Kam Reads and Recs

I wondered if something else had percolated into the loam of Congolese society with China’s famously no-strings-attached, no-questions-asked investments. Was the entire notion of personal freedom—admittedly never particularly strong in a place that had endured seventy-five years of colonialism, almost four decades of dictatorship, and three rigged elections—being forgotten altogether?

Almost without exception, people mentioned that the mining operations had turned the sea “reddish” and that it had become almost impossible to fish in the vicinity. “The fish don’t come near here anymore,” said Lisman Musahati, a twenty-seven-year-old fisherman in the village of Soligi, which is around four miles from the main mine site on Obi. His grievances echoed what I had heard in Sulawesi. “The waste from the mines is destroying the coral reefs, and we can’t fish in this area anymore. We have to go farther out to catch anything—twenty miles out and further in small boats.”

Aris, the professor whom I met in Ternate, said that he had approached Harita in 2010 about doing an environmental study near the Obi mine site. After nine years, Harita finally allowed him to start taking water samples from the area, although his access to many sites, including the main mine, was severely limited and, in some cases, prohibited. Nevertheless, Aris was able to examine water, fish, and fluted giant clams, and he prepared three academic studies to present his findings. In one paper, he wrote that his research had found “degeneration and cell necrosis” in the fluted giant clams, which are listed as a “conservation-dependent” species because their natural habitat has been impacted by humans. “This change is thought to be influenced by heavy metals,” he continued. “Heavy metal content in liquids exceeds the quality standard threshold.” In another paper, he noted the degradation of fish tissues. His sampling detected levels of ammonia, nitrate, dissolved oxygen, nickel, and iron that exceeded water-quality standards set by the government. In the conclusion to his paper on fish, he described it as “a reference for warning of heavy metal pollution in Obi Island waters.” When it came time for Aris to publish his results, Harita contacted him. “They asked me to change the data,” he told me. When he refused, the company tried to prevent the study from appearing. “They sent a letter to the university,” he said, “and the rector spoke to me directly and told me not to publish that the water pollution level was over the limit.” (Khairun University did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment.) Aris decided to publish his work despite the pressure, and he has not received funding to conduct another study in the Obi area since. A separate water sample tested in 2022 by The Guardian, the British newspaper, revealed that the cancer-causing chemical hexavalent chromium, of Erin Brockovich fame, was present in worryingly high levels in water near the mine site.

Signal then storm [from Aeon]

But on Obi, Kahfi told me, many people complained—as they did in Bahodopi, in mineral-rich parts of Congo, in the phosphate-rich Western Sahara, and indeed in many, if not most, places where new critical minerals were being dug up—about serious changes to their world. They complained about forced displacement, low reimbursement for land that had been grabbed by mining companies, pollution of their farmlands. And like in Congo and in the Western Sahara, the concerns had coalesced into a separatist movement of sorts, or at least one that sought a federal status for Obi and the surrounding area that gave those who lived there more control over their own destinies. Their concerns echoed those expressed almost a decade before in a report by the Australian Non-Judicial Human Rights Redress Mechanisms Project at PT Weda Bay Nickel, a mine site on the nearby island of Halmahera. The report found that a “paramilitary arm” of the Indonesian police had pressured residents to sell their land to the mining company for obscenely low compensation. On Obi, the people I spoke to insisted that such practices were alive and well.