• Watchdog reported pattern of extreme sexual violence by security workers

• 11 tribal women said a previous ‘remedy framework’ for 137 women fell short

A Canada-based gold mining company is paying compensation to a group of tribal women and girls who allege they were assaulted and raped by police and security guards at the company’s mine in Papua New Guinea.

The 11 women, who were aged between 14 and in their 80s when the alleged crimes took place, are among 137 local Enga women and girls who had previously been compensated by Barrick Gold Corporation, after allegations of sexual violence, including gang rape and imprisonment, by armed security guards and police officers at the Porgera mine.

Most of the 137 women accepted the company’s offer of a compensation package under a “remedy framework” set up by Barrick as an alternative to the local judicial system, after a Human Rights Watch report in 2011 identified a pattern of extreme sexual violence by security personnel at the mine.

But 11 of the women initially refused and argued that the compensation – on average 23,630 kina, which amounts to $8,743 – was not adequate to remedy the multiple and continuing traumas they had suffered.

One, who was 14 at the time of the alleged rape in 2010, said what happened to her halted her education and ruined her reputation and chance at marriage in her culture. She said she wanted sufficient compensation to start a life for herself and daughter elsewhere.

Over recent days, EarthRights International – which is representing the 11 women – threatened to take legal action against Barrick in Nevada, where the company has numerous holdings. ERI is also representing three individuals in relation to alleged deaths at Porgera.

The remedy framework arose after the HRW report documented six alleged incidents of brutal gang rape by security personnel employed by Barrick at Pogera to patrol the mines and waste dumps against illegal miners. In its report, HRW said the gang rapes were part of a pattern of extreme sexual violence by security personnel at the mine. It highlighted systemic failures by Barrick that it said had kept the company from recognising the risk of abuse or responding to it.

Since then, Barrick, which took over the mine in 2006, has fired about a dozen employees who were either implicated in the assaults documented by HRW or had knowledge of them without reporting it. It also facilitated a PNG police force investigation of the allegations. Police made several arrests, but no convictions resulted.

A joint statement by Earth Rights International and Barrick, issued on Friday, said:

“Barrick Gold Corporation and Earth Rights International (ERI) have negotiated a settlement of claims by 14 individuals from Papua New Guinea (“PNG”), represented by ERI, in relation to a variety of alleged acts of violence concerning the Porgera Mine in PNG.”

“Eleven of these individuals are women with claims alleging acts of sexual violence, including rape. Pursuant to the terms of the settlement, the women will receive compensation under the Porgera Remedy Framework, and a payment in connection with their participation in the mediation process which led to the resolution of their claims. The remaining claims, which relate to alleged deaths, were lodged through the operational grievance mechanism at Porgera, and have also been resolved. All claimants are pleased with this resolution.”

A spokesman for Barrick said: “Sexual assault is a horrific act under any circumstances and it goes against everything we believe in as a company. We believe we have acted decisively to address the issue of sexual assault at the Porgera Joint Venture, both to remedy past harms and ensure such incidents do not occur again.”

ERI, who have worked with the community in Porgera since 2012, have been negotiating a settlement with Barrick over the past two weeks. They said on Friday they were unable to release any further details regarding the specific claims in the deal. The terms mean that ERI will not file litigation on behalf of the 14 clients, it said.

“We have been proud to represent the people of Porgera for the past three years,” said Marco Simons, General Counsel of ERI, which has litigated major human rights suits against companies such as Shell and Unocal. “Porgera presents one of the worst cases we’ve seen of human rights abuse associated with extractive industry.”

Barrick maintains a private security force of 450 security personnel at Porgera mine, according to the HRW report in 2011. The report acknowledged that the mine “must cope with extraordinary security challenges, including violent raids by groups of illegal miners. But Human Rights Watch research documents opportunistic, violent abuses allegedly committed by some security force members that are in no way a reaction to these threats.”

One of the 11 women represented by ERI, who is now 18, said she and two friends had been asked by mobile police officers to make string bags for them in 2010. But instead of taking them to the ATM machine for payment, the armed officers took them in the police car to their living quarters at the mine site, where they were raped. Mobile police at the mine are not employed by Barrick directly but have a support agreement with the company.

In a statement provided by ERI, the woman said: “The rape has caused me to lose many important things in my life. I used to be a top student in my fifth grade class. I was good at school, and I enjoyed it. I could have really made something of myself if I had been able to stay in school. But after I was raped, everyone knew and my classmates were always talking about me. It was too difficult to deal with, so I dropped out. I tried to go back last year, but the kids said such bad things about me. I was so ashamed that I stopped going.”

She later married, but when her husband found out about the rape, they divorced, leaving her to look after a two-year-old daughter alone.

Another woman told how she was collecting firewood near the mine’s tailing pile when she was seized by an armed Barrick security guard and raped. She said: “Rape is a very shameful thing in the eyes of my community, and everyone in my community knows what happened to me.”

She said: “I want to be appropriately compensated for what happened to me, according to Engan culture. I want be able to live somewhere far away from the mine so I do not have to relive the rape that I suffered and risk the dangers of the dump.”

Earlier this year, in a separate action, a subsidiary of Barrick Gold, formerly called African Barrick Gold but now known as Acacia Mining, reached a settlement after claims brought against it in London high court over an incident that saw Tanzanian villagers killed. Villagers claimed the company’s subsidiary, North Mara Gold Mine Limited, had failed to prevent the use of excessive force by police and security services that had led to six deaths and other injuries in 2008.

In 2013, African Barrick Gold compensated 14 women who said they were sexually assaulted by security guards at its North Mara mine in Tanzania.

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Barrick Settlement on Rapes and Killings in Papua New Guinea Proof that Victims need Independent Legal Counsel: Cases of other local victims of violence need review

MiningWatch Canada press statement

3 April 2015

Ottawa, Canada – Today, 11of at least 120 women who claim to have been raped and gang raped by security guards at Barrick’s Porgera Joint Venture mine, and three of many more men and their families who claim to have been the victims of violence and killing by security guards, finally got equitable settlements. These fortunate claimants were the clients of lawyers with US-based EarthRights International, who was prepared to file legal cases on their behalf.

“This case proves once again that victims of criminal acts at the hands of employees of companies such as Barrick Gold absolutely require truly independent legal counsel to ensure their legal and human rights are protected” says Catherine Coumans of MiningWatch Canada.

Once Barrick stopped years of denial of violence by mine security guards against local indigenous men and women at the remote mine, the company put in place its own “remedy program” at the mine site for the female rape victims. However, these women did not receive independent legal advice. And in return for remedy packages that many women themselves felt were not commensurate with the severe harm they had endured, women were required by Barrick to sign away their right to take civil action against Barrick and its subsidiaries.

“Our interviews with victims of rape by mine security in 2008, 2009 and 2013 provided evidence not only of the incredible extent of the problem, but also, once Barrick started offering ‘remedy packages,’ that women were insulted by what they were being offered” says Coumans “public complaints over this to Barrick did improve the package somewhat, but we know that there were still women who accepted the package and signed away their legal rights only because they felt it was all they could get.”

Eleven women became clients of Earth Rights International, rejected the packages offered through the “remedy program,” and were prepared to take legal action. As a result, these women have now received the packages offered under the “remedy program,” as well as additional compensation to ensure that they would drop their legal claim.

“This case, and a similar one at Barrick’s North Mara subsidiary in Tanzania, raises serious concerns of equity for the victims” says Coumans “Porgeran women who suffered similar criminal offences, but did not have independent legal council willing to file a credible law suit on their behalf, were clearly at a disadvantage, their cases should be reviewed.”

MiningWatch also questions why the remedy program for raped women was closed down as we are still receiving reports of violence by mine security.

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For more information contact: Catherine Coumans. 613-569-3439 catherine [at] miningwatch [dot] ca

Previous MiningWatch Canada releases on Porgera:

In March 2011, MiningWatch Canada and local partners Akali Tange Association and Porgera Landowners Association filed an OECD Complaint against Barrick Gold that discusses the alleged rape cases, alleged killings, as well as other environmental and human rights concerns at the Porgera mine. See http://www.miningwatch.ca/sites/www.miningwatch.ca/files/oecd_request_fo... In January 2013, MiningWatch Canada, EarthRights International and UK-based Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) went public for the first time with detailed concerns about Barrick’s remedy program for the raped women in Porgera. See http://www.miningwatch.ca/news/rape-victims-must-sign-away-rights-get-re... MiningWatch Canada has also raised concerns about rapes and Barrick’s “remedy program” in a number of letters to the UN High Commissioner. See http://www.miningwatch.ca/ Home Page feature. MiningWatch Canada and RAID presented a brief on this issue to the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights in December 2014. See http://www.miningwatch.ca/sites/www.miningwatch.ca/files/privatized_reme... ———————————————

Survivors Who Alleged Rape and Killing at Papua New Guinea Mine Pleased With Barrick Gold Settlement

EarthRights International (ERI) statement – http://www.earthrights.org/media/survivors-who-alleged-rape-and-killing-...

3 April 2015

Washington, DC — International human rights and environmental organization EarthRights International (ERI) and Canada’s Barrick Gold Corporation, the world’s largest gold mining company, released the following statement today:

Barrick Gold Corporation and EarthRights International (ERI) have negotiated a settlement of claims by 14 individuals from Papua New Guinea (“PNG”), represented by ERI, in relation to a variety of alleged acts of violence concerning the Porgera Mine in PNG. Eleven of these individuals are women with claims alleging acts of sexual violence, including rape. Pursuant to the terms of the settlement, the women will receive compensation under the Porgera Remedy Framework, and a payment in connection with their participation in the mediation process which led to the resolution of their claims. The remaining claims, which relate to alleged deaths, were lodged through the operational grievance mechanism at Porgera, and have also been resolved. All claimants are pleased with this resolution.

EarthRights International is not able to release any further information regarding the specific claims that are the subject of this settlement. The settlement means that ERI will not file litigation against Barrick on behalf of these 14 individuals.

Background

Investigations by human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and legal clinics at Harvard and New York University law schools have documented years of abuse at Barrick’s Porgera mine, including systematic and brutal rapes by security guards. Due to the mine’s ever-expanding waste dumps, local women and girls have little choice but to enter the mine site to scavenge for gold or cross mine property to reach agricultural land, commercial areas, schools or other villages. Apart from the women in this settlement, at least 120 women have lodged claims of rape at the mine.

EarthRights International began its involvement in the alleged abuses at Porgera in 2011, serving as legal advisor on a complaint with the Canadian government filed by the Porgera Land Owners’ Association, local Porgeran human rights organization Akali Tange Association (ATA), and advocacy organization MiningWatch Canada. ERI has been working directly with the community in Porgera since 2012, exploring the possibility of a lawsuit against Barrick in the United States.

“We have been proud to represent the people of Porgera for the past three years,” said Marco Simons, General Counsel of ERI, which has litigated major human rights suits against companies such as Shell and Unocal. “Porgera presents one of the worst cases we’ve seen of human rights abuse associated with extractive industry.”

“Barrick’s hired security guards were responsible for widespread violence in and around the Porgera Mine, including countless incidents of rape and gang rape,” said Catherine Coumans of MiningWatch Canada. “Barrick tried to push the problem under the rug for many years despite regular reports of human rights abuses committed by its security forces, documented by numerous researchers and human rights organizations.”

The ATA began warning Barrick about alleged abuses by mine security guards as early as 2005. They reported numerous incidents of rape and murder directly to Barrick at the mine site and at the highest levels of the company, but the company failed to respond. “Barrick has been raping our wives and daughters and killing our fathers, brothers, and sons for years.” said Jethro Tulin, Executive Officer of the ATA.

Few of the abuses have ever received a public, independent investigation. In 2006, the PNG government initiated an inquiry into the unusually high number of deaths near the mine, but the report was never released publicly. Local police have accused Barrick of hindering their investigations and obstructing justice.

Barrick finally acknowledged the problem of rape at Porgera and in 2012 created the Porgera Remedy Framework, a non-judicial process organized by the company to hear claims of sexual violence. ERI represented several dozen women in the Remedy Framework process.

In February of this year, the Columbia Law School human rights clinic initiated an interdisciplinary study of human rights and environmental impacts at Porgera. Thousands of people live adjacent to the mine, and report that their traditional livelihoods have been undermined by water contamination, erosion, and air pollution from the mine.

Barrick is now in the process of trying to sell the Porgera mine and exit Papua New Guinea.

Resources

• Photographs of Barrick’s Porgera Mine – https://www.dropbox.com/s/e89n8ul5fgt6ilo/Mines%20%26%20Dumps.zip?dl=0

Previous ERI Releases on Porgera

• Factsheet: Abuse by Barrick Gold Corporation – http://www.earthrights.org/legal/factsheet-abuse-barrick-gold-corporatio...

• Survivors of Rape by Barrick Gold Security Guards Offered “Business Grants” and “Training” in Exchange for Waiving Legal Rights – http://www.earthrights.org/media/survivors-rape-barrick-gold-security-gu...

Contact:

David Lerner, Riptide Communications
+1 (212) 260-5000

Valentina Stackl, EarthRights International
+1 (202) 466 5188 ×113
valentina [at] earthrights [dot] org

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200 girls and women raped: now 11 of them win better compensation from the world’s biggest gold miner

Rick Feneley, Sydney Morning Herald – http://www.smh.com.au/world/200-girls-and-women-raped-now-11-of-them-win...

4 April 2015

Out-of-court settlement prevents human rights group EarthRights International filing a lawsuit against Barrick Gold in the United States.

Eleven women and girls who were raped, gang-raped or violently molested in the Papua New Guinea Highlands have reached an out-of-court settlement with the world’s biggest gold miner, having refused to accept the “insulting” compensation paid to 120 fellow victims of the company’s security guards.

“It would be like accepting lollies as compensation,” one of the 11 told Fairfax Media. Identified only as Jane Doe 10, she was 14 when she and two teenage friends were raped in 2010 at the Porgera mine, owned by the Barrick Gold Corporation.

The Porgera community says security guards and mobile police at the mine have raped more than 200 women and girls over the past two decades. It says men and boys have been beaten, shot and killed for entering the open pit or tailings dumps or going near the mine’s property.

The 11 women were preparing to sue Barrick Gold in the United States, convinced they would be unable to find justice in PNG. The human rights group EarthRights International had been scheduled to file a lawsuit late last month in Las Vegas because the Toronto-based miner has major operations in the state of Nevada.

But the women reached an undisclosed settlement which is likely to be well above the 21,320 kina ($10,430) they say Barrick offered most of them. The settlement also covered the families of three people allegedly killed in violence at the mine.

Barrick says 90 per cent of the women who came forward with allegations accepted packages ranging from 23,040 to 32,740 kia under a “remedial framework” established in October 2012. It says the payouts were determined not by Barrick but an independent group of PNG women’s advocates, and they were at “the upper end of civil court judgments in sexual assault and rape cases” in the country.

These women had to agree never to seek further damages, a provision condemned by MiningWatch Canada, which investigated the abuses – as did Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and legal clinics at Harvard and New York University law schools. But Barrick said the UN High Commission on Human Rights reviewed the remedial framework and the legal waiver was consistent with UN guiding principles.

The mine’s ever-expanding waste dumps, EarthRights says, give impoverished Porgera women and girls little option but to enter the company’s property to scavenge for remnants of gold or to cross the site to reach agricultural land, commercial areas, schools and other villages.

The oldest of the Porgera 11, now aged in her 80s, alleges she was raped many times. Jane Doe 10, now 19, is the youngest, along with another girl who was also 14 when they and an older teenager were seized by three mobile policemen at the mine.

The officers each raped one of the girls. One officer has died but two are awaiting sentencing this month for their crimes.

“I brought disgrace to my community and my parents,” Jane Doe 10 said, speaking through an interpreter. When she returned to school she had been mocked, such is the social stigma associated with rape. She promptly left school and gave up on an education. She married young but, when her husband learned about the rape, he assaulted her and abandoned her with their young child.

The remedial framework compensation package was very low by local customary standards, say Jane Doe 10 and another of the 11 women, Jane Doe 2. To accept it would “add disgrace to the disgrace”, Jane Doe 10 said.

Jane Doe 2 was collecting firewood near the mine’s tailings dump when two security guards raped her. She said they threw her against sharp stones and she still carries the injuries. Her husband’s response to the rape was to beat her and abandon her.

Then security guards at the mine raped her daughter, also near the dump.

“We are both victims,” Jane Doe 2 said, “and now I am finding it difficult to look after my kids as well as my daughter’s.

“I treated Barrick as one of my sons. I have given my land to Barrick. But in return Barrick has not shown any respect … so now I am going to file a lawsuit,” she said on the eve of the aborted action in Las Vegas.

Mother and daughter say they still have no choice but to return to the scene of their rapes to find scraps of gold.

In 2008, EarthRights says, Barrick’s chief executive wrote in a letter to Porgeran leaders that claims of gang rape were “most distasteful, to say the least as you know these allegations to be untrue”.

Asked if it was slow to accept the abuses, Barrick’s vice-president, communications, Andy Lloyd, told Fairfax Media: “When allegations first surfaced, the company attempted to investigate the claims but was unsuccessful in identifying victims or perpetrators.

“When Human Rights Watch came to us with credible information, we acted immediately, terminating the employees implicated in the assaults and handing over all information to the PNG police. We regret that we were unable to uncover these assaults sooner.”

Barrick bought the mine in 2006 and many assaults predate its arrival. However, a local human rights activist, Karath Mal Waka, from the Akali Tange Association, who acted as translator for Jane Doe 2 and Jane Doe 10, says sexual assaults persist. He says an eight-year-old was raped recently at the mine.

Mr Lloyd replied: “There have been no cases of Barrick employees involved in sexual assaults since 2010. We are aware of an incident similar to the one you are describing, however it did not occur on the mine site and it did not involve a Porgera Joint Venture employee.”

Asked about the shooting of men and boys – which a local association has put at 14 deaths in the past 10 years – Mr Lloyd said: “The mine’s security guards do not carry lethal ammunition.”

Mr Waka says more than 100 rape victims – girls and women, many married – were not covered by the remedial framework and he wants Barrick to reopen that program for them. Mr Lloyd was unaware of any extra claims and said the framework was advertised widely over many months. The amount to be paid to the 11 women is not known. It is unlikely to approach the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars that juries in the US can award to rape victims.

When Fairfax Media covered the story in February 2011, one woman described how she and three others were raped by 10 security personnel, one of whom forced her to swallow a used condom that he had used while raping the other victims.

A 26-year-old woman was allegedly raped while collecting native vegetables near the mine in January 2011 – after Barrick had taken action. Because she resisted, her genitals were repeatedly burnt with a hot rod, the Porgera Alliance alleged.

Jethro Tulin, executive officer of the Akali Tange Association, said before the settlement: “Barrick has been raping our wives and daughters and killing our fathers, brothers and sons for years.”

Catherine Coumans, of MiningWatch Canada, said: “Barrick tried to push the problem under the rug for many years despite regular reports of human rights abuses committed by its security forces, documented by numerous researchers and human rights organisations.”

In a joint statement after the settlement, Barrick and EarthRights International said: “All claimants are pleased with this resolution.”

Mr Lloyd said Barrick took action at all of its mines around the world after after the Porgera allegations came to light, and it had “zero tolerance” for human rights abuses.

“Since then, thousands of employees have undergone human rights training, we implemented a new global human rights policy, we have carried out human rights training for local police forces [including in PNG], we have formed a partnership with White Ribbon to carry out awareness and prevention programs aimed at stopping violence against women in communities where we operate.

“In PNG, we worked with leading human rights experts to develop the remedy program, perhaps the first of its kind ever implemented by a mining company. We are also funding community-based initiatives … to combat violence against women.”

Barrick is negotiating to sell the Porgera mine. Any liabilities from future victim claims would remain with the mine, Mr Lloyd confirmed.