Genocide and murder of Indigenous people and environmentalists by government-backed Canadian mining firms

ETA:

Here's more on the record of Canadian mining companies across many mines in Burkino Faso, as well as elsewhere in Africa, and the sad death toll tied to them due to "Labour violations, killings or ecological damage".  The article also discusses how somehow Canadian media always seem willing to report Canadian minings high profits while rarely mentioning the environmental damage, extremely low wages, terrible working conditions, deaths, and even killings. The article also discusses the Trudeau and previous government's role in creating Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (FIPAs) that protect Canadian mining and other corporations to undermine a country's ability to regulate these companies and the use of CIDA [Canadian International Development Agency] to map future natural resource sites for Canadian firms throughout Africa. 

Site of gold mining in Tamiougou just south of Kongoussi. Paul Sawadogo, 27 years old, prospector says, "I started panning for gold at 17. The gallery is 10m deep. Each prospector spends 12 hours underground and brings up several kilos of ore will be crushed and then washed.

Vancouver-based Trevali Mining owns the mine in central Burkina Faso. On April 16 the mine flooded during thunderstorms and eight miners were trapped 550 meters below the surface.

The eight men stuck underground are but the latest in a string of tragedies at Canadian mines in Burkina Faso. At least 37 were killed in a rebel attack at Montréal based SEMAFO’s operations there in 2019. In October several of Toronto-based IAMGOLD’s employees were kidnapped in northern Burkina Faso. A half dozen villages were relocated to make way for IAMGOLD’s open pit gold mine, which gobbles up significant water in an arid region. That company was also accused of hiding gold in coal shipments to avoid paying royalties. 

Labour violations, killings or ecological damage at Canadian mines in Burkina or elsewhere on the continent rarely receive much attention. When they are mentioned, it’s usually in the Globe and Mail Report on Business or Financial Post and there’s generally little about Canada’s influence over mining policy. 

Canadian companies dominate the impoverished country’s main export industry. Responsible for 75 per cent of the country’s gold exports, Canadian firms have some $4 billion invested in Burkina Faso.  ...

A number of individuals on social media pointed out how there’s a great deal of discussion about China buying up Africa’s natural resources but little about how Canadian companies dominate mining in most African countries. 

In 2019 Natural Resources Canada reported that Canadian mining investment in Africa totaled $37.8 billion. The crass double standard has been obvious for some time. In 2013 I wrote, “the dominant media prefers to focus on how Chinese companies are buying up the continent even though on a per capita basis Canadian corporations have taken control of a great deal more of Africa’s natural resources than China’s.” 

In another example of media silence on Canadian mining policy in Burkina Faso I was unable to find a single criticism of the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) Ottawa signed with an interim, military-dominated regime, in any major Canadian news outlet. n 2014 Ottawa signed a FIPA with the transition administration that took over after President Blaise Compaoré’s 27-year reign was ended by popular protest.

FIPAs undermine Africans’ ability to democratically determine economic policy by giving corporations the right to sue governments — in private, investor-friendly tribunals — for pursuing policies that interfere with their profit making. These bilateral investment accords are primarily about protecting Canadian mining firms from popular discontent. After decades of privatization and loosened restrictions on foreign investment through International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programs (SAPs), mining companies operating in Africa fear a reversal of these policies. The ability to sue a government in an international tribunal for lost profits partially alleviates those fears, which is why Ottawa has signed/negotiated these accords with 20 African countries. 

There’s also been little discussion of Canada’s role promoting structural adjustment processes (SAP)s. Through the late 1980s and 1990s Canada channeled hundreds of millions of dollars in “aid” to support SAPs. The structural adjustment process forced more than thirty African governments to rewrite mining codes to facilitate foreign ownership and exploitation of their mineral resources. A World Bank promoted reform in Burkina Faso, for instance, reduced mining income taxes by 20 percent, dividend withholding taxes by 50 percent and capped the government’s share of mining ventures at 10 pe rcent. 

At the same time as Canada’s aid agency promoted reforms that benefited foreign mining firms in Burkina Faso, Canadians mapped the country’s underground riches. Long-time West Africa-based freelance journalist, Joan Baxter, describes a chance encounter with Canadian geologists in her 2008 book Dust From Our Eyes: an Unblinkered Look at Africa: “Another CIDA [Canadian International Development Agency] employee I met one evening in Bamako [Mali] told me his work with CIDA had been a long-term project to map the mineral resources of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

https://rabble.ca/environment/media-ignore-tragedies-exploitation-in-can...

A new report concludes that Canadian mining companies continue "to sue developing countries for environmental policies that affect their profitability and often win huge payouts from these poorer countries, a new report states." The resulting environmental disasters often cost many local people, often indigenous, their lives. 

The average award or settlement in these cases "is US$929 million, nearly four times the rolling average of all known international ISDS cases in 2020, according to the report."

Time to end these corporate legal ripoffs and the deaths they bring.

Canadian mining companies continue to sue developing countries for environmental policies that affect their profitability, costing poorer countries hundreds of millions of dollars. Photo by R. Miller / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Canadian mining companies continue to sue developing countries for environmental policies that affect their profitability and often win huge payouts from these poorer countries, a new report states.

“This is just further evidence to add to Canada's already poor reputation as a source of mining companies that go dig up and often abuse poor countries,” said Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, who authored the report for Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). Canada is home to almost half of the world’s publicly listed mining and mineral exploration companies, which Mertins-Kirkwood says is partly a function of “egregiously slanted” trade agreements that offer companies very strong protections.

Nearly all Canada’s international investment agreements allow foreign companies to sue governments if they are treated unfairly. However, the report finds that instead of being a last resort, these investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) are being used by multinational corporations to extract payment from poor countries or strong-arm them into abandoning environmental policies.

Since 1998, Canadian investors have brought 56 dispute settlements against countries outside North America. Of those, 70 per cent were initiated by companies in the mining and oil and gas industries. 

The report also found a vast majority of dispute settlements target developing countries. The way free trade agreements are worded means “almost anything” can trigger a dispute, said Mertins-Kirkwood.

“If a corporation feels like it has unfairly lost the value of its investment, it'll bring one of these cases forward,” he explained. 

Energy policy and resource management decisions — like revoking a project permit — and environmental policies are the most common causes of these claims, the report notes.

The payout for wealthy Canadian investors has been huge.

According to the report, the largest payout involving a Canadian investor occurred in 2019, when a tribunal ruled Pakistan must pay investors US$5.84 billion because if Pakistan had not denied the mining lease, the project would have gone forward and become operational and profitable. This was despite the company having only invested US$220 million into feasibility studies for the prospective copper and gold mine. Pakistan disputed the decision but reached a settlement in early 2022 that allowed the project to proceed.

The average award or settlement is US$929 million, nearly four times the rolling average of all known international ISDS cases in 2020, according to the report.

Canadian mining companies continue to sue developing countries for environmental policies that affect their profitability and often win huge payouts from these poorer countries, according to a new @ccpa report. #mining #cdnpoli #ISDS 

These payouts have an outsized impact on poorer countries, said Mertins-Kirkwood. 

For example, the report found that in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan and Venezuela, the damages incurred from Canadian ISDS lawsuits amount to more than two per cent of each of those countries’ GDP.

These high price tags, combined with the long, drawn-out settlement process and legal fees, means the mere threat of an ISDS claim can cause governments to back down on environmental regulations, the report says.

In a recent report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted numerous scholars warn ISDS can be used by “fossil fuel companies to block national legislation aimed at phasing out the use of their assets.”

Despite Canada’s wealth, Mertins-Kirkwood says the country could find itself on the flip side of this equation if the government moves to phase out fossil fuels.

“We have a lot of foreign-owned oil and gas companies who could launch ISDS claims against Canada if we started to go after the oil and gas sector, which we kind of have to,” he explained. “If we can't deal with this ISDS system abroad, it's also going to limit our ability to pass environmental regulation at home without being challenged at every turn by powerful corporate interests.”

Canada is currently being sued by U.S. coal company Westmoreland over Alberta’s commitment to phase out all coal-powered electricity by 2030 because it reduced the lifespan of the company’s mines. Westmoreland is claiming at least C$470 million in damages from the federal government. The case was initiated in 2019 and has yet to be resolved.

While Canada can afford to pay Westmoreland and continue the coal phaseout, this isn’t easy for developing countries and can hinder their ability to move away from fossil fuels, the report says.

Trade agreements can be a “serious barrier to climate action” because they influence what policy is permitted and generally do not make exceptions for climate policy, Mertins-Kirkwood adds.

The most obvious solution is for Canada to stop negotiating ISDS into new trade and investment agreements and remove the ISDS mechanism from existing treaties, the report says. 

“Allowing mining companies (to) run roughshod over environmental policy in other countries … sets a terrible precedent for our own efforts to protect the environment and act on climate change,” said Mertins-Kirkwood.

Canada’s National Observer reached out to the Mining Association of Canada Wednesday afternoon but did not hear back before publication. The association later responded that it is unable to comment because it doesn't work closely on ISDS.

Canada’s National Observer also reached out to Global Affairs for comment but did not receive a response before deadline.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/05/19/news/canadian-mining-compani...

The fight of the Shuar Artuam has been ongoing for several years.

Quote:

The Shuar Arutam Will Not Be Divided by Canadian Mining Company Solaris Resources

The company has led a divisive public relations campaign in attempts to manufacture consent for the Warintza mining project

September 25, 2020 | Carlos Mazabanda | Eye on the Amazon
Amazon Watch, together with local and international organizations, has supported the Indigenous resistance by the Shuar Arutam (PSHA) against large-scale extractive projects such as mining in the Ecuadorian Amazon. These projects have the potential to cause irreversible impacts on the environment, local Indigenous communities, and their culture. The harm caused by such projects is well-documented. In fact, Ecuador’s first large-scale mining project, “Mirador,” is a tragic example of the damage mining can create on Shuar Arutam territory. Since its inception, the project has caused mass deforestation, contaminated headwaters, displaced Indigenous communities, and it has led to the breakdown of social agreements within the communities because organizational structures have been co-opted.

In recent months, the Canadian mining company Solaris Resources, Inc., licensee of the Warintza project, has launched an aggressive public relations campaign in an attempt to coerce communities to allow the extractive project to move forward on Shuar Arutam territories.

The PSHA are resisting these strategic attacks by the mining company, but the fight is rigged. They are up against a company with significant economic power and resources. This is why we need international solidarity for their cause and to amplify their campaign, “The Shuar Arutam Have Already Decided: No Mining in Our Territories.” We have an opportunity to learn from the past and make history so that mining projects can never again cause displacement, pollution, and the violation of Indigenous rights on Shuar Arutam territory.

The history of the Shuar Arutam and mining concessions

The territory of the Shuar Arutam people is made up of 45 communities located in the Cordillera del Cóndor, the border area between Ecuador and Peru, whose mountains are home to a unique and fragile ecosystem of biological importance with high levels of biodiversity and endemic species. Those mountains are the source of three important Amazon rivers – the Santiago, the Zamora, and the Coangos.

The Shuar Arutam people have a collective assembly decision-making structure, in which all communities participate and resolutions are passed to be fully executed by the Governing Council, a body of representatives that is democratically-elected.

From the beginning of its organizational history, PSHA has formally rejected extractive projects in its territories, particularly mining projects that have remained a constant threat. Despite their staunch opposition, the Ecuadorian government is advancing several large-scale mining projects which now cover 50 percent of their ancestral territory. Current mining projects on their territory are the San Carlos-Panantza project by Chinese firm Ecuacorrientes SA (currently paused after a conflict between the military and several Shuar communities who were forcibly evicted from their homes for the construction of a workers camp), the Lost Cities-Cutucu project by Aurania Resources and a local subsidiary, and the Warintza Project by Canadian-based Solaris Resources, Inc.

Solaris Resources’ divide and conquer tactics

The Warintza project has caused serious internal conflicts within PSHA, as Solaris Resources is using divisive community relations tactics to manufacture consent for its project. The company secretly established direct relationships with two communities, without authorization from the Assembly and the Governing Council. By doing this, Solaris is circumventing and disrespecting the organizational structure of PSHA, with the aim of establishing a “strategic alliance” by offering economic benefits that fragment PSHA’s social fabric and weaken its intra-community relations.

In March of this year, at a PDAC conference (the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada), Solaris Resources, Inc. presented the results of an alleged “prior consultation” that it had obtained through this “strategic alliance.” The announcement was publicly questioned and rejected by PSHA because this process lacked legality and legitimacy. The process did not follow the constitutional mandate of the Ecuadorian state’s guarantee of the right to free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) in coordination with PSHA. It requires respecting PSHA’s traditional decision-making structure in order to obtain FPIC, as indicated by national and international standards on the collective rights of Indigenous peoples.

To further promote this illegitimate “strategic alliance,” Solaris Resources has been using a communications campaign to position its Community Social Relations program as “successful and innovative.” On September 8th, the company announced to its shareholders that an “Agreement for Cooperation, Benefits, and Access for the Warintza Project” had been signed by the Shuar Centers of Warintza and Yawi.

In response to this announcement, the Shuar Arutam people issued a direct response in an open letter addressed to the CEO and shareholders of Solaris Resources, S.A.:

“This ‘Strategic Alliance’ is not an ‘innovative relationship’ as Solaris portrays it. It is the same strategy that many mining and oil companies have used to advance their projects, while side-stepping and disrespecting the legitimate and traditional Indigenous organizational structures.”

“We demand that Solaris Resources, Inc. abstain from continuing to manipulate our communities since we see that their activities are causing social impacts in our communities like provoking much tension and conflict and rupturing our social fabric. We demand that the company immediately leave our territories. In the event that you do not comply with our wishes, we will exercise our constitutional right to resistance and take other measures (Article 98).”

Protesters at he Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s (PDAC) annual conference in Toronto in June warned that "We can't mine our way out of the climate crisis". With 75% of the world's mining companies headquartered in Canada, this is one industry Canada does dominate. However, it is trying to greenwash the widespread environmental, social and in some cases genocidal activities, often in indigenous lands around the world including in Canada, of this industry by proposing that it can provide the solution in the shift away from fossil fuels by providing the minerals needed for the development of wind, solar and other green technologies, instead of recycling in order to reduce our dependence on new materials. 

The mining industry is fixing to capitalize on the energy transition. But affected communities across the Americas are speaking out against “business as usual.”

While mining executives and industry representatives cozied up with government officials at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s (PDAC) annual conference on June 13, 2022, in Toronto, outside, a group gathered to say something no one was saying inside: We cannot mine our way out of the climate crisis.

The hot topic at PDAC 2022 was our warming climate and the unprecedented business opportunity it affords the mining industry, as the global energy transition shifts investment from fossil fuels to metal and mineral-intense technologies like wind and solar, and energy storage. But far from investing in efforts to recycle and reduce our dependence on new materials, the mining industry — itself responsible for some of the worst environmental disasters in history — has ramped up its public relations efforts to position itself as a climate champion.

Throughout its 90-year history, the PDAC conference has largely been a space for the movers and shakers of the global mining industry to network, make deals, and discuss the latest trends and technologies. Government representatives from across the world make sales pitches in an effort to attract the significant global mining investment raised on Canadian stock exchanges, while Canadian government representatives (including Ambassadors) showcase their work reforming mining codes to make that investment easier. Strip away the industry’s rhetoric around social and environmental sustainability, and PDAC is about one thing — expanding mining, more and faster.

Representatives of communities from the Philippines to Ethiopia to the High Arctic and allies gathered outside PDAC 2022 to denounce the industry’s efforts to greenwash their extractive activities, and to amplify the voices of frontline communities caught in the crosshairs of ‘green’ mining. As the energy transition intensifies, communities across the globe are fighting for real solutions to the climate crisis, protecting their lands and waters from becoming sacrifice zones while the mining industry profits. Below, we highlight a few of those struggles.

https://medium.com/@miningwatch/fierce-resistance-to-canadian-mining-and...

 Canadian investment bank Forbes & Manhattan has been pushing its mining interests in the Amazon by lobbying Bolsinaro's Vice President,  Hamilton Mourão, with growing success that threatens the land, culture and lives of indigenous Brazilians. 

F&M invests in various high-risk projects in the energy, fertilizer, mining and oil sectors, with numerous conflicts surrounding its 13 companies in South America. Image courtesy of F&M.

• Canadian bank Forbes & Manhattan appears to be aided in pushing its mining interests in Brazil thanks to lobbying efforts by an old army acquaintance of the country’s vice president.
• F&M has been trying to secure environmental licenses for two of its companies, Belo Sun and Brazil Potash, for more than 10 years; both companies’ projects have been criticized for threatening Indigenous groups and traditional riverside communities in the Amazon.
• But F&M has managed to secure several private meetings with top government officials, which all appear to feature the same individual acting in a consulting or advisory role: Cláudio Barroso Magno Filho, a retired brigadier general in the Brazilian Army.
• Barroso Magno attended the military academy alongside Hamilton Mourão, who in 2019 took office as Brazil’s vice president in the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro.

Before Jair Bolsonaro took office as Brazil’s president in 2019, Canadian investment bank Forbes & Manhattan was facing problems with its business activities in the Brazilian Amazon. The situation began to change, however, as the group grew closer to members of Bolsonaro’s administration with ties to the Brazilian Armed Forces. F&M enjoyed direct access to the country’s vice president, Hamilton Mourão, in a series of exclusive meetings in Brasília, according to a tranche of documents obtained by Agência Pública.

In the course of the meetings with senior government officials, Cláudio Barroso Magno Filho, a retired brigadier general in the Brazilian Army, lobbied in the interests of F&M and the mining companies in which it had invested. ...

F&M has been trying to secure environmental licenses for two of its mining interests, Belo Sun and Brazil Potash (Potássio do Brasil), for more than 10 years. Belo Sun and Brazil Potash’s respective activities in the states of Amazonas and Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon, are a threat to rural settlements, Indigenous groups and ribeirinhos, or traditional riverside communities, according t activists. ...

Belo Sun intends to dig the biggest open-cast gold mine in the world in Volta Grande do Xingu, located in Pará, more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the state capital Belém. If Belo Sun is successful in carrying out its plans, it would see the construction of a tailings dam larger than the one that collapsed in the Mariana dam disaster in 2015, one of the biggest environmental disasters in Brazil’s history.

“On the government’s side, there is pressure to give the go-ahead for the Volta Grande project,” said Elisângela Côrtes, a public defender who coordinates the regional Center for Human Rights in Altamira, Pará, and is working on the Volta Grande case. “In our view [however], the project is unviable, both from a social standpoint and from an environmental standpoint,” she said. ...

Between 2020 and 2021, exclusive meetings between Bolsonaro administration officials and representatives from F&M took place on at least seven occasions. During the same period, the Brazilian government published the Pro-Strategic Minerals Policy, which “supports the granting of environmental licenses” to both of the F&M-linked mining companies in the Amazon region....

https://news.mongabay.com/2022/04/canadian-miners-get-high-level-lobbyin...

A 2017 report documents the extent of Canadian mining companies' human rights abuses in Latin America, including 44 killings with 30 of them targeted. 

The Justice and Corporate Accountability Project has documented troubling incidents of violence associated with Canadian mining companies in Latin America. In general, neither the Canadian government nor industry are monitoring or reporting on these incidents. ...

 

What we found about the degree of violence and criminalization from 2000-2015

This Report documents incidents that are corroborated by at least two independent sources. We found:

•  incidents involving 28 Canadian companies;
•  44 deaths, 30 of which we classify as “targeted”;
• 403 injuries, 363 of which occurred in during protests and confrontations;
• 709 cases of “criminalization”, including legal complaints, arrests, detentions and charges; and
• a widespread geographical distribution of documented violence: deaths occurred in 11 countries, injuries were suffered in 13 countries, and criminalization occurred in 12 countries.

In addition, our research shows that Canadian companies that are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange do not include reports of violence in their mandatory reports on company performance. Between 2000-2015:

•  publicly listed companies reported 24.2% of the deaths and 12.3% of the injuries listed in this report; and
• larger companies tended to report incidents in general terms, using blanket statements, whereas smaller companies tended to report in more detail

What is significant about this study?

This report on violence and criminalization associated with the Canadian mining industry in Latin America is the first to:

• compile information on reported violence over a 15-year period;
• name the companies involved and seek company comments on the incidents; and
• provide details and sources of the incidents, so that third-parties may reproduce our results.

The incidents documented in this report appear to be the tip of the iceberg

During our study we came across many reports of deaths, injuries and cases of criminalization that we could not include because they could not be corroborated through two independent sources. We were not able to include death threats, deliberate burning of crops and property destruction, forced displacement, reported assassination attempts without reported injury, illness from environmental contamination, or psychological trauma from any of the violence due to the extensive resources required to document these incidents. The violence reported is only from countries in Latin America, and does not cover Canadian mines in other parts of the world.

The world is taking notice of Canadian companies – for the wrong reasons

Canada has been criticized internationally for its lack of oversight of Canadian mining companies. Canada is singled out because more mining companies are domiciled in Canada than in other country; 41% of the large mining companies present in Latin America are Canadian.

• Four United Nations bodies have called on Canada to hold Canadian companies accountable for their operations overseas.
• The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has had three hearings on the accountability of Canadian mining companies and called on Canada to adopt measures to prevent “multiple human rights violations”.
• In June 2016, 180 organizations from Latin America sent a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau demanding action on promises for a mechanism for corporate and state accountability.

Existing Canadian government policies are not addressing the problem

The Canadian government continues to promote the “Canada Brand” by relying on voluntary, non-enforceable Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) codes to measure company conduct. The two main government offices responsible for CSR are the Office of the Extractive Sector Corporate Social Responsibility Counsellor (CSR Counsellor) and the National Contact Point (NCP) under the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Neither office conducts investigations, nor do they have the power to sanction companies directly or compensate victims. Their only power is to recommend the withdrawal of Canadian government financial and embassy support.

There is no indication that there is any systematic review of company behaviour nor any publicly available information to indicate that the current CSR Counsellor has responded to reports of violence or considered withdrawing Canadian embassy support.

There is no evidence that the government does not have the capacity to handle more complaints

The international community demands a more robust accountability mechanism for both state and company accountability, but opponents claim that the government does not have the capacity to handle the claims. There is no evidence that the current CSR Counsellor, nor the NCP, have too many cases to handle.

• The CSR Counsellor was established in 2009 and has handled only six complaints.
• The current CSR Counsellor’s website shows no indication of any investigations, disputes, dialogues or any engagement with specific conflicts.
• The current CSR Counsellor has no Annual Report and the only Publications are news reports of six speeches made by the CSR Counsellor since his appointment in 2015.
• The NCP only dealt with one case in 2015 and five cases in total since 2011.

Methodology

To compile this information, JCAP coordinated a group of volunteer law students from five different Canadian universities to identify incidents of violent conflict and criminalization.

https://justice-project.org/the-canada-brand-violence-and-canadian-minin...

A September 2022 Canada Mining Watch report on Toronto headquartered Barrick Gold's mine in North Mara, Tanzania, concludes that there are "particularly high levels of violence by mine police and by officials and Field Force Unit police involved in forced evictions" ... that "field research concludes that excess use of lethal force since Barrick’s takeover from Acacia has been particularly high" and that "men, women and children were vulnerable to being beaten or shot at by the mine’s private security ... They were also raped, suffered life-altering and lethal, beatings with batons and sticks by mobiles and mine police, and were violently arrested by mine police. Inside the mine walls, primarily men were subject to being shot at by mine police and private mine security with live ammunition and other projectiles". 

This report presents findings from research undertaken by MiningWatch Canada in North Mara, Tanzania, in September 2022. The issues addressed in this report have all occurred since Barrick’s September 2019 takeover of mine ownership and under Barrick’s CEO Mark Bristow. Findings are based on information provided by, among others, elected officials, community leaders, victims of violence by police who receive direct financial and other benefits from the mine (mine police), and family members of those who have perished as a result of excess use of force by mine police, as well as informationprovided by victims of violent and inequitable forced evictions, the legality of which is questionable. 

The current impacts of the North Mara Gold Mine on the Kuria people surrounding the mine, including particularly high levels of violence by mine police and by officials and Field Force Unit police involved in forced evictions, are reflected against findings from MiningWatch’s previous six field visits to the area from 2014 to 2019. ...

Over the years, whole families have taken to eking out a living by seeking remnants of gold in the, until recently, openly accessible waste rock dumps around the mine. Additionally, mainly young men have breached the mine’s high walls and entered the mine site itself in search of gold bearing rocks, at times aided by police guarding the mine in return for payments. While in the waste rock dumps, men, women and children were vulnerable to being beaten or shot at by the mine’s private security, known locally as “Mobiles,” using primarily teargas canisters and rubber bullets, or by Field Force Units of the police, on duty as mine police, who also use live ammunition. They were also raped, suffered life-altering and lethal, beatings with batons and sticks by mobiles and mine police, and were violently arrested by mine police. Inside the mine walls, primarily men were subject to being shot at by mine police and private mine security with live ammunition and other projectiles, such as teargas canisters, severely beaten, and arrested.

Violence by mine police has never stopped at the mine walls. Frequently mine-police chase trespassers fleeing the mine through nearby villages endangering their inhabitants. There have also long been cases of violent arrests of villagers outside the mine’s walls, on public roads and spaces, on dubious charges, including that these villagers may be planning to illegally enter mine territory.

In previous releases10we have reported on our documentation of these abuses over six years (2014- 2019), covering over a hundred cases of excess use of force by both private security and 5 mine police against Kuria villagers at the North Mara Gold Mine....

Regular violent assaults on local Kuria by private mine security and mine police were reported on in-depth in the media as early as 2011. This media exposure ultimately contributed to legal action filed in the U.K. in 2013 by the firm Leigh Day on behalf of some of the victims of these violent assaults and family members of deceased victims. In November 2014, just months before the Leigh Day case was settled out of court in 2015, African Barrick Gold underwent a rebranding to Acacia Mining. ...

Security arrangements in place at the North Mara mine after Barrick acquired Acacia, in September 2019, show both signs of continuity as well as some significant changes made by Barrick. Both the security arrangements that Barrick has not changed, as well as some of the changes Barrick has brought in, have led to high levels of death and life-altering injuries as a result of excess use of force by mine police since September 2019. Furthermore, Barrick has failed to address long-standing causes of killings, life-altering beatings, and arbitrary arrests such as mine police pursuits of trespassers outside of the mine and mine police accosting people on public roads or when they need to cross mine land to reach their homes.

Most significantly, Barrick has failed to sever ties with the police Field Force Units, whose track record at the mine is one of habitual excess use of force leading to loss of life and serious injuries. In fact, the role of mine police seems to be further entrenched with the 16% partnership in the mine with the Government of Tanzania, announced in October 2019. MiningWatch was told by multiple reliable sources, including elected village officials of that time, that shortly after the partnership was announced government officials met with elected village officials and told them that if villagers go to the mine site they will be shot.

https://miningwatch.ca/sites/default/files/north_mara_mwcreport_oct11202...

NDPP wrote:

US Military Weighs Funding Mining Projects in Canada Amid Rivalry With China

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/u-s-military-mining-projects-canada-1.6649522

"The United States military has been quietly soliciting applications for Canadian mining projects that want American public funding through a national security initiative.

Quote:

Mining companies globally have a reputation for poor environmental and human rights practices. Violations include forced relocation, unlawful confinement of protestors, murder, and rape, among other atrocities. Canadian companies, which dominate the global mining industry, are among the worst offenders.

Currently, over 1,000 Canadian companies operate in over 100 countries, making up 75% of the world’s mining and exploration companies. Additionally, of the mining companies accused of environmental and human rights abuses globally, 34% are Canadian.

In Latin America in particular, Canadian corporations operate over half of the mining in the region and are responsible for a great deal of violence and human rights abuses. Guatemala is among the countries most affected by violence related to Canadian mining operations, which has been documented in Catherine Nolin and Grahame Russell’s recently published collection of testimonies by Guatemalan Indigenous community leaders, civil society activists, journalists, and lawyers.

In 2017, the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project (JCAP), a transnational, community-based legal clinic, submitted a report to the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights. Their report focused on research from Latin America from 2000 to 2015 and identified the following:
incidents involving 28 Canadian companies;
44 deaths, 30 of which we classify as “targeted”;
403 injuries, 363 of which occurred in during protests and confrontations;
709 cases of “criminalization”, including legal complaints, arrests, detentions and charges; and
a widespread geographical distribution of documented violence.
Why do so many Canadian mining companies commit human rights violations with seemingly little in the way of repercussions? Historically, the Canadian government has been welcoming to multinational mining corporations with relaxed regulatory and taxation requirements and a reluctance to interfere in business affairs. As JCAP’s 2017 report puts it: “The government offices responsible for corporate social responsibility do not have the power to conduct investigations, nor sanction companies directly or compensate victims. Their only power is to recommend the withdrawal of Canadian government financial and embassy support.”

Canadian courts also historically have been reluctant to adjudicate cases of Canadian parent companies accused of human rights abuses abroad. One argument made is that these cases should be tried in the host country for jurisdictional reasons and to respect the sovereignty of those nations.

However, host countries are often unmotivated to pursue legal action against international mining corporations due to the economic benefit the corporations provide to host governments. And in instances where a host country intends to take action, they may also face difficulties imposing remedies on Canadian companies and their subcontractors for similar jurisdictional reasons.

Another frequent issue is that because Canadian parent companies often operate subsidiaries or subcontractors for work, including operating security forces, it has been difficult to prove that the Canadian parent company directly owes a duty of care. If you can’t prove that the parent company has a responsibility or obligation to avoid harmful acts or negligence, then they can’t be held liable.

In short, the Canadian government and judiciary's lack of ‘teeth’ in addressing human rights violations committed by Canadian corporations, at least in part, contributed to a sense of impunity for violations committed in countries they operate in and a disregard for international human rights obligations.

In recent years, Canadian courts have made some progress in addressing these gaps. The 2017 decision in Garcia v. Tahoe Resources Inc. provided an avenue for victims in host countries to use the Canadian legal system in instances where it is unlikely that the host country will be able to effectively hear the case or if the Canadian parent corporation is out of reach. Similarly, Choc v. Hudbay Minerals Inc (2013) created the potential for Canadian parent companies to be sued in Canada for acts committed by their subsidiaries abroad. Lastly, Nevsun Resources Ltd. v. Araya (2020) re-affirmed that international legal norms and standards, such as human rights protections, are presumed to be incorporated into Canadian law provided there is no legislation to the contrary.

Despite recent progress in the court system, there is still a lack of political will to hold corporations accountable, even to their own corporate social responsibility policies.

Corporations create corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies for a reason, perhaps because they care to some degree about how consumers perceive them, or perhaps to fill some other requirement. However, they also likely fear losing investors’ money or becoming uncompetitive in the market, and this contradiction can cause them to disregard their own CSR initiatives. Better enforcement mechanisms are needed, but options are limited by the desire of businesses to maximize profits.

A good starting place for Canada might be the creation of an oversight board to hold corporations accountable for human rights abuses committed abroad by the parent companies, subsidiaries, and subcontractors. However, many UN member countries face similar challenges. Globally, there needs to be a stronger link between corporate accountability and regulatory bodies.

In Chile, Canadian mining companies, with the help of the Trudeau government, will be one of the big winners out of the failure to change the Chilean constitution with indigenous groups and the environment at great risk.  

The draft constitution, which would replace the current one ratified under the Pinochet dictatorship, explicitly recognizes the rights inherent to nature and names the protection of water as a key pillar in the fight against the climate crisis. Among other things, it removes the constitutional guarantees that currently prioritize mining over any other economic activity, declares Chile a plurinational state while recognizing the rights of Indigenous Peoples to free, prior, and informed consent, and bans mining in glaciers and other protected areas. ...

As of 2019, Chile trailed only behind the United States as the country with the highest number of Canadian mining assets, represented by 53 Canadian companies exploring and exploiting Chile’s mineral wealth. The previous administration of right-wing billionaire Sebastián Piñera forecasted possible mining investments of almost $70 billionin mining projects this decade, with Chile being home to some of the world’s largest reserves of copper and lithium. 

The Canadian Ambassador and Trade Commissioner to Chile have been heavily promoting Canadian mining investment in the country, both as part of Chile’s post-COVID-19 economic recovery and as part of Canada’s sourcing of metals for transition technologies under the Canadian Minerals and Metals Plan. ...

But much of the momentum that led to the October 2020 referendum – and the 2021 presidential election of left-wing student leader Gabriel Boric – is calling for real solutions to address the climate crisis. Organizations and communities affected by Canadian mining projects in Chile are denouncing how Canadian companies and the embassy have co-opted the environmental discourse of the energy transition to justify the expansion and proliferation of mining. Here’s a look at four cases of Canadian mining projects in Chile and the strong opposition that exists to their projects.

Vizcachitas’ threats to endemic species and rock glaciers

The Vizachitas project is owned by Vancouver-based Los Andes Copper and is located in the Putaendo Valley, in the Valparaíso region of Chile. The project, currently in its exploration phase, seeks to develop a massive copper mine, whose open pit would sit directly atop the Rocín River – the main source of freshwater for downstream communities. 

Putaendo Resiste (Putaendo Resists) is a group organized against the project since 2015 and are concerned about the project’s high water use and potential impact on the region’s ecosystems, including high Andean wetlands and over 100 rock glaciers. Meanwhile, Los Andes Copper heavily promotes the project, saying “copper is a critical element to sustain the global shift to electric vehicles and the new green economy,” and claiming the company will produce “sustainable copper” for this transition. 

Alejandro Valdés of Putaendo Resiste says this copper would be mined “at the cost of turning a valley, its community, and its ecosystem into a sacrifice zone.” 

Affected communities are concerned about the mine’s impact on endemic flora and fauna and the potential for environmental harm given Putaendo’s proximity to the proposed mine site. Los Andes Copper’s drilling program has already been suspended due to concerns that vibrations were disturbing the food source for the endangered Andean mountain cat. ...

QB2’s multiple environmental impacts 

The Quebrada Blanca open-pit copper-molybdenum mine began operations in 1994 and was acquired by Vancouver’s Teck Resources in 2007. The mine is located in the Tarapacá region of Chile, at 4400 metres above sea level. Construction of an underground expansion of the mine, Quebrada Blanca Phase 2 (QB2), began in 2019. 

Earlier this year, Chile’s environmental regulator (SMA) filed eight charges against Teck Resources for failing “to comply with measures to avoid impacts on vegetation and animals.” This is the third consecutive year the company has faced such fines. In 2019, the SMA fined Teck $1.2 million for violations “related to the handling of mining waste and internal environmental controls at the mine.” Teck also received the largest environmental fine ever issued under the Canadian Fisheries Act for pollution at its coal mine in Elk Valley, British Columbia. 

Despite these serious and systematic environmental failures, the Canadian ambassador to Chile tweeted that “Teck represents the future of mining: a more sustainable mining industry that generates employment and plays an essential role in economic recovery,” and promoted a visit he made to the site.

Lithium mining in the Maricunga salt flats

Vancouver’s Blanco Bearing Lithium Corp holds an 18% ownership interest in the Proyecto Blanco project located in the Maricunga salt flat in southern Chile. The salt flat and its waters are connected to the Santa Rosa Lagoon, which in turn feeds a complex lagoon system including meadows and wetlands – a vital ecosystem for vulnerable flora and fauna. This area includes Nevado Tres Cruces National Park, a Ramsar Site, and the Negro Francisco Lagoon. As detailed in a recent report about Canadian lithium investments in Chile by OPSAL and MiningWatch, these important sites for ecological conservation have already been affected by Canadian mining activity. 

Colla Indigenous communities have denounced that in contravention of ILO Convention 169, they have been excluded from the project’s environmental consultation process and their traditional and symbolic use of the salt flat waters have been disregarded, such as raising livestock and harvesting plants.  ...

Pascua Lama and its impact on glaciers

Originally set to be one of South America’s largest mining projects, the controversial binational Pascua Lama gold/silver/copper project was shut down by Chile’s environmental regulator in 2018 for damaging native flora and fauna, failing to monitor melting rates of nearby glaciers, and for dumping acidic waters into a local river. This ruling was ratified in 2022 by the Supreme Court after the mine’s owner, Barrick Gold, appealed the decision. 

The mine is located in the high mountains of the Huasco Valley in the Atacama region, sitting on the border between Chile and Argentina. As Chilean environmental organization Glaciares Chilenos says, “during its exploration phase between 1981 and 2000, [Pascua Lama] caused an irreversible loss of 62% of the Toro 1 glacier and 71% of the Toro 2 glacier in the upper basin of the Huasco River.” The environmental regulator’s forced shutdown of the mine is in response to the demands of local communities, who have been speaking out against the socio-environmental harm caused by this project for over two decades. In 2020, MiningWatch Canada spoke with Constanza San Juan who told us: “This is a struggle that has lasted for over 20 years against this mega-project, and we saw what was going to happen from the beginning. We have faced terrible impacts to our glaciers, which give life to our rivers, which brought serious health impacts for our neighbours and our children. But it also provoked a terrible division among our people, provoking conflict between those of us defending life and those who were incited by the company.”

https://miningwatch.ca/blog/2022/8/30/canadian-mining-interests-chile-pl...

Canadian mining company Barrick Gold's Veladero mine in northwestern Argentina is yet another example of the failure of the Harper and Trudeau government's failure to stop the human rights and environmental abuses of Canadian mining firms. Five major toxic spills since 2015 including one in 2022 at the Veladero mine have been so bad they have had major negative impacts on communities even 200 km away in what is considered the worst mining disaster in Argentinian history. "Barrick Gold continues to benefit from the silence of local and regional authorities in Argentina and Canada, who are taking no action to contain or remediate the harm committed from the spills."

Activists from the Jáchal No Se Toca Assembly, a group of concerned citizens downstream from the mine that formed after the first spill in December 2015. Photo supplied by Jáchal No Se Toca.

Communities in northwestern Argentina have been forced to drink bottled water since 2015 and it’s because of a Canadian gold mine. There have been at least five toxic spills in the last seven years of operations at the Veladero mine—located in the province of San Juan, near the community of San José de Jáchal. Independent water monitoring has confirmed mercury levels higher than what’s safe for human consumption and local residents of Jáchal fear that mining activities may have permanently contaminated their water supply with heavy metals.

The Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold has owned the Veladero mine since 2005, selling a 50 percent stake in the project to China’s Shandong Gold in 2017. The two companies now jointly own the project, operated by Minera Argentina Gold SRL in a region known for Canadian mining investment. The large industrial gold and silver mine uses a heap leaching process to extract gold and silver from low grade ore by rinsing crushed ore with a cyanide solution, producing mercury as a byproduct.

In September 12, 2015, a failure in the valve of a heap leach pad pipeline released millions of liters of water contaminated with cyanide and heavy metals into local watersheds, polluting at least five rivers. The spill has been called the worst environmental mining disaster in the country’s history....

Since then, another four spills have occurred at the mine. Despite these repeated offences, none have been reported by the mine nor the provincial government first. Instead, the surrounding communities have always found out about the spills through informal channels, leading them to consistently call out the company’s lack of transparency and regard for the safety of their water, and demand a permanent closure of the mine. ...

Devastating environmental impacts

The Asamblea de Jáchal No Se Toca (“Hands off of Jáchal”), was formed in the months prior to the 2015 spill and has systematically documented and denounced the toxic spills at the mine and the response—or lack thereof—from the government and the company. Jáchal, which is 200 kilometres from the mine, has been one of the municipalities most affected by the spills.

The environmental and health impacts are mounting. The mine is located in a periglacial zone, in violation of the Argentinian Law of Glaciers which prohibits mining exploration or exploitation activities in glacial or periglacial areas given their importance as water reservoirs. The Asamblea de Jáchal is concerned about water contamination in such a sensitive area, as well as the impact of spills on local agriculture. There’s fear that everything from peoples’ water, livelihoods, health, and farming lands has been contaminated with mercury and other heavy metals as a result of the spills.

In the context of the climate crisis, the issue of water contamination is compounded by the fact that the province of San Juan is experiencing one of the worst droughts in 100 years. This pressure on water may also soon be exacerbated by another mining project the communities oppose, the Josemaría gold and copper project, just north of the Veladero mine. As it stands, the Veladero mine is also located within the San Guillermo Biosphere Reserve, affecting endangered species such as the vicuña, the mountain suri, and the horned coot. As Carolina Caliva from the Asamblea de Jáchal says, “Barrick doesn’t have the right to pollute and create health problems in our communities.”

Because of the company’s lack of action to address environmental harm, affected communities have repeatedly taken part in protests such as a 160 kilometre march in September 2015 from Jáchal to the capital city of San José to demand the closure of the Veladero mine. They have set up a permanent encampment in front of the municipality in the central square of San Juan—which has come to symbolize a “People’s struggle against being sacrificed.” They have participated in peaceful road closures at the mine, a bike ride from Jáchal to Buenos Aires, and have filed multiple legal actions against the company—all in an effort to demand Barrick stop polluting their environment and leave.

According to Argentine law, the mine should not be operating

In 2022, the Asamblea denounced a fifth spill, which the company “categorically” denies. Water samples collected by the University of Cuyo were published by a local journalist and reveal levels of heavy metal contamination even higher than the levels recorded after the 2015 spill. These levels exceed World Health Organization (WHO) and Argentine standards for safe human consumption, with arsenic levels exceeding WHO standards by 33 times, lead levels by 16 times, and aluminum levels by 485 times. As with previous spills, the Asamblea learned about it through informal channels—never directly from the company.

Their struggle is getting the attention of important international bodies. Last month, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights sent a letter—co-signed by the Chair-Rapporteur Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises and the Special Rapporteur on the Issue of Human Rights Obligations Relating to the Enjoyment of a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment—to the governments of Canada, Argentina, and China, along with Barrick Gold and Shandong Gold expressing “grave concern about the impact on human rights caused by spills of cyanide, arsenic, mercury and other hazardous substances from the Veladero mine.” The letter underscored how “the lack of timely information hinders the adoption of protective measures for the populations exposed to toxic substances in the spills and the environment” and emphasized that “mercury goes through the food chain, so rural populations, and especially children, could be affected.”

The letter echoes local concerns that Veladero’s mining activities have violated the provisions of the Minamata Convention on Mercury, as well as the Law on Glaciers and the law on hazardous waste. It also points to violations of Argentina’s Mining Code, which states that after three environmental infractions at a mine site—which would include a spill—the company must cease operations. In spite of these laws and the five toxic spills documented, the mine continues with business as usual.

Barrick’s response to the UN follows a pattern of secrecy

Both the governments of Argentina and Canada have acknowledged the UN Special Rapporteur’s letter, respectively requesting more time and “indefinite time” to respond. Barrick Gold sent a lengthy response but—in spite of one of the rapporteur’s chief concerns being a lack of transparency and information sharing with affected communities—asked the UN office to not make the letter public, alleging it could “result in undue community alarm.” In its response, Barrick also alleges that the Asamblea de Jáchal’s “repeated allegations… are biased, not made in good faith, and intended to alarm the residents of the communities located downstream of Veladero.”

Nevertheless, it is thanks to the rigorous documentation by the Asamblea de Jáchal, alongside local universities, that affected communities have learned about the spills and the associated health risks. As Saúl Zeballos from the Asamblea says, there’s a history of “Barrick withholding key information from the public on toxic spills and attempting to minimize their magnitude or impact.”

“We want Barrick to leave”

Barrick Gold continues to benefit from the silence of local and regional authorities in Argentina and Canada, who are taking no action to contain or remediate the harm committed from the spills. Despite this pattern of environmental harm and a history of hiding the spills from those most affected, the company is expanding the mine to extend its life another 10 years.

And while the harms documented here deal with one mine, Barrick’s reputation for causing harm extends beyond Veladero. In the Dominican Republic, communities downstream from Barrick’s Pueblo Viejo mine, specifically its waste deposit, accuse the company of serious environmental contamination resulting in health issues for the local population. Of serious concern is water contamination, and communities rely on bottled water provided by the government for drinking and cooking. Six communities immediately next to the mine are demanding to be relocated to a safer area. In Tanzania, 21 Indigenous Kuria plaintiffs recently filed a lawsuit against Barrick Gold in Ontario courts for violence and human rights violations at the company’s North Mara Gold Mine in Tanzania. The accusations include police violence, killings and torture.

Communities across the world—including in Jáchal, Argentina—are making themselves heard loud and clear. Barrick Gold must operate with more transparency and respect the self-determination of those most affected by their projects.

https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/water-contamination-at-barri...

Two more indigenous land defenders have been murdered in the ongoing genocide against indigenous people in the Brazilian Amazon for their defence of the environment. 

In Brazil, two Indigenous Pataxó land defenders were murdered Tuesday in the municipality of Itabela. Seventeen-year-old Nawir Brito de Jesus and 25-year-old Samuel Cristiano do Amor Divino were traveling to a farm when gunmen on a motorcycle shot them in the back, according to witnesses. The Pataxó people have faced intense conflicts with local ranchers who’ve invaded their land. This comes as the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has launched a series of raids in search of illegal loggers and ranchers in the Amazon rainforest in an effort to halt deforestation, which skyrocketed under the far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro. This is the anti-deforestation mission’s leader, Givanildo Dos Santos. 

Givanildo Dos Santos: “The rhetoric of the former government created a mindset among people that led many to invade areas and deforest them, planting farms and thinking that the government would eliminate Indigenous lands and legalize these invasions for cattle production.”

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/1/20/headlines/two_indigenous_pataxo_l...

In Brazil Justice Minister Flavio Dino also stated this week that there was “evidence of genocide” against the Yanomani people. As a result, President Lula has declared a public health state of emergency in the northernmost part of the Amazon where the indigenous Yanomani people's health and lack of food is the result of the extreme environmental damage caused by the Bolsonaro government's allowing 20,000 illegal miners to continue to contaminate the Amazaon River and surrounding land to such an extent that much of the wildlife and plants of the region has been destroyed or poisoned, thereby putting the Yanomani people's health at risk. Widespread deforestation has also played a major role in the public health and environmental disaster.

Indigenous leader Nando Potiguara raises a copy of the Brazilian Constitution during a protest against miners working on Yanomami Indigenous land in May 2022 [File: Eraldo Peres/AP Photo]

[quote] Brazilian officials have said that the Yanomami Indigenous people are living in dire conditions, as illegal gold miners threaten them with violence and block the delivery of goods such as food and medicine to their embattled region. On Tuesday, Indigenous Health Secretary Weibe Tapeba said that the government should evict the miners — some of whom are well armed — from an area of the Yanomami reservation near the border with Venezuela.
“It looks like a concentration camp,” Tapeba said of the Yanomami’s living conditions in a radio interview. “It’s an extreme calamity. Many Yanomami are suffering from malnutrition and there is a total absence of the Brazilian state.” The statement comes three days after Brazil declared a public health emergency for the Yanomami people in the Amazon rainforest, who suffer from malnutrition and diseases like malaria due to the actions of the miners.
Under former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, critics have said the government largely stood by as Indigenous rights were violated and forests were torched, allowing business interests to illegally extend their reach into the Amazon. An April 2022 report by the Hutukara Yanomami Association found a 46-percent increase in the area of land on the Yanomami reservation that was scarred by “garimpo”, or wildcat gold mining, in 2021. Tapeba also said that an invasion of about 20,000 illegal gold miners contaminated rivers and their fish with mercury, poisoning a food source for the Yanomami and causing children to lose their hair.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in the 2022 elections and was sworn in earlier this month, visited the region last weekend after photos were published of Yanomami children and elderly so malnourished that their ribs were protruding.
Lula has promised to crack down on illegal business activity in the Amazon, protect Indigenous communities and reverse the massive deforestation that proliferated during Bolsonaro’s time in office.
On Monday, Justice Minister Flavio Dino also stated that there was “evidence of genocide” that was under investigation. “Health teams cannot get here because of the heavily armed bandits. This can only be resolved by removing the gold miners, and that can only be done by the armed forces,” said Tapeba, who was appointed by Lula’s government.

The group Survival International warned in December that malnutrition among the Yanomami was reaching critical levels, citing a report by UNICEF showing that children under the age of five were dying of preventable disease at 13 times the national average.
In a statement, Survival International director ​​Fiona Watson called the situation “a deliberate, man-made crisis, stoked by President Bolsonaro, who has encouraged the mass invasion and destruction of the Yanomami’s lands”.
Bolsonaro’s government, which was in power from 2019 to 2022, has faced widespread criticism for turning a blind eye to illegal activities in the Amazon, leading to increased violence as the interests of loggers, miners and other illicit operations clashed with Indigenous people and land defenders. In October 2021, the Catholic Church’s Indigenous Missionary Council said there were 182 murders of Indigenous people in 2020, compared with 113 murders in 2019, a 61-percent increase.
On Monday, Brazilian authorities said that a fish trader was likely behind the 2022 assassination of Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips in the Amazon. The suspect, Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, allegedly ordered the murders because Pereira, a former employee of Brazil’s federal Indigenous agency FUNAI, was causing losses to his illegal fishing operation.
Deforestation also reached dizzying heights during Bolsonaro’s tenure, increasing 150 percent in December over the previous year. Bolsonaro, a noted agribusiness ally, had pushed for development in the Amazon as a way to increase economic activity and address poverty.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/24/calls-for-action-as-brazil-yano...

On March 7 2023, more than 220 organizations from around the world petitioned the Columbian Gustavo Petro government to withdraw from any treaty that allows transnational companies to sue Columbia in a tribunal process that was designed to favour international corporate interests. Columbia is "the most dangerous country in the world for environment defenders" with numerous assassinations of its leaders. With 75% of international mining companies headquartered in Canada because of the country's extremely lax laws governing international operations, many of the firms that have benefitted from this are Canadian mining companies. One example of the many cases of Canadian transnational corporate abuse of power is Eco Oro, a Canadian company that sought to extract gold from the Santurbán páramo (high altitude wetlands), and that is suing Colombia for $736 million dollars because its project was brought to a halt thanks to massive protests given that it threatens one of the most important ecosystems in the country.

A number of other countries have already withdrawn from such treateies. The petition begins: “In Colombia, the defense of life, nature and territory has cost leaders and movements assassinations, threats and stigmatization, being the most dangerous country in the world for environment defenders. In this context, there is an urgent need to prevent the sabotage by this system of the tortuous search for justice over the abuses of multinational corporations, including socio-environmental and labor harms, paramilitary financing, threats and assassination of union leaders.”

 

On the road to Vetas, a sign reads “No entry for unauthorised personnel and multinationals” (Photo: Lorenzo Cotula, IIED)

Today, more than 220 organizations, with strong representation from groups involved in the defense of water, life and territories, including networks, organizations and unions from Colombia, Latin America and around the world, launched a petition urging the Colombian government to withdraw from treaties that enable transnational corporations to sue the country in tribunals designed to favour their interests.

The extractive sector uses this system more than others, and companies such as Glencore and Eco Oro have sued Colombia over decisions to prioritize protection of the páramo ecosystem (high altitude wetlands), water and Indigenous rights. Currently, the National Agency for the State’s Legal Defense reports that there are thirteen such suits against Colombia and eight more in earlier stages with roughly US$2.5 billion dollars in known claims.

The petition calls on Colombian President Gustavo Petro, Vice President Francia Márquez, the National Agency for the State’s Legal Defense, the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Energy and Mines, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Tourism, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to “withdraw from this unjust, arbitrary and colonialist system.”

The signatories argue that the arbitration system is incompatible with human rights and environmental protection, has been designed for and by transnational corporations, and is used as a form of blackmail when governments or their courts put limits on corporate abuse and protect the environment or the rights of their people.

The text, which will be delivered to the government, points out that:

“In Colombia, the defense of life, nature and territory has cost leaders and movements assassinations, threats and stigmatization, being the most dangerous country in the world for environment defenders. In this context, there is an urgent need to prevent the sabotage by this system of the tortuous search for justice over the abuses of multinational corporations, including socio-environmental and labor harms, paramilitary financing, threats and assassination of union leaders.”

The signatories further emphasize precedents from other countries that have reviewed and withdrawn from this arbitration system, without affecting their trade relations. The United Nations has also recommended renegotiating or withdrawing from such treaties.

https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/colombia-more-than-2...

El Salvador was defending its right to democratic decision-making in the public interest in court against Canadian-based Pacific Rim which sued El Salvador under the investment chapter of the US-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) for lost profits using investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). "Pacific Rim’s activities in Cabanas have generated conflict, aggravated divisions, and put environmental defenders at risk." which included death threats, kidnapping, torture and murder of environmental defenders and journalists. In 2014,  the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva cited Pacific Rim as an example of transnational corporate impunity.

However, with the Bukele government having bet heavily on getting revenue from declaring bitcoin its currency and lost big-time, it is now looking at ending the 2107 law banning metals mining because of its long history of human and environmental rights abuses. Instead the government is now looking at re-opening the country to mining, with many of the mining companies involved being Canadian. To do this it is charging the environmental land and water defenders as 1989 war criminals despite this being a violation of the 1992 peace agreement.

El Salvador has upheld a nationally-supported mining moratorium in the interest of protecting its citizens and already stressed water sources from dangerous toxic byproducts. While performing a strategic environmental impact assessment, the Salvadoran government has refused to grant extraction permits for the Pacific Rim Mining Corporation’s El Dorado metal mine. The refute prompted Canadian-based Pacific Rim to sue El Salvador under the investment chapter of the US-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) for lost profits using investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS).

Pacific Rim’s activities in Cabanas have generated conflict, aggravated divisions, and put environmental defenders at risk. In 2009, officials found the body of environmental defender Marcelo Rivera with signs of torture, while three journalists received death threats that they will “end up like Marcelo Rivera” if they continued to report on his disappearance and death. Luis Quintanilla, a priest who worked with environmental defenders in the region, was kidnapped. Ramiro Rivera Gómez, a member of the Mesa, and his wife Felicita Echeverría were shot to death despite the presence of two police officers who had been responsible for his protection since a prior attack against him in which he was shot eight times. Lastly, Dora “Alicia” Recinos Sorto, another environmental defender, was assassinated while eight months pregnant and carrying her two-year-old son. ...

In our ongoing support of La Mesa, CIEL organized a thematic hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2010 on the situation of environmental defenders in Mexico and Central America in the context of mining. In 2011, CIEL filed a “friend of the court” brief on behalf of the National Roundtable on Mining (MESA) to emphasize the environmental harms of mining. ...

The World Bank arbitration panel ruled in 2012 that Pacific Rim could not sue under CAFTA, but that the case could be pursued under Salvadoran national investment law under ICSID. At the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva in 2014, Pacific Rim was presented as an example of transnational corporate impunity, and the Council adopted a resolution that set up a working group to negotiate a treaty on business and human rights. Later that year, CIEL filed a second amicus brief urging ICSID to discredit Pacific Rim’s claims that El Salvador would benefit from mining, among other false claims.

https://www.ciel.org/project-update/pacific-rim/

A total of 37 Canadian organizations, in addition to many international organizations are warning the world about the politically motivation detention in El Salvador of five water defenders on charges of being former FLMN guerillas involved in the murder of a woman in 1989 despite her body never being found. This would be " a direct violation of El Salvador's 1992 Peace Accord and National Reconciliation Law". Not a single prosecution of war criminals on the government side in the civil war has ever occurred despite a UN report saying the government committed 85% of the war crimes (see last two posts for more details on the war crimes and on Canadian mining abuses). It is seen as an attempt to remove the most effective environmental campaigners against mining. Canadian mining companies have a long history of human and enivironmental rights abuses in El Salvador. Indeed, most the mining companies pushing to get back into mining in El Salvador are Canadian. 

Canadian organizations join an International Week of Action in solidarity demanding the release of the Santa Marta 5. For more, visit stopesmining.org. (CNW Group/MiningWatch Canada)

Quote:

 It's been over three months since the arbitrary arrest of five water defenders from Santa Marta in El Salvador and Canadian and international organizations are marking the moment as part of an International Week of Action to urgently call for their release.

In a statement released today, 37 Canadian organizations warn that the water defenders' ongoing detention is a direct violation of El Salvador's 1992 Peace Accord and National Reconciliation Law, and call on the government of Canada – which fully supported the agreement – to speak out. By continuing to detain and prosecute the five, the Salvadoran government risks violating an agreement that ended one of Central America's bloodiest civil wars, establishing a harmful precedent for international peace.

Known colloquially as the "Santa Marta 5," Antonio Pacheco, Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega, Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, and Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez have spent years advocating for the protection of water and played key roles in El Salvador's historic 2017 decision to ban metals mining. The five, who are members of the Association for Economic and Social Development (ADES) of Santa Marta, were arrested on January 11 on trumped-up charges for an alleged crime dating back to El Salvador's internal armed conflict when they were FMLN combatants, over 30 years ago.

The Americas Policy Group, MiningWatch Canada, and The United Church of Canada are among signatories to the open letter published today expressing serious concerns the arrests are politically motivated, as recent reports indicate El Salvador may hope to resume mining activities in the small, water-scarce Central American country.

For Vidalina Morales, a member of the ADES Board of Directors, these arrests represent a return of political persecution in an effort to demobilize strong community opposition to mining at this critical moment. "Their crime is fighting for better living conditions and challenging corporate power, such as transnational mining companies," she says. The Santa Marta 5 have been transferred to a pre-trial detention centre where, like thousands of other prisoners in the country, they are at risk of being hurt or killed before making it to trial. "Since they were moved over a month ago, we know absolutely nothing about the current state of the men's health," says Morales. "We are deeply concerned."

"Statements made by the public prosecutor in the days following the arrests demonstrate a complete lack of evidence," says Luis Parada, an international lawyer who represented El Salvador when it was hit with a multi-million-dollar international arbitration lawsuit by the Canadian mining company Pacific Rim. Parada, who has been following the Santa Marta 5 case closely, says this case is characterized by a lack of information and due process and is shrouded in secrecy.

"There is a clear pattern of criminalizing water defenders and others who speak out against mining throughout the region," says Viviana Herrera, MiningWatch Canada's Latin America Program Coordinator. "We echo the concerns of our Salvadoran partners that these arrests are politically motivated as transnational companies, many of whom are Canadian, eye the country for mining."

Christie Neufeldt of The United Church of Canada noted that Canadian organizations are participating in an International Week of Action led by the International Allies against Mining in El Salvador such as a recently held webinarand other actions that "urge the Canadian government to fulfill its international human rights obligations, advocate for the continued implementation of the Peace Accord, and use all of the tools at its disposal to secure their release."

Canadian organizations join an International Week of Action in solidarity demanding the release of the Santa Marta 5. For more, visit stopesmining.org. (CNW Group/MiningWatch Canada)

https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/arbitrary-arrests-of-water-defende...

Dynasty Gold Corp., a Canadian mining company, is being investigated for using forced labour in its mine northwest Xinjiang, China, where Moslem Uyghurs . "The Chinese government has subjected Uyghurs living in Xinjiang to widespread human rights abuses, including forced sterilization[36][37][38] and forced labor,[39][40][41][42][43] in what has been described as genocide." (https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/1995431/nike-dynasty-gold-uyghur...) Nike Canada is also being investigated for used Uyghur forced labour in its Chinese affiliate factories. 

Dynasty Gold showed even less willingness to cooperate in any manner over its mining operations use of Uyghur forced labour than Nike Canada, a pattern typical of the Canadian mining industry.

Considering "It's the first time the office of the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) has launched an investigation since the federal government appointed Sheri Meyerhoffer to the role in April 2019", this looks like a politically chosen target considering the more than 100 posts in this thread identifying so many Canadian mining companies carrying out human rights abuses around the world and in some cases even engaging in genocide. This does not mean that Dynasty Mine Canada and Nike Canada should not be investigated, but that all the other human rights and genocide cases done by Canadian mining and other Canadian corporations should be investigated. Seeing how long it took to even start the these cases even after Australia first reported on them three years ago, I hold out little hope about other such cases being investigated unless they involve a government that the Trudeau government, which appointed the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) Sheri Meyerhoffer in 2019, considers unfriendly.

In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, rescuers work at the site of a gold mine that suffered an explosion in Qixia in eastern China's Shandong Province, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2021. (Wang Kai/Xinhua via AP) Chinese mines have a terrible safety record and sometimes use forced labour. "But it comes after NMSA statistics released this month showed the number of accidents at coal mines almost doubled in 2022 compared to 2021 and the death toll reached a six-year high of 245, just after China called for higher coal output." (https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/chinas-coal-mine-accidents-r...)

(https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/chinas-coal-mine-accidents-r...)

Canada's watchdog for corporate wrongdoing says she has enough to launch an investigation of allegations that Nike Canada and a Canadian gold mining company are benefiting from the forced labour of Uyghurs in China.

It's the first time the office of the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) has launched an investigation since the federal government appointed Sheri Meyerhoffer to the role in April 2019.

Meyerhoffer  made the announcement Tuesday in response to complaints lodged with her office by a coalition of 28 civil society organizations, including the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project.

The complainants alleged that Nike Canada Corp. has supply relationships with six Chinese companies that the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) identified as using or benefiting from Uyghur forced labour. 

The think tank released a report in 2020 estimating that more than 80,000  (new window)Uyghurs (new window) had been transferred to work in factories across China. It said some were sent directly from detention camps.

Last year, the United Nations concluded China had committed serious human rights violations against Uyghurs and other Muslim communities, particularly arbitrary detentions that may constitute crimes against humanity. ...

In a separate complaint, the group alleges that Dynasty Gold Corp.'s mining operations in northwest Xinjiang, China use or benefit from Uyghur forced labour. The complainants point to a statement from the mine's CEO in January 2021 that many ethnicities, including Uyghur, were represented in all ranks of the work force.

Meyerhoffer said she assessed the complaints and decided there was enough to dig deeper.

On their face, the allegations made by the complainants raise serious issues regarding the possible abuse of the internationally recognized right to be free from forced labour, Meyerhoffer said in a copy of her initial assessment, made public Tuesday.

I have decided to launch investigations into these complaints in order to get the facts and recommend the appropriate actions. I have not pre-judged the outcome of the investigations. We will await the results and we will publish final reports with my recommendations. ...

The complainants' allege that Nike Canada is the primary customer of Qingdao Taekwang Shoes Co. Ltd., a factory that reportedly employs Uyghur workers who attend classes in the evening for vocational training and patriotic education. ...

Meyerhoffer fared worse when trying to get Dynasty to respond despite multiple attempts. DYG [Dynasty Gold Corp.] only provided its comments to the draft initial assessment report. Prior to that, DYG appears to have deliberately avoided participating in and cooperating with the CORE's dispute resolution process without providing any explanation, said the report. ...

The mining company eventually did send a comment denying it has operational control over the Hatu mine. Meyerhoffer said that might not be true. " DYG's assertion that it terminated its mineral exploration activities in Xinjiang in 2008 does not seem to be supported by its press releases dated January 25, 2021 and April 13, 2022," says the report. "Even if DYG does not have operational control, DYG is still responsible for ensuring that forced labour is not present in the Hatu mine over which it asserts 70 per cent ownership."

In a statement issued to CBC News, Dynasty's CEO Ivy Chong called the initial assessment totally unfounded.  "Like many western companies, the wages that we paid to local workers were almost double the local wages. We gave them on-the-job training, such as how to use mining software etc. Everyone was happy working for us," said Chong.  "We don't understand on what evidence and basis that CORE conducts its investigation on Dynasty Gold Corp."

Meyerhoffer said her team won't be able to travel to the Xinjiang region to conduct their investigations.

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/1995431/nike-dynasty-gold-uyghur...

In yet another example of the Trudeau government failing to take any action to curb human rights abuses by Canadian mining companies, Trudeau's Ottawa's corporate-ethics lapdog launched an investigation of Ralph Lauren Ca. into using forced labour, but would only put putting a Toronto-based mining firm, GobiMin Inc., on notice for using Moslem Uyghurs from  "detention" centres or "re-education" camps in China as forced labour. The excuse was that the mine was closed down now, so no need to say any more than 'Tut-tut  GobiMin, please don't do it again. Whether GobiMin faked a sale of the mine or not to cover its tracks has nothing to do with whether there were human rights abuses that should have been investigated. 

Ottawa's corporate-ethics watchdog has announced an investigation into fashion company Ralph Lauren over the alleged use of forced labour in its supply chains, while putting a Toronto-based mining firm on notice.

Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise Sheri Meyerhoffer said it's not clear whether Ralph Lauren Canada LP is doing enough to weed out components linked to the alleged mistreatment of China's Uyghur minority.

Meyerhoffer also has asked Toronto-based mining company GobiMin Inc. to improve its policies to prevent the possible use of forced labour in its supply chains.

China denies allegations that Uyghur citizens are being used for forced labour in what it has called "detention" centres or "re-education" camps. Beijing insists the centres are meant to weed out Islamic radicalization after several deadly domestic attacks.

But the United Nations found in mid-2022 that China had committed "serious human rights violations" against Uyghurs and other Muslim communities that "may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity."

The U.S. government has said that cotton and tomato products from China are at particularly high risk of involving Uyghur forced labour. ...

The ombudsperson opted not to include in her investigation 26 shipments into Canada of Ralph Lauren goods that involved a Chinese company accused of forced labour....

If she finds a company isn't acting in good faith, she can have them blacklisted from Canadian support, such as trade advice and trade advocacy abroad. But her mandate does not allow her to punish companies with fines or other punitive measures.

The ombudsperson also announced Tuesday that she has asked mining firm GobiMin to improve its corporate reporting, following claims that it engaged local companies that used forced labour at a gold mine in Xinjiang before selling the mine to a Chinese firm last year.

"GobiMin has not provided information that it took appropriate steps to ensure a responsible exit when it sold its interest in (the mine)," her report reads.

She noted that the sale of the Sawayaerdun mine limits her ability to launch an investigation, but maintained that the company could better explain its assertion that it has no Uyghur workers, and detail how it prevents forced labour.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-ralph-lauren-force-labour-investi...

Here is more evidence of China's involvement in human rights abuses against Uyghurs. Like the US elsewhere, China has used a "war on terror" propaganda campaign as part of its strategy against the Uyghurs. World history is one long history of abuse by the powerful, no matter what the nature of the regime, and that includes China, as well as every other powerful nation. 

Quote:

Human rights abuses

Further information: Human rights in China § Uyghurs

Inside internment camps

Main article: Xinjiang internment camps

Mass detention

Especially since 2016, internment camps have been a part of the Chinese government's strategy to govern Xinjiang[177] through the detention of ethnic minorities en masse.[178] According to Adrian Zenz, a researcher on the camps, the mass internments peaked in 2018 and have abated since then, with officials shifting focus towards forced labor programs.[179]

In 2021, CNN published an interview with a former Xinjiang police officer identified as "Jiang", who said that, when the police planned to raid a Uyghur village, they would sometimes arrange for the entire village to gather for a meeting with their chief so that the police could show up and arrest everyone, while on other occasions the police would go door-to-door with rifles and pull all the residents from their homes overnight. Once the police had arrested people, they would interrogate and beat every man, woman, and child over age 14 "until they kneel on the floor crying."[180]

Researchers and organizations have made various estimates of the number of Xinjiang internment camp detainees. In 2018, United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination vice chairperson Gay McDougall indicated that around 1 million Uyghurs were being held in internment camps.[3] In September 2020, a Chinese government white paper revealed that an average of 1.29 million workers went through "vocational training" per year between 2014 and 2019, though it does not specify how many of the people received the training in camps or how many times they went through training. Adrian Zenz stated that this "gives us a possible scope of coercive labor" occurring in Xinjiang.[181] There have been multiple reports that mass deaths have occurred inside the camps.[182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189][190][191]

rap: break-word;" title="Adrian Zenz">Adrian Zenz told the United Nations that 1.5 million Uyghurs had been detained in camps, saying that the number accounted for the increases in the size and scope of detention in the region and public reporting on the stories of Uyghur exiles with family in interment camps.[192] In July 2019, Zenz wrote in a paper published by the Journal of Political Risk that 1.5 million Uyghurs had been extrajudicially detained, which he described as being "an equivalent to just under one in six adult members of a Turkic and predominantly Muslim minority group in Xinjiang."[193] In November 2019, Zenz estimated that the number of internment camps in Xinjiang had surpassed 1,000.[194] In July 2020, Zenz wrote in Foreign Policy that his estimate had increased since November 2019, estimating that a total of 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities had been extrajudicially detained in what he described as "the largest incarceration of an ethnoreligious minority since the Holocaust", arguing that the Chinese Government was engaging in policies in violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[195]

According to 2020 study by Joanne Smith Finley, "political re-education involves coercive Sinicization, deaths in the camps through malnutrition, unsanitary conditions, withheld medical care, and violence (beatings); rape of male and female prisoners; and, since the end of 2018, transfers of the most recalcitrant prisoners – usually young, religious males – to high-security prisons in Xinjiang or inner China. Other camp 'graduates' have been sent into securitized forced labour. Those who remain outside the camps have been terrified into religious and cultural self-censorship through the threat of internment."[7]

Ethan Gutmann estimated in December 2020 that 5 to 10 percent of detainees had died each year in the camps.[196]

Torture

China has subjected Uyghurs living in Xinjiang to torture.[197][198][199] A former Chinese police detective, exiled in Europe, revealed to CNN in 2021 details of the systematic torture of Uyghurs in detention camps in Xinjiang, acts in which he had participated, and the fear of his own arrest had he dissented while in China.[180][200]: 24 [failed verification]

Mihrigul Tursun, a young Uyghur mother, said that she was "tortured and subjected to other brutal conditions."[201] In 2018, Tursun gave an interview[202][203] during which she described her experience while at the camps; she was drugged, interrogated for days without sleep, subjected to intrusive medical examinations, and strapped in a chair and received electric shocks. It was her third time being sent to a camp since 2015. Tursun told reporters that she remembered interrogators tell her "Being a Uighur is a crime."[201] A spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, has stated that Tursun was taken into custody by police on "suspicion of inciting ethnic hatred and discrimination" for a period lasting 20 days, but denies that Tursun was ever detained in an internment camp.[203][204][205]

Another past detainee, Kayrat Samarkand, said that "[t]hey made me wear what they called 'iron clothes,' a suit made of metal that weighed over 50 pounds [23 kg]... It forced my arms and legs into an outstretched position. I couldn't move at all, and my back was in terrible pain...They made people wear this thing to break their spirits. After 12 hours, I became so soft, quiet and lawful."[206]

Waterboarding is reportedly among the forms of torture which have been used as part of the indoctrination process.[207]

Compulsory sterilizations and contraception

In 2019, reports of forced sterilization in Xinjiang began to surface.[208][209][210] Zumrat Dwut, a Uyghur woman, says that she was forcibly sterilized by tubal ligation during her time in a camp before her husband was able to get her out through requests to Pakistani diplomats.[24][211] The Xinjiang regional government denies that she was forcibly sterilized.[24]

In 2020, the Associated Press interviewed seven former detainees from internment camps who said they had been forced to take birth control pills or injected with fluids without explanation, which caused women to stop getting periods. The AP suggested the fluid may have been the hormonal medication Depo-Provera, which is commonly used in Xinjiang hospitals for birth control.[18]

In April 2021, exiled Uyghur doctor Gülgine reported that forced sterilization of ethnic Uyghurs persisted since the 1980s.[212] Since 2014, there was an indication for a sharp increase in sterilization of Uyghur women to ensure that Uyghurs would remain a minority in the region.[212] Gülgine said "On some days there were about 80 surgeries to carry out forced sterilizations". She presented intrauterine devices (IUDs) and remarked that "these devices were inserted into women's wombs" to forcibly cause infertility.[212]

Brainwashing

Former detainee Kayrat Samarkand described his camp routine in an article for NPR in 2018: "In addition to living in cramped quarters, he says inmates had to sing songs praising Chinese leader Xi Jinping before being allowed to eat. He says detainees were forced to memorize a list of what he calls '126 lies' about religion: 'Religion is opium, religion is bad, you must believe in no religion, you must believe in the Communist Party,' he remembers. 'Only [the] Communist Party could lead you to the bright future.'"[206]

Documents which were leaked to The New York Times by an anonymous Chinese official advised that "Should students ask whether their missing parents had committed a crime, they are to be told no, it is just that their thinking has been infected by unhealthy thoughts. Freedom is only possible when this 'virus' in their thinking is eradicated and they are in good health."[213]

The Heritage Foundation reported that "children whose parents are detained in the camps are often sent to state-run orphanages and brainwashed to forget their ethnic roots. Even if their parents are not detained, Uyghur children need to move to inner China and immerse themselves into the Han culture under the Chinese government's 'Xinjiang classrooms' policy."[214]

In 2021, Gulbahar Haitiwaji reported being coerced into denouncing her family after her daughter had been photographed at a protest in Paris.[215]

Forced labor

Further information: Xinjiang cotton industry

According to Quartz, the Xinjiang region is described by the Uyghur Human Rights Project as a "'cotton gulag' where prison labor is present in all steps of the cotton supply chain..."[216]

Tahir Hamut, a Uyghur, worked in a labor camp during elementary school when he was a child, and he later worked in a labor camp as an adult, performing tasks such as picking cotton, shoveling gravel, and making bricks. "Everyone is forced to do all types of hard labor or face punishment," he said. "Anyone unable to complete their duties will be beaten."[217]

BuzzFeed News reported in December 2020 that "[f]orced labor on a vast scale is almost certainly taking place" inside the Xinjiang internment camps, with 135 factory facilities identified within the camps covering over 21 million square feet (2.0 km2) of land.[218] The report noted that "[f]ourteen million square feet of new factories were built in 2018 alone" within the camps and that "former detainees said they were never given a choice about working, and that they earned a pittance or no pay at all".[218]

A Chinese website hosted by Baidu has posted job listings for transferring Uyghur laborers in batches of 50 to 100 people.[219] The 2019 Five Year Plan of the Xinjiang government has an official "labour transfer programme" "to provide more employment opportunities for the surplus rural labour force".[219]These batches of Uyghurs are under "half-military" style management and direct supervision. A seafood processing plant owner said that the Uyghur workforce in his factory had left for Xinjiang due to the COVID-19 pandemic and were paid and housed properly.[219] At least 83 companies were found to have profited from Uyghur labor. Company responses included pledges of ensuring that it does not happen again by checking supply lines, such as Marks & Spencer. Samsung said that it would ensure that previous controls ensured good work conditions under its code of conduct. Apple, Esprit, and Fila did not offers responses to related inquiries.[220]

The Chinese government is reported to have pressured foreign companies to reject claims of abuses.[221] Apple was asked by the Chinese government to censor Uyghur-related news apps among others, on its devices sold in China.[222] Companies such as Nike and Adidas were boycotted in China after they criticized the treatment of Uyghurs, which resulted in significant drop in sales.[223]

Medical experiments

Former inmates have said that they were subjected to medical experimentation.[224][225]

Organized mass rape and sexual torture

BBC News and other sources reported accounts of organized mass rape and sexual torture carried out by Chinese authorities in the internment camps.[226][227][228][229][230][231]

Multiple women who were formerly detained in the Xinjiang internment camps have publicly made accusations of systemic sexual abuse, including rape, gang rape, and sexual torture, such as forced vaginal and anal penetrations with electric batons,[232] and rubbing chili pepper paste on genitals.[233][234]Sayragul Sauytbay, a teacher who was forced to work in the camps, told the BBC that employees of the internment camp in which she was detained conducted rapes en masse, saying that camp guards "picked the girls and young women they wanted and took them away".[228] She also told the BBC of an organized gang rape, in which a woman around age 21 was forced to make a confession in front of a crowd of 100 other women detained in the camps, before being raped by multiple policemen in front of the assembled crowd.[228] In 2018, a Globe and Mail interview with Sauytbay indicated that she did not personally see violence at the camp, but did witness malnourishment and a complete lack of freedom.[235] Tursunay Ziawudun, a woman who was detained in the internment camps for a period of nine months, told the BBC that women were removed from their cells every night to be raped by Chinese men in masks and that she was subjected to three separate instances of gang rape while detained.[228] In an earlier interview, Ziawudun reported that while she "wasn't beaten or abused" while in the camps, she was instead subjected to long interrogations, forced to watch propaganda, had her hair cut, was under constant surveillance, and kept in cold conditions with poor food, leading to her developing anemia.[236] Qelbinur Sedik, an Uzbek woman from Xinjiang, has stated that Chinese police sexually abused detainees during electric shock tortures, saying that "there were four kinds of electric shock... the chair, the glove, the helmet, and anal rape with a stick".[228]

Chinese government officials deny all allegations that there have been any human rights abuses within the internment camps.[228] Reuters reported in March 2021 that Chinese government officials also disclosed personal medical information of women witnesses in an effort to discredit them.[237]

In February 2021, the BBC released an extensive report which alleged that systematic sexual abuse was taking place within the camps.[238] The gang rapes and sexual torture were alleged to be part of a systemic rape culture which included both policemen and those from outside the camps who pay for time with the prettiest girls.[227] CNN reported in February 2021 about a worker and several former female inmates which survived the camps; they provided details about murder, torture and rape in the camps, which they described as routinely occurring.[239]

Outside internment camps

IUDs and birth control

China performs regular pregnancy checks on hundreds of thousands of minority women within Xinjiang.[240] Some CCP officials have spoken about the "demographic imbalance" in southern Xinjiang; Liu Yilei, deputy secretary-general of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps CCP Committee, said that the "proportion of the Han population in southern Xinjiang is too low, less than 15 percent. The problem of demographic imbalance is southern Xinjiang’s core issue."[241]

Zenz reported that 80% of "new" Chinese IUD placements (defined in his study as total IUD placements minus IUD removals) in 2018 occurred in Xinjiang, despite the region constituting only 1.8% of the country's population.[242][243][244] Assessing Zenz's analysis, Xinjiang University Professor Lin Fangfei argued that the appropriate measure is that 8.7% of IUD operations were performed in Xinjiang.[245][246]

Zenz reported that birth rates in counties whose majority population consists of ethnic minorities began to fall in 2015, "the very year that the government began to single out the link between population growth and 'religious extremism'".[242]: 8  Prior to the recent drops in birth rates, the Uyghur population had had a growth rate 2.6 times that of the Han between 2005 and 2015.[242]: 5  According to Zenz's analysis of Chinese government documents, the Chinese government had planned to sterilize between 14% and 34% of childbearing-age married women in two predominantly Uyghur counties in 2019, while seeking to sterilize 80% of childbearing-age women in four rural prefectures in Xinjiang's south that are primarily inhabited by ethnic minorities.[247]

According to a fax provided to CNN by the Xinjiang regional government, birth rates in the Xinjiang region fell by 32.68% from 2017 to 2018.[24] In 2019, the birth rates fell by 24% year over year, a significantly greater drop than the 4.2% decline in births experienced across the entire People's Republic of China.[18][24][248] According to Zenz, population growth rates in the two largest Uyghur prefectures in Xinjiang, Kashgar and Hotan, fell by 84% between 2015 and 2018.[20][249]

According to Adrian Zenz, Chinese government documents mandate that birth control violations of Uyghurs are punishable by extrajudicial internment.[250]Official records from Karakax County between 2017 and 2019 leaked to the Financial Times showed that the most common reason for detaining Uyghurs in camps was violation of family planning policies, with the second most common reason being for practising Islam. A 2018 Karakax government report said it had implemented "maximally strict family planning policies".[251]

Also in 2019, The Heritage Foundation reported that officials forced Uyghur women to take unknown drugs and liquids that caused them to lose consciousness, and sometimes caused them to stop menstruating.[214] In 2020, an Associated Press investigation reported that forced birth control in Xinjiang was "far more widespread and systematic than previously known", and that Chinese authorities had forced IUD insertions, sterilization and abortions upon "hundreds of thousands" of Uyghur and other minority women.[18] Many women stated that they were forced to receive contraceptive implants.[22][233] The full scale of forced sterilization in Xinjiang is unknown, partly because of the Chinese government's failure to collect or share data, as well as the reluctance of victims to come forward due to stigma.[252] The measures have been compared to China's past one-child policy targeting its Han population.[253][254]

According to CNN, regional authorities do not dispute the decrease in birth rates but deny that genocide and forced sterilization is occurring; Xinjiang authorities maintain that the decrease in birth rates is due to "the comprehensive implementation of the family planning policy."[24] The Chinese Embassy in the United States said the policy was positive and empowering for Uyghur women, writing that, "in the process of eradicating extremism, the minds of Uygur women were emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, making them no longer baby-making machines. They are more confident and independent." Twitter removed the tweet for violating its policies.[103][255]

Forced cohabitation, co-sleeping, rape, and abortion

Further information: Civil Servant-Family Pair Up

Beginning in 2018,[256] over one million Chinese government workers began forcibly living in the homes of Uyghur families to monitor and assess resistance to assimilation, as well as to watch for frowned-upon religious and cultural practices.[257]

The "Pair Up and Become Family" program assigned Han Chinese men to monitor the homes of Uyghurs and sleep in the same beds as Uyghur women.[258][better source needed] According to Radio Free Asia, these Han Chinese government workers were trained to call themselves "relatives" and forcibly engaged in co-habitation of Uyghur homes for the purpose of promoting "ethnic unity".[257] Radio Free Asia reports that these men "regularly sleep in the same beds as the wives of men detained in the region's internment camps."[259] Chinese officials maintained that co-sleeping is acceptable, provided that a distance of one meter is maintained between the women and the "relative" assigned to the Uyghur home.[258][259] Uyghur activists state that no such restraint takes place, citing pregnancy and forced marriage numbers, and name the program a campaign of "mass rape disguised as 'marriage'."[258]Human Rights Watch has condemned the program as a "deeply invasive forced assimilation practice", while the World Uyghur Congress states that it represents the "total annihilation of the safety, security and well-being of family members."[259]

A 37-year-old pregnant woman from the Xinjiang region said that she attempted to give up her Chinese citizenship to live in Kazakhstan but was told by the Chinese government that she needed to come back to China to complete the process. She alleges that officials seized the passports of her and her two children before coercing her into receiving an abortion to prevent her brother from being detained in an internment camp.[260]

A book from Chandos Publishing authored by Guo Rongxing stated that the 1990 Barin uprising were the result of 250 forced abortions imposed upon local Uyghur women by the Chinese government.[261]

Organ harvesting

See also: Organ harvesting in China

Ethan Gutmann[262] states that organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience became prevalent when members of the Uyghur ethnic group were targeted in security crackdowns and "strike hard campaigns" during the 1990s. According to Gutmann, organ harvesting from Uyghur prisoners dropped off by 1999 with members of the Falun Gong religious group overtaking the Uyghurs as a source of organs.[263][264][265]

In the 2010s, concerns about organ harvesting from Uyghurs resurfaced.[190][266][267] According to a unanimous determination by the China Tribunal in May 2020, China has persecuted and medically tested Uyghurs. Its report expressed concerns that Uyghurs were vulnerable to being subject to organ harvesting but did not yet have evidence of its occurrence.[268][269][270][271] In November 2020, Gutmann told RFA that a former hospital in Aksu, China, which had been converted into a Xinjiang internment camp, would allow local officials to streamline the organ harvesting process and provide a steady stream of harvested organs from Uyghurs.[272] In a December 2020 Haaretz article, Gutmann stated he believed at least 25,000 people were being killed in Xinjiang for their organs each year, claiming that "fast lanes" had been created for the movement of organs in local airports and crematoria had recently built in the province in order to more easily dispose of victims' bodies.[262][273]

In 2020, a Chinese woman alleged that Uyghurs were killed to provide halal organs for primarily Saudi customers. She also alleged that in one such instance in 2006, 37 Saudi clients received organs from killed Uyghurs at the Department of Liver Transplantation of Tianjin Taida Hospital. Dr. Enver Tohti, a former oncology surgeon in Xinjiang, thought the allegation was credible.[274][275][276]

Forced labor

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government has imposed forced labor conditions on Uyghurs.[277][278][279]

In January 2020, videos began to surface on Douyin showing large numbers of Uyghurs being placed into airplanes, trains, and busses for transportation to forced factory labor programs.[278] In March 2020, the Chinese government was found to be using the Uyghur minority as forced sweatshop labor. According to a report published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), no fewer than around 80,000 Uyghurs were forcibly removed from Xinjiang for purposes of forced labor in at least twenty-seven factories around China.[280] According to the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, a UK-based charity, corporations such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Adidas, Amazon, Apple, BMW, Fila, Gap, H&M, Inditex, Marks & Spencer, Nike, North Face, Puma, PVH, Samsung, and Uniqlo sourced from these factories.[20][281] Over 570,000 Uyghurs are forced to pick cotton by hand in Xinjiang.[282][283]According to an archived report from Nankai University, the Chinese forced labor system is designed to reduce Uyghur population density.[284]

In total, by 2021, the Chinese government had relocated more than 600,000 Uyghurs to industrial workplaces as a part of their forced labor programs.[278][279]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide#Government_policies

The thread is aimed at discussing a Canadian issue: namely, the human rights abuses created by Canadian mining firms around the world and their facilitation by the Canadian government. However, I will not hesitate to criticize other governments for their collaboration in these crimes, no matter what or where those governments are. As I noted above in this particular case, I was criticizing the Canadian government and its agencies for failing to do anything about the abuses involved in using forced labour in China, something the Chinese government has been involved in my own opinion and those many others not only believed occurred but have evidence of having occurred. I won't continue this argument because it will end up in another of the interminable arguments seen often on Babble. Let's just agree to disagree.