Post #316

Tanzanian-Style Terror [ Cost of Greed ] 🇹🇿💀 Barrick’s North Mara gold mine in Tanzania’s Tarime district has been one of the country’s major industrial projects since 1993. However, for the Kurya indigenous communities living nearby, the mine has also become a symbol of police terror. ⚙️ A 2016 inquiry launched by the Ministry of Energy and Minerals gathered evidence of 65 deaths and 270 injuries resulting from police violence in the area. Civil rights groups go even higher claiming 77 is the base of the death toll. 🛡 What makes the situation darker is the fact that under an official agreement Barrick in fact uses the police essentially as a private security company. 〰️ At the heart of confrontations lies a struggle for land and livelihoods. When big companies arrived in the 1990s and 2000s, villagers lost access to small-scale mining, their primary source of income. ➡️ Police violence occursin two main situations: either villagers gather in groups and break into the site, or vice-versa police demands unfair tolls from legitimate artisanal miners, who have permission to work at the site or nearby. 🏛 Since 2013, villagers have filed lawsuits in courts in the United Kingdom and Canada, accusing Barrick. One of the early UK cases ended in a confidential settlement with no admission of liability. New lawsuits filed in 2022 and 2024 are still pending. This case, like many others, shows how alliances between major corporations and state security forces — justified as “protecting investments” — almost always end up directed against ordinary residents, simply because no one is left to protect them. #CostOfGreed Devils Below