Manifesto Against Poisoning a Country
The Facebook Generation goes out in the streets to stop monstrous cyanide mining project while Televisions boycott protests
Egypt. Turkey. Now Romania. The Facebook generation is raising its voice against government abuse. These days my country is living its own Facebook revolution. Every evening for the past 5 days thousands of people have been gathering in the centre of major cities to protest against a mining project that could become the biggest environmental disaster Europe has seen in many years and one Romania might never recover from.
At the heart of Transylvannia, beneath the small town of Roșia Montană, lies the largest gold deposit in continental Europe — 300 tons of gold and 1600 tons of silver. Add to that potentially impressive quantities of rare metals and you have a treasure that makes big mining corporations drool. Over the past 7 years Roșia Montană Gold Corporation (RMGC), a consortium where Canadian based company, Gabriel Resources, owns an 80% stake and the Romanian state only 20%, has been running an aggressive public campaign to get the mining project started, after having obtained concession over the land without a public tender. The company has worked tirelessly to convince Romanians what a great investment this will be (the Romanian state will get only 6% of the profits) and how the lives of the poor community in Roșia Montană (where unemployment is now at a whopping 80%) will be transformed for the better by the 2000 workplaces RMGC will create.
Basically this company is offering Romania a minute percentage of its own gold and a couple thousand workplaces for a limited number of years in exchange for the destruction of four mountains in one of the most beautiful areas of the country containing unique underground galleries dating back to the Romans (candidate for becoming a UNESCO heritage site), two historical villages, creating an 8 km wide crater visible from the moon and a monstrous cyanide residue lake 1200 times the volume of that in notorious Summitville. Oh, and let’s not forget that the quantities of cyanide used yearly in this state of the art mining project will be thirteen times larger than that used in ALL the mining projects accross Europe.
These are the facts. Now Romania is divided. The supporters of the project — people in Roșia Montană who are hoping this will be the end to the region’s poverty (at least for the next 16-20 years — the estimated duration of the project), politicians who have, for the past 7 years, been subject to the lobbying of the Gold Corporation and a large part of the media who have, for the same number of years, been receiving millions of dollars in advertising money from the same corporation. The opponents of the project — NGOs, students, intellectuals, middle-class, highly educated, socially responsible, environmentally aware.
There are major distinctions between members of the two camps.
Most of the supporters of the project either have some direct financial interest in it or are regular citizens whose opinions have been mis-shaped by the relentless media campaign featuring countless advertisements on all major TV channels, where locals from Roșia Montană are sharing emotional accounts of their hardships and their hopes for a better future as employees of the Corporation in an attempt to gain public sympathy. The opponents of the same project are, in their vast majority, people who have no personal stakes in it and whose main motivation is the preservation of the environment and of a region which could become economically profitable in countless other ways (tourism is just one alternative) instead of getting drowned in cyanide.
Supporters are mostly people whose main source of information is Television and who passively take on their points of view from mainstream media, while opponents are rather people who read news online and are, overwhelmingly, present on Facebook, actively looking for alternative perspectives.
Perhaps most importantly, supporters arguments are short-term — financial gains (few for the country, huge for the Corporation) and the temporary creation of a number of workplaces, while opponents arguments are long-term — the preservation of a natural treasure that would get irreversibly destroyed if this project were to become reality and the future of a whole generation whose country would be mercilessly stripped of its natural resources and slowly become a waste dump for the benefit of one or more private companies.
For the past 5 days people have been protesting in the streets every evening. Tonight I joined them. It was my first ever public protest after years spent trying to make a difference, always acting discretely, privately, focusing on whatever depended on me and never expecting too much from any authority or anyone else for that matter. I used to believe that instead of protesting in the streets people would do better changing something in their immediate surroundings. I used to be convinced that we’d all be better off talking less and doing more, complaining less and focusing more on what each of us can do to make things better.
Tonight I understood that this is not enough. Sometimes in order to make that difference you need to be joined by others who share your beliefs and are willing to stand by you in facing something bigger than either of you. Tonight I remembered the story of David and Goliath. One man might not make a difference sometimes. But a thousand, two thousand, ten, one hundred thousand will.
Tonight I stood next to people just like me — normal people who simply refuse to be members of the only species on Earth who consciously and purposefully destroys its own habitat and, blinded by greed, condemns itself to self-destruction.
I have come to write this article because our voices deserve to be heard. No major television was present to report on tonight’s protests. No reporter from any major newspaper in Romania was there.
The reporters are us. Facebook, Twitter, blogs — these are our means of making ourselves heard and sharing our Revolution with the world.
Every “like”, every “share”, every “comment” is a victory and confirmation that we have entered a new era, where people no longer depend on Big Media to shape their opinions and inform them on what is best for their lives. The fact that a movement like this can take place without, or, better said, despite the contribution of classical media channels, is indelible proof we are freer than ever before to make up our own minds and shape our own future.
