As Manila invites mining giants to exploit a trillion dollar treasure trove of minerals in the Philippines, rebels backed by environment activists, migrant workers, priests and students warn the country will become "a battleground against the plunder of the people's resources."

Filipino rebels at a training camp

The Communist Party of the Philippines--whose military wing has waged a violent insurgency for 35 years with support from overseas Filipino workers, including many in Vancouver--issued the warning as the government tried to woo investors at an international mining conference in Manila this month.

Among those who attended were heads of mining giants in Canada, Australia, China and the United States.

Local media reported the warnings were meant for all the mining representatives who attended the meeting.

The Philippines, estimated to have a US$1 trillion unexploited treasure trove of minerals is promoting the rejuvenation of the mining sector. This, with the aim to boost the economy and cut its budget deficit and debt.

"The worst foreign mining companies who plunder and ravage the environment and our mineral resources, as well as their military and police protectors, will be punished," the Communist party's spokesman, Gregorio Rosal, said in a statement.

Rosal said the communists' military wing, the New People's Army, "can carry out a wide range of measures to disable the operations of the most destructive mining companies."

In the past, the guerrillas have raided and destroyed the facilities of logging and mining companies that refused to pay "revolutionary war taxes."

Jose Agtalon, spokesman for the armed wing of Communist Party said the recent Supreme Court decision in Manila allowing foreigners to own mining ventures in the country would further worsen the environmental degradation in Central Luzon.

Agtalon said his New People's Army would prevent further destruction of the environment and depletion of mineral resources through "intensified revolutionary actions" in the region.

A rebel breaks from duty with her guitar

With the new vigor given to promoting mining operations, Agtalon said his group also foresees increased displacement of communities in mining areas. But communities will defy this, he said.

The threats against mining firms are not only coming from the Communist Party.

In Baguio City, the militant Cordillera Peoples Alliance has warned mining companies to keep off the ancestral lands of indigenous communities in the region.

"Affected communities will meet you with their might and will fight back if the government and mining companies will insist on opening up their lands to corporate mining. There will be more protests, mass demonstrations and resistance on the ground," said spokesman Joan Carling.

"The country will become a battleground against the plunder of the people's resources," she said.

"We are strengthening the political campaign against mining and massive logging through education [in affected communities]. But if the government responds by sending more soldiers to affected villages, then [that] will be the time to launch our attacks," she said.

Jose-Maria Sison - exiled leader of the Communist Party

"We condemn this government-sponsored mining summit which promotes the business of massive extraction of gold mines and other minerals with the grave consequences being left to poor Filipinos. We have had enough of big foreign and local companies that compromise environmental protection and respect for indigenous peoples and their ancestral domain in their pursuit for maximum profits," Rev. Fr. Allan Jose Arcebuche, OFM, national chairman of the Promotion of Church People's Response (PCPR), said in a statement.

Arcebuche said that instead of allowing the wholesale plunder of Philippine resources and promoting an economic framework lopsided in favor of foreigners, the government must make sure the country's mineral wealth is fully maximized for the benefit of the nation.

The Initiatives for Peace in Mindanao (INPEACE), Sisters Association in Mindanao (SAMIN), Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, and the Religious of the Good Shepherd vowed to support mass actions of communities as the only way to "reverse" the legalization of the entry of transnational, open-pit mining in the country led by American, Canadian and Australian corporate giants.

Haribon Foundation, an organization for the preservation of natural resources said the largest and most direct causes of deforestation in the Philippines are large-scale corporate logging, mining and conflicting land conversions.

In 1993, profits from the 480 logging concessions amounted to billions in pesos, shared only by a few families while 18 indigenous peoples groups and upland dwellers remained mired in poverty.

The deforestation rate "continues unabated at 100,000 hectares per year. As a gross consequence, ecological and economic disasters have now become inevitable," Haribon said.

Information from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in Manila showed 38 areas nationwide are prone to frequent landslides and flooding, most of them located in heavily denuded forest areas.

"This situation has caused 80 million Filipinos to suffer from grossly inadequate and unstable life support system, particularly the 24 million who dwell in the uplands and depend on the forests for food and livelihood," Haribon said.

Vowing not to bow to the threats, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said the country needed foreign investors. "We should never allow loud rhetoric to override patriotic sense," she told a gathering of international mining corporations.

"I am for responsible mining, not for any faction or interest group in our society, but for the people, for whom the bounties of this earth are reserved by the Almighty."

"I realized that the government has a long way to go to prove its earnestness and sincerity in cleaning up abandoned mines and seeing to it that local communities are benefited in a durable way and not hurt by mining," said Arroyo.

She stressed that the government has adopted "legal and administrative systems" to safeguard the environment and see to it that tribal communities are properly compensated if their areas fall under exploration.

Her cash-strapped administration is pinning its hopes on the mining sector to bring in C$5 billion to C$7.5 billion in fresh investments in the next five years.

Popular opinion against mining in the Philippines turned hostile in 1996 when a tailings dam owned by Marcopper Mining Corp., a local unit of Canada's mining giant Placer Dome, contaminated the Boac River in Marinduque.

Environmentalists said the mine spill has left the river virtually dead and allegedly caused diseases among local communities.

Another Canadian company in conflict with segments of a local Filipino tribe is Calgary-based TVI Pacific.

TVI Pacific is looking to extricate 182,951 ounces of gold, 6.99 million ounces of silver, 93.8 million pounds of copper and 68.4 million pounds of zinc near Mount Canatuan which is located on the island of Mindanao, approximately 800 km south of Manila.

The peak of the mountain is the sacred altar to the 2,000-strong Subanon tribe whose ancestors settled in the area in the 17th century. The mining company has pumped in close to C$20 million dollars in exploratory work, including organizing its own paramilitary unit. Recently members of the Subanon Tribe visited Ottawa to plead with the company and politicians to stay away from their sacred land.

TVI Pacific's history in Canatuan is one of conflict and bloodshed after gold was discovered there originally in 1990.

The area is patrolled by the Special Civilian Armed Auxiliary (SCAA), a paramilitary unit organized by TVI Pacific to protect its interests and to keep at bay the Bin Laden linked Abu Sayyaf terrorists and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels who are fighting for an independent Muslim state in Southern Philippines.

The Moro rebels have support in the area because they claim to protect local rights to the lands and waters.

On Dec 27, 2002 a group of heavily armed men ambushed aTVI Pacific bus, killing 13 people and the wounding 12 others. The armed group was believed to comprise members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, according to the Asia Pulse news service.

Despite the threats of attacks, a mining investment forum organized by the Philippine Chamber of Mines this month was told that C$3.8 billion in foreign direct investments are expected in different Philippine mining projects beginning this year.

Jan Vestrum President & CEO of Crew Gold Corporation - it is bidding for a C$1 billion Aglubang nickel project.

Crew Gold has renewed its intent to develop a C$1.2-billion nickel mining project, formerly known as the Aglubang mining project, on Mindoro Island, south of Manila, its president and CEO Jan Vestrum said. The mining permit of Crew Gold's Philippine subsidiary Crew Minerals Corp. expired four years ago, but the company applied for a Financial and Technical Assistance Agreement (FTAA) in March 2004 "and this is proof that we will invest here," Vestrum told Philippine media.

Vestrum said Crew Gold planned to put up a nickel processing plant that would use high-pressure acid leach technology to recover nickel and cobalt from ore, similar to the technology being used by Rio Tuba Mining Corp. in its Coral Bay nickel project in Palawan province with Japan's Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. Ltd.

He added that Crew Gold was pursuing other exploration projects such as the Pamplona sulfur project in the province of Negros Oriental.

"The winds of change are sweeping the Philippine mining sector and foreign investors are now very keen to invest here," Indophil Resources Philippines managing director Tony W. Robbins said in a press briefing.