60 international activists occupy Gold Corporation headquarters in Rosia Montana, Romania

Today, Sep­tem­ber 28th, at 12:00 o’clock, approx­i­mate­ly 60 inter­na­tion­al activists tak­ing part in the Reclaim the Fields camp [1], togeth­er with the local asso­ci­a­tion Albur­nus Maior [2], from Rosia Mon­tana, Roma­nia, occu­pied and blocked the entrance to the Rosia Mon­tana Gold Cor­po­ra­tions [3] head­quar­ters in the vil­lage’s Ol

Today, Sep­tem­ber 28th, at 12:00 o’clock, approx­i­mate­ly 60 inter­na­tion­al activists tak­ing part in the Reclaim the Fields camp [1], togeth­er with the local asso­ci­a­tion Albur­nus Maior [2], from Rosia Mon­tana, Roma­nia, occu­pied and blocked the entrance to the Rosia Mon­tana Gold Cor­po­ra­tions [3] head­quar­ters in the vil­lage’s Old Square. This action was in defi­ance of the com­pa­nies con­tin­u­ing attempt to expro­pri­ate locals and destroy an area pro­tect­ed by Roman­ian con­ser­va­tion law.

Local and inter­na­tion­al peo­ple are oppos­ing plans to open Europe’s largest open cast gold mine, which would dis­place hun­dreds of fam­i­lies and result in wide­spread eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion and cyanide con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the pro­tect­ed land­scape. The peace­ful occu­pa­tion and block­ade last­ed for two hours and the com­pa­ny decid­ed to leave the pub­lic infor­ma­tion point closed for the rest of the day.

The pro­posed mine would destroy the vil­lage of Rosia Mon­tana and intro­duce dan­ger­ous cyanide leach­ing tech­nol­o­gy, threat­en­ing water sys­tems in Roma­nia and beyond with the poten­tial of dev­as­tat­ing acci­dents. Strong local oppo­si­tion to the gold min­ing project emerged almost imme­di­ate­ly in the year 2000 when the project was announced by Cana­di­an com­pa­ny Gabriel Resources. Resis­tance to the plan has since spread across Roma­nia and beyond. Dur­ing the last 10 years, Albur­nus Maior, through the Save Rosia Mon­tana Cam­paign has suc­cess­ful­ly mobi­lized thou­sands of peo­ple and has so far kept the plans from being car­ried out.

The Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment pro­ce­dure for the min­ing project was sus­pend­ed in 2008 by the Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment, due to the dis­cov­ery of ille­gal­i­ties com­mit­ted by the com­pa­ny. Fur­ther­more, civ­il soci­ety has won sev­er­al court cas­es against the Gold Cor­po­ra­tion, where it was proved that the min­ing project was ini­ti­at­ed in ille­gal con­di­tions and involved high lev­els of cor­rup­tion, coer­cion and abuse of the local pop­u­la­tion.

Accord­ing to the law, the min­ing project has to restart from point zero, but the new Roman­ian Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter wants to pro­ceed with a polit­i­cal deci­sion in favour of the min­ing project, in a clear vio­la­tion of the court deci­sions, as well as of Roman­ian and EU laws on Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment pro­ce­dures.

The Roman­ian gov­ern­ment seems keen to sup­port cor­po­rate inter­ests in the face of local oppo­si­tion. A new law on expro­pri­a­tion has been recent­ly pro­posed in the Roman­ian par­lia­ment and is expect­ed to be vot­ed on dur­ing the next month. The law would enable pri­vate com­pa­nies, instead of the Roman­ian state and judi­cial sys­tem, to car­ry out forced expro­pri­a­tion of res­i­dents, in a clear vio­la­tion of human rights.

In dia­logue with the occu­py­ing activists, the com­pa­ny spokesper­son, Catal­in Hosu, reject­ed any rela­tion between the Gold Cor­po­ra­tion and this law and stat­ed that they would not resort to using it if it is passed. In reply, the activists promised to tar­get the cor­po­ra­tion with fur­ther actions if the promise is not kept.

At the EU lev­el, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion has been refus­ing to fol­low up on a May 2010 Euro­pean Par­lia­ment res­o­lu­tion requir­ing it to make a leg­isla­tive pro­pos­al to ban the use of cyanide in min­ing. While the Gold Cor­po­ra­tion has expressed the inten­tion to adopt cyanide reduc­tion tech­nol­o­gy in Rosia Mon­tana, recent news exposed that the use of such tech­nol­o­gy will be much more expen­sive than orig­i­nal­ly planned [4]. In response to this, Catal­in Hosu replied that the Gold Cor­po­ra­tion is com­mit­ted to respect all Roman­ian and EU leg­is­la­tion, but did not state whether this tech­nol­o­gy will be adopt­ed or dropped in face of the costs.

NOTES:

[1] The Reclaim the Fields move­ment (www.reclaimthefields.org) brings togeth­er food grow­ers and farm­ers around Europe that are con­nect­ing local prac­ti­cal action with glob­al polit­i­cal strug­gles. Reclaim the Fields stands against cor­po­rate inter­ests and any projects which reduce the access and right to land for food pro­duc­tion, abuse local com­mu­ni­ties and destroy cul­tur­al and envi­ron­men­tal val­ues. Between 21–30 of Sep­tem­ber, 2011, sev­er­al hun­dred activists from all over Europe and Roma­nia are par­tic­i­pat­ing in an unprece­dent­ed sol­i­dar­i­ty camp in Rosia Mon­tana – Roma­nia. The event is orga­nized by Reclaim the Fields togeth­er with the Albur­nus Maior Asso­ci­a­tion (www.rosiamontana.org), with strong sup­port from the Roman­ian peas­ant asso­ci­a­tion Eco Ruralis (www.ecoruralis.ro) and numer­ous orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als from across geo­graph­i­cal Europe.

[2] Albur­nus Maior asso­ci­a­tion rep­re­sents the local oppo­si­tion from Rosia Mon­tana against the largest gold mine pro­pos­al in Europe which entails the destruc­tion of Rosia Mon­tana and a large area of the Apuseni Moun­tains in Roma­nia. www.rosiamontana.org

[3] Rosia Mon­tana Gold Cor­po­ra­tion is 19.31 per­cent owned by the Roman­ian state with the remain­ing share­hold­ers includ­ing Gabriel Resources, New­mont and Bar­rick Gold.

[4] AFP, Low­er cyanide lev­el in Roman­ian gold mine to cost mil­lions, 23.09.2011, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hXIMBYPJT-sYBLCZhIWJfy-sp_oQ?docId=CNG.eca6a9ad91bdb5676908fa2ea3090890.e1