By IPS Correspondents
CANBERRA, Aug 31 2005 (IPS)

In a bid to defuse a furore over its provision of transport to a Congolese army unit, responsible for the October 2004 massacre of over 100 people, an Australian mining company has promised to adopt voluntary guidelines while dealing with the military.

However, Techa Beaumont, the Director of the Sydney-based mining industry watchdog, the Mineral Policy Institute, dismisses the guidelines as vague and unenforceable. ”If you have voluntary guidelines and companies don’t have to explicitly report on what they are doing, then you can’t hold them to account and the majority of cases of abuse aren’t going to come to light,” she said.

Late August, the company at the centre of the controversy, Anvil Mining, stated that it was ”working with several NGOs (non-government organisations) to simplify and improve protocols in dealing with the Military”, based on the voluntary guidelines on security and human rights, finalised in December 2000 by the US State Department and the British Foreign Office.

Caroline de Mori, who is director of Perth-based public relations company Purple Communications recently hired by Anvil as its spokeswoman, refused to identify the NGO groups. ”I don’t think we want to specify the names of the ones the company is working with,” she said.

However, Anvil may struggle to get a hearing from NGOs after issuing a media release last week warning that it was ”reviewing possible defamation proceedings” against unspecified organisations in the Congo, Australia and Britain.

The voluntary guidelines were negotiated by several governments with inputs from mining companies such as Rio Tinto, Shell and British Petroleum and some international human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

On Oct.14, 2004, a ragtag band of several dozen rebels occupied the town of Kilwa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kilwa is approximately 50 kms from the Dikulushi copper and silver mining operations established two years earlier by Anvil Mining.

The response of the 62nd Brigade of the Armed Forces (FARDC) was brutal. A force of approximately 100 troops was flown into Kilwa on aircraft chartered by Anvil who then used company trucks for on-ground transport. The rebels surrendered without a fight and within two hours the town was under the control of the military.

However, it was then that the soldiers went on a rampage of looting and killing, which a United Nations investigation says resulted in the death of approximately 100 people, mostly unarmed civilians.

In a report to the stock exchange at the end of December 2004, Anvil reported that as a result of the incident the mine had been closed for a period of five days but made no mention of any deaths. ”The government and military response on both provincial and national levels was rapid and supportive of the prompt resumption of operations,” the company stated.

Months after the massacre, Bill Turner, president of the company, which is incorporated in Canada, repeatedly told an Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s ‘Four Corners’ reporter that Congo’s military ”requested” and the company ”provided” trucks and planes.

”We provided that transportation so that they could get their soldiers down to Kilwa,” he stated. In a media release the day after the programmme was aired, Turner described the allegations in the programme as ”deplorable and without foundation” but once more stated that the military ”requested” their vehicles.

Subsequently, at the urging of an Australian lawyer working for the victims, the Australian Federal Police commenced an investigation. Richard Meeran from the law firm Slater and Gordon told IPS that he had written to the AFP requesting an investigation into whether Australian legislation, giving effect to Australia’s obligations under international human rights conventions, may have been breached.

The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, an arm of the World Bank which provided 13.3 million US dollars worth of guarantees for the mine in May this year, has confirmed it too is investigating the controversy. The Canadian government is also investigating the matter.

In a media release issued two weeks after stating in early June that the military had ”requested” transport, Turner changed tack and insisted that during a March 2004 incident in which company vehicles were ”commandeered at gunpoint” the company ”had absolutely no choice” but to provide the transport.

In late August, the company announced that a ”comprehensive” internal investigation cleared the company . The review by Gary Berson, a partner from the major law firm Clayton Utz was reviewed by Perth Queens Counsel Wayne Martin.

However, De Mori said the company had no intention of releasing the 100- page report. Asked what the value of the report was if it wasn’t available for public scrutiny, de Mori retorted ”Up to whose scrutiny? Up to your scrutiny?” she said laughing. ”I’m sorry to be a bit funny about this but we are not obliged to provide the full 100-page report publicly and we are not doing so”.

For Beaumont, the failure of companies to disclose what they know illustrates the weakness of voluntary guidelines. ”Voluntary guidelines, in my opinion, are always going to leave companies with the PR (public relations) opportunity to spin it however they want but do little to prevent abuses or enable effective scrutiny of what is happening on the ground,” she said.

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