Sino Gold Pulls Out of Tibet! Print E-mail

A Win for Tibet! Sino Gold ceases activity at Jinkang.

Sino Gold has today announced it is pulling out of Tibet. ATC welcomed the news that Sino will discontinue its activity at Jinkang in Eastern Tibet.

The announcement is buried at the end of the company’s latest quarterly report. ATC welcomes this decision. Sino’s statement implies that it is pulling out because there isn’t enough gold on site to justify a mine. This is at odds with virtually all previous announcements and conference presentations – since before Sino listed in late 2002 – in which the company talked up the prospects at the site. For example:

  • in the prospectus of late 2002 Sino described Jinkang as “an excellent exploration opportunity with the potential for a new gold province”;
  • exploration results from December 2002 through February 2003 were described as “encouraging”;
  • the first quarter report for 2003 described Sino having recently increased it’s area for exploration where “previous exploration defined strong, coincident gold… anomalies.”

After the launch of the Sino Gold: Hands Off Tibet! Campaign in May last year, Sino’s descriptions of prospects at the Jinkang site were less enthusiastic. Critically they also began to acknowledge the impact of ATC’s campaign.

ATC acknowledges that it is smart positioning by Sino to infer that the pull out from Jinkang is solely based on geology – not enough gold – given their ongoing business activities in China. We have no doubt that our campaign was a factor contributing to Sino’s decision to pull out.

Read ATC’s media release welcoming the Sino Gold pull out

Read the media coverage of Sino Gold’s pull out from Tibet

Thank you very much to all ATC members and Tibet supporters who contributed to the campaign. Thank you to those who wrote to Sino once, twice and and even more. Thank you to those who helped out at stalls, with ATC state branches and in the National Office. Thank you to those who donated money to fund the campaign.

Thank you to other groups in Australia and overseas that joined the Sino Gold: Hands Off Tibet! Campaign Network. These include The Wilderness Society, the Mercy Foundation, the Mineral Policy Institute and AID/WATCH in Australia. South African Friends of Tibet, Free Tibet Campaign in the UK and Students for a Free Tibet and Tibet Justice Center in the US also joined the campaign.

Read or download ATC’s Report Who Owns Tibet’s Gold