A group of seven Tanzanian human rights victims launched a legal claim at the British High Court against subsidiaries of Canada-based Barrick Gold, one of the world’s largest gold mining companies, alleging serious abuses by security forces, including local police, employed at Barrick’s North Mara gold mine...

The group of claimants, who brought their case forward last Friday, reside in local communities around the mine. The group includes the father of a nine year-old girl runover and killed by a mine vehicle, driven without due care, on 19 July 2018. The young girl’s stepmother and other women who had gathered around the body, and whose claims were also issued, say they were injured when security personnel and/or the police fired on them without warning. The claimants further include a young man who says he was shot in the back and then beaten by the police employed by the mine when he was 16 years old, and a man who says he was seriously assaulted by the police on the mine site...

The North Mara gold mine, located in a remote part of northern Tanzania, has been plagued by reports of serious human rights abuses against local community members by security forces since it was acquired by Barrick in 2006. This is the second British lawsuit against Barrick’s subsidiaries for deaths and injuries at the North Mara mine. The first, commenced in 2013, was settled in 2015 by Acacia Mining.