I guess this can stand on it's own though (but if a moderator wants to delete this, I'd be more than happy to make it the comment I intended it to be)

This was sent to me by rights action, the full text for which is posted here)

YOUR CPP CONTRIBUTIONS: FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL TO EXPLOITATION IN GUATEMALA, By Victoria Henderson, December 2006 (Queens University, Kingston ON, Canada)

If you were to follow the money trail of your Canada Pension Plan (CPP) contributions it would lead you, among other disturbing places, to a remote municipality on the northwest shores of Lake Izabal, Guatemala, where a Vancouver-based mining company, indirectly funded by our pension plan, is capitalizing on the exploitation of indigenous land and culture.

Skye Resources (TSX:SKR) holds an exploratory mining license for 300-square-kilometres of land in the municipality of El Estor. According to indigenous elders in the region, Skye is far from the responsible mining company it claims itself to be. Contrary to the image Skye has branded for its shareholders and investors, many Qeqchi Maya say the company has fallen flat on its promises of corporate social responsibility.

The struggle between Skye and indigenous communities in El Estor should be cause for concern among Queens University students, faculty, and staff. Act for the Earth, a peace, ecology and human rights group headquartered in Toronto, reports that CPP currently holds shares worth more than $130-million in INCO, which is both a key shareholder in Skye Resources and the previous owner of the El Estor mine.

Repackaged as the Fenix Project and managed by Skyes wholly owned Guatemalan subsidiary, Compana Guatemalteca de Nuuel (CGN), the El Estor mine is expected to produce up to twenty-five million pounds of ferro-nickel per year by 2008, and up to fifty-million pounds per year thereafter. Not surprisingly, the rebirth of INCOs Guatemalan albatross is opposed by many Qeqchi Maya, who remember all too well the environmental and human rights abuses that tarnished Canadas last mining experiment in El Estor.

INCOs history in El Estor is riddled with counts of military collusion and murder. Guatemalas Comisin de Esclarecimiento Histrico or Truth Commission, which was responsible for documenting abuses committed during the countrys 36-year civil war, implicates INCOs Guatemalan subsidiary, EXMIBAL, in a number of cases, including:

Case 9401 (1978) in which military commissioners and EXMIBAL employees executed four persons, one of whom was a mine worker, in Santa Maria Cahaboncito;

Case 1145 (1981) in which members of the judicial police traveling in an EXMIBAL vehicle abducted a community leader from El Estor who was later found murdered; and

Case 100 (1971), which documents the murder of a Guatemalan Congressman vocally opposed to the concession of a mining license to EXMIBAL. (Cases are available for review in English on the website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.)

[ 27 January 2007: Message edited by: Ahni ]

[ 27 January 2007: Message edited by: Ahni ]