LIMA, Peru – A panel of human rights activists “ethically and morally” condemned 24 European corporations Friday at a symbolic trial parallel to a biennial Latin America-European Union summit in Peru.

The panel, known as the Permanent People's Tribunal, accused the corporations of abuses including environmental contamination, labor exploitation and the careless sale of dangerous agrochemicals while operating in Latin America.

The 24 companies include Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Spanish oil company Repsol YPF and Germany's Bayer AG.

Only one company attended the hearings – Norway's Camposol SA, which was accused of labor exploitation in Peru.

Representatives from Camposol and Bayer, which activists accused of negligent labeling on one of its pesticides – were not available for comment.

Twenty-four school children in a remote Andean village died in 1999 when they were served milk mistakenly mixed with a Bayer agrochemical. Activists say Bayer sold the toxic product despite prior knowledge that it would be used by illiterate villagers unable to read warning labels.

The Permanent People's Tribunal was formed in Italy in 1979 as a permanent extension of a 1967 Vietnam war crimes tribunal convened by philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre.

The 15-person panel, including ex-senators from Colombia and Italy and human rights activists from both continents, heard arguments this week as part of the alternative “People's Summit.”