Category: Tribal Solidarity

Mine secu­ri­ty shoots young man, vil­lagers respond by destroy­ing $7 mil­lion in equip­ment

Decem­ber 24th, 2008

Last week, reports sur­faced in the main­stream press that thou­sands of vil­lagers had raid­ed a gold mine in North­ern Tan­za­nia, set­ting fire to $7 mil­lion* worth of mine equip­ment. Most reports blamed prob­lems with crime in the area, call­ing the intrud­ers “gold-seek­ers.”

While the spokesman for Bar­rick Gold** Tan­za­nia, Teweli Teweli, describes these vil­lagers as “well-orga­nized groups” who attacked the pit fol­low­ing the blast­ing of high-grade ore, oth­ers paint Bar­rick as the aggres­sor in this event, cit­ing imme­di­ate and his­toric caus­es that have been large­ly ignored by the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Accord­ing to sev­er­al wit­ness­es, the imme­di­ate cause of the civil­ian upris­ing was the killing of a young man named Mang’weina Mwi­ta Mang’weina. Human rights lawyer Tun­du Lis­su, who rep­re­sents many of the vil­lagers, explains that Mang’weina and some friends were engaged in an argu­ment with Bar­rick secu­ri­ty when one of the guards shot Mang’weina, who was unarmed at the time. This inci­dent caused an uproar with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, which imme­di­ate­ly took up stones, over­pow­ered mine secu­ri­ty (who then fled), and attacked the mine, set­ting fire to mil­lions worth of equip­ment.

Mang’weina him­self is a part of the lega­cy of the North Mara mine. He was one of the thou­sands of unem­ployed locals in the area, angry over the mine’s recent his­to­ry of forced dis­place­ment, loss of liveli­hoods, human rights abus­es and ongo­ing repres­sion. He is the sev­enth per­son killed at the hands of mine secu­ri­ty since July 2005, when the killing of a local boy sparked a sim­i­lar upris­ing that result­ed in the destruc­tion of mine equip­ment and the sub­se­quent deten­tion of over 200 vil­lagers.***

Eye­wit­ness­es to the 2005 killing told The Guardian (Tan­za­nia) that “the boy who was shot dead was walk­ing past the com­pa­ny premis­es when com­pa­ny secu­ri­ty guards, sus­pect­ing him of steal­ing oil, stopped him. When the boy failed to heed the order, the guards called the police who, before even ques­tion­ing him, shot him in the chest.”

Not one year lat­er, secu­ri­ty guards employed by Bar­rick Gold alleged­ly shot – five times in the back – anoth­er vil­lager who was alleged to have ille­gal­ly entered the mine com­plex, bring­ing the death toll to six.

Accord­ing to Lis­su in a let­ter writ­ten in June 2006:

The killings rep­re­sent a major shift in Bar­rick­’s strat­e­gy for deal­ing
with the trou­ble­some locals who have always opposed the Mine. In the
peri­od after the forced evic­tions of the vil­lagers in August 2001,
hun­dreds of vil­lagers, par­tic­u­lar­ly com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and promi­nent
locals were tar­get­ed for ille­gal arrests, crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions and
long term impris­on­ment. Numer­ous local lead­ers includ­ing the area’s
[late] Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Chacha Zakayo Wang­we and elect­ed Mem­ber of
the Tarime Dis­trict Coun­cil Augusti­no Nesto­ry Sasi were harassed this
way, with the lat­ter being sen­tenced to 30 year jail before we got him
out on appeal to the High Court of Tan­za­nia in Decem­ber 2004.

Cal­cu­lat­ing from media reports, Lis­su esti­mates that over 10,000 arti­sanal min­ers, peas­ant farm­ers and their fam­i­lies were kicked out of the area to make way for the North Mara mine in 2001. Since that time, there has been ongo­ing ten­sion between the mine and the local com­mu­ni­ties.

Accord­ing to Allan Cedil­lo Liss­ner, a Toron­to-based pho­to­jour­nal­ist who recent­ly inter­viewed fam­i­lies sur­round­ing the North Mara mine, “Ongo­ing con­flict between the mine and local com­mu­ni­ties have cre­at­ed a cli­mate of fear for those who live near­by.” Since the mine opened in 2002, one fam­i­ly told Liss­ner that they live in a state of con­stant anx­i­ety because they are repeat­ed­ly harassed and intim­i­dat­ed by the mine’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty forces and by gov­ern­ment police. “There have been sev­er­al dead­ly con­fronta­tions in the area and every time there are prob­lems at the mine, the Mwi­ta fam­i­ly say their com­pound is the first place the police come look­ing. Dur­ing police oper­a­tions the fam­i­ly scat­ters in fear to hide in the bush, ‘like fugi­tives,’ for weeks at a time wait­ing for the sit­u­a­tion to calm down,” Liss­ner explains.

The Mwi­ta fam­i­ly explained that they used to farm and raise live­stock, telling Liss­ner that “now there are no pas­tures because the mine has almost tak­en the whole land … we have no sources of income and we are liv­ing only through God’s wish­es. … We had nev­er expe­ri­enced pover­ty before the mine came here.” They also told Liss­ner that they would like to be relo­cat­ed, but the appli­ca­tion process has been com­pli­cat­ed, and they feel the amount of com­pen­sa­tion offered was mere­ly “can­dy.”

Accord­ing to Tan­zan­ian jour­nal­ist and com­mu­ni­ty advo­cate Evans Rubara, this lat­est upris­ing “is a sign to both the gov­ern­ment of Tan­za­nia and the Inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty (espe­cial­ly Cana­da) that poor and mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple also get tired of oppres­sion.” He hopes that the recent con­flict will inspire Bar­rick “to start anoth­er strat­e­gy that will bring a good and con­struc­tive rela­tion­ship with the local com­mu­ni­ties by imple­ment­ing pro­grams that do not enhance more loot­ing and belit­tle Tan­za­nia, leav­ing thou­sands in des­ti­tu­tion.”

Since this most recent upris­ing, dozens of vil­lagers have been arrest­ed. Accord­ing to Lis­su, who plans to rep­re­sent those arrest­ed, “They have arrest­ed dozens of peo­ple; [Bar­rick is] on a war path; these peo­ple have been denied bail, they are tar­get­ing the youth and repres­sion is on.”

Lis­su also spoke about reports of weapons mak­ing their way into the North Mara area. “Two days ago, we got infor­ma­tion that [Bar­rick is] import­ing weapons: a ton and a half of tear gas, and hand grenades were trans­port­ed to the mine on Thurs­day. The hand grenades were seized by cus­toms on the way to the North Mara Gold Mine, but have since been let through,” he told ProtestBarrick.net on the phone from Tan­za­nia.

Saku­ra Saun­ders is an edi­tor for protestbarrick.net, an all-vol­un­teer news site that net­works orga­ni­za­tions and com­mu­ni­ty groups orga­nized against Bar­rick Gold around the world.

* On Decem­ber 17, 2008 Bar­rick Gold said it had revised down the dam­age to its North Mara Mine in Tan­za­nia dur­ing an attack last week to about $7 mil­lion from an ear­li­er esti­mate of $15 mil­lion.

** In Jan­u­ary 2006, Bar­rick Gold merged with Plac­er Dome, who pre­vi­ous­ly owned the North Mara mine.

*** By mid 2006 all of the vil­lagers detained after the 2005 upris­ing had been released by the courts after the author­i­ties failed to pros­e­cute them.