Rio Tinto are back in the ring

Am well behind on events here but there has been a successful appeal of the case against Rio Tinto by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. You can read more about it here, here and here.

There are three key points of note:

1. The case is now considering whether genocide was committed during the Crisis. Qoute: "Judge Schroeder said the complaint's allegation that Rio Tinto's "worldwide modus operandi" was to treat indigenous non-Caucasians as "expendable" justified restoring the genocide claim to the case."
2. Corporations can be held liable in U.S. courts for human rights violations committed abroad.
3. The case was successfully appealed despite the fact that it has not yet been pursued through PNG courts, which as I understood it was a threshold issue for the Alien Tort Statute.

This is going to require a bit of digging, will post on this soon.

Further to this, another blogger is well on the ball and has plenty of coverage on the history behind the case, including a couple of cables from Wikileaks. If you are interested pop over to Trinketization.