With the arrival of the trains to Lhasa –connecting the capital of Tibet to the industrial and business centres of China, the real business has only just begun. Shetongmon, a non-descript valley on the banks of Yarlung River near Shigatse in western Tibet is today bursting with activity as Chinese businessmen, western corporate investors and mining contractors have come to explore the area of its centuries old treasures of gold and copper.
But Shetongmon is a focused destination to Continental Minerals, a Canadian mining company. Where China failed in mineral exploration in the rugged terrains on the Tibetan plateau is where western companies like Continental Minerals comes in to take advantage of the situation with its sophisticated technology and scientific-technical edge only to make fast money out of the remote regions of Tibet. The whole corporate world is now watching!
Shetongmon is only an example, Yulong, Norbusa, Nyishung, Padma, Tsaidam, Maba, Nagartse are the places where huge deposits of gold, copper, chromite, natural gas and other treasures have been found, and they are now being dug or would soon be.
But mining in Tibet is not simple; deposits of gold and copper live in the company of high concentrates of poisonous arsenic, mercury and cyanide. The mountains of dug-out earth, which heap up to millions of tones of waste containing poisonous residues could flow into any of the major Asian rivers like Yangtze, Yellow River, Bhramaputra or Mekong. Two kilometers down the hill from Shetongmon is the Yarlung River which flows into India and Bangladesh as Bhramaputra.
The Mineral rich mines of Tibet have been a prime target of China’s occupation of Tibet and today it is possible as the trains have arrived into the heart of Tibet. As more railway networks are being readied and with the arrival of western corporate world in Tibet, within the next five to ten years more than hundred big and small mines are expected to be operational feeding the hungry dragon. China today is the largest consumer of raw materials, including iron ore, steel and copper.
Tibetans both inside and outside Tibet protest this rampant exploitation of natural resources in their homeland. Students for a Free Tibet condemns all activities of the exploitation of natural resources in Tibet as direct acts of colonization. SFT continues to campaign to stop this corporate exploitation of Tibet’s natural environment.
www.StudentsforaFreeTibet.org
