The Alyansa Tigil Mina Blog

April 17-21,2006, Maharlika Training Center, Lipata, Surigao City

Conference statement

“Remember, LORD, what has happened to us; look, and see our disgrace. Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to foreigners. We have become fatherless, our mothers are widows. We must buy the water we drink; our wood can be had only at a price. Those who pursue us are at our heels; we are weary and find no rest.”
(Lamentations 5: 1-5)

Our Witnessing
Ours is a mining industry lorded over by transnational corporations and by the whims and caprices of the globalized mining industry. It is a mining industry that further entrenches our maldevelopment by stunting our national industrialization ideally anchored on the rational utilization of our vast and varied mineral base. It is a mining industry that extracts, rapes, denudes, divests, drains, and brings about division and death to our environment and indigenous peoples. It is a mining industry that invades our territory, steals our sovereignty, corrupts our system of governance, circumvents the rule of law, and violates the dignity of persons and of Creation.

We have seen these things first hand in the destruction wrought by transnational and local large scale mining firms on the social and environmental landscape of Surigao del Norte. Deepening and widening wounds are eminent on the face of a province that is a haven for rich aquatic resources and marine life, rice fields, vegetation, and forestry. The environmental degradation that we have witnessed provided us a microcosm of the extensive damage large scale mining ushers into Mindanao, in particular.

Large scale mining companies are salivating and, in fact, are already ravaging part of Mindanao’s3.6 billion metric tons of metallic and 8 billion metric tons of non-metallic mineral reserves— making up half of the country’s 7.1 billion metric tons of minerals. Eleven of the 24 priority mining projects declared by the government are in Mindanao. These foreign companies, aided by their local dummies, bring about displacement and human rights violations through militarization.

We debunk the sales pitch of the Arroyo administration to encourage large scale mining investments in the country. These are rehashed myths and lies spinned to portray large scale mining TNCs as harbingers of our development and economic salvation. The global and national mining situation is replete with evidence that TNC mining in fact displaces productive human resource and increase unemployment, leave mining areas as ghost towns, slacken national growth, and disintegrates cultures and societies, aside from the obvious ecological damage.

We are concerned that our people are fast losing faith in the institutional processes of government. As government engages in a fervid sales pitch abroad to promote the vast potentials of our mineral lands, we increasingly see the bureaucracy not standing on the side of the people. The Supreme Court ruling upholding the Constitutionality of the Mining Act also sends the signal to all that the judicial process is a long-shot recourse even as we try to avail of whatever remaining legal remedies we can to prolong, defend, or mitigate the incursion of large scale mining.

Our Convergence…
We are the mining-affected and threatened communities, the religious, indigenous peoples, Moro, small scale miners, people’s organizations, and non-government organizations coming from various networks, charisms, persuasions, and subregions in Mindanao.

We bind ourselves in our common understanding that largescale mining is a great social and environmental plague that deserves to be exorcised from our country and from our communities.
We likewise strongly uphold that the time to protect our national patrimony and sovereignty is now, when largescale mining plunder is unprecedented as ever in its insidious attacks

We endeavor to create an ever-increasing synergy of people’s mobilizations to resist largescale mining in Mindanao by contributing our various independent, inter-dependent, and complementary anti-mining initiatives.

Our unity is propelled by our common appreciation of the need for genuine national industrialization and for a mining policy that is pro-people and pro-environment.
While we are aware that the initial unities we have gained in this convergence need to be further refined and strengthened given our social, economic, and cultural divergences, we are firm in our resolve that the fight at this moment is to be concentrated on largescale mining TNCs and their local agents.

We unite today with the pledge to continue deepening our understanding of national industrialization and enhancing the People’s Alternative Mining Policy for the interest of the peoples and environment especially of Mindanao.

Our Calls and Commitment…
We therefore unwaveringly call to RESIST THE LIBERALIZATION OF THE MINING INDUSTRY by SCRAPPING THE MINING ACT OF 1995!

We oppose landgrabbing of ancestral domains by mining TNCs and the ensuing ethnocide of our Lumad peoples in Mindanao.

We push for Filipino-owned, regulated small-scale mining leading towards nationalization of the mining industry for genuine industrialization.

We oppose Charter Change as a sinister scheme of the Arroyo government to altogether delete the remaining provisions that protect the economy, our ecology, and our peoples civil and political liberties.

We uphold the People’s Alternative Mining Policy as the framework of a sovereign national mining industry that serves as a catalyst of our national industrialization.

We call for greater accountability of Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for her fervent push for mining revitalization through the Mineral Action Plan.

We direct particular calls to the Church to be unrelenting in their opposition to largescale mining and to concretize its pastoral care and guidance by journeying with mining-affected communities in their struggles; we likewise call on the media to faithfully report and critically interpret the destruction large scale mining wreaks; we call on local government officials to support their people’s calls for the scrapping of the Mining Act.

Finally, we call upon ourselves to KEEP FAITH, that our collective and organized action shall bear fruit as we struggle to defend our patrimony and ensure the same for the sake of our children.

Our Common action…
Today, we declare our CONVERGENCE.

We believe that our convergence should be an action- and response-oriented forum of anti-mining initiatives in Mindanao.

We shall continue to be a forum of learning the framework of national industrialization and enhancing our alternative policy and framework; we take up the Agham/Defend Patrimony and LRC framework and proposals as concrete first steps towards defining our alternatives.

Massive Information-Education-Campaign materials to aid our education drive in communities and organizations; a Mindanao-wide signature campaign to register our broadest opposition to large scale mining.

We commit to generate support and solidarity with and among the grassroots of Mindanao against large scale mining plunder. By this, we join with the farmers to call for the implementation of a genuine agrarian reform. We call for the end of militarization in the mining affected communities. Uphold the indigenous peoples and Moro cultural integrity and identity towards the rights to self-determination and self-governance over ancestral domain. Uphold the dignity and rights of women and children in mining affected communities.

We vow to make bolder steps by prosecuting large scale mining plunderers and their agents who have trampled upon our dignity, creation and patrimony

Approved by 180 delegates to the Mindanao Convergence on April 20, 2006
Convenors :Sisters’ Association in Mindanao (SAMIN), Foundation for Philippine Environment (FPE), Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center (LRC), Mindanao Interfaith Services Foundation, Inc. (MISFI), Philippine Misereor Partners (PMP), Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao (AFRIM), Mainit National Park Conservation Society, Zamboanga del Norte Peoples Network against Mining (ZNPAAM), Katawhang Simbahan Alang sa Malamboong Kabuhatan (KASAMAKA)

Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM)
Position Paper on the Rapu-Rapu Polymetallic Project
Presented before the Rapu Rapu Fact Finding Commission
April 5, 2006

We, the Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM), an alliance of Peoples’ Organizations (POs), Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and mining-affected communities, extend our deepest appreciation and recognition to this commission for its pursuit of the truth in what happened to Rapu Rapu. ATM is a dynamic coalition and part of a broader social movement that is demanding for the repeal of the Philippine Mining Act 1995, the enactment of an alternative mining law and a moratorium to large-scale mining in the Philippines,

With the good bishop of Sorsogon, Bishop Arturo Bastes presiding, the way in achieving the truth has never been clearer. By way of your collective applied expertise and background research, a few weeks of questioning and investigations have exposed the unfortunate reality of the spill that poisoned the Albay Gulf. Without a doubt, this tragedy has dealt a severe blow to all the fishermen and their families whose livelihood depends on clean waters and an equally severe shock to the ecology of the area.

As we face this commission, we would like to reiterate our position against the eventual resumption of Lafayette’s mining operations. Our arguments can be summarized in three points:

1. Ecological considerations. One of the more solid scientific basis of arguing against the mining operation is the small-island ecology of Rapu Rapu. Given this characteristic, special and focused consideration should have been extended on the distinctive impacts that an extractive activity like large-scale mining would have brought to the island, including adverse effects on coastal areas. The other strong point against the project is the presence of rich marine life that traverse Albay Gulf. The death of a dwarf sperm whale and last weekend, of a dolphin, has elicited strong emotional reactions. With the absence of hard evidence, we are hard put to categorically blame Lafayette. The fishkills that happened however cast more clouds of doubt. We will not anymore mention the impact of the actual spills that happened. I will leave it to Greenpeace and HARIBON who are in a better position institutionally to articulate this concern.

2. Corporate deception and conceit. Touted as the state-of-the-art of Philippine mining, Lafayette and its Rapu Rapu operations has been exposed for its falsehoods. The would be world-class mine has not implemented the best practices that it has arrogantly projected to the government, the media and even its own investors. It is the height of irony that amidst the strong projection in the media of the Rapu Rapu project as the “model” mining project, a simple matter of a claimed heavy downpour would force a systems failure. And adding insult to injury, Lafayette appeared to have been more concerned with its performance in the stock markets rather than confronting the issue at hand. A few weeks ago, they had the gall to issue a press release, stating that they expected the Rapu Rapu project to resume its operations around March 21, after “complying” with the conditions set forth in the Cease-and-Desist Order (CDO) issued against it. Expectedly, Lafayette shares rose by almost 10% percent in value a day after the press release. This despite the very clear mandate that this Commission had until April 10 (or 30 days) to complete its investigation, and that the CDO will be sustained within the timeframe.

3. Inadequate regulation. It is an accepted reality that government bureaucracy is understaffed, underpaid and overworked. But it is doubly frustrating for civil society groups to be confronted by government agencies which are either confused or conflicted. Meant to protect the public welfare, but perilously appearing as either unprepared, tentative or worse, hesitant to perform the expected duties, the case in Rapu Rapu is a microcosm of how some government agencies can unwittingly become practically the spokesperson of an extractive industry. The multi-stakeholder mechanisms that were supposed to provide oversight in monitoring has been questioned. MGB and BFAR took days too long to respond to the spills, insisting on re-testing the waters, and at times, appearing too ready and content to accept as truths whatever Lafayette told them. The perils of belief have come up, with conflicting stories told by mine officials, government agencies and local communities. The very revealing exercise yesterday in fact begs two more important questions for us NGOs and support groups – what else has been swept under the rug? And what corners has the mining company cut to generate more profit?

These situations perfectly illustrate the state of the mining industry in the Philippines - all glittery promises, profit for the few, disaster for the environment, and displacement for affected communities.

Lafayette’s Rapu Rapu mine site has been touted as the gold standard for this administration’s new era of mining in the Philippines. Unlike the last era of mining which ended with Marinduque struck by an immense environmental disaster, the administration, in its relentless push to get the Filipinos to accept the return of mining, has promised that nothing of the sort will happen. And of course, something almost like that happened again, when the mine tailings dam that had filled to near capacity was emptied into the waters of Rapu Rapu in October last year.

Of all the investigations that have been initiated, it seems this commission is that most sincere in its desire to bring the truth of the matter to light. With Sorsogon poised to bear a considerable brunt of the fall-out due to marine-coastal contamination, its bishop was empowered to convene this commission. And they have unearthed a great deal of things that expose the practices of mining and what is to be expected from a government that is all too ready to take mining’s money, but not its consequences.

It is not cynical to believe that a corporation puts profit before people – almost all corporation operate in such a manner, and the resource extractors are the worst of all. If the government would hold up Lafayette’s Rapu Rapu mine as an example, then we must take it as that – a perfect example of how mining is practiced in the Philippines – with deception and little regard for the safety of the community and the integrity of the environment. It also exposes just how far the effects of mining are, with Sorsogon feeling the impact of a decision made on Rapu Rapu.

This brings to light one of the stronger stance against mining that has emerged more recently. We stand by the pastoral statement issued by the CBCP last January 29, 2006, and articulated clearly by Bishop Claver last March 10, 2006 – mining, as it is done right now in the Philippines is unsafe, unsustainable and should be put to a halt. The Philippine Mining Act of 1995 requires s serious and rigorous review, if not an outright repeal. The Alyansa Tigil Mina proposes that all mining sites across the nation be subject to their own fact-finding commissions.

The administration cannot simply force its policy, in this, as in all things, the Filipino demand the truth of the matter.

ALYANSA TIGIL MINA
APRIL 5, 2006

For your perusal.

Alternatibong Pangkabuhayan - Non-Timber Forest Products-Task Force (NTFP-TF) and Kalahan Educational Foundation (KEF)

Mga Karanasan sa Alternatibong Pangkabuhayan - NTFP-TF

Mining & Human Rights - Jessica Soto

Again, please let us know if you have any trouble downloading the files.

Legal Remedies Against Mining - Atty. Francis Joseph Ballesteros