by savelakecowal Monday April 09, 2007 at 05:51 PM
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/04/143310.php
Fourteen protestors have been arrested at a demonstration in support of Wiradjuri Traditional Owners who want the Lake Cowal Gold Mine stopped.
Fourteen protestors have been arrested at a demonstration in support of Wiradjuri Traditional Owners who want the Lake Cowal Gold Mine stopped.
Around 100 Aboriginal and environmental supporters demonstrated at the Lake Cowal Gold mine, 47 kms from West Wyalong over Easter to protest against the desecration of traditional Wiradjuri lands and environmental damage caused by gold mining.
Some of the demonstrators locked themselves onto pieces of machinery, shutting down mine operations, while others occupied the mine's offices.
West Wyalong police charged the protestors with entering “inclosed land” under the obscure Inclosed Land Act 1901. The protestors were released on bail on the condition that they did not come within 10 kilometres of the mine.
Wiradjuri Traditional Owners have been holding convergences at Lake Cowal for a number of years as part of their campaign to raise awareness about the destruction of their ancient cultural heritage and their demands for the mine to be closed.
During yesterday's protest, a Barrick Gold mine manager refused to accept an eviction notice from Traditional Owner, Neville “Chappy” Williams. Mine Manager, Bill Shallvey, rudely refused to take the notice, the fourth issued to Barrick since 2002, shouting that Williams and his supporters were “misleading people”.
“Our Aboriginal People are being denied access to our sacred ground. Protestors from around the world are here to support our claim for access to our ancient lands. Australian Aboriginal Peoples have the oldest continuing living culture in the world. We Wiradjuri People are also being denied the right of spiritual and religious freedom under s.116 of the Australian Constitution,” Mr Williams said.
“Barrick is desecrating our sacred site and Dreaming Place and denying us access to our traditional lands. The company has moved or destroyed more than 10 000 artefacts including marked trees, damaging the integrity of the area forever.
“The company did a deal with five unauthorised Wiradjuri, who signed away the ancient inheritance of over 30 000 people of the Wiradjuri Nation. After signing the secret agreement with Barrick they discontinued their Native Title Claim over the area. Our Mooka and Kalara united families' claim is still active in the Federal Court and is proceeding towards determination. Our claim group is more than several thousand people who have bloodline back to Country over thousands and thousands of years.
“Despite Barrick's assertion that we are misleading people, what we are doing is our ancient cultural duty to protect our sacred Country for the generations to come. We are also raising awareness of the dangers of cyanide leach gold mining and the mine's excessive use of precious water in the middle of the worst drought on record. The fullest dams, in the very parched countryside between Condobolin and the mine, are the toxic tailings ponds west of the open cut pit, which extends into the lakebed.
“I am proud of the courageous and brave protestors who entered the mine, occupied its office and locked onto the conveyor belt, shutting down operations. They had my authority to enter our traditional lands.”
The Easter Sunday protest was the climax of the weekend of actions that included a Saturday morning demonstration in Condobolin outside the offices of the Wiradjuri Condobolin Corporation funded by Barrick under the secret agreement.
Attended by environmentalists from Bolivia, Canada, the United States, England, France, Germany, Iraq, Papua New Guinea and Switzerland as well as most Australian states, the campaign to protect Lake Cowal continues to gain international recognition as momentum grows in the fight to stop the desecration of Indigenous lands and the environmental destruction resulting from gold mining on all continents.
Activists are working towards international solidarity against Barrick on 2 May 2007, the day of its Annual General Meeting.
Contacts:
Neville Williams
0416 316 774
Ellie Gilbert
0427 795 639
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Police charge Lake Cowal protesters
Police have arrested and charged 18 protesters who broke into the gold mine at Lake Cowal in central western New South Wales yesterday.
A protest camp was set up near one of the gates to the Barrick Gold mine during the weekend. The protesters say the mine contaminates local waterways and damages nearby wetlands.
One of the protesters, Mia Pepper, says the mine is causing environmental damage and native title issues have not been dealt with properly.
"We decided that if they're not going to listen to us then we need to make them listen to us," she said.
"So by doing this we are forcing them to acknowledge us and forcing them to acknowledge why we've come here."
The mine's community relations manager, Bill Shalvey, says an appropriate native title agreement is in place.
The arrested protesters have been charged with entering enclosed land and are due to face West Wyalong Local Court on April 26.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1892461.htm
Police charge 19 people following mine protest
Tuesday, 10 April 2007 9:03:44 AM
SYDNEY, April 10, 2007: Police have charged 19 people following a protest at a central-western NSW mining site, including a man who attempted to disrupt the activists' campsite.
Eighteen people entered the Barrick Gold site at Lake Cowal at about 1.30pm (AEST) on Sunday, invading the site office and chaining themselves to machinery.
Protesters say the company is stripping the area of precious water supplies and destroying the land of the traditional owners, the Wiradjuri people.
Police said the 18 were arrested and charged with entering enclosed lands.
They have been granted conditional bail and will appear in West Wyalong Local Court on April 26.
Traditional owner Neville "Chappy" Williams said Barrick had done a secret deal with a group of Wiradjuri people who were not entitled to make such an agreement.
"The company did a deal with five unauthorised Wiradjuri, who signed away the ancient inheritance of over 30,000 people of the Wiradjuri Nation," Mr Williams said.
"After signing the secret agreement with Barrick they discontinued their Native Title Claim over the area."
However, another claim by several thousand members of the Wiradjuri was still active in the Federal Court and proceeding towards determination, he said.
The Wiradjuri People were also being denied the right of spiritual and religious freedom under Section 116 of the Australian Constitution, Mr Williams said.
"Barrick is desecrating our sacred site and Dreaming Place and denying us access to our traditional lands. The company has moved or destroyed more than 10 000 artefacts including marked trees, damaging the integrity of the area forever."
In a separate incident, a 32-year-old man from Western Australia allegedly drove into the protesters' campsite and damaged their cars and tents.
He was arrested and charged with malicious damage, failing to undergo a breath analysis, stalking/intimidation, carrying a knife in a public place and driving offences.
The man was refused bail and will appear in Griffith Local Court. - AAP
nit.com.au
UN Body Holds Canada Responsible for Corporations’ Actions Abroad
By Mark Cherrington
April 10, 2007 | World Indigenous News
In a groundbreaking decision, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has told Canada that it must rein in Canadian corporations operating on Indian land in the United States.
The finding, issued in early March, was in response to a petition filed by the Western Shoshone Defense Project about the actions of Canadian resource-extraction companies operating on the tribe’s land in the western United States. Among other things, the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which has been ratified by both Canada and the United States, requires states to "guarantee the right of everyone ... in the enjoyment of ... economic, social, and cultural rights ... and the right to public health." The Shoshone petition claimed that these are the areas in which the Canadian companies are affecting them.
The petition especially targets Barrick Gold Corporation, the largest gold mining company in the world. Gold mining uses large amounts of toxic mercury and creates cyanide-laced leaching ponds, both of which threaten Shoshones’ right to health. The blasting used to open mining sites destroys sacred areas, which violates the tribe’s cultural rights to culture, and mining roads disrupt wildlife, undermining their traditional ways of finding food. Gold mining also requires vast amounts of water, which dries up springs and other water sources that the Shoshone need for health. The Betze mine alone uses 70,000 gallons per minute, and it is hardly alone. Western Shoshone lands are the third-largest gold producing region in the world, and there are six other Canadian gold companies besides Barrick operating there, with more applications for leases already under consideration.
The Shoshone have targeted Canada in part because the United States has failed to take any action to protect Shoshone lands. On the contrary, the U.S. government has declared most of Shoshone territory to be federal public land open to resource extraction and other commercial activities. The treaty protecting the original Western Shoshone territory—some 60 million acres from southern Idaho to California’s Mojave Desert—is still valid, but the government has gotten around the treaty by invoking a principle it calls "gradual encroachment." This legal tautology has been discredited by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, but the United States has ignored those findings.
In fact, the government has been seeking ways of making their lands even more available to encroachment. Until now, extraction industries have been operating under a federal lease arrangement, but in 2004 Republican congressman Richard Pombo introduced an amendment to a budget bill that would allow foreign companies to buy this "public" Shoshone land for $1,000 an acre. (The bill was passed by the House of Representatives but defeated in the Senate.) And a second bill, introduced by Republican congressman James Gibbons (now governor of Nevada), would have offered more than 60,000 acres of Shoshone land for sale to the Canadian company Placer Dome, now owned by Barrick Gold.
The racial discrimination treaty is a binding agreement for Canada, which, like all state parties, has to submit to biannual review by the CERD Committee, the treaty’s enforcement body. CERD reviews the country’s report (and any accompanying unofficial "shadow reports" like the Western Shoshones’) and issues observations and recommendations like the one regarding Canada, which read in part: "The committee encourages the state party to take appropriate legislative or administrative measures to prevent acts of transnational corporations registered in Canada which have a negative impact on the enjoyment of rights of indigenous peoples in territories outside Canada. In particular, the committee recommends to the state party that it explore ways to hold transnational corporations registered in Canada accountable."
Will Canada act on that recommendation? One hopeful sign in that regard is a report published on March 29 by Canada’s National Roundtables on Corporate Social Responsibility and Canadian Extractive Industries in Developing Countries. Among many recommendations in this comprehensive government report, are several that stress the need to protect the rights of indigenous peoples in the areas where Canadian companies operate.
Sources and Further Reading:
[The National Roundtables on Corporate Social Responsibility] April 10, 2007
[ommittee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination] April 10, 2007
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