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A $32.5billion lawsuit against the US mining firm Freeport-McMoRan has been launched by an Indonesian tribe over the company’s alleged illegal acquisition of ancestral land.
Papua’s Amungme tribe has lodged a class-action lawsuit against Freeport in Jakarta after the failure of previous actions, which focused on a number of issues including environmental damage and human rights violations. The latest suit focuses on land acquisition.
Demanding Freeport pay $2.5bn in ‘material damages’ and $30bn in non-material damages, the tribe claims the company has deprived them of nearly three million hectares of land, on which a Freeport mine is located.
An Amungme lawyer claims the land had been forcibly acquired, beginning back in 1969, without the approval of the tribe which is ‘the traditional owner of the land’.
Freeport says the plaintiffs have an ‘inability... to present facts to support their allegations’. It also says it established a land rights trust fund in 2001 for Indonesian tribes including the Amungme, to which it had contributed $27million by 2008.
If successful, the figure claimed by the tribe would hit the company hard, which reported a $1bn profit for the last quarter.
Papua’s Amungme tribe has lodged a class-action lawsuit against Freeport in Jakarta after the failure of previous actions, which focused on a number of issues including environmental damage and human rights violations. The latest suit focuses on land acquisition.
Demanding Freeport pay $2.5bn in ‘material damages’ and $30bn in non-material damages, the tribe claims the company has deprived them of nearly three million hectares of land, on which a Freeport mine is located.
An Amungme lawyer claims the land had been forcibly acquired, beginning back in 1969, without the approval of the tribe which is ‘the traditional owner of the land’.
Freeport says the plaintiffs have an ‘inability... to present facts to support their allegations’. It also says it established a land rights trust fund in 2001 for Indonesian tribes including the Amungme, to which it had contributed $27million by 2008.
If successful, the figure claimed by the tribe would hit the company hard, which reported a $1bn profit for the last quarter.
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