Forbidden Stories: Silence is golden at a Tanzanian mine linked to multiple human rights abuses

“Truly innovative products leave their mark on the world instead of the planet,” Apple proudly claims on its website. “We are building a better world for future generations,” says Canon’s CEO. While Nokia’s “technology improves lives”.

“Right now, responsible sourcing is clearly part of the cost of doing business, it’s part of the commercial need of a company to access markets and financing, among others,” said Tyler Gillard, due diligence expert from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

In other words, it pays to advertise green and ethical products. That’s why big tech companies get the gold they need for certain electronic components from certified suppliers. In the case of Apple, Canon, Nokia and more than 500 companies registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, that means MMTC-PAMP in India.

Yet, certifications guaranteeing conflict-free minerals have focused on small-scale miners, not multinationals. In Tanzania, a gold mine indirectly owned by the Canadian gold mining giant Barrick, has a documented history of human rights abuses and environmental damage. The North Mara gold mine sends its gold bars to MMTC-PAMP in India, which puts it among the suppliers of many companies in the tech industry.

Canon and Nokia both highlighted that the Indian refiner had previously been audited and found conformant.

“If allegations are confirmed, this smelter will be red-flagged and we will ask our supply chain to divert business from this smelter,” said a Nokia spokesperson. Apple shared a similar statement.

At the other end of the chain, local and foreign reporters who have tried to cover what is happening on the ground have faced intimidation and censorship from the state. Forbidden Stories, an international consortium of 40 journalists publishing in 30 media organisations around the world, found wrongdoing was ongoing at the North Mara gold mine, despite the company’s claims.

The mine, close to the Great Lakes Region, has been plagued with violence for about two decades. As a result, the mine is surrounded by a 2m-high wall and guarded like a fortress. Physically and metaphorically.

The mine is surrounded by a 2m-high wall and guarded like a fortress (Forbidden Stories)

Forbidden Stories talked to several reporters who had been discouraged from reporting on the mine. Some received anonymous threats, others were censored by authorities. One reporter even decided to flee the country for more than a year.

“They have created fear.” Jabir Idrissa, a 55-year-old journalist from Zanzibar, has not forgotten what happened to him two years ago. He was then working for two newspapers, the Swahili-language weekly MwanaHalisi and Mawio, both part of a newspaper group recognised for its investigative reporting.

In June 2017, Mawio published a story linking two former presidents to alleged irregularities in mining deals signed in the 1990s.

“We had a long discussion in the newsroom when we were deciding on stories,” Idrissa said, remembering the editorial meeting that preceded publication.

“Truly, there are topics we didn’t report on because of the general environment,” he said. But this one was a must, he said. They couldn’t avoid it “because journalism is a job of telling the truth”.

This is particularly difficult in Tanzania where press freedom has been threatened for the last five years and, more specifically, since the election of John Magufuli to the presidency in 2015. A recent law provides for more than three years imprisonment, a fine of more than 5-million Tanzanian shillings ($2,100) or both for knowingly publishing information or data deemed “false, deceptive, misleading, or inaccurate”.

President Jacob Zuma and Tanzanian President John Magufuli during the bilateral meeting held on the sidelines of the 28th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia under the the theme: Harnessing the Demographic Devidend through Investment in Youth. 31/01/2017 GCIS

In addition, “journalists are attacked without reason,” according to Ryan Powell, a media development specialist working in East and West Africa. “Police will harass journalists, and people do not interfere.”

Tanzania now ranks 118th out of 179 countries on Reporters Without Borders’ World Freedom Index. It dropped 25 places in 2018.

The day following publication of Mawio’s investigation, Minister of Information Harrison Mwakyembe banned the newspaper for two years. The editor-in-chief of Mawio, Simon Mkina, claimed he started receiving threatening phone calls. As for Idrissa, he lost his job and was ostracised from any other journalistic opportunity. Left without resources, having to feed his three children, he left Dar es Salaam and started working in his cousin’s second-hand shop in Zanzibar.

Jabir Idrissa, a 55-year-old journalist from Zanzibar, now works in his brother's second-hand store. (Forbidden Stories)

The story that caused all this hardship was about Acacia Mining, a UK registered company that has owned the North Mara gold mine under different names since 2006 and whose majority shareholder is gold giant Barrick. The Canadian parent company could soon become the direct owner of the North Mara mine and two others because of a tax dispute between Acacia and the Tanzanian government.

After benefiting for years from an extremely advantageous tax agreement with the Tanzanian government, the company is now losing an arm-wrestling match with authorities on the environmental front. In May 2019, authorities fined the company 5.6-billion Tanzanian shillings ($2.4-million) for alleged pollution from its tailings dam.

January Makamba, the minister responsible for the environment, said the amount of the fine was justified by the persistence of the problem.

“It’s been 10 years, and the tailing storage facility is still seeping,” he said about the dam supposed to prevent run-off of the environmentally damaging by-products of the mining operation.

“North Mara gold mine has kept water with poison in this facility for a long time, and this dam is not built properly, so poison has been seeping into underground water and nearby rivers and streams.”

Makamba conceded some responsibility on the part of the Tanzanian government, saying it “consistently believed what the mine was telling”.

Acacia Mining told Forbidden Stories that it “has already recognised the need for additional tailings management” and that it “has commenced planning and design for a new tailing storage facility”.

Opposition politician Tundu Lissu, who has written on the environmental aspects of the mining industry in Tanzania, noted “the pollution of rivers and grasslands where villagers are taking the water from and raise their animals” as well as “serious health problems associated with pollution”.

“I saw six people who washed in water near the mining area and they got a very bad reaction,” said Dr Mark Nega, a former district medical officer in the area, about patients he saw in 2013.

In 2009, a study found high levels of arsenic in water in the vicinity of the mine. Elevated concentrations of arsenic are frequently found near gold mining sites. In 2015, farmers from the area sent samples of water coming from the mine to Kenya to be tested. Toxicology analysis carried out by a Kenyan government analyst found “nitrates and nitrites levels considered unsafe for livestock’s consumption”.

“An environmental incident occurred at North Mara mine during the spring 2009 high rainfall season, when water containing discharges from containment ponds and run-off from the mine entered the nearby Tigithe River,” said Acacia Mining. The company says it took prompt action following the incident.

On top of that, non-governmental organisations have documented 22 alleged killings by the police or mine security workers since 2014. The victims? For the most part illegal miners, called “intruders” by the company.

“Small-scale miners who had government licences had previously owned most of the land in question,” explained Mary Rutenge, a lecturer at Mzumbe University in Tanzania.

“The company’s acquisition of their land destabilised their livelihoods, and this company did not compensate them adequately.”

All of this with disastrous results: groups of jobless young people from neighbouring villages arm themselves with machetes or metal spears and get drunk on beer and Konyagi – a local brand of gin – every night to find the courage to climb the wall in the hope of making no more than the equivalent of $20. Instead, they find the armed policemen on the other side.

Groups of jobless young people from neighbouring villages arm themselves with machetes or metal spears and get drunk on beer and Konyagi (Forbidden Stories)

Why take so much risk?

“We must go so we can get gold to help our families,” said Monchena Mwita, the leader of the “intruders” from Kewanja, a village at the edge of the mine.

“We can’t get gold without getting into the place, and there is nowhere else to get money so that’s our only source of income.”

Monchena Mwita, the leader of the “intruders” from Kewanja, a village at the edge of the mine (Forbidden Stories)

Kewanja Village (Forbidden Stories)

Barrick’s leadership blames Tanzania’s police for any wrongdoing.

“There have been many, many investigations on various allegations, and you can’t hold me accountable for the state authority,” said Barrick CEO Mark Bristow when asked about the killings by Forbidden Stories.

Mark Bristow addresses the panel discussion on reshaping the industry at the Africa Mining Indaba on February 9, 2016 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre in Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo by Gallo Images / Business Day / Trevor Samson)

Yet, the barrier separating national police forces from mine security is not so clear. According to the UK NGO Rights and Accountability in Development, Acacia has signed a memorandum of understanding with the police in which it says it will “provide ‘monetary and in-kind support’ to the police, will pay officers an allowance, provide meals and accommodation, [and] supply fuel” to protect the mine.

Some victims also say it is not the police but mine security workers who attacked them. Forbidden Stories, along with a reporter from the UK’s Guardian newspaper, met Lucia Marembela, a 44-year-old woman who says she was raped twice in 2010. She says she recognised her rapists as mine security forces because they were wearing blue uniforms and not the police force’s beige ones.

Lucia Marembela says she was raped twice in 2010 (Forbidden Stories)

Marembela was caught by men while she was looking for gold from the mine, a fate she says is common for women in the area.

“When we were tired of running, they would end up catching us and bringing us with them,” she said.

“They would throw us in their vehicle and take us to an isolated place, near a small airfield, far from the view of passers-by.” She says one man would then rape them, while the others were on the lookout.

“Once they’ve finished their dirty work, they let you go, get in their vehicle and go back to work,” she said.

We met two other women who described the same type of attack.

Marembela will have to spend the rest of her life living with the consequences. Her partner left her when he learned she had been raped, leaving her alone to raise her six children.

“I have very bad memories of what was done to me,” she said. “Especially since everyone knows that I was raped, starting with my children. Sometimes people tell each other what happened to me on the street, and that hurts me very much.”

Lucia Marembela (Forbidden Stories)

Marembela, along with other women, went to complain to mine management. She says the company – then called African Barrick Gold – subsequently reached out and asked her to sign a confidential agreement: in exchange for 13.9-million Tanzanian shillings ($8,600), Marembela gave up her right to pursue a civil case against the mine or against Barrick. She says she was not able to fully read and understand the document before signing it.

“You shouldn’t silence people, but there’s always retribution,” said Barrick CEO Mark Bristow. “And, in the short time I have been with Barrick, there have been demands for retribution. Not for justice. For retribution. To pay people who are making the demands.”

The situation continues as of today.

“These abuses, particularly in North Mara gold mine, they come and go, they come and go,” said Lissu, who had legally represented villagers in the region. Lissu was the victim of an assassination attempt in 2017, after he accused Magufuli’s government of lying about the mining contract.

“There are periods of calm, and then something happens, and the whole thing blows up. But the tensions remain today.”

“Human rights abuses related to excess use of force by private and public mine security started increasing noticeably around 2005 and was very high between 2009 and 2016,” said Catherine Coumans from the Canadian NGO Mining Watch, who has been documenting what is happening at North Mara for many years.

“Our local contacts, and even mine personnel I have interviewed have told me that the international focus MiningWatch and RAID have put on the issue have helped bring the cases of shootings down, but severe beatings, especially of the head and joints, leading to sometimes lifelong handicaps, are still very high.”

In a statement, Acacia Mining said it had consistently refuted various allegations from both NGOs regarding unlawful deaths and human rights issues.

Forbidden Stories journalists met the families of two men, shot by the police in separate incidents in 2014 and 2016 when they were inside the mine. The families say they were not compensated. The police say they acted in self-defence.

“It is clear from Acacia’s own account that human rights violations continue at its North Mara mine,” wrote RAID in July 2017.

Yet, the mine’s gold bars are today refined at MMTC-PAMP – an Indian refiner, part of the Swiss-Dutch MKS PAMP Group – which is certified by the London Bullion Market Association, the most prestigious trade association in the industry.

“During our due diligence performed on North Mara, we took the NGO’s reports very seriously and challenged the mine on the issues raised,” said Hitesh Kalia, a risk and compliance officer at MMTC-PAMP.

“We have assessed the measures taken by the mine to remediate the human rights claims, which are largely historical and related to the activities of the state police force operating in the area of the mine.”

Back in 2010, at the peak of human rights abuses, a document written for investors indicated that the gold was refined by the Swiss company Argor-Heraeus, also certified and a listed supplier of more than 600 companies. Asked by a journalist from Tamedia (Switzerland), Argor-Heraeus did not deny nor confirm having refined gold from North Mara.

There is less to labels than it seems, say experts.

“It’s important to know that these schemes in the gold sector are run by industry associations,” explained Gillard. “They check that refiners have systems in place to source gold responsibly, in line with OECD standards. They are not intended to provide a guarantee on the status of every gold product, a guarantee that there is no child labour, a guarantee that there is no conflict financing with each piece of gold that is purchased.”

He said the complexity of the gold supply chain makes such certainty unfeasible, and the quality of audits is often insufficient. The responsibility is thus diluted all along the supply chain.

Jürgen Heraeus, chairman of the supervisory board of Argor-Heraeus, described the situation frankly in an interview in 2016: “[I]n this industry it is impossible to refine clean gold.”

Thus, back in Tanzania, impoverished “intruders” keep looking for gold at the risk of their lives, and reporters are punished and prevented from shedding light on environmental damage and other wrongdoing.

“Once they’ve used the gold, they will go, and they’ll leave and leave the poison behind,” Lissu said of the mining operation.

And, in the case of journalist Jabir Idrissa, a career and a livelihood laid to waste.

Jabir Idrissa (Forbidden Stories)

In December 2018, Mawio won the case in court against the minister for information. The newspaper will not reopen any time soon though, as it needs a licence from the government to publish again.

“So it is just up to the government. If they give us the licence, we will get back to work,” says Idrissa. “I haven’t lost hope we will get back and work with high status and courage.” DM

*This is part of the “Green Blood” series, a project pursuing stories of journalists who have been threatened, jailed or killed while investigating environmental issues.