[WSMDiscuss] Mining conflicts multiply, as critics of ‘extractivism’ gather in Johannesburg

Sun Nov 11 04:34:37 CET 2018

Albertina read my mind.  I have pasted below information about the attack that was shared by the network she is part of, and attached a statement from the network of peoples for a sustainable northeast.

The Northeast region of India is has a lot of natural wealth, and has been plundered for years, and subjected to extreme repression through military and para-military forces.  There is also a powerful anti-mining mafia in operation there that uses contract killers and thugs.  Many regions and places in India face similar threats and risks, and violence against rights activists has become almost routine in India. There are many more cases than are reported, compiled, documented…

So Patrick and all those attending the social forum on mining: do please have an action to express protest against the continuing violence against the people who seek to defend and protect their communities and mother earth from the violence of extractives.

In solidarity,  Shalmali

Our colleague and INSAF National Executive Member from Shillong Ms. Agnes Agnes Kharshiing and her colleague were brutally attacked this  afternoon in Kong Ong, a coal dumping area on the national highway in East Jaintia hills. She is Meghalaya's frontline activist  fighting to safeguard environment, anti-mining,  human rights and protect women and child rights  She is said to be in serious condition with severe head injuries and rushed to NEIGRIHMS, Shillong.

She had just raised issue with the complete failure of the state government to enforce the NGT BAN on coal mining and posted photographs of massive coal transport still going on despite the ban. Yesterday Agnes lodged a complaint on coal-laden trucks parked at Mawiong rim in Shillong, which were later seized by the police. In the past, she had exposed rampant mining and transportation of coal despite the ban across the Khasi and Jaintia Hills. She has been fiercely fighting against the education scam mafia.

INSAF strongly condemns the cowardly acts of the corrupt corporates involved in this attack and demands the Meghalaya government immediately book the culprits and urgently halt the frauds of the mining and education mafia.

https://thenortheasttoday.com/meghalaya-rti-activist-agnes-kharshiing-attacked-in-ejh-condition-said-to-be-critical/ <https://thenortheasttoday.com/meghalaya-rti-activist-agnes-kharshiing-attacked-in-ejh-condition-said-to-be-critical/>

Meghalaya's frontline anto-mining activist and human rights defenders was attacked by unknown miscreants in Kong Ong area, a major coal depo, east Jaintia hills district of Meghalaya. She and a another activist were found seriously injured at Sohshrieh on the roadside by the Jaintia Hills police who sent search parties for her on a tip off.  police confirmed the incident  
In her fifties, Kharshiing is a fire brand who has been raising her voice against the rampant coal mining despite the state bring under an NGT BAN  a for several years. 
She is the president of the Civil Society Women's Organization (CSWO) through which she has been constantly fighting for women and children in distress.
She is being ferried by ambulance to Shillong which is about 66 Kms

> On 11 Nov 2018, at 10:10, Albertina Almeida via WSM-Discuss <wsm-discuss at lists.openspaceforum.net> wrote:
> 
> Hello Patrick,
> 
> I was wondering if in this WSF event beginning 12th, you can organise a solidarity protest against the murderous attempt on the life of Agnes Kharshiing, anti-mining activist in North East India, and on her colleague Amita Sangma and their driver E Kurba, after Agenes had a lodged a complaint on the illegal mining and transportation of coal at Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya
> 
> Albertina
> 
> On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 1:05 AM Patrick Bond <pbond at mail.ngo.za <mailto:pbond at mail.ngo.za>> wrote:
> (If you're near Joburg, this tribunal against TNCs underway now - including tomorrow - is excellent. And be sure to come for the opening plenary on Monday which will turn into a protest against AngloGold Ashanti next door, in the mining precinct of Newtown.)
> 
> https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/mining-conflicts-multiply-as-critics-of-extractivism-gather-in-johannesburg/ <https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/mining-conflicts-multiply-as-critics-of-extractivism-gather-in-johannesburg/>
> 
> 
> Mining conflicts multiply, as critics of ‘extractivism’ gather in Johannesburg
> By Patrick Bond
>  
> The World Social Forum’s ‘Thematic Forum on Mining and Extractivism <https://www.thematicsocialforum.org/>’ convenes from November 12-15 here in Johannesburg, just after the Southern Africa People’s Tribunal on Transnational Corporations <http://aidc.org.za/3rd-session-peoples-permanent-tribunal/>. In between, at the notorious 2012 massacre site on the platinum belt to the west, there’s a launch of a new book – Business as Usual after Marikana <http://www.jacana.co.za/book-categories/new-releases-65840/business-as-usual-after-marikana-detail> – critical not only of the mining house Lonmin but of its international financiers and buyers.
>  
> This is the moment for a profoundly critical standpoint to take root, unhindered by ineffectual reformism associated with Corporate Social Responsibility <https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781317906599/chapters/10.4324%2F9781315848341-18> gimmicks and the mining sector’s civilised-society watchdogging at the mainly uncritical <https://www.pambazuka.org/global-south/we-need-real-%E2%80%9Calternatives-mining%E2%80%9D-indaba> Alternative Mining Indaba. That NGO-dominated event occurs annually in Cape Town every February, at the same time and place where the extractive mega-corporations gather.
>  
> The Thematic Forum firmly opposes <https://www.thematicsocialforum.org/> ‘extractivism.’ Unlike the Indaba <https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/13/disconnecting-the-minerals-energy-climate-dots/>, it aims to connect the dots between oppressions, defining its target as extraction of “so-called natural resources” in a way that is “devastating and degrading,” since mining exacerbates “conditions of global warming and climate injustice. It subjects local economies to a logic of accumulation that privately benefits corporations,” and represses “traditional, indigenous and peasant communities by violations of human rights, affecting in particular the lives of women and children.”
>  
> The last point is not incidental, as two of the main organisers are the Southern Africa Rural Women's Assembly <https://www.facebook.com/SARuralWomen/?fref=mentions&__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARD2VrKCXK7yqD6rKMom_LW-6VGnCS9Imhl70G2O_nUmjBvNx6LR_TsMqsq8kkxd_sGdBOX-kXp0H6kcjoQMvp1ZhvT3CmkqXD_ohBwVANwOrcoEdqRRWRBJzU-ZU9Ycc2uKiNZykrD8yrsRV_i4qc7pcMUSw8e940KT8T054yK95L_jUsPTYi5ajei5E7KdGXaR9TKsoS7a-eCIRN0NpSs-Mwc&__tn__=K-R> and the WoMin <https://womin.org.za/> network: “African Women Unite Against Destructive Resource Extraction.” Inspired by Amadiba Crisis Committee activists in the Eastern Cape’s Wild Coast, they’ve campaigned hard for the #Right2SayNo <https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/right2sayno?source=feed_text&__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARD2VrKCXK7yqD6rKMom_LW-6VGnCS9Imhl70G2O_nUmjBvNx6LR_TsMqsq8kkxd_sGdBOX-kXp0H6kcjoQMvp1ZhvT3CmkqXD_ohBwVANwOrcoEdqRRWRBJzU-ZU9Ycc2uKiNZykrD8yrsRV_i4qc7pcMUSw8e940KT8T054yK95L_jUsPTYi5ajei5E7KdGXaR9TKsoS7a-eCIRN0NpSs-Mwc&__tn__=%2ANK-R>.
>  
> Last month, such rights language proved invaluable in the Constitutional Court here in Johannesburg, when the Itireleng community won <https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-11-01-maledu-judgment-victory-for-the-constitution-over-mining-evictions/> a judgement <http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2018/41.html> against displacement from their farm, under attack by a local platinum mining house. (This was pleasantly surprising to many of us who are Court critics, given how much corporate power <https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Corporate+rights+in+South+Africa.-a019528162> is hardwired into South Africa’s founding document.)
>  
> On the Wild Coast last month, South Africa’s Mining Minister Gwede Mantashe <https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-09-27-from-xolobeni-to-the-mining-charter-community-members-marginalised/> had shown how desperately he wants investment by the likes of aggressive Australian titanium mining firm MRC <https://www.moneyweb.co.za/mineweb/mining-companies-investment/awkward-questions-get-short-shrift-at-mrc-annual-general-meeting/>. But the Amadiba Crisis Committee <https://www.facebook.com/amadibacrisiscommittee/> and its allies have consistently shown their ability to say “No!”
>  
> No means no
>  
> The Forum’s opening morning features a demonstration at the nearby world headquarters of AngloGold Ashanti, the locally-listed firm shamed in 2005 by Human Rights Watch <https://www.hrw.org/report/2005/06/01/curse-gold> for its alliances with warlords during the minerals-related murder of millions of people in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2011, AngloGold Ashanti won the title “world’s most irresponsible corporation” at the ‘Davos Public Eye’ ceremony <https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=202199> organised outside the World Economic Forum by Greenpeace and the Berne Declaration.
>  
> Since then the firm has attracted even more intense community, labour, feminist and environmental protests from Chile <http://ejatlas.org/conflict/mina-cerro-vanguardia> to Colombia <https://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2018/03/27/how-a-tiny-colombian-village-beat-the-worlds-third-largest-gold-mining-company/> to Ghana <http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2017/mar/30/profiteering-mars-record-black-african-gold-mining/> to Guinea <http://www.miningweekly.com/article/anglogold-ashantis-guinea-mine-hit-by-violent-power-cuts-protests-2018-06-28> to Tanzania <https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9276/1/1/3/htm>, as well as at home in South Africa <https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-06-29-miners-rise-up-and-march-as-anglo-gold-ashanti-fires-salvo-to-cut-8500-jobs/> over mass retrenchments, inadequate pay and delay of silicosis-related compensation payments. It’s a sick company, with its Johannesburg Stock Exchange price having fallen by more than half since a mid-2016 peak (and even further from its 2006-12 JSE valuations).
>  
> Criticised <https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/mining/2018-07-23-anglogold-ashanti-appoints-barricks-kelvin-dushnisky-as-ceo/> by investors who believe “AngloGold has not matched up to its global peers” in large part because of less profitable South African holdings, AngloGold Ashanti is rapidly exiting its home country. The firm <https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Anglo_American_and_the_rise_of_modern_So.html?id=cYhkAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y> made its fortune during the notorious 20th century era of extreme apartheid extractivism when it was run by the Oppenheimer family. Perhaps even worse is the new boss, Kelvin Dushnisky <https://tanzaniabusinessethics.wordpress.com/2018/09/13/kelvin-dushnisky-accountable-for-crimes-violations-human-rights-abuses-damages/>, who has presided over Toronto-based Barrick (the world's largest gold producer, known in Africa as Acacia) during its recent reign of mining terrorism <http://protestbarrick.net/>, including mass rape <http://protestbarrick.net/article.php@id=1007.html>.
>  
> The mining corporations under fire at the Forum are not only the typical pinstriped, ethics-challenged cowboys from the London-Toronto-Melbourne-Joburg circuits. Next door in Mozambique, Rio-based Vale’s coal-mining operations at Moatize were disrupted last month, according <https://clubofmozambique.com/news/vale-mozambique-suspends-activities-in-moatize-after-protests-watch/> to activist allies at the Associação de Apoio e Assistência Jurídica às Comunidades, due to “excessive pollution [and] acceleration of the decay of  houses due to explosion of dynamites.”
>  
> Albeit trying to “mask brutal exploitation with the language of South-South solidarity,” as documented <https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/vale-corporation-brazil-mining-lula-mozambique-brics> by Canadian researcher Judith Marshall, Vale is brutal in numerous jurisdictions, judged by Berne Declaration and the Brazilian Movement of Landless Workers as worst company in the world <https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2012/01/30/worst-company-in-the-world-award-goes-to/#76f601d76a0a> in 2012 due to “its labour relations, community impact and environmental record.”
>  
> In Mozambique, Vale as well as the Indian firms Coal of India, Vedanta and Jindal have been criticised for displacement and destruction. Community protests <https://clubofmozambique.com/news/mzoambique-coal-and-resettlement-by-joseph-hanlon/> against foreign companies are prolific in coal-rich Tete Province. Further east, on the Mozambican coastline, beach sands in some communities have been destroyed by the voracious Chinese firm Haiyu.
>  
> Complains <https://mg.co.za/article/2018-10-16-they-have-taken-our-beautiful-sand-from-us-and-left-nothing> a local resident who can no longer carry out fishing subsistence, Nassire Omar, “They owe us because they have taken our beautiful sand from us and left nothing. We don’t know the quantity of the sand that they took over seven years, but we know that they profited from it and we want our dues. They have taken all the riches here and left us with nothing.”
>  
> But it may be that Vedanta <http://www.foilvedanta.org/> and its boss Anil Agarwal – who is also Anglo American Corporation’s largest single investor with more than 20% of shares – has witnessed the most sustained protest, including a mass protest in May against the Thoothukudi Sterlite copper plant which his officials responded to with a massacre of 13 Indians demanding an end to pollution.
>  
> Protest against Africa’s largest copper mine, Konkola, centres on 1,826 Zambian farmers <http://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/knowledge/publications/158040/emlungowe-v-vedantaem-appeal-highlights-important-points-regarding-parent-company-liability> poisoned by Vedanta. Just before the London Stock Exchange delisting of Vedanta last month, popular reggae musician Maiko Zulu protested <https://www.lusakatimes.com/2018/09/28/maiko-zulu-released-after-kcm-protest/> (and was arrested) at the British High Commission in Lusaka, demanding that authorities deny Agarwal his escape from London prior to justice being served. Agarwal bought <http://www.foilvedanta.org/?s=Konkola> that mine for $25 million in 2004 and a decade later bragged <https://www.lusakaftimes.com/2014/05/13/video-vedanta-boss-saying-kcm-makes-500-million-profit-per-year/> that ever since he had taken $500 million to $1 billion home from Konkola annually.
> 
> 
> 
> Maiko Zulu just before arrest at British High Commission, Lusaka, 27 September 2018
> 
> 
>  
> After extractivism
>  
> These sorts of Western+BRICS modes of super-exploitation exemplify the mineral, oil and gas looting <https://www.pambazuka.org/economics/new-evidence-africa%E2%80%99s-systematic-looting-provided-increasingly-schizophrenic-world-bank> underway across Africa. The uncompensated extraction of non-renewable resources amounts to an estimated $150 billion annually, far more even than the $50-80 billion Illicit Financial Flows and $50 billion in legal profit repatriation from Africa by mining and petroleum firms.
>  
> But increasingly, mining houses are pushing the people and environment too far, and resistance is rising. As Anglo American Corporation leader Mark Cutifani remarked <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/miners-offer-clinics-bull-rings-as-protests-tie-up-25-billion> in 2015, “There’s something like $25 billion worth of projects tied up or stopped” by mining critics across the world.
>  
> How activists can increase that figure is the topic of next week’s discussions, along with moving from these critiques to strategies for post-extractivist systems of political economy, political ecology and social reproduction.
>  
> (Patrick Bond – pbond at mail.ngo.za <mailto:pbond at mail.ngo.za> – teaches political economy at the Wits University School of Governance in Johannesburg.)
>  
> 
> ________________________________________
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Shalmali Guttal
Executive Director
Focus on the Global South
CUSRI: 4th Floor Wisit Prachuabmoh Building
Chulalongkorn University
Phayathai Road, Bangkok 10330
THAILAND
Telephone: +66 22187363-65
Fax: (+66-2) 255 9976
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