Tibetan exiles in India have welcomed the decision by an Australian public company not to proceed with a joint-venture gold mine in China’s Sichuan province.
Sydney-based Sino Gold announced this week that its exploration of an area close to the town of Jinkang had revealed an insufficient quantity of minerals to proceed with the project.
While Jinkang is not part of China’s Tibetan Administrative Region, its indigenous population is ethnically Tibetan.
According to Thubten Samphel, a member of Tibet’s so-called government in exile, the Sino Gold project would have ignored the will of local communities:
“The central Tibet administration and his holiness the Dalai Lama is against any big, mammoth projects in Tibet. I mean, these projects simply don’t take into consideration the true needs of the people and at the same time they have a very negative environmental impact.”
