Bill C300: Understanding where Canadian refugees come from:

tango · August 26, 2009

Gold, impunity, violence in El Salvador

Assassination of anti-mining resistance leader Marcelo Rivera part of terror campaign against activists

A 37-year-old teacher, community center founder, and anti-mining activist is found tortured and assassinated in Northern El Salvador. Authorities, despite all evidence to the contrary, attribute the death to common gang violence. In the following weeks, other critics of mining are victims of death threats, attempted kidnappings and shootings. Communities plunged into fear not seen since the Civil War of the 1980s place the blame on the presence of Pacific Rim, a Canadian gold mining company.

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Activists in El Salvador have come to oppose mining for a variety of reasons, including the lack of democracy in the process, the belief that the 2 percent royalties companies are required to pay under current law is not sufficient, fear of contamination from the liberation of heavy metals like arsenic and lead and the use of cyanide in separating gold from rock, as well as the potential for loss of water access. These serious environmental and public health effects normally occur in the stage of exploitation; however, in 2008, exploratory drilling in Cabañas left numerous community wells without water. José Orlando Amaya, a significant landowner in Cabañas, originally supported Pacific Rim, selling the company the rights to drill on his land. But when his well went dry just days after the drilling began, he quickly changed his tone.

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Since Rivera's assassination in June, the attack on the anti-mining movement has intensified considerably. Death threats have been sent to three journalists at the independent radio station Radio Victoria, and to Antonio Pacheco, president of Cabañas's Association for Economic and Social Development. A local Catholic priest, Father Luis Quintanilla, after receiving numerous death threats on his cell phone, barely escaped an attempted kidnapping by a group of masked and armed men while driving home from a community forum on July 27. These and other victims all have one thing in common: their opposition to mining. And all the death threats have contained the same message: stop your activism, or you'll end up like Marcelo.

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After helping organize three successful highway roadblocks, which stopped Pacific Rim's exploration equipment from entering the community, Rodriguez was attacked with a small machete by his old neighbor and fishing buddy, Óscar Menjivar, severing three of Rodriguez's fingers in the process. Menjivar is known in this small community as a paid promoter of Pacific Rim's mining project and as a close friend of local mayors that support the mining. Rodriguez, who was handcuffed to his hospital bed for two days, believes the authorities acted in favor of the company.

Indigenous Peoples and being pushed off their land by Canadian gold mining companies ... and we will welcome them as refugees ... refugees from Canadian gold mining companies who will be forced to leave their dry wells and dry land and the terrorism of the paid thugs ... and come to Canada.

Now that's some immigration scam!

Now I understand it better. It isn't just that businesses inside Canada can 'order' whatever immigrants they want to employ: Canadian companies operating outside the country can ship out whatever refugees they want to create by whatever foul means they can pay for.

Appears to me.

omigod it's so sick.

Pacific Rim did not respond to repeated interview requests from The Real News, but it should be noted that there's no evidence that the company either ordered or advocated the crimes in question. However, activists in Cabañas claim that Pacific Rim, like mining companies across the globe, shower money on influential community members, politicians, and local elites in return for support for the company's project. This, they say, creates a system of incentives that generates violent conflicts of interest inside poor communities.

Communities become divided between those who fear the environmental and public health effects of mining and those who are in the pay of the company. All this takes place under a legal system that does nothing to deter the resulting acts of violence. Activists in El Salvador refer to this whole phenomenon as social and institutional contamination. Paying people like Óscar Menjivar, they say, is not much of a strain on the company, since the price of a mere ounce of gold, currently around $950, is roughly equal to ten months of income for a rural Salvadoran worker.

Only 17 years ago, El Salvador emerged from a civil war that claimed over 75,000 lives. At the end of that war, a UN truth commission found that right-wing death squads and government forces, largely trained and funded by the US, were responsible for 85 percent of the humans rights abuses. The Government responded five days later by passing a general amnesty law for all crimes committed during the war. The majority of the crimes in question, including rapes, massacres, and targeted disappearances, were committed on civilians, making efforts at community organization almost impossible. Many in El Salvador believe it is precisely this culture of impunity for the powerful sectors, exemplified in the general amnesty law, which permits the violence and fear that organizers continue to live with today.

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=...13+02%3A14%3A31

So ... we'll soon have another wave of refugees from El Salvador, in the 1980's running from US 'intervention', now running from Canadian interference in their lives.

So that's how it works. :blink:

I can certainly see where the need for Bill C-300 comes from:

Bill C-300 – Corporate Accountability for the Activities of Mining, Oil or Gas Corporations in Developing Countries

Bill C-300, An Act Respecting Corporate Accountability for the Activities of Mining, Oil or Gas Corporations in Developing Countries, represents the best chance we have as Canadians to assure that Canadian extractive companies adhere to human rights and environmental best practices when they operate overseas. It also represents our best chance to assure the accountability of our government to us, as taxpayers and citizens, by assuring that government financial and political support will not be provided to companies that breach human rights and environmental standards. Learn more about C-300 and how you can take action on this critical issue.

http://www.miningwatch.ca/index.php?/corpo...s/bill_c300_csr

And of course ... Pacific Rim is a paragon of virtue ... in its own eyes:

http://www.pacrim-mining.com/s/Home.asp

Pacific Rim is a growth-oriented, revenue-generating, environmentally and socially responsible gold exploration company with operations in North America and exploration assets in Central and South America. The Company is expanding and developing its advanced-stage, high-grade El Dorado gold project in El Salvador...

Mining is a dirty business ... one that many people do not survive ... if they oppose it.

Edited August 26, 2009 by tango