The Editors respond to Freeport. (Again.)

Texas Observer
June 14, 1996

They take our land and our grandparents' land. They ruined the mountains, which are the head of our mother, without any hesitation. They ruined our environment by putting the waste in the river. We can't drink our water anymore...From all the mining, what do we get? Humiliation. Torture. Hostages. Killing. They ask us to leave our land. They've taken away our tradition and our culture. We've become alienated in our own land....

I come here to ask for justice.

Those are the words of Tom Beanal, a leader of the Amungme Tribal Council (officially known as Lembaga Musyawarah Adat Suku Amungme, or LEMASA), whose home is Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Beanal spoke through an interpreter at Loyola University in New Orleans, where he had come to give testimony in a lawsuit filed against the Freeport-McMoRan Corporation, owner of the Grasberg mine, also located in Irian Jaya. Regular Observer readers are familiar with the controversy surrounding Freeport, not only concerning its mining operations in Indonesia, but its geological research/public relations operations at the University of Texas, and its real estate operations in Austin.

The class action lawsuit filed in New Orleans on April 29 is the latest development in the international controversy. Beanal's suit, filed on behalf of the indigenous people of Irian Jaya, seeks six billion dollars in damages, for "human rights violations, environmental violations, and cultural genocide" alleged to have occurred as the consequences of Freeport's mine and the company's close collaboration with the Indonesian military regime.

When Egan last wrote to us (January 12, 1996), he called us liars--because we had reported, along with Freeport's denials, the persistent charges of human rights violations and environmental damage made against the company and the Indonesian regime. Egan returns to that theme, this time alleging additional but still unspecified "falsehoods and innuendos."

It remains to be seen whether Beanal will be allowed to make his case in a U.S. courtroom. Freeport responded by calling the lawsuit "frivolous and opportunistic," and tried to drive a wedge between Beanal and his lawyer, Martin E. Regan, Jr. The company's lawyers argued for a dismissal on the grounds that Regan had filed the suit without fully consulting his client, and that the suit was filed in haste simply to create bad publicity just prior to the company's annual shareholder meeting. But in testimony last month before U.S. District Court Judge Stanwood R. Duval, Regan and Beanal each responded that despite some initial confusion over timing and translation problems, Beanal wanted the suit to proceed. Beanal and his people contend they have exhausted their limited recourse with the Indonesian authorities, who assumed control of their homeland (West Papua, New Guinea) from the Dutch empire in the 1960s. Said Beanal, "I think it is appropriate to proceed here because it's an American company, and the [Indonesian] government has an interest in the mine." The night before his testimony, he told his university audience, "During the last thirty years, we tried to find justice, but we never found it. And now comes Mr. Martin [Regan] and I can see justice. I come here to ask for justice."

Beanal's frank perspective provides an illuminating contrast to that of Thomas Egan, the Freeport Vice President whose corporate press release, thinly disguised as a letter to the editor, also appears in this issue ("Dialogue," page 2). When Egan last wrote to us (January 12, 1996), he called us liars--because we had reported, along with Freeport's denials, the persistent charges of human rights violations and environmental damage made against the company and the Indonesian regime. Egan returns to that theme, this time alleging additional but still unspecified "falsehoods and innuendos." Then, after reciting Freeport's recent public relations achievements, he requests that we "report these developments with the same zealdisplayed in reporting OPIC's cancellation and the environmental and social allegations against us." Apparently Jim Bob Moffett does not have enough advertising copywriters already in his employ.

For the record: while the Observer had not yet noted Freeport's sub-contracted, self-exonerating "independent" environmental audit (the Dames & Moore report Egan trumpets here), we have indeed reported OPIC's renewal of Freeport's political risk insurance, its environmental trust fund, and its purported agreement with the local people of Irian Jaya. We have not, it is true, taken Freeport's versions of events at face value; we have reported the context in which all these events have taken place (the recent popular uprisings in Irian Jaya, which resulted in several deaths and extensive damage to Freeport facilities), and we have reported that, contrary to Egan's "unflagging optimism," some of the people of Irian Jaya have taken an understandably dimmer view of Freeport's recent attempts to proclaim that its problems have been resolved. Local leaders, including Beanal, have specifically rejected Freeport's claim of an agreement between the company and the local people, under which Freeport says it will contribute to community development projects and hire more local people to work at the mine. In April, for example, immediately following Freeport's unilateral announcement of this agreement, LEMASA issued a statement saying that it had in fact rejected Freeport's offer, because "it fails to address the roots of the problem" (Observer, May 3). According to Beanal's lawyer, Martin Regan, the specific timing of the class-action lawsuit was in fact a consequence of Freeport's full-page newspaper advertisements in New Orleans (and elsewhere, including Austin) announcing its settlement.

In any case, Egan's real interest is not in factual journalism, but in buying or bullying the media into coverage favorable to his company. The current instance offers an exact illustration. In response to Egan's letter and the recent events in Irian Jaya and New Orleans, we called to ask him a few questions. After repeated requests, we were referred to Garland Robinette, the former New Orleans TV anchor who is now Freeport's chief p.r. flack; repeated calls to Robinette eventually produced Bill Collier, the former Austin American-Statesman reporter who is now Freeport's Austin spokesman (is it just us, or is there a pattern here?). Collier--calling our previous reports "unfair" and "inaccurate"--refused to answer any questions unless they were submitted in writing. (We pressed Collier to name a single "lie" in the Observer's Freeport coverage. He finally responded, "You published...that Freeport security people carry guns, and that's an absolute lie." We have, indeed, reported [e.g., November 17, 1995] that the Irianese have told human rights investigators that Freeport personnel sometimes carry weapons, and we followed the charge with Freeport's response: "Freeport security over there is unarmed..." Speaking on behalf of Freeport was Bill Collier.)

Freeport shares with the Indonesian government a strong preference for the sort of "journalism" that only tells its side of the story. Freeport stonewalls reporters who fail to parrot the company line, and when it can't buy newspeople outright, it spends thousands of dollars on misleading advertisements portraying its mining operations as motivated by public spirit and altruism.

A brief list of questions concerning the matters raised in Egan's letter was delivered to Collier the next day; a week later, neither he nor his New Orleans masters had even managed a curt "no comment."

Freeport shares with the Indonesian government a strong preference for the sort of "journalism" that only tells its side of the story. Freeport stonewalls reporters who fail to parrot the company line, and when it can't buy newspeople outright, it spends thousands of dollars on misleading advertisements portraying its mining operations as motivated by public spirit and altruism. A recent beneficiary of Freeport's largesse is Texas Monthly, whose April issue featured a glossy eight-page spread in this unctuous vein, suggesting that if it weren't for Freeport's generosity in sharing its precious minerals with the world, we'd all be sitting in the dark writing on stone tablets. According to Louisa Brinsmade of the Austin Chronicle (April 12), for its 162 thousand dollars Freeport got more than just an ad; for that kind of payola, Monthly publisher Michael Levy sent out a personal letter (described as a "collaborative effort" with Freeport) to selected subscribers, calling "special attention to Freeport-McMoRan's description in these pages of its achievements as a corporate citizen of Texas and the world." Levy's letter, like Freeport's ad, had all the zeal money can buy, but of course, no mention of alleged human rights violations, environmental violations, or cultural genocide. (In that regard, Levy can at least claim unanimity with his editors.)

In the Freeport counterattack, the Monthly is not alone. More recently, Forbes, a magazine which is to journalism what The Turner Diaries is to literature, published an article by Brigid McMenamin called "Environmental Imperialism" (May 20). It is devoted to a particularly absurd attack on environmental groups working to influence the U.S. government to enforce the laws governing U.S. corporations abroad. Freeport is offered as the prime example by McMenamin who, in an argument of truly sublime looniness, decries "environmental fascists" like the International Rivers Network for calling OPIC's attention to Freeport's environmental and human rights record--items you would think an underwriter just might be interested in before they guarantee one hundred million dollars of U.S. taxpayers' money against political risks. But in McMenamin's dizzily inverted universe, the environmental advocates are the new "imperialists," and international conglomerates like Freeport--not to mention Indonesia's bloody legions--are simply beleaguered entrepreneurs trying to bring opportunity, wealth, and progress to primitive peoples. "O brave new world," said the innocent Miranda, as she looked upon the finely-dressed collection of respectable pillars of industry, statecraft, and military might which had disembarked on her island home. "O brave new world, that has such people in it!"

Which brings us back to Tom Beanal. One of the problems with primitive people--like this man who so eloquently defies the pronouncements of Freeport's "Senior Vice President and Senior Administrative Deputy to the Office of the Chairman"--is that they are not so easily purchased as American journalists. They won't do or speak as they're told, and they don't seem to understand that freedom, honor, and justice are readily bartered for dollars. In court, Freeport's lawyers attempted to demonstrate that Beanal had been duped by his American attorney, and was incapable of understanding the proceedings. Beanal responded: "I'm not afraid to defend the truth in court. But in my country, the truth is something to be struggled with."

Readers may judge for themselves which Tom--Egan or Beanal--has had the better of that struggle thus far. The original complaint in Beanal v. Freeport, along with many other informative documents, is at U.T. Professor Robert S. Boyer's web page. An initial decision on Freeport's motion to dismiss is expected sometime in early June.

--M.K.

Listen to Our Critics--read Freeport's letter. (June 14, 1996.)
Freeport's first letter (January 12, 1996.)