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Porgera Village Elder Points to Former Farming Land. Credit: Damian Baker.

By Damian Baker:

Porgera is nestled in a valley in the Papua New Guinean highlands shadowed on one side by 300-meter rock walls, with all other steep approaches covered in dense green tropical jungle.

The soil is volcanic and fertile and with mountain streams entering the picturesque grass-thatched villages from every angle, at first glance you could imagine having entered a Garden of Eden. Unfortunately though, I was to witness a massive class of cultures, human rights abuses, an environmental disaster and claims of killings and destructive raids that would have sat well with stories from the Middle Ages.

Arriving in a public transport vehicle (PMV) the local Ipili tribespeople waved and shouted at me, laughing with wild red smiles, blood red from the chewing of betel nut.

“White man, white man you go wehhh,” they called at me numerous times as I passed. It was a little unnerving at first, but I thought not surprising with our shared colonial history.

It turned out to be a linguistic misunderstanding. In Pidgin “you go wehhh” means “where do you go?” They genuinely seem to enjoy “white fellas” company and wanted to know what I was doing and where I was headed. These people descend from a famous warrior culture renowned for its savagery and PNG history is full of bloodthirsty tales involving such Highlanders.

But what I was about to witness made me wonder why they were not still clubbing white men to death on sight.

Tailings dump. Credit: Damian Baker.

I rounded the corner to look into and up one of the biggest gold mines in the world. Run by Barrick – a Canadian company headquartered in Australia – it has some of the highest financial returns the mining world has to offer.

But at what price?

It became obvious to me that people in the Porgera valley see very few white men. Considering the gold mine is being dug at their doorstep (and I mean this literally) this might seem surprising, but the white men who work the mine fly high above the villages and directly into one of the most enormous fenced compounds I have ever seen to do their work.

Illegal Mining

The mine is fenced with security born of Guantanamo Bay. Three-meter-high fencing topped with razor wire; with dog patrols and floodlights are used in an attempt to stop the locals from illegally mining on land in what is known as the Special Mining Lease (SML).

Villages are precariously perched both above the mine and in its shadow. The mine has completely eradicated one mountain and is in the process of eating another two into extinction in an endless and voracious search for gold. It spews toxic red and grey mud into the two valleys it sits above from numerous pipes, streams and tunnels and belches sulphuric tasting smoke into the mountain air night and day.

Barrick Pumps Chemical Filled Waste Directly into Creek System. Cred: Damian Baker

It cuts a swathe through the valley leaving seven major clan groups and thousands of people reliant on two medieval-style tunnels for contact with the outside world.

Entry to the Special Mining Lease tribal lands means you walk or drive down a dirt track corralled on both sides by a narrowing set of three-metre-high security fences.(see video). The fences are topped with razor wire and as they squeezed me into the first tunnel I had to wonder what I was entering into.

Walking single file into the gloom, I felt claustrophobic and slightly uneasy that this was my only way out. I can only imagine what it is like for an 80-year-old tribesman or a toddler to have to use these tunnels every time they enter and leave their own homelands.

I was a little concerned there would be no quick exits from here if things went pear shaped with the police and security.

Emerging from the second gloomy dripping tunnel is like entering a crazy version of a pre-industrial Mad Max set. Razor wire and corrugated iron fences topped with jagged serrated cuts, lead off to what can only be described as a filthy squatter camp filled with dirty, desperate-looking people.

They come here hoping for legal work in the mines. Others long ago gave up on this hope and have become illegal miners. I was stopped for the first time at this point by police who seemed uneasy seeing a non-local and were particularly interested in my camera, demanding to know for whom I worked.

The term “illegal miner” is widely used by both Barrick mine and the locals who feel it needs qualification. Half of this so-called illegal mining is done in the chemically tainted tailings that spew on land not contained under the mining lease. The other half is done on land that has been tribal since time immemorial but was handed to Barrick’s predecessors by the government under the Special Mining Lease.

Mine Security Guard Spots Us Taking Photos. Credit: Damian Baker

Such is the attempt to obfuscate the issue that the mining company sponsors the local footy side to wear “No Illegal Mining” black and white jerseys, and it is little wonder the term is now used so widely and with such confusing context. In fact one self-confessed illegal miner saw no irony in the fact he wore the shirt on his jaunts into the SML.

The once idyllic subsistence farming past carried out by the locals, is still visible on the steep hillsides between the land slips, but the damage done by the mine, its chemicals and the security employed to protect Barrick’s interests is irreversible. Health statistics are said by the locals to be dire, cholera is present in the villages and birth defects are common.

The constant raids by both security and police, often burning dwellings and sometimes beating and killing illegal miners has taken its toll on the community.

Whole villages on territory deemed too close to the mine and or, involved in alleged illegal mining have been raided and burned to the ground by police using special powers, in what is termed a State of Emergency Operation.

Some dwellings have suffered this fate as much as three times after hasty rebuilds necessitated by families having no other place to go. Regardless of this hardship the hunger for gold is still driving the locals into dangerous illegal mining practices both above and below the ground.

Mercury is used in archaic attempts to process the gold they find, further contaminating the miners and the water. Locals have documented at least 14 young local men said to have been killed by security or in mining accidents. The numbers are much higher when legal miners and illegal miners from other communities are included, the latter involves unknown numbers. Miners breaking in to steal the ore and race one another down the walls of the mine to be the first to get to the blasted ore. This dangerous but high income dice with death is often practiced at night and casualties are high.

I interviewed an elderly tribal lady arrested while walking on the fringes of the tailings area. She had been jailed for four months. A young man lost his leg last year when a tailings bulldozer pushed a boulder over the edge and he was caught in its path.

Last week a Barrick-employed legal miner was killed by an above ground blast and I witnessed his family’s grieving. His youngest child spattered in the poisonous, white-grey tailings mud, seemed oblivious to the grief the extended family was feeling or the pain which engulfed the whole valley.

I walked into a second valley to be dwarfed by the shadows of landslips that had taken out whole sleeping villages in the past. Blasting on the other side of the mountain, combined with rivers of tailings scouring the base of the mountains has caused damage to the valley that is unimaginable.

Locals stop cooking in some areas, leave their houses and wait for the blasting to stop at around 5.30 every day.

A coalition of elders and tribal leaders have gathered in Port Moresby as I write, trying to carve out a deal with Barrick on a relocation deal that would alleviate the dire situation. However the negotiation process is long and drawn out and the infighting among tribes is slowing the process further.

There are some locals who see the mine as a ticket out of poverty and are looking to deal with the mine for monetary gains. However in my time in the valley it is was hard to find a local, educated or otherwise, who wasn’t well aware of, and in total disagreement with the environmental damage being done.