OUTRAGED over the issuance of a clearance permit to a mining company to operate in Mindoro, anti-mining advocates from the island province are poised to go on hunger strike next week to express their protest.
Fr. Edwin Gariguez of Alyansa Laban sa Mina (ALAMIN) and Mangyan Mission said volunteers from their group are leading the hunger strike on November 17 in front of the office of Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Manila.
The hunger strikers will be joined in their peaceful protest by representatives from the Local government units of two Mindoro provinces on Nov. 17.
Representatives from the Church led by Calapan Bishop Warlito Cajandig and San Jose Bishop Antonio Palang together with CBCP-NASSA Chairman and Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo will say Mass for the strikers on Nov. 18.
‘Betrayal of public trust’
In a statement, Gariguez’ group lambasted the move of DENR to grant permit to the mining company saying that the action was a “brazen act of betrayal of public trust.”
“The issuance of the ECC is an outright insult to the people of Mindoro who have continually expressed their vehement and overwhelming opposition to the project as articulated in the Mining Moratorium of Oriental Mindoro and Municipality of Sablayan, in volumes of Sangguniang Bayan Resolutions, Position papers of sectoral and civil society organizations, indigenous peoples, farmers, fisherfolks and the Church,” the statement read.
Supported by the local Church and local government units of Mindoro province the protest activity is meant to pressure DENR secretary Joselito Atienza to revoke the environmental compliance certificate (ECC) issued to Intex Resources.
Intex Resources Philippines, a division of Intex Resources ASA of Norway, has been granted an ECC by DENR last October 14, 2009 to operate the Mindoro Nickel project that will extract and process nickel laterite ore and its by-products, such as chromite, cobalt, zinc, sulfide and ammonium sulfate.
The issuance of permit led the people of Mindoro to howl in protest saying it violated an existing ordinance that calls for a 25-year large-scale mining moratorium in the province.
“Instead of coming to rescue our fragile ecology, the DENR shamelessly pursued the national policy agenda of the Arroyo government to promote mining industry, with utter disregard to the risks posed by the destruction of Mindoro’s critical watershed through the risky large-scale, strip mining operation of Intex Resources ASA,” the statement further read.
The mining site lies in a critical watershed area which supplies irrigation water for Mindoro’s rice fields.
Gariguez said that aside from poisoning of water source and destruction of environment, mining will also displace the Mangyan communities living within the area.
The protest activity initially set from Nov. 17-19 may go on indefinitely until the ECC is withdrawn, according to a statement released by the group.
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