Mining giant accused of profiting from abuse by Colombian army

Hello,
I'm still hugely busy and should really be focusing on (paid) work, but have to share with you a report from this week's Guardian Weekly (p. 8/comment p. 18):



Mining giant accused of profiting from abuse by Colombian army

• Soldiers protecting Anglo American's interests
• Attacks on protesters 'part of pattern of global abuse'

Sibylla Brodzinsky in Bogotá
The Guardian, Friday August 3, 2007 / The Guardian Weekly, August 10, 2007, p. 8: Mining giant 'profiting from army abuses in Colombia'

The British mining giant Anglo American has been accused of profiting from the persecution, intimidation and killing of miners in Colombia who oppose the company's operations.
The international charity War on Want says in a report released yesterday [Aug 2, 2007] that Anglo American and its subsidiaries benefited from army operations in areas where the company is prospecting, which have forced families off their land and intimidated community leaders. It is part of a "pattern of global abuse" in countries where Anglo American operates, it says.

[... the article continues at http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2140798,00.html]

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Painful extraction
A British mining firm linked to abuses around the world is banking huge profits at Africa's expense

Mark Curtis
The Guardian, Friday August 3, 2007 / The Guardian Weekly, 10.08.07, p. 18 [Comment & Debate: A UK mining firm linked to abuses is profiting at Africa's expense]

It all has a depressingly familiar ring. The fingerprints of a British mining company are found to be all over abuses around the world. And again, there are high-level connections with the government. Enervated readers might be tempted to follow the lead of Gordon Brown, who is allowing it all to happen.
Anglo American, the world's second-largest mining company, today announces its financial figures for 2007, on the back of record profits in 2006 of more than $6bn. Last year I visited Obuasi in Ghana, the site of Africa's largest gold mine, run by AngloGold Ashanti (AGA), an Anglo American subsidiary. The mine had polluted local water systems, while many people told me how they live in fear of joint company/police "security" patrols. In the past year, the appalling poverty of villagers literally living on top of gold has not improved one jot.

[...]

Anglo American's chairman, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, [...] finds a soulmate in Brown, who in 10 years in government has never seriously criticised, let alone sought to regulate, British companies overseas. Virtually every speech he has given since 1997 has pledged his commitment to minimal company regulation while praising businesses as "partners" in overseas development.
The reality is that a more open investment climate in poor countries can sometimes be good and sometimes bad. In Obuasi, Sur de Bolivar and Cordillera, open investment translates as repression and exploitation. Yet Brown is a liberalisation evangelist who has failed to discriminate between good investment and bad. Britain has supported the World Bank-led rewriting of dozens of countries' mining laws, resulting in foreign firms paying much lower corporation tax and royalties to host governments. In Ghana the government gets a minuscule 5% of the value of all minerals exported. No wonder Anglo American was able to make $6bn profits last year.

[...]

• The War on Want report is at http://www.waronwant.org
• Mark Curtis is the author of Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses http://www.markcurtis.info
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[For the whole comment, go to http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2140853,00.html#article_continue, where this article is followed by a substantial number of messages from readers, with some interesting/useful links to related websites]