Private security personnel employed at the Porgera gold mine in Papua New Guinea have been implicated in alleged gang rapes and other violent abuses, Human Rights Watch said in a report.
The Porgera mine has produced billions of dollars of gold in its twenty years of operation, and is operated and 95 percent owned by Barrick Gold, a Canadian company that is the world’s largest gold producer and in which a number of UK-based funds invest (see http://moneytometal.org/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=Barrick&go=Go).
The 94-page report, “Gold’s Costly Dividend: Human Rights Impacts of Papua New Guinea’s Porgera Gold Mine,” identifies systemic failures on the part of Toronto-based Barrick Gold that kept the company from recognizing the risk of abuses, and responding to allegations that abuses had occurred.
The report examines the impact of Canada’s failure to regulate the overseas activities of its companies and also calls on Barrick to address environmental and health concerns around the mine with greater transparency.
See http://ramumine.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/serious-abuses-at-barricks-porgera-mine/.