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Information on the Moffett Building Controversy 1992-94

  • Those outside agitators. "You've got people who are paid to come in there and stir up the pot. They'll get all this stuff on the books and then they'll leave town." Moffett quoted in the Austin American-Statesman, May 24, 1992, apropos the likes of Bunch and Shea and the SOS ordinance. Shea later became a member of the city council for years, and Bunch is still defending SOS in court in 1998.

  • Freeport denies it is destroying Irian environment, Jakarta Post, July 7, 1993. "PT Freeport Indonesia says the recent outbreaks of diarrhoea and skin disease among the people in Irian Jaya (West Papua) were not caused by its copper mining activities in the province. The giant American copper company has been accused by some local leaders of destroying the environment and polluting the river water in Irian Jaya's hinterland which they linked with the recent outbreak of the diseases."

  • Newsbriefs, Editor, October 14, 1993. (Full text in Lexis-Nexis.) "An assistant to the Environment Minister, R E Soeriatmadja, 22/9 accused Freeport Indonesia Company FIC of silting up five local rivers below its Irian Jaya (West Papua)n copper mine: the Aikwa, Pika, Uamiau Aimua and Minayerwi. FIC daily dumps 54 - 57 000 tons of tailings into these rivers after copper and gold ore had been extracted. Hoediatmo Hoed, director-president of FIC, acknowledged the company was doing this, but said there was no more feasible method."

  • The deforesting of Irian Jaya (West Papua) , The Nation, February 7, 1994. (Full text in Lexis-Nexis.)
    • "Until recent times, the Irianese lived relatively undisturbed. So, too, did the hodgepodge of endemic creatures that rival Australian fauna--including the bird of paradise, the world's most opulent and showy bird, and tree-dwelling kangaroos. They flourish in Irian Jaya (West Papua)'s rain forest, which covers the bulk of the province's 163,000 square miles, the largest remaining stand of trees in a nation that is second only to Brazil in rain forest acreage. Anthropologists, herbologists, biologists and other scientists consider Irian Jaya (West Papua) a treasure trove of previously undiscovered cures and an evolutionary roadmap. It is also home to much of the earth's remaining Stone Age civilization."
    • "the Irianese, almost to a person, believe the Indonesian presence is an occupation akin to that in East Timor"

  • Army Area Handbooks, AR ARMAN INDOCH, Chapter 3.07, Minerals, US Department of the Army, 03/08/1994. Some facts and figures about gold, copper, and Freeport.

  • Indonesia's evil occupation in New Guinea can't be ignored, Islands Business Pacific, April, 1994. (Full text in Lexis-Nexis.)
    • "This is a former Dutch territory which, we shan't tire of reminding our readers, was handed shamefully to the Indonesians on a plate thanks to a sham United Nations vote pressured for by the Americans at a time when it was Washington's policy to do anything at all to curry favour with anti-Communist Asian regimes."
    • "In western New Guinea, the Indonesians are simply probably doing a better job hiding their crimes there than they are in East Timor."

  • Outrage fades; UT ties to Freeport, genocide persist, Daily Texan, April 14, 1994. (The five most recent issues of the Daily Texan are on the web.)

  • The striving for democratization and against human-rights violations in Indonesia, Robert Priyanto, Watch Indonesia, Berlin. Presented at the ENAAT (European Network Against Arms Trade) Conference April 22, 1994 in Antwerpen. (Full text in Lexis-Nexis.)
    • "Antonius Kelanangame, a 37 year old Amungme activist, says his people have names for all mountains and look on them as woman whose breasts provide them with life."
    • "Kelanangame complains there has been no effort to compensate the Amungme displaced by the mine or to provide them with means to help themselves.
      `Freeport and government keep saying it is state land, but traditionally it's our land.'"

  • Smooth sailing for Suharto, Ken Silverstein, Lies of Our Times, June, 1994. (Full text in Lexis-Nexis.)
    • "Take Sen. Bennett Johnston (Dem.-La.), a man at the forefront of the pro-Suharto congressional lobby. Johnston told Defense News last year that too tough a U.S. stance against Indonesia could `set in motion a series of acts which could result in the breakup of Indonesia and the creation of another Yugoslavia in this very strategic part of the world' (Barbara Opall, November 22, 1993, p. 3). The senator, as is his custom, failed to mention his warm relations with Freeport-McMoRan, a Louisiana-based mining and exploration firm which has approximately $1 billion invested in Indonesian gold and sulphur operations. Johnston's fealty to the company, not strategic concerns, is his primary reason for backing Suharto."
    • "[Indonesia's] occupation has resulted, directly or indirectly, in the death of 200,000 of East Timor's 600,000 people, the largest proportional genocide since the Nazis."

  • Mining takes its toll on West Papua. Green Left Review, July, 1994. (Full text in Lexis-Nexis.) "Freeport and the Indonesian authorities `justify' the dispossession of the indigenous peoples on the basis of an agreement which was signed under duress by people who could not read or write and did not understand what they were signing."

  • Some atrocities attract a blind eye, Charles Glass, The Independent (UK), December 7, 1994. (Full text in Lexis-Nexis.)
    • "In December 1975, the Indonesian president, general Suharto, was planning his invasion [of East Timor]. The president of the United States, Gerald Ford and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, flew to Jakarta to meet Suharto and give full American support to the invasion - a fact admitted to me years later by Philip Habib, a State Department official who attended the meeting."
    • "After leaving office, Kissinger met Suharto again. In 1991, as a board member of Freeport McMoRan, he helped the company to renew for 30 years its permit to produce copper in the Indonesian province of West Irian. By then the Indonesian army, with American and British weapons, had killed 200,000 of East Timor's 700,000 people. East Timor had become in all but international law and common justice, Indonesia's 27th province."