In his article "New gold mine draws fire," the BBC's Romanian correspondent Mike Wooldridge reports that some steadfast locals are refusing to leave their homes in Rosia Montana, central Romania, where Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources plans to construct a $900 million open-cast gold mine. A central figure in Wooldridge's story is Eugen David, whose reluctance to surrender his small farm to the mining compay forms the sentimental core of Wooldridge's narrative:
I arrived to find Eugen David leading his young daughter down the track on a horse.
Soon the family are gathered around the sort of tiled stove that heats many a Romanian kitchen in winter.
"My life is in Rosia Montana", the former miner says. "I don't want to leave. And they will never start the new mine unless we do."
The David family smallholding is right on the "front line" of what has often seemed to be a battleground.
Eugen took me out into the yard, past the haystacks and the barn and up a muddy path.
He gestured through the woods to where one of the open-pit mines would be, bordering his land.
With more than a twinkle in his eye, he said he had also bought a few acres within the boundary of the proposed mine.
From Eugen David's house there is a panoramic view across the Transylvanian countryside.
At this time of year a morning mist clings to the valley floor and there is frost on the fields and the branches.
His central argument is that there is no need to revive mining here, with the new disruption it would cause.
He claims that the combination of natural beauty and historic interest -- including the relics of gold mining dating back to Roman times -- means that tourism could help to save Rosia Montana.
Depicting Eugen David with his horse, his rustic kitchen, and his close-knit family gathered around their traditional tiled stove, Wooldridge portrays a classic reluctant hero with whom we can all identify -- a poor peasant bent on saving his family's idyllic farm and traditional lifestyle from a rapacious, multi-billion-dollar Western mining company. Wooldridge solicits our sympathy for David's young children, who, if Gabriel Resources gets its way, will grow up unrooted and displaced, never able to raise their own children among the surrounding countryside's unspoilt splendors. And Wooldridge accepts that David's gentler alternative -- tourism -- would bring wealth to the community while keeping the area's natural beauty and time-honored traditions intact for future generations.
But in telling Eugen David's story, Wooldridge makes some curious omissions. He makes no mention of the local activist group Alburnus Maior, which has joined forces with Greenpeace and other Western environmental groups to spearhead opposition to the proposed mine. He makes no mention of that group's extensive English-language activist website www.rosiamontana.org, which is supported by Western volunteers dedicated to driving Gabriel Resources out of Rosia Montana. Most significantly, he neglects to mention that the president of Alburnus Major, and thus a central figure in coordinating international resistance to the mine, is none other than Eugen David himself.
Belgian-born environmentalist Francoise Heidebroeck, the spokeswoman for Alburnus Maior, appears in Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney's MPI-funded film Mine Your Own Business to represent the views of that organization. Heidebroeck claims on film that Rosia Montana's residents prefer riding horses to driving cars; that they prefer traditional peasant lifestyles to working in mines; and that, if they wanted, they could attain great wealth by investing in sheep. Her statements evoke laughter, incredulity, and derision from the locals whom McAleer and McElhinney interview: Most agree that Alburnus Maior deliberately misrepresents the economic realities of Rosia Montana, and many understand that the group wants to impose on locals a romanticized, timeless ideal of rural life that would profoundly ignore their real-world wants and needs.
Mine Your Own Business capably debunks many of Alburnus Maior's assertions. It dispenses with Wooldridge's poetic flourish to show the real Rosia Montana: a rundown village where housing is dilapidated and inadequate; where two-thirds of homes have no running water; where previous state mining projects have heavily polluted both the air and the water, leaving the latter with cadmium levels 70 times over the legal limit; where the unemployment rate exceeds 70 percent; and where people desperately want cars, better homes, indoor bathrooms, improved health care, and more educational opportunities for their children.
Wooldridge's reporting raises questions about the BBC's neutrality and objectivity in Rosia Montana. Why does Wooldridge describe Eugen David as a peasant farmer acting alone to save his small farm? Why does he conceal David's presidency of Alburnus Maior and his long-running affiliation with powerful Western environmentalist groups? Why does he describe the morning mist clinging to Rosia Montana's valley floor while ignoring the village's crumbling buildings, ramshackle outhouses, and polluted streams? Why doesn't he interview the many locals who have willingly left their homes and farms and who look forward to working for the mining company? And why does he claim that Gabriel Resources' "public relations offensive has included partially funding [Mine Your Own Business]" without noting that the Irish filmmakers received in return a guarantee of editorial autonomy? Surely one expects more than partial truths from an organization whose Charter "requires [it] to produce comprehensive, authoritative and impartial coverage of news and current affairs in the UK and throughout the world to support fair and informed debate"?
