Source: The Tyee
Business-friendly laws have made Canada the preferred legal residence for three-quarters of the world’s mining companies. But many of those companies actually operate in developing countries whose legal systems inspire little confidence, even among their own citizens.
Violent attacks ranging from assault to murder have been reported from scores of communities near Canadian-operated mines in Latin America, Africa, Europe and elsewhere. Company spokesmen typically blame such events on murky ‘pre-existing’ conflicts.
Thanks to the generosity of donors to the Tyee Fellowship Fund, journalists Liam Barrington-Bush and Jen Wilton were able to put that explanation under scrutiny in one place where it’s been offered: a Canadian-owned silver and gold mine in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.
Barrington-Bush and Wilton spent four months investigating the conflict in San José del Progreso, the growing grassroots resistance movement to mining operations, and what Canada could do to better police the country’s global mining sector.
Read the Series: http://thetyee.ca/Series/2013/09/20/Trouble-with-mining/