"Moroccans protest mine with world’s longest 'ecological sit-in'", 06 Jan 2015

Dozens of villagers have spent the last three years camping on a hill in the Great Atlas mountains in Morocco to protest against a mining company that is polluting their region. 

The residents of the Berber community of Imider have been speaking out for the past few years about the toxic waste produced by the Société Métallurgique d’Imider (or SMI), a mining company that owns the deed to one of Africa’s most important silver mines. The villagers, most of whom are farmers, are calling for the company to stop flooding their waterways with toxic waste. They also want SMI to provide locals with more jobs. 

In August 2011, after several months of fruitless negotiations with the company, the villagers decided to take matters into their own hands by shutting off the water flow from the principal reservoir that supplies the mine. In the years since, the villagers have kept up their protest, taking turns to camp on Mount Alebban, where the reservoir is located, in the hope that the authorities will one day listen to their demands... 

...SMI says that 40% of its employees come from local villages. Imider residents contest this number, saying that the company’s definition of “local villages” includes far-off places like Ouarzazate, which is about 140 kilometres from the mining zone. SMI also says that it undertook studies showing that the mine did not damage the environment. Local activists say that they had never seen such studies.