Illegal gold mining in Indonesia sees miners paying with their lives to earn extra money

“More air! Quick.” The voice echoes from the black hole below.

Illegal gold miner Ependi, 28, grabs the hose and pumps three empty ice bags full of compressed air. He ties the neck of each one with a plastic tie, and straps them to the rope on the homemade pulley system, which is just an old wheelbarrow wheel and 125cc bike motor, and sends them 50m down the shaft below.

For the three illegal gold miners working down there, this pulley system is their lifeline. They breathe oxygen from the plastic ice bags that Ependi sends down to them, and it is their means of bringing themselves and their livelihoods back up to the earth’s surface.

While many miners in Western Australia enjoy the benefits of a heavily regulated industry, mining in Indonesia is a very different story. All over the country, thousands of illegal underground mines operate on both a community and industrial scale, with many people willing to risk their lives for the chance to seek their fortune.

“Most people who live here (rural Sumbawa) are corn farmers, and outside of the corn season there are not a lot of job options for us. What else can I do? I have to put food on the table for my wife and my young son. It’s important that they eat,” Ependi says.

While he could find legitimate employment at a licensed gold mine nearby, the appeal of illegal mining to many Indonesians lies in its freedom and potential to find their own fortune.

“If I go up there, the average salary is only two million rupiah per month ($190). It’s barely enough to provide for my wife and son. A few months ago she crashed her motorbike. How can I ever buy her a new one with that salary? And to spend a month at a time, away working? I’ll miss ever getting to see my son grow up,” he says.

“Here, I can work when I want, and I can take home all the profits for myself, too.”

While hard data is difficult to come by due to the secretive nature of the industry, Indonesia’s Ministry of the Environment and Forestry estimates there are almost 9000 illegal mines operating across Indonesia, about a quarter of which are gold mines.

Some are unlicensed mines operating on an industrial scale, attracting fortune seekers from around the country, especially poorer areas with few employment options. But others, like the one in which Ependi is operating, are small community mines, worked with rudimentary equipment and open to anyone game enough to have a go.

“Sometimes people want a little bit of extra money for rice, cigarettes, so we let them come and work the mine. Anyone can work, so long as they’re game enough to take a chance. Indonesia is a place where your safety is your own responsibility, and if they die down there, that’s on them,” he says.

Death is a very real prospect for these men, and one they confront often. A few weeks ago, one of Ependi’s close friends died while working the mine late at night. Reluctant to call the authorities, the men had to lift him out and return him to his family.

“We told him not to go down, but he insisted. He was working with a light at the bottom of the shaft and he couldn’t see up. A rock fell and killed him. We found him dead down there the following day. We had to strap him to a board and lift him out using the pulley, so that he could be given a proper burial,” he says.

Miners at many of these illegal sites face greater risks due to a reluctance to call the authorities for help when things go wrong underground, says Nasir Buloh, deputy director of the Indonesian Forum for Environment.

“There have been some cases of victims who were not removed following a landslide and left in the mining shafts,” he says, adding that mining typically involved digging vertical and horizontal holes into mountains or dredging rivers using heavy equipment.

Landslides around these mines are a common occurrence, usually resulting from heavy rains and unstable land. Although the Government does not keep official figures on deaths at illegal mines, last year eight miners drowned in Central Java after the gold mine they were working flooded.

In 2021, six miners died in an illegal gold mine collapse in Central Sulawesi, while 11 miners died at an unlicensed coal mine in a similar incident in South Sumatra in 2020.

This community mine is open to anyone, Ependi says. Sometimes people from other villages want to come and work it. With no regulations, it is their responsibility to maintain the security of their workplace.

“People from outside the village can work it, too, but if they are from outside they are only allowed to take two rocks. If they know what they are looking for, they can find gold,” he says.

“You always have to be on your toes, though, because sometimes people from outside only want to work a little bit and take a lot. Sometimes, we have to be ready to fight and stand up for our work. All the time, it happens.”

Ependi has worked around Indonesia as an illegal miner for most of his life. He left home as a 17-year-old to work an industrial scale illegal mine in West Papua, home to the officially sanctioned Grasberg mine, one of the largest gold mines in the world.

He took two flights to reach West Papua’s the regional capital of Irian Jaya, and then a seven-hour boat ride up a chocolate coloured river as wide as a sea to the foothills of a remote mountain range.

That mine was able to operate by way of an illegal arrangement between the mining bosses and tribal chiefs. Almost weekly, the tribal chiefs would tip the bosses off that police were arriving, and the men would load all the equipment — excavators, machinery — onto boats and hide in the nearby jungle.

Sometimes, though, the police would arrive without warning, and the men would have to run and hide in the thick jungle. On one of these occasions, four of Ependi’s friends did not return.

Under Indonesian law, mining without a licence is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to 100 billion rupiah ($9.4 million).

But the greatest fear the boys had was not the police, but malaria. If they got sick, there was nothing they could do but wait Even in the sweltering humidity of the Papuan jungle, Ependi would sleep with the zipper of his sleeping bag done right up to his mouth.

“If you got sick out there, there was nothing you could do except pray to God,” he says. “There were no drugs, no doctors. The tribal chief sometimes gave us knowledge about the different herbal remedies we could use from the forest, but that was it.”

All this risk seemed worth when the monthly pay check arrived, however. The boys were paid 30 million rupiah ($2829) per month, more than 10 times the average Indonesia wage. If they mined more than 100kg of gold, their salary was raised to 70 million ($6600). It was a stupid amount of money, Ependi says, and it was easy to spend it stupidly, too.

“There was a bar with drinks down there: beer, vodka. And girls, too. The girls there were expensive. But what do you do? We’re working for months at a time in the middle of the jungle. We want to enjoy ourselves, too,” he says.

After a five-year stint working as a tour guide in Bali, Ependi returned home to Sumbawa, where he met his wife. Just a few months ago, his first child was born. The pressure to provide drew him back to the lure of easy money from illegal gold mining, and while he knows this work could leave his child without a father, he says it does not worry him.

“I tell them not to be afraid. I’m not afraid, because if I die, maybe that’s my fate. Maybe it is supposed to be. Perhaps that is just the plan that God has for me.”