Extractivism and Green Hypocrisy Pt. 2

Rio Tinto’s record of ruthless, destructive practices extends far beyond Serbia, where we covered the current controversy around lithium mining in the previous part of this article.

One of the most infamous historical stains on the company’s reputation was the February 4th, 1888 massacre in Spain, when at least 13  workers and farmers were murdered for protesting against the lethal fumes emitted by the company, inhaled during their grueling days of work.

Ever since, the company has remained notorious for its “excesses” in pursuit of profit, both abroad and at home. In fact, some of the most notable recent controversies have involved Rio Tinto’s activities in Australia and broader Oceania.

The Juukan Gorge Incident

Rio Tinto’s operations in Australia, particularly in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, are central to its global iron ore and bauxite extraction activities. The Pilbara mines are among the largest in the world. Their further expansion risked the destruction of the Juukan Gorge, a site of immense cultural and historical importance to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura (PKKP) peoples.

In May 2020, Rio Tinto made extensive use of explosives to expand its Brockman 4 iron ore mine, causing the destruction of two rock shelters within Juukan Gorge, despite the company’s full awareness of the site’s 46,000-year-old history, which included numerous artifacts and DNA evidence of ancient human occupation.

The PKKP peoples sought to protect Juukan Gorge through Australia’s heritage protection mechanisms, specifically the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972 in Western Australia. This Act requires companies to obtain permission from the state government before disturbing sites of Aboriginal significance.

In 2013, Rio Tinto obtained Section 18 consent under this Act to proceed with the destruction, despite growing awareness of the site’s significance through subsequent archaeological studies. The PKKP, supported by the Puutu Kunti Kurrama Land Committee, engaged in direct communication with Rio Tinto, presenting further evidence of the site’s importance and urging the company to halt its plans. Despite these efforts, the Section 18 consent was not revoked, and the destruction of the site proceeded.

The decision to grant Section 18 consent was made by the Western Australian Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, based on recommendations from the Aboriginal Cultural Material Committee (ACMC). The ACMC had initially recommended granting consent based on the information available at the time, but later archaeological findings were insufficient to have the decision reversed.

The incident triggered a parliamentary inquiry in Australia, which exposed systemic failures in the cultural heritage protection framework and highlighted Rio Tinto’s inadequate engagement with the PKKP. Following the inquiry, several senior executives at Rio Tinto, including the CEO, resigned, and the company pledged to review its cultural heritage management practices, although these measures were insufficient in addressing broader issues.

The Panguna Mine in Papua New Guinea

The Panguna copper mine, located on the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea (PNG), was one of the largest open-pit copper mines in the world during its peak. Operated by Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL), a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, the mine began operations in 1972 and quickly became a significant source of income for PNG, contributing substantially to the country’s export revenue.

Between 1972 and 1989, the mine generated approximately $2 billion USD in revenue. The PNG government, which owned a 19.1% stake in BCL, received around 5% of this revenue which, during the mine’s peak years, constituted about 12-15% of the country’s total national income. However, most profits went to Rio Tinto and its shareholders, while local communities in Bougainville received minimal benefits.

However, the environmental and social impact of the mine has been severe. The mining process produced vast amounts of waste material, which were routinely dumped into the Jaba River, leading to widespread contamination of the river system. This pollution destroyed local fisheries, poisoned water supplies, and rendered large areas of land unusable for farming, devastating the livelihoods of thousands of Bougainvilleans.

This growing resentment culminated in an armed uprising against the PNG government and Rio Tinto in 1988, signaling the beginning of the Bougainville Civil War. The conflict, which lasted nearly a decade, was initially sparked by landowners’ demands for compensation and better environmental management but quickly evolved into a broader struggle for Bougainville’s independence. The Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA), composed mainly of local landowners, began sabotaging the mine’s operations and attacking government forces, leading to a violent crackdown by the PNG military.

The conflict resulted in the deaths of an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people and widespread displacement.

The PNG government, with tacit support from Rio Tinto, maintained a blockade around Bougainville for much of the conflict, cutting off essential services and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis.

Rio Tinto certainly bears a significant responsibility for both the environmental and social impact of the Panguna mine and for the unleashing of the conflict.

Despite the conflict’s end in 1998, Rio Tinto has largely been unresponsive to calls for compensation or reparations from the population of Bougainville. The mine has remained closed since the outbreak of the conflict, and Bougainville has since been granted greater autonomy, with ongoing discussions about full independence from PNG. The environmental damage caused by the mine persists, and efforts to rehabilitate the land have been minimal.

Australia’s Regional Involvement and Complicity

Australia’s relationship with PNG is rooted in a colonial past that has evolved into a dynamic characterized by significant Australian influence over PNG’s political and economic affairs. Australia, which had administered PNG under a League of Nations mandate following World War I, continued to exert dominance even after PNG’s independence in 1975, through foreign aid, military assistance, and economic investments. Australia’s economic involvement in PNG is heavily focused on the extraction of natural resources, particularly through Australian mining companies. This involvement has resulted in significant environmental and social costs for PNG’s Indigenous communities, as evidenced by the Panguna mine.

Beyond economic exploitation, Australia’s foreign aid program exerts considerable influence over PNG’s domestic policies. This aid is often tied to conditions that promote the interests of Australian businesses, such as the privatization of public services and the encouragement of foreign investment. Australian consultants frequently shape PNG’s economic and development strategies, further entrenching Australia’s control over PNG’s internal affairs.

This pattern of imperialist involvement is mirrored in Australia’s complicity in the Indonesian occupation of East Timor and the subsequent Timor genocide. Following East Timor’s declaration of independence from Portugal in 1975, Indonesia invaded and annexed the territory. Australia’s position was one of broad complicity, motivated by a desire to maintain good relations with Indonesia and secure its economic interests in the Timor Gap, an oil-rich area of the Timor Sea.

The genocide, which occurred during Indonesian occupation in 1975 to 1999, resulted in the deaths of an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people. This figure includes those who were killed directly by military actions as well as those who died from starvation, disease, and other consequences of the conflict. East Timor’s population at the time was around 600,000 to 700,000.

Despite this, Australia provided diplomatic support to the occupation, recognized Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor, and signed the Timor Gap Treaty with Indonesia in 1989, allowing for joint exploitation of the region’s oil and gas resources.

Australia’s complicity extends further back to its involvement in Indonesia’s anti-communist purge during the mid-1960s, where an estimated 500,000 to 1 million people were killed. Following an attempted coup in 1965, the Indonesian military, led by General Suharto, launched a campaign against suspected communists. Australia, along with other Western powers, tacitly supported these actions, viewing the eradication of communism in Indonesia as crucial for containing workers’ movements in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. Australian intelligence provided covert assistance, including information used to target suspected communists, and refrained from condemning the mass killings. This support was driven by a desire to align with U.S. strategic interests and protect Australian investments.

An International Solution to an International Problem

Rio Tinto uses its entire productive and political force to upset territorial sovereignty for the sake of profit, and to destroy the most backward forms of national capitalism as if determining the destiny of entire states and peoples. It is a form of imperialism, that of production and trade, to which the political and military imperialisms of involved states are in concordance with. This is a distinctive trait common to large multinationals, all capitalist structures that have overcome the narrow limits of national productive economies. They represent an extreme form of capitalism, its most advanced and definitive structure.

These multinationals appear to place themselves above states, and above imperialist blocs themselves. In our doctrine, they are the definitive point of capitalist development, the latest historical end of this system that reigns on a world scale. There is no other possible development for capitalism. After this phase there can only either be the catastrophe of a third world war, or the overthrow of the capitalist states by the antagonistic class and its world party. For this reason, their operation in apparent contempt of every law and regulation gives the impression of being limitless. It’s often said that the States themselves must bow to these giants of profit because they cannot defend national capital in the face of their excessive power.

But this is only an illusion. Behind the multinationals there is always the State. It is not that the State is subjugated by them, but rather, defends and supports them. It is also able to express a certain degree of control over their operation and growth and to keep them within established tracks. Beyond this, the State itself does not hesitate to intervene when in its interest. During wars these hypertrophic producers of profits are dismembered in favor of national capital.

In this sense, the petty bourgeois beautiful souls, sincere democrats who would demand “fair profit” and stringent legal rules from capitalism in its highest form, presume that its excesses could be curbed by following these same holy principles. Or that limited and local struggles against capitalist excesses can bring to “reason” what is by its nature inhuman and limitless.

The multinational Rio Tinto, with all its wickedness and violence, as well as its unscrupulous indifference to human needs and the preservation of nature, operates in the way that the extreme rules of capitalism allow it to operate. But on the other hand, it is a striking example of the petty-bourgeois illusion of being able to change capitalism’s actions either by law, or by popular pressure, or by any of the other tools that democracy makes available.

The absolutely anarchic and anti-human nature of capitalism, due to its intrinsic need to produce profit, does not hesitate in its rape of nature and wage workers in the face of any social crime.

To believe that rationality, or the law, can stop the deadly march of capitalist development with all its tragedies, set it on a human scale, or to realize only the “just” profit, is the other side of the petty-bourgeois ideology that ardently hopes that things can be “fixed” without breaking that form of production, and above all without overthrowing its state.