Indonesia

Systems of community organization rooted in sacred beliefs and concepts guide relations in Bali, Indonesia, and help defy agribusiness and mega-tourism.

This bulletin, on International Women's Day, is a call for direct and radical solidarity with those women who suffer, resist, organize and mobilize against the daily violence and abuse that industrial plantations cause.

The expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia has turned women into landless food buyers and cheap labour, with no adequate safety and health protection, for the plantation companies. (Available in Indonesian).

Women suffer many types of violence committed by oil palm plantations companies’ employers, security forces, police and military, which subsequently reinforce patriarchy and their roles and relations within society in general. (Available in Indonesian).

The commercial power of the oil palm industry in Indonesia is intertwined with politicians and government authorities at the highest level, which leads to violent grabbing of land from peasant and traditional communities. This article, part of the series “Indonesia for sale”, is the story of money, politics and power in Seruyan, Borneo, Indonesia, one of the main focal areas of the oil palm industry in the country. Access the article in English here.

SwissInfo in conversation with Kartini Samon from GRAIN on the impacts of industrial oil palm production on communities and on the role of Swiss banks in financing land grabbing by funding expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia.

In Indonesia, resistance against the cement production complex of the Indonesian company Semen Indonesia which willl destroy the Kendeng karst forest area in uphill Java, has been growing. Patmi, a woman from one of the villages in the district of Tambakromo traveled to the capital Jakarta to join protests against the forest destruction for the cement production. She died on March 21st, possibly of a heart attack, after days of sit-in protest in front of the Presidential Palace in Jakarta.

 

An obituary. By Hendro Sangkoyo (1)