Report Confirms Gang Rapes at Canadian-Controlled PNG Mine
One of the world's largest mining organisations, Barrick Gold, is in damage control this week following the release of a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report outlining longstanding incidents of sexual and physical violence at the company's Porgera Joint Venture (PJV) mine in Papua New Guinea.
Following an extensive investigation, the 94-page report tabled serious occurrences of rape and human rights abuses at the gold mine, allegedly committed by members of PJV's security force.
'We interviewed women who described brutal gang rapes by security guards at Barrick's mine,' said Chris Albin-Lackey, senior business and human rights researcher at HRW.
'The company should have acted long before Human Rights Watch conducted its research and prompted them into action.'
Toronto-based Barrick Gold has responded to the allegations by launching an internal investigation, which has resulted in the termination of employees involved in the incidents, and changes to security functions in the mine.
Following a concurrent criminal investigation by the Papua New Guinea Police, three current and former PJV employees have also been arrested.
Two were charged with rape and the third with inflicting grievous bodily harm.
In a statement released Tuesday the mining giant said: 'Barrick condemns these alleged crimes in the strongest possible terms and wishes to see anyone involved brought to justice under PNG law.'
However, industry watchdogs such as MiningWatch Canada say it's too little, too late.
'Barrick has chosen for many years to ignore the urgent warnings the company has received in both written and verbal form about serious human rights problems associated with its security forces at the Porgera mine,' spokesperson Catherine Coumans said.
'This new report by Human Rights Watch appears to have finally moved Barrick to take some actions that may prevent abuses in the future,' she said.
Coumans added that the company should now take steps to compensate the victims and improve transparency regarding with other environmental and human rights concerns at the mine.
PJV, jointly owned by Barrick (95 percent) and Mineral Resources Enga (five percent), has produced billions of dollars of gold in its 20 years of operation.
While Porgera's security personnel contend with 'extraordinary challenges' daily, including raids by groups of illegal miners, the reported cases of rape were 'opportunistic' and committed by security force members who were in no way reacting to violent threats, according to HRW.
Their investigation found the assaults were carried out on poor, local women, after they were caught scouring the waste rock dumps around the mine for traces of gold — an unauthorised, but non-violent practice.
One woman described being gang raped by six security personnel, after one of her assailants kicked her in the face, shattering her teeth.
Meanwhile, the HRW report has also thrown the spotlight on the Canadian government's current regulation of Canadian- controlled mining operations overseas.
In the wake of the defeat of the recent Bill C-300, which proposed improving government oversight of mining companies, there have been renewed calls for tighter regulation.
'The example of what's happened in PNG shows exactly how things will inevitably go wrong, as long as the government refuses to play a role in overseeing and providing guidance to companies,' HRW's Albin-Lackey told IPS.
'Barrick is a very large, well-resourced and experienced company and more than anything else all of the problems that have happened at this mine in PNG show that even a company of their size, experience and resources can't regulate themselves, they will mess it up, and there will be very serious consequences for people who have to live around their operations.'
'So this really should be a wake-up call for the Canadian government to step forward and finally start to implement some proactive policies to exercise oversight over these companies,' he said.
Albin-Lackey said if Canada refused to improve regulation, rampant corruption and poor-governance in PNG would allow human rights abuses to continue.
'The PNG government has consistently shown a complete lack of interest in regulating or overseeing the activities of big extractive companies in the country, just as it's largely shown a complete lack of interest in delivering a range of other important government services,' he told IPS.
'That's exactly why the role of the Canadian government is so important,' he added.
The Canadian mission to the U.N. was unavailable to comment at the time of publication.
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service