Thursday 27 November 2003, Oxford

Embargoed until: Wednesday 3 December 2003



Oxford-based human rights and environmental activists are pleased to announce the 2003 Dirty Digger Awards. These awards are being held to highlight the Mining Journal’s ‘Outstanding Achievement’ Awards, to be presented at the Mines and Money Congress on 3rd December 2003.



The Mining Journal Awards are happening not long after the dust has settled on the pit wall collapse at the Grasberg mine in West Papua, Indonesia, which killed at least nine workers. There are also hundreds of thousands of past or present victims of corporate mining aggression and abuses of human rights. These community members and workers will find this self-congratulatory exercise very hard to swallow - especially when many officially nominated for Mines & Money awards are among the worst offenders.



Therefore in honour of their backslapping behaviour, activists and community representatives globally, have got together for the first time to present their very own ‘Dirty Digger Awards’. In doing so, the Mining Journal’s own awards and nominations have been paralleled where possible, to better examine the nominee’s infamous achievements.



Please visit the Dirty Digger web page ( http://www.minesandcommunities.org/dda.htm) for more information on, among others, the ‘Omai “Clobber the Communities” Award’, the ‘Grasberg Award for Unacceptable Resource Appropriation’ and the ‘Machiavelli Award for Corporate Deception’. Nominations include the following:



- Jim-Bob Moffet and Robert Wilson - The respective heads of Freeport and Rio Tinto during the period when the two companies stole the world's richest mineral deposit at Grasberg from the indigenous people of West Papua. They were complicit in numerous human rights abuses, paid millions of dollars directly to the Indonesian army, and have criminally failed to protect their workforce from operational disaster - notably at Lake Wanagon in 2000 and this October at the Grasberg mine itself.

- Robert Friedland - Known all over the world as "Toxic Bob". Friedland is by far the most roguish of all mining entrepreneurs. He is, inter alia, responsible for the worst environmental mining disaster in recent US history (at Summerville Colorado) and - through his Ivanhoe Mining company - is the greatest exploiter of Burma's mineral resources, in the service of the SLORC regime.

- Newmont, Rio Tinto & Placer Dome – Jointly nominated for their continued use, and advocacy of, Submarine Tailings Disposal (STD or DSTP) in the Asia-Pacific. Despite woeful past experience elsewhere, the lack of scientific data, the numerous warnings of marine biologists and recent practical failures in the technology, these companies continue to pour millions of tonnes of toxic mine wastes into the ocean, smothering vital organisms on the seabed.



These are only a small section of the nominations on offer. Winners will be announced to the press on December 1st, and the awards will be presented outside the Excel Exhibition Centre, London, on December 3rd.



QUOTE: “To put an end to the dynamics of destruction and violence, the international [mining] community - particularly international investors - must, first and foremost, recognize indigenous communities' basic rights to chart their own development paths, to manage their own resources, to pursue their traditional livelihoods and cultures, and to say NO to multinational operations on their lands.” John Rumbiak (West Papuan Human Rights activist), ELSHAM.

PHOTO OP: Presentation of awards, 03/12/03, Excel Exhibition Centre.

PHOTOS AVAILABLE: The Dirty Digger ‘gong’ (jpeg or hard copy); the Grasberg Disaster (jpeg)



More Information:




Andrew Whitmore

Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

tel: 07754 395597

e-mail:  comms@piplinks.org