Debate continues raging over the role played by Rio Tinto’s subsidiary Bougainville Copper Ltd (BCL) in the decade-long war waged by Papua New Guinea “security” forces on the people of Bougainville from 1988 onwards.
One of the key proponents of the company’s innocence is major BCL stockholder, the highly-irascible Axel Sturm. In his latest broadside, Sturm accuses Ulster University criminologist, Kristian Lasslett, of using his “academic position as a platform for indoctrination and agitation.”
In fact Mr Lasslett’s critique of the company’s complicity in human rights abuses, during the first 15 months of the bloody conflict, is quite measured. And it’s based on compelling evidence which BCL shareholders – not to mention Rio Tinto itself – would do well to urgently address.
See http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=11665.
See also BCL keen to reopen mine, http://www.thenational.com.pg/?q=node/32323.