Portrait of Dora Alicia, campaigning against Golden Mine, shot dead 26th December
On 26th December 2009 member of the Cabañas Environmental Committee in El Salvador, actively opposing the re-opening of a Gold Mine in the community, Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto was shot dead. She was eight months pregnant. Her two years old son was also wounded in the attack.
Cabañas Environmental Committee is a grassroots organisation struggling against Canadian Company Pacific Rim. Peasant farmers from this northern Salvadoran province fear that mining operations planned for the region will consume 30,000 litres of water a day, drawn from the same sources that currently provide local residents with water only once a week.
Environmentalists and experts have also warned that if the operations that are now awaiting legal permission actually begin, the cyanide that would be used by the Canadian mining company Pacific Rim to extract gold and silver could contaminate the area’s groundwater and soil.
Until 2006 the company invested 28 million dollars to uncover deposits of at least 1.2 million ounces of gold and 7.4 million ounces of silver. An environmental advisor to Pacific Rim estimated that at current world prices, each ounce of gold could fetch 700 dollars.
The company maintains that it would create 2,000 direct and indirect jobs and would pay the Salvadoran government at least three percent in taxes on its gross sales.
Since June 2009 three anti-mining activists have been shot dead: Vice President of the Cabañas Environmental Committee, Ramiro Rivera Gomez, Gustavo Marcelo Rivera Moreno, who had been tortured and killed, and the last victim, Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto.
Many other members of the community have received death threats, including youth workers and journalists for the local community radio station. Also el Salvador’s Human Rights Ombudsman, Oscar Luna has been receiving death threats.
The Vancouver-based corporation remains, according to the activists, impassive, insensitive and wholly unaccountable for violence perpetrated against community members who’ve actively opposed the mine.
More information:
http://www.cispes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=659&Itemid=1
