Azerbaijani officials have green-lighted the resumption of operations at a controversial gold mine following a more than year-long hiatus due to public protests over pollution concerns.
Trouble at the mine near the village of Soyudlu in western Azerbaijan’s Gadabay District began in mid-2023, when its operator, Anglo Asian Mining, sought to build a second artificial lake to handle mine tailings. The announcement at that time provoked a fierce backlash from local residents. Security forces, in turn, used force to quash protests, including the widespread use of pepper spray-like substances against elderly demonstrators. Multiple arrests were also reported. Local residents opposed the planned expansion, saying lax standards in the storage of toxic waste created by mining operations was causing serious health problems and poisoning surrounding agricultural lands.
In addition to cracking down on local protesters, authorities locked down the area, hindering media coverage of the protests and their aftermath. At the same time, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev criticized the mine operator’s practices and vowed that environmental standards would be upheld. Operations at the mine were put on hold.
That pause lasted just over a year.
On August 5, Anglo Asian Mining announced that it had received an authorization to restart operations, including the expansion of an existing pond containing toxic waste.
“We have also started mobilizing resources to restart flotation and agitation leaching processing and expect to recommence full production in approximately one week. This marks the end of a year-long disruption, and we look forward to normalizing production,” the company statement quotes CEO Reza Vaziri as saying.
Anglo Asian Mining is the country’s largest gold and copper producer and holds the rights to eight deposits across the country. Azerbaijan generated about $162 million in gold exports in 2023, down roughly 14 percent over the previous year’s total of $188 million. An investigative report published by OCCRP in 2016 revealed that Aliyev’s daughters, Arzu and Leyla, had extensive interests at that time in Azerbaijan’s gold mining industry.
The renewed operations at the mine come as Aliyev’s administration is preparing to host the annual UN environmental summit, or COP29, in Baku. The mine near Soyudlu now threatens to become a focal point of undesired attention, at least from officials’ viewpoint, on the government’s environmental record, along with other contentious issues, including Baku’s vanishing green space and a growing water shortage in central Azerbaijan.
The announcement generated lots of heat on social media. One Facebook user commented on the news: “The health of the people is of no importance to the oppressive government. This is why the ordinary citizens were put in jail [in Soyudlu], so that when the construction works resume, people should remain in fear.”
“Visitors to COP29 should be taken to see the toxic waste lake too,” another wrote.
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