The announcement follows a sustained campaign by fishermen and other residents of the bay to hold Newmont accountable for its waste disposal practices. In the last year they have held meetings, collaborated with environmental activists, and sent at least one delegation to Jakarta, the capital, which is located on Java—like Sulawesi, one of the largest islands that make up Indonesia.

Company executives have insisted that the pollutants are at safe levels and have not entered the food chain.

Villagers have initiated their own $543 million lawsuit against Newmont, reported the Associated Press in November. “We can feel there is something wrong in our bodies,” Jemi Bawole, 36, told AP. “Newmont has to be held responsible.”

“Before Newmont came, we only got colds and malaria,” said Nurbaya Patenda, 27. “Now we suffer weird diseases. Even the doctors are confused.”

During a December 2 stop in Jakarta, U.S. Treasury assistant secretary Randal Quarles expressed concern about the government’s lawsuit, telling reporters that “these sorts of issues are deterring investment in Indonesia.” Quarles visited Indonesia to meet with government ministers and the head of the Bank of Indonesia.

If found guilty, company executives could face jail terms of up to 15 years, fines of around $85,000, and “confiscation of any profit,” said the November 25 Jakarta Post. In September Indonesian police held and questioned a number of Newmont representatives for several weeks.

The government is basing its prosecution on a report by a “joint team of government officials, activists and police,” said the Post. It added that the survey concluded “that the bay was indeed polluted with excessive levels of arsenic and mercury.”

Alwi Shihab, the Coordinating Minister for People’s Welfare, told a November 24 press conference, “The bay is contaminated with arsenic, but we will leave it to the courts to determine the level of pollution.” The courts would also determine who is responsible, he said—a reference to claims by Newmont executives that “illegal miners” had dumped poisonous tailings into the bay, bumping up the test readings of mercury and arsenic.  
 
Gov’t says ‘eat less fish’
At the same time, the report said that the water quality met official Indonesian standards and advised locals to eat less fish and avoid local wells. “The government told us not to drink the water in our village, but there is no other source of water here,” said Buyat resident Anwar, speaking before the Regional Representatives Council in Jakarta on December 2. “The local administration has also terminated its water aid,” he said.

Anwar said that “dozens of women in Buyat Bay village had developed anal and vaginal hemorrhage,” reported the Post. “Doctors there did not recognize the condition,” he said, “and we don’t have any money to go to the hospital, because the local administration has stopped providing medical assistance.” AP noted that nearby Buyat Pantai is “one of the poorest villages in the isolated region, [with] a single dirt road running through it and no electricity or running water.” Villagers have demanded that they be settled elsewhere.

Newmont lawyer Luhut Pangaribuan told the Post that the firm stuck to its position that “the metals in the bay’s water and fish are within the safety levels and are therefore fit for consumption.” Company executives have said that the government had OK’d their proposal to pour waste into the bay through a submerged pipeline.

AP noted that the practice “would violate clean water standards” in the United States and Canada, and added, “The controversy could spill over to Newmont’s other larger gold mine on the island of Sumbawa, where villagers earlier held demonstrations over demands for jobs and compensation for lost land.”

Using the same waste disposal system as the Buyat Bay operation, the Sumbawa mine is forecast to deposit around half a billion tons of tailings in the ocean over the next 10 years.

The Sumbawa mine produces both copper and gold, like the mining operation of New Orleans-based Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold Inc. on West Papua, established in 1967 in an agreement with the then-newly installed Suharto dictatorship. Protests about environmental destruction by the mining company have been a component of the campaign for independence on West Papua.

Such mining operations are a key part of the Indonesian economy. Sales of minerals and related products account for close to one-fifth of the country’s export earnings, with gold being most valuable of all. The resource-rich country is also a producer of bauxite, phosphate, iron, and nickel, and is the world’s second largest producer of tin, and third largest producer of coal and copper.

While giant companies like Freeport and Newmont dominate the export scene, many mining operations are small-scale and frequently function outside regulation. In a 2001 study by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, geologist Clive Aspinall estimated that in northern Sulawesi alone up to 3,000 workers were employed in this kind of gold mining. Their work included the manual crushing of ore, for which they received up to 400,000 rupiah a month, equivalent to less than $50.  
 
White House approval
Meanwhile, officials from both the U.S. and Australian governments have expressed satisfaction with the drive by the new government in Jakarta to align itself with the imperialist-led “war on terror.”

Speaking to the United States-Indonesia Society in Washington, D.C., November 30, U.S. deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz said the recent elections were a “huge accomplishment.” He added that “the Indonesian people gave a very strong mandate to their new president for reform… and a very clear mandate against religious extremism.”

Wolfowitz, who served a term as ambassador to Indonesia during the U.S.-backed Suharto dictatorship, congratulated the Indonesian military for having “done a lot to contribute in a positive way to the success of democracy.” In the week following Wolfowitz’s remarks, Australia’s foreign minister Alexander Downer officiated at a conference of religious leaders in Jakarta. “A terrible perversion of religion, with a violent face, threatens moderate believers and moderate states in both the East and the West,” Downer said at the opening ceremony.

In his keynote address, Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said that “terrorism today must be regarded as the enemy of all religions. In the end the forces of light, reason and hope must overpower the forces of darkness, despair and violence.” His government has continued the hunt for those alleged to have carried out several bombings in Indonesia, including the 2002 attacks in Bali that took 202 lives. In November it launched the trial of Abu Bakar Bashir, accused of links to Jemaah Islamiah, which prosecutors claim is linked to al-Qaeda.

Bashir has denied any involvement in the attacks.  
 
 
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