amccombs@mail.wiscnet.net (Alice McCombs) wrote:

Mining is almost synonymous with human rights violations against Native and Indigenous communities:

• In Brazil, the Instituto Sociambiental (ISA) struggles to keep the Brazilian government from taking away more Indian land for logging, ranching, and mining.
• Indigenous villagers have been tortured and killed for resisting pollution of their rivers and hunting grounds by PT Freeport in Indonesia.
• The Dene in Saskatchewan and Inuit Tapirisat in Ottawa have to cope with health and environmental problems from uranium mining.
• Mining, logging, and bioprospecting threaten the lands of the Bribri and Cabecar peoples in Costa Rica.
• Exxon and Rio Algom propose a mine for Wisconsin that could pollute the water where the Mole Lake Indian Tribe grows their wild rice.

The list is endless.

People who oppose unsafe mining know multinational mining corporations violate the human rights of Native and Indigenous peoples.

But specifically which rights? Which corporations? Which projects? When?

December 10, 1995 is Human Rights Day, the 47th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To honor the memories of those who have suffered and died because of unsafe mining and to help ensure a future for the world's children, mining-exchange is:

1. Collecting a list of violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, clause by clause, that mining corporations past, present, and planned have committed.

2. Composing a letter suggesting the addition of an article to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that makes environmental security for every human being a human right.

If you would like to contribute, send a list of human rights violations by mining companies identified by the article of the Declaration to mining-exchange@igc.apc.org or the FAX/address at end of this email. Please include documentation or citations of documentation with your list.

Example of a violation:

Article 3 - Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of person.

Violation: Because Crass Mining Company makes up 80% of Sad Country's economy, the company has great influence on the military in Sad City. For the past xx years, the military has tortured or killed anyone who protests the daily dumps of toxic waste by Crass Mining Company.

Citation: "Unscrupulous Mining Practices." Environmental Activism. Vol. now, No. infinite. Any Date. Anywhere, Earth: Honest Publishing Co, every year.

If people want to send in their versions of an environmental security article patterned on the other Declaration's articles, that would be great.

Example: Include an additional article along with the thirty existing items ....

Article 31 - All human beings have the right to clean air, clean water, and unpolluted soil.

Mining-exchange will collect your responses and publish them, one year from today, on December 10, 1996. Included below for your convenience is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Read it, copy it, share it, put it up on a wall somewhere. It's an amazing document.

Mining-exchange is an international email listserv dedicated to helping people who resist unsafe mining in their neighborhoods share information about their strategies, mining, and mining corporations.

To subscribe to Mining-exchange: send an email message to: majordomo@igc.apc.org with message:
subscribe mining-exchange

Mining-exchange welcomes information about mining for publication in EarthWINS Daily, the mining-exchange newsletter. If you subscribe to mining-exchange, send email information to: mining-exchange@igc.apc.org

If you are not a subscriber or have non-email information to contribute, please send it to Alice McCombs, at the FAX/address below. Thank you! Mining-exchange comes to you courtesy of Institute for Global Communications (IGC), the home of Econet, PeaceNet, ConflictNet. For more information about IGC, send email to .

When EarthWINS,
Everybody Wins!

************************************************************
"People have the power to redeem the work of fools." - Patti Smith

For Mother Earth. . .
For Humanity. . .

Alice McCombs
P.O. Box 573
Shawano, WI 54166
FX: 715-524-9958
Email: amccombs@mail.wiscnet.net

PEACE
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Mountain Man's UseNet Archive Human Rights & the Mining Corporations - Institute for Global Communications
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia in the Southern Summer of 1995