Today's Citizen
Mining critics 'facing death threats': report
Ecuador project being 'smeared,' Ascendant Copper says
Kelly Patterson, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, July 27, 2007Opponents of a Canadian mining operation in Ecuador are "facing death threats and attacks," Amnesty International warned in a report released this week.
The move comes at the same time as Ascendant Copper Corp. is responding to allegations of land-sale irregularities by Ecuador's anti-corruption watchdog, and an order by the Ministry of Energy and Mines to stop "dividing" the community.
Tensions over Ascendant's Junin project, a copper-molybdenum mine in an ecologically sensitive region of northwestern Ecuador, have been running high in recent months.
Now Polivio Perez, head of the Community Development Council in Garcia Moreno Parish, near the mine site, has been offered police protection after reporting a series of threats.
Another mine opponent, Mercy Torres, says she was beaten at her home earlier this month. She reportedly received death threats two months earlier.
A team from Amnesty International who visited the area in November recorded reports of "intimidation, harassment and attacks" against opponents of the mine.
But Francisco Ventimilla, general manger of the Junin project, says "there is no proof" to back the allegations, adding the charges are part of a smear campaign against the company.
Tension over the project exploded in December when a consulting firm hired by Ascendant broke through community roadblocks with the help of armed paramilitaries. The incident led to hostage-takings on both sides.
"We cut relations with that company in January ... (because) they didn't have the company's permission" to bring in armed guards, says Mr. Ventimilla.
"We have a very strict policy about the use of weapons and aggression in the field." The allegations are just the latest in a series of setbacks the project has suffered in recent days.
Earlier this week, Ecuador's Ministry of Energy and Mines ordered Ascendant to stop its community-relations work, saying it was "intended to divide the community." "The ministry doesn't have the right to control our corporate-social responsibility policies," says Mr. Ventimilla, arguing that company policies are separate from formal community-relations programs, which are part of an official agreement through the environmental-assessment process.
The company provides services such as medical, educational and agricultural-training programs -- all of them part of the company's internal policy, he says.
Previous community-development projects have been plagued by problems, however. In 2005, a local development group funded by the company was headed by a former general who, along with some of his bodyguards, was accused of issuing death threats and even shooting at mine opponents. Ascendant eventually fired him and other staff and the group later folded.
Ecuador's anti-corruption watchdog also urged the government to investigate alleged irregularities in the Ascendant land deals, saying speculators snapped up 18 properties earmarked for use as farmland, and sold them within weeks to the mine at prices 40 to 50 times higher than they had paid.
