This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. VI, No. 8, March 26-April 1, 2006
Marinduque Declared as
Mining Free
After three decades of
hosting large-scale mining projects, Marinduque remains impoverished,
ranked as the country's 14th poorest province with a staggering poverty
incidence of 71.9 percent.
By Dennis
Espada
The people of Marinduque (some 170 kms
south of Manila) marked March 24 as a "day of mourning, unity and action"
to remember an ill-fated decade following the infamous Boac River disaster
and other mining-related tragedies, considered the worst ever that
occurred in Philippine history.
Mine tailings coming from a defective
drainage tunnel at the Tapian Pit operated by Marcopper Mining Corp.
gushed down from the mountain on March 24, 1996, filling the 30-kilometer
Boac River with three million tons of toxic
wastes.
On Dec. 6, 1993, a deluge of dam water
drowned two children to death in Mogpog town after the collapse of the
Maguila-guila siltation dam. Meanwhile, some 36 residents of Calancan Bay
died due to diseases believed to have been caused by heavy metal
contamination after Marcopper dumped 200 million tons of mine wastes into
the river system from 1976 to 1991.
All these serve as a painful reminder that
natural resources are not for sale.
During a recent protest gathering in Boac
town, church leaders, local government units, academic institutions and
multi-sectoral organizations urged the Macapagal-Arroyo administration to
put an end to ecological ruin by making their island-province mining-free.
Continuing Calvary
Last Jan. 31, key leaders in the province,
among them Bishop Reynaldo Evangelista of the Diocese of Boac, Marinduque
Council of Environmental Concerns (Macec) chairman Msgr. Senen Malapad,
Gov. Carmencita Reyes and Cong. Edmundo Reyes Jr., endorsed the "Marinduque
Declaration". It demands the removal of the San Antonio Copper Project
from Malacañang’s mining priority list and rejection of all pending mining
applications in the province.
In a pastoral letter, Evangelista said
more than 80 lay leaders and representatives of pastoral councils,
diocesan commissions, religious groups and church organizations assembled
last month for the First Church People's Diocesan Colloquium on Social
Concerns to draw out activities for the enhancement of advocacy and
information work on mining issues. They collectively expressed support for
the "Marinduque Declaration" and the Catholic Bishops Conference of the
Philippines (CBCP) statement calling for the scrapping of Republic Act No.
7942 or Philippine Mining Act of 1995.
After three decades of hosting large-scale
mining projects such as the Consolidated Mine Project and Tapian Copper
Project, Marinduque remains impoverished, ranked as the country's 14th
poorest province with a staggering poverty incidence of 71.9 percent and
has the third most denuded forest.
"It (San Antonio Copper Project's
inclusion in the mining priority list) is insulting for us, Marinduqueños,
and really shows callous disregard of the national government for the
suffering of our children, women and men as a result of large-scale
mining," the declaration read.
"It is quite clear that the government
still doesn't realize the gravity of environmental problems in our
province, just don't care about the poor people's welfare, or has lost all
capacity to function as a sovereign government for the best interest of
its people and the nation's future. Whichever it is or a combination of
all three, there resides in the Marinduqueños a deeply-rooted sense of
justice and rights and a long history of willingness to fight for those
rights in the face of oppression. "
Forsaken
Macec's executive secretary Myke Magalang
blamed the executive, legislative and judicial branches for their utter
failure to give justice to the victims.
He said that while lawsuits against
Marcopper are still pending before the courts, Placer Dome Inc., the
Canadian firm that controls Marcopper, fled the country without
satisfactorily cleaning-up their mess.
"We had to run after Placer Dome and when
we found them in Nevada in the United States, we filed a civil case in
that foreign country, a very expensive quest for justice," Magalang told
the media.
Bayan Muna (People First) Party-list Rep.
Joel Virador pointed out that the Marinduque catastrophes are glaring
cases of neglect that “concretize the pitfalls of the government's mining
liberalization policy”. "The Philippine
Mining Law is a clear case of how this government tailor-fits its own law
to serve the interests of foreign multinationals and to be consistent with
GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the rules of World Trade
Organization," Virador said. "Indeed, it is high-time for us to combine
our strength and together say no to the plunder of our finite natural
resources." Bulatlat © 2006 Bulatlat
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As Marinduque folks commemorate a decade of mining debacles
Bulatlat