“Rio Tinto” is not only lacking a spatial plan and permits to open the mine. In the request for determining the scope and content of the Environmental Impact Assessment Study for the “Jadar” project, submitted to the competent ministry by the company “Rio Sava Exploration,” it states that one third of the plots for the surface part of the mine is still missing.
In order to extract jadarite from the underground part of the mine one day, what is above it is also crucial. Here, “Rio Tinto” needs to build roads, a railway, loading and unloading facilities, and a complex where lithium, boron, and other elements will be chemically separated.
For this, the Australian company must purchase another 209 plots. Zlatko Kokanović from the “We Won’t Give Up Jadar” Association explained to N1 that the planned mining zone covers about 220 hectares.
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“The largest part is around our church in Nedeljica, and there are plots in the Slatina area. And it’s not compact—it’s not that they have one side and we have the other; it’s scattered like a leopard’s skin,” said Kokanović.
The necessary land is mostly under fields and forests. There is one permanently inhabited household, while property relations need to be resolved for four temporarily settled households. One of the “scattered” plots is also the headquarters of the “We Won’t Give Up Jadar” Association.
“So we’re on a plot that will never be sold,” Kokanović said. For Kokanović’s brother Zvonko, selling is also not an option. On the contrary, he owns seven plots, totaling 4.5 hectares, which he wanted to expand, and he aimed to acquire additional agricultural land through preemptive purchasing rights. However, due to conversion, a large part of it became construction land.
“You can’t find a field that is free and not being cultivated. Now they want to take what we have,” said Zvonko Kokanović from Gornje Nedeljice.
Tihomir Maksimović is also unwilling to give up his land. He says he won’t find better or closer land, essential for his dairy cattle farming.
“Two hectares and 70 ares, all of this is mine! All the way to the river. Corn for silage, wheat used to be here. They sent us home with payment notices. I don’t know how much it was, 50-60 thousand euros. We’re not interested in that,” said Tihomir Maksimović from Gornje Nedeljice.
Slavoljub Nenadović cannot access his field; his wheels won’t allow it. Nevertheless, he refuses to part with it.
“I have my children, I have grandchildren. I inherited this, and I won’t sell it. I’m not interested in money. They have come, talked, threatened with expropriation…” said Slavoljub Nenadović from Gornje Nedeljice.
However, Nenadović has not given up. Since he is not the only one, we asked “Rio Tinto” what they plan to do.
“If land acquisition activities continue in the future, we will continue to carry out this process in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Serbia and the highest international standards of the International Finance Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,” stated Rio Tinto in response.
We did not receive a direct answer to the question of whether expropriation is the last resort.
“The only way they can take our land is by force. There is no other way for them to obtain our land as their property. Neither the state nor the company, certainly,” said Zvonko Kokanović.
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Source: N1
Photo: Printscreen / Youtube @Srbin.info