PanAust, an Australian-registered miner ultimately owned by the Chinese state-owned Guangdong Rising Assets Management, has proposed building a gold, silver and copper mine on the Frieda river, a tributary to the Sepik.
Chiefs from 28 haus tambarans – “spirit houses” – representing 78,000 people along Papua New Guinea’s remote Sepik river have formally declared they want a proposal for the country’s largest ever mine halted.
Chiefs from 28 haus tambarans – “spirit houses” – representing 78,000 people along Papua New Guinea’s remote Sepik river have formally declared they want a proposal for the country’s largest ever mine halted.
Haus tambarans are the cultural and political hub of villages in the Sepik region. Pre-colonisation their function was analogous to a local parliament, where debates were held and collective decisions taken. But they also play important roles in spiritual and ancestral connection and in rituals and initiations. In an unprecedented move, the 28 haus tambarans issued a collective Supreme Sukundimi Declaration calling for “a total ban on the Frieda river mine”.
It said: “The river is the life of the Sepik and therefore it must be protected at all cost. It is our innate role to guard the river from exploitation and destruction by outsiders. Our future is in peril from this proposed mine and, therefore, we have gathered together as guardians of the river to stand firm as one.”
Peni, from Korogu village on the Sepik River, said the villages felt the need to make the collective declaration – admissible in court – because “they do not trust the government, the police, the army and the outsider who is the owner of the Frieda mine”.
Peni said villages along the Frieda and Sepik rivers would seek to halt the mine through legal and legislative channels but would ultimately defend their ancestral lands.
“There will be an uprising in the Sepik region and lives will be lost. No one will win this uprising. The government of PNG will have blood on their hands.”
The mine would be the largest in PNG’s history, and one of the largest in the world, covering 16,000 hectares, and is forecast to yield gold, silver and copper worth an estimated US$1.5bn a year for more than 30 years.
Campaigner Emmanuel Peni told the Guardian PanAust had not been “honest or transparent” in its consultations with those who live in the Sepik river valley. He said people whose lives and livelihoods depended on the river feared their villages could be permanently damaged or destroyed by the mine, citing the case of Rio Tinto’s Panguna mine, which has left downstream villages with poisoned water, polluted fields and a ruined river valley.
“If the dam collapses it will be catastrophic and destroy the Sepik river and our way of life,” he said. “We need to ensure that the Sepik is protected. It is our identity, our life, and the heartbeat of our culture. A life without the Sepik river as we know it would devastate our communities forever.”
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