Protesters target Olympic medal firm's AGM

A group of environmental, human rights and labour demonstrators targeted the annual general meeting of Rio Tinto in central London.

Some were wearing "gas masks" and token Olympic medals to highlight massive amounts of air pollution being caused by the firm's Bingham Canyon mine in Utah where most of the medals are coming from.

Utah Moms for Clean Air carried and burst black balloons symbolising deaths they claim were attributable to the company's contribution to air pollution in the Salt Lake City area.

A protest was also led by Workers Uniting, United Steel Workers, Britain's Unite and the International Transport Federation supporting 780 workers at the Alma aluminum smelter in Quebec who have been subject to a four-month lockout in a dispute over Rio Tinto's plans to replace retiring employees with contract workers.

The Free West Papua Campaign was flying West Papuan flags - the raising of which leads to long prison sentences in Indonesian-occupied West Papua - to protest against Rio Tinto's involvement in the Grasberg copper-gold mine which has a long history of violation of land rights and sacred sites.

It has been an embarrassing week for Rio Tinto after the Greenwash Gold 2012 campaign nominated the company as one of the three "worst" corporate sponsors of the Olympics.

Rio Tinto is providing 99 per cent of the metal for the London Olympic medals and Unite is calling for the International Olympic Committee to drop the company.

Unite assistant general secretary Tony Burke said: "Its actions go completely against the Olympic values of 'friendship, solidarity and fair play'."

On the other side of London, Anglo American was holding its annual general meeting.

It and Rio Tinto had been targeted by people of Bristol Bay, Alaska, in a full-page ad in the Financial Times, backed by an array of conservation groups saying they didn't want the two companies mining in the area.

tonyp@peoples-press.com