Phulbari

On Saturday, 25 April, A mass action held in Germany, with over 6000 people coming together to create a 7.5 km human chain that passed through deserted villages in western Germany’s Rhineland to the open cast Garzweiler coal mine owned by  the German utility company RWE.

The chain is to protest RWE’s planned expansion of the mine and passed through  “almost deserted villages” that “have gradually become ghost villages as residents have been bought out and communities broken down by utility company RWE.”

RWE was Contracted by GCM as an advisor for the Phulbari Coal Mine throughout project implementation? This very same RWE mine has been promoted in Bangladesh as a model for how open pit mining can purportedly be done in a socially and environmentally responsible way, and there was some controversy generated by sponsored trips for key decision-makers in Bangladesh to travel to Germany and visit the mine.  At the time, we noted that claims promoting the mine and RWE as “models” for Bangladesh were contradicted by protests against the impacts of the company’s mining operations in Germany and Belgium.

Read detailed report with photos and video clip here: http://350.org/humanchain/