Priest hit with object during demonstration in Dominican Republic

SÃO PAULO – Footage of a priest who was wounded on his face during a protest in the Dominican Republic went viral in the Caribbean nation and other Latin American countries.

Activists now hope that the outrage sparked by the attack on Father Yonny Durán in the city of Cotuí will draw popular support to the cause of the rural communities he’s assisting in their resistance to a mining project.

On Jan. 8, before dawn, members of five communities in Cotuí – in the Diocese of La Vega – were gathered to block the attempt of the Canadian mining company Barrick Gold of crossing the zone to study for the construction of a new dam.

Numerous army troops were deployed to stop the demonstrators and ensure the company’s machines would get into the area. As the protestors wouldn’t agree to open the way for the company, police reacted with violence, with nine people ending up injured, Durán among them.

A video of Durán, who heads the Diocese of La Vega’s Environment Pastoral Ministry, was posted on social media and showed him visibly disturbed as policemen and army troops attacked the demonstrators.

Shots of non-lethal guns could be heard as the priest explained what was happening to the on-line audience.

He had a bloody, swollen wound on the left side of his forehead. His clerical clothes were stained with blood. He appeared to be in shock, with tears in his eyes, but kept denouncing the actions of the security forces and of the mining company.

“At that point, the demonstration had already been controlled by the army and the police. Protestors had run away and were distant from the point where I was. But, anyway, I was hit,” Durán told Crux.

Along with a few other priests, he had gathered with delegates of Barrick Gold in order to negotiate a solution for the crisis. He said the company’s reaction, however, was “radical.”

“They simply didn’t want to dialogue. The CEO kept saying that the machines would get through and period,” Durán recalled.

Durán repeatedly accused the security forces of illegally storming into the village of Arroyo Vuelta by request of Barrick Gold.

“It was a massive contingent, like that of a war. They were there to do what Barrick Gold wanted them to do. Even after controlling the protest, they kept chasing people in their yards,” the priest said.

Another local priest, Father Julian Rosario Basora, was hit by the police as well. An agent threw a tear gas bomb at him, hitting his back. Thankfully, the priest was not seriously impacted.

Durán went to a clinic shortly after the incident and received medical attention. He didn’t suffer any internal damage, but continues to take painkillers.

According to Catholic environmentalist Eduardo Acevedo, who has been accompanying the struggle of such communities for several months, Barrick Gold – which has been extracting gold and silver from that region since it bought a mining company there in 2006 – tried to build a tailings dam in another area in the past, but the project was received with hostility.

“People had already been feeling the impacts of that kind of dam, with the pollution of the local rivers, lands, and vegetation and a growing number of cases of lead contamination and cancer,” Acevedo told Crux.

The communities near Cotuí, however, didn’t oppose the new dam, but wanted to ensure that the adequate prices for their lands and agricultural products would be paid to them.

While the procedures for the communities’ resettlement were established by the World Bank, Barrick Gold allegedly was against the institution’s parameters for prices and undervalued the people’s properties and production.

The situation has frozen the dialogue, along with the fact that more than 100 families were left out of the resettlement plan.

“The only thing the communities have is their bodies to blockade a road. They shouldn’t be forced out of there,” Durán said.

He said the communities have never been properly consulted about their approval or not to the implementation of the mining endeavors, something that is guaranteed by the Dominican legislation.

“If you look at the current map of mining projects in the Dominican Republic, you discover that most of the country – maybe 90 percent of its territory – is being targeted by mining, which has permission to prospect minerals in those zones. That’s why the government acts with such a violence: it’s protecting such interests,” Durán argued.

Acevedo said the Church has been one of the most visible civil institutions working to protect the Dominican environment, with bishops taking full part in that process.

“[Encyclical] Laudato si’ has generated a special consciousness about those themes and they naturally grew in importance,” he claimed.

He said he thinks both the mining company and the government will have to change its strategy now that there has been such a focus on the violence perpetrated against Durán.

“The footage of Durán bleeding during the protest was aired all the time on TV. It was very bad publicity for them, because priests are very respected in the Dominican Republic,” he added.

In the opinion of Durán, the government has been wrong to allow companies to prospect in large areas that should not be touched, given that they can impact the ecosystem and the people.

“Mining should not be more important than the people’s lives,” the priest said.