Communities
in the departments of Santa Rosa and Jalapa have been peacefully resisting the proposed Escobal silver mine, operated by Minera San
Rafael, Guatemalan Subsidiary of Canada's Tahoe Resources for more
than three years. Since 2011, residents have carried out eight
community consultations in which more than 35,000 people have
rejected chemical mineral mining on their territory. "The Minera San Rafael does not have the social license to operate and they are never going to have the social license to operate," stated Oscar Morales from the Committe in Defense of Life and Peace of San Rafael Las Flores.
Despite
this ongoing community opposition, on April 3 the Guatemalan
authorities granted Tahoe Resources the final permit necessary to
begin mineral exploitation.
This
morning community, human rights and environmental organizations held
a press conference to highlight the numerous illegalities of the
Escobal exploitation license and to denounce the context of escalating violence, specifically the recent abduction of four Xinca leaders. Representatives from communities surrounding the mine site
called for an investigation of the attack against the Xinca
leadership, which resulted in one death, and demanded respect for
their rights to free, prior and informed consent over the mine
project.
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| Press conference to denounce granting of license (Photo: C.P.R.Urbana) |
Yuri
Melini and Rafael Maldonado of the Center for Environmental and Social Legal Action (CALAS), the legal team supporting the peaceful
community resistance to the project, also denounced the multiple
attacks perpetrated against them on the same day that the Tahoe
license was granted. Three gun shots were fired at the CALAS office,
while Maldonado's home was ransacked for the second time in two
weeks. In a interview with Guatemala's Plaza Publica, Maldonado
states, “It was a direct message from the mine because we have been
accompanying the entire process of legal opposition, as well as in
the community consultations.”
PRESS
RELEASE
Translation by NISGUA
IN
RESPONSE TO THE ILLEGAL APPROVAL OF THE MINERAL EXPLORATION LICENSE
IDENTIFIED AS SEXT-015-11 ESCOBAL of
MINERA
SAN RAFAEL, S.A.
WE
EXPRESS
1.
Our profound rejection of the illegal means by which the exploration
license was granted to Minera San Rafael S. A., a company formally
accused of the industrial contamination of the El Escobal ravine, a
direct tributary of the Los Esclavos river. The criminal complaint,
identified as file 1048-2012, is investigated by the Pollution
Prosecution Unit of the Public Prosecutor's Office on Crimes Against
the Environment and is subject to the judicial oversight of the Court
specialized in Criminal, Narcotics and Crimes against the Environment
in the department of Santa Rosa. On September 10, 2012 the
aforementioned Court confirmed the denouncement of the blatant
industrial contamination, a situation that makes the approval of the
granted license totally invalid.
2.
The serious violation of the Rule of Law committed by the Ministry of
Energy and Mines in refusing to process the more than 250
administrative objections to the approved mining license, which
were presented by citizens of the affected municipalities. The
affected citizens were notified of the arbitrary and illegal decision
to dismiss the objections in the exact same moment in which the
license was granted. This administrative decision, in addition to
being illegal, represents a series of violations of the fundamental
rights of the affected citizens in accordance with articles 46, 47,
48 and 49, which regulate administrative objections. The
aforementioned articles demonstrate that there are no legal means to
dismiss the [administrative] process.
3.
Our complete disappointment in the attitude assumed by the Ministry
of Energy and Mines who, in clear violation of the prevalence of the
common good over the individual, ignored the community
consultations carried out in the municipalities of Casillas,
Nueva Santa Rosa and Santa Rosa de Lima, as well as the community
consultations held in the communities of San Rafael Las Flores,
during which more than 98% of the population rejected the development
of this illegally approved mining project.
4.
Our complete condemnation of the violation of the right to access
the file of the approved license, perpetrated by the office
advisor of the Ministry of
Energy and Mines, Justina Solís, and the
General Secretary of the Ministry of Energy and Mines, María
Mercedes Bonilla, who denied Yuri Giovanni Melini Salguero,
General Director of CALAS, Moisés Divas Santos and Quelvin Otoniel
Jiménez access to the requested file. This situation raises
suspicion that the license had not yet been legally granted and was
immediately reported to the Human Rights Ombudsman.
5.
Finally, considering the evidence and the glaring illegalities that
the Ministry of Energy and Mines has committed in granting the
license to Minera San Rafael, we commit to exhausting all
constitutional, administrative and criminal legal actions in order to
invalidate the approved license, and to request an immediate criminal
investigation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, so that the
government officials responsible for this violation of national
judicial regulation are punished.
Center
for Environmental and Social Legal Action (CALAS)
The
Diocesan Commission in Defense of Nature (CODIDENA)
Committee
in Defense of Life and Peace of San Rafael Las Flores
Xinca
Peoples' Parliament of Guatemala (PAPXIGUA)
Guatemala
City, April 4, 2013
NISGUA has been
accompanying the consultation processes in the communities
surrounding the Tahoe Resources mine site since 2011.
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