Bangladesh mine activists dump coal outside GCM meeting in London

Activists dumped coal out­side the annu­al meet­ing of min­ing firm GCM Resources in Lon­don on Thurs­day in protest at the com­pa­ny’s plans for a con­tro­ver­sial mine in Bangladesh.

The meet­ing at the Insti­tute of Direc­tors was brought to an end after a pro­test­er dressed as San­ta Claus deliv­ered a sack of coal to the GCM chair­man, Ger­ard How­ell. Two pro­test­ers were arrest­ed for breach of the peace but released with­out charge.

The firm, list­ed on Lon­don’s junior Aim mar­ket, wants to run an open pit coal mine in the Phul­bari town­ship in the north of the coun­try, despite claims that up to 130,000 peo­ple could be dis­placed and warn­ings by the UN that human rights could be vio­lat­ed.

An offi­cial com­plaint to the Organ­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-oper­a­tion and Devel­op­ment has been made by the World Devel­op­ment Move­ment and the Inter­na­tion­al Account­abil­i­ty Project, say­ing the com­pa­ny would forcibly evict up to 130,000 peo­ple if the project went ahead. The com­plaint men­tions a UN report from ear­li­er this year warn­ing that “access to safe drink­ing water for some 220,000 peo­ple is at stake”.

The com­pa­ny claims the mine will dis­place 40,000 peo­ple but cre­ate 17,000 jobs.

The 1,000ft-deep mine, which could stretch across 14,500 acres has been put on hold since 2006 after local oppo­si­tion.

Accord­ing to doc­u­ments released under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act, GCM boss­es have approached Britain’s Depart­ment of Trade and Indus­try to soothe rela­tions between the com­pa­ny and the Bangladeshi gov­ern­ment.

In 2006, three peo­ple were killed and 800 injured at the mine dur­ing protests about the pos­si­ble evic­tions. GCM said devel­op­ment of the mine was essen­tial for meet­ing Bangladesh’s ener­gy needs by pro­vid­ing about 114m tonnes of coal for domes­tic con­sump­tion with the remain­ing 458m tonnes sold abroad.