Mission & Justice

Amanda O’Brien & Elizabeth Gosch; 11/7/08

Japanese and Canadian mining giants have made a $500 million bet on a change of government in Western Australia after agreeing to buy Rio Tinto’s vast uranium deposit in the Pilbara region of the state. The state Labor Government remains vehemently opposed to uranium mining, but with an election expected in October, the sale of Rio Tinto’s Kintyre uranium deposit sets up a major political brawl. Under the deal unveiled yesterday, and which is expected to be completed next month, Canada’s Cameco and Japan’s Mitsubishi Development will pay $US496million ($519million) to buy the deposit, which could be worth up to $5 billion at current uranium oxide prices. Cameco noted yesterday: “Australian governments and political parties generally are becoming more supportive of uranium development.”

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10/7/08

Palestinian villagers are suing two Canadian companies, accusing them in a Quebec court of war crimes for building a Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The writ, made public on Thursday, claims Green Park International and Green Mount International are building and selling homes in the Israeli settlement of Modiin Illit on land that belongs to the Palestinian village of Bilin. This, the village council argued, is a violation of international war crimes laws that prohibit an occupying power from transferring civilians into the land it occupied. The petition was filed with the Superior Court in Montreal on Wednesday, according to Shaawan Jabbari, who heads the Al Haq human rights legal centre which has been assisting the Bilin villagers.

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Mineral Policy Institute; 1/6/08

Seventh Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues; Interventions at the forum by Jethro Tulin (Ipili, Papua New Guinea), Neville Chappy Williams (Wiradjuri, Australia), Carrie Dann (Western Shoshone, USA) and Larson Bill (Western Shoshone, USA) all voiced the serious concern these communities have with large scale mining on their lands, particularly by Barrick Gold Corporation.
Extract from Jethro Tulin’s intervention at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. “Madam Chair, ours is a clash of civilisations. Propelled largely by state services, the Engan and Huli people have shot from the so-called Stone Age, an age of true sustainability, to the space age in one generation, with stunning results for some. Tribesmen, who in their youth wore grass aprons and sported fantastical wings studded with bird of paradise feathers, now have health care and modern homes. But others are reeling from the impact of cash-for-land deals that have turned their traditions upside-down and their ancestral home into an industrial moonscape patrolled by guards and police, including one of PNG’s notorious “Mobile Units”, renowned for savages human rights abuses, including killings. The Porgera Mine Death and Injury case [Shooting Fields of Porgera Joint Venture, Papua New Guinea, 2005, by Jethro Tulin] is a textbook case of what can go wrong when large-scale mining confronts Indigenous Peoples, ignoring the impacts of its projects and resorting to goon squads when people rebel against it. This outrages local Indigenous communities, especially when the mine is right next to our homes; my people are exposed to dangerous chemicals like cyanide and mercury; some of our people drown in the tailings and waste during floods; and fishing stocks, flora and fauna are depleted down the river systems, leading to indigenous food sources being threatened.”

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Deneen Brown; 13/6/08

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has delivered a long-anticipated apology to tens of thousands of indigenous people who as children were taken from their families and sent to boarding schools, where many were abused as part of official government policy to “kill the Indian in the child”. Mr Harper rose on the floor of a packed House of Commons and condemned the decades-long federal effort to wipe out aboriginal culture and assimilate native Canadians into European-dominated society. “The Government of Canada sincerely apologises and asks the forgiveness of the aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly,” Mr Harper declared. “We are sorry.” Investigations have established that thousands of Indian, Inuit and Metis children suffered mental, physical and sexual abuse in 132 boarding schools, most of them run by churches. The first opened in the late 1800s; the last shut in 1996.

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Rob Gillies; 2/6/08

A truth and reconciliation commission examining what native Indian leaders call one of the most tragic and racist chapters in Canada’s history will begin its work today. From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 aboriginal children were required to attend state-funded church schools in a painful attempt to rid them of their native cultures and integrate them into Canadian society. The Canadian Government admitted 10 years ago that physical and sexual abuse in the once-mandatory schools was rampant. Many students recall being beaten for speaking their native languages, and they lost touch with their parents and customs. Contemporary accounts suggest up to half the children in some institutions died of tuberculosis. “It’s the darkest, most tragic chapter in Canadian history and virtually no one knows about this,” said Phil Fontaine, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

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Fatin Bundagji; 29/5/08; Earth Summit Conference; United Nations back in 1992

There is a YouTube video clip being forwarded that is worth seeing and definitely worth passing around…“Hello, Coming up here today I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future. Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market. I am here to speak for all generations to come. I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have nowhere left to go. I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in our ozone; I am afraid to breathe the air because I don’t know what chemicals are in it. I used to go fishing in Vancouver, my home, with my dad until just a few years ago we found the fish full of cancers. And now we hear of animals and plants going extinct, every day, vanishing forever. In my life I have dreamt of seeing a great herd of wild animals, jungles and rainforests full of birds and butterflies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see. I am Severn Suzuki speaking for ECO the environmental children’s organization. We are a group of 12- and 13-year-olds trying to make a difference. Venessa Suthie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and I. We have raised all the money to come here ourselves, to come 5000 miles to tell you adults you must change your ways.”

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