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Human Rights

This category contains 12 posts

Red-carded Australian miner signals intention to play on in Greenland

Mongabay 12 July 2021: An Australian mining company hoping to build a vast open-cut rare earths and uranium mine on a mountain in southern Greenland has told shareholders it will persist with the project despite the mine having been rejected by the people of the Arctic nation. Publicly listed Greenland Minerals Limited has been working to develop … Continue reading

Water mission

IT WAS around 40 degrees in Kerang, northern Victoria, when Ruslan Shakin jogged into town pushing a pram one Tuesday afternoon in January.The 38-year-old Russian, who lives in Los Angeles, was approximately 3000km into a 4300km journey from Perth to Sydney, which he deliberately embarked on in the hottest months. “I wanted to feel the thirst,” … Continue reading

‘If it’s going to kill us, OK, we’ll die’: Villagers stand firm as Cambodian dam begins to fill

Mongabay 18 October 2017: On Sept. 25, amid a continuing crackdown on media, political opposition and civil society described by commentators as “a slide into dictatorship,” Prime Minister Hun Sen officially launched Cambodia’s biggest hydropower project. At the ceremony the gates were closed on the $800 million Lower Sesan 2 dam, a joint venture between China’s … Continue reading

A rising chorus of voices condemns Laos’ planned Pak Beng dam

Mongabay 2 June 2017: A damning review of plans for the controversial Pak Beng hydropower dam on the Mekong River in Laos was released this week by US-based advocacy group International Rivers, adding weight to calls for the project to be halted until new impact assessment studies are completed. The report follows recent criticisms of … Continue reading

Banks turn a blind eye to human rights abuses in Borneo

Crikey, 12 May 2017: On a Tuesday morning in June last year, Sarawak land rights activist and opposition politician Bill Kayong pulled up at a set of traffic lights in the coastal city of Miri, and was shot dead through the driver’s window of his Toyota pickup. The alleged “mastermind” of the assassination was Stephen … Continue reading

Laos pushes ahead with Pak Beng dam

Mongabay, 8 February 2017: The Pak Beng dam is the third of nine mainstream dams planned for the Mekong in Laos, and the second in a cascade of six on the country’s upper stretch of the river. At the Happy Bar, on the bank of the Mekong River, the Bob Marley mixed tape starts up … Continue reading

The Killing of Dr Kem Ley

New Matilda, 25 July 2016: A funeral procession of more than a million people, organisers said, accompanied the coffin of slain activist Kem Ley through Phnom Penh on Sunday as his body made the journey from the pagoda where it had lain in state for two weeks back to his home town in the provinces. … Continue reading

Review – The Peaceful People: The Penan and their Fight for the Forest

In the early 1990s the plight of the Penan people of Sarawak became an international cause celebre, with Swiss adventurer Bruno Manser touring the world with a small Penan delegation, and the likes of Prince Charles, Al Gore, David Suzuki and the Greatful Dead speaking out about the rapid destruction of the forest in Sarawak. … Continue reading

Blockading Baram dam (video)

The government of Sarawak, one of two Malaysian states in Borneo, plans to build a string of hydroelectric dams and industrialise with the power. But the next of the planned dams, on the Baram River, threatens the land and homes of 20,000 indigenous people. A group of local activists have been blockading the proposed dam … Continue reading

‘Fight until they die’ – Malaysia’s dam blockade finds international support

Crikey, 16 November 2015: When they first set up camp it was under plastic tarps strung from the trees and propped up with sticks. That night the rain came — a drenching tropical downpour that left the group of 100 or so protesters wet, cold and awake through the dark Borneo night. But after years of petitions … Continue reading