Barrick Gold

UPDATE: After 2-day strike in the Veladero mine (December 17-18, 2009) OSMA-CTA (Organización Sindical de Mineros Argentinos) and Barrick Gold in Argentina signed a historic agreement on Jan. 12, 2010.

News release from the Tanzania Episcopal Conference (TEC), the Muslim Council of Tanzania (BAKWATA), and the Christian Council of Tanzania (CCT): A new report published by the Norwegian University of Life Sciences finds potentially life-threatening levels of arsenic around Barrick Gold’s North Mara mine in Tanzania. “If nothing is done the environment will be destroyed. It has already become heavily polluted by arsenic, cobalt and other heavy metals,” says Evans Rubara of the Christian Council of Tanzania, one of the organizations that commissioned the report.

By Catherine Coumans, MiningWatch Canada, May 2009. Allegations of rapes, beatings and killings of community members by Porgera Joint Venture (PJV) security forces have been prevalent for at least a decade. In 2005, a grass roots human rights organization established by indigenous community members of Porgera, Akali Tange Association Inc., issued a report called “The Shooting Fields of Porgera Joint Venture.”

MiningWatch Canada has sent an Urgent Appeal to several United Nations Special Rapporteurs regarding human rights abuses near Barrick Gold’s Porgera Joint Venture (PJV) mine in Papua New Guinea.

(Ottawa) Even as houses near Barrick's mine in the highlands of Papua New Guinea are being burned down in a joint military and police action, Jethro Tulin is in Canada to address shareholders and government officials, whom he considers complicit in the suffering of his people as a result of Barrick's Porgera Joint Venture mine.

Norway’s Government Pension Fund has dropped its shares in Canada’s Barrick Gold as a result of Barrick’s operations at the Porgera Mine in Papua New Guinea.

In November 2008 MiningWatch Canada’s Catherine Coumans had the opportunity to meet with partners at Barrick Gold’s Porgera Mine in the Papua New Guinea Highlands.

The South Fork Band Council of Western Shoshone, the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, the Western Shoshone Defense Project, and Great Basin Resource Watch filed a legal complaint on November 21, 2008, to stop construction of Barrick Gold's Cortez Mine expansion onto the lower flanks of Mount Tenabo.

Barrick Gold plans to build a massive new open pit gold mine, over 900 acres in size and over 2,000 feet deep, on Mount Tenabo in the territory of the Western Shoshone Nation, recognized in the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley.

[News release] Indigenous leaders from Porgera in Papua New Guinea (PNG) have traveled to Canada to speak out about devastating impacts in their mountainous community from a Barrick Gold-operated mine. Joining the indigenous leaders are researchers with the International Human Rights Clinic at the Harvard Law School and MiningWatch Canada. Concerns about killings by security guards at the Porgera Joint Venture (PJV) mine, as well as about serious public health, environmental and socio-cultural impacts of the mine have continued since Barrick’s purchase of the mine two years ago. Neither the PNG government nor Barrick have responded effectively to these concerns.