Indigenous Leaders confront Barrick Gold I

Indigenous leaders from Papua New Guinea and Chile traveled to Canada this week to attend the April 29 shareholders’ meeting of Barrick Gold. Where they confronted Barrick about human rights abuses and environmental degradation on their lands.

Jethro Tulin, from Papua New Guinea, speaks outside Barrick Gold's Anual General Meeting

Complaints include killings, rapes and arbitrary detentions of local village people in the Papua New Guinea highlands by Barrick security guards. For Barrick’s Pascua Lama project on the border of Chile and Argentina, Barrick failed to consult the Diaguita Huascoaltinos Indigenous community, who hold title to the land of that proposed mine, as well as other areas that Barrick is exploring.

Sergio Campusano (second from left), the elected leader of the Diaguita Huascoaltinos in Chile, speaking through a translator outside Barrick Gold's AGM

“Barrick Gold says that they want to help the poor, but we don’t want their helping hand, we want their hands off our mountains,” says Sergio Campusano, president of the Diaguita Huascoaltino Indigenous and Agricultural community who are struggling against Barrick Gold’s Pascua Lama mine and other exploration in the area. Barrick recognized Campusano as the legitimate leader of the Huascoaltino community until he asked Barrick to leave the area. Now the corporation is promoting Diaguita from other areas as legitimate leaders who will provide consent to the project.

In 2006, Sergio’s community lodged a complaint against the State of Chile for the Pascua Lama project in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Jethro Tulin, from Papua New Guinea, speaking outside Barrick Gold's AGM backed by over a dozen supporters who came out to show their solidarity with affected communities.

According to Jethro Tulin, Executive Officer of the Akali Tange Association, a human rights organization in Papua New Guinea, “Barrick’s Porgera Mine is a textbook case of what can go wrong when large-scale mining confronts indigenous peoples, ignoring the impacts of its projects and resorting to goon squads when people rebel against it. This outrages the conscience of local Indigenous communities, especially when the mine is right next to our homes; my people are exposed to dangerous chemicals like cyanide and mercury; some of our people drown in the tailings and waste during floods; and fishing stocks, flora and fauna are depleted down the river systems, leading to indigenous food sources being threatened.”

As Mr. Tulin traveled to Canada to attend Barrick’s AGM, the Papua New Guinea government sent 200 heavily armed troops to the Porgera area. This effective State of Emergency in Porgera was motivated by situation reports presented by Barrick (PNG) Limited, according to Laigap Porgera Member of Parliament Phillip Kikala. Reports and photos received from Porgera landowners this week testify that these troops have burnt down 80 houses in one village bordering the mine site and are now targeting houses in other nearby villages.

Jethro Tulin describes the destruction documented in recent photos of the ongoing violence at the Porgera Gold Mine in Papua New Guinea

“Barrick Gold and the Government of Papua New Guinea must immediately start to address the catastrophic problem in Porgera pro-actively rather than over reacting with high level security installations and branding it as a law and order problem. Calling a State of Emergency is not the right method to fix these extensive and irreversible damages, the ordinary people are already victims of what as gone wrong.”

Last year the Norwegian Pension Fund divested $230 million CAD from Barrick Gold for ethical concerns related to the Porgera Mine.

Jethro Tulin

Native to the rocky highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG), Jethro Tulin is a popular organiser and founder of the Akali Tange Association (ATA), a human rights organization documenting abuses at the Porgera mine, owned by Toronto’s Barrick Gold.

Jethro has been organizing within and outside the Barrick’s Porgera mine since its inception (then owned by Placer Dome. In 1989, he registered Porgera’s first mine workers union and became its first secretary. Years later, after spending time abroad and involved in other aspects of Papua New Guinea’s nascent union movement, Jethro returned to Porgera to find the situation with the mine and the surrounding villages had worsened dramatically. So, in 2003, he founded the ATA, which has operated in Porgera with an all-volunteer staff and material support from friends, victims’ relatives, and even local businessmen and officials.

here’s a good youtube clip of Jethro speaking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUY-ift-6ts

Sergio Campusano

Sergio Campusano is the President of the Diaguita Huascoaltinos Indigenous and Agricultural Community. Since he assumed the role of president, Sergio has been fighting against the greed of the mining corporations and the local agriculture companies in order to mantain the rights of his people. He has participated pressing charges in countless times even against the Chilean State and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. He’s  conscious they’re fighting not only to represent the living, but also the ancestral thought of preservation of the ecosystem for the entire world, for the children of us all. In this clear idea is impregnated the principles of AUTO-DESTINY, AUTONOMY, and the right of the indigenous peoples of AUTODETERMINATION.

He will be accompanied by Albadina Carmona Villegas, an elder of his community.

Both Sergio and Jethro got inside the Barrick AGM and were able to speak and raise their complaints directly to the company directors and shareholders.

While Jethro Tulin and Sergio Campusano were speaking to shareholders inside the AGM, more than twenty supporters were rallying outside the AGM to show their solidarity with the affected communities.

For more information on Sergio Campusano’s and Jethro Tulin’s trips to Canada:

www.ProtestBarrick.net

For more on the social and environmental impacts of the global mining industry:

Someone Else’s Treasure