Freeport Indonesia says death toll rises to 28 after tunnel accident

[dipsydoodle]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - The death toll from a tunnel collapse at the world's second largest copper mine run by Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc's Indonesian unit was raised to 28 on Wednesday as rescuers gave up hope of finding any more survivors.

Arizona-based Freeport closed the remote Papua mine on Wednesday last week, a day after a training tunnel away from its main operations fell in on 38 workers. Ten workers were rescued, but the search for the seven still listed as missing has now turned into an attempt the retrieve their bodies.

"We continue to grieve with the families even as we close this grim chapter," Freeport Indonesia President Director Rozik Soetjipto said in a statement.

Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/05/22/uk-indonesia-freeport-idUKBRE94L02U20130522

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The name Freeport McMoRan may ring a bell with some here.

Re. Kissenger :

In 1989, Freeport McMoRan paid Kissinger Associates a retainer of $200,000 and fees of $600,000, not to mention a promise of a 2 percent commission on future earnings. Freeport McMoRan also made Kissinger a member of its board of directors, at an annual salary of at least $30,000. In 1990, the two concerns went into business in Burma, the most grimly repressive state in all of South Asia. Freeport McMoRan would drill for oil and gas, according to the agreement, and Kissinger's other client, Daewoo (which was then itself a venal corporate prop of an unscrupulous Korean regime), would build the plant. However, that year the Burmese generals, under their wonderful collective title of SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council), lost a popular election to the democratic opposition led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and decided to annul the result. This development - producing yet more irritating calls for the isolation of the Burmese junta - was unfavorable to the Kissinger- Freeport-Daewoo triad, and the proposal lapsed.

But the following year, in March 1991, Kissinger was back in Indonesia with Moffett, closing a deal for a thirty-year license to continue exploiting a gigantic gold and copper mine. The mine is of prime importance for three reasons. First, it was operated as part of a joint venture with the Indonesian military government, and with that government's leader, the now-deposed General Suharto. Second, it is located on the island of Irian Jaya (in an area formerly known as West Irian): a part of the archipelago which - in common with East Timor - is only Indonesian by right of arbitrary conquest. Third, its operations commenced in 1973 - two years before Henry Kissinger visited Indonesia and helped unleash the Indonesian bloodbath in East Timor while unlocking a flow of weaponry to his future business partners.

This could mean no more than the "harmony of interest" I suggested above. No more, in other words, than a happy coincidence. What is not coincidental is the following:

* Freeport McMoRan's enormous Grasberg mine in Irian Jaya stands accused of creating an environmental and social catastrophe. In October 1995 the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a Federal body that exists to help US companies overseas, decided to cancel Freeport McMoRan's investment insurance for political risk- the very element on which Kissinger had furnished soothing assurances m 1991. OPIC concluded that the Grasberg mine had "created and continues to pose unreasonable or major environmental, health or safety hazards with respect to the rivers that are being impacted by the tailings, the surrounding terrestrial ecosystem, and the local inhabitants."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/Afterword_TOHK.html