Indonesia

Indonesia’s forests occupy about 120 million hectares. Although at least 2-3 million families of indigenous peoples live in or around the forests and many of the 220 million inhabitants of the country depend directly or indirectly on forests for their livelihood, the government’s approach has been to consider forests as "empty" land. Logging and plantation companies are responsible for the high deforestation rates (1 million hectares a year according to the World Bank, but 2,4 million according to Indonesian NGOs).

A land dispute between local farmers from Kuala Batee and the oil palm plantation company PT Cemerlang Abdi has erupted into violent conflict. After several months of attempts to negotiate over land rights, hundreds of angry villagers went to PT Cemerlang Abdi's base camp and told the staff to leave. They took away vehicles, heavy machinery and a generator before burning the base camp to the ground. A security police post was also burnt down.. No-one was killed, but six people were shot and injured (two seriously) and 49 were held in custody after security forces moved in.

A group of Dayaks recently toured Australia to promote solidarity with their struggle for land rights and compensation from Australian-based mining companies, which account for more than 60% of Australian investments in Indonesia.

The timber empires of Bob Hasan and others are crumbling amid the economic crisis in Indonesia. A third of the country’s timber companies are facing bankruptcy.

It seems that problems for the Dayak people in Central Kalimatan do not cease. While they are still suffering the consequences of this year's enormous forest fires, the mega-project launched by President Suharto at the beginning of 1996 to convert around 1.5 million hectares of peat swamp forests into rice-fields keeps on going, in spite of the local and international protests, and of the recommendations made two months ago by the EIA carried out in the area.

Freeport, a huge US-based mining company that operates in Indonesia, owns the Grasberg gold mine in Irian Jaya, the biggest open-pit gold mine in the world. This mine is producing a significatively negative environmental impact both on the water courses and on the forests of Irian Jaya. Ajkwa River -into which Freeport dumps 125,000 tons of rock waste every day- was considered by the provincial environmental bureau in April 1997 as not filling the required public health standards because of contamination from mining waste.

It seems that problems for the Dayak people in Central Kalimatan do not cease. While they are still suffering the consequences of this year’s enormous forest fires, the mega-project launched by President Suharto at the beginning of 1996 to convert around 1.5 million hectares of peat swamp forests into rice-fields keeps on going, in spite of the local and international protests, and of the recommendations made two months ago by the EIA carried out in the area.

UPM-Kymmene of Finland and Singapore-based Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Ltd.(APRIL), have agreed to establish a strategic alliance to develop jointly their respective fine paper operations in Europe and Asia. In Europe, UPM-Kymmene will hold 70% and APRIL 30% of a new company called UPM-Kymmene Fine Paper, which will comprise UPM-Kymmene's fine paper units, Nordland Papier in Germany and Kymi in Finland. This new company will be the largest fine paper producer in Europe with a combined annual capacity of 1.7 million tonnes of paper and 460,000 tonnes of related pulp.

At the same time as the Indonesian delegate sat at the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests –a UN body aimed at the sustainable use of the remaining world’s forests- the Indonesian forests in Sumatra and Borneo were going up in smoke. As many other country delegates in international fora –both Northern and Southern- the Indonesian delegate spoke about sustainable forest management as if it were something that was really happening or about to happen in his country. He even stressed the need for NGO participation in Indonesia!

On September 4 we addressed a letter to president Suharto and Mr Robert Wilson, chairman of Rio Tinto Co., expressing our concern for the death -possibly murder- of four Ekari tribal people around Freeport and Rio Tinto’s mine, as well as for the obligation of Ekari villagers to hand over their working tools to the police. We also demanded that abuses of foreign mining companies in the region cease.

In WRM Bulletin Nr 1 (23/5/97) we informed on PT Tanjung Enim Lestari (PT TEL) plans to establish a huge pulp mill in South Sumatra. Despite protests from local communities and NGOs the project continues. Although PT TEL has not still received the necessary government license (which is to be taken for granted since President Suharto’s eldest daughter, Tutut, is a shareholder in the project herself), the company has already cleared 800 hectares of the 1,250 hectares of forested lands the factory site will occupy.

After more than two years monitoring and carrying out research visits to Suriname, the Tropical Rainforest Team of IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare) and SKEPHI have published an interesting report on N.V. MUSA Indo-Surinam -an Indonesian logging company- operating in that country.