March 23, 2009

Thou­sands of local vil­lagers in the Mas­bate province of the Philip­pines, are in their sec­ond week of protest­ing the “unwel­come and unsafe” pres­ence of the Filmin­era Min­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (FMC).

Work­ing in part­ner­ship with Aus­trali­a/­Cana­da-based com­pa­ny, Cen­tral Gold Asia (CGA), Filminera’s open pit gold mine in Aro­roy was sched­uled to be ful­ly oper­a­tional on March 20th, but a mas­sive show of local oppo­si­tion halt­ed the com­pa­ny from mov­ing ahead.

On March 14, as many as 4,000 vil­lagers from Aro­roy bar­ri­cad­ed them­selves in front of the mine site.

A bat­tal­ion of sol­diers was flown in to pro­tect the mine site soon after the protest began, reports the CBCP. A sec­ond report from the CBCP explains that, as of March 18, there were “about 50 armed men belong­ing to Alpha Com­pa­ny 22nd CAFGU Bat­tal­ion who are roam­ing around the min­ing site, while three boats of the 9th Infantry Bat­tal­ion of the Philip­pine Army are anchored at the municipality’s shores and most of its men are con­duct­ing check points and search­es.”

For­tu­nate­ly the mil­i­tary hasn’t tak­en any action yet, but they could make a move at any moment.

Mean­while, the com­pa­ny has declared a “five-day work hol­i­day” at the mine, and giv­en away free ban­quets, bin­go socials “and all sorts of sports” to try and hol­low-out the pro­test­ers’ legit­i­mate demands.

The vil­lagers are ask­ing the gov­ern­ment to revoke Filminera’s min­ing per­mit, and to repeal the Min­ing Act of 1995 “which favors for­eign com­pa­nies” over envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, human rights, and indige­nous peo­ples rights.

A num­ber of pri­ma­ry con­cerns are fuel­ing the demands, as the dio­cese of Mas­bate Social Action Foun­da­tion Inc. (DIMASAFI) explains in a recent state­ment:

Cen­tral Gold Asia, at the begin­ning of its activ­i­ty has paint­ed a rosy pic­ture before the eight (8) impact­ed com­mu­ni­ties with promis­es of employ­ment and social devel­op­ment. After years of explo­ration, it began to show its ugly face:

• An open pit min­ing with wide tracks of land being scraped while moun­tains and hills are being flat­tened, leav­ing the com­mu­ni­ties agape at the unex­pect­ed sight;
• farm­ers being dis­placed with mea­gre mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion and relo­cat­ed in near­by cat­tle graz­ing land with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of farm­ing activ­i­ties;
• the small scale min­ers with thou­sands of depen­dents being dri­ven out of their place of work result­ing in their scam­per­ing every­where to dig for their sur­vival;
• rivers being closed with embank­ment for the con­struc­tion of the tail­ings pond, and some rivers rerout­ed, with the con­se­quent dry­ing up of rice fields and fish ponds and water source of a near­by com­mu­ni­ty;
• age-old trees being bull­dozed with plants and crops to the dis­ap­point­ment of farm­ers who have tilled the land for many years;
• the source of drink­ing water that serves the near­by com­mu­ni­ty being cut off;
• the port of Bar­rera, a long time source of liveli­hood of the peo­ple resid­ing along the coast­lines, now being made the catch basin of the mine tox­ic wastes in case of over­flow and the pos­si­ble con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the 21,000 hectares of 68 fish­pond own­ers in 9 barangays.

The sit­u­a­tion for local com­mu­ni­ties will con­tin­ue to dete­ri­o­rate if the mine becomes ful­ly oper­a­tional.

How­ev­er, if sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty is an indi­ca­tion, it’s that the mine will nev­er see the full light of day.

As of March 23, the protest is attend­ed by at least 7,000 vil­lagers, fish­er­folk, and oth­er con­cerned cit­i­zens. Sev­er­al NGO’s and Ecu­meni­cal groups, includ­ing the Catholic Church, have also expressed their sup­port for the vil­lagers.

It appears that the local gov­ern­ment sup­ports them aswell. Aroroy’s Sang­gu­ni­ang Pan­lalaw­igan (leg­is­la­ture) “has slammed them for lack­ing even the basic require­ment of an Envi­ron­ment Com­pli­ance Cer­tifi­cate,” notes a press release from Alyansa Tig­il Mina, a coali­tion of NGO’s opposed to large scale min­ing. “It was also recent­ly revealed that FMC lacks a Mayor’s per­mit and a busi­ness per­mit.”

Contacts

• Rodne R. Galicha (ATM Sites of Strug­gles Offi­cer): 09087421905
• Mar­cial Velasco/Danilo Cor­puz (ACRA Mem­bers of the Board): 09209190274
• E‑mail: kalikasan101@gmail.com Web­site: www.alyansatigilmina.net