Activist Dave Vasey said, “here in Toronto, groups like Environmental Justice Toronto are working closely with communities directly impacted by tar sands extraction to change the story being told by industry. People are listening, we have a broad base of support and with a network of allies through out the country, the public has become aware of the true cost of so called development.”
The true cost of development includes damage to human rights and support for regimes that commit atrocities. Peter Munk --owner of Barrick Gold, the largest gold mining company in Canada-- justified the human rights record of Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator. Referring to Pinochet’s human rights record Munk said, “they can put people in jail, I have no comment on that, I think that may be true… I think [the end justifies the means] because it brought wealth to an enormous number of people. If you ask someone in jail, they’ll say no. But that’s the wonderful thing about our world, people have the freedom to disagree.”
What happens to people who disagree with mining companies? In some places, they have a tendency to end up dead. In Guatemala for example, human rights and indigenous activists have been assassinated; and the Guatemalan police and army combine with mine security to create a climate of threats and intimidation, especially in the post-conflict climate of the country. In 2009, Adolfo Ich Chaman, a schoolteacher and community leader, was killed during an eviction of an indigenous Maya-Qeqchi community land in El Estor claimed by mining company Skye Resources. In El Salvador, three community activists against mining were killed in 2009. According to Amnesty International, a colleague of theirs, Hector Berríos, received death threats this past January. Journalists have also been killed. In the Philippines, Gerry Ortega, a journalist covering mining abuses and bribery was shot dead.
Mining also begets violence against women. In Papua New Guinea, indigenous women living near mine sites have to deal with a destruction of local agriculture, pollution, and dislocation, but do not receive any of the temporary jobs that men might get from mining (although modern open-pit mines employ very few local people of any gender). Security guards from Barrick Gold were arrested in PNG for raping women. How did Peter Munk, recipient of the Order of Canada, respond? By saying, “gang rape is a cultural habit”.
Mark Tony Ekepa, chairman of the Porgera Alliance and Porgera Landowners Association responded with this statement: “Your Barick Gold Corporation extracting gold in Porgera in the Enga Province of Papua New Guinea is bringing wealth and luxury for your betterment alone at the expense of deaths, rapes and beatings of local indigenous people in the pretext of development. Your mining impacts have brought pain, disunity, poverty and cultural conflict induced by your way of operation...A gang rape is a new phenomenon to us since your mine arrived and is only practiced by criminals as in western cultures. The practice of gang rapes in the mine at Porgera is reflecting your criminal paramilitary type goon guard security operation system.”
People throughout Canada are fighting back. On February 17, University of Toronto Students and community members protested a board of governors meeting, with the theme “Make a Mockery of Munk”. They were protesting Munk’s giant donation to the University of Toronto, the conditions which come with it, and how it was approved in secret. Munk made the donation in return for having his name on a new “Munk Centre for Global Affairs”. Of course, his company has a vested interest in global affairs and public policy, and so this “donation” will affect research on regulation of mining corporations and environmental law, putting a seemingly “neutral” face on corporate propaganda.
The “Munk OUT of U of T” campaign is taking off and other autonomous actions are being taken. A sign that read, “No more injustice: Barrick Gold: Canada’s Shame” was placed over the sign announcing the centre. This was removed, but a more subtle changing of “Munk School of Global Affairs” to “Munk School of the Americas” remained up for days. This particular sign links current human rights issues with mining by referencing the infamous “School of the Americas” in Fort Benning, where officers from Latin American countries were trained in “counter-insurgency tactics” including torture, in part of a North American support program for military dictatorships. With the coup in Honduras fresh in everyone’s mind, and evictions of indigenous Maya communities taking place in Guatemala as we speak, the comparison is apt.
Members of the University of Toronto General Assembly leafleted U of T with zines and posters describing how dirty money is funding destruction and curtailing academic freedom. In November, Masrour Zoghi rejected his PhD in math from U of T, wearing a t-shirt that said “U of T Inc” and “Univ for SALE”. Similar struggles are taking place in British Colombia, on the campus of Sandford Fleming University, where Goldcorp has donated millions for a new “Goldcorp centre for the Arts”.
Juan-Carlos Jimenez, a student at the University of Toronto and member of the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network, said: “I personally feel that fighting is important because it resembles the continued colonization in Latin America, Asia, Africa. It is important to me personally because it is my community [El Salvador] being effected, and there are many communities being oppressed in such a way that they are defenseless, and for that, it is up to us to struggle with them. For this same reason, we have to kick Munk out of U of T. Munk will push his right wing agenda which in turn, will reveal U of T students to a political discourse which resembles his corporate needs.”
