ENVIRONMENT-INDONESIA: World’s biggest gold mine killing native people

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

Jul 26 1995 (IPS) - “If you drink that water, you’ll die,” said a Freeport McMoRan security official in the Grasberg mountains, the site of the world’s biggest gold mine, on the island of New Guinea in the south Pacific.

The security guard laughed as he told a visitor not to drink from the Ajkwa river that runs below the mountains. But for the Amungme indigenous people, who have inhabited the forests and river valleys around the mining site for thousands of years, dangers posed by mining activities are no laughing matter.

The western half of New Guinea, where the mine is located, was taken over by neighbouring Indonesia in 1967 and renamed Irian Jaya. Immediately after the take-over, Freeport, a New Orleans- based company, was awarded a concession to mine the Grasberg mountains for copper and gold.

The Grasberg mountains include the glacier-covered peak of Mount Jaya, which at 5,000 metres is the highest point between the Himalayas and the Andes. Mount Jaya used to have a 3,500-metre- high outcrop called Ertsberg, but today all that remains of Ertsberg is a barren, water-filled pit.

Ertsberg was torn down by Freeport to mine copper and gold. During the excavation, the company dumped 115,000 tonnes of toxic refuse a day straight into the Ajkwa, Aghawagon and Otomona rivers that pass below the mountains.

This seemingly cavalier disregard for the people whose lives depend on the river is no surprise to activists in the United States who are familiar with Freeport’s record here.

According to figures issued by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Freeport is the country’s biggest polluter — it dumped 88,000 tonnes of waste into U.S. soil, water and air in 1993.

“Freeport is the picture of modern corporatism, heedless of country or flag, ruthless in pursuit of profit. Across the globe its trail is marked by despoiled lands, poisoned water, ruined lives; its progress assured by a powerful nexus of forces,” writes Eyal Press in a profile of the company to be published next week in the Nation, a New York-based weekly magazine.

Freeport’s record in Indonesia goes beyond the destruction of the natural environment, according to Press.

A total of 37 civilians and rebels have been killed near the mine by Freeport and Indonesian security officials in the nine months ending this March, according to figures quoted by Press from the Australian Council for Overseas Aid (ACFOA) Human Rights Office.

Nor, says Press, were they the first to die. Freeport and the Indonesian army have struck back at local protestors since Organasi Papua Merdeka (Papuan Independence Movement), a local resistance movement, stole the company’s explosives to blow up a copper slurry pipe in 1977.

At the time, the army had launched Operasi Tumpas (Operation Annihilation), a counterinsurgency campaign that reportedly resulted in the death of several thousand local people.

In 1988, Freeport forced 1,000 people to move out of their homes in order to expand the mine. It then burnt down their huts, according to Rainforest Action Network, a San Francisco-based group.

In 1991, Freeport signed a new agreement with Indonesia to prospect for more copper and gold on an additional 2.5 million hectares, which are estimated to hold another 50 billion dollars worth of minerals. The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), the World Bank’s political risk insurance arm, has guaranteed the deal.

Credit for obtaining the new prospecting concessions goes in part to Henry Kissinger, secretary of state under former U.S. President Gerald Ford, who is a member of Freeport’s board of directors, according to Jim Valette, of the International Trade Information Service (ITIS), a non-governmental organisation in Washington.

“Kissinger Associates has a consulting arrangement with Freeport that pays him 200,000 dollars a year. He negotiated the permit for Freeport’s new concessions,” says Valette, who recently put together a report on U.S.-Indonesian trade.

The people of New Guinea, however, are now fighting against the new concessions. Protests against the expansion began last June. Last July, the army sent aircraft and troops to contain the agitation.

The local people told ACFOA that the army troops opened fire on a group of people who were on their way to church on Christmas day and stopped worship services to search for suspected rebels.

Four days after the killings, the local people met with the army and Freeport. At the meeting, a chief of the Amungme people, reportedly offered his knife to Freeport’s chief of security.

“Take it and kill me because I can’t stand anymore to see these problems…. Slice the left side of the body and bury each piece from here up to Grasberg. On your way back, round up all the Amungme people, our pigs and every piece we have. And make a huge hole to bury us with all our belongings. You cover that and then do anything you want,” he said, according to an ACFOA account.

“I always ask God everyday in my prayers and thoughts, why did he have to create those beautiful and snowy mountains in the Amungme tribal people’s area,” he asked.

“Freeport security are neither armed, nor are they trained in the use of weapons,” a spokesman for Freeport in New Orleans told IPS this week. “We cannot comment on the actions of the Indonesian army. Our lawyers are looking into the gross misstatements and factual inaccuracies made in the Nation article,” he added.