September 27, 1995

William H. Cunningham,
1909 Hill Oaks Court,
Austin, Texas 78703

Dear Dr. Cunningham,

Thank you for your letter of September 12 in response to my resignation from UT.

Your letter attributes the source of our disagreement on Freeport's environmental and human rights record to the fact that you have visited the mine site and I have not. I find this response inadequate. First, because it is merely the tired red herring Freeport spokesman Bill Collier routinely feeds to the press in efforts to discredit me. More importantly, because it indicates little understanding of the political situation in Irian Jaya (West Papua).

I have not undertaken research in Irian Jaya (West Papua) because the Indonesian government does not grant research visas to anthropologists for work there. This has been the dominant situation for 25 years. It is well-known that the Indonesian state finds anthropologists to be potential threats to its efforts to dominate indigenous West Papuans. This pattern applies to both foreign and local anthropologists; witness the 1984 Indonesian police murder of Irian Jaya (West Papua) anthropologist Arnold Ap. Indonesia has been repeatedly cited for such repressive and brutal retaliation against researchers and journalists. As I write over 50 political prisoners are in Indonesian jails merely for advocating independence for the indigenous people of Irian Jaya (West Papua). Documentation of these matters can be found in Amnesty International's 1995 Annual Report and 1994 Indonesia handbook, Power and Impunity: Human Rights under the New Order; more local details can be found in Carmel Budiardjo and Liem Soei Liong's book West Papua: The Obliteration of a People, published in 1988 by TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign.

You might object that even if I cannot do official research in Irian Jaya (West Papua), I could at least visit as a tourist. But in fact travel to Irian Jaya (West Papua) on a tourist visa is also quite restrictive in terms of where one is allowed to go and who one is allowed to meet. Indeed, there are serious risks to visitors who ask questions of indigenous Melanesians, as well as retaliations against locals who speak to them. Given my interests in the human rights and development needs of indigenous peoples, it has thus never seemed that entering Irian Jaya (West Papua) on a short-term tourist visit would be particularly insightful.

But this does not mean that there is no reliable information about indigenous responses to Indonesian colonialism and its transnational component. Some 10,000 indigenous West Papuans who are refugees from Indonesian political oppression in Irian Jaya (West Papua) currently live over the border in Papua New Guinea. Many of them have been visited and interviewed by local and foreign anthropologists, human rights workers, and members of church and international health organizations. These refugee accounts, as well as those from other West Papuan refugees living in Australia and Netherlands, have been in circulation for years. There are also eyewitness and first-person accounts of experiences around the mine, like the ones in the ACFOA and Catholic Church reports, and ones provided by Indonesian and foreign NGO's as well as former Freeport staff.

My claim is simply that I have taken considerable time over the past five years to pursue the full range of this source material in the US and during my regular research trips to Australia and Papua New Guinea. Whatever your experience at Freeport's mine, or Bill Collier's, the volume and variety of information I and others have researched is serious and must be addressed; it cannot simply be dismissed by claiming that I have not been to the site.

Apart from that matter, I am, nonetheless, grateful for your offer to facilitate a visit to the mine, now that you have gone on record stating how strongly you feel that such an experience would significantly alter my views. I would very much like to take such a trip in the near future (at my own expense of course). Please inform me how I might initiate the process of visiting the mine site and witnessing Freeport's operation in the way you have.

Turning to the third paragraph of your letter, I too am aware that environmental and human rights issues are "subject to distortion and highly charged rhetoric." This is precisely why I have found Freeport-McMoRan's and Indonesia's damage control campaigns so troublesome. Freeport's threats to bankrupt the City of Austin, to persuade other businesses not to operate there, as well as its aggressive lobbying and sponsorship of Austin-bashing bills in the Texas legislature indicates clearly that the company prefers vindictive retaliation rather than serious engagement with its critics.

As for Indonesia's accountability, I appreciated the clipping from the the Jakarta Post and will, of course, follow up on it. However I am hardly as confident as you are of its integrity, since it is well-known that the Indonesian press is tightly controlled and that views critical of state projects are not tolerated (see for example "Indonesia Ridding Press of Critical Writers" The New York Times, April 17, 1995). Additionally, Indonesia's National Commission on Human Rights has little independence and risks serious difficulty if it appears critical of the state. More to the point, Indonesia's new human rights rhetoric is still wildy out of line with its practices; the country has not yet implemented the recommendations on tortures and detentions made following investigations by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1992. For more on this see the Indonesia section of Amnesty International's 1995 report, Human Rights and US Security Assistance.

Finally, I am astonished by your transparent acceptance of the Jakarta Post headline proclaiming "Freeport Not Involved in Timika Case." Neither the ACFOA report nor the Catholic Church report I sent claim that the murders, detentions, tortures, and harassments cited were perpetrated by Freeport security personnel. They indicate clearly that these were acts carried out by Indonesian military police. But this hardly means that Freeport was "not involved." If any of these violent abuses of human rights took place, as reported, on Freeport vehicles, in Freeport containers, at Freeport workshops, at Freeport security stations, in the presence of Freeport personnel, then Freeport surely was involved. For this the company must accept its measure of responsibility rather than hide behind a distorted headline in the state-controlled press.

Sincerely,
Steven Feld

enclosures, from documents cited