Africa Speaks Reasoning Forum

Globalization, Rights and Poverty
by John Rumbiak (West Papua, New
Guinea Island)



As an activist from the Global South, I have witnessed, in
excruciating detail, the devastating impacts of multinational
corporations on the natural environment, on the basic human rights
of people - primarily indigenous communities - and also on the
democratic governance of entire countries.

Indonesia - the political entity that has official sovereignty
over my home West Papua in the western half of the island of New
Guinea - is rated as one of the most corrupt governments on the
planet by Transparency International and others.

Indeed, the World Bank, in a report released this week, states
that corruption is pervasive in nearly every aspect of Indonesian
society and that this corruption poses "a significant threat" to
Indonesia's efforts to solidify its transition to democracy and to
economic prosperity. Recognizing its own complicity, the Bank
notes in its report that this pervasive corruption is a legacy of
the 32-year rule of former Army General and President Suharto, a
regime that the Bank once touted as a poster child for economic
development. The Bank, along with the U.S. and other governments,
literally allowed the Suharto regime to get away with murder and
to skim vast sums of money from international loans and aid funds.
It is ironic, perhaps, that Suharto was forced to resign from
office in 1998 by a massive, peaceful student-led popular movement
representing the ordinary Indonesian citizens who will be paying
for the regime's financial crimes for decades.

It is important to understand the role that multinational
corporations have played in enabling and fomenting this situation
of extreme corruption and bad governance. In their blind and
greedy rush to exploit Indonesia's vast natural resources and
cheap labor, mining, oil & gas, timber, pulp & paper, and
manufacturing corporations from the United States and elsewhere
descended upon the country in the years following the
establishment of the Suharto regime. Indeed, the United States
government supported Suharto in taking power through a campaign of
massive violence in which an estimated 500,000 Indonesians were
killed. Why? In the Cold War era, the U.S. government and
multinationals were keen to solidify their access to Indonesian
natural resources, and Suharto promised a more pliable partner
than Sukarno, whom Suharto overthrew. With the path cleared by
Suharto's New Order regime, these corporations wrote Indonesia's
new investment and industry laws and authored their own contracts,
creating the most favorable climate possible for their investment -
and more importantly, for their extraction of billions of dollars
in profits.

Providing a select few Indonesians such as Suharto, his family and
cronies with revenue from these corporate operations,
multinationals could keep Indonesian power-holders happy and keep
government regulators at a safe distance. At the same time,
corporations financed Indonesia's military, which is the vehicle
through which these corporations protect their operations.
Sometimes payments to the military are direct, other times,
multinationals go to bat at home with their own legislatures to
lobby for financing and political impunity for the military. All
the while, Indonesia's court system, lacking in independence from
the regime, proved powerless to serve justice to those wronged.
Welcome to neo-colonialism.

Chief amongst these neo-colonial multinationals is the U.S.-based
mining company Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold, Inc. (Freeport),
which operates one of the world's largest gold & copper mines in
Papua, where I am from. In its 1967 contract of work, the first
foreign investor to enter into such an agreement with Suharto's
New Order regime, the company gave itself broad powers to resettle
local indigenous populations whose traditional lands the company
seized free of charge for its operations. It also gave itself, in
writing its own contract of work with the Indonesian government,
the power to take, free of charge, whatever natural resources it
required for its operations.

In the three decades that Freeport has operated in West Papua, the
company has single-handedly succeeded in establishing its own
fiefdom. With the assistance of the Indonesian armed forces, paid
by Freeport to safeguard its operations, the company decides who
can enter the area surrounding its mine and who cannot. Although
there are commercial flights in and out of Timika, the main town
near the mine, visitors have been deported and blacklisted for
attempting to be in the area without Freeport's permission. These
include, in recent years, an American lawyer representing local
landowners in two U.S.-based lawsuits against Freeport as well as
American and Australian human rights observers. Indeed, Freeport
fired its vice president for communications when she proved unable
to prevent a New York Times journalist from visiting Timika.

Local indigenous West Papuans and some of Freeport's U.S.-based
institutional investors have criticized such actions and called
for an end to the company's support of the Indonesian military,
citing the connection between Freeport's financial and logistical
assistance and human rights violations. For example, based on my
fact-finding work with local community members, the Catholic
Church of Jayapura (the capital of West Papua Province) reported
that some acts of torture experienced by local indigenous West
Papuans during the 1994-95 period took place on a Freeport-
operated bus and "in Freeport [shipping] containers, the Army
Commander's Mess, the police station and the Freeport security
post." The Catholic Church report, based on eyewitness testimony,
provides a highly detailed and disturbing account of the human
rights abuses experienced by local indigenous people:

"[P]hysical torture consisted of kicking in the belly, chest and
head with army boots; beating with fists, rattan, [sic] sticks,
rifle butts and stones; denial of food; kneeling with an iron bar
in the knee hollows; standing for hours with a heavy weight on the
head, shoulders, or cradled in the arms; stepping and stamping on
hands; tying and shackling of thumbs, wrists and legs; sleeping on
bare floors; stabbing, taping eyes shut; and forced labor in a
weakened condition. The torture caused bleeding head wounds,
swollen faces and hands, bruises, loss of consciousness and death
because of a broken neck."

In September 1995, Indonesia's National Commission on Human Rights
(Komnas HAM) concluded that clear and identifiable human rights
violations had occurred in and around Freeport's project area,
including indiscriminate killings, torture, and inhuman or
degrading treatment, unlawful arrest and arbitrary detention,
disappearance, excessive surveillance, and destruction of
property. The commission noted that these violations "are directly
connected to [the Indonesian army].acting as protection for the
mining business of PT Freeport Indonesia." In response, company
officials have claimed that Freeport's Contract of Work with the
national government requires the provision of logistical support
to the Indonesian military and police. However, as noted by my
colleague Abigail Abrash in "Development Aggression," her report
for the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights,
Freeport's contracts make no explicit mention of any such
stipulation. Therefore, she argues, the company's financial and
logistical support for Indonesian security forces appears to have
no legal basis. Yet Freeport recently signed a voluntary set of
principles regarding security and human rights that presents as
legitimate its continuing corporate financial support to the
Indonesian military and police.

Unfortunately for all of us, the story of Freeport in West Papua
is not an isolated case. Indeed, throughout the Global South in
countries with resources favored by the extraction industries,
there exist strong linkages between militaries and corporations.
As I have described, in West Papua - and Indonesia as a whole - we
have seen countless examples of the military committing widespread
human rights violations in the name of safeguarding some economic
interest - whether its own or that of a multinational corporation
such as Freeport, ExxonMobil or Rio Tinto. One could also think of
the Nigerian military's abuses and execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and
other nonviolent Ogoni activists who opposed the social and
environmental harms caused by Royal Dutch Shell Oil. Or perhaps
the killings, forced labor and other crimes of the Burmese
military in support of Unocal's pipeline.

To put an end to these dynamics of destruction and violence, the
international community - particularly international investors -
must, first and foremost, recognize indigenous communities' basic
rights to chart their own development paths, to manage their own
resources, to pursue their traditional livelihoods and cultures,
and to say NO to multinational operations on their lands. The
failure to respect communities' basic right to "just say no"
exists at the heart of the nexus of human rights violations,
environmental degradation and conflict.

In addition to this one fundamental necessity, there are other
steps that can be taken to ensure that the operations of
multinationals do not harm people and the natural environment. For
example:

All corporations, as compelled by the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, should seek to uphold the full range of
internationally recognized human rights protections in all of
their operations and policies. All corporations should allow and
cooperate with independent monitoring of their operation areas and
support government efforts to investigate human rights violations
and prosecute offenders.

Corporations must be ready to acknowledge human rights violations
that have occurred in their operations areas and seek new forms of
mediation with the local communities to address their concerns and
complaints.

Corporations should end their financial support for military and
police personnel stationed in their operations areas. These
security forces are under the command of governments for the
national defense and should only be paid and directed by
democratically elected representatives. All companies should
develop clear rules governing the use of and/or engagement with
state security forces that include an effective prohibition
against hiring security personnel who have been responsible for
human rights violations.

Corporations should ensure that all company security arrangements
are designed and implemented to protect human rights and to be
consistent with international standards for law enforcement. Any
security personnel employed or under contract should receive
adequate training, including training in international human
rights and law enforcement standards. There should also be a
clearly established procedure to ensure that all complaints about
security procedures or personnel are promptly and independently
investigated. Corporate policies must include strict monitoring of
the use of all company equipment to ensure that the equipment is
not used to commit
human rights violations.

All corporate contracts of work with governments should include
provisions committing the corporation and the government to fully
respect international human rights laws. In particular, no
contract of work should allow a company to resettle local
populations and every contract should commit the company's
operations to full oversight and regulation by the Ministry of
Environment and other appropriate and responsible institutions.

Corporations must limit their operations in ways that would
effectively protect the human rights of local communities and the
cultural and environmental surroundings of the area. Company
decision-making should be bound by a transparent and honest
assessment of the impact of operations. These assessments should
always involve the participation of local community
representatives, appropriate NGOs, and academic experts, and
should adhere to "best practice" processes outlined in
international human rights instruments.

Decisions about operations should respect the results of genuine
consultation processes with the local communities. Such
consultation should follow a process satisfactory to and designed
in cooperation with recognized and legitimate representatives of
affected local communities. All companies should demonstrate a
genuine "political will" to improve their consultation processes
with local communities by hiring well-qualified and trained staff
in their community affairs departments and giving that department
a real say in overall company operations.

All corporations must (1) protect employees and non-employees who
report human rights violations; (2) establish internal reporting
procedures that will ensure this protection; and (3) inform all
employees about these procedures fully and on a regular basis.
Companies should also report credible accusations of human rights
violations to the appropriate government authorities as well as to
local and international human rights organizations.

All corporate human rights protection policies should also include
a plan for evaluation, including assessments by independent
groups, and improvement of implementation. Companies' performance
records in this regard should be available to shareholders,
members of the local affected communities, government agencies and
nongovernmental organizations.

Lastly, and of great importance:

Governments should adopt and ratify the primary international
human rights conventions, including the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Governments should also ratify International Labour Organization
Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples and
implement "best practices," as set forth in that instrument and
the draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, in its
economic development policies. Government programs and policies
should be focused on sustainable development and respect for the
rights of indigenous peoples who are or could be affected by
corporate activities. Respected local community leaders-including
women, farmers, fisher folk, students and other key sectors of
society-should play a central role in dialogue about appropriate
programs and policies.

Envisioning these changes, we can begin to imagine a world in
which the forces of neo-colonialism - or neo-liberalism, as it is
now called - are disrupted, thereby ensuring that naked profit
does not triumph over human rights, the environment and good
governance.

"All corporations, as compelled by the Universal Declaration of  
Human Rights, should seek to uphold the full range of  
internationally recognized human rights protections in all of  
their operations and policies. All corporations should allow and  
cooperate with independent monitoring of their operation areas and  
support government efforts to investigate human rights violations  
and prosecute offenders."

Who is going to enforce this?? Corporations are private entities.