Militarisation

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.

Indigenous leaders from Papua New Guinea travel to Canada to speak out about mine-related killings and severe impacts on their rivers, food security, and health.

(Ottawa) 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.

On January 8th and 9th, 2007, hundreds of police and soldiers in Guatemala forcibly evicted the inhabitants of several communities who were living on lands that a Guatemalan military government had granted to Canadian mining company INCO in 1965. Local indigenous people claim the land to be theirs, and resent the exploitation of a foreign corporation. Canada's Skye Resources now lays claim to the land, and paid workers a nominal sum to destroy people's homes.

In October, MiningWatch's Catherine Coumans visited communities affected by TVI Pacific's mine in the municipality of Siocon, on the Zamboanga peninsula of the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.