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explained the purpose of our visit. We then met an a packed room with some of the local Subaanen people who told us how their right, entrenched in law, to give free, prior, informed consent to any mining proposals on their lands was being suborned by government bribery and intimidation. It is, of course, easy to bribe the very poor people, and among those who were resisting the numerous mining proposals the sense of fear was palpable.
Our later meetings, first with activists and then the whole community in the church, revealed a people living in dread of 70 per cent of their municipality being taken over by mining. Our mining expert, Clive Wicks, was ut¬terly shocked that applications were being considered for open-cast mining that would take the tops off some of the mountains and therefore risk poisoning all the local rivers and bring destruction to rich agricultural land. In addition to this, the community had a long-standing complaint that the local municipal officers were paying themselves the salaries to which officials in Manila were entitled, thus using all the funding provided for the mu¬nicipality leaving little for services. A com¬plaint to the local ombudsman had been turned down and the case is now before the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the mal¬practice is spreading to other municipalities.
From Midsalip, we travelled to Libay, located in a beautiful bay where a large mine run by another company, Philex Gold, had been shut because of large-scale landslips which de¬stroyed houses and rice fields. The people told us that when the mine was open, the bay was muddy and the fish, mangrove and shellfish all suffered. The mine was closed after seven years and the bay gradually recovered. But Philex continues to finance small-scale min¬ers to engage in open-cast mining. They are using cyanide to extract the maximum gold from the rock. The consequence, we were told, was that a man’s rice field was growing less rice, his legs were covered in black blotches from working in the rice field and even the farmers’ bathing water, which came from a well, made their skin itch. It seemed that the cyanide had got into the water table. In addition, some farm animals were thin and infertile; and landslips were a continuing threat. They asked us to help them prevent the mine from reopen¬ing as Philex is making a new application.
In Manila, we met the Chief Justice, a de¬vout Catholic, who explained that the Supreme Court had reversed its decision against the Mining Act because it provided a framework to regulate mining. He maintained that the mining companies can be called to account if they flout the law. I also met the ombuds¬man - a recently appointed woman - who acknowledged that there were major problems of corruption and asked for ammunition to enable her to make useful enquiries. We will certainly be testing her promise.
The British ambassador set up a useful meeting with the chairman of the Chamber of Mines, representatives of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Minerals Council of the President’s office. The Governor and parish priest from the beau¬tiful island of Mindoro joined the meeting to tell how their community opposed the min¬ing proposal submitted by a British-based
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