ENVIRONMENT: Judge OKs Lawsuit Against World’s Largest Gold Mine

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

NEW ORLEANS, Jul 5 1996 (IPS) - A six-billion-dollar lawsuit against Freeport McMoRan for environmental damage and human rights violations at its mine site in Indonesia can move forward now that a federal judge rejected the company’s claim that the suit was improperly filed.

Judge Stanwood Duval last week dimissed the New Orleans-based mining firm’s claim that Martin Regan filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Amungme people, who live near the gold mine, without first securing proper permission from his client.

Regan charged the company with “eco-terrorism.” The lawsuit also claims that security guards, responding to company policy, have engaged in arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and property destruction.

The 23-year-old mine, which is situated in the western half of the island of New Guinea in the South Pacific, generates revenues of 1.5 billion dollars a year for Freeport.

But operation of the gold mine — the largest in the world — results in some 120,000 tonnes of toxic waste being dumped into local rivers every day.

Indonesian troops who guard the mine and the surrounding area have been accused of numerous human rights violations, including massacres, several of which have been confirmed by government human rights organisations and courts.

In mid-May Tom Beanal, an Amungme indigenous leader from the island, flew to New Orleans, to testify against Freeport.

“They have taken away our tradition and our culture. We have become alienated in our own land. During the 30 years (of mining) we are trying to find justice but we never find one. I come here to ask for justice,” he told supporters before his court appearance.

At a four-hour hearing before Duval in May, Freeport attorney John Reynolds argued that Regan had failed to properly inform his client of his intentions to file a lawsuit.

Reynolds repeatedly hammered home the point that Regan had only met with Beanal once, months before filing the lawsuit, and that the text of the complaint itself wasn’t shown to his client until well after the suit was filed on Apr 29.

Freeport’s lawyers highlighted a letter dated May 1 in which Beanal revoked Regan’s authority to work on his behalf. Regan insisted that his client had signed the letter without reading its contents, noting that Beanal wrote and signed another letter the following day in which he rebuked the first letter.

Reynolds also pointed out that Regan had filed the lawsuit on Apr 29 — the day before Freeport’s annual shareholders meeting — and then issued a press release congratulating Beanal on his courageous lawsuit, despite the fact that his client had not seen the complaint.

“The purpose was to get the matter before the press and generate publicity, your honour,” Reynolds told Duval.

But Regan insisted that the timing of the lawsuit was based on the fact that Beanal was angry about full-page newspaper advertisements in New Orleans newspapers in which Freeport touted a proposed settlement with local indigenous people over compensation for environmental damage.

Regan also argued that Duval should consider the gravity of the case. “We are not talking about a hit-and-run or a fender-bender (minor car accident),” he said. “We are talking about death and torture.”

In testimony taken from Beanal in Indonesia in early May, Beanal appears confused by his lawyer, as well as the legal process.

“Please, please tell him everything he needs to know so that he does not feel like he is being treated as a child. That hurts his feelings. He is not a child,” an Beanal’s interpreter told.

At the hearing before Duval, Beanal said he was willing to allow Regan to proceed with the case, although he admitted that he had expected Regan to show him the text of the lawsuit before filing it.

Beanal also reiterated his belief that the case should go forward in New Orleans. “I think it is appropriate to proceed here because Freeport is an American company,” he said. “I am not afraid to defend the truth in court but in my country truth is something to be struggled with.”

Regan, who currently is in Irian Jaya, said he was extremely pleased with Duval’s decision to allow the lawsuit to move forward.

“Freeport’s comments suggesting that Mr. Beanal’s claims will be summarily dismissed are a pathetic reminder of this corporation’s continuing failures to accept responsibility for the environmental and human damage it has caused in Indonesia,” he said.

Days before the ruling, the tribal council of the Amungme peoples issued a statement rejecting an offer from Freeport to give them 1 per cent of the earnings from the mine.

The council said that it “unconditionally and absolutely reject(ed)” the Freeport offer, according to a statement issued last week in Timika, Irian Jaya.

“We shall never succumb to the offer of bribes, intimidation or dishonestly induced,” the statement said in an apparent reference to reports that leaders of seven other tribes had accepted 270 dollars each from Freeport to sign the agreement.

Meanwhile, international news services report that at least eight people were shot and wounded on Jul 4, probably by army troops, in Nabire, a town north-west of the Freeport mine. The soldiers were responding to youth who rampaged through the town in protest of the government’s failure to provide jobs to the local residents.