Activists interfere with international mining conference in Finland

“There is no such thing as socially and environmentally sustainable mining!”

Today in Espoo, Fin­land, a meet­ing of bureau­crats and indus­tri­al­ists  enti­tled Con­fer­ence on Social­ly and Envi­ron­men­tal­ly Respon­si­ble Min­ing was dis­rupt­ed by the group Hyökyaal­to (“Tidal wave). The fol­low­ing state­ment was released today:

With the North­ern min­ing boom the min­ing indus­try, famous for it’s chem­i­cal emis­sions, is threat­en­ing waters and ecosys­tems in var­i­ous loca­tions, where clean nature offers the most pos­si­bil­i­ties for local peo­ple. It is grotesque that the peo­ple involved gath­er to dis­cuss the min­ing indus­try as a sus­tain­able activ­i­ty while every emer­gency dam in the Tal­vi­vaara mine is leak­ing poi­so­nous waste into Vuok­si waters.

The action is a protest against the indus­try and the state’s attempt to legit­imize min­ing by dis­cussing its “sus­tain­abil­i­ty”. Pro­test­ers are remind­ing peo­ple that no such thing as “respon­si­ble”, “sus­tain­able” or “green” min­ing exists. The Tal­vi­vaara mine in Sotkamo, East­ern Fin­land is a clear exam­ple that the only green things caused by min­ing are the pol­lut­ed swamps and waters. The min­ing indus­try, famous for its chem­i­cal emis­sions, threat­ens the waters and oth­er ecosys­tems cru­cial to every­one liv­ing in the sur­round­ing areas. The action is arranged in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Stop Tal­vi­vaara move­ment and all the peo­ple to whom min­ing indus­try caus­es suf­fer­ing around the world.

The envi­ron­men­tal activists feel that direct action is the only strat­e­gy left to make a dif­fer­ence since the Finnish gov­ern­ment has decid­ed to sup­port min­ing and ignore the crit­i­cal voic­es from the peo­ple com­plete­ly. Thus, the pub­lic opin­ion has no impact in the par­la­men­tary sys­tem. A reveal­ing exam­ple of this is that the open­ing speak­er for the two-day green­wash­ing con­fer­ence is Hei­di Hau­ta­la from the Finnish Green par­ty.

The organ­is­ing group of this protest, Hyökyaal­to demands imme­di­ate shut­down of Tal­vi­vaara mine and aban­don­ing all oth­er min­ing plans.

www.hyokyaalto.org

Stop the mining boom!