Bulyanhulu probe teams leave amid confusion

A team of nongovernmental organisation (NGO) investigators which arrived in Tanzania last month on a mission to investigate allegations of human rights abuses Bulyanhulu gold mine in northwestern Tanzania has left the country without fulfilling its goals. The team arrived in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam, in late March to enquire into various aspects of the 1996 eviction and alleged killing of small-scale artisanal miners at Bulyanhulu. There have been repeated allegations of human rights abuses during the Bulyanhulu evictions, and that some miners were buried alive when the artisanal shafts were filled in to make way for the large-scale development of the mine. The departure of the NGO mission followed an accusation by the government that it had arrived without official permission, as a result of which it was denied access to the Bulyanhulu site. A separate, World Bank mission on a similar mission conducted preliminary investigations in Dar es Salaam and met selected member of the artisanal mining community in the north before being told by the authorities to go home and apply for permission to conduct investigations in Tanzania, according to its hosts, Lawyers' Environmental Action Team (LEAT). A press release issued by Home Affairs Minister Mohammed Seif Khatib said the investigators "had applied [for] and were given a business visa for normal activities, and not investigations". He said LEAT and the group of investigators had contravened the law by starting an inquiry without the government's permission. LEAT denied accusations that the investigators had bluffed their way into the country, saying they had made their intentions clear to the authorities well before their arrival. "It is clear that neither LEAT nor the international fact-finding mission on Bulyanhulu were in breach of any of the laws of Tanzania," it said in a statement. The Daily News in Tanzania subsequently quoted the Director of Criminal Investigations, Adadi Rajabu, in Dar es Salaam as saying that no correspondence between the government and LEAT had indicated that the government sanctioned the investigations. Confusion over the legality of the investigations is likely to persist but while Prof Kathleen Mahoney, leader of the NGO probe, was unavailable for comment, the Sunday News quoted another team member, Mattias Ylstra, as saying it would be back at a later date to continue its mission. Since then, the opposition Tanzania Labour Party (TLP) has said it intends to pursue the issue in the courts. "We have instructed our lawyers... to sue the government over this matter, because we are sure that these people [artisanal miners in Bulyanhulu in 1996] were buried alive here," Thomas Ngawaiya, the TLP's publicity secretary, told IRIN on Friday. "We are very keen to pursue the matter, because we have to fight for their rights." According to Ngawaiya, the party has sworn testimonies from relatives of victims describing how the miners were buried. TLP also had a video of villagers showing senior police officers the filled-in pits and several corpses that had been dug up, he said. Saying that the TLP would produce this evidence in court, he challenged the Tanzanian government to set up an independent investigation (as called for, in a separate development, by former Attorney-General, Judge Mark Bomani, in early March). "Our government is not telling the truth and is, therefore, hiding something. We need independent people to come and see for themselves," Ngawaiya told IRIN. Vince Borg, head of Corporate Communications at Barrick Gold Corporation [www.barrick.com], which owns Bulyanhulu, told IRIN that people with any evidence supporting allegations of killings should produce it, rather than making unsubstantiated accusations. Completely ignored by the Tanzanian media, two members of the office of the Complaints Adviser Ombudsman (CAO) of the World Bank - Rachel Kyte and John Ambrose - have been investigating a complaint filed by LEAT regarding the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) political risk guarantee for the development of the mine since the end of March. The CAO is a specialist agency which investigates complaints and concerns of individuals and groups affected by projects of the World Bank's International Finance Corporation and MIGA. The investigators had been able to conduct some work and meet some stakeholders, according to LEAT. However, IRIN was told that no one from CAO could comment on the mission or any of its findings while enquiries were under way. "We are still in the process of assessment of the complaint and therefore cannot comment on the mission to Tanzania at this stage," Kyte told IRIN on Thursday. "We would expect that our assessment report will be completed and in the hands of the parties at some point around the end of April," she added. Outgoing World Bank Resident Representative to Tanzania, Jim Adams, told IRIN recently that, because new entrants to the mining sector in Tanzania were large, international mining companies, there appeared to be "pretty good performance in terms of safety" and few difficulties in terms of regulation in the sector.