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	PNG court orders Ok Tedi to halt dumping waste by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre & agencies   27 January 2014   Papua New Guinea"s National Court has ordered the Ok Tedi mining company to stop dumping waste into a river, a move that would effectively shut down the mine.   Communities in the South Fly River area, 500 kilometres downstream from the mine, filed a writ claiming the dumping of waste and tailings into the nearby river system is illegal.   Local government president Benjes Kudi Alusi says pollution has hurt his constituents.   "A lot of the wildlife and fish is gone and it"s going to be a time bomb before, the people will die and float like fish," he said.   Gedi Dabu, another local government leader, says the damage has also been felt further south.   "There are so many of our women giving birth to deformed babies in Daru Hospital and this may be part of the effects from the damages of the mine," Mr Dabu said.   Since the 1980s, the Ok Tedi gold and copper mine created billions of dollars of revenue for Australian company BHP, but waste dumped into the river system caused widespread damage.   BHP handed over its majority share to a local trust in 2001 in return for legal immunity.   Last year, the Papua New Guinea Government passed legislation to take over the PNG Sustainable Development Program - effectively nationalising the mine.   But the order from PNG"s National Court could see the mine grind to a halt.   Samson Jubi, a lawyer for the South Fly River community leaders, says the interim order is long overdue.   "The court has ordered Ok Tedi Mine Limited to stop dumping anymore mine waste and tailings into the Ok Mine, Ok Tedi, and the Fly River and all of its tributaries," Mr Jubi said.   "Everybody wants that mine to be shut. Enough is enough. We have suffered enough."   The court has also ordered that company bank accounts be frozen after allegations were made that money earmarked for local development had been misused.   Justice Gibbs Salika has ordered $19 million of the money held in the accounts to be used for extensive research into the environmental and health impacts to the South Fly River and the Torres Strait. He wants to see a preliminary report in three months. Visit the related web page
	South African pharma firms accused of planning to delay patents law reform by Sarah Boseley Guardian News South Africa   17 January 2014   Drug companies in South Africa have been accused of planning a covert, well-funded campaign to delay the introduction of laws that threaten their profits. Leaked documents show that pharmaceutical companies planned a $450,000 campaign, involving a high-profile consultancy based in Washington, DC, against changes to intellectual property laws that would enable their patents on new medicines to be bypassed in the interests of public health. This would allow the manufacture of cheaper copies of their medicines.   Campaigners accused the international drug giants of trying to derail life-saving legislation. The trade body IPASA (Innovative Pharmaceutical Industry Association South Africa), which was coordinating the campaign, said on Thursday the plans were no longer going ahead – although it was legitimate for drug companies to promote their views in this way.   One of the leaked documents is an email dated 10 January from a member of IPASA''s executive to representatives of most of the big-name drug companies operating in South Africa. As agreed in December, it says, "we have moved ahead in identifying a high-calibre consultancy group to work with us", naming Washington-based Public Affairs Engagement (PAE).   The second document is the proposed PAE strategy, involving the creation of an alliance of businesspeople and academics, the placement of prominent editorials in newspapers, and a bid to "distract" access to medicine campaigners "from their own aggressive campaign".   The document later names Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), calling them a "coalition that was formed to pressure the government into producing [the draft IP policy] in the first place".   The stakes are high, says the document. "South Africa is now ground zero for the debate on the value of strong IP protection. If the battle is lost here, the effects will resonate. Clearly MSF and similar NGOs understand that ... Without a vigorous campaign, opponents of strong IP will prevail – not just in South Africa but eventually in much of the rest of the developing world."   Campaigners said they were shocked. "What is surprising to us is that it is done so subversively," said Julia Hill of MSF. "We have really made an effort to be very transparent. It is disappointing that this is being done in secret and that such an extraordinary amount of money is being spent to interfere with the democratic process."   Lotti Rutter, a senior researcher at TAC, said: "We have got massive concerns over what appears to be quite a covert and well-funded atempt from foreign industry to delay an essential law reform process happening here in South Africa."   Val Beaumont of IPASA said the discussions had taken place but the PAE proposal had not been accepted. "It is a very, very important issue to us and it will be to any of the knowledge-based organisations," she said. "There was a huge concern that it would be rushed." It was OK for an organisation to have a PR agency to help put across its views, she said. Visit the related web page
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