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Rights Action - SPEAKING TOUR
GOLDCORP Inc’s Open Pit Cyanide Mining In Honduras and Guatemala
-- Versus --
Community Development, Environment & Human Rights Well-being of Indigenous and Local Populations in Guatemala & Honduras
WHEN: late April & May, 2009
WHERE: Ontario, Quebec & Eastern Canada
WHO: Carlos Amador, a community leader and member of the Siria Valley Environmental Defense Committee (Honduras), and Francois Guindon, a French-Canadian activist living in Guatemala and working for Rights Action on issues related to mining affected communities in Guatemala and Honduras
A "CANADIAN" ISSUE
On May 22, 2009, Goldcorp Inc. will hold its annual shareholder’s meeting in Vancouver, Canada.
Rights Action is organizing this Tour to bring more critical attention, in Canada, to health and environment harms and human rights violations that Goldcorp’s mines are contributing to in Honduras and Guatemala.
Since 2000, in Honduras, and since 2005, in Guatemala, Goldcorp Inc. has been making huge profits for its shareholders, directors and investors (including the Canada Pension Plan and numerous pension funds across the country), from its open pit, cyanide-leaching mining operations in Guatemala and Honduras, at the expense of a growing list of human and indigenous rights violations and environmental and health harms against local and Indigenous populations in Guatemala and Honduras.
INTERESTED IN HOSTING EVENTS, contact: Grahame Russell, 1-860-352-2448, info@rightsaction.org. We will ask interested organizations to contribute funds towards the over-all costs of the tour. All profits from this tour will go to the work of the Siria Valley Environmental Defense Committee.
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GUATEMALA & HONDURAS: THE GLOBAL INVESTOR'S OASIS
Since the mid-1990s, during Central America’s so-called “transition to democracy”, indigenous and campesino communities in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua have been suffering an aggressive phase of what some call neo-colonialist mining expansion.
"DEVELOPMENT" FOR WHOM?
Mining projects offer a clear example of the “development” model promoted by the U.S. and Canadian governments, global companies and investors, and the International Financial Institutions.
North American governments and the World Bank, which invested directly in Goldcorp Inc’s “Marlin” mine in Guatemala, pressured for “modernization” of mining legislation in countries across Latin America, including Honduras and Guatemala; 'modernization' that simply means favouring multinational mining companies at the expense of the development and human rights needs of local communities.
GOLDCORP Inc. in HONDURAS & GUATEMALA
Specific examples are the "Marlin” mine in Guatemala and the "San Martin” mine in Honduras, both owned by the Canadian/U.S. company Goldcorp Inc. At www.rightsaction.org, you will find:
- “A Backwards, Upside-Down Kind of Development: Global Actors, Mining and Community-Based Resistance in Honduras and Guatemala”, by Sandra Cuffe: (http://www.rightsaction.org/Reports/Cuffe%20mining%20report%202005-03.htm);
- “Investing in Conflict: Goldcorp in the Americas”, by Dawn Paley: (http://www.rightsaction.org/Reports/research.pdf);
- a photo-essay about mine-related health harms in Guatemala: http://www.rightsaction.org/articles/San_Miguel_022009.htm;
- “All That Glitters Isn’t Gold”, an hour long film by Steven Schnoor about Goldcorp’s mine in Honduras: http://www.rightsaction.org/video/gold/;
And more.
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INTERESTED IN HOSTING EVENTS, contact: Grahame Russell, 1-860-352-2448, info@rightsaction.org. We will ask interested organizations to contribute funds towards the over-all costs of the tour. All profits from this tour will go to the work of the Siria Valley Environmental Defense Committee.
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