Civil Society Response to the Indonesian Government's Reply to the Letter from Nine UN Special Rapporteurs Regarding the Merauke National Strategic Project
Indonesia: Stop the Merauke National Strategic Project!
In 2023, then President Jokowi designated Merauke, in South Papua, as the site for yet another National Strategic Project (PSN). The food and energy production programme will cover 2 million hectares with rice and sugar cane plantations to produce sugar and bio-ethanol. If fully implemented, it might become the biggest deforestation project worldwide, destroying livelihoods of an indigenous population of 40,000 people.
The Solidaritas Merauke Movement is a grassroots-based Indonesian-wide movement, opposing the colonial and socially and ecologically harmful policy of the Central Government in Jakarta called National Strategic Project (PSN). At present, around 200 large-scale projects and programmes have received the status of PSN throughout the archipelago.
Solidaritas Merauke fully rejects the Merauke PSN project. In a declaration from March 2024, it denounces the militarization of the project region and those to benefit from it, the oligarchies that built their fortunes on the destruction of forests and communities in Indonesia. "The perpetrators of state-corporate crimes must return all the stolen prosperity of the people and immediately restore the health and living space of the people in all areas sacrificed in the name of national interests", it said.
Bulletin articles
23 April 2025
The "Deklarasi Solidaritas Merauke" (Merauke Solidarity Declaration, see below) has been collectively written by participants of the "Konsolidasi Solidaritas Merauke" (Merauke Solidarity Consolidation Meeting), a people's gathering that took place in the town of Merauke, South Papua Province in March, 2025. The declaration calls for an immediate halt of the National Strategic Project (PSN) Merauke.
Multimedia
1 April 2025
Video - Militarised deforestation in Papua: how Indonesia is converting indigenous forest into farms
The Indonesian government’s food estate programme aims to convert 1.6 million hectares of land in Papua into rice fields and sugar cane plantations, annexing indigenous lands in the process. Thousands of troops have been sent from Java to support President Prabowo Subianto’s signature policy. Video made by The Gecko Project.
Other information
24 October 2024
The new program “PSN Merauke”, being implemented at a high speed, might become the biggest deforestation project worldwide, is overlapping with customary lands and will directly affect 40,000 indigenous people.
Other information
22 August 2024
Indonesian President Jokowi planted the first sugar cane of one more mega-project in Merauke Regency in the South Papua Province on 23 July 2024. He claims the project will help to address the global food and climate crises. But it seems just one more disastrous large-scale project set up in Indonesia and Papua - such as the failed MIFEE project – that put the livelihoods of forest-dependent peoples at risk.