Indonesia

Asia Tenggara: menghubungkan rakyat melawan investasi dan inisiatif konservasi skala-besar WRM Bulletin 229_Bahasa version

Since joining Indonesia officially in 1969, Papua had only seven oil palm companies until 2005. In 2014, the number jumped to 21 companies, with another 20 companies gearing up to start their operations.

The Scale of Disaster

An article from “The Guardian” highlights how despite fire raging across over 5,000 km in Indonesia, the media “dominated by corporate press releases, photo ops and fashion shoots” is not paying attention. This catastrophe is having severe effects on many levels. Children are being prepared for evacuation on warships. Populations of species, including threatened species, are going up in smoke at an untold rate.

Global Voices online, 12 June 2015.  Friends of Jopi Peranginangin, an Indonesian environmentalist who was stabbed and killed in a bar in south Jakarta, are asking the government to lead a quick and transparent murder investigation. They fear the murder is related to his activism. To monitor the case, his friends and supporters have launched a campaign called “Solidaritas4Jopi” (Solidarity for Jopi).

 

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.

JAMBI-INDONESIA: A farmer and environmental defenders activist murdered by Security Force of PT. WKS (Wirakarya Sakti), a subsidiary of APP (Asia Pulp and Paper – Sinar Mas Group).