Since 1967, Freeport McMoran (“Freeport”), a US company headquartered in Arizona, has owned and operated the world’s largest gold and third largest copper mine, located in the mountains of Papua, Indonesia. Over the last five decades, the Grasberg mine has been the source of severe environmental damage, and Freeport has allegedly committed or facilitated labor and human rights abuses through its operation of the mine and influence over large swaths of daily life and security in Papuan communities. Although Indonesia’s state-owned mining company Inalum has owned a majority stake in the Grasberg mine since 2018 (the result of recent legislation preventing foreign companies from owning majority stakes in new mining licenses), Freeport’s Indonesian subsidiary still operates the mine. Responsibility for five decades of harm cannot be erased by this transfer of interest three years ago. As this blog will illustrate, Freeport has evaded accountability for much too long.
In our first post of this two-part series, we outlined Papua’s violent colonial history, the ongoing Free West Papua movement, and the inextricable connection between this history, present-day struggles, and Freeport’s operations in the region. In this post, we’ll dive into the specific harm experienced by mine workers, surrounding Indigenous communities, and the unique Papuan ecosystem– and, we’ll describe Freeport’s alleged role in all of it. For over fifty years, Papuans have suffered for the sake of a foreign company’s profits. Freeport’s initial investment, made in the throes of colonialism, is a critical part of this story, and the company’s dominance over Papua’s economy and institutions continues today, making accountability very difficult to achieve.
This is the second post of a blog series on the human rights and environmental impacts of the Grasberg mine in Papua, Indonesia. This post will highlight three types of abuses allegedly occurring at or connected to Freeport’s operation of Grasberg.
Freeport pollutes unique, life-giving resources
In 1973, Freeport began dumping more than 200,000 tons of mine tailings per day into the Ajikwa River, which drains into the Arafura Sea. Such tailings consist of highly concentrated toxins, including arsenic, cadmium, and selenium, which can cause cancer, skin lesions, joint pain, hair loss, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney failure, and bone and lung disease. The impacts of this on wildlife are unsurprising: in 2002, the Indonesian Environment Ministry released a previously unpublished study (commissioned by Freeport and Rio Tinto, which formerly held partial ownership of the mine) that found that the polluted rivers and wetlands were “unsuitable for aquatic life.” This increased level of contamination contributed to several aquatic “mass mortality events,'' with sediment levels one hundred times Indonesia’s legal limit smothering fish and killing smaller organisms. Similarly, in a 2012 report, Earthworks and MiningWatch Canada claim that waste from the mine has “buried over 166 square kilometers of formerly productive forest and wetlands”. This is a tremendous loss, as Papua is one of the most ecologically diverse regions in the world – 7% of all animal and plant species in the world are found there.
Freeport left behind these toxins for locals to live with. Yet—as we’ll later discuss—Freeport managed to maintain a working relationship with the state, even getting police protection, despite violations of local environmental laws and ownership disputes. That it has been able to do this as a foreign entity speaks to the colonial context in which it operates – rather than being accountable to the people and land that experience the effects of tailings releases, environmental degradation, and biodiversity losses, Freeport got a pass.
Freeport dominates the local economy and violates the safety and labor rights of workers
It’s easy to see why the Indonesian government values Freeport’s operation: in 2020, globally, Freeport earned over $14 billion in revenue and $599 million in profit according to the database MergentIntellect Advanced Search, in part from its Indonesian subsidiary. This revenue makes up 91% of the local district’s GDP and one-third of Papua’s economy, and the Grasberg mine facility employed nearly 30,000 people as of October 2020. Most importantly, from 1992 to 2007, the company paid an average of $2.75 billion per year in taxes to the Indonesian government. That’s not to say it’s always been a friendly relationship—ongoing disputes over ownership and conditions for the mine’s permits led to Freeport’s recent sale of the majority stake in the mine—but these continued abuses show how the government has sided with the mining company on matters of worker and indigenous rights.
Freeport frequently showed little regard for its workers’ safety. For example, evidence suggests that in 2003 the company knew two days before a portion of the mine wall crumbled that a collapse was imminent. It responded by moving large pieces of equipment away from the vulnerable wall, but did not move mine workers. Eight miners were killed by the eventual collapse, and five more were injured. In response, Freeport called the collapse a mere “slippage of material” and reassured investors that the financial damage would be minimal. Again, in 2013, a Grasberg facility caved-in during a worker training, killing 28 and trapping or injuring ten.
Naturally, workers have fought for improved conditions. In August 2017, 4,000 legally striking workers were deemed by Freeport to have “resigned.” The workers were denied their health benefits and denied educational benefits for their children. At least ten people died after being discharged from hospitals due to lack of benefits, as Freeport runs two out of three hospitals in the area. This speaks to the concerning level of societal control Freeport exercises in the region. Similarly, Freeport continued operating the mine during the pandemic with a reduced staff that was obligated to remain at the mine site for months without returning home or risk being furloughed without pay.
Workers have also reported being scared for their personal safety. These fears are not unfounded. In 2011, police forces opened fire on a group of striking mine workers in Timika as they boarded a bus to the mine for a protest. Two people died and many others were injured. It is not unusual for corporations and workers to have disputes over labor conditions – but Freeport seemed to maintain its poor labor conditions and control the actions and choices of its employees by wielding—or at the very least, leveraging—state violence. The company should be held accountable for any role it has played in violent and undemocratic abuses of labor rights.
Freeport maintains financial ties to the Indonesian police and military, whose brutal violence against civilians often serves to benefit the company
The Indonesian state’s support for Freeport was not free. Estimates place Freeport’s payments to the military and police between $20 and $80 million in the 1990s and 2010s. After the Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed the US legislature in 2003, Freeport began sending money to police and military units rather than to individual commanders and officers – but for years, individual security personnel received direct payments. Individual officers reportedly received $140/month from Freeport as “supplemental income,” 28 times an officer’s regular monthly pay from the government. Several individual commanders have received between $150,000 and $250,000. When pressed, Freeport has claimed that security payments are obligated by its 1967 and 1991 contracts with the state; the New York Times obtained copies of both contracts and there is no mention of police and military payments.
These payments finance a brutal security state. It is estimated that the number of Indigenous Papuans killed by Indonesian security forces since Papua lost its independence in 1962 is close to 500,000. A covert investigation by the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission of the Archdiocese of Brisbane in 2016 concluded that Indigenous Papuans have suffered a “slow motion genocide.” A 2013 study estimated that one torture incident had occurred every six weeks for the past fifty years by Indonesian security forces, the vast majority involving civilians.
Much of the state’s violence has served to protect Freeport’s interests. For example, in 1977, the Free Papua Movement, an Indigenous rebel group, blew up a slurry pipe and caused extensive damage to the mining operation. The Indonesian military responded by killing 800 people. After the Grasberg mine opened in 1988, the Indonesian government dispatched a notorious special military detachment called the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI) to protect the mine. The TNI are well known for their rape, murder, and torture of Indigenous Papuans. In 2002, Freeport reported payments totalling $5.6 million for that year alone to the SEC. In 1996, after protests against the mine turned violent and facilities were ransacked, then-CEO James Moffett flew to Papua. He met with the Indonesian commander of special forces, General Prabowo Subianto, son-in-law of President Suharto, who apparently told him he’d need to support the military for them to protect his company. Shortly afterwards, Freeport invested $35 million in military infrastructure and purchased seventy Land Cruisers for all military commanders.
It is inherently undemocratic for a corporation to finance state forces that claim (however unconvincingly) to serve and protect the public. We’ve said this before, in relation to the company Enbridge’s toxic relationship with state forces in the United States. Violent state-corporate alliances, whether they exist in Indonesia or the US, are pariah forces that must be held to account.
Conclusion
The root of the story is this: Freeport operated violently toward indigenous Papuans and the environment for decades, leveraging a dark colonial history for profit and control. The abuse—extracting resources while leaving behind a degraded environment, denying local workers safety and their collective bargaining power, and paying off state forces—calls for remedy, and any progress toward justice must include real input from those most affected, especially Papuans calling for sovereignty.
Daniel Kiefus is the Office & Program Coordinator at Corporate Accountability Lab.
