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Barrick Gold is a criminal company of global proportions. Implicated in killings, rapes, toxic spills, fraudulent reporting, land theft, and the militarization of entire communities, this company is a case study in the need for corporate accountability regulations internationally. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Harvard Law Clinic, Mining Watch, NYU Law School, and many others have documented this abuse, but popular pressure in Canada is needed to push for justice for the communities impacted by Barrick's operations.

Stand with communities to demand justice!

WHEN: April 26, 2016 11am
WHERE: 255 Front St. (outside Metro Convention Centre)

This will be our 10th year working with communities directly impacted by Barrick's operations and this time of year has always been a time for us to bring impacted communities to Canada so that they can speak directly to their experiences and perspectives. We are an all volunteer group, motivated soley by our passion for justice, our care for those impacted, and our outrage that these abuses continue to happen.

The truth is that it won't stop, until they are stopped, and it is our responsibility to hold these companies to account. Mainstream media wants to ignore these issues, so we need people to stand with us so they can't. Please show up and pass this on!

*specific speakers TBA

For many years, indigenous people of the Porgera Valley, in Papua New Guinea, suffered brutal sexual and other assaults at the hands of mine security guards. Only after repeated pressure from human rights advocates did Canadian mining company Barrick Gold finally acknowledge the sexual assaults and create a mechanism to provide a remedy to rape survivors. Yet the process has left many survivors deeply unsatisfied.

This report analyzes Barrick�s remedy mechanism in light of human rights standards, and offers lessons learned for corporations, civil society, survivors and affected communities, and the international community. It considers the benefits, challenges, and limitations of remedy mechanisms created by companies and designed to redress gross human rights violations. The report is based on investigations over many years, including hundreds of interviews in Porgera before and during the implementation of the remedy mechanism.

While Barrick has been offloading assets and reducing operational costs in order to improve its standing with shareholders, the social costs of the Pascua Lama project in Chile�s Huasco Valley continue to grow.

Despite company statements that community relations around Pascua Lama have improved with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Diaguita Indigenous communities in 2014, a report published by MiningWatch Canada and the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (OLCA) indicates that Barrick�s MOU undermined the ongoing resistance of Indigenous and non-Indigenous organizations to this project.  

The report is based on testimonies from the Huasco Valley, n Chile�s northern Atacama region, that were gathered by anthropologist Adrienne Wiebe. The testimonies state that the process to develop the MOU was confusing and manipulative, and lacked the full support of communities that signed on.

Download report in English and Spanish.

WHERE: 255 Front St., Toronto
WHEN: Tues. April 28, 10:30am

Every year, Barrick Gold gathers with their major shareholders and board of directors at their Annual General Meeting in downtown Toronto. And every year, we gather to support campaigns for justice, accountability, and a future for communities directly impacted by their mines.

On Friday, April 3, 2015, eleven of the estimated 120-200 women raped at Barrick's Porgera mine settled on a compensation package from the company, negotiated by US-law firm Earth Rights International. Family members of three people killed in mine violence also received an undisclosed amount of compensation for their suffering. This victory is the result of a decade of advocacy from groups such as the Atali Tange Association, the Porgera Alliance, Harvard Legal Clinic, New York University law school, Mining Watch Canada, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. However, we should remember that far more than these eleven women were brutally raped by Barrick's security forces and continue to fight for justice, accountability, and a removal of the conditions leading to these abuses.

The community continues to advocate for their collective resettlement away from the mine. At ProtestBarrick, we will continue to support the community in this long-term solution to widespread mine violence.

Some media coverage of the recent victory:

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: 200 girls and women raped: now 11 of them win better compensation from the world's biggest gold miner

THE GUARDIAN (UK): Canada mining firm compensates Papua New Guinea women after alleged rapes

MINING WATCH PRESS STATEMENT:
Barrick Settlement on Rapes and Killings in Papua New Guinea Proof that Victims Need Independent Legal Counsel

Barrick Gold and the Royal Canadian Mint today unveiled the design of the medals to be awarded to athletes at this summer's PanAm games. 4,000 competitions medals will be awarded during the course of both the Pan Am Games and the Parapan Am Games.

But why are we using this opportunity to promote the irresponsible practice of open pit gold mining, especially considering that we get more than enough gold these days from recycled sources? Specifically, why are we celebrating a mining company whose abuses are well documented and widespread. To illustrate my point, let's look at the three mines highlighted as the sources of the PanAm medals.

This film originally appeared on French Television and offers an inside look on the ground at Barrick's Porgera Mine in Papua New Guinea. Now, the documentary short is available with English subtitles.

This context is important given Barrick's recent announcement that it intends to sell its stake in Porgera. Landowners are determined to not let any sale happen before outstanding issues are resolved with the company, and have issued an ultimatum to the PNG government threatening to shut down the mine if their concerns are not met.

On February 6, lawfirm Leigh Day announced that African Barrick Gold (now Acacia Mining) had settled out of court with Tanzanian villagers wanting compensation in relation to killings at its North Mara mine. While this settlement is likely welcome to the victims who pursued this legal claim, a recent press statement by Mining Watch Canada and RAID points out that Barrick's greivance mechanism, hastily put in place in response to this lawsuit, makes it so that victims of mine violence who seek redress through the company will not be allowed to sue the company.

"In order to receive compensation victims must sign a controversial legal waiver preventing them from suing Barrick or any of its subsidiaries in any jurisdiction for the harm they have suffered," reads the press statemend. "Many of Leigh Day�s original clients were persuaded to sign up to the programme without the benefit of having their lawyers� present. Some now regret this and believe that they fell victim to a process by which they received paltry levels of compensation for life-changing injuries or deaths sustained in security incidents at the mine."

Additionally, this case does not address the fact that killings at the mine site are on-going. "Since September 2014, local human rights sources allege that there have been at least 20 new cases of deaths or serious injury at the North Mara."

In 2011, a guest on Lang's show cited a recent cover story in Globe & Mail's Report on Business, stating that 19 villagers had been killed by security and police guarding Barrick's mine in Tanzania. She responds by saying that Peter Munk (Barrick's) founder, has done "amazing things" in Tanzania, "creating wealth where there was none." (Lang's husband worked for Barrick Gold and still advised for them at the time. He also worked directly with Peter Munk's Philathropic endeavours at the time).
This article fully debunks this statement, pointing to the displacement of hundreds of thousands at Barrick's minesites in Tanzania. It also scratches the surface of CBC's horrible coverage of the regular killings at this site.

In July 2014, �Mining Morality Canada� began a journey to investigate and document the environmental, social, political, and economic impacts that Canadian mining companies are having on local communities within the Dominican Republic. This journey led us all around the central mountain range of the Dominican where we have been working in solidarity with those directly resisting Canadian mining companies including Barrick Gold, Gold Corp and Glencore Falconbridge. These companies, in conjunction with other previously operating mining companies such as Rosario Dominicana, have had devastating effects on the livelihoods of communities and the environment.

On October 28, 2014, hundreds of Porgerans marched onto Barrick Gold�s Porgera mine site to demand benefits that rightfully belong to the Porgera Special Mining Lease (SML) Landowners.

On Oct 17, Barrick Gold was given a 48 hour ultimatum to respond to requests by landowners at their controversial Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea.

Three London students were shocked by what they found last winter during a trip to the Dominican Republic.

Canadian mining companies, they say, are destroying lives in the country.

�We visited the Barrick Gold mine, and while we were there, we spoke with a woman named Juliana (Rodriguez). She is 82 years old and has lived in the area for all of her life,� Klaire Gain said. �She told us the last four years, which (has seen) Barrick Gold mining in the region, have been the worst years of her life.�

On Oct 17, Barrick Gold was given a 48 hour ultimatum to respond to requests by landowners at their controversial Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea. The first demand, that Barrick become Party to a revised Porgera Mine Memorandum of Agreement and make a date to commence MOA review, has been the landowners "number one ask from day one", according to a letter dated October 17, 2014 from the landowners association to Barrick management. For many years, the Porgera Landowners Association has been urging Barrick Gold for the resettlement of their people away from the Porgera mine site, through MOA reviews, and an international pressure and educational campaign including an OECD complaint and several appeals to the United Nations. However, Barrick continues to sidestep this urgent issue. 

Jethro Tulin has waged an international battle against Barrick for over a decade. In 1989, he registered Porgera�s first mine workers union and became its first secretary. Years later, Tulin returned to Porgera to find the situation worse and thus founded the Akali Tange Association (ATA), a human rights organization documenting abuses at the Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea.

Jethro will appear alongside Sakura Saunders, editor of ProtestBarrick.net.

"Porgera Burns" read headlines this morning in Papua New Guinea's daily newspaper. More than 200 houses were burnt to the ground, it reports, and angry villagers retaliated by attacking an Australian mine worker.

This isn't the first time that security forces have burnt down hundreds of houses next to Barrick's mine, and this recent violent episode underscores the need to meet the community's demand to be resettled away from the dangerous mine site.

�Why is Barrick not looking at long term solutions like relocating the people out of the special mining lease area? Burning houses in a particular village in the special mining lease area will not solve the illegal mining problem. It�s adding more fuel to a burning fire.�

Every year, the board of directors of the world's largest gold mining company meet in downtown Toronto. And every year (for the last 7) people who are aware of Barrick's abuses around the world turn up to support impacted communities in their campaigns against this abusive company.

This annual general meeting is taking place while:

• Barrick is facing a court case in the British High Court seeking damages for the death and injury of local villagers in Tanzania.
• Communities in Papua New Guinea are making urgent calls for resettlement away from the mine site and community members are seeking compensation for killings and sexual assault. 
• Communities in the Dominican Republic are also seeking urgent relocation away from the contaminated mine site, and to be compensated for their economic losses from dead cattle and contaminated produce.
• Indigenous Diaguita communities in Chile are fighting to stop the Pascua Lama project, which does not have their consent and has been poisoning their scarce water resources.
  
• Communities on Marinduque Island in the Philippines are seeking damages from a mine tailings disaster, considered the worst mining disaster in the Philippines.
  

WHERE: Metro Convention Centre, 255 Front St, Toronto
WHEN: April 30, 2014 @ 11am

Please come out and support the communities negatively affected by Barrick. Through grassroots solidarity, we can ensure that their perspectives and needs are heard loud and clear in Toronto!

WHEN: Tuesday, April 1, 7pm
WHERE: 506 Bloor St West (the Bloor Cinema)

What are the limits to freedom of speech? Can we put a price on our spoken and written words? Following the 2008 release of the book Noir Canada, author Alain Deneault, his co-writers and his publisher, Éditions Écosociété, grappled with these questions � at great personal expense � after being sued for defamation in Quebec and Ontario courts by two large Canadian mining companies. Deneault and his publisher fought back, becoming entangled in a seemingly never-ending spiral of judicial proceedings. Silence Is Gold is a thriller of a documentary that tells their story, set against the backdrop of the Canadian justice system. We follow the complex procedural twists and turns, eagerly anticipating a resolution that is repeatedly delayed.

Watch Trailer: https://www.nfb.ca/film/silence_is_gold/trailer/silence-is-gold-trailer

Riots break out in Porgera, Papua New Guinea, after Toronto-based Barrick Gold's security kills several local miners. Reporting by activist Jethro Tulin, of the Akali Tange Association, a local human rights organization. Jethro has visited Canada many times to advocate around compensating victims of mine-related violence and collectively resettling the population away from the mine. This is the violence that exists surround Barrick's mines in PNG, Tanzania, and Peru.

Protestbarrick.net is proud to announce that we won Now's reader's choice award for being the best activist group in Toronto with a non-local cause! While we believe that ProtestBarrick's cause is at the core of Toronto, we are thrilled to have received this honour.

Protestbarrick editor Sakura Saunders also received the runner-up position for the Best Activist in Toronto in the reader poll. As Now magazine is Toronto's largest weekly magazine, we believe that these honours help highlight the importance of mining justice issues within Toronto.