"Protests grow over defamation suits against environmentalists", 24 Apr 2019

Environmental activists are headed to court next month in a bitter defamation suit brought last year by Australian mining company MRC, which is planning to mine titanium sands at Xolobeni on the Wild Coast.

The case involving three of the six environmentalists who are being sued for defamation by MRC and its CEO Mark Caruso is a curtain raiser to the main hearing and is intended to discover documents the environmentalists say they need to properly defend themselves...

“Around the world, Slapp suits are used by companies, particularly in the mining and energy sectors, to intimidate environmental defenders, in an effort to suppress debate about the negative impacts of their operations on local communities and in relation to environmental degradation,” says Leanne Govindsamy, head of corporate accountability and transparency at the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER). Two of CER’s attorneys have been sued by MRC and Caruso for defamation over criticisms made of MRC’s environmental practices...

Earlier this month CER and several other civil bodies – including groundWork, Earthjustice and Human Rights Watch – released a report highlighting threats against activists in the form of harassment, intimidation, violence and the use of Slapp suits.

“Judging from the response to the report, including the response to the report’s findings around the Slapp suits brought by MRC, the company is likely to find itself facing a wall of opposition from other civil society groups which resist the notion of censorship over issues that are in the public interest,” says Govindsamy...