Pacific Rim issues statement about murders

Pacific Rim, the gold mining company which has sued El Salvador over the government's failure to grant it mining permits, has put a statement on its website regarding the recent murders of environmental activists in Cabanas:
January 04, 2010
STATEMENT REGARDING RECENT EVENTS IN EL SALVADOR

Pacific Rim Mining Corp. and its subsidiaries (collectively, "PacRim") are environmentally and socially responsible gold mining and development companies with significant assets in El Salvador.

PacRim has recently been the target of false accusations made by certain anti-mining groups, which wrongfully suggest PacRim's involvement in a series of murders in the area of Trinidad, El Salvador. PacRim unequivocally denies these accusations.
PacRim has no knowledge in relation to the Trinidad murders other than what has appeared in the mainstream Salvadoran press, which reports that these tragic incidents are apparently related to a longstanding feud between two local families.

More broadly, the same anti-mining groups that have wrongfully implicated PacRim in the murders have portrayed the incidents as the result of an allegedly hostile conflict related to the debate over mining in El Salvador. However, there is no evidence indicating these violent acts bear any relation whatsoever to the debate over mining in the country. PacRim encourages all parties affected by the recent violence in Trinidad to rely on the appropriate legal processes to determine the true facts of these cases.

PacRim takes this opportunity to reiterate its support for open dialogue in relation to all events affecting the communities in which it operates, and to unequivocally condemn the use of violence and threats of violence as part of such dialogue. Furthermore, PacRim condemns attempts to incite violence through the deliberate dissemination of misinformation about PacRim and its activities in El Salvador.

Comments

Anonymous said…
What is all that about main stream press reporting of a long standing family feud? Is there any truth in that at all? I don't have access to local media in El Salvador, but I had not heard any mention of local family feud until reading their statement.
Tim said…
There is a reference to feuding among neighbors as one of the police theories in this La Prensa Grafica article.
See also Oscar Luna's condemnation of the police for pursuing the "family fued" line of investigation to the exclusion of all other evidence.
Unknown said…
It would be interesting to know what is the historical behaviour of the murder rate in the area where these killings have happened. The internet newspaper www.elfaro.net has an interesting series on the communities where murder was non existant in El Salvador, and how murder has finally appeared in some of these communities.

I suspect that Trinidad may be one of the high murder rate communities.

It would be interesting to ascertain how involved the murdered persons were in the anti mining movement. Becauses going to stand around in a protest does not necessarily make you a target of mining companies death squads, but having stood around and having been murdered might make you a cause celebre with interest groups.

And we have seen alot of that in El Salvador before, even if mining companies are certainly unscrupulous anyhow......