Thaisarco And "blood Tin"

[iforget]

Phuket tin smelter at centre of international row

Phuket's last vestige of heavy industry, the very-low-profile Thaisarco tin smelter on Cape Panwa, has been hurled into the limelight by a report from a major NGO accusing tin producers of buying ore from vicious military groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The NGO is Global Witness, formed in 1995, which has offices in London and Washington DC. Global Witness targets corruption and environmental degradation in the use of natural resources. It claims, for example, to have been instrumental in exposing the trade in "conflict diamonds", the plot pivot of the 2006 Leonardo di Caprio hit movie "Blood Diamond".

Now Global Witness has targeted the tin industry, accusing a number of tin companies, including Thaisarco and its parent company, Amalgamated Metals Corp of the UK (AMC), of buying, in effect, "blood tin" from the Congo.

The report alleges that Thaisarco and AMC are receiving supplies of cassiterite, the main ore from which tin is extracted, from mines controlled by the Congolese army and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

The FDLR is a vicious Hutu militia that includes former members of the Interahamwe, which carried out the 1994 Rwanda genocide, in which roughly 20% of Rwanda's population – 900,000 or more people – were slaughtered in just 10 days. Today the FDLR occupies a swath of land in the eastern Congo, next to the border with Rwanda and, according to Global Witness, it and the Congolese army – though supposedly on opposing sides – cooperate to "violently exploit civilians to retain access to valuable minerals, including cassiterite".

In the Global Witness report, the NGO's director, Patrick Alley, asserts, "…violence against unarmed civilians is continuing and countless lives are lost each day. All the warring parties in the Congo are systematically using forced labour and violent extortion in mining areas. "It is not good enough for companies to say they buy only from licensed exporters, when they know full well that their middlemen buy from armed groups. The failure of governments to hold companies to account, of Burundi and Rwanda to restrict the trade across their borders, and of donors and diplomats to address explicitly the role of the mineral trade, have all contributed to the continuation of a conflict that has killed millions and displaced many more."

AMC has staunchly defended sourcing of cassiterite from the Congo, and criticises the Global Witness report as inaccurate. "We are disappointed with the number of inaccuracies and omissions in the report," it said in a statement released yesterday.

Global Witness demands that companies trading in minerals from the Congo should carry out thorough due diligence to ensure that they are not funding warring parties. The AMC statement counters that Thaisarco "has been instrumental in designing the industry-wide written system of due diligence for the main industry body, the ITRI. The ITRI Tin Supply Chain Initiative [iTSCi] aims to improve transparency of the supply chain, the first phase of which has now been implemented [on July 1]".

Global Witness also demands that "the Congo and other governments should cut off warring parties' access to the mines and to international trade routes and external networks." AMC counters that this risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater by penalising all cassiterite suppliers in the Congo. "We are concerned that Global Witness' approach will lead to a de facto ban on the trade which we do not believe is in either the short term or the long term interests of the Congo, either economically, politically or socially."

The NGO's third demand is for "home" governments (in the case of Thaisarco and AMC, these would be the Thai and British governments) to hold companies to account for involvement in illicit trade in minerals from Congo.

But AMC says that it and its subsidiary have bent over backwards to ensure they receive no "blood tin". Thaisarco, says AMC, not only follows all official recommendations, especially United Nations recommendations, but was a leader in devising the checks and balances in the iTSCi system, which is expected to be fully implemented next year or in 2011.

AMC also stresses that it will continue to follow advice from UN experts and adds, "If the UN were to decide that dissociation from the trade [with the Congo] is the most appropriate way forward, then Thaisarco would comply absolutely with such a requirement."

It plainly believes – and hopes – that this is unlikely, arguing, "An approach of dissociation would be to the detriment of large numbers of artisanal miners and their dependents in Congo (with up to 10 million people being economically dependent on the mineral trade according to World Bank estimates."

Locally, Michael Spratt, the managing director of Thaisarco – the world's fifth-largest tin smelter – noted, "Thaisarco is an important value adder in the Phuket and the Thai economy. While our direct employment at Ao Makham is around 260 Thai people, I estimate that we create indirect employment throughout Thailand for about 1,500 others.

"In addition to being a highly responsible employer and significant tax payer we are responsible for substantial import substitution. Thailand consumes about 6,000 tonnes of tin a year and Thaisarco supplies most of it."

http://www.phuketobserver.com/phuket-tin-s...ernational-row/

[moo9]

Same story as some years ago on Tantalum Metal "Blood mobile phones" etc.

The interesting thing is, that always Western companies get blamed, never the Chinese competitors, who are strategically buying mines and assets in Africa! And they do not care at all about human rights in this region, believe me.

What to do? Major raw material deposits are exploited, so the world has to look more and more in remote areas of the planet to find metals needed. This fact certainly will attract more and more corrupt heads, as there is a lot of money to be made.