Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | A | Arena Magazine

Gagged: proposed mining activity by BHP Billiton, backed by the Australian government, threatens both West Papua''s environment and Indonesia''s fragile democracy.

Article Excerpt
Abdul Teng is in his element. Mr Teng is from the North Malukus and is the head of Gambir Village, the only settlement on Gag Island, a diminutive and isolated 56-square-kilometre coral atoll located 150km north-west of Sorong, in the Raja Ampat archipelago, the world's most diverse marine environment. He agreed to talk about BHP Billiton's planned open-pit nickel mine on Gag Island, and his settlement of around 600 people.

Abdul Teng talks animatedly about his time working for the company and his hopes that the mine may soon be operational. Asked about the company's environmental record, Mr Teng looks reflective, smiles, pulls back on his clove cigarette and tells a story: One time a big snake came into our village. Everybody was running around in a panic. We all wanted to kill it, but one of the Australian men who worked for the company wouldn't let us. He made us catch the snake. We put it in a sack and carried it into the forest where we released it. Also whenever we travelled on the company's boat we weren't allowed to throw our cigarette butts into the ocean. All the workers had to put out their smokes in the ashtrays provided. So you see, this is definitely a company that cares about the environment.

Abdul Teng says that he trusts that BHP Billiton will respect the environment and protect the people's gardens, sago palms and fishing grounds, but adds that if they don't 'the people will close the mine down'. Mr Teng hasn't heard of Ok Tedi. He doesn't know that the same company that wanted the people of Gambir Village to protect snakes on Gag and encouraged them not to throw their cigarette butts into the ocean also dumped 80,000 tons of toxic tailings daily into the Fly River. The tailings sucked the life out of the Fly and destroyed the livelihood of those who depended on it. Local people can no longer catch fish. Their sago palms and food gardens are smothered under a blanket of waste stretching for hundreds of kilometres along the river. Thousands of square kilometres of rainforest have been poisoned. The dead trunks point upwards like bony fingers, giving silent testimony beside the deoxygenated banks.

Afterwards, the company walked away and, in a widely criticised deal, has left the Papua New Guinea government to pick up the pieces. The profits have been effectively privatised, but the debt--a damaged environment and the clean-up costs--have been socialised. The local people have paid the heaviest price. This hasn't happened yet on Gag. But it could.

Gag Island is part of West Papua, a resource rich territory on the western rim of the Pacific bordering independent Papua New Guinea. Indonesia gained sovereignty of the former Dutch colony after a widely condemned and fraudulent referendum known as the 1969 Act of Free Choice. West Papuans call it the Act of No Choice. It is not hard to understand why. The Indonesian government, advised and assisted by the United Nations who sanctioned the process, press-ganged 1022 tribal elders, less than one per cent of the population, to vote on the question of independence or integration. Observers, including internationals present at the time, say that participants were told to vote for integration or have their tongues cut out. Not surprisingly, in this climate of intimidation and outright violence, 100 per cent...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!