Protests Over Gold Mine

Protesting villagers in Kyrgyzstan’s Talas region are digging their heels in as the government tries to negotiate a settlement in their dispute with a gold-mining project in the area. Although most observers believe the Kyrgyz government and the Andash Mining Company will win the dispute in the end, some say the protestors’ demand for an independent environmental study should be met.



A government commission met villagers from Kopurobazar on January 31 in an attempt to end their row with the Andash Mining Company. Local residents have been protesting against the mining work since it began last May. They say it deprives them of winter pastures and upsets the ecological balance in the area.



Erkin Kazakbaev, deputy executive director of the Andash Mining Company, told NBCentralAsia that according to the information he had, fewer than half the 5,000 people in the village actually object to the mining. He added that environmental matters are regulated by Kyrgyzstan’s emergencies ministry, and if the company were to cause any environmental harm it would be subject to large fines and damage payments.



Acting finance minister Akylbek Japarov believes the confrontation would come to an end if the mining company offered to pay for improvements to the village’s infrastructure and to compensate for any damage caused to farmland.



Nevertheless, Aziza Abdrasulova, director of the Kylym Shamy human rights centre, says the government should take the villagers’ views into account, and should set up a joint commission that would look into the ecological risks facing the local population.



But Orozbek Duysheev, who heads the country’s Association of Geologists, says that as the mine is important to the national economy, and members of the public know little about environmental issues, it should be a government commission that decides how justified people’s fears really are.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)