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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold and Silver Juniors, Mid-tiers and Producers
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From: Leebert12/8/2006 7:17:00 PM
   of 78416
 
Fri Dec 8

QUITO (AFP) - Ecuadoran indigenous activists continued to hold hostage 57 employees of Canada's Ascendant Copper, demanding that the company drop plans to build a strip mine in a nature preserve in the Andes.

Some 15,000 indigenous Ecuadorans living near a preserve targeted for copper prospecting have been complaining that the mining concession Ascendant was granted in 2004 is illegal since they were not consulted.

Besides their claim to the land, locals are also afraid of the environmental damage the planned strip mine might cause to a 205,000-hectare (500,000-acre) wilderness stretching across four provinces bordering with Colombia.

To press their demands, the locals on Monday took 57 Ascendant employees hostage, keeping them inside a church in the village of Junin.

Among the hostages are 34 former army soldiers the protesters say are members of paramilitary groups and the mining company insists are armed security guards hired to protect their facilities.

"The detainees will be turned over to authorities when the concessions are declared groundless, and the mining company leaves the area as its 15,000 inhabitants are demanding," protest leader Gustavo Leon told AFP.

Ascendant Copper manager Francisco Veintimilla earlier this week denied that the company was trying to take land illegally and said that some of the security guards held captive were injured.

A human rights activist who visited the hostages, however, said Friday that the captives were being treated well, fed two meals a day and allowed to go outside the church to attend to bodily functions.
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