An insurrection led by ethnic Jarai villagers against the Kingdom’s first commercial underground gold mine, to be operated by Indian-owned Mesco Gold (Cambodia), looms over the green, serene remote hamlet of Plung, a few kilometers from the Vietnamese border, in Ratanakiri’s O’Yadaw district. About 140 Jarai families live at the edges of the forest there that are still teeming with wildlife and home to the much sought after Siamese rosewood. Chainsaws and bulldozers have spared these jungles, unlike the neighboring forested land that has been decimated and converted into mammoth rubber and cassava plantations.
 

“This Indian gold mine would destroy the environment by their dynamiting and the chemicals they use to extract the gold underground will poison our land,” Romam Davit, a 28-year-old Jarai villager, told Khmer Times. “Our forests are also sacred to us. We have our spirits here, where we can make sacrifices to our ancestors. If all this is taken away, we will have nothing to pass on to our children,” he said.
 

“If the company doesn’t agree to stop mining and leave our land alone, we will stop them by using force if necessary,” warned the villager. Last month the Ministry of Mines and Energy issued Cambodia’s first industrial mining license to Mesco Gold, with a 30-year concession, to start operating a 12-square kilometer underground gold mine in Phum Syarung in O’Yadaw district.

 

read more http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/30569/jarai-say-no-to-ratanakiri-gold-mine/

 

-- © Copyright Khmer Times 10/10

Now who's gonna win that fight ... the Gold miners or the ethnic Jarai villagers ?

mmm