April 12th, 2015

Scrawled on the homes of the vil­lage of Mega­li Pana­gia in north­ern Greece are slo­gans emblem­at­ic of the deep rift caused in this soci­ety by a con­tro­ver­sial Cana­di­an gold min­ing project.

“Gold­mines are a curse for every nation,” reads one — oth­ers are more pro­fane.

For the past three years, the invest­ment of Hel­lenic Gold — a sub­sidiary of Cana­di­an firm Eldo­ra­do Gold — has deeply divid­ed the local com­mu­ni­ties of the Halkidi­ki penin­su­la, even set­ting fam­i­ly mem­bers at each oth­ers’ throats.

In Mega­li Pana­gia itself, tit-for-tat attacks on shops and cars belong­ing to rival fac­tions have been going on for years.

Until now, most of the demon­stra­tions were by res­i­dents fear­ing that the project will cause irre­versible harm to the forest­ed Halkidi­ki penin­su­la, one of Greece’s most pop­u­lar tourist areas.

But the arrival in Jan­u­ary of a new left­ist gov­ern­ment that oppos­es the invest­ment has sparked a mobil­i­sa­tion among Hel­lenic Gold employ­ees afraid of los­ing their jobs.

“A civ­il war is unfold­ing and the gov­ern­ment must clear this sit­u­a­tion up imme­di­ate­ly,” says Yior­gos Kyrit­sis, a legal rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the anti-min­ing fac­tion.

“I know of one pend­ing law­suit con­cern­ing a beat­ing between two broth­ers,” he told AFP.

Ear­li­er this month, riot police were sent in when the rival groups came close to clash­ing in an oak for­est between the vil­lages of Stra­toni, where Hel­lenic Gold has its base, and Ieris­sos, which oppos­es the project.

– ‘There will be blood’ –

Police min­is­ter Yian­nis Panousis lat­er said some of the pro­test­ers were fir­ing bolts from sling­shots.

Panousis warned “there will be casu­al­ties” unless the sit­u­a­tion is resolved.

The new left­ist gov­ern­ment has clear­ly declared its oppo­si­tion to the project, with Ener­gy and Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Pana­gi­o­tis Lafaza­nis recent­ly pledg­ing to “employ all pos­si­ble legal means” to halt it.

After the lat­est protest Lafaza­nis went fur­ther, accus­ing the com­pa­ny of act­ing “as a state with­in a state” and mobil­is­ing its staff to cause vio­lence.

“Nobody can black­mail the gov­ern­ment… Greece is not a banana repub­lic,” Lafaza­nis’ min­istry said in a state­ment.

In a sim­i­lar vein, the dai­ly news­pa­per of the rul­ing Syriza par­ty, Avgi, brand­ed the protest­ing min­ers “mer­ce­nar­ies”.

The mine employ­ees, who plan to protest in Athens on April 16, counter that it is they who have faced intim­i­da­tion and vio­lence from the so-called envi­ron­men­tal fac­tion since the project was first announced in 2011.

In the town of Ieris­sos, where most res­i­dents oppose the project, fam­i­lies of min­ers live in a “cli­mate of ter­ror”, says their union rep­re­sen­ta­tive Chris­tos Zafeiroudas.

“What is dan­ger­ous is that this hatred has even passed to the chil­dren in the local schools. The com­pa­ny may leave one day, but we still live here,” he told AFP.

In 2012, dozens of min­ers trashed an obser­va­tion post manned by anti-mine activists in the moun­tain of Skouries, near a planned expan­sion site of the mine project.

In turn, in a pre-dawn raid in 2013, hood­ed mil­i­tants threw Molo­tov cock­tails at the mine work­site, wound­ing a guard and dam­ag­ing equip­ment.

The police sta­tion of Ieris­sos was lat­er ran­sacked after two local men were arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of par­tic­i­pat­ing in that attack.

The min­is­ter in charge at the time said the anti-mine pro­test­ers saw them­selves as real-life ver­sions of the feisty Gauls that take on the Roman Empire in the Aster­ix com­ic books.

“We are fac­ing oppo­si­tion from a sec­tion of the local com­mu­ni­ty that wants to impose its own law and oper­ate like a Gaul­ish vil­lage,” then pub­lic order min­is­ter Nikos Den­dias said.

Hel­lenic Gold says it plans to invest 1.3 bil­lion euros ($1.38 bil­lion) in the area over­all, and extract 9.6 mil­lion ounces of gold.

Its oper­a­tions, it says, have been repeat­ed­ly vet­ted and cleared by the author­i­ties.

Anti-mine pro­test­ers claim the project will cause irre­versible harm to the envi­ron­ment, drain­ing and con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing local water reserves and fill­ing the air with haz­ardous chem­i­cals includ­ing lead, cad­mi­um, arsenic and mer­cury.

It is like­ly to also affect the area’s agri­cul­tur­al and tourism econ­o­my, they say.

The pre­vi­ous con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment had sup­port­ed the invest­ment, argu­ing that it would cre­ate hun­dreds of jobs in the reces­sion-hit coun­try where the unem­ploy­ment rate now stands at over 25 per­cent.

Anoth­er Cana­di­an com­pa­ny, TVX, began an oper­a­tion in Halkidi­ki near­ly two decades ago before pulling out in 2003.