Category: mining

LP members, financiers after Lumad land

Tribune Wires

President Aquino will likely face new troubles with the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) which has been demanding action from him on rights protection after local group Karapatan raised the issue on the killings of members of the Lumad tribe by paramilitary force to the UN body.

Karapatan sought the UNHRC intervention on the deaths of Lumad leaders Dionel Campos and Datu Juvello Sinzo, and Alternative Learning Center for Agriculture and Livelihood Development Inc (ALCADEV) school director Emerito Samarca.

A member of the oppressed Lumad tribe in Mindanao when asked what is with the ancestral lands of their in Surigao del Norte and Surigao del Sur that caused forced evacuations, division and killings said “bulawan” or gold in the Manobo dialect was the most probable reason.

An emotional Imelda Balandres, a woman leader from the community of Lumad evacuees, who witnessed the killing of Campos and Sinzo, last Sept. 1 told The Daily Tribune in an interview that the rich source of gold and other precious minerals are the root of all the violence inflicted on them as big mining companies target their ancestral lands.

Apparently, the two primary mining companies that are interested in the Lumad lands are owned by campaign financiers of no less than the ruling Liberal Party’s (LP) 2016 standard bearer, Mar Roxas.

Nickel Asia and SR Metals Incorporated (SRMI), owned by Salvador Zamora and Eric Gutierrez respectively, are, according to Lumads and previous reports, the ones that operate “big time” in the said area.

Both Zamora and Gutierrez are known to have contributed to the campaign funds during President Aquino’s 2010 presidential bid, as they are now associated with Roxas’ machinery.

The UNHRC was asked to investigate the killings and the evacuation of almost 3,000 Lumad in Surigao del Sur through letters sent to Dr. Chaloka Beyani, UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons; Christof Heyns, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; Michel Forst, Special Rapporteur on Situation of Human Rights Defenders; and Victoria Lucia Tauli-Corpuz, Special Rapporteur on Rights of the Indigenous People’s.

“We are asking the UN HRC to investigate and recommend actions to the Philippine Government on these issues,” Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay said.

Karapatan said on September 1, 2015, the Magahat/Bagani paramilitary forces under the 36th and 75th Infantry Battalion-Philippine Army gunned down Campos in front of the whole community in Km. 16, Diatago, Lianga, Surigao del Sur.

Sinzo, who was separated from the crowd, was tortured by hitting his arms and legs with wooden stick before he was shot.

Samarca, on the other hand, was found dead inside the classroom of ALCADEV with an ear-to-ear slit on the throat and gunshot wounds in the chest. “The 36th Infantry Battalion (IB), 74th IB and the Special Forces were at the periphery,” Palabay recounted the accounts of the witnesses.

“While the AFP can lie through their teeth about their involvement on the killings and all other atrocities of its paramilitary groups, the motives are crystal clear: eliminate those who are perceived as enemies of the state, including those who fight for their land and their rights,” Palabay said.
She added there was no way the government can deny its responsibility in the killings as long as it implements counter-insurgency programs like Oplan Bayanihan.

“The paramilitary groups is one way of tackling this dirty war against the Filipino people. It is no wonder why the AFP has not disbanded these groups—because they work together,” Palabay said.

The killing of Fr. Fausto Tentorio, the massacre of the Capion family, the murder of Datu Jimmy Liguyon, the Tabugol brothers, among others was done through the use of paramilitary forces who are known in many names—the Civilian Auxiliary Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU), the Special Civilian Armed Auxilliary, the Investment Defense Force, Bagani Forces, Magahat-Bagani, Alde Salusad’s group, and the De la Mance group, to name a few.

In 2012, Heyns and then UN SR on human rights defenders Margaret Sekaggya had sounded the alarm on the role of the paramilitary groups in the killings, Karapatan said.

In the same year, during the UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on the Philippines there were already recommendations from member Nations to disband paramilitary groups that perpetuate serious abuses.

“The Aquino government has rejected this and even continued to multiply and allowed the proliferation of these groups as force multipliers. We reiterate our position that the political killings happening right now is part of the government’s policy and not simply an internal conflict among indigenous people’s as the government wants the public to believe,” Palabay said.

LP imprint all over

LP stalwart and Caloocan Rep. Edgar Erice served as SRMI’s President when a plunder case was filed against the said firm that caused them P7 million in fines for over-extraction in 2007 as, it has been previously reported months back, subsidiary firms San R Mining and Galeo Equipment and Mining Corp. shipped nearly 2 million metric tons of nickel from August 2006 to September 2007 based on the records of the Philippine Ports Authority and the Mines and Geosciences Bureau.

Government is yet to prosecute SRMI for the massive shipment of minerals which reportedly totals to P28 billion.

Although SRMI’s alleged illegal activities occured in Agusan del Norte, Lumad leader Balandres said that “their (SRMI and Nickel Asia) power to organize private armies or paramilitary groups backed by the (Armed Forces of the Philippines) for mining purposes is among the top reasons why they’re too interested in stealing our lands (in Surigao).”

If not for mining interests, violence and fear would never exist at all in the Lumad community, Balandres said.

According to rights group Karapatan, mining companies with armed men that connive with the state forces is “not new”.

“Employing guns and goons for gold is obviously not new. Mining companies are rich and powerful as they can bribe their way out to getting what they want,” Karapatan’s Palabay said.

Gutierrez, too, is tagged as the one who provided the helicopter for aerial photos of the so-called ‘Hacienda Binay’ that is now apparently a debunked stunt to sensationalize the Senate Blue Ribbon Subcommittee troika’s hearings against Vice President Jejomar Binay as the first allegations filed against the VP was not taken popularly.

VP Binay is ahead the LP’s frontrunner Roxas in independent and reputed surveys contrary to the one released by administration attack dog Erice which, in the first place, is shamelessly “LP-commissioned”.

Meanwhile, despite President Aquino’s denials of targeting Lumads with military offensives earlier this week in a press forum hosted by a national daily, militant group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) says that the regime’s counter-insurgency program “sugar-coated in the guise of peace and development” is aimed at “terrorizing” Lumads.

In a document obtained by Bayan from a government agency, it is admitted by the government that 74 per cent of the membership of communist New People’s Army (NPA) are indigenous peoples and that 90 percent of insurgent operated and controlled areas are within the ancestral domain of the Lumads.
The said document states that IP communities need apparent investments, which can be hypocritically referred to as relative to mining.

The Powerpoint presentation called “Whole of Nation Initiative” spells out the target groups and priority regions for government’s counter-insurgency program. Various government agencies are being tapped to undertake “serbisyo caravans” to compliment “focused military operations” in these target areas.

The slogans used in the said document are synonymous with President Aquino’s counter-insurgency program Oplan Bayanihan’s lines such as “whole of nation” and “people centered” approach.

“Those insisting that the IPs are merely “caught in the crossfire” should re-examine their position because as far as the AFP and other civilian agencies are concerned, the IPs and their communities and schools are the real targets,” notes Bayan secretary-general Renato Reyes.

Human rights groups in Caraga have reported, according to Reyes, that on August 25, simultaneous “peace/serbisyo caravans” were launched in Surigao del Sur and Surigao del Norte (consistent with the proposed timeline in the PowerPoint presentation).

“Based on the accounts, the caravans were initiated by the AFP’s and the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process and included agencies such as the Department of Health, the Department of the Interior and Local Government, National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, and the Department of Education,” Reyes elaborated.

Reportedly too, there were programs and public meetings in Surigao del Sur towns Marihatag and Lianga. The program included presentations to the public of NPA rebel returnees.

A week after the “peace caravans” were held, together with Campos and Sinzo, Emerito Samarca, 54, School Director of the Alternative Learning Center for Agriculture and Livelihood Development (ALCADEV) in Lianga town, were killed on the same day.

Alleged perpetrators are paramilitary groups Magahat and Bagani that are linked with the AFP.

“That the President refuses to acknowledge that this policy exists means that there will be no meaningful action or resolution that can be expected from this administration,” Reyes said.

Due to the cases of forced mass evacuations, nine Lumad community-based schools were forced to shut down.

Church condemns killings

The Catholic hierarchy joined in the chorus of condemnation against the killings of Lumads in Mindanao and criticized the government’s response to the issue.

In homily, CBCP president Archbishop Socrates Villegas said it is “disturbing” how the government quickly exonerated those allegedly behind the killings.
“This alarming eagerness to deny culpability does not augur well for truth and justice,” Villegas said.

According to him, such declarations inspire credence only after a reliable and trustworthy investigation by impartial and competent persons shall have taken place.

“If made before any such investigation, they disturbingly suggest a refusal to hold accountable those to whom the administration so eagerly extends its mantle of protection,” he said.

President Aquino in a forum on Wednesday said the government has “no campaign to kill anybody”, as he defends the military’s alleged involvement in the killings.

The much-awaited statement from Aquino, however, dismayed various human rights groups, saying his response was inadequate.

The bishops are also backing calls for the government to urgently investigate the killings of three Lumad leaders by alleged paramilitary forces in Surigao del Sur.

“The CBCP asks the government for an honest, thorough, impartial, and speedy investigation so that the guilty may be held to account for their wrong-doing,” Villegas said.

The CBCP chief also said the use of militia groups for the government’s counter-insurgency campaign is already “troubling.”

“If militia groups cannot fit within a structure of clear authority and command by legitimate state authority, they should not be tolerated, much less employed as mercenaries by the State,” he added.

The Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) earlier said the Lumad communities are under attack because of their determination to protect their ancestral lands.

Sr. Francis Añover, RMP coordinator, said the Lumad people continue to be victims of massive land grabbing and displacement because of large-scale mining operations and the expansion of huge plantations.

“The Philippine Army and its para-military groups commit grave human rights abuses as clearing up operations for the entry of big foreign and local corporations,” Añover said.

The bishops said indigenous peoples are already disadvantaged in a number of ways and the government’s failure to protect their rights “only underscores their plight as marginalized.”

“This cannot be just. This cannot be the will of God,” Villegas said. 

 

 

philex, marcopper, waste spills

It will be total closure for listed mining firm Philex Mining Corp. if it does not pay within 45 days a P1.034 billion penalty for violations of the Mining Act of 1995 imposed by the Department Environment and Natural Resources.

that’s the good news.  the bad news is, philex spokesperson mike toledo says the company will file a motion for reconsideration.

“We will exhaust all administrative remedies provided for under the law, under the department circulars and administrative orders… We will appeal the MGB decision finding us liable for the payment of this fine,” he said.

Toledo said Philex is aiming to complete a clean up and rehabilitation of Padcal mine by the second quarter of 2013. The company hopes to restart operations by the second half of next year.

so i suppose the media spin goes on:  that it was an accident, that philex responded right away with financial help to victims, that the waste spill is not as toxic as marcopper’s in 1996 — even if this last were true (we have yet to see toxicity studies) the sheer volume of the waste spill, some 20 million metric tons, said to be 10 times that of marcopper’s, still makes it the worse disaster, if not the worst, it would seem, ever.

it was no accident.  it could have been avoided had philex built a new tailings pond instead of continuing to use an old one that was due for decommissioning by june 2012 at the latest.

read bulatlat‘s Philex’s 20 MT mine waste spill, ‘An act of God, or Greed?’

Since day 1 (last Aug 1) of the latest reported leak from the Philex tailings pond in the north, Philex has actively projected an appearance of taking responsibility.

Philex boasted that they shut down operations a day ahead of the government suspension. It also promised it will only continue mining operations at Padcal after assuring the “safety and integrity” of tailings pond 3, Padcal’s sole operational mine tailings pond at the site.

But contrary to Philex’s projection, it is not telling the public that instead of repair and remediation, it should have been decommissioning the Tailings Pond 3 as early as 2010 or at the latest, this June of 2012. The said tailings pond has reached the end of its 18 to 20 years’ lifespan this year, based on DENR data on the dam. An earlier waste spill from the same dam occurred in December 2009, and it should have been warning enough, the Katribu Partylist said in a statement.

victoria fritz, in ricardo saludo’s column space, submits that it would have cost philex much less if it had earlier built a new tailings pond instead.

Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) chief Juan Miguel Cuna said that Philex violated terms in its ECC for discharges “way beyond regulatory levels.” Cuna added that penalties for ECC violations were separate from fines for violation of the Clean Water Act, imposed by the Pollution Adjudication Board.

And if the ECC is revoked, closing the copper and gold mine would mean losing over P10 billion in revenues a year, going by the facility’s 2011 earnings of P9.29 billion from gold alone.

With those kinds of losses, it clearly would have been far cheaper to build a spare pond for P300 million, so tailings could be diverted there after two storms damaged the tailings facility on August 1. Now, on top of suffering massive losses and fines, Philex will still need to build a new pond or repair the old one, as it is considering so as to resume mining sooner.

in developed countries, here’s the drill in preventing and containing mining accidents:

For the Tailings Management Handbook of Australia’s Department of Industry Tourism and Resources, a state-of-the-art tailings storage facility is a safe, stable landform not requiring constant management after mine closure, and blending with the surrounding landscape.

That’s a tall order, since a tailings pool takes up a large area hard to hide. It must store huge volumes of water without letting any contamination to seep into the ground. And there are dust problems. Not to mention the threat of typhoons and floods in the Philippines.

For greater efficiency and economy, the facility’s processing plant must remove excess water from tailings before transport. More water and processed chemicals are recovered for reuse, to lessen the volume discharged to the storage facility. This reduces the risk of seepage to surface waters.

Many mines in Australia use thickened and paste tailings, once difficult due to the cost or lack of thickener technology. Today, expenses are down, and equipment has improved, producing high underflow densities. The thickened or paste tailings improves water and process chemical recovery at the processing plant, reduces storage volume and seepage, and creates a more stable landform.

Mining companies in developing countries like the Philippines should send staff to observe and train in the mines of select developed countries using state-of-the-art technology in minimizing mining risk.

… One cannot and should not force a false choice between prosperity from mining and environmental sustainability. With technology, enlightened management, and earnest, honest dialogue, solutions can be forged to prevent accidents and mitigate their effects. Only then can the national patrimony truly become a blessing for the Filipino people, not a resource exploited for profit to the detriment of nature and nation.

so it’s not true, as suggested by an environment advocate to rina jimenez-david, that “responsible mining” is an oxymoron,  that there cannot ever be a mining operation that is “responsible” or which safeguards the community even as owners profit from it.  responsible mining is doable but it means that both the DENR and the mining industry would have to level-up.

*

After Philex mine spill, a world of gray
Untold story of Philex’s mine waste spill
Philex spill ‘biggest mining disaster’ in PHL, surpassing Marcopper – DENR

Marcopper and media

Isyu 18 April 96

I’ve been monitoring the news on the Marcopper disaster (not accident) that killed two rivers and millions of marine life and which threatens the health and livelihood of the people of Marinduque for the next who-knows-how-many decades, and I’m afraid it’s hard to be optimistic for our environment and our poor, not to speak of future generations.

Take this. The waste spill started on March 23 – Marcopper stopped operations a day or two (reports don’t agree) later – yet newspaper headlines didn’t register the event until after five days, on March 28.

Why not? Is the information network so faulty, hindi agad nakarating ang balita sa Maynila? Or was the news deliberately suppressed by who-knows-whom to give the DENR time to consult Malacañang and/or Marcopper to consult Placer-Dome in Vancouver?

Then, again, maaaring nakarating agad ang balita sa Maynila ngunit inisnab muna ito ng media, mas sensational kasi ang burnt bodies kaysa dead rivers, or maybe they can’t handle more than one disaster at a time?

Kung sa Amerika nangyari ito, media would have screamed out the news immediately (hand in hand with more sensational news, if any) while government would have flown in the state’s best engineers to help dam the flow as soon as humanly possible, and both media and government would have been breathing down Marcopper’s neck to hurry, hurry, hurry. When you’re dealing with the environment, every second counts, every dump truck less of silt counts.

Think of it. That was 10 to 15 cubic meters (roughly three dump trucks) of mine waste pollutants roaring out of that damned tunnel every single second, unabated, for more than five days. At 85,400 seconds per day, that would have been more than a million cubic meters or close to 250,000 dump trucks of mine tailings emptying into those rivers every single day, from Saturday afternoon when the spill was reported to have started, to Friday at 10:00 a.m. when it was reported to have been stopped.

The bad news is, it wasn’t completely stopped pala, only considerably slowed down. Ayon sa mga taga-Marinduque, may seepage pa rin. (Probably 0.62 cubic meter per second, the lowest rate of spillage cited.)

It was another 12 days (April 10) before a Marcopper official went on TV with the good news – two days na lang daw, titigil na ang tulo ng mining tails in Makulapnit. I checked out the news two days later (and since), and nada, nothing, zero. Nary a peep from media on whether Marcopper had made good on its word or not.

Apparently, print and broadcast media perfer to watch investigations – like the DENR’s, the DOJ’s, the Senate’s and the Ombudsman’s – than to watch, and watch out for, the environment.

Sustainable development, please!

It’s a sad time for the environmental movement. After more than two decades of advocacy and struggle, tryingto raise public consciousness, trying toget us concerned about how our nation’s natural wealth is being extracted, exploited, made capital of, by private groups for private gain while 70 percent of our people remain poor, tila walang effect pa rin.

When it comes to environmental issues and disasters, we can’t quite summon up a real sense of urgency. Either we’re not very bright or we’re not very caring, or both.

A more intelligent people led by a more intelligent media would be demanding by now, after the Marcopper disaster, the repeal of the Mining Act of 1995 and the rejection of 67 new mining applications that, if approved, would take over at least 22 percent of our total land area, or 35 percent of our upland ecosystems. The DENR already has its hands full monitoring 16 large-scale mining operations plus some 300 small-scale ones currently in place all over the country.

A more intelligent and caring people and media would demand that President Ramos de-liberalize the mining industry and stop offering our patrimony for foreign investors to cash in on. There’s nothing wrong with saving some of our natural wealth to pass on untouched to future generations.

Meanwhile, there are other less destructive, more creative and sustainable ways for a cash-strapped government to raise money. Eco-tourism is obviously one of them. Environment-friendly and community-oriented na, sustainable dollar-earner pa. Too bad FVR’s Philippines 2000 isn’t New Age.

Marcopper’s misfortune

Finally, a few words on Marcopper’s line that the mine waste spill was an “accident” and, therefore, criminal charges are not “appropriate.”

An accident, according to my dictionary, is an event without apparent cause; it is unexpected and usually happens by chance.

The Marcopper waste spill was no accident. Marcopper’s waste spilled, not without cause, but apparently because Macopper’s waste-storage system was neither as five-star nor as fail-safe as it should have been. Tapian Pit, after all, was not made to hold or impound mine waste. It was originally a mining site; the tunnel was for draining water (from mountain pockets hit by miners) into the Makulapnit River.

When the ore reserves of the Tapian Pit were exhausted in 1991, Marcopper turned it into an impounding pit to hold mine wastes from the San Antonio Pit, the new mining site. Dito nag-umpisa ang problema ng Marcopper.

The drainage tunnel obviously had to be sealed solidly enough to withstand the pressure of millions of tons of mine waste bearing down. Ang nangyari, tinipid ng Marcopper ang semento at trabaho; tila yung mga dulo lang ang ni-reinforce. Natural, di nagtagal ang mga ito at unti-unting bumigay sa bigat ng mine tailings. Seepage in August ’95. Flash flood in March ’96.

Apparently it was in the process of an engineering intervention when Marcopper’s so-called accident occurred. They had bored a hole into the hollow part of the tunnel and were filling it up with more cement when the tailings came thundering down. Either they had waited too long before intervening or it was the wrong intervention.

Government engineers says it was the wrong one and the outcome was predictable. Naturally (not accidentally), the hole released captive air from the hollow tunnel, creating a vacuum that sucked in the stored wastes from above, and spilling the silt down into the rivers by the dump truck.

Marcopper may be right about one thing though – that the DENR knew about the tunnel. If not, how could DENR officials have known that nothing but water used to drain out of it?