Article 3: Divesting from mining companies
TRIGGER WARNING: Rape, violence
CANADIAN MINING COMPANIES AND INVESTORS
MAKING A KILLING
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Posted by Rights Action Team | 0 comments
On a given day, a Canadian might read the business section of her favourite newspaper or on-line news
service, to check the price of gold or nickel and see how her investments are doing.
Yet, the price of metals is not only the profits they bring to company directors, shareholders and other
investors, from private equity funds to pension funds like the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), but also the
prices that people pay in terms of environmental destruction, harm to personal health and human rights
violations.
In today's global order, where trans-national companies often operate with immunity from prosecution
and accountability, shareholder and investor profits go, all too often, hand in hand with environmental
destruction, harm to personal health and various human rights violations.
HUDBAY MINERALS & NICKEL MINING IN GUATEMALA:VIOLENT EVICTIONS, GANG
RAPES & THE KILLING OF ADOLFO ICH

The bcIMC (BC Investment Management Corporation) has $281,061,874.50, and the CPP (Canada
Pension Plan) $42,000,000, invested in HudBay Minerals.
In January 2007, Skye Resources (bought by HudBay Minerals in 2008) participated in the violent
evictions of a number of indigenous Mayan Qeqchi communities in the municipality of El Estor in Eastern
Guatemala). These are their ancestral lands long before mining companies arrived in the 1950s, claiming
"ownership".
Hundreds of huts were burned to the ground; all personal property was destroyed or stolen; community
member's crops and animals were destroyed or stolen. Hundreds of families - young and old, men and
women - fled into the hills and forest for weeks, before returning to rebuild their huts and replant their
subsistence crops.
In one community, Lote 8, 11 women villagers were gang-raped by private security guards, hired by
HudBay Minerals (then Skye Resources), and by soldiers and police. This atrocity is only recently coming
to light.
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On September 27, 2009, Adolfo Ich, a Mayan Qeqchi teacher and community leader in El Estor, was
captured by HudBay's security guards, hacked with machetes and then shot. Hours later, family members
found him dead in the company building where the security guards had dragged him.
GOLDCORP INC & GOLD MINING IN GUATEMALA:
The attempted killing of Diodora Hernandez

The bcIMC (BC Investment Management Corporation) has $142,239,000, and the CPP (Canada
Pension Plan) $177,000,000 invested in Goldcorp.
Since 2005, Goldcorp Inc has been operating a very profitable and harmful open-pit, cyanide leaching
gold mine in the Mayan Mam region of western Guatemala; a mine strongly opposed by much of the local
population. Since 2000, they have operated a similar mine in central Honduras, with most of the same
harms and violations occurring, and with the same local opposition.
At 7pm, July 7, 2010, in the rural community of Sacmuj, two men came to the small hut of Diodora
Hernández asking for coffee. As Diodora was bringing them cups of coffee, one man shot her in the right
eye and ran off into the night.
Miraculously, Diodora survived. After 3 months in the hospital, she is back in her community, with a
prosthetic eye, still opposing the expansion of Goldcorp's mine onto her land. Goldcorp, a CanadianAmerican company, acknowledged the men had worked in its mine, but deny any responsibility for the
attempted assassination.
PACIFIC RIM & GOLD MINING IN EL SALVADOR:
The killing of four community members
In July 2009, the body of Marcelo Rivera, a teacher and community leader, was found dumped in a well.
He had been 'disappeared' weeks before. Signs of torture were found on his body, including burn marks;
he was missing toe and finger nails. On December 20, 2009, Ramiro Rivera Gomez and Felicíta
Echeverría were killed. On December 26, 2009, Dora Sorto Recinos (8 months pregnant) was murdered
in the community of Trinidad.
These killings occurred in the department of Cabañas, bordering Honduras, where Pacific Rim Mining
Corp., a Canadian-American company, wants to mine for gold. Prevented from mining by widespread
opposition, Pacific Rim is now using a World Bank "mediation" procedure to sue the government of El
Salvador for $100 million in "lost profits". No one has been held accountable for the killings, neither in the
World Bank "mediation" process (where murder charges can't be filed), nor in any court in El Salvador or
Canada.
IMMUNITY
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These abuses happen because it is Canadian public policy to push for the expansion of our mining and
investor interests around the world, while opposing attempts to enact enforceable civil and criminal law
standards that could be used to hold our companies and investors accountable.
North American mining companies benefit from immunity from prosecution in many countries where they
operate mines - like Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. In the sphere of international law, they
operate with immunity.
And, they operate with immunity from prosecution and accountability in Canada where the major
corporate and investor decisions are made. There are no criminal or civil laws on the books to hold
Canadian companies and investors accountable for harm or violations caused directly or indirectly by their
business operations elsewhere.
Over the past few years, there were efforts in Canada to pass legislation - Bill C-300 - that would have
provided a judicial framework for some government oversight and possible sanction (withdrawal of public
funds a company might be receiving) in the case of mining company wrong-doing.
Bill C-300 would not have provided for criminal law sanctions where crimes were committed; it would not
have provided for civil law sanctions, or for remedies to the victims of mining company activities if wrong
doings and harms were proven. Even at that, Bill C-300 was defeated in October 2010.
Civil cases recently filed in Toronto (by Klippensteins Barristers & Solicitors) - "Choc v. HudBay Minerals"
(for the killing of Adolfo Ich) & "Caal v. HudBay Minerals (for the gang rape of 11 women in the community
of Lote 8) - are based on common law remedies and provide a possible crack in the Canadian wall of
immunity from prosecution and legal accountability, and will need substantial political and financial
support.
The DOUBLE-STANDARD
This opposition to enacting criminal and civil legislation to hold our companies accountable is self-serving
and hypocritical. I wager that the mining company executives, investors and politicians who opposed the
enactment of enforceable legislation swear by the values of democracy and the rule of law - just not when
applied to their corporate and investment activities abroad.
Were these executives, investors and politicians victims themselves in their home communities of
environmental and health and human rights violations caused by corporate activities, they would demand
nothing less than full legal accountability and sanctions for the wrong doing and remedy for the harms and
losses.
PUBLIC POLICY ISSUE
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It is a public policy issue. Canadian governments, independent of which party is in power, support the
expansion of Canadian mining and investor interests across the world, claiming that mining is good for
"development", while ignoring or outright denying that Canadian companies have directly and indirectly
caused harm and violations to communities around the world.
INVESTOR'S ISSUE
It is an investment issue. Investors from the wealthier sectors of society, and their private investment
funds, through to a majority of Canadians with deductions paid into federal and provincial pension funds,
benefit from the profits that mining companies - and other resource extraction companies and weapons
producers - generate around the world.
Yet, there is little demand from investors that corporate activities be regulated by enforceable
environmental, health and human rights standards.
Assurances of "responsible investing" by pension trustees and the management of bcIMC, for example,
amount to little more than 'window dressing' in an attempt to hide what is really happening in the
marketplace.
CULTURE AND MEDIA ISSUES
With notable exceptions, our media relegates corporate and investor issues to the business and financial
pages and does not properly report on environmental destruction, harm to personal health and other
human rights violations that Canadian companies can and do cause.
Written by:
Grahame Russell
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