Barrick Gold - Canada's Shame: Protest Barrick at their Annual General Meeting this Wednesday!

Subject: THEE once-in-a-year opportunity to PROTEST BARRICK

Affected Indigenous communities from Papua New Guinea and Chile are coming to Toronto to give Peter Munk a piece of their mind. Come out and support them! Rally at the annual general meeting of Barrick Gold on Wed. April 29th.

WHAT: Barrick Gold Annual General Meeting Protest!
WHEN: Wednesday, April 29th: Start gathering 9am (the meeting starts at 10am and we want to hand the shareholders information on their way in!)
WHERE: Toronto Metro Convention Center, 255 Front Street

Backstory on the Indigenous Representatives:

Jethro Tulin

Native to the rocky highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG), Jethro Tulin is a popular organiser and founder of the Akali Tange Association (ATA), a human rights organization documenting abuses at the Porgera mine, owned by Toronto’s Barrick Gold.

Jethro has been organizing within and outside the Barrick's Porgera mine since its inception (then owned by Placer Dome. In 1989, he registered Porgera’s first mine workers union and became its first secretary. Years later, after spending time abroad and involved in other aspects of Papua New Guinea’s nascent union movement, Jethro returned to Porgera to find the situation with the mine and the surrounding villages had worsened dramatically. So, in 2003, he founded the ATA, which has operated in Porgera with an all-volunteer staff and material support from friends, victims’ relatives, and even local businessmen and officials.

Jethro will be accompanied by Mark Ekepa and Anga Atalu, chairman and secretary of the Porgera Landowners Association to advocate for the resettlement of communities surrounding Barrick's Porgera mine.

here's a good youtube clip of Jethro speaking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUY-ift-6ts

Sergio Campusano is the President of the Diaguita Huascoaltinos Indigenous and Agricultural Community. Since he assumed the role of president, Sergio has been fighting against the greed of the mining corporations and the local agriculture companies in order to maintain the rights of his people. He has participated pressing charges in countless times even against the Chilean State and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. He's conscious they're fighting not only to represent the living, but also the ancestral thought of preservation of the ecosystem for the entire world, for the children of us all. In this clear idea is impregnated the principles of AUTO-DESTINY, AUTONOMY, and the right of the indigenous peoples of AUTODETERMINATION.

He will be accompanied by Albadina Carmona Villegas, an elder of his community.

When asked why he appointed Brian Mulroney to his board, Peter Munk,chairman and founder of Barrick Gold, told Peter C. Newman: "He has great contacts. He knows every dictator in the world on a first name basis."
--
website:protestbarrick.net

"Canada does not yet have laws to ensure that the activities of Canadian mining companies in developing countries conform to human rights standards, including the rights of workers and of indigenous peoples."

– Canada's Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. June 2005

"Canadian mining companies are taking advantage of [inadequate and poorly enforced regulatory controls] to expand into all corners of the globe, manipulating, slandering, abusing, and even killing those who dare to oppose them, displacing Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities alike, supporting repressive governments and taking advantage of weak ones, and contaminating and destroying sensitive
ecosystems."

– Jamie Kneen, MiningWatch Canada. November 2006