With the licensing procedure for the Rosia Montana project currently suspended for an unlimited period due to the actions of anti-mine groups, including the US based and George Soros funded Open Society Institute, and a more than compliant Attila Korodi Minister of the Environment, one would imagine it's party time for Alburnus Maior the self-declared ‘local’ village NGO fronting the opposition to the mining project. But all does not seem well in the Alburnus camp as the following email anonymously sent us indicates. (click here for email)

Whether some in Alburnus are queasy about going cap in hand to Hungarian NGOs to fund their supposedly local campaign, or whether it’s disaffection over Alburnus seeking funds to bankroll President Eugene David’s new house-hotel-pension we are not sure. But we were happy to receive such interesting mail that begins to shed a little light on the who's and why's of a campaign to oppose a mine that local people overwhelmingly want.

One of the tedious mantras that Alburnus Maior, never stop spouting is that they are a small village NGO fighting a foreign mining company. Whilst this fable was always easier to accept the further you are away from this village valley, it has been effective in rallying support for the anti-mine campaign.

Scores of websites, press releases, newspaper stories and documentary films looking at the project have accepted this at face value. They all emphasise the ‘local’ basis of the opposition to the mine. Two recent examples, highlighted on the Alburnus website give us a flavour. One declares the struggle to oppose the mine is a “David-and-Goliath battle of an impoverished community of dairy farmers and out-of-work miners… vs. the gigantic Gabriel Resources Ltd., a Toronto-based company seeking to buy up the Transylvanian village”. A second contribution, a press release for the documentary Gold Futures (exposed on Goldenmyths as a pack of lies) talks of “rural farmers and townspeople confronting a choice, as a Canadian company prepares to excavate a massive open-pit gold mine where their village still stands”.

The belief that Alburnus Maior is a local campaign for local people (who are local) has been accepted far too easily. It makes the conflict over the mine a simple morality tale of good vs evil. Of rural farmers standing in the way of a rapacious multi-national company set on destroying their ancestral farm land. Of local people with environmental sensibilities opposing an Industrial giant set to poison the land.

Few have questioned the involvement some of the most powerful global environmental NGOs in the world such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and billionaire George Soros in the opposition to the mine. Nor indeed as the email we received suggests Hungarian interest. To do so would pull the ‘locally made’ rug from the under the legs of Alburnus Maior, suggesting that there is indeed outside interests, possibly using a stage army of local landowners to oppose the mine

The email we received is basically a plea for funds from an unnamed Hungarian NGO. Fair enough you might think, but closer investigation raises some interesting questions as to why Alburnus would go cap in hand to an Hungarian benefactor to fund their work, where the money asked for is actually going.

So here are a few thoughts on the email.

1. Why would Alburnus Maior be asking for funds to cover the cost of Dr Robert Martin’s recent review of the Independent Group of International Experts (IGIE) report on the Environmental Impact Assessment Study on the Rosia Montana Project? This plea for funds casts real doubt on how neutral Martins review actually was. So much for an independent voice!

2. The email also confirms rumours that Alburnus leaked the IGIE report to the Hungarian press on the promise of negative publicity.

3. Why are Alburnus seeking support and funding for the Hungarian Film director Tibor Kocics? Is it because his two films on the mine, New Eldorado and Gold Futures are not the neutral social documentaries, he claims, and which the likes of PBS in the USA closed their critical eyes to, but instead partisan anti-mine propaganda?

4. It’s not clear if Alburnus were successful in getting funding for the film. If they were that would indeed be interesting as they have publicly denied raising money for Kocics films.

5. Finally, why would Alburnus be fundraising to help Eugene David, President of Alburnus Maior build his house-hotel-pension? Having met Eugene David I can testify to the fact that he is a big man, so is his new building on the 30 hectares that make him one of the valley’s largest landowners. One can only surmise that a higher and wider home, funded by someone else, is being built to both stymie attempts by Gabriel to buy land, and to build up the reputation of Eugene David as an ordinary local man fighting Global Capitalism!

So how local is this campaign?

22 September 2007