In early July 2021, a business meeting took place between members of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Shoryia NGO of the Shor people, and local citizens. It happened in the Chuvashka village (Myskovsky urban district). Participants of the business meeting discussed realization of rights of small indigenous peoples, improvement of state aid for their traditional economy, project activities of the Association, and how business can help resolve current problems. In his speech, Nikita Shulbayev, the president of the Shoriya NGO, mentioned his experience of efficient cooperation with the Open-Pit Mine Kiyzassky (part of the Sibanthracite Group) and thanked the enterprise for their many years of support. The company funds construction of sports grounds and playgrounds, and provides money for national holidays. It also carries out a project to release Shor language textbooks.

Authorized capital: 8,500,000.00 rubles (about $275,000)

Primary business: ? 
5 October 2013 open-pit coal mining, except for anthracite, coking coal and brown coal
Other types of business: 19.

Such a lovely picture is, indeed, truly heartwarming. Or is it?  OOO Open-Pit Mine Kiyzassky (Open-Pit Mine Kiyzassky LLC) was put into operation in late 2014. Kiyzassky’s balance reserves are 123 million tons. It’s enough for 30 years of non-stop operation. The mine workers are going to be extracting thermal coal (lean and low-caking lean coal), as well as low-caking coal. All in all, 1.6 billion rubles (about $21.7 million) was invested in building and equipping the mine.

Since then, a conflict has been raging between the mine owners and the Shorians who are being forced to leave their ancestral lands. Residents of the Kazas village had to appeal to the UN in their attempts to protect their native soil. When UN made an inquiry on the topic, Russia’s answer was cynical beyond all reason. It stated that in all of Russia, including the Kemerovo Oblast, free and informed consent of the indigenous peoples is required for any mining to take place where they live. The reply even mentions as an example the treatment by the coal company Yuzhnaya towards the residents of Kazas.

According to them, the houses in that area were bought by the coal mine owners from the residents for lucrative prices. What they failed to mention is how many houses had been burnt down to force people to leave. Besides, what exactly constitutes a “lucrative price”? How much do you need to be paid to agree to abandon the house built by your grandfather, where your father grew up and where you dreamed to raise your grandchildren? Residents of localities next to Kazas leave their homes because of dust and because of local rivers getting contaminated with coal refuse.

Residents of the villages Borodino, Tetenza and Akkol (the city of Myski, Kemerovo Oblast) have been trying for years to prove that the coal loading station built by Kiyzassky violates environmental legislation and makes life considerably worse for hundreds of people. In 2019, Sergey Tsivilyov, the governor of the Kemerovo Oblast, even promised to Kuzbass residents that coal loading was going to be transferred to the licensed area of the open pit mine. However, the deadline for that promise passed a long time ago; and Kiyzassky keeps on ruining the living conditions for local residents. According to official reports, the Open-Pit Mine Kiyzassky installed a TF10 EmiControls dust suppression unit on the station back in 2018. They also built a screen for noise and dust suppression that fully shielded the Borodino village from the railway station. If this is true, then how come many kilometers around the mine are covered in a thick layer of coal dust?

Even within its defined limits, Kiyzassky can’t operate without destroying nature. In 2019, a mass of mined rock descended from the mine dump into the Bolshoy Kiyzas river’s stream bed, clogging one kilometer of the river to the point of blockage. Also, during this descent, a landslide hit and damaged nine reserve transmission towers and knocked down trees. In March 2020, the Inter-District Environmental Prosecutor's Office filed a claim for reimbursement of environmental damage against the Open-Pit Mine Kiyzassky company, which belonged to the Sibanthracite Group, then owned by Dmitry Bosov, an entrepreneur who later committed suicide. The environmental authority demanded that 23 million rubles (about $315,000) be collected from the open-pit mine for the damages it inflicted upon forests in the Kemerovo Oblast.

Open-Pit Mine Kiyzassky is one of the most hypocritical and deceitful enterprises that mine coal in the Kuznetsk Basin. Its reports claim that it has one of the best track records when it comes to complying with environmental legislation. In reality, this is the kind of company that is not only causing irreversible destruction to large parts of Siberian taiga, but is also destroying the environment in the territories where the Shor people live. They are basically destroying an entire ethnic group. Of course, it’s great to fund construction of playgrounds; however, it has nothing to do with saving Shors. Kiyzassky is a company that engages in blatant hypocrisy under the guise of charity. Its activities are perceived by the indigenous population as ethnocide. Sadly, a wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf. In the same way, the Open-Pit Mine Kiyzassky that acts like a boss on the native lands of Shors remains an enterprise that does irreversible harm to the environment and to Shors, a small indigenous people.

Translation by Nikolay Gorelov

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