Of "Jim Bob" and "boat people"

Your Guambat is getting a fair bit dotty in his old age. Scanning the Herald this morning, there were three separate stories that each seemed like a dot which, if connnected, painted some kind of a picture. It's probably just prejudice, though. See if you find any dots and if they connect.
Two workers die in goldmine landslide

A LANDSLIDE at the beleaguered Freeport mine in the Indonesian province of Papua has killed two workers, with another missing and 31 injured.

One of the injured was flown to Townsville and another four are in serious conditions at a local hospital.

Freeport, the largest goldmine in the world, has been beset by controversies in the past month, with violent demonstrations demanding its closure and an investigation into allegations the US-owned firm corruptly paid millions of dollars to Indonesian military officers.

Last week it was the target of a wave of violent protests by Papuan students in which five police and soldiers were killed.

Hundreds of fearful students remain in hiding in the mountains surrounding Jayapura. Dormitories housing more than a thousand students were damaged and deserted yesterday following police searches.

Papua's acting Governor pleaded for the students to return and urged them not to cross the border into Papua New Guinea.

"It is not necessary for people to be worried and seek asylum in other regions or abroad," Soadjuangon Situmorang said. "If you are not guilty, why do you have to be afraid? I and the security apparatus guarantee everything will be fine."

Visa ruling puts Jakarta ties at risk

AUSTRALIA has recognised there are serious human rights abuses in the Indonesian province of Papua by granting visas to 42 asylum seekers on the basis of a "well-founded fear of persecution".

Despite considerable diplomatic massaging from Canberra yesterday, the decision has already antagonised Indonesia and has been condemned by an influential MP in Jakarta as an "unfriendly" act.

The Indonesian Government went to great lengths to try to get the Papuans home. The President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, even called the Prime Minister, John Howard, offering his personal guarantee no harm would come to them.

Mr Howard last night refused to say whether he endorsed the decision and there was no official comment from Jakarta, although diplomatic sources said the decision was "disappointing".

Djoko Susilo, a nationalist MP and member of Indonesia's powerful foreign affairs commission, called on the Indonesian Government to formally protest, saying Australia clearly believed the claims of the asylum seekers. "This is an unfriendly gesture by the Australian Government," he said.

The asylum seekers arrived in January. Independence activists said they were fleeing "genocide" and oppression by the Indonesian military and police.

In a statement read out last night, the leader of the Papuans, Herman Wainggai, thanked the Australian Government and people for a "fair and just decision". He said: "We were threatened in an extremely dangerous position.

"We trust that the Indonesians will act with maturity and see that the situation in West Papua is very serious and one that must be dealt with peacefully."

Papua's indigenous population has been campaigning for independence since the United Nations handed the resource-rich province to Indonesia in 1969.

Senior Australian officials confirmed yesterday that the Papuans had been granted visas based on a determination that they had established a "well-founded fear of persecution".

Indonesia has insisted that there are no abuses in Papua and is acutely sensitive to any notion of Papuan independence, especially after Australia's lead role in liberating its former province of East Timor.

It is also understood that in past weeks senior Australian Foreign Affairs officials expressed concern to the Immigration Department about the potential impact the Papuans would have on Australia's relationship with Indonesia.

Jim Bob rakes in millions from Papua goldmine

Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, owner of the troubled Grasberg mine in Indonesia's Papua province, paid its two top executives a combined $US83 million ($115.7 million) last year.

Freeport's annual earnings rose to $US995.1 million from $US202.3 million last year due to record commodity prices. But the New Orleans company has since faced heavy criticism of its environmental and security practices in Papua.

Freeport's colourful chairman, James "Jim Bob" Moffett, pocketed $US47 million, while chief executive Richard Adkerson was paid $US36 million, according to filings made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday.

Mr Moffett's base salary was $US2.5 million but he received a $US19 million bonus, $US21.5 million worth of stock options and various other forms of compensation to take the total to $US47 million.

By comparison, BHP Billiton chief executive Chip Goodyear received a $US5 million salary package in 2005, while Rio chief executive Leigh Clifford earned $US6.7 million.

BHP has a market value of $US102 billion, making the diversified resources behemoth 10 times as large as Freeport, which is a one-mine company worth $US10 billion. Mr Goodyear served as Freeport's chief financial officer in the mid-1990s before joining BHP in 1999.

Freeport's Grasberg mine is the biggest goldmine in the world and the second largest copper mine. Rio sold its 13 per cent stake in Freeport for $US882 million in March 2004 but has a 40 per cent interest in Grasberg's copper and gold reserves discovered after 1994.

A detailed report in The New York Times last year said Freeport has paid local military and police at least $US20 million for questionable purposes since 1998 and allowed waste to seep into surrounding groundwater.

Despite the troubles at Grasberg, Freeport said Mr Moffett's $US47 million compensation package was justified because he "has been and continues to be instrumental in fostering our company's relationship with the government of Indonesia".

Now, quite aside from seeing and connecting any dots in that mirage of stories, I want to comment on the Papuan asylum story. Dewy eyed lefties howled in indignant dispair when the Howard government began turning back boatloads of people trying to sail to Australia from Indonesia a couple of years back. Actually, there was a great deal of popular support for the action, and I have to count myself amongst it. And this deserves a bit of discerning here.

Those prior boatloads of people were not our neighbours. These were people who had come from half-way around the world, by sea, air and land, to muster in Indonesia to try to enter Australia. Along the way they passed through, over and around multiple places that would have given them due asylum, asylum intending to be by its very nature a temporary refuge from persecution.

Australians have not raised one wimper in opposition to the Papuan asylum-seekers, notwithstanding that they, too, arrived by sea, in their traditional dug-out craft. Is this a change of heart or a difference with a distinction? I would argue that the great unwashed are far more caring and discriminating than they are sometimes portrayed. In the case of the previous boat people, the perception was these were not serious asylum seekers but opportunistic economic emigrants trying to slip under the immigration radar or otherwise "jump the queue".

That there has been no voice in disdain of the latest boat people speaks volumes about Australia's true feelings about asylum and giving "genuine" asylum seekers a fair go.

Afterthoughts

I was going to look at Papua with my Google Earth and found I needed to upgrade it and that all took a while and I got sidetracked, as Guambats are want. But I got there in the end, and thought I'd add some more to this post from stuff I stumbled across along the way.

I think the Freeport Grasberg mine is located at: lat=-3.93581529709, lon=136.721751698. It is, as near as I've been able to find from large maps, at least near that. You can roam around Papua with GE (now what kind of coincidence is that abbreviation!?) and see scarred lands in many places which are likely the result of mining. The attached pic of Papua mining effects near the (supposed) Grasberg mine is taken from a virtual 117 miles high, so the scale is rather awsome.

But this would probably be only a toeprint of the total footprint of Freeport's presence in Indonesia: "All these [Freeport] companies operate through Contracts of Work with the Government of Indonesia which, at the end of 2002, covered approximately 2.2 million acres. (http://www.infomine.com/index/companies/FREEPORT_MCMORAN_COPPER_&_GOLD_INC.html)"

Freeport is no johnny-come-lately to Indonesia, having been there over half a century. There is plenty of material about the company and its relationship to the people and environment of Papua, both "friendly" and "not-so", on the net. These are just a miniscule sampling:
Freeport-McMoRan: A Pit of Trouble
A short history of West Papua


Yet one more update: Indonesia has recalled its Ambassador from Australia back to Jakarta for "discussions" about the issuance of the asylum visas to the Papuans. You get the feeling that, since Timor, especially, Indonesia feels, perhaps justifiably so, that Australians would like to see parts of Indonesia, West Papua and perhaps Aceh and -- any place else?? -- freed from Jakarta, and they ain't none too happy about that.