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Published: Thursday, 26 July 2012 12:47
Solidarity from 3,000 Miles Away
Last winter, when environmental activists and members of the community of San Sebastian heard about the struggles in Wisconsin to defeat legislation that would pave the way for sulfide mining in the northern part of the state, they sent a statement expressing their solidarity with the efforts.
A few months later, the Tribal Chairman of the Bad River Ojibwe Tribe, Mike Wiggins Jr., responded.
To the people of Wisconsin
Regarding protection of your water, your lands and your people
From the National Roundtable against Metallic Mining in El Salvador and the Social Pastoral Committee of the Santa Rosa de Lima Parish, El Salvador
February 14, 2012
In El Salvador, we understand very well what the impacts of mining are. We have seen the effects of open pit mining on our neighbors (Guatemala and Honduras), and we have lived and suffered through the damages subterranean gold mining causes in our very own communities. Water and soil pollution, acid mine drainage, health problems like kidney failure and cancer from consuming contaminated water, and violence as a result of the arrival of mining companies are not foreign concepts to us. The community of San Sebastian, in the department of La Union, is confronting on a daily basis the consequences of more than one hundred years of mining. A Wisconsin based company has been responsible for the mining project in that community since 1968. When, finally, we were about to stop mining in San Sebastian, the company, Commerce Group, sued our government in an illegitimate World Bank tribunal for $100 million.
Mining companies come to communities promising employment, development and community projects, but the sad reality for our country, which has so many economic restraints and inequality, is that these promises are never fulfilled and their legacy is disastrous for water and life. The companies’ arrivals divide communities and create social violence. Who, better than us, can speak to this reality: to the havoc wreaked by the lack of ethics and the voracity of gold mining companies. These companies are cutting down the very branch they are perched on, that is to say, finishing off our way of living.
We are facing a challenge of life or death. Our contribution is to prevent that you, in Wisconsin, are caught in the talons of companies that only think about profits, so that you do not regret it later. We don’t want any community, any people, to suffer what we are suffering in San Sebastian because of mining. We have to struggle for the rights we have as human beings, and our right to live in a health community has been violated.
After seven years of struggling against metallic mining, we are convinced of the importance of laws that protect the rights of people to access water and to a healthy environment over the economic interests of mining companies. We have witnessed the way in which mining companies try to eliminate legal or institutional restrictions, by forcing laws that threaten the sovereignty of the people. Here in El Salvador, we are denouncing gruesome Free Trade Agreements and promoting a law that would ban metallic mining because we believe that these are best ways to protect ourselves from pollution, the destruction of natural resources, and the social conflicted created by massive mining projects.
As the National Roundtable against Metallic Mining in El Salvador, as part of the struggle against the extractive model in our country or any country in the world, we show our solidarity with the struggle for life and culture of our brothers and sisters in Wisconsin. We are convinced more than ever that the number of voices are growing of those who demand political and environmental policies that respect the sovereignty of communities to decide the way in which they want to build their own destiny. We are pleased and excited by the strength the people of Wisconsin are showing because together we are telling the world that human and environmental rights are non-negotiable and we will do everything within our reach to ensure they are respected.
The people’s right to water is worth more than profits for a few. Let’s make our resistance grow: No to mining. Yes to life.
To the people of El Salvador
From the Bad River Ojibwe Tribe
March 22, 2012
From our sovereign shores of Anishinaabeg-Gitchigami, the Big Water, we also understand what the risks of mining can be. We, too, have witnessed the effects of open-pit mining on our neighbors (Minnesota and Michigan) and now watch that same dark cloud gather on our own horizon. Fugitive dust emissions carried on the wind, toxic mercury making our fish unsafe to eat, sulfate discharges exterminating wild rice, and mine wastes leaching into the groundwater. These effects, not prosperity, are the true legacies left by mining.
Now, a Florida-based company has enticed Wisconsin’s State Government to privilege mines that could result in similar ecological devastation, widespread pollution, and a disproportionate risk to the social, cultural, and economic integrity of northern communities. As has too often been the case, these outside corporate interests have offered empty promises of employment and half-truths of wealth to manipulate the public and State leadership. It has divided our neighbors, our towns, and our elected officials.
But, we have taken a different path. As responsible people, we have not looked to outside corporate interests to inform the management of our people’s air, lands, and water. Rather, we have looked to our elders, our children, our teachings, and science to better understand the risks and incentives associated with mining. We have shared this information with our community, our neighbors, local governments, and State officials. We have hosted a scientific conference open to all —including mining proponents.
We have sought a path of truth-seeking and transparency. If such things are in opposition to mining, then we stand a Sovereign Nation opposed to mining in the Penokee Hills and the legislative maneuvering of corporate interests. We hope that our struggle will illuminate the issue of mining impacts on the resources of indigenous and rural communities across the nation, and across the planet: Rio Tinto’s tunneling into the culturally-significant Migizi wa sin (Eagle Rock) for nickel and copper, the half-of-a-billion tons of Michigan copper mine tailings discharged historically into Lake Superior1, the 160 square miles of Lake Superior’s lake bed covered by Reserve Mining’s taconite tailings2, the sulfate levels chocking out wild rice in the St. Louis River of Minnesota3, the dozens of air and water quality violations throughout Michigan and Minnesota since 20044, the 9,000-15,000+ miles of streams affected by Acid Mine Drainage around the country5, and the plight of the El Salvadorian people and the callous actions of the Commerce Group in that country.
We stand beside the people of El Salvador today and let them know that our voices have been added to theirs. It is our belief that governmental decision makers, laws, and public policies should respect that: “the right to clean air, land, and water for the people is worth more than profit to the powerful.”
Mike Wiggins Jr
Tribal Chairman, Bad River Ojibwe Tribe
References:
1) Kerfoot, W.C., S. Harting, R. Rossmann, and J.A. Robbins. 1999. Anthropogenic Copper Inventories and Mercury Profiles from Lake Superior: Evidence of Mining Impacts. Journal of Great Lakes Research 25(4): 663-682
2) Environmental Protection Agency. 1994. Iron: Extraction and Beneficiation of Ores and Minerals. Technical Resources Document, vol 3. EPA 530-R-94-030. 122pgs.
3) Maccabee, P. 2011. Wild Rice and the Sulfate Standard. Water Legacy factsheet. 2pgs. Available at: http://waterlegacy.org/sites/default/files/Regulation-Enforcement/WildRice/WildRiceSulfateFacts.pdf
4) Sierra Club. 2011. The Environmental Track Record of Taconite Mining: A Fact Sheet on the False Promise that Iron Ore Mining is Safe. 2 pgs. Available at: wisconsin.sierraclub.org/PenokeeMine.asp
5) Environmental Protection Agency. 1994. Acid Mine Drainage Prediction. Technical Document. EPA
530-R-94-036. 52pgs.
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Published: Wednesday, 27 June 2012 16:42
Why we are shouting out against mining injustice
BY BRENT PATTERSON and MEERA KARUNANANTHAN
JUNE 18, 2012
In the next decade, the Conservative government predicts over $500 billion in investments in the mining and extractive sector here in Canada - a prophecy to be fulfilled by the reckless dismantling of already weak Canadian environmental safeguards through the omnibus budget implementation bill, C-38.
In the Global South, Canadian mining companies have long evaded the enforcement of human rights obligations and environmental regulations using their lobbying power or trade mechanisms that have further entrenched the rights of transnational corporations.
Read the rest of the article here…
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Published: Tuesday, 24 April 2012 10:23
The Mesa is preparing an activity in front of the Attorney General's Office in response to the recent sentences in the cases of violence in Cabañas. For more information see here.
They are asking for international support in their efforts.
Below and attached is a solidarity statement outlining the problems with the recent decision and with demands the Mesa will be making towards the Attorney General's Office. All of the demands and most of the language of the statement are a direct translation from the Mesa's own document (that way, we know that the content has been approved)
Please take a moment to read the statement, and if you would like to sign your organization on, email stopEsmining@gmail.com by 9:00 am Eastern Time on Wednesday the 25th. The Mesa will be presenting their demands to the Attorney General's Office Wednesday morning and holding a press conference. The solidarity statement will be read at the press conference. Any names received after 9:00 am Eastern will not be included in the statement at the press conference.
Feel free to stopESmining@gmail.com with any questions.
Thanks for your support
We the undersigned ____ organizations from across the U.S. and Canada express our solidarity with and support for the National Roundtable against Metallic Mining in El Salvador and the communities of the Department of Cabañas as they demand justice in the cases of violence towards environmentalists.
On April 13th, the Specialized Sentencing Tribunal in San Salvador sentenced six of the nine people convicted for a string of homicides, including those of anti-mining activist Ramiro Rivera and Dora Sorto, and Sorto’s unborn child, to between 30 and 145 years in prison. The murders were carried out over a span of seven months in 2009 in the town of Trinidad, Sensuntepeque, Cabañas, El Salvador.
The sentencing has caused profound frustration and indignation on the part of the civil society organizations and communities that make up the National Roundtable against Metallic Mining (the Mesa in Spanish) because of the lack of investigation into the intellectual authors of these murders.
Members of the Mesa say that there is no doubt that the crimes committed against anti-mining leaders and activists, like Ramiro Rivera and Dora Sorto, have intellectual authors that need to be investigated and prosecuted. The persecution and threats leading to the murders in 2009, the apparent planning of the crimes, and the use of weapons supposedly only available to the Armed Forces are some of the factors they argue should be considered in the investigations.
However, from the beginning the Attorney General’s office, the government institution charged with guaranteeing quick and effective access to justice, has ruled out this hypothesis, cutting off the possibility of thorough investigations and the arrest of the intellectual authors behind the crimes.
Despite the constant demands voiced by civil society and the Mesa, the Attorney General’s Office and the Attorney General himself have refused to carry out thorough and serious investigations into the intellectual authors of the crimes in Cabañas. This has created a climate of impunity that ensures that politically motivated crimes can be committed in El Salvador without serious risks for the intellectual authors. Based on information from documents that have been publically released in these cases, it seems that the Attorney General’s Office never even attempted to thoroughly investigate the intellectual authors. According to Salvadoran law, examining only one hypothesis when other tangible hypotheses exist is illegal.
In addition, the recently released sentences in these cases demonstrate a troubling delay of justice on the part of the Attorney General’s Office and Mr. Barahona. These painful and deplorable cases have been surrounded by a wave of similarly deplorable crimes: the disappearance, torture and murder of environmentalist Marcelo Rivera; the death threats against members of Radio Victoria; the kidnapping and assassination attempts of Bishop Luis Alberto Quintanilla and Father Neftali Ruiz; the death threats against Antonio Pacheco, the President of the Association for Social Development Santa Marta (ADES); and the death threats against Hector Berrios and Zenayda Serrano, of the Unified Movement Francisco Sanchez 1932 (MUFRAS 32).
A 2009 letter to the U.S. State Department signed by 68 organizations from across the United States asked the U.S. government to insist on thorough investigations for all of the cases of violence in Cabañas. The sign-on letter stated: “We believe that the events described [above] are linked and are part of a systematic campaign to intimidate environmental and community organizations in Cabañas. We vehemently reject the statement by the prosecutor from the Attorney General’s Office, Rodolfo Delgado, that in the case of Marcelo Rivera ‘there is not evidence of an intellectual author of the assassination.’”
The undersigned organizations believe that the continued violence in El Salvador is a direct result of this atmosphere of impunity and we support the following demands made by the National Roundtable against Metallic Mining to the Attorney General of the Republic of El Salvador:
1. An objective, impartial investigation without political bias or personal interests into the structures that support and promote the resurgence of illegal armed groups with political ties in the Department of Cabañas. It is not acceptable that the communities have had to take the initiative to prove the facts in these cases when government institutions are legally responsible for these investigations and not the citizens themselves
2. An objective and impartial investigation into the causes of the wave of violence in the region, including death threats towards environmentalists, kidnapping and murder attempts. It is fundamental that the intellectual authors in all of these crimes be investigated and prosecuted.
3. That these cases are all assigned to the same unit within the Attorney General’s Office. Also the cases should be given to prosecutors that have not been accused of due process violations or of manipulating investigations for political reasons, as is the case with the head of the Organized Crime Unit of the Attorney General’s Office, who has been accused of covering up and instigating serious due process violations in the aforementioned cases.
4. Immediate protection for activists from civil society organizations who oppose metallic mining projects and have been threatened , in accordance with the recommendations made by the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights stating that the Government of El Salvador ensure protective measures for the integrity of the environmentalists who continue to live with serious risks.
5. That the Attorney General of the Republic and officials from the Ministry of Justice and Public Security take seriously the conclusions released by the Joint Group on the Investigation of Illegal Armed Groups with Political Motives in its report from June 28, 1994 which were never adopted by the Salvadoran Government. The report showed the mutation of the prior death squad structures to fragmented cells that are tied to common and organized crime which could potentially participate in political violence. These groups take advantage of the fertile ground presented by delinquency to hire assassins for politically motivated violence.
Signed,
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Published: Monday, 27 February 2012 16:37
Another Example of a National Unified Mining Resistance
In December, fifteen high school students from Carasque, Chalatenango piled into a van and made the six hour trek from their home to Santa Rosa de Lima in La Union. For many of them it was the first time they had ever traveled outside of their department (the Salvadoran equivalent of a state) as well as the first time that any of them had gone as far as La Union, the most eastern department in the country.
These rambunctious youth, part of the Nuevas Estrellas Juveniles theater group, traveled all that way to participate in the music, arts and culture week organized by the Santa Rosa de Lima Parish. Since the beginning of last year, the theater group has been traveling around the department of Chalatenango presenting a play called La Mina Contamina (The Mine Contaminates). The parish priest in Santa Rosa de Lima invited the group to perform their play as way to continue to educate his community about the dangers of mining and also so that the theater group could leave a copy of the script for the parish theater group to reproduce.
This trip was an important experience for the actors not only because they were able see a new part of their country, but also because they were able to see the effects of mining first hand. The group went to San Sebastian, the site of the now defunct Commerce Group mine and saw one of the byproducts of the mining process: acid mine drainage. They also spoke with a former employee of the mine who said that almost all his coworkers from his mining days have died of illness. One of the members of the theater group said, “This visit has been very helpful for me. In the play we talk about the dangers of mining, but today we were able to actually see what those are.” Many of the actors also commented on the similarities between the mountain above the town of San Sebastian and the mountain above their own community, which has been sought by mining companies in recent years. This led them to reflect on what would happen to their community and the river that flows along its border, if the proposed mining project on their mountain were allowed.
In the evening the theater group presented their play to around 250 people gathered in the square in front of the church. Each scene was greeted by applause and laughter. Afterwards, a number of audience members came up and congratulated the group.
Education around mining and specifically the Commerce Group company is as crucial now as ever. In 2009, Commerce Group sued the Salvadoran government for revoking their mining permits, in spite of studies showing extreme acid mine drainage in the San Sebastian River. The World Bank trade tribunal hearing the case threw it out in 2011 on a technicality, while still forcing the Salvadoran government to pay close to $800,000 in fees to the tribunal. Commerce Group filed for an appeal of the decision in July of 2011. However, in a recent letter the company stated that they cannot afford the appeals proceedings fees. This has not stopped the company from speaking out in the media, and this November Mr. John Machulak, the lawyer for the Commerce Group, was interviewed on Milwaukee Public Radio where he misrepresented a number of issues surrounding the case.
The Salvadoran anti-mining movement has been able to stand up to multi-national corporations like Commerce Group for a number of reasons, one of which being its success at building a unified national response to mining companies. Something as seemingly insignificant as a play presented by a group of high schoolers from across the country is just another example of this strategy in action.
