Reply #2: This is not a business that's going green. [View All]

[noamnety]

The concepts of going green and mining gold are incompatible.

The industry itself is environmentally unfriendly by definition, and in reality a pit of human rights abuses.

The lure of gold has fuelled massive human rights atrocities in the northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Human Rights Watch said in a new report published today. Local warlords and international companies are among those benefiting from access to gold rich areas while local people suffer from ethnic slaughter, torture and rape.

... The gold concessions of northeastern Congo, some of the richest in Africa, could help to rebuild Congo’s shattered economy. But according to Human Rights Watch researchers, fighting between armed groups for the control of the gold mining town of Mongbwalu cost the lives of at least two thousand civilians between June 2002 and September 2004. One miner told Human Rights Watch: “We are cursed because of our gold. All we do is suffer. There is no benefit to us.”

http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/06/02/congo11041.htm