RIGHTS/ENVIRONMENT: Indonesia Pressed to Stop Paper Industry Abuses

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jan 6 2003 (IPS) - Indonesia’s international donors are being pressed to link future aid to Jakarta to addressing the grievances of the local population in Sumatra against the country’s pulp and paper industry and the security forces which protect it.

In a 90-page report released Tuesday, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) charges that the industry has wrought havoc on both the environment and the property and human rights of the indigenous people in Riau province in Sumatra over the last 20 years.

Saddled with debts of more than 20 billion dollars, the industry finds itself engaged in rampant deforestation in order to pay off the debt. The cycle created by those pressures is not only devastating the region’s remaining lowland tropical forests but is also creating new tensions with the indigenous people, according to the report, ‘Without Remedy: Human Rights Abuse and Indonesia’s Pulp and Paper Industry’.

The report is being issued in advance of the meeting of the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI) in Bali, January 21-22. Chaired by the World Bank, the CGI consists of Indonesia’s bilateral and multilateral donors.

”Donors should urge President Megawati (Sukarnoputri) and her government to take immediate steps to end these abuses”, said Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington director of HRW’s Asia division. ”They should also call for longer-term measures to curb the problems of impunity and land confiscation underlying conflicts in the paper industry”.

Indonesia’s pulp and paper industry was launched in the 1980s when Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), the country’s largest paper producer and owner of one of the largest stand-alone pulp mills in the world, and its sister company, Arara Abadi (AA), began seizing land – with the help of the police and military – from indigenous Malay and Sakai communities without consultation or compensation.

These seizures took place under former President Suharto’s ”New Order” administration that strongly favoured the dictator’s business cronies, such as the principles in the Sinar Mas Group, which owns both APP and AA.

Those people who tried to resist or protest these ”government projects” were usually arrested or beaten by the military and police who both provided protection but were also frequently cut in on the profits of the two operations. As in mining and other resource-extraction industries under Suharto, the award of forest concessions were used as a means of consolidating political power and paying off the security forces.

As the company’s wood-processing capacity expanded, it became ever more aggressive in seizing land beyond its plantations, leading to wholesale destruction of forests usually by company crews made up of employees hired from other regions. As a result, the indigenous communities, which subsisted largely on products taken from the original forests, have been particularly hard hit.

Since Suharto was forced from office in 1998, local residents began to openly protest the loss of their lands and livelihoods. Their efforts to press their complaints through the judicial and administrative system, however, have so far proved ineffectual.

As a result, they have turned increasingly to vigilantism, usually by obstructing company operations by harvesting plantation trees, reoccupying lands, charging ”tolls” for use of village roads, or at times seizing company vehicles and equipment.

These protests, however, have been met with violent attacks by organised mobs of hundreds of club-wielding men, usually trained and sometimes even accompanied by state police, according to the report which details three such attacks in 2001.

In those three attacks, at least nine people suffered serious injuries, and a total of 63 were detained by the mobs. Yet, out of hundreds of assailants, only two people have ever been prosecuted, for assault and battery. They were sentenced to only 30 days in jail.

While those attacks took place in 2001, HRW said it continued to receive reports of attacks by company- and police-backed mobs on villagers who have refused to give up their land to AA and other APP suppliers during 2002.

While the report stressed that HRW does not condone illegal actions by the indigenous communities against the company, it also emphasised that the overwhelming force used by company-funded militias can also not be justified.

”The acquiescence of state security forces, and, sometimes, their direct assistance in the militia attacks, moreover, has meant that villagers have no recourse for the violations”, the report said. ”Impunity for those responsible for beatings is directly fueling this cycle of vigilante justice.”

While post-Suharto governments have made a number of promising commitments to remedy many of the problems that have led to both the trampling of the villagers’ rights and the massive deforestation of the region, progress toward their implementation has been slow.

Nor will it be enough for the government to simply try to curb militia activity. Jakarta and local governments need to take longer-term measures to strengthen the independence of the judiciary and create a mechanism to which local people can address their land claims.

Although the Indonesian constitution and forestry regulations recognise indigenous land rights, ”many state officials and business leaders continue to operate on the mistaken belief that, in the absence of written title, local communities have no legal or legitimate claims”, the report notes.

Moreover, some 70 percent of police and military spending still relies on off-budget business ventures, many of which are in the forestry sector, setting up a continuing conflict of interest for security forces that profit from exploiting the timber resources and are also obliged to uphold the rights of citizens.

HRW said it was particularly concerned about APP’s plans to expand its plantation area almost two-fold in the coming months and the likely implications for conflict between the industry and local residents. Its enormous debt, on which it partially defaulted to foreign creditors in 2001, is fuelling the expansion plans.

APP has argued that expanding its wood sources and working with villages to establish ”joint ventures” should reduce local discontent, but such arrangements are not nearly enough, according to HRW.

It is urging donors to link aid to specific reforms, including the creation of a land claims board and investigation of past mob violence and the security forces’ role in it. These kinds of efforts are required throughout Indonesia where resource-extraction industries, such as the pulp and paper operations in Riau, and the security forces that protect them, have impoverished and repressed the local inhabitants.

Moreover, international lenders that hold much of APP’s debt and that failed to take account of the social or environmental impacts of the company’s operations should be required to institute more rigorous due-diligence procedures to take into account the kinds of disruptions the industry has caused.