No to Eppawala!
IN a landmark judgement in June the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka temporarily blocked a controversial mining project of a US trans-national in
International Viewpoint #323 July-August 2000
Sri Lanka * far tougher than those in Sri Lanka.
West Papua
In West Papua, Freeport McMoran has for thirty years operated the world's largest copper and gold mine. The Indonesian army act as security guards, the nearest a victory for an environmental campaign uniting the affected people, environmental and religious groups, and the country's leading private sector trade union, the Ceylon Mercantile, Industrial and General
Workers Union (C.M.U.).
B. SKANTHAKUMAR town is a de-facto military encampment to protect the mine, and local people have been killed, tortured, raped and intimidated because of their consistent opposition to the mining. The Amungme people has been dispossessed of their lands, denied access to its resources, their river and water system polluted by tailings from the
A NY future exploratory work and doned, six miles of the Jaya Ganga (river)
negotiations between the Sri dried up, water supplies inevitably pollutLankan government and IMC ed by effluents and the eco-system with its Agrico for a phosphate project must await a comprehensive environmental impact assessment and farther scientific evidence. The Court has also ordered the public disclosure of the draft investment agreement between the parties, which was kept secret.
In 1993 the previous government began talks with IMC-Agrico for the exploitation of phosphate (an ingredient in the production of chemical fertilisers) near a small town called Eppawala, in the remote North-Central province of the country. In spite of promises made during the 1994 general election campaign, the present government continued secretive negotiations and on at least one occasion the president herself had directly intervened to speed it up.
### Archaeological sites
Eppawala is in an area of historical and cultural importance dotted with numerous archaeological sites and is today farmed by peasants cultivating paddy rice, coconut and market vegetables.
Local people do not object to the extraction of phosphate, which a state-owned company has been doing anyway since 1977. This small-scale mining of low-grade phosphate for the domestic fertiliser industry is a sustainable operation and ensures there will be deposits for the next 200 years. They do object to the proposed project which aims to exhaust the entire reserve within 30 years, will cause massive ecological and human dislocation, and is being undertaken by a company with a record of environmental crime.
About 12,000 peasants will be displaced from the area, 54 villages with their homes, schools and temples must be abanflora and fauna lost forever.
Project
The project includes the construction of a processing plant in the Eastern port of
Trincomalee. The government has agreed to alienate 450 acres of land in that area for the dumping of radio-active waste generated, with neither consultation nor due care for the people of Trincomalee.
In Eppawala itself, besides the 56 square kilometres of the "exploration
, 300 acres of land to the east will be reserved for the company and the mine itself surrounded by a ten kilometre buffer zone. Therefore bringing the total land grab in that area to 800 square kilometres!
Critics of the scheme point to the appalling record of IMC Agrico's parent companies (IMC
Global and Freeport
McMoran) in other parts of the world where they have ruined the natural environment, violated human rights and been deaf to the demands for justice of communities.
In Florida, IMC Global has an appalling record in phosphate mining where it has wreaked devastation on 200,000 acres as well as polluted waterways in the Everglades, in defiance of United States environmental standards and regulatory agencies mine, and the Jayawijaya mountain which is sacred to them decapitated and now disembowelled in the greed for gold.
A class action suit has been filed by Amungme leaders in the U.S. courts against Freeport McMoran but the firm has powerful friends. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is a Director and lobbied successfully for it at a private meeting last year in Jakarta with Indonesian president Abdurahman Wahid.
The suffering of the West Papuans is a familiar story to the people of Eppawala through an Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary, Blood on the Cross. This film has also been shown at meetings throughout Sri Lanka.
Over the last five years the Committee
10000 29
Sri Lanka Press Council equates lesbianism with sadism
* Sri Lanka to Protect Eppawala Phosphate, has protested the re-colonisation of their region. Its spokesperson is a Buddhist priest, M. Piyarathana Thero, who has
THE Sri Lanka Press Council has outraged human rights activists in a disgraceful ruling on June 2 which condones an incitement to rape lesbians made alliances not only with environmenand which brands lesbianism "an act of sadism" and an offence under the penal tal and religious organisations but also code. The Council, which is the regulatory body for the Sri Lankan print with the scientific community, trade unionists, the Left & Democratic Alliance and media, had been asked to adjudicate on the conduct of an English-language daily newspaper which in August last year published a letter calling upon the international environmental groups.
police to let loose convicted rapists on a proposed lesbian conference in
While there have been significant envi-
Colombo (that conference, which would have been the first in South Asia, was ronmental campaigns in Sri Lanka over the past decade, none have matched this one in postponed when its timing clashed with snap Presidential elections and it is its mobilisation of the affected community, now scheduled for later this year). While that letter appeared without comment by the newspaper, it refused to publish a letter of reply by "Companions On a its breadth of support and the coalition cre-
Journey" (COJ, which is a Sri Lankan organisation working on HIV/AIDS ated. Credit for which belongs to the priest, awareness and prevention as well as lesbian and gay rights, Sherman De Rose, according to C.M.U. leader Bala Tampoe
Director of COJ, approacbed the Press Council arguing that his right to free who has hailed him as "the most unique expression had been denied. Unfortunately its intervention has set back the person whom I have come across" in his human rigbts agenda in Sri Lanka and legitimised hate crimes against lesbians fifty year trade union career.
and gays. Not only did the Council find against the complainant (and fine him),
Death threats it then went on in violation of its mandate and powers to offer its opinion on the content of the letter and the general subject of horoscsuality. While conceding
Facing down death threats, disapproval that the letter encouraged rape, the Council argued that it was only the writer from the Buddhist hierarchy and a demomanifesting his disapproval of lesbianism. The Council then scolded De Rose tion by his Order, he has led demonstrafor encouraging and promoting "abnormal or immoral acts" and for denying tions and protests including at the regional the right of others to criticise homosesuality. Its final insult was to conclude city of Anuradhapura in February 1998 that as De Rose is male and would not have been harmed or in danger of being when 20,000 supporters staged a sit-in and harmed he had no standing before the Council on the issue! In fact De Rose fast and most recently this year on March responds he was only asserting his equal right to free expression and asking the
30 in a 10,000 strong mass picket and
Council to fake action against the incitement to violence against women which is impromptu demonstration in the capital a criminal act. There has been no comment or action taken by the Media city, Colombo, which is a great distance
Minister, Mangala Samaraweera, to whom the Press Council is accountable, and from Eppawala. In solidarity with that whose own sexual orientation is well known. * protest there was a half-day work stoppage by C.M.U. members in workplaces in and
*Companions On a Journey" request letters of protest to:
The Chairman around Colombo.
Sri Lanka Press Council
There is growing international awareness of the campaign too. In March, Bala
No. 346 Nawala Road
Tampoe testified on its behalf at a hearing
Rajagiriya of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal on
FAX: 00-94-1-876-511 or 00-94-1-876-512
Global Corporations and Human Wrongs, held at Warwick University in England.
In Japan, where the campaign has
Minister of Pasts, Telecommunications and Media, focused on a minority shareholder in the
West Lower
Eppawala project, the Tomen Corporation
World Trade Centre informed activists that it is reconsidering
Echelon Square its participation since the Supreme Court
Colombo-01 ruling. A conference in Japan including
Sri Lanka
Fas 00-94-1-440-488 representatives from the Sri Lankan
Committee was scheduled for June to publicise the issues better.
Even in the euphoria of the legal ruling
1BS1 and not continue negotiations with IMC al corporation," adding, "this is a crime the Eppawala Committee knows that the struggle is far from over and that the government cannot be trusted to protect the interests of its people over those of transnationals. Minister of Science and
Technology, Batty Weerakoon who is also leader of the left-wing Lanka Sama Samaja
Party, has claimed that the government will
30 International Viewpoint #323 July-August 2000
Agrico, but has also said that he cannot be responsible if the Cabinet changes that decision!
Trade unionist Bala Tampoe protests, *The government has absolutely no right to barter the rights and future of the people of Eppawala and this country to any globwhich we must prevent by national action with international support." Meanwhile Piyarathana Thero vows a campaign of mass resistance to prevent the passage of any earth-moving machinery to the area. "We will not kill," he says, "but we are willing to die". *
Philippines *