Shooting Gold Diggers at Barrick African Mine Coincides With Record Prices
source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-23/shooting-gold-diggers-at-african-mine-seen-amid-rec...
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Barrick Gold Corp.’s North Mara mine near the Tanzanian border with Kenya disgorges millions of pounds of waste rock each week, piled high around communities where almost half the people live on less than 33 cents a day.
Security guards and federal police allegedly have shot and killed people scavenging the gold-laced rocks to sell for small amounts of cash, according to interviews with 28 people, including victims’ relatives, witnesses, local officials and human-rights workers.
“They are not arresting them or taking them to court,” said Machage Bartholomew Machage, a member of the Tarime District Council, the highest local government body. “They are just shooting them.”
At least seven people have been killed in clashes with security forces at the mine in the past two years, according to the 28 people interviewed. In at least four cases, police acknowledged the shootings in contemporaneous press accounts.
The dead include Mwita Werema, a father of four who was killed one day after gold set another record price in October 2009; Chacha Nyamakono, who was one year from becoming the first in his family to complete a basic education; and Daudi Nyagabure, shot in February, who was eager to build a future for his pregnant wife.
Fifteen people were seriously wounded in the same period, according to the Legal and Human Rights Center, a human-rights group in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam, and Machage, who was the district council vice chairman until August.
Toronto-based Barrick and African Barrick Gold Plc, which is 74 percent-owned by the Canadian miner, pay the Tanzanian government for federal police protection at the mine and employ private armed guards, according to company documents.
The violence at North Mara is a brutal dividend of gold prices that have risen almost threefold in the past five years to a record $1,431.25 on Dec. 7.
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/65489136/
Security guards and federal police allegedly have shot and killed people scavenging the gold-laced rocks to sell for small amounts of cash, according to interviews with 28 people, including victims’ relatives, witnesses, local officials and human-rights workers.
“They are not arresting them or taking them to court,” said Machage Bartholomew Machage, a member of the Tarime District Council, the highest local government body. “They are just shooting them.”
At least seven people have been killed in clashes with security forces at the mine in the past two years, according to the 28 people interviewed. In at least four cases, police acknowledged the shootings in contemporaneous press accounts.
The dead include Mwita Werema, a father of four who was killed one day after gold set another record price in October 2009; Chacha Nyamakono, who was one year from becoming the first in his family to complete a basic education; and Daudi Nyagabure, shot in February, who was eager to build a future for his pregnant wife.
Fifteen people were seriously wounded in the same period, according to the Legal and Human Rights Center, a human-rights group in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam, and Machage, who was the district council vice chairman until August.
Toronto-based Barrick and African Barrick Gold Plc, which is 74 percent-owned by the Canadian miner, pay the Tanzanian government for federal police protection at the mine and employ private armed guards, according to company documents.
The violence at North Mara is a brutal dividend of gold prices that have risen almost threefold in the past five years to a record $1,431.25 on Dec. 7.
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/65489136/
