Impacts on the people and their environment 'For the Amungme people, land is our mother.We are born from the land, cared for by the land and return to it in death. It has enormous spiritual and economic value. This r~latio~ship is  cosmologically  constructed, with each segment or layer having a certain       function.Degradation of the land, and therefore of these layers... threatens the very survival  of Amungme culture and people. " John Otto Ondawame, An Amungme now living in Australia Social impacts Development can bring benefits, such as improved communication with the outside world, better  health,  education  and employment     opportunities.However, few, if any, of these benefits have accrued to local people, from Freeport's operations in West Papua.
Because Indonesian state law does not recognise customary land ownership, local indigenous people are not consulted regarding development on their land, nor are t.hey entit.led to compensation: or royalties. This lack of recognition and respect for the fundamental human rights of indigenous  people,  including their rights t.o land, has been a crucial cause of conflict around the Freeport. mine.
The major negative social impacts from the Freeport mine are: the forced resettlement of tens of thousands of indigenous people; increasing Indonesianisation of the culture; the swamping of the Papuan population by migrant workers and transmigrants; the breakdown of customary social structures, resulting in crime, alcohol abuse and youth problems; the introduction of sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV/ATDS; increased militarisation of the area; and human rights abuses carried out by the Indonesian military and Freeport's mine security.
In 1995 it was announced that 2000 Amungme people living in the vicir~ity of the mine, in the Waa, Arwaa and Tsinga valleys, were to be moved.Recently Freeport moved the 1,000 inhabitants of the village of Lower-Waa to the coastal lowlands. In one month alone, following the move, 38 people died from malaria. It was from this region that, in 1994-1995, reports of fighting, deaths, and up to 200 disappearances had filtered out. A 1995 Australian Council for Overseas Aid (ACFOA) report detailed murders and assaults in villages around the Freeport mine, by both Indonesian military forces and Freeport's private security force. According to the ACFOA report, at least 37 murders, as well as torture, beatings, searches, house burnings and church lootings, took place around the mine within a nine month period. (see Appendix 1) Other reports have documented human rights violations associated with the mine.
Freeport has consistently turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the Indonesian military in the area around the mining concession. As many as 2,000 people are estimated to have been killed during the life of the mine.As a ploy to justify the forced removal of indigenous people from areas within mining concessions, some land has been designated 'earthquake zone'. In this way, the unnecessary and destructive resettlement of tribes such as the Hupla of the Central Highlands, is excused. Highland Communities are coerced into moving to lower sites, where they are more prone to diseases such as malaria and where traditional mountain foods such as pandanus trees do not grow.
Thousands of lowland Koperapoka people have also been told to move to Timika, so their land can be used as a dump for mine wastes.Environmental devastation For the Amungme people, Mt.Grasberg, or Jayawijaya, was the head of their sacred mother, with her body extending down the mountain range to the PNG lowlands. The once magnificent mountain is now a plateau . According to the local people, Freeport has cut off her head and are now digging into her heart (see Appendix 2).
The establishment and operation of Freeport's mine has resulted in large areas of rainforest around the mine site being cleared for mining, roads and towns. Important rivers have been polluted and silted causing severe flooding and erosion. A massive area of mangrove was cleared to create a seaport at Amamapare at the mouth of the Timika River, and the adjacent Arafura Sea has been heavily silted and polluted.
Freeport mines 100,000 tonnes of ore per day, plus the additional overburden. The company is presently in the process of increasing the mine's output to 200,000 tonnes per day, with further plans to increase this further, to a massive 300,000 tonnes, which will make it the world's largest mining operation. Virtually all of this mined material is dumped into the river system, as waste rock and processed mill-tailings.
An environmental audit carried out in 1996 by Dames and Moore, and endorsed by Freeport, estimates that over the life-span of the Grasberg mine, 3.2 billion tons of waste rock