Dionne Rose, Staff ReporterAS DETERMINED as their fore-fathers, the Maroons of Accompong in Trelawny and environ-mental lobby groups will not stop fighting until Government abandons its plans to conduct mining into Jamaica's largest undisturbed forest, the Cockpit Country.
On Thursday night, it was evident that months of waiting on the boundary study, commissioned by the Government to determine the areas that constitute the Cockpit Country, had not waned their fighting spirits.
"We do not want any bauxite mining up there at all and we will have to fight it until the last Maroon is dead," said a determined Melville Currie, Maroon Council member. "It is a sacred area where our ancestors fought and died - so we think it should be preserved," he said.
Asbergar Harwood, a resident of Duanvale in the Cockpit Country, said that it is an area in which abounds many medicinal plants for all types of ailments.
"Anyone who is thinking of troubling the Cockpit, they are troubling health and we are fighting for health," she said. "So we are not going to allow them to come and destroy the Cockpit."
Meanwhile, Winsome Lawson, environmental club coordinator at Westwood High School in Stewart Town said, mining in the Cockpit Country would destroy its educational value, which is rich with natural vegetation, indigenous fauna and flora.
"As an educator, it would be crazy. We cannot afford to allow this thing (mining) to take place; we would be robbing our children of a good education," she pointed out.
The group were members of a panel featured in a documentary film, which was shown by the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) at the Terra Nova Hotel in Kingston.
The documentary, entitled 'Cockpit Country: Voices from Jamaica's Heart', is a locally-produced film which takes a look at the Cockpit country through their eyes.
Diana McCaulay, chief executive officer of JET, said the lobby group would be doing a mass copying of the documentary, which will be made available to schools and members of the public.
dionne.rose@gleanerjm.com
