Indigenous Villagers In Nueva Vizcaya Want Gold Mine Back From Oceana’

October 21, 2019 Provincial

DIDIPIO, NUEVA VIZCAYA— (October 17, 2019) — Indigenous villagers and anti-mining activists want the Didipio copper-gold big mine back to them.

This as the Australian-Canadian firm Oceanagold has formally suspended its operations after months of being paralyzed by barricades and local government restraint. “The suspension of the Oceanagold mine is a hard fought victory for the people of Vizcaya long suffering from deception, threat and intimidation, ecological harm, and violence.

We challenge the Duterte government to follow suit by rejecting Oceanagold’s contract renewal with finality and returning the mineralized lands to the indigenous communities who rightfully own the land,” Leon Dulce, national coordinator of the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE) said.

The lapse of Oceanagold’s Financial or Technical Assistance Agreement (FTAA) on June 2019, Dulce said, “meant the tenement area should have returned to the effective ownership of the State, which in turn is obliged to return the land to the ancestral domain of the indigenous Tuwali-Ifugao communities.”

Dulce challenged “(Pres.) Duterte should demonstrate his avowed opposition to destructive mines by respecting the Vizcaya indigenous people’s right to self-determination over their mineralized lands. The Duterte government must also ensure that Oceanagold immediately rehabilitates the devastated ecosystems and landscapes left in the wake of their operations.”

He added, “Oceanagold must also ensure the transition of their workers towards secure jobs and livelihoods including rationalized minerals utilization and environmental rehab work.”

Nueva Vizcaya communities and the provincial government led by Gov. Carlos Padilla had earlier rejected a proposal by the Mines and Geoscience Bureau (MGB) to grant an ‘interim FTAA renewal’ to the mine. An interim FTAA renewal would have given the company a basis to continue its operations without resolving complaints raised before them over the years.

Dulce claimed, “There is no basis for an interim renewal and therefore interim resumption of operations for Oceanagold. We have extensively divulged to the authorities and the public the years upon years’ worth of human rights violations the large-scale mine has been involved in, even up to the point of its renewal application process.”

Artemio A. Dumlao/ABN