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記事

2022年7月28日

著者:
Prensa Comunitaria,
著者:
Sierra Nevada Ally

Guatemala: US congressmen call for withdrawal of diplomatic support for mining company Kappes over human rights allegations against it

"KCA, a Reno Nevada based mining company, suspended gold mine in Guatemala", 26 July 2022

...Nevada-based Kappes, Cassiday & Associates (KCA) filed an international arbitration suit against the Guatemala government...The...response, however, was surprising. The same Guatemalan government that has been more than happy to force unwanted mining projects on a population ready and willing to defend their water and territory, adopted the community’s message: KCA’s mine is illegal, illegitimate, and should never have operated at all. 

To defend itself against the arbitration brought by KCA under the terms of the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), the Guatemalan government turned to local communities organized as the Peaceful Resistance La Puya for information...

KCA filed the suit in 2018 after a court decision in late 2015 led to the suspension of its gold mine for lack of prior consultation with the affected communities. The company argues that it has been treated unfairly and that the government did not do enough to repress La Puya. 

...[T]he Guatemalan government argues...that KCA’s Environmental Impact Assessment was so incomplete and deficient that “it should not have been approved;” that the company violated around 50% of its environmental obligations, and that it lacked the necessary municipal construction license operating illegally from the start. 

...[L]ocals feel latent tension that the imminent consultation process or the arbitration suit could revive earlier threats, violence, and legal persecution from company employees and contractors...

Stalwart participants at La Puya recently shared these concerns during the visit of a delegation of U.S. Congressional members in late March as part of a fact-finding mission to Central America...

As twelve (12) members of Congress outlined in the following letter sent this week to Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, “The government’s brief includes how the company’s investment in the mine increased after the community set up its permanent resistance camp, and how the company, coordinating with national police, used aggression and threats in its successive attempts to dismantle community resistance”...