It is not only Australian-registered corporations like Andrew Twiggy Forrest's Fortescue Metals Group or Chinese-owned Anchor Resources which make a mockery of the concept of community consultation.
Recently another mining corporation (described last year as Australia's 60th largest gold company by market capitalisation) went a step further in Indonesia......
This is what a publicly listed mining exploration company, Arc Exploration, formerly Austindo Resources Corporation N.L., told the Australian Stock Exchange on 4 October 2011 concerning the proposed open pit gold mine at Bima and its current plans to conduct further exploratory test drilling in the 250sq.km mining tenement project it 95% owns and manages:
Snapshot of excerpt from Quarterly Activities Report - September 2011 Quarter
Again on 29 November 2011:
Snapshot of opening paragraphs in Exploration Recommences at Bima
Not quite one month later on 24 December 2011 JATAM - the Mining Advocacy Network reported:
Residents reported to The National Human Rights Commission, which then conducted an investigation on April 2011. On November 2011, The National Human Rights Commission issued a recommendation No. 2.784/K/PMT/XI/2011 for The Regent of Bima, The West Nusa Tenggara Chief of Police, and The Director of PT. SMN. The National Human Rights Commission recommended The Regent of Bima to improve the information system and publicize mining activities; started from exploration to exploitation, and also to suspend the activities of PT. SMN while waiting for the conduciveness of society’s social life. The West Nusa Tenggara Chief of Police was asked to take coordinative and communicative steps with all elements of government and community leaders to prevent horizontal conflicts in Bima. The National Human Rights Commission urged the warranty for residents’ freedom of speech or aspiration (demonstration) in accordance with statutory provisions, and to avoid repressive measures by using weapons with live ammunition in securing rallies.
On 26 December 2011 ABC News reported in the article Indonesian police fire on gold mine protesters:
Video has emerged showing Indonesian police firing on protesters who were demonstrating against a planned Australian-owned gold mine.
Two people were killed and 10 others injured in the incident in the town of Bima on the island of Sumbawa, east of Bali.
The confrontation occurred on Saturday when nearly 1,000 villagers refused to end a week-long blockade of a local port.
Police were ordered to fire directly into the crowd.
Later they can be seen dragging and beating one of the injured protesters.
The group was trying to block the construction of a gold mine, owned by Indonesia's PT Sumber Mineral Nusantara and Australian company Arc Exploration….
Arc Exploration's Board of Directors; investment consultant and former banker Bruce James Watson (Non Exec. Chairman), UK & Indonesia-based mining geologist John Charles Carlile (Managing Director), Indonesian Rich List nominee and businessman George Santosa Tahija (Non Exec. Director), lawyer and mining industry advisor Robert Moyse Willcocks (Non Exec. Director), Indonesian businessman Cahyono Halim (CFO), lawyer Andrew John Cooke (Comp. Secretary) and its Top Twenty Shareholders, might like to explain the company’s extensive consultation process (in partnership with PT. Sumber Mineral Nusantara [SMN] which according to de.indymedia.org has as its Managing Director John Carlile and as its Company Secretary Andrew Cooke).
This extensive consultation resulted in a thousand-strong demonstration and at least three dead at the hands of the civil authority including Arief Rachman, 18, and Syaiful,17 (both allegedly pictured below).
This extensive consultation resulted in a thousand-strong demonstration and at least three dead at the hands of the civil authority including Arief Rachman, 18, and Syaiful,17 (both allegedly pictured below).
Indonesian police are not admitting to these shootings, however investigations are ongoing.
According to The Australian on 28 December 2011; Indonesia's National Commission on Human Rights is investigating the clash on Christmas Eve at the site of the Arc Exploration project at Bima near the port city of Sape.
The Jakarta Globe had previously noted the connection between another mining company associated with an Arc Exploration director and an alleged $14 million annual payment to Indonesian police for what might be assumed by a reasonable person as being some form of extraordinary 'protection'. In February last year the company involved denied there was any graft involved in these payments.
By 28 December 2011 the Chairman of the Indonesian Human Rights Commission was characterising Arc Exploration's assurances regarding local community support as ill-founded and, raising the possibility that Arc Exploration had paid local police to act as corporate enforcers.
At the same time Australian Greens Senator Chrisitne Milne was saying; Arc employed John Carlile as managing director because of his experience with Newcrest Mining operating in Indonesia.....Newcrest admitted in 2004 it had paid Indonesian security forces to manage its site in Indonesia. Newcrest was registered as an Australian corporation in 1980.
This business relationship with paramilitary police appears to have existed in 2003 and possibly earlier. Various online sources mention payments of $35,000 U.S. dollars a year to a 65-man strong contingent of the Mobile Brigade.
Using Brimob police against protesters with lethal force was endorsed and possibly encouraged by then Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and the Howard Government according to various media reports at the time.
On 28 December 2011 Arc Exploration gave a brief statement to the Australian Stock Exchange concerning the recent violent events at Bima. However, like the past and present business interests of its board, this does not necessarily create confidence under closer scrutiny.
Snapshot of Further Anti-Mining Demonstrations at Bima
A further short clarification was issued later on the same day.
One has to wonder why anyone would invest in this mining company.
It will come as no surprise to concerned residents and community groups on the NSW North Coast - opposing the proposed antimony mine in the Clarence River catchment area - to find that Anchor Resources Managing Director, Ian Price, was listed in 2003 by Austock Research as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Arc Exploration when it traded as Austindo Resources Corporation N.L. He apparently held this position from 18 November 2002 , serving alongside Messrs. Watson, Tahija and Carlile and Cooke.
One has to wonder why anyone would invest in this mining company.
It will come as no surprise to concerned residents and community groups on the NSW North Coast - opposing the proposed antimony mine in the Clarence River catchment area - to find that Anchor Resources Managing Director, Ian Price, was listed in 2003 by Austock Research as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Arc Exploration when it traded as Austindo Resources Corporation N.L. He apparently held this position from 18 November 2002 , serving alongside Messrs. Watson, Tahija and Carlile and Cooke.
Nor will communities in Northern NSW battling the high-handed methods of the coal seam gas industry be astonished to learn that until 7 June 2011 Bruce Watson and Robert Willcocks were respectively Non-executive Director and Non-executive Chairman of Orion Petroleum Pty Ltd which currently holds an interest along with Santos-owned Eastern Star Gas in exploration licenses in the Goondiwindi, Kurrabooma, & Maules Creek areas and, in its own right in the Whalan Creek, Willaroo, Moree and Gwydir districts.
That the Australian mining industry contains complex business relationships is obvious; that this country may be used as a corporate flag of convenience so that foreign nationals can take advantage of tax law favourable to their overseas mining interests is suspected; that certain superannuation schemes may be growing on the back of corporate bullying of small farming communities is a distinct possibility; nevertheless the idea that mining business culture has become so debased as to ignore human rights and civilised behaviour comes as something of a shock.
With communities in rural and regional New South Wales under so much pressure from mining interests and their political supporters, it may be wise to remember the absence of ethics which appears to be festering within both multinational and national corporations these days.
Photographs from no2mininginpalawan.com
Video from YouTube
Video from YouTube
UPDATE
The Jakarta Post report on 1 January 2012:
Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Jero Wacik said on Friday he had requested West Nusa Tenggara administration to scrap the mining permit of PT Sumber Mineral Nusantara (SMN) after two people died last week during an anti-mining protest. Jero said the province’s governor would order Bima regent, Ferry Zulkarnain, to revoke the permit, which was first issued in 2008 to explore gold in the regency......
Herald-Sun on 28 January 2012:
INDONESIA on Saturday revoked a gold mining exploration permit granted to an Australian miner after a series of violent protests against the project left two people dead last month, reports said.
The decision came after thousands of people on Thursday demonstrated in the city of Bima on Sumbawa Island, east of Bali, with government buildings set ablaze.
''We decided to revoke permanently the permit for the sake of security stability here,'' Bima district head Ferry Zulkarnain told local television station MetroTV.....
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