Greedy miners and loggers are despoiling a whole nation
The Universe
(February 12, 2006)
There is one glaring piece of evidence that convinces
me that large scale mining in the Philippines benefits mostly the rich
and destroys the environment: a gigantic hole in the ground in Pili, San
Marcelino, Zambales. The rumbling trucks and great jaws of the
earth-eating machines in the exhausted Benguet-Dizon mine are now gone.
Silence reigns. Once a proud and mighty mountain, its valuable
chromate and gold has been extracted, milled and trucked to the coast
and shipped to Japan. The forest has been long cut down, the surrounding
hills are bare and brown. The soil has been washed away and a vast open
pit, like an ugly wound, scars the earth. When Mt. Pinatubo erupted there was nothing to hold
back the landslides and floods. A lake of poisoned water and chemicals
behind a leaky dam threatens disastrous consequences. The looters have the profits safely banked abroad and
the people are just as poor as they were before despite the promises of
prosperity and stability. Now an avalanche of poisonous propaganda has been
unleashed against the Church, environmentalists and the defenders of
people rights. They are being described as anti-people, anti-progress
and creators of poverty and unemployment for their stance against the
irresponsible mining and logging practices of the ruling elite. Have the mining propagandists forgotten the disasters
of the recent past and present? For example, Benguet in Baguio and
Marinduque in Mindanao? The most recent disaster was at Rapu-Rapu, in Alba
province where cyanide spills from mining operations cause massive
environmental damage. The mining moguls say the bishop’s call to repeal the
mining act is sweeping and extreme. Mining, according to these
propagandists, is the hope of the nation, the end of poverty, the wiping
out of national debt. The bishops say it must be repealed. They have a
valid reason. Environmental protections law are circumvented and
sometimes ignored. Violations are rampant. In the village of New San
Juan, Cabangan, Zambales, bulldozers are poised again to get at deposits
of chromate on the ancestral tribal land of the Aeta, without permits. Laws are only as good as the people charged to uphold
them. A corruption riddled government plagued by one scandal after
another cannot be trusted to protect the rights of the poor. History shows that the money earned from mining the
natural heritage flows, not to the poor but to the rich. The Philippine
elite, in cahoots with foreign tycoons, take it all. After years of oil,
gas and mineral extraction, the country is poorer than ever. In this nation of 86 million two per cent of the
population owns or controls 70 per cent of the wealth. Beyond these
wealthy elite are a sliver of middle class and a mass of impoverished
peasants and slum dwellers. So desperate are they to escape the
bitterness of this unjust and impoverished society they swarmed in their
thousands outside a Manila television show last week for a chance to win
a prize and 73 died in the crush. Mining does not even offer a prize to the poor. Under
the present oligarchy, it’s not going to change the grossly unjust
distribution of political power and economic wealth. They who don’t
care, don’t share. If this is what the Bishops are deploring, they are
right. This greed is what must change. [End]
Fr. Shay Cullen is a Columban missionary: PREDA Centre,
Kalaklan, Olongapo City. www.preda.org
