Tundu Lissu, a human rights lawyer with the Lawyers’ Environmental Action Team (LEAT), grew up in Tanzania. His devotion to the plight of peasants and working people in his country led him into what has become a three-year struggle to find out what happened to the 52 miners allegedly buried at Bulyanhulu.
He continues to assert that the burials took place.
Lissu now works with the Washington- based World Resource Institute. His relentless accumulation of evidence has been lauded, disputed, celebrated, authenticated and refuted. He has been subject to Tanzanian police raids, libel threats and more, but he remains undaunted.
He brought the story of the miners to Canada when he came to Toronto for a press conference with the Council of Canadians and Mining Watch Canada, who have called for an independent commission of inquiry into the affair. With LEAT, he has been the driving force in bringing the problems of small-scale or peasant miners to the attention of the West.
Lissu also seems to function, along with LEAT, as the unofficial leadership of the opposition in Tanzania. Some believe his work with the Bulyanhulu story can be dismissed as political opportunism. Barrick Gold, which now owns the rights to Bulyanhulu, says his witness statements are not valid. “To assess whether the information coming from a person is truthful or not we have to see them, and if we can’t, we’re simply not prepared to give any weight whatsoever to a signed statement, particularly a statement that is not a sworn statement,” said their lawyer, Kent Thomson.
Lissu stands by his research and has continued to work doggedly on the case. He has collected numerous statements from witnesses who say they saw the alleged burials, or who simply have loved ones who have not been heard from since the evictions took place. He is frustrated because he believes cultural biases have meant his work, and the testimony of African peasants, is being held to a different standard than evidence gathered by those in the Western world. The witness statements are every bit as valid as other pieces of evidence, he says, and show quite clearly why an independent inquiry needs to take place.
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