Fidelity Investments - Shares In Genocide

Activists from Manchester Earth First! have taken action in support of the U'wa people who are fighting against Oxy oil drilling on their sacred lands in Columbia.

On Friday 17th March, eight people called round on the UK northern regional offices of Fidelity Investments (a major shareholder of Oxy), with a few choice words to put forward about the situation in Colombia. Staff at the office were caught completely by surprise as suited up crusties randomly wandered the office, locking on to delicate computer equipment and reorganising a few filing systems.

For some reason the office manager called the Police who sped around en masse, arriving within five to ten minutes. Four police vans parked up outside the innocuous-looking building and 16 TAG officers jumped out onto King's Street in the centre of Manchester's financial district, attracting a lot of attention.

Other activists held up a banner outside the building denouncing Fidelity, and handed out Rainforest Action Network leaflets, along with some home made Fidelity shares in grief, pain, suicide, war, U'wa land, rainforest and genocide.

The protestors were finally ejected from the building after about an hour and a half, with one arrest (for hiding in a stationary cupboard and wedging a rubber stop under the door) and leaving behind a dismantled computer monitor and stand. Website http://www.snet.co.uk/ef/.