Evicton of five indigenous communities in Guatemala

Five indigenous communities were cleared by 800 policemen and 150 soldiers in the regions Izabal and Alta Verapaz in Guatemala on 8th and 9th January 2007.

The Guatemalan nickel company (Compania Guatemalteca de Niquel; CGN) is owned in the majority by Skye Resources, a Canadian mining company.

CGN 's earlier name was Exploraciones y Explotaciones Mineras Izabal S.A. (Exmibal) and owns in this region a nickel processing plant, which hasn't been used for more than 20 years.
This project was built during the civil war in the middle of the 70ies .
In this time several thousands of indigenous Q’eqchi’ people had to flee from violence perpetrated by the military. Some sources evenrefer to the displacement particularly in order to build this plant.

Skye wants to restart the nickel production and is currently examining two different possibilities.
One would be the reusage of the old facility with a renovation and extension, the other possibility is an "athmospheric stroage process [...] with the usage of sulphuric usage to produce an interim product beween nickel and cobalt, which would be sold for further processing." (Skye Resources Inc).

The clearance of the five villages has been pushed through after a sccessfull court action of the CGN. 350 families had to leave the regions, their whole posession and fields were destroyed by the workers of the CGN. Anybody who returned, was evicted again on 16th of January by the police. Several children were injured by tear gas.

Beside ther current destruction of the basic existance of several hundred families a possible environmental damage is feared by poisenous sewage leaking into the Izballake close-by, affecting many more people living around the lake.
The reusage of the Nickelmine would also destroy the efforts for an environmental and ethical tourism, which were made recently and which is favoured by the population to cut longtern possibilities for employment.

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