PRESS RELEASE 15 Dec 2016
Thursday, London: Bangladeshi protesters from Phulbari were joined by transnational climate activists in a picket of directors of Global Coal Management (GCM) Resources Plc, an AIM-listed British mining company who want to build a massive open cast coal mine by forcibly displacing 130,000 people in Phulbari, Bangladesh. During the company’s annual general meeting (AGM) on Thursday 15 December in London a large group of protesters holding colourful banners and placards with powerful messages occupied the entrance of Aeronautical Society , an elite venue near Hyde Park Corner, where the AGM of GCM Resources was held.
Anti-coal protesters outside and inside the AGM called to shut down GCM Resources because the company does not have a valid license for business with Bangladesh but they are selling shares in London and committing abuse and human rights violation of farmers and local businessmen in Phulbari. Protesters outside the AGM chanted “CGM, out out”, “Gary Lye, blood on your hands”, referring to 26 August in 2006, when three people were shot dead and two hundred injured in a demonstration of 80,000 people for opposing plans by the company’s Bangladesh subsidiary, Asia Energy.
Dissident voices before entering the AGM express solidarity with the protesters outside 4 Hamilton Place, London. Photo by Golam Rabbani
A delegation of dissidents went inside the AGM and powerfully interrogated the company directors who failed to show evidence of any valid licence for business. The poorly attended AGM, which had only 10 shareholders including the company PR and excluding the six dissident voices, was quickly closed by the Chairman, Michael Tang, who was unable to answer any question from the floor.
This year marked the tenth anniversary of Phulbari outburst. The Phulbari project threatens to destroy the homes, lands, and water sources of as many as 220,000 people, and forcibly evict an estimated 130,000 people. If implemented, it would destroy 14,600 hectares of highly cultivable land and would leave devastative impact on the world’s largest mangrove forests and UNESCO heritage site, the Sunderbans. Earlier this year Phulbari Solidarity Group and Bangladesh National Committee called on London Stock Exchange to de-list GCM from London Stock Exchange.
Rumana Hashem of Phulbari Solidarity Group and an eye-witness to the killings in 2006 said:
The company’s CEO, Gary Lye, has been systematically abusing local opponents of the project. Earlier this year, Lye has filed multiple arbitrary cases against 26 frontline local opponents, farmers, and small business entrepreneurs against mining in Phulbari and Dinajpur. This is incredible, and human rights abuse facing the innocent people and their families who never had anything to do with violence before this company inflicted violence in Phulbari.
Akhter Sobhan Khan of the UK Committee to Protect Resources of Bangladesh stated:
The Bangladesh government withdrew the mining licence in the wake of GCM’s atrocity but the company continues its dodgy attempts to raise funds for the operation of a perilous project. CGM is selling shares in the name of the Phulbari project in London.
Thursday’s picket event was co-organised by Phulbari Solidarity Group and the Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports in Bangladesh. Action outside and inside the AGM was joined by transnational activists from Foil Vedanta, London Mining Network, Coal Action Network, UK, Bioregional, Plane Stupid, Reclaim the Power, Socialist Party of England and Wales, Transition by Design, and many Bangladeshi community protesters from Tower Hamlets and East London in the UK. Protesters say that they will not sleep until the company has closed its office in Dhaka and left Bangladesh.
Read a full report on the GCM Resources AGM by Richard Solly at London Mining Network http://londonminingnetwork.org/2016/12/gcm-resources-at-phulbari-perseverance-or-perversity/
Further news here http://m.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/24116/15-12-2016/picket-against-coal-project-in-bangladesh
Phulbari Solidarity Blog 
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