Human-rights groups decry rising trend of corporate SLAPP lawsuits

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When a Canadian mining company filed a lawsuit against a small African human-rights group, the company said it was merely seeking to get errors corrected. The African group disagreed, calling the suit an attempt to bully and silence it.

They settled out of court last year, but two United Nations experts took notice. Last month, the UN rapporteurs released a letter they had sent to the company, First Quantum Minerals Ltd. FM-T, asking it to explain its actions.

“Without prejudging the accuracy of these allegations, we express our deep concern regarding the alleged acts of intimidation and criminalization of human-rights defenders,” wrote Mary Lawlor and Damilola Olawuyi, who serve as independent experts to monitor human rights for the UN.

The First Quantum case is one of a growing number of lawsuits by corporations against human-rights activists and other critics – often categorized as “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or SLAPPs. Mining companies and other resource corporations, including Canadian companies, have been among the most likely to file such lawsuits.

The trend is sparking worldwide concern. One study, by London-based Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, identified 437 lawsuits between 2015 and last year that have the characteristics of a SLAPP.

“Judicial harassment” – including SLAPPs – comprised more than half of the attacks against human-rights defenders, the centre said. “This form of abuse presents a grave threat to defenders’ participation in peaceful public discourse around operations and activities which affect their lives.”

The suits, often filed after a person or group speaks out on a project, can have a “chilling effect on the exercise of freedom of expression,” it said.

Charis Kamphuis, an associate professor of law at Thompson Rivers University in B.C., said she expects to see more SLAPPs as conflicts over development intensify at a time of climate change, biodiversity loss and social inequality.

“It’s part of a power struggle. To the extent that movements are gaining power, and their voices have impact, we will see more SLAPPs that try to weaken and silence these movements, and that’s really disturbing,” said Prof. Kamphuis, who is also a board member of the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project, a legal clinic.

She said the lawsuits can cause personal stress, reputational damage and financial losses to those who are targeted. “Many people assume that if you are sued, you must have done something wrong.”

First Quantum, a Canadian-based multinational with operations in seven countries and more than 19,000 employees at its Zambian copper mines alone, filed suit against Southern Africa Resource Watch (SARW) in 2021 after a SARW report suggested that one of its Zambia mines had damaged the environment and local communities. The company complained of inaccuracies and demanded an apology and the equivalent of $82,000 in damages.

John Gladston, director of corporate affairs at First Quantum, told The Globe and Mail that the company filed the suit because SARW had failed to conduct “any proper on-the-ground research” and had made “a large number of major factual inaccuracies that significantly misrepresented the true situation.”

He said the lawsuit led to “common ground for a dialogue” between the company and the rights group, including “a collaborative framework” for future reports. “The lawsuit was settled by mutual consent in early 2023 and we consider the issue closed,” he said.

The UN rapporteurs were less willing to let the matter drop. They wrote to First Quantum and to the Canadian government in October, seeking a response to their concerns about the case. Federal officials answered in December, saying they were working on a reply.

Claude Kabemba, executive director of SARW, said his group responded to the First Quantum lawsuit by creating the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Africa, aiming to resist similar cases across the continent.

“We are concerned and terrified,” he told The Globe. “We are happy that the rapporteurs have picked up this case. It might help with some level of restorative justice.”

Jamie Kneen, a spokesperson for Ottawa-based corporate watchdog MiningWatch Canada, said the First Quantum case showed the tendency of some companies to “attack the messenger” rather than resolving serious problems at their mines.

“It’s good that the UN rapporteurs are bringing attention to this troubling situation, where a corporation that is profiting from the natural wealth of the country is more focused on silencing criticism of its failed promises to benefit and compensate communities affected by its operations,” he said.

Mr. Gladston denied the accusation. The company “has always been open to public scrutiny and fair criticism from civil society organizations and the public in general,” he said. “Our approach remains to listen to various perspectives in order to inform us of areas where we can potentially improve as a business.”

In the United States and Ontario, environmental group Greenpeace has been fighting lawsuits by Montreal-based Resolute Forest Products Inc. for the past decade. The environmentalists had raised concerns over Resolute’s operations in the boreal forest and its impact on woodland caribou. The company accused them of defamation.

One of the lawsuits was dismissed by a California court last year, but the threat of lawsuits is making environmentalists more reluctant to call out companies by name, according to Shane Moffatt, head of Greenpeace Canada’s nature and food campaign, who was among the people individually named in the suit.

“Over the past decade, I have observed a chill and a silencing effect of this litigation on the broader environmental movement in Canada,” he said.

The case has tied up the organization’s time and resources, but “the stakes are too high for us to back down,” he said.

The Globe reached out to Resolute Forest for a response. In an e-mailed reply, spokesperson Seth Kursman said the company doesn’t comment on continuing litigation.

In another case, four UN rapporteurs raised questions about legal claims filed by mining company Lydian Armenia, co-owned by Canadian-based Osisko Gold Royalties, against an Armenian journalist, Tehmina Yenoqyan, who had opposed the company’s gold mining in the country.

The UN rapporteurs, in a letter to the Canadian company last year, said they were particularly concerned about the “abuse” of defamation lawsuits against the journalist. “These lawsuits appear to qualify as strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs), aimed at silencing Ms. Yenoqyan through intimidation and exhausting resources,” their letter said.

The company did not respond to the letter, which the rapporteurs released publicly after a 60-day waiting period. It did not respond to a Globe message seeking comment.

The growing use of similar lawsuits has prompted action by governments and courts in several regions. The European Union’s council and parliament reached agreement last November on a proposed anti-SLAPP directive, which will set new rules to protect human-rights defenders, journalists and civil-society groups that are targeted by lawsuits. The directive was a result of years of activism after the murder of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, killed by a car bomb in 2017 at a time when she faced 48 libel suits.

In South Africa, the country’s highest court – the Constitutional Court – ruled in 2022 that defendants have a right to argue that defamation suits are SLAPP cases, intended to silence critics. In a decision that followed an Australian mining company’s lawsuit against South African activists, the Constitutional Court ruled that courts can reject such suits if the defendants prove that the legal action is abusive and a violation of their constitutional freedoms.