Этот пост доступен на языках: Русский

For the past three months, the inhab­i­tants of the Armenian spa town of Jermuk have been rallying against the local Amulsar gold mine. The company operating the mine claims their oper­a­tions are envi­ron­men­tal­ly sound and has threat­ened to sue the Armenian gov­ern­ment if they have to suspend work. All eyes are now on Armenia’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary gov­ern­ment, which has promised ‘power to the people’.

Lydian Inter­na­tion­al Ltd, a Jersey based company estab­lished in 2005, has been warning potential investors of the risks asso­ci­at­ed with investing in the company’s gold mine in Armenia. Risks in Armenia, Lydian warns, are not ‘typically like those in Canada; the company’s results may be adversely affected by changes in political and social con­di­tions’.

Iron­i­cal­ly, this token note, affixed like a cigarette warning to the company’s financial reports, turned out to be prophetic. The company’s first gold mine in Armenia (named ‘Amulsar’ after the mountain it’s built on) may have to close before it even starts fully operating, as a result of oppo­si­tion from local com­mu­ni­ties in Jermuk. Local activists claim their blockade — which has effec­tive­ly shut down the mine’s oper­a­tions for the past two months — has been inspired by the new wave of civic activism which has swept across Armenia since its Velvet Rev­o­lu­tion in May.

Proud New Armenians

To under­stand the sudden rise of the movement against the mining company, one has to drive 170 km south-east from Armenia’s capital city, Yerevan, into the moun­tain­ous landscape sur­round­ing Jermuk. The young men who greet you are blocking the road to the mine; they smile as they tell you, ‘this is not what you think it is’.

Stepping out of your car, you are greeted by sunburnt young pro­test­ers in sports gear who offer coffee and a piece of shade at a rusty Soviet-era bus stop. This is the first of four check­points blocking the mine entrance that have been hindering con­struc­tion for three months now.

Those manning the blockades call them­selves ‘the defenders of Amulsar mountain’, and are deter­mined not to leave their posts until the new gov­ern­ment decides whether to permit the mine to continue operating or to close it down on envi­ron­men­tal grounds.

The first check­point is manned by young men, mostly former class­mates.

‘We weren’t friends until now. There are no hangout spots in our town, even tourists get bored, so we didn’t see each other much. Our common fight helped us bond and reconnect’, says one of the class­mates, Sahak, as he restarts their inter­rupt­ed card game.

Some of those at the first-post are also workers of the very mine they are now blockad­ing.

‘I worked on con­struct­ing the conveyors, which would bring the rock con­tain­ing gold to the pro­cess­ing plant. Of course, they wouldn’t let Armenians deal with the gold itself — only for­eign­ers would work inside the plant’, says Vahe.

Davit, another former senior mine worker, told us the story of his conflict with the mine author­i­ties as he drove us to the second check­point.

‘We had morning meetings every day; one day we were told that if we arrived late, we should not enter and disturb the dis­cus­sion. So one day I arrived five minutes late and didn’t go into the [meeting] room. An Italian engineer came out and started shouting at me. Of course I shouted back. A few days later I was summoned by HR and asked to sign a letter of res­ig­na­tion which read that the company “wasn’t satisfied with my per­for­mance”. I knew the reason for my being fired was the fight with the Italian, so I refused to sign the letter, even though HR said I couldn’t refuse, as it had been sent from Yerevan’, Davit told OC Media.

The exploita­tion and dis­crim­i­na­tion against workers at the gold mine was appalling, he added, but the defenders chose not to go into ‘workers rights issues’ as the focus of their protest was ‘the pro­tec­tion of nature’.

At the fourth and final post, mostly older men gathered — veterans of the Nagorno-Karabakh War, who had witnessed the past 20 years of Armenian state-building. The oldest of the men sat at the end of a small table, making toasts, playing the accordion, and inventing witty captions for posters.

‘Whoever had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go looting after the war got their hands on newly pri­va­tised prop­er­ties. They gradually became oligarchs, [and rose to become] local author­i­ties. It never occurred to us to do the same. We only wanted to earn enough to support our families. We never had that greed’, said one of the veterans.

‘Even the Velvet Rev­o­lu­tion didn’t reach Jermuk. The whole country was on strike, but the people of Jermuk were afraid of the local oligarchs. The state of terror used to be strong here’, said another protester, Sharl.

Jermuk, unlike other major towns, doesn’t have a local TV station. Varuzhan, a local jour­nal­ist who used to run a cable TV channel in the 1990s, is sad about this. ‘I now work as an elec­tri­cian in a spa resort, but jour­nal­ism is my passion. I make video reports in Jermuk and post them on my YouTube channel’, Varuzhan says.

‘Too emotional’

According to the mine’s owners, the locals’ scep­ti­cism towards mining can be explained by the legacy of irre­spon­si­ble mining elsewhere in Armenia. Lydian Armenia claims the site’s location near three rivers, three reser­voirs, and Jermuk, a mineral water spa town, shouldn’t be alarming, as they are using best practice to ensure no indus­tri­al water leaks into the rivers.

Lydian’s met­al­lur­gi­cal manager, John Fourie, announced at a meeting in the nearby village of Gndevaz in April 2017 that the mine’s cyanide heap leaching facility, which caused par­tic­u­lar alarm among locals, would be ‘so safe it could be located in the centre of Yerevan’. The company’s CEO, Hayk Aloyan, called for local people to refrain from being ‘too emotional’ and ‘trust in science’.

However, Lydian’s project has also come under fire from local sci­en­tists. A group of inde­pen­dent Armenian geol­o­gists studied the site and released an ‘alter­na­tive assess­ment’. One of the staunchest critics of the project, Dr Armen Saghatelyan, argues that mining at Amulsar will bring about a ‘cocktail of acidic waters rich in heavy metals’, which threaten to con­t­a­m­i­nate the local water sources.

The mine site is rich in elements such as sulphide and arsenic - when exposed to acidic water, these can become toxic. Dr Saghetalyan argues that if left alone, the existing metals in the area would remain undis­turbed, or at worst, be oxidised into harmless rust. However, if the mining goes ahead, these metals would be exposed and could end up con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the local rivers.

Apart from local experts, four inter­na­tion­al sci­en­tists also studied Lydian’s data. They concluded that the Amulsar Project had a high risk of gen­er­at­ing acidic rock drainage -an outflow of toxic water from the mine -that would put the Arpa, Darb, and Vorotan rivers and the local envi­ron­ment at risk.

According to their eval­u­a­tion, Lydian Armenia has under­es­ti­mat­ed all these risks and designed inad­e­quate mit­i­ga­tion measures in order to save on costs. For instance, Lydian plans to treat mine water only in the fifth year of the project and does not plan to have a Lime Treatment Plant on site, which would have cost an estimated $125–185 million over 200 years.

When the report was read aloud at a surprise inter­ven­tion during a Lydian Advisory panel pre­sen­ta­tion on 22 May, panellist John Harker dismissed the arguments.

‘The young student said there is no such thing as safe mining’, he remarked, ‘inter­est­ing­ly, she did so holding in her hand a mobile phone that works only by virtue of mining’.

Corporate imperialism

The company’s stated aim is to turn Amulsar into Armenia’s largest gold mine, producing an annual average of approx­i­mate­ly 225,000 ounces of gold over an initial ten-year lifespan. For such a large project, the company has solicited funds from investors, among them financial insti­tu­tions such as the World Bank group — which abandoned the project in 2017 — and the EBRD, and it is currently trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

People in Jermuk express suspicion over the way the company is financed as well as the fact that it is reg­is­tered offshore.

‘First they launder money, then they launder gold [in a cyanide solution to separate it from rocks], then they launder [purify] the water. I call this company a big laundry machine’, says local resident Samvel Poghosyan.

This was a criticism echoed by economist Hrant Bagratyan, Armenia’s first Prime Minister, who called out the hypocrisy of inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions financing such a risky project.

‘The World Bank and similar insti­tu­tions love to come and interfere. Whenever the state borrows a little money, they come to regulate [how the loans are spent]. But in this case, they don’t do that, as it’s a Western company that is set to get its revenue and leave the country. This case illus­trates the bourgeois nature of these insti­tu­tions. See what vocab­u­lary I am using — even as one of the fathers of cap­i­tal­ism in Armenia’, Bagratyan said in a July interview.

Lydian doesn’t see anything untoward about the way in which it is financed. The company claims to have become one of the biggest investors in Armenia, with over $320 million invested and com­mit­ments to invest another $120 million after the operation begins.

When address­ing an Armenian audience, the company prides itself on its large invest­ment, despite calling Amulsar a ‘low-cost’ mine in financial reports to investors. As the company is account­able to its share­hold­ers, Lydian’s managing director Hayk Aloyan announced it would sue the Armenian gov­ern­ment if it decided to close the mine.

Envi­ron­men­tal activist Anna Shah­nazaryan places the case of the Amulsar mine in the wider context of global trends, which focus on letting the market regulate itself making it superior to the leg­is­la­tion of sovereign states. She argues that global powers seek to dereg­u­late devel­op­ing countries in order to protect big companies from any legal con­se­quences of their actions.

‘We are talking about a company that is financed mainly through hedge funds. Its so-called “investors” are agents dealing with secu­ri­ties, managing assets such as private pension funds. This means they are purely financial entities. Where there is finance, there is room for manip­u­la­tion’, Shah­nazaryan told OC Media.

All eyes on Pashinyan

Everyone is impatient for the rev­o­lu­tion­ary gov­ern­ment of New Armenia to make a decision on the mine. The roads to the Amulsar con­struc­tion site have been blocked for over three months now causing the company, by its own estimates, $500,000 per day. To address the issue, a few simul­ta­ne­ous inspec­tions are under way.

An ad hoc group has been created by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, which comprises 24 geol­o­gists and lawyers, civil society members, and people from the affected com­mu­ni­ties. The group is currently studying Lydia’s documents and is expected to make a decision next week.

The Nature Pro­tec­tion and Inspec­tion Depart­ment, under its new head, envi­ron­men­tal lawyer Artur Grigoryan, was quick to pass judgment. In a statement on 27 August, the Depart­ment proposed that the Nature Pro­tec­tion Ministry annul the report it published on the Amulsar Mining Project in 2016 on the basis of ‘newly emerged’ envi­ron­men­tal factors.

Bio­di­ver­si­ty concerns are at the core of the issue. At least one endan­gered plant species and one endan­gered butterfly species have been dis­cov­ered in the Amulsar area. The statement also asks the company to refrain from per­form­ing any activity related to soil man­age­ment until a new expert assess­ment is conducted.

The Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office was quick to react to the Inspec­tion Department’s claims. It announced on 30 August that a criminal case had been launched against the company for ‘breaching the rules for the pro­tec­tion and use of lithos­phere’. According to the announce­ment, the company has carried out soil man­age­ment activ­i­ties causing ֏18 million ($38,000) worth of damage to the state.

The dawn of direct democracy

On the 100th day of his gov­ern­ment on 17 August, Pashinyan once again convened a crowd in Yerevan’s Republic Square and elab­o­rat­ed on his vision of the political trans­for­ma­tions to come. Pashinyan, who has avoided explic­it­ly stating many of his political beliefs, only said that ‘the time of “-isms” ’ was over and that it was about time to introduce a ‘ref­er­en­dum culture’ to the country.

Pashinyan told the crowd that they were the ‘only supreme power’ in the country and that amend­ments were needed ‘to empower the gov­ern­ment and the people to make decisions on local, regional, and national issues’.

Pashinyan and the Amulsar pro­tec­tors seem to agree on the idea of sus­tain­ing the rev­o­lu­tion­ary spirit through per­pet­u­at­ing public par­tic­i­pa­tion in decision making. The future of the mine is set to be a litmus test of the new government’s com­mit­ment to a more direct democracy, but it may also represent a challenge to the country’s sov­er­eign­ty, if inter­na­tion­al arbi­tra­tion comes into play.

This article was prepared with support from the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Regional Office in the South Caucasus. All opinions expressed are the author’s alone, and do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the views of FES.