Public Audience Thwarted For Yanacocha Expansion

Public Audience Thwarted for Yanacocha Expansion

Jaén, Perú (CNR)

21st April 2004

http://www.cnr.org.pe

The public hearing organized by the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM - http://www.minem.gob.pe/) and mining company Yanacocha (http://www.yanacocha.com.pe/) was thwarted by the withdrawal of support of community members of San Ignacio, who consider that the mining company intended to deceive them. The hearing was to be held with the purpose of obtaining social license for the approval of the Environmental Impact Study for the expansion of the Yanacocha mining operations. However campesinos have opposed the operation, which is already seriously affecting the environment.

Unfortunately the hearing was called off in the middle of a conflict between community members and a contingent of police contracted by Yanacocha. One campesina emerged injured from the confrontation. Afterwards, the director of the Group of Formation and Intervention for Sustainable Development (GRUFIDES - http://www.grufides.org), Mirtha Vásquez Chuquilín, warned that mechanisms do not exist to permit the monitoring of the real environmental impact of the mining project.

She also announced that GRUFIDES would ask the Public Ombudsperson to carry out appropriate investigations, and indicated that these meetings are solely formalities in which campesinos are used in order to gain approval the studies without having the right to really give their opinions.