Freeport’s Grasberg Mine: A Festering Sore in the Heart of West Papua

Freeport's mining concession in Grasberg, West Papua.

In February 2024, the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) filed a lawsuit in the UK High Court against the London Metal Exchange (LME) over the trade of so-called "dirty metals" originating from the Freeport Grasberg mine in Indonesian-occupied West Papua.

Map showing the location of Freeport's Grasberg mine (Map courtesy of IIED)

This mine — the largest gold mine and the third-largest copper mine in the world — discharges more than 200,000 tons of waste daily into local rivers and coastal waters. The result is catastrophic: a slow-motion ecological apocalypse causing irreparable damage to ecosystems and communities. Toxic sludge buries rivers, heavy metals seep into the groundwater, and aquatic life suffocates under layers of tailings. What once was one of the world’s most biodiverse rainforests now resembles a scarred war zone.

Controversy over Freeport’s Mining Activities

One of the largest contributors to Indonesia’s state revenue, PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI) is a subsidiary of the US-based multinational Freeport-McMoRan. Operating in West Papua since 1967 — under the shadow of a contested and heavily militarized annexation — the company has long been mired in controversy.

Reports since 1997 have documented Freeport’s repeated violations of environmental regulations. These include unregulated waste disposal, illegal deforestation, and a complete disregard for indigenous land rights. As a result, the Norwegian Government Pension Fund — the second-largest in the world — blacklisted Freeport from its investment portfolio. Rio Tinto, Freeport’s long-time business partner, received the same treatment from 2008 to 2019.

What Freeport calls mining, others rightly call plunder.

Dirty Metals as Proceeds of Crime

GLAN and the London Mining Network argue that the gold and copper exported from Grasberg are “proceeds of crime,” since the methods used to extract them would violate UK criminal law if committed domestically. The legal action aims to challenge the LME’s ethical responsibilities: should a marketplace continue to trade in materials born from environmental destruction, human rights abuses, and political oppression?

Indigenous communities bear the brunt of this violence. The mine’s waste flows into rivers that serve as vital sources of drinking water, food, and sanitation. Toxic sedimentation has brought with it a plague of health problems: chronic skin conditions, respiratory diseases, and contamination-linked illnesses disproportionately affecting children and the elderly. In many villages, suffering has become a way of life, and the land once considered sacred now oozes poison.

A Global Symbol of Ecological Horror

Andrew Hickman of the London Mining Network describes Grasberg vividly:

“The Grasberg mine in West Papua, where copper traded on the LME is produced, is like a festering ulcer in the heart of the New Guinea rainforest.”

It’s not just a metaphor. Grasberg is a literal open wound — a gaping chasm blasted into the Earth, bleeding toxins, lined with tailings, guarded by military units, and watched silently by a world more interested in copper futures than human lives. Helicopters fly overhead. Armed forces patrol the perimeter. And the rainforest, once teeming with life, lies silent beneath layers of corporate waste.

The destruction unfolding in West Papua is not an isolated event but part of a broader pattern of extractive violence. GLAN has identified similar atrocities committed by mining giants in Brazil, Peru, Guinea, and the Russian Federation — where profits come first, and people and the planet are collateral damage.

The Grasberg mine is not merely a mining site — it is the living embodiment of global ecological injustice, a monument to modern colonialism, and a hellish spectacle that reminds us how far corporations will go when accountability is optional.