About Those People Who Own the Bluff Smelter.......

The life histories of the companies which hold shares in the Bluff smelter are full of fascination. Showa Denko K.K., with a 25% holding, operates three Aluminium smelters in Japan and carries heavy responsibility for mercury pollution in Japanese coastal waters. They have recently paid life long annuities of $1400 a year to several thousand victims of mercury poisoning, with some serious victims getting an additional grant of $28,000. A Showa Denko aluminium smelter is also responsible for fluoride pollution in South Korea which caused fruit trees in the area to wither into stunted dwarfs.

Kaiser [unclear: Strip mining] activities are angering conservation groups in Canada. For every ton of coal extracted, six tons of overburden has to be stripped away. This overburden is piled up in great mountainous heaps, which crode away in the rain to pollute streams and rivers with silt.

[unclear: Conzinc Riotinto] of Australia (C.R.A.) holds an equal share in Comalco with Kaiser. C.R.A. has a controlling interest in Mount Tom Price and in [unclear: Hamersley,] both gigantic [unclear: iron] ore mines in Western Australia. They also control Mary Kathleen uranium in (Queensland), Bougainville Copper Proprietary (Papua New Guinea) and New Broken Hill, a lead zinc mine in New South Wales. Australians tend to think of all these mines as Their mines, but they are, in fact, all foreign owned C.R.A. itself is 85% owned by the English Rio Tinto Zinc Corporation — C.R.A recently made news by hiring Australia's second most senior secret service executive as its new general manager for corporate affairs. Mr R.W.L. Austin has previously served in the [unclear: Ausiralian] Security Intelligence Service in Japan, Indonesia, London, Rome and Hongkong. "Mr Austin's new post" says the Australian Financial Review "will involve responsibility for the C.R.A. group's public relations activities, its overseas relations and many of its most delicate multinational negotiations."

The story of C.R.A.'s copper mine on Bougainville Island makes grim reading. Until C.R.A. came along, Europeans had had very little influence on the people's way of life. As a result the islanders had almost no understanding of the concept of money, let alone that of compensation for [unclear: land]. For them wealth lay with the land, which was passed down to them through the female side of the family, from their ancestors. By an accident of history the island had been attached to Papua New Guinea then a United Nations Trust Territory under the administration of Australia C.R.A., acting according to Australian law, asked the people to give over their land in return for compensation. The people refused. So. C.R.A working in hand with the Australian administration took it from them. Richard West in "River of Tears" writes "The Rorovana people refused to sell their land, which was then compulsorily acquired by the Administration. On 1st August 1969, a hundred police were sent to help the surveyors mark the boundaries of the land, and in spite of this force, twenty women managed to snatch away a peg. Four days later police used clubs and tear gas to beat the men and women off their land." A twelve year old schoolboy when asked to write about the company in an essay, had this to say, "Bougainvillians became angry when the company came to Bougainville to dig out our copper. The company is digging out the copper all through the day and all through the night and it is hard for us to stop them. Our people think when the company stole all our copper there will be no more copper and Bougainville will never be a rich country, it will be a desert"

The English based Rio Tinto Zinc Corporation, largest mining corporation in the world, has mines in Rhodesia (nickel) and in South Africa (copper) and exports metal in violation of the United Nations sanctions. In South West Africa, which is a United Nations Trust Territory illegally occupied by South Africa, Rio Tinto Zinc has a mine from which she supplies uranium under contract to the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. In these three mining operations Rio Tinto Zinc employs black Africans under the system of apartheid. And in England the Corporation is planning a $60 million open cast copper mine in Snowdonia National Park, against fierce opposition from conservationists. It is not surprising that Rio Tinto Zinc has always gone out of its way to avoid publicity. Its record of human exploitation around the world puts it in a class of its own as far as international criminality is concerned.