Oxfam has an ongoing letter campaign in support of indigenous communities that border near the Prestea Mine in Southwest Ghana. The US-based company Golden Star Resources recently announced a plan to expand the mine. The plan jeopardizes the communities, and explicitly denies their right to free, prior, and informed consent.

There are also several injustices surrounding the mine which have yet to be adequately addressed, including two cyanide spills in 2004 and 2006, and a violent confrontation in 2005 between community members and security personnel guarding the mine. The guards shot seven people.

To …

Courtesy of Rights Action, here’s a story discussing a reparations plan for Genocide survivors and Mayan-Achi people who were massacred and forcibly evicted from their communities in the 1970s and 1980s - to make way for the Inter-American Development Bank- and World Bank-funded Chixoy hydro-electric dam.

CHIXOY DAM AGREEMENT
By Hugo Alvarado, www.prensalibre.com
Translated by Rosalind M. Gill, for Rights Action

The Government and communities affected by the construction of the Chixoy Dam have signed an agreement to set up a reparations plan. Diego Paz, representative of the OEA, Rafael Espada, Vice-president, and Juan …

Around 100 villagers gathered in front of the German, Austrian and Swiss embassies on Tuesday to protest against the construction of the Ilisu Dam on the River Tigris. Once completed, the controversial project would submerge the ancient town of Hasankeyf (it’s 12,000 years old) along with 200 nearby villages, displacing up to 78,000 people.

The government started to move ahead with the dam in the late 90s, but it was soon met with massive protests which led several companies to withdraw from the project. Nevertheless, the Turkish government remained eager …

Indigenous groups in Costa Rica have reaffirmed their opposition to El Diquis, a hydro-electric project the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) plans to build in the southern province of Puntarenas. The government of Costa Rica recently declared the project a “National interest”.

Ivannia Villalobos explains on her blog that, while El Diquís “was presented publicly by the ICE about two years ago, it’s in fact another version of the so-called ‘Boruca Hydroelectric Project’ which was first proposed in the early 70’s.”

As it’s currently proposed, El Diquis would flood the Traditional …

The Shan Herald reports that the first construction phase of the Tasang Dam is nearing completion. According to a source from the Thai/Burma border, Chinese dam builders have been at the site since last November, and have so far installed about 90% of the dams pillars.

The Tasang is the largest of 4 dams currently planned for the Salween River, in Shan State, Burma. Once the Tasang is operational, thousands of Karen, Karenni, Mon, Shan, Wa, Pa-O, Lahu, Padaung, Akha, Lisu and Palaung - face displacement at …

With the Asian Development Bank preparing to give a $100 million loan and $200 million political risk insurance package to GCM Resources’ open pit coal mine in Phulbari, Bangladesh - the future of the entire local population becomes evermore uncertain.

On the land they’ve live on for generations, many continue asking themselves questions that no one should have to ask: “What will happen to us if we are forced to move from here? What will happen to our livelihoods? I don’t want us to live like this. Our mosques …

Last week, Environmental groups from the Philippines cautioned against the government sending in larger deployments of police and military to protect mining operations such as the one headed by the Australian mining giant Xstrata in Tampakan, Mindanao. The groups warn that doing so “would give rise to even more conflict and human rights violations against mining-affected communities.”

In a statement, Clemente Bautista Jr., National Coordinator of Kalikasan Peoples’ Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE), said “We’re disappointed that the Environment Secretary favors militarization over peace talks and community consent …

December 13th marked the first anniversary of the Kgeikani Kweni’s (First People of the Kalahari) landmark victory in Botswana’s High Court. As relayed in the following video produced shortly after the victory, the court ruled the government’s eviction of the Kgeikani Kweni was ‘unlawful and unconstitutional’, and that they have the right to live, hunt, and gather on their ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

After the court ruling, the government continued to deny their rights. In fact, they stepped up their persecution of those who try to hunt on the reserve. At least 53 Kgeikani Kweni have been …

The farmers of Daechuri and Doduri have long resisted the Korean government’s attempts to force their eviction in order to make way for the expansion of the “Camp Humphreys” (K-6) US Military Base. After years of legal battles, in December 2005, the Central Land Expropriation Committee approved a request for imminent domain acquisition of the two villages, instantly making the farmers criminals trespassing on federal property.

Three months later, the farmers marched to the local government office to declare that Daechuri and Doduri were autonomous from Korea. They renounced …

The Crimean Tatars are Turkic people who inhabited the Crimean peninsula, now a part of Ukraine, for over seven centuries. During World War II, the entire Tatar population was unjustly accused of being Nazi collaborators and deported en masse to Central Asia and other lands in the Soviet Union.

In 1967 a Soviet decree removed the charges against the Tatars, but the government did nothing to facilitate their resettlement or to make reparations for lost lives and confiscated property.

In the early 1990s, the Tatars began to return to their …