Lima, February 22, 2016
Mr. Gary J. Goldberg
Presidente and CEO
Newmont Mining Corporation
Dear Mr. Goldberg
You will be visiting Peru to participate in the Opening Plenary of the VII Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Global Conference, to be held between February 22nd and 25th in the city of Lima.
We celebrate the existence of an initiative like EITI that promotes transparency in mining, oil and gas activities, in which traditionally there have been a great degree of opacity and corruption. In addition, we commend that a mining company like Newmont is part of this initiative and promotes its existence and consolidation in the countries where it operates.
However, we sincerely regret and strongly oppose that, while you participate in the opening of an event that promotes transparency in the extractive industry, the company you head, Newmont Mining Company, and Buenaventura Mining Company, its partner in the Yanacocha mine, have, according to reliable sources, systematically and abusively violated the human rights of Mrs. Máxima Acuña de Chaupe and her family, peasants from the Celendín Province in the Cajamarca Region), who have refused to sell their lands to Yanacocha as they wish to remain small agricultural producers, and who have denounced the adverse human rights impacts of the Yanacocha and Conga mining projects.
There is no doubt that, as president and CEO of Newmont visiting Peru, you have prepared well before your trip and you are aware of the above-mentioned case. You would be aware that there have been reports of harassment and attacks on the rights of this family on the part the police and security personnel of the Newmont and Buenaventura mining companies for years now. You would know that Yanacocha is acting in violation of Newmont’s internal protocols and of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, voluntarily adhered to by the world’s top mining companies. You would know that on December 17, 2014, the Peruvian judiciary ruled that the Chaupe family was not guilty of illegal occupation of land, and that this case has also been taken to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS), which has issued precautionary measures in favor of the Chaupe family on the 5th of May ,2014.
Being well informed of your companies’ doings, you would know that in the last few weeks there have been new reports of attacks against the Chaupe Family by armed security personnel of the Newmont and Buenaventura mining companies (associates in Yanacocha), including physically sieging their lands preventing the family’s mobility; surveilling them with drones and violating their intimacy; physically attacking their pet; destroying their crops; etc. [1]
Given the circumstances, we urge you to take effective measures towards ending the permanent harassment of the Chaupe Family, and to ensure that Newmont and Buenaventura cooperate in good faith to necessary and independent investigations in relation to these actions, in order for those responsible to be prosecuted.
It is only on the basis of strict respect for the human rights of populations living in the territories where extractive activities are carried out that we can lay the foundations for an open and responsible dialogue about the role of mining in socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable strategies to generate welfare for the people.
Sincerely