MILITARY COUPS, MINING & CANADIAN INVOLVEMENT

[Judi Lynn]

MILITARY COUPS, MINING & CANADIAN INVOLVEMENT
Rights Action
September 10, 2010
By Karen Spring (with Grahame Russell)

Since the June 28, 2009, military coup in Honduras, Rights Action has supported and worked with the Honduran people's pro-democracy, anti-coup regime movement. This widespread people's movement is unique in Honduran history and is one more inspiring 'struggle of the Americas', as people work to end the impunity of and exploitation by minority elites, and to re-found their nations and societies by establishing real democracy and rule of law from below. Since military ouster of the government of President Zelaya, and 15 months a widespread repression, we have also denounced how and why the governments of the USA and Canada have been the main supporters and backers of the coup itself and, since then, the post-coup regime of "President" Pepe Lobo. A direct way of understanding why Canada has thrown democracy and human rights down the toilet is to view Honduras through the lens of Canadian mining interests.

C.E.O. OF AURA MINERALS Inc. VISITS HONDURAS WITH CANADIAN AMBASSADOR

In April 2010, Rights Action reported that the President of Aura Minerals Inc, Patrick Downey, and other mining and corporate investors accompanied Canadian Ambassador Neil Reeder on an official government visit to Honduras in February 2010, to 'encourage' the Honduran government to approve a new mining law that favours the interests of mining companies. Canada is proceeding with "business as usual" in Honduras, even as Canadian government officials and politicians receive - from Rights Action and many other groups - a steady stream of reports on on-going State-sponsored repression in Honduras. Repression is being widely used to keep in place an undemocratic regime and an unjust economic model that favours global investors and corporate interests, such as the mining industry. In August, Karen Spring visited the "San Andres Mine" in Honduras owned by Aura Minerals. Standing at the edge of a huge 250 meter-deep crater left behind by 3 Canadian mining companies, one gets a glimpse of the serious harms and destruction that the San Andres Mine has caused, and continues to cause in the municipality of La Unión, department of Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras.

Since the mid-1990s, the San Andres Mine has passed hands 3 times, from Greenstone Resources to Yamana Gold and finally to Aura Minerals Inc. in August 2009. The CPP (Canada Pension Plan) is an investor in both Yamana Gold and Aura Minerales (http://www.cppib.ca/files/PDF/q4_10_cdn_re_holdings.pdf). The mining-harmed communities of the La Union municipality claim that along with selling the mine from one company to another, the companies pass the problems along that they created, in order to avoid being held criminally and/or civilly accountable. Harms and violations documented over the years include: environmental contamination from cyanide spills and related health harms, forced relocations, unfulfilled promises to the communities, disappearing villages and on-going social tensions between community members.

GHOST VILLAGES

In the region around the mine, four communities are directly affected by Aura Minerals operations. The property line of the community of San Miguel lies 125 meters from the sprinklers that spray cyanide solution onto the rock. Less than 125 metres from San Miguel homes, a sprinkler system sprays cyanide solution over crushed rock, the leaching process by which the gold is separated from the rock. Although roughly 40 houses are still inhabited in San Miguel, the community looks like a ghost town where several run-down and destroyed houses show the slow disappearance of a once fully inhabited community. It is believed that instead of relocating and compensating the people of San Miguel, first Greenstone Resources, then Yamana Gold decided to slowly buy the houses forcing the people to relocate, in hopes of saving money.

More:
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/honduras/7045.html

[Wilms]

1. kick n/t