Guatemalan Women’s Claims Put Focus on Canadian Firms’ Conduct Abroad

A poor, rural Guatemalan woman has brought a lawsuit against a Canadian mining company whose employees, she says, to take her land for mining purposes, gang-raped her, burned her house down, and forced her off her land. This, and the claims of ten other women in the area has brought up a history of misbehavior on the part of overseas mining companies across the world, over 50% of which are based in Canada; however, legal hurdles jumped by these cases in the Canadian court system may mean that overseas mining companies (at least those based in Canada) will face more heavy legal scrutiny.

To me, this is a moral outrage and something that needs to be brought to the public attention. This is surpassing even the barbarism of the East India Companies' abuses of indigenous people in Asia and Polynesia back in the eighteenth century. I am shocked that things like this are still happening today. This is also another sign that big corporations have too much power and can get away with too much. I am not opposed to big business as an economic system, but this is emblematic of the fact that some large businesses think (and effectively are, considering there is a history of this) they are above the law, and something needs to be done about. This power that they have is what enables large corporations to steal money from employees and clients and effectively abuse our economic principles. The fact this is only a civil and not a criminal case means our legal scrutiny of big businesses needs to be improved.

Daley, Suzanne. "Guatemalan Women’s Claims Put Focus on Canadian Firms’ Conduct Abroad." The New York Times. The New York Times, 02 Apr. 2016. Web. 03 Apr. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/world/americas/guatemalan-womens-claims-put-focus-on-canadian-firms-conduct-abroad.html?ref=world&_r=0>.