3) West Papua's Catholic Priests call for urgent ceasefire
The new pattern of operation, Nemangkawi 2022, will be implemented after analysis and evaluation of the ongoing security operation is conducted in December 2021, chief of the public information bureau of the public relations division of the National Police, Brigadier General Rusdi Hartono, informed on Thursday.
"We will look at it later on. As a matter of fact, the analysis and evaluation have not been conducted. The (current) operation remains (as it is),” he said.
The security operation Nemangkawi has been arranged in such a way that it will be evaluated once every six months in June and December, he added.
Nemangkawi 2021 will end in December this year, he noted. One week before the operation ends, it will be analyzed and evaluated, Hartono said.
"The operation Nemangkawi 2021 will end in December. But the National Police Headquarters and the Papua provincial police will analyze and evaluate it in late December. Based on the results of analysis and evaluation,
The recommendation will serve as input for the National Police and Indonesian Military leaderships for deciding how operation Nemangkawi 2022 will be implemented, he said.
During a fit and proper test at the parliament building recently, TNI chief candidate General Andika Perkasa proposed approaches based on military diplomacy and humanity to settle the Papua issue.
Hartono said he supported the idea and believed it can be realized.
However, the implementation of operation Nemangkawi 2022 will be discussed after the analysis and evaluation have been completed, he added.
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During her visit to one of the chicken farms built in Amagais Village, Der Komur Sub-district, Asmat District, Social Affairs Minister Tri Rismaharini expressed optimism that farms for other animals would be built following the development of chicken farms.
"If the chicken farm is successfully run here, then other farm animals, such as quails or pigs, can be raised," the minister noted in her statement received here Friday.
The minister expressed hope that the farms that have succeeded, such as the one in Amagais Village, could become an example for other villages.
"This farm can be developed as a business that increases (the residents') income. It should be managed well," she remarked.
Asmat District Head Elisa Kambu expressed gratitude for the assistance from the Ministry of Social Affairs. Minister Rismaharini's visit and assistance is an honor and a form of love for the community in Asmat, he affirmed.
Related news: Papua PON encourages revival of creative economy in Merauke
According to the district head, the chicken farm is a means to support the improvement of community nutrition, as the eggs from chickens are valuable for protein intake. People can also sell eggs to increase their income.
On the same occasion, a community leader from the Roman Catholic Diocese of AgatsMonsinyur Aloysius Murwito assessed that the social affairs minister's visit demonstrated the government's genuine intention to help boost the community's welfare.
He urged the community to work diligently and optimize the assistance that has been provided to improve their standard of living.
The assistance to build chicken farms was the result of cooperation between the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Agats. As many as 10 chicken farms spread across eight sub-districts are established under the program.
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3) West Papua's Catholic Priests call for urgent ceasefire
Almost 6,000 people fleeing violence in Indonesia’s West Papua region have taken shelter in local churches. Rebels from the West Papua National Liberation Army and the Free Papua Movement have clashed with government forces for much of 2021, leading to a surge in internal refugees. Now 30 local Catholic priests have signed an urgent appeal for a ceasefire.
Peter Arndt is executive officer at the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission in Brisbane, and he's been involved with human rights work in West Papua over the past decade.
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Jayapura, Jubi – When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and disrupted world supply chains, the Indonesian government l
aunched an ambitious plan to boost domestic food production through the “food estate” program in June last year.
The government claimed that the plan would not harm the environment. In fact, they claimed that by boosting crop
yields while encouraging modern, environmentally-friendly agricultural practices, the country would dodge the food crisis.
However, in just five months, the Ministry of Defense, oddly the ministry appointed by President Joko “Jokowi”
Widodo to lead the program, has cleared the orangutan habitat in Borneo (Kalimantan) and turned it into a giant plantation.
The story behind the plantation clearing reveals how the Ministry of Defense took advantage of a set of regulations
hastily drafted during the pandemic, stripping away environmental protection principles to open up vast new lands
for food plantations.
An investigation by The Gecko Project, Tempo, and Jubi found that the ministry moved so quickly that it failed to
comply with the rules, potentially clearing hundreds of hectares of forest illegally.
The plantation in Central Kalimantan will use 32,000 hectares of land, almost entirely of which is a rain forest.
And this is only a small part of the ministry’s ambitions.
Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto planned to plant cassava on more than one million hectares of land in
various parts of Indonesia.
The investigation also found evidence that the ministry was trying to direct the tens-of-trillions worth food
estate program to a company without a clear track record in plantation, namely PT Agro Industri Nasional (Agrinas).
Agrinas is owned by a non-profit foundation run by Prabowo with the support of a line of retired and senior
military officers.
Experts question the legality of the ownership structure because it appears to violate rules meant to ensure t
hat the foundation actually serves a charitable purpose. They also said that Prabowo’s close relationship
with the executives of Agrinas and its commissioners gave rise to a serious conflict of interest.
Both Agrinas and the Ministry of Defense denied that they were partners in the food estate program.
However, we found evidence that Agrinas was trying to attract Rp 33 trillion (US$2.31 million) of investment
from foreign governments. To attract this investment, the company said they had special access to the f
ood estate program and had connections with Prabowo.
Our investigation also reveals that the Ministry of Defense is planning to develop a food estate in Papua,
a center of biodiversity in eastern Indonesia. Currently, Papua holds the largest intact rainforest reserves in Asia.
The ministry’s efforts to open plantations in Papua were led by a retired Navy officer. According to him,
his party would recruit Papuan youths as members of the Reserve Component, to supply the workforce
needs in food plantations. Meanwhile, soldiers have been deployed to secure the food estate in Borneo.
The involvement of the military in Papua has drawn criticism. The military has a record of human rights
violations against Indigenous Papuans to expedite the exploitation of natural resources for mining and
plantation projects.
The Ministry of Defense has announced plans to grow rice and cassava on thousands of hectares of forest
land and customary land in Merauke, a military-turbulent area in Indonesia’s far east.
However, they did not talk about the plan with local residents who would be severely affected. Papuans,
whose rights have been violated by the new set of regulations, are still in the dark.
‘We are racing against time’
Jokowi launched the food estate program amid the alarming global food crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The coronavirus outbreak could be a catastrophe for the millions of people around the world living on the
brink of starvation, said the World Food Programme’s Chief Economist.
The UN organization says the problem is not a lack of food production. The real threat is when food cannot
reach the people because of stagnating supply chains due to regional restrictions and many workers being
forced to stay at home during the pandemic. As a result, many families in Indonesia may find it difficult to
afford food due to the economic slowdown.
On the other hand, the political elite has always had the ambition to reduce Indonesia’s dependence on
food imports by increasing domestic production.
Such an issue has emerged as a topic of debate in the last two presidential elections. Jokowi, who has
served for two terms, ordered his ministers to realize that ambition, while at the same time countering the
threat of a food crisis caused by the pandemic. The method is by boosting the production of staple foods
such as rice through the opening of giant food plantations.
The licensing process for opening plantations in Indonesia is complex and lengthy. Companies must first
obtain approval from various government agencies, negotiate with local residents, and conduct an
environmental impact analysis (AMDAL). Large areas of land and forest should not be converted for
agriculture or plantations because they protect watersheds and preserve forest cover.
But officials in Jakarta drafted a series of regulations to cut the bureaucracy. Once the new regulations
emerged, experts considered the government was prioritizing shortcuts rather than enforcing legal principles
and protecting the environment.
Adrianus Eryan, a legal researcher at the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL), suspected t
he “National Food Estate Economic Recovery Operational Plan” document which he found online
in mid-2020. The document issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry explains the government’s
plan to convert millions of hectares of forest land in four provinces into “food land”.
According to Eryan, such documents showing technical guidance are normally issued after the legal
framework has been ratified. The land conversion plan as described in the document does not have a clear legal basis.
“It’s a bit weird because it’s the reverse,” he said.
The first regulation on food estates published in October 2020 paves the way for potential land conversion.
It gives the government the authority to convert millions of hectares of land that previously could not be
used for food plantations, including protected forest areas.
The regulation allows the government to have an unbalanced authority and expedite the transfer of land
functions with minimal supervision. There are indeed a number of requirements that must be met in acquiring
land including documents of a management plan and environmental permit. But almost all of these documents
can be made after land acquisition.
Land conversion for food estate only requires a “commitment” to complete these documents. The main
requirement is a Strategic Environmental Study (KLHS). The study usually contains in-depth analysis, I
ncluding results of public consultations, which are used as recommendations for long-term planning.
However, the new regulation allows for a “quick” KLHS in urgent circumstances. According to ICEL’s
analysis, the quick study relies only on expert judgment rather than empirical evidence. ICEL found that
the study “tends to be speculative and leaves a lot of room for uncertainty.” They also questioned why
the government chose this instrument for the food estate program.
The Indonesian Forum for Environment (Walhi) considers the quick KLHS to have no legal basis. They
urged the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to revoke the regulation allowing a quick KLHS.
In July 2021, the regulation was updated but the changes were not substantial. Yeka Hendra Fatika, a
member of the Ombudsman of the Republic of Indonesia, said that even a year after the food estate
program was announced, it was still unclear who would be implementing it and how the financing scheme would be.
“Without standard planning, the project is vulnerable to “potential maladministration”, Fatika added.
Two months after the first food estate regulation was issued, fears of a global food crisis have eased,
according to a World Bank analysis published in December 2020. Many countries have returned to exporting
agricultural products. Staple foods trade is also expected to increase again for the first time in the last four years.
According to the World Bank, the problem faced by poor families in Indonesia is the high price of food as a
result of processing and transportation costs. It is also difficult for poor people in Indonesia to obtain nutritious
food such as vegetables and fruits. The food estate program, whose main target is rice and cassava production,
will not be able to address these two problems directly.
“Structural problems cannot be solved simply by large-scale land clearing,” said Bhima Yudhistira, economist
and director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies.
In its analysis, the World Bank warns that one of the keys to a food estate’s success is “management of
environmental and social risks”. However, the Indonesian government instead disarms the principles of social
and environmental protection.
In September, Presidential Chief of Staff Moeldoko told us in an interview that the issuance of a food estate r
egulation was legitimate because it was based on an urgent situation, namely the threat of a “food crisis”.
“We are racing against time,” he said. “If we’re determined to serve the community, then the safety of the people
is the priority.” (*)
Reporter: Admin Jubi
Jayapura, Jubi – The focus of the food estate program was, at first, to promote rice production in the peatland
areas of Central Kalimantan. The plan immediately drew heavy criticism from those who worried it would only
repeat the disaster that had occurred two decades ago in the same location. At that time, a similar project
caused the peatlands to dry up, resulting in massive greenhouse gas emissions and only a small amount of
rice yields.
The Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) dismisses concerns that the latest program will cause
environmental damage. In fact, KHLK claims the program aims to rehabilitate protected forest areas that
have been illegally deforested, as well as support agroforestry wherein farmers can harvest crops without
the need to clear forests.
“We are also committed to ensuring that no Bornean orangutan habitat will be targeted,” said KLHK Minister
Siti Nurbaya Bakar.
But it was President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo himself who appointed Minister of Defense Prabowo Subianto,
his former rival in the last two presidential elections, to lead the food estate program. The Ministry of
Defense has since cleared the orangutan habitat and turned it into a giant plantation.
During the same month Jokowi visited peatlands in the southern part of Borneo, the Indonesian Military (TNI)
and Defense Ministry officials held a meeting with the local government in Gunung Mas Regency,
150 kilometers north of Jokowi’s visit location. The Indigenous Dayak people there live along large rivers t
hat meander to the south from the mountainous upstream in the middle of the island of Borneo, through
the forest and empties into the Java Sea.
The Ministry of Defense was eyeing a stretch of wilderness on the east side of the Kahayan River, which
is a living space for local residents. The people gather food, tap rubber, and pick up wood in the forest.
According to the village heads we interviewed, they were invited to a meeting with ministry officials and a
high-ranking army officer in July 2021, a month after the food estate program was launched. The people
from Jakarta conveyed their desire to open plantations to secure the national food needs. However, they did
not elaborate on the plan further. Villagers were not told where it would be located and when the program would start.
Just a few weeks later, Prabowo submitted a request to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to build a food
plantation in Gunung Mas, which is the size of almost half of Jakarta. At that time there was no regulation that
explained what a food estate area was, let alone how to make it. The results of the satellite image mapping show
that during the time the food estate was proposed, most of the targeted locations were actually rainforest areas.
Whereas according to the study approved by the government, most of the area is an orangutan habitat.
“They did not inform [that the area] was 33,000 hectares,” said Mine Yantri, a village head who attended the
meeting in July 2021. “And we cannot refuse the government’s program”.
The land clearing process in Gunung Mas began in mid-November 2020 when the regulation on food estates
was only three weeks old. Though involved in the initial meetings, the villagers around the project site did
not receive sufficient information.
Sigo, a traditional leader from the Tewai Baru village, found his usual path to find wood blocked by soldiers
guarding the newly cleared land. The villagers, on the other hand, began to accuse Sigo of selling the land
without the residents knowing. “I’m in a tight spot,” said Sigo.
The requirement for land conversion, namely the public consultation to establish the Strategic Environmental
Study (KLHS), was only carried out by the Ministry of Defense three months later, in February 2021. At that time,
more than 600 hectares of land had been cleared.
Furthermore, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry presented at the meeting with Commission IV of the House
of Representatives in March 2021 that the Ministry of Defense had not yet fulfilled the various provisions required
to convert the land. The land targeted by the Ministry of Defense is considered the production forest. The
long-standing principle in Indonesian forestry law emphasizes that production forest areas may not be converted
into agricultural plantations.
Adrianus Eryan, a legal researcher at the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL), said such a series
of events only strengthen the allegation of violations of forest law in the program. “Many safeguards are simply
ignored in this food estate program,” he said.
“The KLHS study is not well established, the community is not involved, and the process is carried out in a closed
manner,” Eryan added.
The Ministry of Defense argued that the land clearing was in accordance with the 2018 regulation which stipulated
that, in urgent situations, “borrowing and use” of forest areas for other uses without changing their status was allowed.
They said they had “adjusted” later when the food estate regulation was enforced in 2020. The land clearing was
carried out “based on instructions from President Jokowi at a cabinet meeting.”
When our reporter visited the project site in August, the land was guarded by soldiers. Moeldoko, the Presidential Chief of Staff, said that the assignment of soldiers is permitted by Law No.34/2004 on the TNI.
We checked that the law required the President to obtain the House’s approval for the deployment of TNI forces.
However, we did not find any documents confirming that these conditions were met. Two security experts told us
that the deployment of troops for the food estate program was likely to be against the law.
Even though the government has cleared a vast amount of land, only about 30 hectares of land have been planted
with cassava as of August. Our reporter saw that many of the cassava trees withered and their leaves turned yellow,
not a few of them were dead.
Prabowo has the ambition to plant cassava in an area of more than one million hectares to replace wheat, as an
effort to reduce Indonesia’s dependence on food imports. The Ministry of Defense also believes that cassava can be
used for various processed products other than food, from biofuels to pharmaceuticals. However, according
to Reinhardt Howeler, a scientist who has researched cassava for decades, opening cassava plantations is a
strenuous job. Most of the world’s cassava demands are supplied by community gardens, Howeler says, and
most cassava plantations with an area of more than a few hundred hectares are very labor-intensive and
therefore uneconomical. For Howeler, the cassava plantation of 32,000 hectares was the largest he had ever
heard of, about five times larger than the largest plantation he already knew.
Meanwhile, Achmad Subagio, a cassava expert who assisted the ministry’s program in Gunung Mas,
said cassava needed intensive care for four months after being planted. He had not visited the plantation
site since February.
“If there is no treatment fund, [the cassava] will be skinny for sure,” he added. But the Ministry of Defense
rushed into clearing the forest before it even got the budget. Nearly a year after the logging took place, t
hey stated that they are “still waiting for the regulatory process and budget allocation” for the program. (*)
Reporter: Admin Jubi
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