Indonesia, Will You Be Mine? [1]
Submitted by Diane Farsetta [2] on
David Case reports on Rick Ness, an employee of the Colorado-based Newmont Mining Corporation who the Indonesia [3]n government has accused of dumping dangerous waste into a shallow bay in Sulawesi. "Since 2004," Case writes, Ness "has waged a full-time PR and legal campaign to clear his name, with Newmont backing him up at a burn rate of up to $1 million a month." When an infant's death was blamed on the pollution, Ness and Newmont employed "textbook crisis communication [4]. Ness did media interviews and spoke before sympathetic audiences such as the American Chamber of Commerce [5]. He mocked the [Indonesian] government's evidence as 'junk science [6].' He extolled studies that he said supported the company's argument -- one conducted by the Australian lab CSIRO [7] (and funded by Newmont). ... Meanwhile, Newmont threw its full legal weight at the critics," including independent and government scientists. Ness was acquitted by a provincial court, but the case is now before Indonesia's Supreme Court.