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 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 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 town is a de-facto military encampment to protect the mine, and local people have been killed, tortured, raped and intimidated
Workers Union (C.M.U.).
B. SKANTHAKUMAR A NY future exploratory work and negotiations between the Sri Lankan government and IMC 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 abandoned, six miles of the Jaya Ganga (river)
dried up, water supplies inevitably polluted by effluents and the eco-system with its flora 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 area",
, 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 because of their consistent opposition to the mining. The Amungme people has been disnossessed of their landa denied been dispossessed of their lands, denied access to its resources, their river and water system polluted by tailings from the 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 deaf to the demands for justice of communities.
In Florida, IMC Global
10000 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
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International Viewpoint #323 July-August 2000
* 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 made alliances not only with environmental and religious organisations but also with the scientific community, trade unionists, the Left & Democratic Alliance and international environmental groups.
While there have been significant environmental campaigns in Sri Lanka over the past decade, none have matched this one in its mobilisation of the affected community, its breadth of support and the coalition created. Credit for which belongs to the priest, according to C.M.U. leader Bala Tampoe who has hailed him as "the most unique person whom I have come across" in his fifty year trade union career.
### Death threats
Facing down death threats, disapproval from the Buddhist hierarchy and a demotion by his Order, he has led demonstrations and protests including at the regional city of Anuradhapura in February 1998 when 20,000 supporters staged a sit-in and fast and most recently this year on March 30 in a 10,000 strong mass picket and impromptu demonstration in the capital city, Colombo, which is a great distance from Eppawala. In solidarity with that protest there was a half-day work stoppage by C.M.U. members in workplaces in and around Colombo.
There is growing international awareness of the campaign too. In March, Bala Tampoe testified on its behalf at a hearing of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal on Global Corporations and Human Wrongs, held at Warwick University in England.
In Japan, where the campaign has focused on a minority shareholder in the Eppawala project, the Tomen Corporation informed activists that it is reconsidering its participation since the Supreme Court ruling. A conference in Japan including representatives from the Sri Lankan Committee was scheduled for June to publicise the issues better.
Even in the euphoria of the legal ruling 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
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Sri Lanka Press Council equates lesbianism with sadism
IBSI THE Sri Lanka Press Council has outraged human rights activists in a disgraceful ruling on Jone 2 which condones an incitement to rape lesbians and which brands lesbianism "an act of sadism" and an offence under the penal code. The Council, which is the regulatory body for the Sri Lankan print 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 police to let loose convicted rapists on a proposed lesbian conference in Colombo (that conference, which would have been the first in South Asia, was postponed when its timing clashed with snap Presidential elections and it is 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 Journey" (COJ, which is a Sri Lankan organisation working on HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention as well as lesbian and gay rights. Sherman De Rose, Director of COJ, approached the Press Council arguing that his right to free expression had been denied. Unfortunately its intervention has set back the human rights agenda in Sri Lanka and legitimised hate crimes against lesbians and gays. Not only did the Council find against the complainant (and fine him) 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 homosexuality. While conceding that the letter encouraged rape, the Council argued that it was only the writer manifesting his disapproval of lesbianism. The Council then scolded De Rose for encouraging and promoting "abnormal or immoral acts" and for denying the right of others to criticise homosexuality. Its final insult was to conclude that as De Rose is male and would not have been harmed or in danger of being harmed he had no standing before the Council on the issue! In fact De Rose responds he was only asserting his equal right to free expression and asking the Council to take action against the incitement to violence against women which is a criminal act. There has been no comment or action taken by the Media Minister, Mangala Samaraweera, to whom the Press Coonell is accountable, and whose own sexual orientation is well known. * "Companions On a Journey" request letters of protest to: The Chairman Sri Lanka Press Council No. 346 Nawala Road Rajagiriya Sri Lanka FАX9 00-94-1-876-511 or 00-94-1-876-512 and Minister of Pests, Telecommunications and Media. West Tower World Trade Centre Echelon Square Colombo-01 Sri Lanka Fax 00-94-1-440-488 continue negotiations with IMC al corporation," adding, "this is a crime not
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". *
T HE continuing chaos in Mindanao has attracted great attention not only in the Philippines but also in the entire world. The decision of the Philippine state to launch an all out war against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is the main reason the Mindanao trouble has erupted.
But the situation became complicated and more confused when the Abu Sayyaf group kidnapped not only local residents but also international tourists. This incident is not co-incidence but a part of the over-all scheme of the Estrada regime.
Basically, the all out war is the decisive use of all the weapons and armaments of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to wipe out the MILF and other revolutionary groups that have become an impediment to the economic interests of the ruling class in Mindanao and in the Philippines.
The role of Abu Sayyaf
The all out war carried out by the Estrada government as the solution to Mindanao problem was implemented with due consideration to all the lessons they learned from the past. The ground, air and naval assaults against Camp Abubakar, the MILF's biggest camp, fitted in very well with the Abu Sayyaf's kidnapping and terrorist activities. The purpose of Abu Sayyaf is to sabotage the struggle of the MILF and the Bangsamoro in general by ensuring that the sympathy and the popular support of the masses will not go to the MILE, while international Islamic communities would be too confused or divided to support the MILF and the struggle of the Bangsamoro for the right to self-determination.
Let us review the packaging of the military offensive launched by the AFP against the MILF: before the military launched its offensive against Camp Abubakar, in the guise of clearing the Narciso Ramos Highway, there was first a series of bombings all over Mindanao (later in part extended to Metro Manila), which the AFP was quick to blame on the MILF. Again, before the military attacked the Narciso Ramos Highway where the MILF established their military checkpoints there was the kidnapping of the foreign tourists by the Abu Sayyaf group in a world class diving resort in Sabah Malaysia.
This incident fuels again the sensitive