Dozens of community members of Dairi regency in North Sumatra staged a protest in front of the Chinese Embassy and the Supreme Court in Jakarta on Tuesday, June 11, 2024, against the planned development of a zinc and lead mine project by Dairi Prima Mineral (DPM) in the regency despite overwhelming evidence that it poses extreme and deadly risk to surrounding villages.
“The world knows what happens with tailings dams on unstable ground. It kills people. It destroys the environment,” Mangatur Lumban Toruan, a resident of Sumbari village, Dairi regency, said.
Environmental, energy and human rights experts have cited the case as a litmus test for the future of mining safety in Indonesia.
The protest outside the Chinese Embassy came in response to recent media reports that a Chinese state-controlled corporation will provide hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to help the project move forward. They demand the Chinese government, as the shareholder of the major investor and the developer of the project, as well as the regulator of these companies, to immediately halt the construction and the financing of the DPM project.
On 27 April 2024, China Nonferrous Metal Industry’s Foreign Engineering and Construction Co., Ltd. (NFC), the parent company of DPM, disclosed that Carren Holdings Corporation Ltd. will lend US$245 million to DPM for the development of a zinc and lead mine project near Parongil, Dairi Regency, North Sumatra.
Carren Holdings Corporation Ltd. is registered in Hong Kong and fully owned by CNIC Corporation Ltd., also registered in Hong Kong. CNIC Corporation is ultimately controlled by China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE).
The loan came after international mine safety experts confirmed that the DPM project poses an extreme risk to people and the environment, including due to the very high risk that the planned tailings dam will collapse.
If this happens, a flood of millions of tons of toxic mine waste will likely kill many villagers living downstream. The project as it is designed would not be approved if built in China, since it fails to meet China’s safety standards, with the tailings dam less than 1,000 meters upstream from numerous homes.
“There are thousands of people in Dairi and Aceh who could be negatively affected by this DPM mine. The financing and approval of mining-related disasters has also been happening all around Indonesia. Communities should not be the victims of reckless finance decisions,” Muhammad Jamil of the Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam) said.
In August 2022, the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry issued an Environmental Approval to the project. Communities challenged this in the Jakarta State Administrative Court, which later on ruled in favor of the community’s complaint and ordered that the Environmental Approval be revoked.
Both DPM and the ministry appealed against the Jakarta State Administrative Court’s ruling with the Jakarta High State Administrative Court, which overturned the lower court’s ruling. The community then filed for a review of the case with the Supreme Court, which is niw still examining the case.
