Antinuclear

Protest against BHP as Alternative BHP Report released

In Melbourne today, protesters gather outside BHP Billiton’s head
office in Melbourne, highlighting the impacts of BHP’s plan to make
Olympic Dam the biggest uranium mine in the world.

Friends of the Earth’s national nuclear campaigner Dr Jim Green said:
“For all of BHP Billiton’s hollow rhetoric about corporate social
responsibility, the company operates the Olympic Dam mine in SA under an outdated Indenture Act which exempts the mine from key environmental and Aboriginal heritage laws.

“BHP Billiton has provided over $2 million to Reconciliation Australia.
Yet the company will not relinquish its exemptions from the SA
Aboriginal Heritage Act. The company’s attitude appears to be ‘do as I
say not as I do’. It’s time for this hypocrisy to end.”

Duban Velez, a union delegate for workers at the Cerrejon coal mine in
Colombia, will be at today’s protest in Melbourne to tell his story
about BHP’s inadequate social and environmental standards in Colombia.
Mr Velez will also be attending BHP’s second AGM, in Brisbane on
November 26. Farming families in villages around the mine have been
deprived of their livelihoods as the mine expands and accuse BHP of
failing to negotiate in good faith or offer sufficient assistance or
compensation.

The Alternative Annual Report can be downloaded at:
http://tinyurl.com/yjjluqg

October 29, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, uranium | aboriginal, antinuclear, Australia, BHP, BHP Billiton, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear wastes, nuclear weapons, radioactive, uranium | Leave a comment