INSIGHTS: Death at Dawn in a Peruvian Mining Camp

[Richard D]

PIURA, Peru, November 13, 2009 (ENS) - It is four in the morning on Sunday, November 1 in the paramo and cloud forest of Huancabamba, Piura Department in northern Peru. Harsh detonations and yellow refulgence break the calm of a chilly dawn in this presently occupied habitat of the nearly extinct mountain tapir.

Here, the mining encampment of Henry Hills is incongruously located high in the Peruvian Andes. The camp is about four hours by 4WD vehicle and 10 hours by foot from the quaint regional seat of Huancabamba and is owned by Rio Blanco-Copper, a subsidiary of the Chinese company Zijin, formerly Majaz subsidiary of Monterrico of England. Monterrico's principal asset is the wholly owned Rio Blanco Copper Project.



An estimated 20 armed persons with their rifles and Molotov cocktails bombard this encampment where 14 employees peacefully sleep. With the precise aim of their rifles, the assailants easily bring down two young guards, Joel Martin Severino Zapata and Luis Guillermo Gomez Vilchez, as well as the administrator of the encampment, Eduardo Ramirez Montero. They die terrible deaths and one of them is carbonized by the fires set by these anonymous attackers.

Able to escape the flames that consumed 80 percent of the mining encampment, the other employees flee and hide out in the steepest and wildest mountains until they can finally escape and advise authorities.



The Henry Hills installation was named by former British miners in the area and is one of four installations started by Majaz to extract copper by open pit mining within this vital remnant paramo and cloud forest region of northern Peru. The Rio Blanco copper and molybdenum deposit is one of the largest undeveloped copper resources in the world.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2009/2009-11-13-insperu.asp

[Cleita]

1. An open pit copper mine?

It should be outlawed by the authorities. There are other sources of copper and molybdenum that can be obtained from developed mines that haven't barely scratched the surface of the ores. There is no reason to scar a virgin landscape with mining. I'm sorry for the workers who were murdered and hope it wasn't environmentalists who did it.