MSM/TTN are strongly deemed to have deliberately created horizontal conflicts among the local people and in communal institutions like schools and churches by creating the image that the ones who resist the company destroy the working opportunities and livelihoods of many, as if the communities were deperately dependent on job opportunities granted by the company and will fall into poverty without.
The coastal population was stirred up by glorious work promises, and rumors of a splendid future for the villages that support the mine and on the other hand by intimidations against the ones that showed resistance. The village chiefs were called into conspiracy meetings, generously paid and their families employed as workforce, as long as they supported the mine by suppressing adversary village people and issuing support letters which never passed any village meeting but were made in the name of the village.

MSM/TTN are known to have actively interfered in local village head elections by handing out money to voters. MSM/TTN have purposefully misused the religion by having community services organized in the villages of the surrounding area in June 2006 as part of their ADMAL socialization. They secularly intimidated the villagers having priests telling them that the government was the true minister of god and the government had accepted MSM, thus refusing MSM was a sin against god himself and would receive severe punishment.

As Toka Tindung is located in a densely populated area it endangers directly the villages in its immediate surroundings to be contaminated. A possible overspill of fine tailings mud presents a real danger to the bay of Rinondoran which is the heart of the local fishing industry. Having buit – illegally- a company jetty at Pasar Rinondoran, fishing traffic and fishing results are hampered.

As North Sulawesi’s main economic pillars are tourism, fishery and agriculture, all three viable sectors will suffer severe damage and many thousands of jobs are going to be lost if Toka Tindung goes into production giving a few hundred people jobs for a period of a company – projected mine life of maximum eight years.

The destruction of a healthy environment and the very livelihood of thousands of peole will cause a man made sudden poverty in this rich province of North Sulawesi.

In July 2006 several thousand fishing and farming people associated in the coastal peoples alliance AMMALTA had staged a peaceful mass demonstration from Bitung harbor via Airmadidi, the regency’s capital, to the provincial capital Manado demanding that the Australian company cancels the gold mine and leaves North Sulawesi. As a result, the company’s original plan of submarine disposal of tailings (STD) was modified into the Tailing Storage Facility on land (TSF), although the area is prone to yearly floods and earthquakes and thus this solution is far from safe for man and environment. On their way home one truck with peaceful demonstrators was attacked out of the back by men known to belong to MSMs security forces. Several demonstrators suffered severe head injuries and a woman pregnant seven months had a miscarriage. The case was never properly investigated, as vice governor Freddy Sualang is cited in KOMENTAR October 4, 2006 edition “it cannot be that people who peacefully demonstrate their aspirations are terrorized”.

In November 2006, hundreds of fishermen staged a blockade in the bay of Rinondoran in order to protect their fishing rights as the company had – illegally – built a company jetty to land mining material. The case was reported to the National Human Rights Commission in Jakarta. MSM and TTN violated the land rights of traditional landowners when annexing huge amounts of land in the villages Pinenek/North Minahasa and Pinasungkulan/ North Bitung. Several cases of traditional landowners who filed law suits against the company since 2003 are still pending and are seriously looked into by the Provincial Parliament. One case which the Indonesian High Court decided in favor of the traditional owner was manipulated by MSM on the regional level.

Manipulating Indonesian law enforcement and bribing authorities the company violates the human rights of the People Of North Sulawesi: the central government in Jakarta rejected the original North Sulawesi Geographical Usage Plan as submitted by the provincial government of North Sulawesi in 2008 mapping the regions as agriculture and tourism development zones and instead pointed the regencies North Minahasa and Bitung as mining areas. This change was very obviously made due to the interference of the proposed gold mining operation Toka Tindung owned by MSM and TTN which before had been rejected by the North Sulawesi government and the people in the province. In the direct cause the Ministry For Energy And Mineral Resources (ESDM) readily issued the mining permit, although – according to law – both companies then had not been granted a valid EIA yet – a pre-condition to be granted operation permits.

The island of Sulawesi is located in the bioregion of Wallacea, which separates the zoogeographical regions of Asia and Australia. This area harbors some of the most biodiverse, unique, and most fragile ecosystems in the world. North Sulawesi’s Bunaken marine National Park and Lembeh Strait known for its critters both attract tourists from around the world. The area between soft coral paradise Bangka and muck diving haven Lembeh Strait has been nominated for World Heritage status. The nature reserves of Tangkoko and Dua Saudara, which are directly adjacent to the mining area, are home to many endangered mammal, bird and reptile species.

Archipelago will extract the gold at Toka Tindung using cyanide lye, which is feared to infiltrate the groundwater, and there are grave concerns regarding the storage of tailings as the concession area is known for its frequent earthquakes and volcanic activity. It can therefore not be guaranteed that toxic waste will not enter the ecosystem, especially in a business environment as corrupt and inefficient as Indonesia’s.

The project will also have a devastating impact on local water supplies, as the goldmine will use large amounts of water (on average, 104 litres of water are needed to produce 1 gram of gold) and will leave a deep hole far below the groundwater table, causing substantial drawdown. This would severely impact drinking water supplies and local agriculture. Lastly, the heavy increase in sea traffic caused by the goldmine project threatens fish stocks and the spectacular marine wildlife in the Strait of Lembeh. The mining operation has therefore met with widespread resistance both from local inhabitants and the Provincial Government, who fear that the mines would disrupt the ecology and the economy of the region, which is based on fishing, agriculture and tourism.

The illegal construction activities of MSM in the Toka Tindung area of East Likupang’s district between the years 2003 and 2006, modeling the landscape without EIA, on March 11th 2007 most probably caused a mud flood which was unseen before in the area. It forced 400 villagers of Rinondoran and vicinity to flee their houses which were buried under fine mud of 1 – 1.5 meters strength and turned the crystal clear ocean into a stinky mud pool. There were also hundreds of dead fish swept ashore.

Approving the Company’s EIA in October 2009 must be seen as a supremative act by the central government which counteracts and denies all previous efforts of the government of North Sulawesi to turn the province into a green province, establishing an environmentally friendly and sustainable economy and focussing on long term, non–destructive industries for the future. The viable and healthy prime sectors of the North Sulawesi economy which are fishing/ocean, tourism and agriculture might suffer severe damage to even the point of destruction as a result of the short–sighted central government interference. It not only violates the principles of provincial autonomy, but also turns the image of North Sulawesi in the international world into a caricature, as North Sulawesi had earned international reputation by successfully conducting two international events in 2009, i.e. the World Ocean Conference (WOC) and Sail Bunaken. The World Ocean Declaration (MOC) which was yielded as a result of the WOC under the new circumstances has no relevance any more, although it was meant as a strong signal for the environmental concern of the Indonesian nation and North Sulawesi Province to present itself in the world.