A Golden Nightmare
By Janine Roberts ©96
The angry throng of hundreds of Amungne,
Dana and other tribes besieged the airport at the mining settlement
of Timika by the Grasberg mountains - in a land controlled by the
Indonesian army 4000k west of Jakarta. Here Freeport and RTZ are
levelling a snow clad mountain rich in gold, silver and copper. The
local inhabitants demanded to see Jim Bob Moffett, the Chairman of
Freeport, who was flying in from New Orleans.
The tribespeople said that if he would not
see him, if there were no negotiations, they would close the mine
down no matter it being the world's biggest gold mine and third
biggest copper. Their protest was at first frustrated. The company
found a way to smuggle Moffett in without using the airport. When
they learnt he was at the Sheraton Hotel they surged towards it but
found it protected by a heavily armed wall of Indonesian military.
Moffett eventually agreed to receive a delegation.
On these negotiations could hang the
future fate of this land inhabited by over 200 tribes of very ancient
cultures, alien not only to the West but also to the majority of
Indonesians. These people are akin to the Papua-New Guineans of the
adjacent state with dark skin and frizzy hair, not at all like the
Indonesians of Java. The remoteness of their land from other
societies has meant that their cultural inheritance has remained
intact. So too has their land. They live in the second largest
rainforest after the Amazon, a forest in part protected from easy
access by the highest mountain range between the Himalayas and the
Andes. It is because one of these snow-clad 14,000 foot peaks has
been found to be made up of the world's biggest single gold deposits
as well as of much copper and gold that Freeport and RTZ have come
into their land.
Forty tribal elders under a heavily armed
military escort were allowed into the hotel to meet with Moffett.
They brought with them the local Catholic priest. Moffett on his part
was surrounded by Army Generals including Brig. General Prabowa,
brother- in -law of President Suharto of Indonesia, head of the
feared Kompass special troops. Also in attendance was the Chief of
the provincial legislative body.
It was not like any other corporate
meeting. Moffett, from the deep South bible belt of New Orleans,
opened it with a quotation from the bible. He said his left cheek had
been slapped, so he was now proffering his right cheek. He said the
situation at the mine was like to that of a boil. It had now burst.
Blood had come out. He tearfully said he would treat the injury and
he was ready to work with the people and completely change the
structure of the mine.
Then one of the tribal elders, Mama
Yosepha, who had been imprisoned by the army in a Freeport container
last year, spoke out. She said in her Amungme language "My son
Moffett, in the past I put you inside my noken (a native woven bag
used by women to carry babies and piglets), I took you with me
wherever I went, but I did not realise that you suck my blood until
it is all drained and I remain only bones without flesh. Now, I pick
you out of my noken and will throw you far away.' She threw her bag
from her and as her words were translated the audience were shocked
and tense.
Jim Bob Moffett, again in tears, replied:
' Mama, is there not any way we can have peace. Mama Yosepha remained
silent. Then the Executive Director of the Amungme Tribal Council,
Andreas Anggaibak, spoke out and said he spoke in the name of the
whole 'koteka' community (the koteka is a thin long gourd widely used
to cover the penis in Irian Jaya) "The Freeport operation should be
shut down." Anggaibak then left the meeting. He says that Brig.
General Prabowo followed him out and asked: 'What do you mean by
closing Freeport? Do you want to go to war? "Anggaibak answered: ' No
sir, we do not want war. We want to negotiate with Freeport.' After a
further conversation they returned to the meeting.
Jim Moffett then said to Mama Yosepha: '
Mama, can I be put back inside your nokia?' She replied: 'When I have
thrown something, I will not pick it back up again - unless you
promise to fulfil our written demands.'
They then presented Moffett with ten
demands including the dismantling of the Freeport Security Service,
improvement of living conditions, the employment of local people,
compensation for certain past environmental damage and for Freeport
in future to negotiate all use of tribal land directly with their
Tribal Council. It was then agreed that Moffett would answer these
demands in 30 days time. In the meantime the mine, shut for the
previous 3 days, would resume operations.
Freeport has long been aware of this and
has made some efforts to compensate by building medical facilities
and houses for the local inhabitants. But it has remained dependent
on a military garrison supplied to the mine by the Indonesian
government for protection against the OPM independence movement. For
the Indonesians it is a golden prize - and is to be protected at all
costs.
However in recent months since world wide
publicity was given to killings and torture inflicted on the local
inhabitants by its military garrison, Freeport has tried to distance
itself from the armed forces, painting the vehicles it lends the
military a distinctive colour so they will not be seen as Freeport
vehicles.
The result of this seems to be that the
military have left Freeport to fend for itself in dealing with the
tribes. The military showed unaccustomed restraint when the rioting
inhabitants wrecked Freeport buildings, airport facilities and
vehicles. President Suharto placed the responsibility of improving
relations firmly onto Freeport/RTZ's shoulders when he recently said
at the opening of a new housing complex at the mine, saying "the
absence of the people's support will obstruct the mining
operations.'
In 1977 when the tribes attacked the mine
blowing up its slurry pipeline through which the ore was sent to the
port, the military responded by strafing from the air many villages
killing up to 2000 inhabitants. A leader of this attack was Kelly
Kwalik who is currently holding 11 hostages including 4 British
citizens. He said of Freeport 'The mountains are our women. Freeport
by taking our mountain is taking a bride - without paying a
bride-price.' Among these people a woman must be paid for with pigs
and other prized goods.
The major environmental problem faced by
the mine is fundamental to its design. As they demolish this mountain
for its riches, they have 130,000 tonnes of waste rock to dispose of
every day. The investment of £1.1 billion from RTZ is to be used
in part to expand the mine so that in future it will dump 184,000
tonnes a day. They have chosen to remove this waste by dumping it
into the fast flowing Aiwa river system that plunges from the 14,000
feet peaks down to the coastal plains some 70 miles below where it
spreads out into an extensive delta system of meandering rivers and
lakes rich in all forms of life. But the waste is now producing heavy
silting in this system, flooding more and more of this forest,
killing it. So far over 15 square miles of the forest has died from
drowning. Freeport has cut the dead trees to make this less obvious
but swathes of dead vegetation are evident to all visitors flying
in.
Since some 240 square miles of lowland
rainforest will be totally destroyed if no steps were taken to
protect it, Freeport has commenced a program of building,
Mississippi-style levees along the sides of the Aiwa river system to
stop it flooding the plains in the hope this will limit the damage to
50 square miles. So far this has not proved completely successful.
This is a land of torrential rains and as fast as the levees are
built, the river undermines the banks.
This damage is inevitable if the mine
continues to dump all its waste into the river system as current
plans are to dump practically the whole mountain they are mining into
it in powdered form. Freeport has calculated that to remove this
volume of rock any other way would require a fleet of over 4,100
heavy trucks. The company maintains that the waste rock dumped is
chemically safe. But the only independent environmental scientists so
far to inspect the project, from the US government's Overseas Private
Investment Corporation, expressed serious concern last year over
toxic heavy metals released from the mine waste.
A lake next to the mine at the top of the
mountain has been so severely damaged by copper sulphide leached from
the mine works that it is now rocks largely dead and a bright
turquoise hue.. It is now being filled in by Freeport. According to a
1994 Freeport study, one of the rivers affected by the project, the
Minajerwi, contains levels of copper that exceed US standards for
aquatic life.
The indigenous people are in no doubt
about this damage...
©95;Janine
Roberts
Tuesday, March 19, 1996
__________________________________
When thousands of troops poured in
.
___________How a tribal Elder takes on
an American Corporation, Freeport_______
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