The opinion article from the Jakarta Post by Abetnego Tarigan, of the Indonesian NGO Walhi, and Iwan Nurdin, of the Agrarian Reform Consortium, warns on how the international focus on the impacts of plantation companies has been on their environmental impacts rather than their human rights abuses. They explain how the recent torture and murder of Indra Pelani amounts to an entrenched industrial plantation system whereby whole swaths of rural land have been taken from locals without their consent. Companies have militarized the protection of their plantations and their armed guards routinely act violently and with impunity. According to the authors: “Environmental organizations and their supporters have clearly been more concerned with protecting biodiversity and carbon stocks than with lives, land rights, livelihoods or cultural survival.”
Read full article at:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/
