During the 4,metre ascent, Dozy noticed an unusual rock outcrop veined with green streaks. Samples he brought back confirmed exceptionally rich gold and copper deposits. Today, these remote, sharp-edged mountains are part of West Papua, Indonesia, and home to the Grasberg mine, one of the biggest gold mines โ and third largest copper mine โ in the world. Since the Suharto dictatorship annexed the region in a UN referendum largely seen as a fixed land grab , an estimated , West Papuans have been killed in their fight for self-rule.
Decades of military and police oppression, kidnapping and torture have created a long-standing culture of fear. Local and foreign journalists are routinely banned, detained, beaten and forced to face trial on trumped-up charges. Undercover police regularly trail indigenous religious, social and political leaders. And children still in primary school have been jailed for taking part in demonstrations calling for independence from Indonesia. But his discovery sparked the interest of Freeport Sulphur โ later to become Freeport Minerals Company and then, through a merger with the McMoRan Oil and Gas Company, Freeport McMoRan โ whose board of directors included the well-connected Godfrey Rockefeller serving from until the early s and Henry Kissinger Today, indigenous tribes such as the Kamoro and the Amungme claim their communities have been racked with poverty, disease, oppression and environmental degradation since the mine began operations in But life is very difficult now.
Urmani motions to the river opposite, languishing green and motionless. He claims that tailing sediment from the mine has raised the riverbed, suffocating the fish, oysters and shrimp on which the Kamoro diet and economy are traditionally based. Although most Kamoro still try to eke out a living fishing and foraging for food, they struggle to find paid work, says Urmani.
But now we face major competition from non-Papuan migrants. Clashes between the indigenous Christians โ and migrant Indonesian Muslims โ have also resulted in riots, fires and injuries. The Indonesian government signed over to Freeport the right to extract mineral wealth from the Grasberg site in West Papua in A report from the International Institute for Environment and Development IIED details that land agreements were not negotiated with the Amungme until , a year after the mine opened, and with the Kamoro in The compensation paid for Kamoro and Amungme land has been mainly in the form of communal benefits, such as the building of homes, schools and places of worship.
Yet Papua has the highest poverty rate in the country, nearly three times the national average. It also has the highest infant, child and maternal mortality rates in Indonesia, as well as the worst health indicators, and the poorest literacy rates. The scale of destitution is best observed from the highland Amungme village of Banti, just 20 miles down from the Grasberg mine. Estimates from Earthworks suggest that Freeport dumps as much as , tonnes of mine waste , known as tailings, directly into the Aikwa delta system every day.
