Monday, May 26, 2014

1) Papua`s community figure cautions Jokowi-JK of election fraud

1) Papua`s community figure cautions Jokowi-JK of election fraud
2) PAPUA DEPARTMENTS EXHIBIT PRODUCTS IN JAKARTA
3) Oil Palm Companies Redraw Indonesia’s Forest Permit Moratorium Map
4) Australia Seeking Stronger Ties With Indonesia Through Research
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1) Papua`s community figure cautions Jokowi-JK of election fraud

Sat, May 24 2014 16:40 | 398 Views
Timika, Papua (ANTARA News) - Mimika district community figure Yosep Yopi Kilangin in Papua reminded the success team of presidential and vice presidential candidates, Joko Widodo and Jusuf Kalla (Jokowi-JK) to anticipate likely fraud during the July 9 presidential election.


"Democracy in Indonesia is still immature and can be easily fabricated. Therefore, the people in Papua and the success team of Jokowi-JK should anticipate the possibility of fraud during the election," Yosep emphasized here on Saturday. 

Yosep was optimistic that the Jokowi-JK pair, supported by the coalition of Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), National Democrat Party (NasDem), National Awakening Party (PKB), Peoples Conscience Party (Hanura), and the Indonesian Justice and Unity Party (PKPI) will win the presidential election. 

Yosep noted that the Jokowi-JK pair will face strong rivals, Prabowo Subianto-Hatta Rajasa pair who are supported by the coalition of Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), United Development Party (PPP), Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), National Mandate Party (PAN), Golkar, and Star and Crescent Party (PBB).

"I just want to remind them that both majority and minority groups should be able to enjoy equal rights in this country because there is no second-class citizen here," he reiterated.
(Uu.O001/INE/KR-BSR)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
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2) PAPUA DEPARTMENTS EXHIBIT PRODUCTS IN JAKARTA


Jakarta, 25/5 (Jubi) – Some departments of the Papua provincial government took part in the Art and Cultural Festival of Papua and West Papua held in the National Monument in Jakarta.
These include the Education and Cultural Department, Plantation, Food and Horticulture Department, Cooperation and SMEs Department, Industry and Trade Department, Energy and Mineral Resources Department, Tourism Department and the Regional Planning and Development Body.
“They represented Papua to introduce the programs launched by Governor Lukas Enembe including Gerbang Mas Hasrat Papua, a community based program. We also prepared some presentation documents,” said M. Musa’ad, the Head of the Regional Planning and Development of Province (BAPPEDA) Papua in Jakarta (25/5).
The year 2016 is projected to be the Investment Year of Papua. Therefore, BAPPEDA will provide information on the Papua’s potencies to the investors to coming and investing in Papua.
“We also prepared some documents of the regional five years planning which will distribute among the visitors of this exhibition. We hoped when people read the documents; they would get the detail description on Papua. So they have no fear or worry coming to Papua,” he further said.
At the same place, the Head of the Energy and Mineral Resources, Bangun Manurung said his office provided the information about the mining in Papua including the opportunities of investment, its procedure and the prospects of the existing mining areas and the Governor’s Policy about the People’s Mining Areas in the regencies of Waropen, Nabire, Paniai and Mimika. (Jubi/Alex/rom)

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Lots of maps. Click on link

https://awasmifee.potager.org/?p=857

3) Oil Palm Companies Redraw Indonesia’s Forest Permit Moratorium Map

What’s been going on with Indonesia’s forestry moratorium? Since it was introduced in 2011 it has always been recognised as quite weak, but some protection for Indonesia’s forest at least. However now it seems that oil palm companies are free to just redraw the map at will.
In 2011 Indonesia agreed to place a moratorium on all new permits on primary forest and peatland, in exchange for $1 billion from the Norwegian Government. That moratorium was valid for two years, but then the President extended it for two years more in 2013. Every six months the map of areas covered by the moratorium is revised if there are any changes necessary.
The fifth update to this map was published at the end of 2013. A lot of the changes made were after direct appeals from plantation companies. It is as if all a company has to do to change the map is send a letter to the forestry department, claiming its concession is not primary forest, and the forestry department will obligingly remove it from the next edition.
Plantation companies in Papua have been some of the most active in appealing the moratorium map, after many were refused permission to use state forests during 2013. For example, PT Tunas Sawaerma, PT Visi Hijau Nusantara, PT Wahana Agri Karya and Duta Visi Global1  are four companies which are trying to obtain permits on a strip of land roughly following the route of the Trans-Papua road going north through Boven Digoel from Asiki to Tanah Merah and on towards Mindiptana.
Those four companies obtained location permits from the local government, but then the forestry department refused their request to use state forest land, presumably because some of that land was covered by the moratorium. However, the companies wrote to the forestry department in November 2013. They claimed the land was all secondary forest. The forestry department accepted their appeal and a few weeks later the land was duly removed from the area under moratorium.
Here are the two versions of the map – green areas are primary forest and pink areas are peatland. In theory the grey areas are either secondary forest or were already covered by an existing permit when the moratorium came into force in 2011.
The forestry department’s website also shows information on land cover. It can be seen that according to that data the concession areas do actually consist of a mixture of primary and secondary forest. Nevertheless, on 6th February 2014 the four companies were all awarded an in-principle permit to release the land from the state forest estate.

Another case is in the south of Jayapura Regency, near to the Mamboramo River. The Musim Mas group already has all the permits it needs to start two plantations there – even though the land is primary forest it was not included in the original 2011 moratorium area. A third subsidiary, PT Inti Benua Perkasatama2 This company complained to the forestry ministry in May 2013, claiming the land was secondary forest, with mineral soils. This seems somewhat unlikely, as the area is very remote, and all the land for many kilometres in every direction is classified as primary forest by the forestry department. Nevertheless, a neat hole was snipped out of the map.

On Papua’s south coast, in the western part of Mimika regency, PT Tunas Agung Sejahtera3 has a location permit for 40,000 hectare plantation. The boundary is shown on the map below. This company also wrote to the forestry department in November 2013, again claiming that the land was secondary forest. It appears that their appeal was accepted but missed the deadline for inclusion in the fifth revision of the moratorium map. The forestry department noted that it would make the changes in the sixth revision.

And then it gave the company the permit anyway, despite the fact that under the current moratorium map, the land is still supposedly protected. PT Tunas Agung Sejahtera got its in-principle permit on 19th March 2014.
There are many more cases: in Papua alone, the plantation companies PT Inti Kebun Sejahtera and PT Inti Kebun Sawit (Kayu Lapis Group) in Sorong, PT Daya Indah Nusantara (Musim Mas Group) in Sarmi, PT HCW Papua Plantation in Bintuni and PT Mega Mustika Plantation in Sorong (corporate group unknown) also made appeals and were granted revisions. Timber company PT Semarak Dharma Timber (Patria Group) in Keerom and mining company PT Gag Nickel in Raja Ampat (now wholly owned by state-owned miner ANTAM) were also successful.
None of the Papuan companies which applied were turned down, although a first appeal by Inti Kebun Sejahtera had been refused earlier in the year, and a similar pattern emerged in Kalimantan and Sumatra. A summary list of all the submissions received was published by the forestry department which you can check out for yourself here. The maps are here.
The full details of each individual case have not been made public, and the circumstances are undoubtedly different in each one. Nevertheless, the forestry department seems to have been very amenable to making changes, and remarkably swift too, considering that deciding whether these large and remote areas do in fact contain degraded forest and mineral soils would require detailed surveys.
The next revision is due in June so let’s see what happens. But if things go on like they have been doing recently, it is only a moratorium until a company asks to be exempted from it. This is not the first time that the forestry department has been accused of excising areas from the map to order (for example in the MIFEE area in Merauke or PT Sumber Indah Perkasa’s concession in Jayapura). But now it seems to be on a much larger scale and much more blatant.

  1. PT Tunas Sawa Erma is a subsidiary of the Korean-Indonesia conglomerate Korindo, and is applying for an extension of its existing plantation. The other three companies (PT Visi Hijau Nusantara, PT Wahana Agri Karya and PT Duta Visi Global) appear to have made their application jointly with Korindo. However, they may not be subsidiaries. Korindo, an established business in the area with several oil palm plantations, large timber concessions and a plywood factory, may be using its local contacts to facilitate another company’s operation. This already happened with the case of Korean Multinational Daewoo International, which Korindo helped to establish plantations in Merauke. 
  2. Awas MIFEE has not been able to obtain an exact map of PT Inti Benua Perkasatama’s location permit to verify whether the boundaries of the area snipped are the same. In fact the area cut from the map is almost certainly also takes in the concession of PT Daya Indah Nusantara, another Musim Mas subsidiary, judging from its size and the small area of peatland which is left as part of the moratorium., is applying for another 25773 hectares in the same area. 
  3. PT Tunas Agung Sejahtera is to the best of our knowledge owned by PT Pusaka Agro Sejahtera, a company which avoids having any kind of public profile, but has acquired permits for plantations in Sorong Selatan, Maybrat and Jayapura as well as Timika. 
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4) Australia Seeking Stronger Ties With Indonesia Through Research

By Vita A.D. Busyra on 08:45 am May 26, 2014
Category EducationNewsPolitics
Jakarta. Australia seeks to strengthen cooperation with Indonesia by building a high-level research partnership, officials said at a summit in Jakarta last week.
“Bringing together researchers, business leaders and government representatives will deepen the discussion about how to respond to some of our shared challenges,” Greg Moriarty, Australia’s ambassador to Indonesia, said at the Indonesia-Australia Research Summit 2014 on Thursday. “Today’s event adds serious weight to the initiatives already underway.”
Ainun Na’im, the secretary general of the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture, dubbed the summit a meeting of minds, where representatives from state universities and research institutions in this country could exchange and discover mutual interests and share best practices in various fields with their counterparts from Australia.
“Indonesian universities [can] build a stronger research culture, capacity and productivity in order to produce new technology, innovation, findings — even products that can support Indonesian development,” he said.
He acknowledged that Indonesia faced many challenges in elevating its economic competitiveness through inquiry and high-tech innovations, including problems with funding, capacity, research management, intellectual property rights and knowledge production.
The Austrialia-Indonesia Center (AIC) based at Monash University in Melbourne, which is sponsoring the 2013 summit, last October unveiled a four-year A$15 million ($13.9 million) federal government commitment, and highlighted five main issues that would be the focus of the research funding: food and agriculture; energy; infrastructure; health and medicine; and education.
Greg Barton, the Herb Feith research professor for the study of Indonesia at the AIC, told the Jakarta Globe that Monash University was providing A$5 million and other institutions — Australian National University and several Australian companies — had pledged funds totalling $25 million for joint research projects, capacity building, human resources training and other projects.
Barton said one of the AIC’s projects was to create a documentary series about true life in Indonesia, given that many Australians still saw their northern neighbor as an authoritarian state, despite the fact that it had become Southeast Asia’s and the Muslim world’s healthiest democracy.
“To strengthen the relationship, one needs to eminently comprehend,” Barton said. “The inaccuracy of Australians’ views of Indonesia is still prevalent. Despite the four changes of government and development that Indonesia has experienced in the past 16 years, many [Australians] don’t know yet about the rapid changes.
“Those prejudices and perception should be destroyed and replaced with [an understanding of] the real condition of Indonesia,” he added. “So we want to increase and update the comprehension of our people toward Indonesia with good accuracy through narratives. We believe if Australians can know more about Indonesia, they will love it.”
The importance of the summit was highlighted with the presence of Nadjib Riphat Kesoema, Indonesia’s ambassador to Australia. He is heading back to Canberra after being recalled to Jakarta in November last year in protest over revelations of phone-tapping by Australia’s intelligence services.
The Indonesian institutions represented at the meeting included the University of Indonesia, Gadjah Mada University, the Bandung Institute of Technology and the Bogor Institute of Agriculture.
Also present were officials from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and the Ministry of Research and Technology.
The Australian research community was represented by officials from Monash, ANU, the University of Melbourne, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), and the University of Sydney.
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