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[ This article was printed from Sundaytimes.co.za - home of the Sunday Times, South Africa. ] |
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The Curse of Gold
(full text at: www.hrw.org/reports/2005/drc0505/
the section on Uganda is: www.hrw.org/reports/2005/drc0505/11.htm#_Toc102992174)
Thursday June 02, 2005 11:37 - (SA)
By Justin Brown
The lure of gold has fuelled massive human rights atrocities in the north-eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Human Rights Watch (HRW) alleges in a new repo
rt -
"The Curse of Gold".
The 159-page report, illustrates the trail of tainted gold from the DRC to neighbouring Uganda from where it is sent to global gold markets in Europe and elsewhere.
The report documents how a leading Swiss gold refining company, Metalor Technologies, previously bought gold from Uganda.
Millions of dollars worth of gold are smuggled out of Congo each year, some of it destined for Switzerland.
Metalor Technologies bought gold from Uganda. Asked about these purchases by HRW on April 21, 2005, Metalor stated it believed "the gold...was of legal origin."
But since Uganda has almost no gold reserves of its own, a significant amount of the gold purchased by the company was almost certainly mined in Congo.
In its public statement of May 20, 2005, Metalor said it would not accept any further deliveries from Uganda until the company could clarify Uganda's position and statistics on gold production and export.
"We hope other companies will follow the lead set by Metalor," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher on DRC at HRW.
The gold concessions of north-eastern Congo, some of the richest in Africa, could help to rebuild Congo's shattered economy.
But, according to HRW researchers, fighting between armed groups for the control of the gold mining town of Mongbwalu cost the lives of at least 2,000 civilians
between June 2002 and September 2004.
One miner told HRW: "We are cursed because of our gold. All we do is suffer. There is no benefit to us."
Throughout the conflict, artisanal mining has continued.
"The
problems we have documented are not unique to Congo, nor to one international company. Rules governing corporate behaviour must be enforced, otherwise they are meaningless," the report said.
In August 2003, a group of United Nations (UN) experts adopted a set of draft human rights business standards, known as the UN Norms, which signalled a growing consensus on the need for standards on corporate responsibility, but they have not yet been widely implemented by companies.
The international community has also failed to effectively tackle the link between resources exploitation and conflict in the DRC, choosing to ignore previous UN reports that highlighted the issue.
North-eastern Congo has been one of the worst hit areas during Congo's devastating five-year war.
Competing armed groups carried out ethnic massacres, rape and torture in this mineral-rich corner of Congo.
A local conflict between Hema and Lendu ethnic groups allied with national rebel groups and foreign backers, including Uganda and Rwanda, has claimed over 60,000 lives since 1999, according to United Nations estimates.
These losses are just one part of an estimated four million civilians dead throughout the Congo, a toll that makes this war more deadly to civilians than any other since World War II.
"Efforts to make peace in Congo risk failure unless the issue of natural resource exploitation and its link to human rights abuses are put at the top of the agenda," said Van Woudenberg.
"Congolese citizens deserve to benefit from their gold resources, not be cursed by them," she added.
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