Army Destroys Clandestine Gold Dredgers
The new Colombian President Gustavo Petro, elected during the summer, has made the fight against illegal gold prospecting one of his priorities.
This new operation against illegal gold panning brings to 12 the number of digging machines of this type put out of action since the end of August.
AFP
The Colombian army announced on Tuesday that it had destroyed four dredges used by clandestine gold miners in the Amazon rainforest, a priority set by the new left-wing president Gustavo Petro to fight against this scourge.
The military arrested six Brazilians while they were smuggling gold from the Purity River in the far south of the country, on the border with Brazil. “Four dredgers were destroyed and six Brazilian nationals were caught red-handed” on Tuesday, General Jaime Galindo, commander of the army’s sixth division, said in a video sent to the media.
This new operation against illegal gold panning brings to 12 the number of digging machines of this type put out of action since the end of August. President Petro, elected in the summer, has made the fight against illegal gold prospecting one of his priorities.
Immediate destruction
To do this, he initiated a new strategy, under the slogan “an illegal dredge found, a dredge dynamited”: namely the immediate destruction of the dredges on the very spot of their seizure rather than their confiscation.
On September 5, Gustavo Petro posted on his Twitter account the spectacular video of the blasting of a dredger by the army. Seven devices were seized that day in the Bajo Calima region (southwest). Illegal mining and drug trafficking are two of the main activities that finance the armed groups that have challenged the Colombian state for several decades.
Some independent studies show that mining for gold and other minerals is even more profitable than producing and trafficking cocaine. According to General Galindo, the detained Brazilians “would be in the service of the armed group ”Comandos de la Frontera””, a criminal organization born in 2020 and made up of former guerrillas and paramilitaries.
Grave menace
Illegal gold mining also poses a serious threat to the environment and biodiversity of the Amazon. The process of separating gold from other sediments uses mercury, a highly polluting product which is then dumped into waterways and ingested by fish, which are themselves consumed by local populations.
In 2021, the area contaminated by clandestine gold production reached 640 km2, six times the area of Paris, according to a UN study. The Colombian government has set the protection of the Amazon as a priority in the face of the advance of deforestation.
AFP
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