Insular Southeast Asia - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 478

broad return of family businesses and helped spawn new
service companies such as automobile rentals and Inter-
net providers. Now hundreds of new motorbikes clog the
streets where bulldozers once plowed piles of post-
tsunami debris. Talented Achenese who fled the conflict
are also returning to win construction contracts.
In 2003, Aceh became the first of Indonesia' s 33
provinces to adopt Sharia Islamic law . The issue is not so
much the law itself, but rather how it is implemented.
The Acehnese now face harsh punisments for even mi-
nor infractions. There are public floggings at mosques for
drinking alcohol, gambling or having premarital sex. In
addition, a radical “vice and virtue” patrol that includes
women has become feared and despised. Moderates,
who constitute most of Indonesia' s Muslim community ,
are worried that the secular 1945 Constitution will not
be enough to hold the extremists at bay in other parts of
the country where Islamism is spreading.

whose biotic richness is incomparable. The park' is eco-
logical integrity is endangered. Lava flows containing
the mineral deposits also exist in the national park.
The mountains are rich in timber and oil and gas de-
posits lie offshore. How is this area to be protected
from exploitation?
Freeport has one of the world' s worst environmental
records. It dumps tailings and other chemical and toxic
wastes into local rivers, and the mining operations leave
behind a bare patch large enough to be viewed from
space. Tailings devastate lowland vegetation by choking
the life out of the plants. T Trees are killed by tailings-laden
floodwaters. Ninety-seven percent of ore ends up as tail-
ings, which contain arsenic, lead, mercury , and other
dangerous metals. These have killed fish, poisoned sago
forests (a traditional food source), and made the water
unsafe to drink.
Some scientists claim that the vegetation will regen-
erate on its own. Experiments are taking place to find out
what crops might grow on the tailings. World pressure
has forced Freeport to put more resources into environ-
mental considerations.
Papua is an Indonesian province but it lies in the Pa-
cific geographic realm. Along with the ethnic Papuans,
about 200,000 Indonesians from other parts of the archi-
pelago, especially Java, inhabit the province. Most of the
non-Papuans are concentrated in the capital of Jayapura
(a non-Papuan name). Local opposition against Indone-
sia' s rule has continued for decades. For example, the
Organisasi Papua Merdeka (Free Papua Movement or FPM)
held rallies in Jayapura in 1999 and in 2000 demanded
independence. They went so far as to display a Papuan
flag—the Morning Star. Later that year, Indonesian
troops killed demonstrators on Papua' s southern coast.
Papua has seen the introduction of a series of meas-
ures aimed at closing down the political space that
opened up in the post-Suharto period. Papua is a state of
de facto military operations that are responsible for the
displacement, disappearance, and death of thousands.
The division of Papua into three provinces in 2003 is per-
ceived by Papuans as an effort to fragment their internal
control and concentrate the power of “security forces”
within each region. Papuan animosity toward other In-
donesians and the Indonesian government is deepening,
and there is no solution in sight.

PAPUA
In Papua, whose name was changed from West Irian Jaya
in 2007, there is a 13,500-foot (4,050 m) mountain
thrusting out of the crocodile- and malaria-infested
swamps of the glacier-capped Sundirman Range. Here is
a hunk of rock called Grasberg that holds the world' s
richest copper and gold deposits. The Grasberg (esti-
mated worth of US$50 billion) is owned by the mining
company of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold of
Louisiana. The mine was one of Suharto' s first develop-
ment projects and is Indonesia' is single largest source of
tax revenue.
Since the Freeport mine opened, the lives of the in-
digenous inhabitants have been radically altered. T Tribes
have received little if any compensation for their lands.
Indonesian law requires indigenous peoples to relin-
quish customary rights over their land in the national in-
terest. After riots in 1996, the mine implemented a
scheme to parcel out 1 percent of its revenues to the
20,000-strong Melanesian population. However, the
scheme collapsed due to corruption and mismanagement
among provincial officials.
The Freeport mine has provided 18,000 jobs, but
only 1,500 of these are filled by Papuans, and only 400
are filled by local people. In addition, locals are paid only
one-seventh as much as other employees. There have
been intertribal conflicts. Alcoholism and prostitution
abound in the nearby town.
On the mountain' s eastern border lies the Lorentz
National Park, a 6-million-acre (2.5 million ha) expanse

RADICAL ISLAM
For centuries, the Indonesian version of Islam was a
moderate and tolerant one. Many Indonesians were