Sav­ing Ice­land
Press Release (in Ice­landic below)
July 24th, 2007

LANDSVIRKJUN INVOLVED IN COAL & NUCLEAR POWERED RIO TINTO-ALCAN SMELTER IN AFRICA

HAFNARFJORDUR – Sav­ing Ice­land has closed access to RioTinto’s Straumsvik smelter in South-West Ice­land. About 20 pro­tes­tors have locked their arms in met­al tubes and climbed onto cranes on the smelter site. Sav­ing Ice­land oppos­es plans for a new RioT­in­to-Alcan smelter in Keil­isnes or Thor­lak­shöfn, expan­sion of the exist­ing smelter, and a new coal and nuclear pow­ered smelter in South Africa.

“Protests against Alcan have been suc­cess­ful. Of course the peo­ple of Haf­nafjor­dur have stopped the expan­sion of Straumsvik and recent­ly, in Kashipur, North­east India, Alcan had to give up it’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in a baux­ite mine because of protests against their human rights vio­la­tions and envi­ron­men­tal deves­ta­tion. Alcan has been accused of cul­tur­al geno­cide in Kashipur, because min­ing and dams have already dis­placed 150.000 main­ly trib­al peo­ple there . Norsk Hydro left the project when police tor­tured and opened fire on pro­tes­tors, and then Alcan moved in,” says Sav­ing Iceland’s Snor­ri Páll Jóns­son Úlfhildar­son.

“This case and sim­i­lar cas­es, and Alcan’s involve­ment in arms pro­duc­tion, shows how ruth­less they are. The takeover by RioT­in­to is rather unlike­ly to make Alcan into a respon­si­ble cor­po­rate cit­i­zen.”

“RioT­in­to-Alcan haven’t blown off their inter­est in a new smelter in Ice­land. Haf­nafjor­dur is still being named by Alcan despite the ref­er­en­dum , and a new smelter might be built in Thor­lak­shöfn or Keil­isnes. Sav­ing Ice­land rejects this, and we express our sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple in South Africa oppos­ing RioTinto-Alcan’s coal- and nuclear pow­ered smelter plans there. Landsvirkjun has also got­ten involved in this , so it is very impor­tant that peo­ple in Ice­land reject these neo-colo­nial devel­op­ments that destroy the envi­ron­ment and com­mu­ni­ties. ” says Úlfhildar­son.

Doc­u­men­ta­tion of Alcan’s links to the arms indus­try, the South-African deal with Landsvirkjun, and some of the his­to­ry of Rio Tin­to is attached to this press release.

More infor­ma­tion:
http://www.savingiceland.org
Snor­ri Páll Jóns­son Úlfhildar­son

ALCAN’S LINKS TO THE ARMS INDUSTRY
RioTinto-Alcan’s alu­mini­um alloys are sold for a whole range of mil­i­tary pur­pos­es. Alcan is the main sup­pli­er for Euro­pean Aero­space and Defense and Space, pro­duc­er of mil­i­tary heli­copters, mil­i­tary satel­lites, the Eurofight­er Tycoon, Mirage F1, EF18 Hor­net and oth­er jets . EADS is the world’s lead­ing pro­duc­er of mis­siles . Deals made between the EADS and Alcan are pre­sent­ed as between Air­bus and Alcan, to cloud the mil­i­tary involve­ment ; it is com­mon for all alu­mini­um com­pa­nies to hide their ‘defense’ prod­ucts under the title ‘aero­space’. But at the same time, mil­i­tary prod­ucts need to be mar­ket­ed, so images of fight­er jets are dis­played on Alcan Aerospace’s web­site .

EADS claims to sell to coun­tries that “guar­an­tee a respon­si­ble approach to high-tech mil­i­tary air sys­tems. It draws on decades of exper­tise in mil­i­tary avi­a­tion.” But can you trust a com­pa­ny that is sick enough to add video frag­ments from Nazi Ger­many, glo­ri­fy­ing first world war and Nazi air­planes , on the same web­page as this quote?

RIO TINTO-ALCAN: ALUMINIUM TO IRAQ
Alcan fur­ther sup­plies Boe­ing a “vari­ety of high per­for­mance alu­minum-prod­ucts” . Boe­ing pro­duces the Apache and Chi­nook mil­i­tary heli­copters used in Iraq and less known prod­ucts that bright­en your day, such as the the ‘Small Diam­e­ter Bomb’ and the ‘Joint Direct Attack Muni­tion.’ Then there are Alcan’s asso­ci­a­tions with Das­sault ., a French arms man­u­fac­tur­er, which pro­duces a range of alu­mini­um fight­er-jets . Alcan has also been pro­mot­ing itself to Naval ser­vices .

RIO TINTO-ALCAN: PLANS FOR AFRICA
RioT­in­to-Alcan has signed a let­ter of intent with the Govt. of Cameroon to expand the exist­ing Alu­cam smelter with 150.000 Mtpy, and build a new 150.000 Mtpy smelter. The Lom Pan­gar Dam, to be con­struct­ed by the gov­ern­ment, would pow­er this . Alcan have a large num­ber of projects planned Africa – their “green­field project pipeline” includes Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Mada­gas­car and South Africa. ‘Green­field’ means that untouched nature will be destroyed for the mines, infra­struc­ture, smelters, and dams that would pow­er them.

APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA, ESKOM AND LANDSVIRKJUN
Alcan was active in apartheid South Africa between 1949–1986 . Now they want to come back and devel­op a new smelter in the near zero-tax ‘Coega Devel­op­ment Zone’ near Port Eliz­a­beth, pow­ered by coal and nuclear deliv­ered by Eskom, one of the worlds largest elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­nies. “Thir­ty per­cent of the poor com­mu­ni­ties of South Africa don’t have elec­tric­i­ty, and now that will be going straight to Alcan,” says Ler­a­to Maregele, a S‑African activist vis­it­ing Ice­land .
Elkom is a ‘sis­ter-com­pa­ny’ of Iceland’s Landsvirkjun . Landsvirkun want to be part of this deal and more gen­er­al­ly branch out to Africa.
Landsvirkjun can be expect­ed to try and sell their exper­tise to Eskom’s var­i­ous hydropro­jects in Mozam­biqu, Ugan­da and Con­go. They will try to be part of damming the Con­go riv­er, a project twice the size of China’s Three Gorges, that will have a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the cen­tral African rain­for­est.

RIO TINTO’S ABYSMAL RECORD
While we can con­clude that Alcan itself heav­i­ly sup­plies the arms indus­try and is invad­ing Africa as it invades Ice­land, it is now part of Rio Tin­to, the world’s largest pri­vate min­ing com­pa­ny, “long crit­i­cized for gross human rights vio­la­tions dat­ing back to its sup­port of apartheid in South­ern Africa.”
We will name some of the many cas­es. Rio Tin­to has been know to sub­ject it’s own work­ers to poi­son­ing in mines, hav­ing secu­ri­ty guards shoot­ing locals on the spot look­ing for small amounts of gold in one of it’s mines and hav­ing union-mem­bers spied upon or fired in its Brazil­ian gold mines.

Rio Tin­to has been involved with mer­ce­nary scan­dals. The Papua New Guinean (PNG) Gov­ern­ment, in joint ven­ture with Rio Tin­to, hired pri­vate mer­ce­nary com­pa­nies San­d­line Inter­na­tion­al, a Lon­don-based pri­vate mil­i­tary com­pa­ny, com­posed pri­mar­i­ly of for­mer British and South African spe­cial forces sol­diers, which had been involved in the civ­il wars in Ango­la and Sier­ra Leone and were now payed to fight the pop­u­la­tion of Bougainville, an island near PNG. The mine had been closed by the peo­ple of the island because of the dis­as­trous eco­log­i­cal effects .
Cit­i­zens of Bougainville have filed a class action law­suit in the Unit­ed States against Rio Tin­to aris­ing from the envi­ron­men­tal dam­age caused by the mine and war crimes occur­ring dur­ing the civ­il war years. In August 2006, the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Cir­cuit reject­ed Rio Tin­to’s effort to dis­miss the claim.

S. Das & F. Padel, “Dou­ble Death — Aluminium’s Links with Geno­cide”, Eco­nom­ic and Polit­i­cal Week­ly, Dec. 2005, also avail­able at http://www.savingiceland.org/doubledeath
Chan­dra Sid­dan, “Blood and Baux­ite”, Mon­tre­al Mir­ror, Nov 20–26, 2003, Vol. 19 No. 23.
“Smelter Expan­sion on Land­fill?”, Ice­land Review, June 20th 2007.
RUV News, 26-02-2007, http://ruv.is/heim/frettir/frett/store64/item145391/. Note that RUV has Alcoa and Alcan con­fused.
EADS web­site, http://www.eads.com/1024/en/businet/defence/mas/combat_aircraft/combat_aircraft.html
EADS pro­mo­tion film, “A Brief Glance at EADS”, http://www.eads.com/xml/content/OF00000000400004/1/10/41434101.mov
AFX News, June 13, 2007, http://www.abcmoney.co.uk/news/13200786914.htm
Alcan Press Release, “Com­pa­ny To Pro­vide Crit­i­cal Alu­minum Mate­ri­als For Full Range Of Air­craft Includ­ing A380”, June 13, 2007, http://www.decisionplus.com/fr/fintools/stock_news.asp?Market=TSE&Symbol=AL&NewsID=20070613/021501
http://www.alcanaerospace.com/Aerospace/aerospace.nsf/html/FWFGHOME?Open&LG=1, dd. 22–7‑2007.
EADS pro­mo­tion film, “90 years of air­craft his­to­ry in Augs­burg”, http://www.eads.com/1024/en/businet/defence/mas/mas.html and http://www.eads.com/xml/content/OF00000000400004/0/64/41488640.asx
US Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, “Min­er­als Year­book 2005,” Sep­tem­ber 2006, p. 5.2.
Boe­ing Web­site Image Gallery of Small Diam­e­ter Bomb: http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/gallery/images/missiles/sdb/sdb.html
Boe­ing Image Gallery: http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/gallery/images/missiles/sdb/sdb.html
Alcan Press Release, “Alcan Con­tributes to Suc­cess of Eighth Ari­ane 5 ECA Launch,” Dec 13th, 2006.
http://www.dassault-aviation.com/
“Pacif­ic 2004, Inter­na­tion­al Naval and Mar­itime Expo­si­tion for the South­ern Pacif­ic,” Aero­space Mar­itime and Defence Con­fer­ence, http://www.ideea.com/pacific2004/embassy/smithbriefing.pdf
US Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, “Min­er­als Year­book 2005,” Sep­tem­ber 2006, p. 5.5.
Alcan Press Release, “Alcan to Explore Devel­op­ment of Baux­ite Mine and Alu­mi­na Refin­ery in Mada­gas­car,” Sep­tem­ber 11th 2006.
Alcan’t web­site, http://www.alcant.co.za/history.html
Grapevine, Issue 10, July 13, 2007. Inter­view also avail­able at http://www.savingiceland.org/node/870
RUV News, 26-02-2007, http://ruv.is/heim/frettir/frett/store64/item145391/. Note that RUV has Alcoa and Alcan con­fused.
Inter­na­tion­al Rivers Net­work & Earth­Life Africa, “Eskom’s Expand­ing Empire
The Social and Eco­log­i­cal Foot­print of Africa’s Largest Pow­er Util­i­ty,” June 2003, http://www.irn.org/programs/safrica/index.php?id=030601eskomfactsheet.html
Asia-Pacif­ic Human Rights Net­work, “Rio Tinto’s Record and the Glob­al Com­pact,” July 13th 2001, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=623.
SBS Australia’s tele­vi­sion pro­gram Date­line in a report on Rio Tin­to, August 2000.
Wikipedia Ger­many (22–7‑2007), http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandline-Affäre
Con­tract between PNG Gov­ern­ment and San­d­line: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/PNG/htmls/Sandline.html.
Sarei v Rio Tin­to, 456 F.3d 1069 (9th Cir. 2006), USA.

Sav­ing Ice­land
24 July 2007

The Ice­landic gov­ern­ment and ALCOA have gained their first polit­i­cal pris­on­er with their repres­sion of protest against the heavy indus­try pol­i­cy.

A twen­ty three year old British Sav­ing Ice­land activist who was arrest­ed today on the action against Rio Tin­to-Alcan, has been impris­oned for eight days.

Appar­ent­ly the activist was told by the Ice­landic police that she was to pay a 100.000 kro­nur (£840) fine for her involve­ment in protests against ALCOA in the east of Ice­land in the sum­mer of 2006, or face prison. She chose the lat­ter.

At this time we do not know where she will be held.

Oth­er for­eign pro­test­ers have their pass­ports held at ran­som by the police for fines based on accu­sa­tions for obstruct­ing the police, but no actu­al charges.

Here at Sav­ing Ice­land we seem to remem­ber that pass­ports are the prop­er­ty of the States that they are issued in.

Thus, not for the first time, the Ice­landic police may actu­al­ly be breach­ing inter­na­tion­al law by black­mail­ing for­eign cit­i­zens who are exer­cis­ing their demo­c­ra­t­ic right to protest against the cor­rupt heavy indus­try pol­i­cy that the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to main­tain.

In March this year the Left-Green par­ty in Ice­land called in par­lia­ment for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into the con­duct of the Ice­landic police against Sav­ing Ice­land pro­test­ers in the the years of 2005 and 2006.

It is high time that the auto­crat­ic and fre­quent­ly vio­lent meth­ods of the Ice­landic police against peace­ful pro­test­ers come under seri­ous scruti­ny.

http://www.savingiceland.org/node/887