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London-based multinational company, GCM Resources Plc, is desperately moving to implement an immense open pit coal mine in northwest Bangladesh, forcibly displacing an estimated 130,000 people and destroying the homes, lands, and water sources of as many as 220,000 people.  On November 26, 2014, the company’s CEO, Gary Lye, attempted to conduct consultation with locals in Phulbari and was met with angry crowds.  “He had to leave the town in two hours.

British company GCM Resources was dealt a serious blow today as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) agreed to consider complaints regarding severe human rights violations associated with the company’s planned coal mine in Bangladesh. 

GCM wants to open a massive open-pit coal mine in Phulbari in the north-west of Bangladesh, displacing up to 220,000 people and threatening the Sundarbans, one of the world’s largest remaining mangrove forests and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

 

Amid a flurry of recent protests, strikes, negative press, and shareholder divestment, British coal company GCM Resources’ executive Grahram Taggart resigned last week.

The company has plans to construct an open-pit coal mine in Northern Bangladesh that is widely opposed by local Indigenous Peoples, grassroots organizations, environmentalists and UN Special Rapporteurs. 

 

Officials have called the approval of the open-pit mine “unlikely” during this government’s tenure, which will last until late 2013 or early 2014.

This comes as great news for the broad movement of people opposed to the Phulbari open-pit coal mining project in northern Bangaldesh, who have been successful in holding off the project for the past six years thus far.

 

In a new documentary, the people of Phulbari, Bangladesh explain why, since 2005, they have opposed an open pit coal mine that would displace them from their homes, and will continue to oppose the project in the future at any cost.  "We are united," explains one community member.  "Any any cost, we will stay united. We will stay alive in our own place, and if the time comes to die, we shall die in our own place."

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