Ivanhoe at centre of storm over Mongolia's resources: 3,000 in protest; Vancouver miner found gold,
Published by MAC on 2006-04-19Ivanhoe at centre of storm over Mongolia's resources: 3,000 in protest; Vancouver miner found gold, copper
19th April 2006
(AP) Demonstrators marched outside Mongolian government headquarters yesterday, burning effigies of the country's leaders and demanding their resignations over alleged mishandling of mineral wealth in dealings with Canada's Ivanhoe Mines Ltd.
Some of the protesters have been camped in the city's central square for nearly two weeks. They are demanding that the 3-month-old government resign if it cannot obtain favourable terms from Ivanhoe for the company's concession to mine a huge copper deposit in the southern Gobi region.
"Resign! Resign!" chanted a horseman dressed as an ancient warrior, circling the massive Government House adjacent to the square.
An estimated 3,000 people joined the protest. Hundreds of police guarded government offices, but did not intervene.
The protesters burned effigies of President Nambaryn Enkhbayar, Prime Minister Mieagombo Enkhbold and Robert Friedland, chairperson of Ivanhoe Mines, the Vancouver-based company that discovered the massive Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold deposit in the Gobi Desert.
There have been no accusations of improprieties by Ivanhoe, which is negotiating an agreement with the government on tax and other policies for developing the project.
Protesters said they were starting a hunger strike yesterday that would add more people each day until opposition demands were met, said S. Ganbaatar, an activist with the Radical Reform, one of several civic groups claiming to represent the poor and unemployed.
They later marched to the headquarters of the Mongolian Revolutionary People's Party that leads the ruling coalition.
Protests have become increasingly common in Mongolia's 16-year-old democracy, with political parties often trying to capitalize on demonstrations and public disaffection. The current government was installed in January after a wave of demonstrations.
Copper mining is a major part of the economy of this impoverished former Soviet satellite, a sprawling grassland where many people are nomadic herders of cattle and sheep.
Politicians have clashed repeatedly over how to exploit the country's mineral resources. The opposition accuses the government of giving away Mongolia's wealth and wants the national minerals law changed to give the government a large share in foreign-owned mines.
Ivanhoe has said the project would generate 117,000 jobs and pay 46 per cent of its pre-tax profits to the state over the contract's 35-year term.
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006