This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 20, June 26-July 2, 2005
Oust-GMA to End Mining
Liberalization, Conference Declares
A national conference on
mining held recently concluded that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo serves as
an instrument of corruption and plunder by foreign mining corporations and
declared her ouster as an urgent agenda.
BY FELICISIMO H.
MANALANSAN, JR.
Bulatlat
For participants to the Second People’s Mining
Conference, realizing the ouster of the Macapagal-Arroyo government is not just
a strategic objective but a matter of urgent necessity. Arroyo has come to
symbolize a mining rush nationwide that primarily benefits transnational mining
corporations while leaving the people destitute and displaced as well as killed
and ill because of militarization and diseases caused by large-scale foreign
mining.
That is why on the first day of the conference
held June 11-13, participants did not hesitate to momentarily leave the
conference venue on a call to join a rally demanding the president’s ouster a
few days after evidence surfaced which confirmed widely held suspicions that the
president cheated in last year’s elections.
At the end of the conference, participants
formalized their support to calls for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to step down from
Malacañang in a declaration which also advances the reorientation of the
domestic mining industry through a People’s Mining Policy.
Arroyo’s corruption and plunder
Conference participants were one in condemning
Arroyo for being an instrument of corruption and plunder by mining TNCs.
For prioritizing TNCs over Filipinos “who more
than foreigners, have the willingness and capability to develop the local mining
industry,” Franco Tito, barangay captain of a small-scale mining community in
Mt. Diwata, Campostela Valley, said President Arroyo “is more fit to be the
president of foreigners and not of Filipinos.”
Tito accused the President and the Department of
Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) of deception and corruption in managing
gold-rich Mt.
Diwata through the Natural Resources Mining
Development Corporation (NRMDC), a government-owned corporation. He expressed
suspicion that the NRMDC intervened in small-scale mining operations in Mt.
Diwata in order to pave the way for the
entry of mining TNCs.
“They (national government) are deceiving the
people that they came to Mt.
Diwata to enforce peace and order only to offer
our place to foreign investors in mining roadshows in Manila and abroad,” he
said.
Among 23 priority mining projects nationwide
which the government through the DENR is offering to foreign investors is the
Mt.
Diwalwal (also Mt.
Diwata) Direct State Gold Utilization
project.
Tito said President Arroyo could also be cited
for corruption for profiting from small-scale miners in Diwalwal. He said since
the NRMDC came to Mt. Diwata in 2001, the national government has been getting
15 percent of the gold ores small miners have been digging up as excise taxes.
In exchange, the government promised to build a tailings dam, but up to now no
dam has been built.
Tito said a part of the proceeds from the tax
goes straight to the president’s social fund which he also said he believes was
used during Arroyo’s campaign in the 2004 elections.
Tito estimated the amount that Diwalwal
small-scale miners have already paid the NRMDC at P150 million. The NRMDC also
undertakes gold mining operations in Diwalwal.
In another case, Dr. Orencio Pusing, leader of
the Aroroy Gold Panners Multipurpose Cooperative in Masbate accused the DENR of
playing deaf to charges of corruption against a DENR local executive who favored
the return of Atlas Consolidated Mining Company (ACMDC) through a dummy
foreign-funded mining corporation under questionable circumstances. Pusing said
ACMDC forfeited its right to the mining project for failing to pay P82 million
in excise taxes. He also charged Filminera, ACMDC’s dummy, of human rights
violations by forcibly driving away small-scale miners, including a small-scale
miner who was shot and wounded reportedly by a Filminera guard last April.
ACMDC’s copper project in Toledo, Cebu, is under
similar circumstances. On President Arroyo’s order, the company’s unpaid tax
obligation was cancelled to pave the way for ACMDC’s resumption of operations in
Cebu.
Both the Aroroy and Cebu mining projects are
included in the 23 priority projects of the government.
Deaths, displacement and diseases
The government’s mining projects are causing
deaths, displacements and diseases. Most victims are indigenous peoples.
In Central Luzon, two Aeta leaders were abducted
and found murdered last February. Their deaths followed after they voiced
opposition to the expansion of operations of Benguet Corporation’s Dizon Mine
which is encroaching in Aeta ancestral territories in Zambales, Bataan and
Pampanga.
In Surigao provinces where five of the 23
government mining projects are found, scores of government military, police and
para-military forces are deployed. This resulted in the forcible evacuation of
over 2,000 Manobos on the first week of June. Two of their leaders have been
killed. Meanwhile, four peasant leaders are missing up to the present.
Manobo Datu Jalandoni Campos, who participated
in the mining conference, said they believe the militarization is connected to
mining and energy projects of the government. In nine Manobo communities where
the mass evacuation took place, a few months before scores of military men
descended in Brgy. Diatogon, Andap
Valley, Surigao del Sur, the Department of
Energy allegedly gave the go-signal to Benguet Corporation for its coal mining
project in the area.
Meanwhile, an outbreak of diarrhea was confirmed
by local health authorities in Rapu-rapu island, Albay province, according to
conference participants from the Bicol region. Three-fourths of the island is
the site of a pollymetallic project of Canadian and Australian Lafayette Mining
which started its operations on the first week of June.
People’s mining policy
A major highlight of the mining conference,
according to Trixie Concepcion, spokesperson of the Defend Patrimony, which
spearheaded the conference, is the adoption by conference participants of the
People’s Mining Policy.
Concepcion said the People’s Mining Policy seeks
to disengage the local mining industry from its export-orientation and
dependence on foreign investments.
“Whatever benefits of mining should be
guaranteed to accrue to the national interest and the Filipino people’s needs
for national industrialization, genuine agrarian reform and agricultural
modernization, as well as to basic needs for housing, consumer goods and the
general upliftment of lives of Filipinos,” Concepcion said. She added this can
only be done by starting the development of downstream mining industries,
stressing that mineral inputs should be used for improvement of domestic
industries and not the economies of rich countries.
Concepcion, however, stressed that the first
thing that must be done is the scrapping of the Mining Act of 1995.
But for the participants of the Second People’s
Mining Conference, first and foremost must be the removal from office of Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo.
“For as long as Arroyo sits in Malacañang, the
people and the environment can never be safe from mining TNC plunder and
globalization,” said Clemente Bautista of the Kalikasan People’s Network for the
Environment (Kalikasan-PNE).
The conference was organized by Kalikasan-PNE,
Tebbteba Foundation, Samahang ng Nagtataguyod ng Agham at Teknolohiya para sa
Sambayanan (Agham), Kalipunan ng mga Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas (Kamp)
and the Center for Environmental Concerns-Philippines. Bulatlat © 2004 Bulatlat
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