We got the gold mine, they got the shaft ...

... to paraphrase an old country western song. One of the comments of a previous post reminded me of New Guinea and the Grasberg (Freeport) mine, the American owned gold mine on the Indonesian owned western half of the island, the largest of its kind in the world and so huge you can see it from space ....


- This astronaut photograph illustrates the approximately 4-kilometer-wide open-pit portion of the mine complex .... NASA

I first learned about the mine when I was reading up on Papua New Guinea (the independent eastern half of the island) - I had wanted to locate a fiction short story there. New Guinea is a fabulous place both ecologically and culturally, but the more I read about it, the more disturbed I was about the politics. The mine was an example. Here's a bit about Western New Guinea, first ....

Western New Guinea is the western half of the island of New Guinea. It is the easternmost part of Indonesia, consisting of two provinces: Papua and West Papua. It was previously known by various names, including Netherlands New Guinea (1895–1 October 1962) .... The incorporation of western New Guinea into Indonesia remains controversial with human rights non-governmental organizations (NGO), including some supporters in the United States Congress and other bodies, as well as many of the territory's indigenous population .....

During the 1950s the Dutch government began to prepare Netherlands New Guinea for full independence and allowed elections in 1959; an elected Papuan council, the New Guinea Council (Nieuw Guinea Raad) took office on April 5, 1961. The Council decided on the name of West Papua, a national emblem, a flag called the Morning Star or Bintang Kejora, and a national anthem; the flag was first raised — next to the Dutch flag — on December 1, 1961. However, Indonesia threatened with an invasion, after full mobilisation of its army, by August 15, 1962, after receiving military help from the Soviet Union. Under strong pressure of the United States government (under the Kennedy administration) the Dutch, who were prepared to resist an Indonesian attack, attended diplomatic talks. On October 1, 1962, the Dutch handed over the territory to a temporary UN administration (UNTEA). On May 1, 1963, Indonesia took control. The territory was renamed West Irian and then Irian Jaya.

It's said that Kennedy allowed Indonesia to take over the western half of New Guinea because he feared it would otherwise turn Soviet, but the whole thing was pretty convoluted and tainted with self-interest (and weirdly, Henry Kissinger is now on the board of the mine) ....

In 1969, General Sarwo Edhi Wibowo oversaw the Indonesian conduct of the widely criticized "Act of Free Choice." Prior to the vote, the Indonesian military rounded up and detained for one month a large group of Papuan tribal leaders. The Papuans were daily threatened with death at gunpoint if the entire group did not vote to continue Indonesian rule. Assembled troops and two Western observers acted as witnesses to the public vote; however, the Western observers left after witnessing the first two hundred (of 1,054) votes for integration. Concerned over Communism in South East Asia, and with an eye toward extracting Papua's vast mineral wealth, the US and other Western powers ignored protests over the circumstances surrounding the vote [9] The process was deemed to have been an "Act of Free Choice" in accordance with the United Nations requirements, and Indonesia formally annexed the territory in August. Dissenters mockingly called it the "Act of No Choice" or "Act Free of Choice."

In 1971, construction of the world's largest copper and gold mine (also the world's largest open cut mine) began. Under an Indonesian agreement signed in 1967 (two years before the "Act of Free Choice"), the US company Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. obtained a 30-year exclusive mining license from Suharto in (dating from the mine's opening in 1973). The pact was extended in 1991 by another 30 years. After 1988 with the opening of the Grasberg mine it became the biggest gold mine and lowest extraction-price copper mine in the world .... ([9] Saltford, John. 2003. The United Nations and the Indonesian Takeover 1962-1969: The Anatomy of Betrayal. NY: Routledge.

Don't know exactly why I posted this - I guess I loved reading about New Guinea and always wanted to at least mention the unfairness of what happened and seems to still be happening there, since it doesn't get much press.

For more info, check out the article, JFK, Indonesia, CIA & Freeport Sulphur

And a NY Times story ..... Below a Mountain of Wealth, a River of Waste (2005)

And from the Mineral Policy Institute - Mining companies' role in rights abuses and violence (2003)

Read more at Free West Papua