Rio Tinto Plc: Racial Discrimination And Environmental Destruction

EDM number 91 in 2000-01, proposed by Michael Clapham on 12/12/2000.

That this House is deeply disturbed to learn of the class action complaint filed in the USA courts, in respect of Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea, accusing London-based Rio Tinto, the mining conglomerate, that in operating its Panguna Copper Mine, the most productive in the world, it treated the indigenous people as inferior and expendable, through apartheid, racial discrimination and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, constituting gross violation of their human rights, that Rio Tinto destroyed Bougainville's forests, fauna and river systems, generating billions of tons of toxic waste, killing animal and plant life, turning vast, fertile areas into a toxic, barren wasteland, that Rio Tinto chemically defoliated, bulldozed and sluiced of an entire mountainside of rainforest and that Rio Tinto caused serious illness and death to the people; demands that Rio Tinto accept its responsibility to pay compensation; and urges Her Majesty's Government to institute a full public inquiry and to report back to this House.

This motion has been signed by a total of 50 MPs.