TrueNorthGemsApartheid.Com-Declaration Of Intent
16th August Union Declaration of Intent
The 16th August Union demands that all Greenlanders have rights to a fair share of Greenland Ruby.
Specific Demands:
- Restoration of the rights in Article 32
- Restoration of the rights in the “One Handful” rule
- Cease and desist all legal harassment of ruby miners
- Due process for ruby miners permits and licenses
- New ASM law written by neutral international party
- Guaranteed rights to free and fair trade
- Guaranteed rights to international participation
Situation Briefing
The 16th August Union is a Greenlandic guild of ruby prospectors, gemstone shapers, jewelry designers and artisans, members of the Greenland Stone Club, who stand for human rights and the right to continue their tradition of native ruby in Greenland.
For over two centuries, Greenland have freely worked and traded ruby. Until just two years ago, Greenlander jewelry artists and their fellow gemstone hunter-gatherer artisannes delivered Greenland ruby and jewelry products to friends and family, to local markets, to Arctic Ocean tour boats, and to the international jewelry trade.
How very important today is Greenland’s contribution of clean, natural, native ruby in the face of blood ruby embargoed against Burma – Myanmar, with Burma – Myanmar representing some eighty (80) percent of the world’s supply of ruby, forming a major pillar of support for an outlaw military regime.
Today in Greenland, unfortunately, things have changed for the worse. Long-standing rights and sacred traditions have been taken away.
greenland ruby
What was once clear to the people is now confused and uncertain. What was once easy and natural, is now difficult and expensive. Today, the Greenland ruby is being held hostage by a junior Canadian mining company working in collusion with a rogue government bureaucracy. This agency has been subject to independent internal investigation by the Greenland government. The Official Ombudsman delcared the agency’s actions illegal, and vindicated native ruby prospectors who had been falsely arrested and improperly charged.
Corporate and political interests are denying the native people of Greenland their human rights to earn a living from village ruby as has been done for generations. Profoundly and negatively impacted are the Greenlandic villages of: Nuuk, Qeqertarsuatsiaat, Maniitsoq, along the western Kitaa coast, and now along the eastern Tunua coast, Tasiilaq.
Greenland Ruby needs your help.
Formal Demands
We demand a return of the rights long guaranteed in Section 32. For generations, Greenlanders had been allowed to hunt, fish and gather minerals virtually anywhere on Greenland. Now, those rights are violated for minerals and Greenlanders worry next they will be confiscated for fish and food.
For generations, Greenlanders were free to give gifts to visitors to their beloved island, and all visitors to Greenland were allowed to collect rocks and minerals to take home, the famous “One Handful” rule. Now those sacred rights have been violated and taken away. Greenlanders with valid export permits have had their permits torn up and thrown away, and then been arrested.
Friends and allies have been harassed and persecuted in violation of traditional Greenlandic hospitality. Greenlanders go to get the new permits and licenses under the newest new laws and the paperwork is incomprehensible, the cost is too high with no rights guaranteed and no appeal possible.
Greenlanders need a way to get the things they need to hunt for ruby again. The laws governing artisanal small miners must take the 
counsel of global experts in the field. We Greenlanders demand our rights to earn a living in ruby, selling to the world and benefiting our families, villages and nation.
If these demands are not met, we will organize a united effort through our connections to the ethical gemstone community to thwart all efforts to market gems under the current apartheid system.
