[Xmca-l] Re: Rio Tinto Zinc

[Andy Blunden]

I think the entire country was struck speechless when we 
learnt that a site - with 47,000 year old cave art and human 
remains which were 8,000 years old, genetically found to be 
ancestors of the people living in the area today - were 
bulldozed for the sake of a small sum of money it would have 
cost to carry on their mining with a different approach. And 
we learnt that they had a long list of other ancient sites 
which they planned to destroy in the future, and that it was 
all approved by the State government and legal within 
Federal government legislation. All legal! And their lawyers 
had worked extremely deviously to make it legal, getting the 
formal approval of the local PKK people who could not 
possibly have understood what they were signing, and then 
they waiting about 8 years before moving in without warning 
with bulldozers. It is utterly unspeakable and shameful and 
extremely distressing.

As soon it came to light, there was a Senate enquiry 
initiated. It won't happen again. The shareholders of RTZ 
then demanded the sacking of the top 3 CEOs, but ... get 
this ... they in fact remain in place until a replacement is 
appointed! The indigenous representatives are calling for 
the sacking of the entire Board. But they have actually 
committed no crime under Australian law. This is the real 
outrage. Someone needs to go to some international court to 
make someone pay.

But is /has /shocked people, and the local people have not 
even spoken yet. All thee sites need to be placed under 
Federal protection as National Parks. It is amazing that 
this has not been done before. The sites are all so remote 
that they can't be guarded. Tourists can get in their 
land-rover and go and graffiti over cave art which is 
thousands of years old. It's not just this one area. There 
are lots of such sites. So precious. The practice of 
employing the local indigenous people are land care workers 
is in place in many national parks, but we need more of this 
and they need to get technology to help.

Andy

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*Andy Blunden*
Hegel for Social Movements <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brill.com/view/title/54574__;!!Mih3wA!S3wE2Br0yKDvj2IcVGWmUs0dBaoX0c5uBQgtuxWazaNPSEHnNWMOx4gRQFMw1OxxGsjLEg$ >
Home Page <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm__;!!Mih3wA!S3wE2Br0yKDvj2IcVGWmUs0dBaoX0c5uBQgtuxWazaNPSEHnNWMOx4gRQFMw1OyOZj3O6g$ >
On 13/09/2020 12:23 am, Martin Packer wrote:
> Andy, what on earth has Rio Tinto Zinc been up to??
>
> Martin
>
>
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