8th Asia Pacific Mining Conference Blasted

October 2008

Environmental activists, mining-affected communities, indigenous peoples, and Church representatives staged a demonstration October 14 in front of the Sofitel Philippine Plaza in protest of the ongoing 8th Asia Pacific Mining Conference. The conference is organized by the ASEAN Federation of Mining Associations (AFMA), Philippines Chambers of Mines, and the Minerals Development Council of the Department of Natural Resources.

The conference's organizers have stated their optimism that mining is in a bright position for investments and economic activity despite the current world-wide financial turmoil. According to the protesters, however, this assurance is baseless and is negated by what is happening in the international market. In the past weeks, the price of copper dropped to its lowest since February 2007. Also, aluminum and nickel prices have plummeted to values not seen in more than two and a half years, while zinc fell to its lowest point since November 2005.

"Like what happened in the late 1970's up to late 1990s, the local and global mining industry will undergo a major crisis more intense than before," said Clemente Bautista Jr., national coordinator of militant environmental group Kalikasan People's Network for the Environment (Kalikasan-PNE).

"The claim of Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean and Chamber of Mines of the Philippines (CMP) president Benjamin Philip Romualdez that the mining sector will remain stable in the midst of global depression is just a facade to conceal the crisis affecting the local and global mining industry. We expect majority of local and foreign mining companies in the country will either go bankrupt or would slow down their operation."

In the past five months, the world's top 20 mining stocks have surrendered a combined US$1.1 trillion in market value. The average big mining stock has lost 64%. These include mining giants who have projects in the Philippines, such as BHP Billiton, Anglo-American, Vale, and Xstrata, that have lost hundreds of billions worth of investments in the stock markets.

"In the midst of the global economic meltdown," explained Bautista, "the aim of this conference is to discuss how to further implement the globalization policy of liberalization and privatization in local mining industries in Southeast Asian countries. Capitalist countries like Australia, United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Korea, and even China want to further open up mining industries such as those in the Philippines and Indonesia to make it cheaper and easier for them to exploit and extract mineral resources from these third-world countries. This way, they get more profits, at the same time shift the impacts of the global crisis from their home countries to third-world countries."

"We are the ones who suffer the brunt of mining liberalization of the government," asserted Nelson Mallari, an indigenous leader and a member of PROTECT Zambales, a provincial alliance opposing mining plunder and destruction in Zambales province. "We are the ones who are displaced from our communities and farms as the government allows local and foreign mining companies to grab our lands. When we oppose and resist, the government employs militarization and human rights violations. We have nowhere to go and no option to take but to fight these land grabbers to our last breath."

In 2007, there was an upsurge in protest actions by mining-affected communities, and in armed attacks staged by rebel groups against large-scale mining projects in the Philippines. Junior mining companies like Australian-owned Lafayette Mining Limited and New Zealand-owned OceanaGold Corporation were forced to halt or suspend their projects because of community resistance. From January 2007 to July 2008 there were at least 10 armed attacks by the communist rebel group the New People's Army directed against foreign mining projects in the Philippines. Among them was the billion-dollar project of mining giants Xstrata, which was attacked twice this year.

According to a statement by Defend Patrimony!, a national multi-sectoral alliance opposed to the mining liberalization policy and large-scale mining projects of the Arroyo government, "The 'golden period of opportunity' the participants and organizers of this AFMA conference are looking for will not be found in their horizon, and instead they will be met by a nightmare of bankruptcies, lay-offs, and shutdowns. Given the worsening global crisis and the growing peoples' resistance, mining TNCs and their cohorts will be met with opposition in every step of the way by mining-affected communities and their supporters. The people will frustrate their agenda to plunder the country's resources and national patrimony.