Freeport-McMoRan, an American company that operates a giant open-pit copper and gold mine in Papua, is a major contributor to Indonesia’s economy. The company is also one of Indonesia’s most reckless polluters and a source of hard cash for the Indonesian military, which has one of the worst human rights records anywhere.

Over the past decade, the company has built what amounts to an industrial city in Indonesia’s easternmost province. On the plus side, the company provides jobs for 18,000 people and has provided Indonesia with $33 billion in direct and indirect benefits from 1992 to 2004, almost 2 per cent of the country’s GDP. The environmental damage, however, has been breathtaking. So far, the company has produced about one billion tons of waste. Some of this waste has been dumped into the mountains surrounding the mine, and some into a system of rivers.

Critics say that the government is an improvement over the authoritarian rule of President Suharto. Yet the military continues its abusive practices. Setting aside for the moment Freeport’s environmental horror show, the company is not doing Indonesia’s civilian authorities any favours by underwriting the generals. Free-port describes its payments as an essential cost of doing business. But it appears not to have measured the costs to democracy.