Report from Demo Against Superfund Investments in Freeport

Last Friday picketers gathered outside the NZ Superfund office in Downtown Auckland to protest against the fund investing taxpayer money in the US mining company Freeport McMoRan. Since 1967 Freeport has been mining copper and gold in, Indonesian Military occupied, West Papua. Every day Freeport's Grasberg mine dumps 700,000 tonnes of mining waste into Papua's rivers. The pollution is so bad it can be seen from NASA sattelite images from space.

Since it began mining in Papua, Freeport has paid the Indonesian Military to provide security from angry locals. The Indonesian Military is estimated to have killed as many as 100,000 West Papuans since invading in 1963. West Papuans living near the mine have suffered massive human rights abuses.

In the late 1970s, after a group of Papuans cut Freeport's copper pipeline the Indonesian Military launched 'Operation Annihilation'. Troops went from village to village shooting men, women and children and villages were bombarded by the airforce with 'daisy cutter' bombs. 3000 civilians were killed. Killings and arrests of civilians continue today. In 2006 many Papuan students were imprisoned and tortured for protesting against Freeport.

The NZ Superfund has investments totaling $1,600,548 in Freeport McMoran. Plus an investment of $23,846,105 in the Rio Tinto Group ($9,780,671 in Rio Tinto Plc, Britain, and $14,065,434 in Rio Tinto Ltd, Australia) - Rio Tinto has a 40 per cent joint venture interest in the Freeport McMoRan mine.