Barrick Gold under fire over killings

Dar es Salaam. Two international NGOs are claiming that excessive force continues to be widely used by police officers who guard the African Barrick Gold’s North Mara Gold Mine.

The NGOs, Canadian Mining Watch and UK’s Rights and Accountability in Development (Raid), claim that the excessive use of force has resulted into deaths and serious injuries to the villagers living around the mine.

But the NGOs didn’t mention the total number of individuals who have been killed or injured.

A few months ago the London Stock Exchange-listed mine was blamed for the killings that took place at its property, and this led to accusations of human rights violation allegedly carried out by security and police officers.

Even though the company pays the guards, the report reveals that the desperately poor villagers have been paying these security men and police officers to gain access to waste rock dumps and the pits hoping to collect rocks that bear gold.

Through the practice, which is alleged to be associated with corruption, the police and the guards have been allowing a few people into the area.

The report notes that the police are paid by the company to protect the mine – (in addition to the mine’s own security guards) much as they are reputedly corrupt and cruel whereby they at times they shoot tress-passers, leading to deaths and injuries.

“We interviewed more than 30 victims and their family members,” says Ms Catherine Coumans of MiningWatch Canada, who adds:

“Most of them had been shot by police or assaulted by the mine’s own security guards within the last five years.”

During their visit, MiningWatch and Raid also had meetings with African Barrick Gold (ABG) staff at the mine and with its NGO partner, Search for Common Ground.

“We are deeply concerned not only about the clear patterns we discern in the excessive use of force at the mine,” says Ms Patricia Feeney of Raid, “but also about the intimidation, persecution, and the invasion of privacy suffered by victims and their families in the aftermath of violence by mine security.”

In response to the MiningWatch and Raid report, ABG and the North Mara Mines Ltd, through its spokesperson, Ms Nector Foya, said the company has not received any report on the matter, adding that the two institutions should submit their the information they have and to give the accused a right to respond.

“African Barrick Gold (“ABG” or the “Company”) and North Mara Gold Mines Limited (“NMGML”) have not been issued with a copy of the report; do not accept the statements made by MWC and Raid and request MWC and Raid provide a copy of the draft report and an opportunity to comment,” said the ABG response.

It added that Barrick and North Mara have already provided detailed response to Mining Watch and Raid in relation to several of these allegations, which have been made publicly available on the company’s website.

Mid-July, this year, the all-party parliamentary group on international corporate responsibility met at Westminster in UK to discuss incidents at ABG, amid allegations that four people may have been killed at the area this year.

The meeting, aimed at discussing killings at a British-owned gold mine in Tanzania that alarmed a group of MPs, lawyers and human rights campaigners, who had called on the British government to intervene.

The group claimed that in the past six years, 16 people have been shot dead by the Tanzanian police, an indication that there is a major problem that needs to be sorted out.

Raid and MiningWatch are preparing a detailed report of their findings for the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights and for the Board of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.