by SAMER ELATRASH

A lawsuit against a Canadian-Australian mining company over its alleged role in a Congo massacre will be heard by an Australian court “imminently,” says a rights worker involved in preparing the case.

Victims of an October 14, 2004 massacre in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) accuse Anvil Mining Ltd., which runs copper and silver mines in the DRC, of helping soldiers end an uprising in Kilwa, a village near an Anvil mine in the country’s Katanga province, in an assault that killed more than 80 rebels and villagers. Anvil is headquartered in Perth, Australia, but is incorporated in Canada, with offices in Montreal.

Soldiers travelled to Kilwa in Anvil vehicles and used the company’s trucks to dump corpses in mass graves, according to the findings of a UN investigation leaked to the media last year.

The complaints in the lawsuit detail killings, rapes and looting by Congolese soldiers, says Tricia Feeney, director of Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID), which helped victims prepare their complaints. The suit will be filed in Melbourne.

Richard Meeran, the complainants’ lawyer with Australian law firm Slater and Gordon, says they will be seeking compensation, but he wouldn’t share more details on the lawsuit.

Anvil CEO Bill Turner, reached in South Africa, had no comment, although he has repeatedly told media his company is in no way responsible for the massacre. Caroline de Mori, a communications representative for Anvil in Australia, directed the Mirror to the company’s Web site for additional information.

Death in Kilwa

Anvil is already under investigation by the Australian Federal Police for involvement in “alleged war crimes,” says an AFP official, who, owing to the force’s media relations guidelines, asked that his name not be published.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade asked AFP to look into the allegations last year, says the official.

The killings occurred after rebels took over a police station and declared the Katanga province liberated, the UN report says. Rebels also looted an Anvil fuel depot near Kilwa. Soldiers were flown to Kilwa in Anvil planes, and after quickly defeating the rebels they carried out summary executions of rebels and villagers, the report says.

Corpses of victims were transported in Anvil trucks to mass graves outside the village, witnesses say. The mother of one of the victims told an Australian paper that the trucks were driven by Anvil employees.

The military operation in Kilwa “had been made possible thanks to the logistical efforts provided by Anvil Mining,” a Congolese military commander told UN investigators.

Anvil officials denied information that a company security guard accompanied the soldiers, but said company workers acted as drivers for the soldiers.

After the rebellion had been put down, Anvil issued a press statement saying they would resume mining within a day, and they were consulting with Congolese authorities on additional security for the future.

“The response from the military and the government both on the provincial and national level has been swift and of great assistance in the speedy resumption of operations,” Anvil later said in a company quarterly report.

Transportation available

The incident garnered attention when the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) aired an investigative report in June 2005 on Anvil’s ties to the killings. Reporter Sally Neighbour interviewed Anvil CEO Bill Turner, who in response to a question on Anvil’s providing vehicles to the army said, “So what?”

“They requested assistance from Anvil for transportation. We provided that transportation so that they could get their soldiers down to Kilwa,” he told ABC.

Anvil said, in an immediate response to the program, that they “had no option but to agree to the request, made by the military of the lawful government of DRC.”

A few days later, Anvil issued another statement saying that Anvil vehicles had in fact been “commandeered.”

Anvil had “no reason to suspect that this would involve anything other than the lawful enforcement of the laws of the DRC,” the statement said. However, Anvil officials had told the UN they supplied soldiers with food rations to dissuade them from looting Kilwa.

Foreign Affairs Canada refuses to comment on whether Canada has been contacted by the AFP or the Australian government on the Anvil investigation.

Human rights groups in Canada had raised complaints against Anvil last year to the National Contact Point, an interministrial committee that oversees companies’ compliance with a set of non-binding guidelines drawn by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The NCP invited the groups to meet with Anvil representatives, but said in a letter to Montreal-based human rights group Rights and Democracy that it couldn’t investigate whether Anvil violated the OECD guidelines.

Andrew Hannon, a spokesman with Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, says the NCP offered to facilitate more meetings between the groups and Anvil.

“The NGOs felt that this would not be necessary since there was now adequate contact between the company and their groups,” says Hannon.

Contributing to instability

Diana Bronson, a coordinator with Rights and Democracy, says the groups were more interested in the government “assuming its responsibility to make sure companies aren’t involved in human rights abuses.”

Bronson says the government should check the human rights records of Canadian corporations abroad before providing them with political risk insurance and export financing.

A war in the DRC that lasted from 1998 to 2003 killed over three million, many of them from starvation and preventable diseases. Some mining companies are accused by the UN, human rights groups and mining watchdogs of taking advantage of the instability in Congo, and the corruption of its government, to loot Congo’s resources.

A 2002 report by a United Nations panel of experts on illegal exploitation that was presented to the Security Council listed eight Canadian companies—none of them Anvil—that were involved in illegal exploitation and contributing to violence in the DRC.

A follow-up report exonerated most of the companies, but critics say they were taken off the list owing to pressure by the Canadian government.

An informed source, speaking to the Mirror on condition of anonymity, says the Canadian government exercised its clout in the UN on behalf of the corporations.

“Canada has strong representation in the UN. They imposed on the Security Council to review [the 2002] report,” he says.

Other countries whose companies were mentioned followed suit, he adds. “These companies are the darlings of the countries to which they belong.”

One of the companies mentioned in the 2002 report, First Quantum Minerals Ltd., had former prime minister Joe Clark as its special adviser on African affairs.