America, mining, Kissinger and West Papua: environmental and human rights abuses - time for a refresher course; time for democratic accountability: FBI (and ASIO) targets Wall Street analyst (and girlfriend) after publishing report that touched on the killing of indigenous protestors at the US listed Freeport McMoran Grasberg mine in West Papua, Indonesia. Wall Street investment banks and commercial banks, and Australian commercial banks ANZ and Westpac, were instrumental in supporting and providing financing for the project. What is little known and not reported is the role the FBI played during this time to lower the profile of Freeport’s controversial Grasberg operation and silence discussion that included targeting Wall Street analysts. The use of FBI power in this way is all the more disturbing given the agency’s dual role in helping to identify and interview eyewitnesses to the alleged Freeport human rights abuses on location in West Papua in 1995. (Alleged human rights abuses were never proven in relation to Freeport in U.S. courts.) The brutality seemed to be spiralling out of control with seven indigenous protestors shot and killed in and around the Grasberg mine in a short period around Christmas day 1994. Some of the protestors were reportedly killed at point blank range, inside steel shipping containers on Freeport property. For a sensitive topic it received unusually wide publicity and the US State Department had taken the unusual step of launching a formal investigation. Freeport’s public relations machine went into overdrive. It paid for a full page ad in the New York Times, made an infomercial, threatened to sue journalists and academics covering the matter and withdraw university funding. FBI agents named [27 March 2014]. https://dl.dropboxusercontent/u/38850305/Opening%20v1.3.docx
Posted on: Sat, 31 May 2014 06:27:59 +0000
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