Death Threats in El Salvador as Mining Company Asserts Corporate "Rights"

[Judi Lynn]

Death Threats in El Salvador as Mining Company Asserts Corporate "Rights"
Submitted by Brendan Fischer on May 14, 2011 - 8:26am

While a transnational corporation asserts its "right" to extract gold from El Salvador under the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a grassroots anti-mining movement fights for self-determination and its leaders are turning up dead. In recent weeks, death threats have also been sent to radio journalists at Radio Victoria, the sister radio station to Madison, Wisconsin's WORT-FM.

For almost ten years, the Canadian mining company Pacific Rim has been seeking to exploit El Salvador's gold resources. The corporation has encountered a surprising level of grassroots and political opposition as Salvadorans recognize the risks that cyanide-dependent gold mining pose to the environment and public health. Located near Pacific Rim's proposed mine, Radio Victoria has given voice to the anti-mining struggle in its reporting on community issues.

During the early hours of Saturday April 30, 2011, a note was slipped under Radio Victoria´s front entrance threatening the lives of three employees. On the evening of May 2nd, threats were sent to two Radio Victoria journalists via text messages, including threats to one journalist's three-year-old daughter. Journalists also reported intimidation in the form of late night visits to their homes, many of which are located in very isolated and vulnerable rural areas. More threats were sent after a May 4 press conference. Update: on May 16, another set of threats was texted to a Radio Victoria reporter and a truck full of men visited his rural community and inquired into his whereabouts.

"This is not the first time Radio Victoria journalists have been threatened, and it probably won't be the last time," says Norm Stockwell, Operations Director for Madison, Wisconsin's WORT-FM, the sister station to Radio Victoria. "Radio Victoria journalists have won multiple awards for their coverage, both in El Salvador and from international bodies," he says, but have also faced years of intimidation and sabotage. The death threats last intensified in 2009, the same year three anti-mining leaders were murdered, and just after Pacific Rim initiated its CAFTA suit.

More:
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/05/10748/death-threats-el-salvador-mining-company-asserts-corporate-rights