Victims of Gang-Rape in Guatemala Announce Lawsuit Against Canadian Mining Company

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Marketwire - Morningstar

Victims of Gang-Rape in Guatemala Announce Lawsuit Against Canadian Mining Company
03-28-2011 | 01:30

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - March 28, 2011) - Rosa Elbira Coc Ich and ten other indigenous Mayan Q'eqchi' women filed a lawsuit today against Canadian mining companies HMI Nickel, and its corporate owner, HudBay Minerals, regarding mining-related gang-rapes suffered by them near a Canadian owned mining site in El Estor, Guatemala.

On January 17, 2007, the eleven plaintiffs were gang-raped by mining company security personnel, police and military during the forceful expulsion of Mayan Q'eqchi' families from their farms and homes in the community of "Lote Ocho". These armed evictions were sought by HMI Nickel in relation to its Fenix mining project, located in eastern Guatemala. The plaintiffs have said that, at the time of the attacks, some of their assailants wore uniforms bearing the initials and logo of HMI Nickel's Guatemalan subsidiary, Compania Guatemalteca de Niquel.

The lawsuit, filed in HudBay and HMI Nickel's home jurisdiction of Ontario, claims $11 million in general damages and $44 million in punitive damages.

HMI Nickel was previously known as Skye Resources. All shares of HMI Nickel were purchased by HudBay Minerals in 2008. HMI is currently a wholly-owned and controlled subsidiary of HudBay Minerals. HudBay Minerals did not own HMI Nickel at the time of the assaults.

Read more: http://cawidgets.morningstar.ca/ArticleTemplate/ArticleGL.aspx?s=Acquire&r=201103281330CCNMATHWCANADAPR_0685300001&culture=en-CA&head=off&ads=off

[Judi Lynn]

1. Same country, same company, same situation, letter written last year:

Formal Human Rights Complaint to Canadian Government: Canadian Nickel Company Linked to Serious Human Rights Violations - including Gang Rapes - in Guatemala

To: Mr. Lawrence Cannon
Minister of Foreign Affairs
509-S Centre Block,
House of Commons,
Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6, Canada
[e-mail]

5 July, 2010

Dear Minister Cannon,

~snip~
These human rights violations were committed by the Guatemalan army and police, and private security guards in the direct employ of the Canadian mining company HudBay Minerals Inc., formerly known as Skye Resources, and its subsidiary, Compañía Guatemalteca de Níquel (CGN).

On May 19, 2010, 11 Canadian delegates (signatories as noted below) collected the testimonies of "Lote 8" community members and accounted for the following human rights violations. The community allowed the UNBC students and Rights Action, a Canadian-American NGO with years of work in Guatemala, to collect their testimonies upon our arrival. It must be understood that the community indicated to us that these testimonies were one of the first public recounting of their shared experiences.

JANUARY 9TH 2007 - Hundreds of police/military soldiers/Skye Resources private security agents (who arrived in at least 80 pickup trucks, 2 commando trucks of military soldiers, and 3 private CGN trucks of private security) entered the remote community of Lote 8 in 85 vehicles with the intent of illegally and forcibly evicting the inhabitants. Community members were given 5 minutes to retrieve belongings and offered 300 Quetzales to destroy their own homes. Upon peaceful refusal, police/military soldiers and Skye Resources private security forces started shooting teargas, robbed homes, and set residences on fire with gasoline. In total 100 homes were destroyed. The villagers-from Grandparents to newborns-were forced to flee into the forests. All of their belongings, including clothes, bedding, food, cooking implements, etc, were either destroyed or stolen. With absolutely nowhere to go, the 100 families of Lote 8 spent the next week re-building minimal shelter, while scrounging for food and trying to recover some of the subsistence crops. During this week, Skye Resources helicopters regularly flew over their remote community.

JANUARY 17TH 2007 - Hundreds of police/military soldiers/Skye Resources private security agents again returned to the community to illegally and forcibly evict the community while male residents were away from Lote 8. They carried out the same plan of destruction as on January 9th. Moreover, members of the police/ military soldiers/ Skye Resources private security gang-raped female community members. At least two of the victims were pregnant at the time, and lost their babies due to the rapes and brutality.

More:
http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=10247

[Judi Lynn]

4. Reminder of the assassination of one of their leaders by security from the same company.

LAWSUIT IN CANADA AGAINST MINING COMPANY RELATING TO KILLING OF MAYAN LEADER

For immediate release: December 1, 2010

Toronto, Canada and Guatemala City, Guatemala.

Angelica Choc and her lawyers announced today a lawsuit against Canadian mining company HudBay Minerals Inc. relating to the killing of her husband, Adolfo Ich Chamán.

On September 27, 2009, Adolfo Ich, a respected Mayan Q'eqchi' (Kek-chi, phonetically) community leader and an outspoken critic of environmental and health harms and other human rights violations caused by mining activities in his community, was hacked and shot to death by security forces employed at HudBay Minerals' "Fenix" Mining Project in an unprovoked attack near the town of El Estor, Guatemala.

Adolfo's widow has brought a lawsuit in Ontario courts to seek accountability for his death. The lawsuit claims $2 million in general damages and $10 million in punitive damages and is brought against Canadian companies HudBay Minerals Inc. and HMI Nickel Inc., as well as their Guatemalan subsidiary, Compañía Guatemalteca de Níquel ("CGN").

Adolfo's murder was brutal. Mining security forces recognized Adolfo as a community leader, surrounded him, beat him and hacked at him with machetes before shooting him in the head at close range.

More:
http://breakingthesilencenet.blogspot.com/2010/12/choc-v-hudbay-minerals.html

http://4.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_SvEBaUNrt8M/TKU5n26FvZI/AAAAAAAAAaE/mSwaURIbXAU/s400/01.jpg

Adolfo Ich sits in the center.
Canadians for Mining Awareness
Written by Natalie Guttormsson

Thursday, 27 January 2011 18:37

On December 2, 2010, Klippensteins, Barristers & Solicitors, a small progressive law firm in Toronto, launched a lawsuit against HudBay Minerals Inc. and its two subsidiaries, HMI Nickel Inc. and Compañía Guatemalteca de Níquel S.A., on behalf of Angelica Choc. Choc is a Guatemalan woman seeking accountability by the company for the murder of her husband, Adolfo Ich Chamán, a respected indigenous Mayan Q’eqchi’ leader in his community of El Astor, Guatemala. He was a well-known critic of the Fenix Mining Project, located near his community, for the rights violations committed by the company. He was murdered on September 27, 2009 by security forces working for HudBay Minerals at the Fenix Mining Project. That day had seen a series of protests by community members sparked by a fear of mass, forced, violent evictions by the company. Adolfo left his house on that afternoon , unarmed, to find out what was going on in his community. Witnesses say the security guards saw him, appeared to recognize him and invited him over to speak but instead surrounded him and hacked at him with machetes before shooting him in the head at close range. He died shortly after.

HudBay Minerals Inc. is a Canadian company based out of Toronto with assets in North and Central America. Their ownership of the Fenix nickel mine is through their subsidiary: Compañía Guatemalteca de Niquel (CGN). The company statement is that the security personnel acted with restraint and in self-defence only on that day, which they describe as being a violent protest. The company statement says that Adolfo “died as a result of wounds sustained that day” but that they were certain that no security personnel were involved. This argument becomes hearsay as to which witnesses are more credible, the community of protesters or the company personnel.

The root of the conflict in which Adolfo’s life was tragically claimed goes back into Guatemala’s history, which the HudBay Minerals Inc. statement and website completely ignores. Their acknowledgement of the reason for protests extends only to say that the company has struggled to evict what they call illegal squatters from the land owned by the company. The land in question was land from which hundreds of Mayan Q’eqchi’ people were violently displaced during the bloody civil war in Guatemala which lasted thirty-six years, from approximately 1960 to 1996. The Mayan Q’eqchi’ people were also the victims of targeted genocide, as declared by the United Nations, during this period of conflict. During this period of conflict, HMI Nickel, then known as Skye Resources, was given part of the land in question by the military dictatorship in place at the time. Since 2006, there has been a movement by the Mayan Q’eqchi’ people to reclaim the land that was unjustly taken from them. They have done this by occupying the land, which HudBay refers to as an illegal occupation. Shortly after the police, military, and private security forces forced those occupying the land to leave by burning their houses to the ground, firing gunshots, looting what possessions were left behind in the flight, and in one community, also gang-raping several women.

http://www.trentarthur.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2299:canadians-for-mining-awareness&catid=24&Itemid=48

[MedicalAdmin]

2. Well. I'm nauseated.

I hope the Canadian courts do the right thing.

[Catherina]

3. Rec'd. North America, stay within your own borders please. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

5. The company is determined to get away with it. They have been burning down villages

murdering leaders, killing, raping Q'eqchi’ Maya for years.

The Canadian Press assisted forming perception toward the Q'eqchi’ Maya women by showing a photo of city people, who live
Hudson Bay is determined to get away with it. They have been burning down villages,

light years in circumstances from their peers living in their homes far away in the countryside on ancestral land the mining company has taken.

http://www.aktenamit.org.nyud.net:8090/about_us/images/about-1.jpg http://2.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_1E42fbJdzZ4/R0us_6MR0LI/AAAAAAAAAfM/twoSRzNFU_U/s400/mnprt3.jpg

http://www.schnoorversuscanada.ca.nyud.net:8090/burning-house.jpg

Judge Rules that Canadian Ambassador Slandered Documentary Video Maker
Both Ambassador and the Canadian Government are ordered to pay almost $10,000.00 in damages and costs

Toronto: On June 16, 2010 an Ontario judge ruled that former Canadian Ambassador to Guatemala, Kenneth Cook, slandered Ph.D. student and videographer Steven Schnoor by making false statements about a documentary video that Schnoor made that was critical of the practices of a Canadian mining company.

In January 2007, Schnoor made a short documentary depicting the violent eviction of Mayan subsistence farmers from their homes in rural Guatemala at the behest of a Canadian mining company. This documentary includes footage of a woman who protests loudly about the evictions. It also includes a number of still photographs, including one of a community member in despair with his head in his hand.

Justice Pamela Thomson has ruled that in a meeting conducted at the Canadian Embassy in Guatemala City in February 2007, Ambassador Cook said that the woman in the documentary was paid to act in the video and that the photograph of the man in despair was not taken at the evictions, but was a stock photograph that had been used before.

~snip~
Ambassador Cook’s slanderous attack appears to be an example of the Government of Canada’s disturbing and ongoing practice of providing extensive support for Canadian mining companies even in the face of serious human rights abuses and social and environmental harms caused by these companies (for other examples, see here and here). It is also an example of Canada’s continuing troubling relationship with the region dating back to the beginnings of Guatemala’s bloody civil war (for more information see this detailed timeline of Canada’s involvement in Guatemala and El Estor).

More:
http://www.schnoorversuscanada.ca/

[freshwest]

6. Whatever they're selling us that's being produced from these mines, it's not worth it!

[Judi Lynn]

7. Related area, another business brutalizing Guatemalan citizens.

Rights Action - March 21, 2011
Guatemala Repression & Impunity Watch
POLOCHIC VALLEY, BIOFUELS RELATED Violent Evictions - #2

BELOW: a background article by Annie Bird, about the context in which these violent, illegal evictions are taking place in the Polochic Valley.

On March 15, 16 and 17, thousands of Mayan Qeqchi villagers were violently evicted from 14 communities, to make way for 'for export' agribusiness initiatives, particularly production of sugar cane and African palm trees aimed at biofuel promotion.

One man was killed during the evictions and at least five people injured.

http://ih.constantcontact.com.nyud.net:8090/fs061/1103480765269/img/61.jpg

http://ih.constantcontact.com.nyud.net:8090/fs061/1103480765269/img/62.jpg
On March 20th, a man who returned to his fields in the community of Los Recuerdos, hoping to recover some of his survival corn and bean crops, was shot three times by security guards when they found him harvesting.

Today, thousands are living on the roadsides, in the Polochic Valley, in the rain - no shelter, no where to go, no food.

More:
http://www.rightsaction.org/articles/Guatemala_evictions_PolochicV_032111.html