(Quezon City, April 6, 2020) Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM) strongly condemns the violent dispersal by the police against indigenous community leaders in Barangay Didipio, Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya, late afternoon today.

More than 100 personnel of the Philippine National Police from the regional and Quirino provincial units escorted a diesel tanker and forcibly entered the premises of the Didipio mine of Oceana Gold Philippines, Inc. (OGPI).

Mining executives are washing their hands, alright — they’re washing their hands of responsibility for their workers’ and communities’ well-being.

In not acting quickly to curtail or halt operations in light of COVID-19, mining companies are putting workers and communities at greater risk. 

Here are ten points to consider:

Teck Resources’ Carmen de Andacollo mine in northern Chile has come under scrutiny for the way it is reacting to the COVID-19 crisis as the number of cases in that country continues to rise.

The peaceful resistance of Santa Rosa, Jalapa, and Jutiapa in southeastern Guatemala has struggled since 2010 to defend the health of their communities from the Escobal mine. Since June 2017, they have maintained a 24-hour roadside encampment to prevent traffic from reaching the mine site, which halted operations shortly before Guatemalan courts ordered the mine suspended.

The Xinka People of Guatemala Inform the Public That:

Twenty-four years after a catastrophic mine waste disaster on the small Philippine island of Marinduque filled a 26-kilometre river with mine tailings from the mountainous mine site to the sea, Marinduqueños still seek compensation for this disaster from Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold.

The 55,000 residents of the town of Boac, many of whom lost homes, rice fields, animals, and the use of the Boac River for food security and their livelihoods, continue to suffer from acidification and high metal levels in the river that has yet to be remediated. 

Seventeen years after the Esquel referendum (March 23, 2003), funding dirty metal extraction projects seems further away than ever.

Author: Luis Manuel Claps

“The hygiene here in the camp is intolerable – we don’t have toilet paper, we don’t have hand sanitizer, we don’t even have soap to wash our hands; we are terrified of catching it [coronavirus].”

(Ottawa, Quito) Last Friday, the Indigenous Pueblo Shuar Arutam government (PSHA) released a public statement condemning a Canadian company Solaris Resources, owner of the Warintza copper-molybdenum project, and the Ecuadorian government for using unelected representatives of the Shuar peoples in Canada to misrepresent the project as enjoying the support of the Shuar.

More than 100 indigenous women and women's rights advocates in Brgy. Didipio in Kasibu town dance the Tayaw to protest the mining operations of OceanaGold Philippines 

Mavic Conde 

Published 2:00 PM, March 07, 2020 

Updated 2:02 PM, March 07, 2020 

ALBAY, Philippines – "Tayaw," a traditional dance of the Tuwali tribe in Nueva Vizcaya, is about unity and the power to face threats against a community.