People affected protest against the mining company Belo Sun

Posted on Tue, 01/12/2015 – 15:26

Dozens of families of Volta Grande do Xingu occupied the office and accommodation of the Canadian transnational mining Belo Sun in Itatá and the village’s harbor on November 30. They demand the company’s exit from the region and the return of the manual craft mining activity, which supports local residents and which Belo Sun have hindered.

The resident Francisco “Piauí” denounces that Belo Sun is already buying land since three years ago, however, the transnational has not yet its installation license (LI). With the release of the Operating License (LO) of the Belo Monte Dam, the communities living in the region fear that the License of Belo Sun is going to be released.

According to Valdemir do Nascimento, from the miner’s workers union (COOMGRIF), Belo Sun never sat down to negotiate the list of demands. “At first, when Belo Sun came to the region, the company said it would need to relocate about 500 families, but now, the company doesn’t say anything.

For the resident Ideglam Cunha “these companies only talk and negotiate with the people if we strike, so it is important for us to be organized with the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) to make  Belo Sun and Norte Energia to sit with us and solve these problems. “

According to the resident of the union José Pereira Cunha, “Belo Sun came from Canada to do whatever they want here in the region, and all governments accept it, I wanted to see if it was one of us Brazilians go to mine there in Canada to see if we would not be kicked out from there”.

Due to the mobilization, the Canadian company called the people affected for a meeting on December  14th. Until then, vehicles of Belo Sun will no longer circulate through the site.

The situation of the families is worrying because they are doubly affected by the construction of the largest national dam and further exploration of the open pit gold mining. The region of Volta Grande do Xingu (100 km long) will have its water flow reduced, because its water flow is diverted to the channel that will take the water to the turbines of Belo Monte dam. At this month of December,   75% of the Xingu river flow is already reduced. Belo Sun will benefit from the reduced river flow and the energy generated by Belo Monte for fleecing about 100 tons of gold in the period of 17 years.

 For this, Belo Sun is raising at the stock exchange about $ 300 million to begin the installation and operation of the gold mine. “If  Belo Sun is able to raise these funds, the state Department of Environment and Sustainability of Pará (licensing agency) will release the LI for Belo Sun to start profiting billions and sending profits abroad,” said Jackson , from MAB in the Xingu region.

The militant also explains that this gold exploration process will remove about 80 million tons of rocks and the substance used to separate gold from impurities is cyanide, which is highly destructive. “Families will be living less than a kilometer far from the tailings dam, which will have worst substance than that in theory has been presented at the Samarco dam (Vale/ BHP Billiton) [which ruptured  in Minas Gerais] and the level of risk and damage are larger, of the Amazon’s extreme rainy weather.” Says Jackson.  

For the fisherman and resident of Fazenda da Ilha, Chiquinho, the families can’t stay in the situation they are because “we are doubly affected,” due to the reduced river flow of Xingu caused by the Belo Monte dam and due to that we  live just 800 meter far from where is expected to install the Belo Sun’s  tailing dam.