Continental Minerals Partners with Murderers
A Reuters article on the Nangpa Pass shooting is comprehensive in its rejection of China’s provably false assertions that their border forces opened fire on a group of seventy Tibetan refugees after the Tibetans attacked the troops.
But [China] defended the shooting, saying the group was trying to cross the border illegally and attacked the soldiers when they tried to persuade the group to return home.
The video shows no such confrontation, and the London-based International Campaign for Tibet, which said a Tibetan nun was killed in the incident, rejected China’s defense.
What comes next, though, is a remarkable revelation into mining operations going on inside Tibet without the consent of the local Tibetan population. The unnamed Reuters reporter breaks the news that a group of Tibetan villagers held a demonstration outside of Continental Mineral Corp’s site at Shethongmon, near Shigatse, an action that resulted in Continental temporarily halting work on the project.
In another sign of unrest in the isolated region, a group of Tibetans forced the delay of a Canadian mining company’s operations, angered over test-drilling.
Vancouver-based Continental Minerals Corp. said it was drilling near a village about 3 km (2 miles) from the main area of operations for its Xietongmen copper-gold project, near the Tibet city of Shigatse, on June 19 when residents raised concerns.
But it denied reports from a Tibet independence group that a serious confrontation occurred.
“We delayed work in this particular area until the concerns had been addressed to the satisfaction of all the local community and then the activities resumed,” Shari Gardiner, a spokeswoman for Continental, wrote in an e-mail response to Reuters.
“Work in our main area of operations continued as normal throughout this period,” she said. “At no time did the villagers ask us to leave Tibet.”
…
Students for a Free Tibet called on the company to withdraw from the region.“This incident again demonstrates that Canadian and other mining firms have no business in Tibet until the Tibetan people are in a position to decide the use of their own natural resources,” the group’s executive director, Lhadon Tethong, said in a statement.
This is the first time that we know of any media outlets reporting this demonstration. We have received information that directly contradicts the words of Continental mouthpiece Gardiner. On June 19th a group of about thirty Tibetans from Shegthongmon went to Continental’s mining site and demanded that the company close shop and leave Tibet. The protest lasted a number of hours and the Tibetans were unequivocal in their demands for the mining to stop.
What is remarkable about this story breaking in this manner is that the unnamed Reuters reporter used information already acquired, but not yet reported, on a daring protest by the Tibetan villagers in connection with the story of China’s illegal shooting of at least two Tibetan refugees at Nangpa La. The connection between the stories is based on the common rejection of China’s occupation of Tibet by Tibetans. On the one hand, Tibetans risk their lives to find freedom by escaping from Tibet; sometimes this escape is stopped by Chinese guns. On the other hand, Tibetans demand control over their land and their resources and they will not allow their communities to be destroyed and exploited by invasive mining projects that only benefit China and these western corporations. Their protest is an exertion of their desire for control over their land and their lives.
Tibetans deserve the right to determine how their resources are used and by what means. Tibetans in Shegthongmon do not approve of Continental Mineral’s mining for gold and copper and they have said so in the clearest possible terms. Continental has instead rejected the wishes of the local Tibetan population and continued its partnership with murderers of Tibetans.
Is there a point at which Continental will act with an iota of moral standing? Will Continental listen to the local people and discontinue their project? Will Continental act responsibly and disavow their brand and their shareholders from their association with murderers?
You can learn more about SFT’s campaigns against mining inside Tibet at StopMiningTibet.com. Here are links to two SFT press releases for protests targeting HDI/Continental and other Canadian mining firms for the exploitative work inside Tibet.
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[...] Tibet’s resources are going to make (and in fact already are making) millions of Chinese settlers rich. Tibetan resources are going to fuel the Chinese economy, yet Tibetans will not be benefiting from this boom. They have no control over how the resources are extracted and what infrastructure will be put in place to grow the Tibetan economy for Tibetans. In fact, this past June Tibetans living near Continental Minerals mine in Shegthongmon held a protest and demanded that the mine be shut down and the Canadian company leave Tibet for good. The new copper reserves are no less substantial. A 250-mile seam of the metal has been found along Tibet’s environmentally cherished Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge. One mine there called Yulong, already described as the second-largest reserve in China, is now estimated to hold as much as 18 million tons according to the government news site Xinhua and could soon become the largest copper mine in the country, helping to feed China’s hyper-charged metabolism for the metal used for electrical wiring and generation. … While transportation development continues – a fresh set of satellite images on Google shows a large increase in road construction branching off the new railway route – education and health care spending in Tibet continue to lag far behind the rest of China, provoking the ire of human rights advocates. [...]
[...] Tibet’s resources are going to make (and in fact already are making) millions of Chinese settlers rich. Tibetan resources are going to fuel the Chinese economy, yet Tibetans will not be benefiting from this boom. They have no control over how the resources are extracted and what infrastructure will be put in place to grow the Tibetan economy for Tibetans. In fact, this past June Tibetans living near Continental Minerals mine in Shegthongmon held a protest and demanded that the mine be shut down and the Canadian company leave Tibet for good. The new copper reserves are no less substantial. A 250-mile seam of the metal has been found along Tibet’s environmentally cherished Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge. One mine there called Yulong, already described as the second-largest reserve in China, is now estimated to hold as much as 18 million tons according to the government news site Xinhua and could soon become the largest copper mine in the country, helping to feed China’s hyper-charged metabolism for the metal used for electrical wiring and generation. … While transportation development continues – a fresh set of satellite images on Google shows a large increase in road construction branching off the new railway route – education and health care spending in Tibet continue to lag far behind the rest of China, provoking the ire of human rights advocates. [...]
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