The Snow From Canada
“When the wind would blow [in Calancan Bay, Marinduque], the mine tailings would be picked up and dumped onto the village, they called it their ‘snow from Canada.’” [C. Coumans, MiningWatch, www.miningwatch.ca]
A couple of days ago at an Amnesty conference I showed a small sample of my images from two of the four foreign owned mining sites that I visited in the Philippines. As a Filipino and a Canadian, this is a sore issue.
You may or may not know, but Toronto is one of the big three financial sectors for international mining (along with London and Melbourne). Half of the worlds mining companies and 2/3rd of the world’s exploration companies are traded on the TSX.
Couple this with the Philippines massive mineral deposits and one can start to see the conflict. The Phils are second to Indonesia in terms of geological prospectivity; second to South Africa in gold production per unit land area; third in terms of copper reserves.
From this mineral wealth alone the Phils should be in very good economic health, unfortunately its government has allowed Canadian and other foreign owned companies to extract the wealth for itself. They are given renewable five year tax holidays (2% subsequently), are allowed to own 100% of the mine, repatriate 100% of the profits and capital, and rights that guarantee unhampered mining operations (including rights over other resources such as (1) water rights, (2) timber rights, (3) easement rights, (4) arbitration rights and arbitration method to resolve disputes).
For the Amnesty conference I showed images from two sites, Mt. Canatuan in Mindanao, and the island of Marinduque, as they represent both the short and long term effects of open pit mining.
The mining issue is one that is tied to a lot of the big human rights issues in the country today. An UNICEF/IBON book published late last year claims that 200,000 women and children have been the victims of military atrocities since Gloria came to power. Add to that that Karapatan says that the government is responsible for almost 900 deaths, almost 200 missing, and almost 8000 permanently displaced. Now start to look at the places on the map where these occur and you will see that foreign owned mining is one of the big reasons behind it. Look at where the main insurgencies are and what do you find but that their territories are often mining territories—and many of these mines are Canadian owned and/or financed.
So as a Filipino-Canadian I know that some of my tax dollars (used for pension plans, other investments, and ‘development’ funding) go to Canadian Mining in the Philippines, I know that CIDA works closely with mining companies and is touted as bringing ‘development’ to these sites, and all this leads me to know that in an indirect--but still significant—way, I am complicit in their sins.
That’s why I chose to visit a few of these sites during my three month photographing mission in the Phils.
I was in the area of Mt. Canatuan (open pit mine opened in 2003) to hear the local Subanon tribe try Toronto Ventures Incorporated in a tribal court. I heard of their stories of human rights abuses, of people being forced from their homes (in some cases led out at night to watch as it is bulldozed down), of health problems and death resulting from mine waste.
I was in Marinduque to see that over a decade after the Canadian mine closed to see that health problems still abounded, signs of heavy metal poisoning was everywhere. Mine waste still littered their beaches and rivers, and the risk of a new disaster from poorly maintained tailings dams are ever-present.
My plan is to return to the Philippines this year to continue documenting these sites. I hope other Filipino-Canadians will pick up on this issue that should be very close to us all.
The Canadian government is set to finally respond to a public-private commission’s recommendations around Canadian mining abroad this spring. Since this was written in 2005 it has been severely watered down with the companies blaming poor legislation and follow through in developing countries as the reason for the human rights violations (as if they don’t encourage this weakness themselves).
It is in visiting sites like these that have continued the erosion of my happy thoughts around this adopted country of ours as a ‘human rights champion.’
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Canatuan, Zamboanga del Norte:
Toronto Ventures Incorporated (TVI) has had an open pit mine here since 2003 (though they've been in the area since the 90s). The land was given to the indigenous people of the area by the Philippine government. This was a hurdle to TVI as they needed the consent of the tribe. The tribe opposed the mine, so to circumvent this the government set up it’s own "Council of Elders" made up of mine supporters.
Since the mine opened there have been severe cases of human rights breaches including destruction of homes and livelihood without compensation leading to forced displacement, an armed ambush (resulting in death), strafings, beatings, and more. There have also been health ramifications coming from what locals claim are polluted water coming out of the mine entering the river.
When I was there in December the Subanon tribe held a traditional gokum [trial] that found the company liable for many crimes. I also was able to access the mine site itself and to live with the handful of people whose homes are right in the middle of mining operations.
Marinduque Island:
This is the site of one of the biggest mining disasters in the world, and the company is again a Canadian one (Placer Dome/Barrick Gold). There are three major sites on this island: 1) Calancan Bay where 200 million metric tones of mine tailings were purposefully dumped into the ocean at surface level. This dumping continued 24 hours a day from 1975 to 1991; 2) the Boac River where a dam breach spilled 3-4 metric tones of tailings in 1996; 3) the Mogpog river had a similar spill in 1991.
This mine closed down in 1996, but the health and environmental problems linger. Heavy metal poisoning is rampant throughout the island, and none of the sites have been fully rehabilitated. Living on this island means taking alot of risks.
For more information:
MiningWatch:
www.miningwatch.ca
Oxfam-Australia:
www.oxfam.org.au/campaigns/mining/
Mines and Communities:
www.minesandcommunities.org
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*** About the photographer:
Alex Felipe is a Philippine-born, Canadian-raised documentary photographer that spent three months in late 2007-08 in the Philippines to photograph human rights stories. In that time he visited four foreign-owned mining sites; spent time with/lived with labour leaders and internally displaced peoples whose lives are under threat; worked with children that were victims of state violence; documented rallies showing the growing public discontent over the government; and visited urban poor areas in Manila.
Contact him at: alex.felipe@gmail.com
View images at: www.flickr.com/photos/alex_felipe
