State Irresponsibility unleashes confrontation for forest protection
THURSDAY, 08 ABRIL DE 2010 09:21 DINA MEZA
Gunmen had been harassing residents and were exerting strong psychological pressure
A confrontation between communities of Siria Valley and destroyers of the forest left one dead, two wounded, and one missing, on April 07.
This could have been avoided if the Government of Honduras through the Office of Environment and the Forest Conservation Institute, ICF, had tackled the problem for more than four months, when the residents argued that the family Raudales Urrutia intended to cut down the forest in Cerro La Torrecita, located in the area, in order to obtain a financial gain of about six million lempiras with wood.
Men armed with chainsaws climbed the hill at about 10 am on Wednesday to chop down the forest, but between 600 and 700 people from the communities decided to go to defend their forest, triggering a clash, which caused the death of one of the men sent by the family Raudales Urrutia and villagers Carlos Urrutia (50) who was shot in his legs and Jose Lopez (45), who was shot in his left arm.
While another man sent by the family has been missing since Wednesday night .
Carlos Amador of the Environmental Committee of Siria Valley denounced the irresponsibility of both the Office of Environment and the ICF, which delayed the solutions to stop the predators of the forest, who have already been denounced for six months for planning to carry out their activities against the area's environment.
Amador said the fiscal Lorena Fernandez of the Office of Environment went there, but took no decisive action to stop deforestation.
A month ago, a tripartite commission made up of communities, the ICF and the family Raudales was formed, but members of this state institution and representatives of the aforementioned family, went alone without including the community, therefore , suspicions have arisen that peddling of political favors is taking place.
Prior to this unfortunate fact, armed men had been harassing residents and were exerting strong psychological pressure on them.
For Amador, after what happened, there is fear that there is a dangerous atmosphere for residents and settlers of the area, that cutting down the forests will affect between 6 and 7 thousand people, and additionaly, reprisals from part of the Raudales Urrutia family are feared.
This new act of violence evidences that the powerful in Honduras have been acting in such high-handed manner, since June 28, 2009, when the coup against President Manuel Zelaya Rosales took place and the country's institutions were jettisoned.
The Aguan, Zacate Grande, and other communities are being harassed by powerful landowners who seek to steal their natural resources.
Given the lack of government response, the Siria Valley communities are determined to defend their environment.
Source: http://www.defensoresenlinea.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=688:irresponsabilidad-estatal-desencadena-enfrentamiento-por-el-bosque&catid=58:amb&Itemid=181New attacks in the Siria Valley
State Irresponsibility unleashes confrontation for forest protection
THURSDAY, 08 ABRIL DE 2010 09:21 DINA MEZA
Gunmen had been harassing residents and were exerting strong psychological pressure
A confrontation between communities of Siria Valley and destroyers of the forest left one dead, two wounded, and one missing, on April 07.
This could have been avoided if the Government of Honduras through the Office of Environment and the Forest Conservation Institute, ICF, had tackled the problem for more than four months, when the residents argued that the family Raudales Urrutia intended to cut down the forest in Cerro La Torrecita, located in the area, in order to obtain a financial gain of about six million lempiras with wood.
Men armed with chainsaws climbed the hill at about 10 am on Wednesday to chop down the forest, but between 600 and 700 people from the communities decided to go to defend their forest, triggering a clash, which caused the death of one of the men sent by the family Raudales Urrutia and villagers Carlos Urrutia (50) who was shot in his legs and Jose Lopez (45), who was shot in his left arm.
While another man sent by the family has been missing since Wednesday night .
Carlos Amador of the Environmental Committee of Siria Valley denounced the irresponsibility of both the Office of Environment and the ICF, which delayed the solutions to stop the predators of the forest, who have already been denounced for six months for planning to carry out their activities against the area's environment.
Amador said the fiscal Lorena Fernandez of the Office of Environment went there, but took no decisive action to stop deforestation.
A month ago, a tripartite commission made up of communities, the ICF and the family Raudales was formed, but members of this state institution and representatives of the aforementioned family, went alone without including the community, therefore , suspicions have arisen that peddling of political favors is taking place.
Prior to this unfortunate fact, armed men had been harassing residents and were exerting strong psychological pressure on them.
For Amador, after what happened, there is fear that there is a dangerous atmosphere for residents and settlers of the area, that cutting down the forests will affect between 6 and 7 thousand people, and additionaly, reprisals from part of the Raudales Urrutia family are feared.
This new act of violence evidences that the powerful in Honduras have been acting in such high-handed manner, since June 28, 2009, when the coup against President Manuel Zelaya Rosales took place and the country's institutions were jettisoned.
The Aguan, Zacate Grande, and other communities are being harassed by powerful landowners who seek to steal their natural resources.
Given the lack of government response, the Siria Valley communities are determined to defend their environment.
Source: http://www.defensoresenlinea.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=688:irresponsabilidad-estatal-desencadena-enfrentamiento-por-el-bosque&catid=58:amb&Itemid=181
THURSDAY, 08 ABRIL DE 2010 09:21 DINA MEZA
Gunmen had been harassing residents and were exerting strong psychological pressure
A confrontation between communities of Siria Valley and destroyers of the forest left one dead, two wounded, and one missing, on April 07.
This could have been avoided if the Government of Honduras through the Office of Environment and the Forest Conservation Institute, ICF, had tackled the problem for more than four months, when the residents argued that the family Raudales Urrutia intended to cut down the forest in Cerro La Torrecita, located in the area, in order to obtain a financial gain of about six million lempiras with wood.
Men armed with chainsaws climbed the hill at about 10 am on Wednesday to chop down the forest, but between 600 and 700 people from the communities decided to go to defend their forest, triggering a clash, which caused the death of one of the men sent by the family Raudales Urrutia and villagers Carlos Urrutia (50) who was shot in his legs and Jose Lopez (45), who was shot in his left arm.
While another man sent by the family has been missing since Wednesday night .
Carlos Amador of the Environmental Committee of Siria Valley denounced the irresponsibility of both the Office of Environment and the ICF, which delayed the solutions to stop the predators of the forest, who have already been denounced for six months for planning to carry out their activities against the area's environment.
Amador said the fiscal Lorena Fernandez of the Office of Environment went there, but took no decisive action to stop deforestation.
A month ago, a tripartite commission made up of communities, the ICF and the family Raudales was formed, but members of this state institution and representatives of the aforementioned family, went alone without including the community, therefore , suspicions have arisen that peddling of political favors is taking place.
Prior to this unfortunate fact, armed men had been harassing residents and were exerting strong psychological pressure on them.
For Amador, after what happened, there is fear that there is a dangerous atmosphere for residents and settlers of the area, that cutting down the forests will affect between 6 and 7 thousand people, and additionaly, reprisals from part of the Raudales Urrutia family are feared.
This new act of violence evidences that the powerful in Honduras have been acting in such high-handed manner, since June 28, 2009, when the coup against President Manuel Zelaya Rosales took place and the country's institutions were jettisoned.
The Aguan, Zacate Grande, and other communities are being harassed by powerful landowners who seek to steal their natural resources.
Given the lack of government response, the Siria Valley communities are determined to defend their environment.
Source: http://www.defensoresenlinea.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=688:irresponsabilidad-estatal-desencadena-enfrentamiento-por-el-bosque&catid=58:amb&Itemid=181
New attacks in the Siria Valley
by Radio Liberada, 13-minute audio transmission with an interview with Carlos Amador, of the Regional Environmental Committee of Syria Valley, who yesterday suffered an armed attack by hitmen hired by the Raudales Urrutia family, members of the multinational Entre Mares, who want to exploit more than 600 hectares of forest ..., Our colleagues have made formal complaints to those who call themselves responsible for the "government" to protect the environment, they have been criminally indifferent because their inaction has led the population to be attacked by these gunmen, wounding two comrades. Colleagues now say, "with or law or without law, we will not allow them to chop down a meter of forest " ... Entre Mares has contaminated groundwater with cyanide and are cutting down the forests with the help of their local "partners" ...
The peoples of the Siria Valley have engaged in a genuine act of self defense to protect not only the forest, but their own lives, "we have decided to defend what is ours to live with dignity, otherwise, it would mean that our community would be in a place, where there is no reason to live, because it would alienate the water ... the air ... the birds singing ..."; women have joined the struggle and have said present in this defense of the forest, the peasants and the inhabitants are declared ready to resist, they say " this is the product of communities arriving defenseless to the forest, what happened happened (aggression, the wounded), but this is not going to repeat itself, because communities are already alert that if there is anything strange going on in the woods, they will act in the same way they acted today ... "
We should all denounce these aggressions, since denouncing is the only survival weapon of the peoples in resistance.
Source: radioeslodemenos.blogspot.com
Gold giant faces Honduras inquiry into alleged heavy metal pollution
by Rory Caroll, guardian.co.uk
Villagers and NGOs have accused Goldcorp of poisoning people and livestock by contaminating the Siria valley
A family carries laundry to a stream that has allegedly been contaminated by the San Martin mine owned by Goldcorp in the Valle de Siria, Honduras. Photograph: James Rodriguez/MiMundo.org
Authorities in Honduras are investigating claims that one of the world's biggest gold mining corporations has contaminated a valley with toxic heavy metals. Villagers and non-governmental organisations have accused Goldcorp of killing livestock and making people sick by polluting land and rivers in the Siria valley.
The environmental prosecutor is undertaking an investigation after being presented with evidence that the Canadian corporation's San Martin opencast mine discharged highly acidic and metal-rich water in 2008. The company has denied wrongdoing.
The inquiry comes at a critical time when record gold prices are encouraging other mining corporations to explore fresh sites in Honduras. Environmentalists fear the impoverished central American country will lift a moratorium on new mining after a new government takes office in January.
Goldcorp is shutting the decade-old San Martin mine after extracting nearly 12,000 tonnes of ore from its forested slopes. The dynamite explosions have stopped and there are no more ore-laden trucks rattling down rutted, dusty roads.
People in villages bordering the site say the damage is done and the fields and streams are poisoned. "The water tastes like acid, like something out of a car battery," said Roger Abraham, vice-president of the Siria Valley Environmental Committee, an activist group. "It would have been better if the mine never came. It has done more harm than good."
He said the damage to the valley would galvanise campaigns against other mines. "We will use peaceful, social actions to block access. We can't allow this to be repeated."
The community's complaints have been backed by two studies, commissioned by the UK-based advocacy group Cafod. The studies detected high acidity which could be linked to cyanide "heap-leaching" methods to extract gold from low-grade deposits. They describe how the process soaks piles of crushed gold ore in a cyanide solution which filters down, leaching out the precious metal from the rock but also releasing other toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury and lead. Without careful management it can contaminate streams and groundwater.
The first study, by Paul Younger, a Newcastle university hydro-geochemical engineering professor and expert on mine water management, detected acidic mine drainage, whereby sulphides in the rock are exposed to oxygen and water and produce sulphuric acid. Younger said this can have devastating effects on animals and plants.
A follow-up study by Adam Jarvis and Jaime Amezaga, also of Newcastle University, found evidence of "severe" contamination in the form of highly acidic and metal-rich water from the mine site flowing into a stream used by villagers for agriculture and domestic purposes. The data was in a previously undisclosed 2008 report by Defomin, Honduras's mining regulatory authority.
"This new information provides concrete evidence that the San Martin mine has caused pollution in Honduras," said Sonya Maldar of Cafod. "Goldcorp must clean up its act so that the people of Siria Valley are not left with a toxic legacy."
The enviromental prosecutor is reviewing the information and is expected to decide soon whether to prosecute. Goldcorp did not respond to interview requests for this article. But in previous public statements, the company denied wrongdoing and said its mining operation and clean-up met the highest international environmental standards and had been vetted by authorities. The company said Defomin reported in September 2008 that water flowing from Palo Alto pit had been treated to international standards.
"The presence of the mine has had no impact on the quantity or quality of the water in the areas of the San Martin mine," Goldcorp said in May last year. In a televised debate in November two senior managers said there was no problem with the discharge of acidic waters. Honduran authorities, the company said, took water samples during three visits in 2008 and all pH measurements were normal. They also reviewed and approved the mine closure plan.
A skeleton crew is now cleaning up the area. "As the site becomes rehabilitated, Goldcorp will cede the land to the San Martin Foundation for commercial agricultural projects," said the company's website.
The mine is visible from miles away: an orange-coloured gash from which vegetation and clay have been stripped from the hillside, an incongruous sight in a landscape of meadows and sun-crinkled villagers on horse-back.
A Nevada-based company, Glamis Gold, started mining in 2000 after relocating the village of Palo Ralo. Entre Mares, a Honduran subsidiary owned by Goldcorp, took over the concession in 2005.
Initally the project had local support. As a rural backwater in the western hemisphere's third poorest country the prospect of good jobs and new houses was welcome, said Rudolfo Arteaga, a Palo Ralo farmer and community activist. Brick homes were an improvement on adobe and 400 people got temporary work – but the price was too high, he said.
Of 18 riverbeds, 15 were now parched, the alleged result of the mine using up to 220 gallons a minute during operations, according to Cafod. Crops had withered and, while drought currently afflicts much of central America, Siria's troubles, said Arteaga, arrived with the mine.
Water was not only scarce, it was contaminated, he said. Cattle had died – this year 24 carcasses were found on grazing land near the mine – and people suffered respiratory, skin and gastro-intestinal diseases.
Woods had been felled, leaving the area vulnerable to mudslides during tropical storms. Goldcorp had planted thousands of trees but often used alien species such as eucalyptus, Arteaga said, which sucked up more water.
Concern about environmental damage in Honduras prompted a moratorium on new mining in 2004 but the ban may not survive a political crisis which has left Honduras broke, starved of investment and short of economic options.
Campaigners fear Honduras's new government, which is due to be sworn in on 27 January, will bow to pressure from the national assembly and mining corporations to permit new explorations.
"In this climate it's difficult to be optimistic," said Pedro Landa, executive director of campaign group Caritas in Tegucigalpa. "There is a lot of pressure for mining to resume."
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