Serbia rocked by protests against pollution & Rio Tinto lithium mine

Serbia has been rocked by nationwide protests over the past week with environmental activists and citizens taking to the streets to demonstrate against pollution and new legislation they claim was adopted to enable a Rio Tinto lithium mining project in the country's Loznica region.

Protestors gathered in the capital Belgrade, as well as Novi Sad and a number of other cities and towns across Serbia in protest against the legislation which they claim favours foreign investors. Critics of the new law have said that it was adopted specifically to facilitate Rio Tinto's lithium ambitions in the country, as well as those of companies like China's Zijin, which owns a copper mine. 

A recent reform introduced by the government will effectively prevent popular anti-pollution initiatives through the establishment of large administrative fees, environmentalists argue.

Read more: Serbia to draft new energy laws "by the end of the year"

Activists also demonstrated against a new expropriation law, which allows the state to acquire private land within eight days.

Roads and bridges across Serbia were blocked by the protestors on Saturday, with skirmishes breaking out with police. Traffic was brought to a standstill in Belgrade, with the demonstrators chanting slogans against the country's right-wing president Aleksandar Vučić as they occupied a stretch of the city's main highway.

The most serious incident took place in the city of Šabac, where an as yet unidentified man attempted to drive through the group of protestors blocking the road with a bulldozer. One of the demonstrators managed to climb up to the bulldozer cabin and started beating the person inside. The incident was widely shared on social media.

Also in Šabac, protestors were attacked by masked men wielding baseball bats and hammers. The city's former mayor and current leader of the centre-left opposition party Together for Serbia, Nebojša Zelenović, claimed that the attacks took place after police had left the scene.

"Police withdrew and let the mafia carrying weapons, bats, hammers, to attack us, dispersing the people who were peacefully protesting, to enable the passage to SNS buses which were on their way to their congress", Zelenović said.

Further protests are planned for the coming weekend.

Serbia is one of the most polluted countries in Europe and if it is to meet the European Union's environmental standards, it will require billions of euros of investment. The issue is proving to be one of the country's main obstacles to joining the bloc, and its accession process has effectively been halted.

Read more: Rio Tinto pushes for battery development with InoBat investment

Rio Tinto has stated that it will adhere to all domestic and EU level environmental standards at its lithium mine in the Loznica region, in the country's west. The company is expected to open a jadarite mine in the area - a variant of lithium. Demand is high for the mineral, which is used in the production of electric vehicle batteries.

The project, if it goes ahead, has the potential to produce as much as 58,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate, and would position Rio Tinto as Europe's largest lithium supplier for the next decade.

The Vučić government has said it would hold a referendum to gauge public support for Rio Tinto's mining project, though activists have threatened further action if it, along with the expropriation laws, are not withdrawn.

The protests were just the latest following months of demonstrations against Rio Tinto's arrival. Opponents of the lithium project say that the international mining company has a history of causing environmental damage at its various mining sites across the world.

In 2020, the company destroyed a 46,000-year-old sacred Aboriginal site at the Juukan Gorge in Western Australia, prompting an international backlash that resulted in the CEO and other executives resigning. The incident also led to a backlash by shareholders over the former CEO's £7.2 million bonus.

Read more: RMF: Rio Tinto's destruction of heritage site is "loss for humanity"

Last year, the company also became embroiled in a dispute with the government in Mongolia over a much delayed and overbudget extension to a copper mine.

Rio Tinto faced another raft of public criticism last year with accusations that it had "side-stepped" its responsibilities on the Papua New Guinea autonomous island of Bougainville. Critics claimed the mining giant had failed to clean up toxic waste from the Panguna gold and copper mine after its closure in 1989, which remains to this day. The closure and pollution from the mine became one of the factors that led to a civil war, resulting in around 20,000 deaths.

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