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Canadian hands in Congo drip with the blood of millions
Congo has been wracked by more than a century of violent colonization and imperialism resulting in millions of deaths—and Canada has supported it all, or at best stayed silent while watching it happen. The federal government’s strong support for the Kagame government today contradicts Canada’s purported principles and should be seen as a stain on our global reputation.
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Sidelined in Mali, Barrick turns Tanzania mine into ‘armed encampment’
While Barrick faces an intense challenge from the Malian government, the company is unlikely to relinquish its investments on the continent. And, as last year’s court decision shows, Canada’s government and judicial system appear committed to protecting the overseas operations of Canadian mining firms, no matter how severe the allegations against them.
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Apple is accused of profiting from war crimes in Congo
In the Great Lakes region of Africa, which is ground zero in the global supply chain for Big Tech, Apple appears to have betrayed its vision. The company stands accused of deceiving consumers, laundering Congolese minerals and profiting from war crimes, according to criminal complaints filed against Apple subsidiaries in France and Belgium.
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Mali’s arrest of Barrick employees shows continued push for sovereignty in West Africa
One important element in this new phase of pan-Africanist struggle is the fight against foreign mining companies. West Africa is a mineral-rich region, and leaders from Traoré to Goïta to Senegal’s Bassirou Diomaye Faye recognize that greater state control of the industry is a necessary precondition for sovereign development.
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In West Africa, Canadian mining firms come up against bloc of independent states
Canada has long profited from West Africa’s gold resources. In fact, every year, these firms extract billions in revenue from the region. Right now, however, Canadian companies in West Africa are quarreling with an increasingly independent bloc of states determined to constrain the ability of foreign corporations to profit from African resources.
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Canada’s response to Sudanese humanitarian crisis reflects systemic racism
How many more lives will be lost as a small Sudanese diaspora struggles to bring attention to a crisis that has paralyzed Africa’s third-largest country? And how much longer will a crisis be widely recognized as tragic, brutal and heartbreaking—but ultimately disregarded in practice as just another African war?
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Canada’s whitewashing of Africa’s most ruthless regime
Using an African country as a political and economic tool is as old as colonialism itself. If this is what Canada’s new politics are on the African continent, it is indeed retrograde. Canada should not be engaging with, or buttressing a nation that has inflicted so much harm on innocent people. We should not be aiding and abetting crimes abroad.
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Barrick Gold bristles at Mali’s new mining code
While the US claims that Mali is turning the screws on the mining industry because it wants to hand lucrative gold mines to Russian interests, these reforms are part of a broader anti-colonial uprising sweeping the region. If Mali continues to put pressure on Canadian mining companies, it would not be unreasonable to assume Ottawa may involve itself in the dispute.
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Will a landmark war crimes trial usher in an era of corporate accountability?
A groundbreaking criminal case against a company accused of war crimes in South Sudan is now underway in Sweden, drawing parallels with the corporate complicity trials of Nuremberg in 1949. The trial in Stockholm against executives of the Swedish oil giant Lundin is expected to change the landscape of corporate accountability for international crimes.
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Rift between US and Niger reveals failure of ‘counterterrorism’ in West Africa
Canada’s role in West Africa was ostensibly a counterterrorism effort, but like the US and European presence it was meant to bolster, Canada failed to bring security or development to the region. In fact, the results of the ‘War on Terror’ have been catastrophic. Since 2002-2003, deaths in Islamist militant attacks in the Sahel have risen a shocking 50,000 percent.