JakartaPost/AFP-Nov 4
An Indigenous tribe in Indonesia is at risk of losing vast swathes of ancestral forest after a court threw out its lawsuit against a palm oil firm, rights groups say. The Awyu tribe, whose roughly 20,000 members rely on the land for their subsistence, had sought to freeze the operations of PT Indo Asiana Lestari (PT IAL) in the eastern Indonesian province of West Papua. But on Thursday a Papuan court upheld the firm’s concession permit, which allows for the potential clearance of more than 39,000 hectares of Indigenous forest land. “The decision… is bad news for Awyu Indigenous People who are struggling to defend their customary land,” the Coalition to Save Papuan Customary Forests, made up of 10 environmental NGOs, said in a statement Thursday. Palm oil is a billion-dollar industry in Indonesia, which is the world’s largest producer and exporter of the commodity used in everything from chocolate spreads to cosmetics. The environmental coalition claimed that PT IAL’s maps did not acknowledge local clans and environmental assessments did not involve Indigenous communities. The coalition also claimed opponents of the firm’s plans faced intimidation. Tigor Hutapea of the environmental NGO Bentala Rakyat Heritage Foundation said the court had made the “worst ruling” he had ever read on the enforcement of environmental law. The European Union agreed last year to ban palm oil imports linked to deforestation. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2023/11/04/west-papua-tribe-at-risk-of-losing-homeland-after-court-ruling-ngos.html.
