Watut river communities ‘riot’ against Harmony and Newcrest mining in Papua New Guinea

June 4 – Riots have report­ed­ly bro­ken out against the Aus­tralian based min­ing com­pa­ny, New­crest Min­ing, and Har­mo­ny Gold of South Africa in the Bulo­lo Dis­trict of Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. The vio­lence has been sparked by the long out­stand­ing griev­ances of the com­mu­ni­ties down stream of the Hid­den Val­ley mine over min­ing pol­lu­tion and sed­i­ments which affect the lives of thou­sands of peo­ple who say they do not ben­e­fit one way or anoth­er from the oper­a­tions of some of the worlds biggest min­ing com­pa­nies.

Com­mu­ni­ties have, since 2009, been rais­ing issues regard­ing tox­ic sed­i­ment build up caus­ing dam­age to food gar­dens, wash­ing away foot­bridges, die back of veg­e­ta­tion, the death of aquat­ic organ­isms, health and hygiene com­pli­ca­tions in com­mu­ni­ties, loss of nav­i­ga­tion on water routes, loss of clean water and recre­ation­al areas, loss of eco­nom­i­cal land and hunt­ing sites, destruc­tion of secret (sacred) sites and destruc­tion of a pri­ma­ry income source – alu­vial gold.

Ear­li­er last month, Papua New Guinea Min­ing Min­is­ter, John Pun­dari, tried to address the com­mu­ni­ty griev­ances but this proved to be in vain as the meet­ing under­stand­ing sign by par­ties includ­ing Hid­den Val­ley Joint Ven­ture (HVJV), ‘a two face min­ing com­pa­ny’ com­pris­ing New­crest and Har­mo­ny, was not imple­ment­ed and HVJV and Papua New Guinea’s Min­er­al Resources Author­i­ty (MRA) failed to imple­ment the under­stand­ing.

Local com­mu­ni­ties say they served 24 hours notice on MRA to address their con­cerns on June 2nd but by 4pm local time on June 3rd there was no answer.

While the Watut Riv­er com­mu­ni­ties griev­ances were not addressed, HVJV staff silent­ly went on the com­mu­ni­ties land to col­lect water sam­ples for analy­sis.

Ear­li­er this year, the com­mu­ni­ty based orga­ni­za­tion, the Union of Watut Riv­er Com­mu­ni­ties, attempt­ed to enter into the Min­ing Lease and HVJV MoU cov­ered area with its own chemist to col­lect sam­ples but per­mis­sion was reject­ed by the min­ing com­pa­nies.

Yes­ter­day a vehi­cle belong­ing to the New­crest and Har­mo­ny was smashed by frus­trat­ed com­mu­ni­ties. Two Roy­al Police Con­stab­u­lary offi­cers who were pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty and pri­vate escorts to the min­ing com­pa­nies have also being accused by local peo­ple.

Local peo­ple say more riots are expect­ed today between the gov­ern­ment offi­cers, min­ing com­pa­ny and the PNG police force on one side with the rur­al min­ing affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties on the oth­er.

They also say police this morn­ing sent a warn­ing that they would burn vil­lages hous­es if there is any more trou­ble.

A road block­ade is expect­ed to start today.