BARRICK Gold is back in the Ontario Superior Court today where it will seek to have allegations of human rights abuses dismissed or permanently stayed.
The allegations relate to alleged security incidents at the North Mara mine in Tanzania. In June, the miner wrote to the United Nations Human Rights Council saying the allegations were “misdirected, unfounded” and “lacked substance”.
Killings, assault, torture, sexual abuse and violence against women and girls were allegedly perpetrated by Tanzanian security forces and private security contractors at North Mara dating back as far back as 2006 when Barrick first acquired the mine.
This is according to the UK human rights organisation RAID which drew on research it said it conducted in 2022.
There have been many reports of violence between security forces and villagers at North Mara over the years. The Globe and Mail reported incidents in 2014 of “excessive violence” by local police. Bloomberg News reported in 2010 that seven people had been killed over the previous two years.
Barrick, however, is arguing that by hearing the case in Canada the parties are undermining the Tanzanian justice system which it says is amply sophisticated to hear the matter.
“The plaintiffs in this case are engaging in a classic case of forum-shopping: deliberately seeking to implicate Barrick in a case in Ontario, where the only viable defendants would be North Mara Gold Mine Limited (NMGML) and the Tanzanian Police Force (TPF),” said a spokesman for Barrick on Tuesday.
Barrick will also argue that many of the relevant witnesses live in Tanzania, speak Swahili and other local languages and do not speak, read or understand English. “Barrick should not be placed in a position where it can’t properly defend itself due to the unavailability of vitally important evidence,” the spokesman said.
“Filing the claims in the Ontario Courts is an egregious example of forum-shopping in an effort to benefit the Plaintiffs at the expense of conducting fair and just legal proceedings. The right forum to consider the claims of the Plaintiffs is Tanzania.”
In 2019, Barrick merged with Randgold Resources. Previous management of the African mines (under African Barrick) was restructured.
The Tanzanian mines were then put into the newly established Twiga Resources, a joint venture company with the Tanzanian government. A long-standing dispute in which the government blocked gold exports was also resolved as part of that process.
