CARACAS.- The Venezuelan NGO Fundaredes denounced that the Venezuelan State is “complicit” in the illegal mining that takes place in the Orinoco Mining Arcan area of mineral resource exploitation in the southeast of Venezuela, and recalled the risks that this irregular activity represents for communities and the environment, after the recent collapse in the illegal mine “Bulla loca”which left 30 dead.
The EPA Project environmental observatory, from Fundaredes, indicated that “it is evident that the State has been complacent and even complicit in the development of these activities, allowing irregular armed groups to control and exploit the mines without any type of restrictions, regulations or effective sanctions…”.
It is not a secret in Venezuela that irregular armed groups have control of illegal mining around some areas of the Mining Arc and this has been reported by several civil organizations. One of them, SOS Orinoco, has denounced that mining activity in southern Venezuela is “imbued” in an organized crime scheme in which the country’s political and military power participates. And one of the “key irregular actors within this complex plot are the Organized Armed Groups (GAO),” SOS Orinoco noted in a March 2022 report.
Another NGO, AlertaVenezuela, assured in September 2023 that in the last 10 years irregular armed groups have proliferated in the South American country, in reference to the presence of paramilitary groups, organized crime gangs and irregular groups of Colombian origin. In her complaint, AlertaVenezuela adds that these groups “have control of territory and governance capacity,” affecting the rights of the populations where they operate.
The NGO maintained that in the case of Arco Minero the relationship with irregular groups “is more evident”, since the mafias fight for control of the business of illegal mineral extraction, which ends up promoting activities such as human trafficking and smuggling, internal displacement and forced migration, murders, sexual exploitation, among other crimes.
And in this scheme, the NGO affirms that the activity of irregular groups “It is only possible with the consent or complicity of civil and military authorities at the national or local level.”
“This was to come”
Last week, the collapse of the illegal mine “Bulla loca”, Located in a remote area in the state of Bolívar (southern Venezuela), 30 people died, although residents and those who managed to survive the accident claim that more than 100 people were covered in the collapse.
The accident revealed the precarious conditions in which mining activity is carried out in the south of Venezuela.
“This was to come,” commented Robinson Basanta, a resident of the place, referring to the unsafe conditions under which the miners work, most of them in situations of extreme poverty.
“This mine has released a lot of gold (…) People go there out of necessity to make ends meet,” he added.
Activists denounce “ecocide” in the area and the exploitation of children and women, who work long hours without protection.
He Orinoco Mining Arc It is an extensive area of 112,000 km2 with large reserves of gold, diamonds, iron, bauxite, quartz and coltan. It was declared a “National Strategic Development Zone” by the Nicolás Maduro regime in 2016.
“Illegal mining in the Orinoco Mining Arc represents a serious threat to the most important natural reserve in the country, its uncontrolled practice leads to deforestation, contamination of water sources, soil degradation and loss of biodiversity. These impacts not only affect the environment, but also to the local communities that depend on natural resources for their livelihood,” the EPA Project warned on the social network X this Tuesday, seven days after the collapse in “Bulla loca.”
Fundaredes stressed that it has repeatedly denounced “the serious risks” of illegal mining, “an activity controlled by irregular armed groups with the permissiveness of the State, keeping hundreds of people subjected to inhumane conditions of forced labor” and “putting environmental sustainability at risk, in addition to subjecting those who work in these spaces to forced labor and modern slavery, violating by omission the right to life, work, health and personal safety.”
The collapse in “Bulla loca” is not the first accident of this type that has been recorded in an illegal mine in Venezuela. In December 2023, a mine collapsed in the indigenous community of Ikabarú, also in the state of Bolívar, which left 12 dead. Days before, a “partial collapse” had occurred in the same mine that left no fatalities.
Source: REDACTION / With information from SOS Orinoco / AlertaVenezuela / AFP
