rupert's travel blog

Tag: Rosia Montana

  • My Pulitzer Prize

    I published an article on Huffington Post on January 1st 2014 called Thank You Romania and it went viral. Over 11,000 people liked it on Facebook and everyone I met in Romania seemed to have seen it. Apparently it was just what was needed in Romania – a positive article to balance all the scaremongering by the British tabloids about the „Romanian immigrant invasion’. By now, almost two months later, everyone knows that story is a joke but for Romanians a bitter taste remains; it’s hard for them to accept that they’re disliked – even hated – in the UK.

    When Formula AS, a leading Romanian weekly newspaper, asked me to do an interview based on my brief analysis of the British tabloids in my Thank You Romania, I jumped at the chance. (more…)

  • Eugen David vs Goliath

    Romanian villagers face down Canadian mining corporation over cyanide lake.

    A small charity has succeeded in blocking a multi-billion dollar Canadian gold-mining operation in the Romanian village of Rosia Montana. Romania’s new Prime Minister, Victor Ponta, has promised a “transparent” investigation into the controversial project “so that permitting decisions take into account the national interest, environmental protection and European legislation.” This could set the project back by at least five years. (more…)

  • East Europe’s Toxic Timebomb

    www.guardian.co.uk
    www.guardian.co.uk

    An edited version of this article was published by Time (see their version here).

    On Sunday October 4, 2010, the small Hungarian village of Kolontar was evacuated.  Local officials had been warned that the dam at the nearby Ajkai alumina plant was about to be breached.  The following day over 700,000 cubic metres of caustic red mud burst out of the storage reservoir and a two metre toxic wave devastated Kolontar and two other villages, killed 8 people, hospitalized 150, contaminated over 1,000 hectares of farmland and polluted 3 river systems. An intense political drama about responsibility for the spill is being played out in Hungary, with furious statements by the Prime Minister (“This should have been  detected”), the nationalization of the operating company (MAL) until compensation is paid and the temporary arrest of its CEO, Zoltan Bakonyi, a controversial figure whose father ran the Environmental Department at the Ministry of Industry around the time when the alumina plant was privatised. (more…)