Author: earthfirst

News update from the strug­gle against the Indone­sian state, min­ing and log­ging com­pa­nies by Papuan peo­ple.
- a drilling rig is set afire in kam­pung Tabla­su­pa
- five log­ging camps burned by Arso vil­lagers

TABLASUPA NICKEL MINING RIG BURNED, THREE ARRESTED

On the morn­ing of 8th Feb­ru­ary 2012, local peo­ple from kam­pung Tabla­su­pa, near to the Papuan cap­i­tal Jaya­pu­ra, burned a drilling rig belong­ing to the min­ing com­pa­ny PT Tabla­su­pa Nikel Min­ing. The action was con­nect­ed to an ongo­ing con­flict between local peo­ple and the com­pa­ny, which plans to mine nick­el on 9629 hectares of land, and is cur­rent­ly car­ry­ing out explo­ration activ­i­ties. Although the com­pa­ny has been giv­en a per­mit by the local Jaya­pu­ra Bupati’s office, the peo­ple of Tabla­su­pa feel that their rights as the hold­ers of cus­tom­ary rights over the land have not been respect­ed.

Two weeks after the machine was burnt, on Feb­ru­ary 20th, police arrest­ed three vil­lagers. Saul Soron­touw, Lam­ber­tus Sei­bo and Kani­sius Kromisian. They have been charged under arti­cle 170 of the Indone­sian penal code, and are being held in Jaya­pu­ra police head­quar­ters. While in prison Saul Soron­touw has been ill with gout, which has caused swellings in his knees. On Feb­ru­ary 28th police demand­ed state­ments from anoth­er six vil­lagers, but they were allowed to go home that evening.

The fol­low­ing state­ment was released by vil­lagers of Tabla­su­pa the day before the action:

State­ment of opin­ion of the Soron­tou-Okoser­ay-Kiswait­ou Eth­nic Group

As hold­ers of rights to cus­tom­ary lands on the area cov­ered by PT Tabla­su­pa Nick­el Min­ing’s Mine Enter­prise Per­mit (IUP), Min­ing Rights (KP) and the Bupati’s rec­om­men­da­tion that allows explo­ration in Kam­pung Tabla­su­pa, Jaya­pu­ra Regency

Regard­ing the as yet unre­solved prob­lems around PT Tabla­su­pa Nick­el Min­ing com­menc­ing explo­ration activites on cus­tom­ary land belong­ing to the peo­ple of kam­pung Tabla­su­pa, the Soron­tou- Okoser­ay- Kiswait­ou eth­nic group wish­es to make the fol­low­ing dec­la­ra­tion:

“Reject PT Tabla­su­pa Nick­el Min­ing”
con­duct­ing explo­ration and min­er­al exploita­tion activ­i­ties with­in the cus­tom­ary bound­aries of the Soron­tou- Okoser­ay- Kiswait­ou eth­nic group.

The rea­sons for our rejec­tion of min­ing activ­i­ties are as fol­lows:
1. The whole ter­ri­to­ry of kam­pung Tabla­su­pa is unsuit­able for min­ing activ­i­ties.
2. The impact of min­ing activ­i­ties would also dam­age the envi­ron­ment of areas that fall with­in the ter­ri­to­ry of neigh­bour­ing vil­lages.
3 To avoid min­ing activ­i­ties caus­ing con­flict with the peo­ple and near­by vil­lages.
4. The effect of min­ing activ­i­ties will dam­age and des­e­crate the envi­ron­ment, and indus­tri­al pol­lu­tion from the mine will con­tribute to glob­al warm­ing and affect the sources of clean water from the Cyclop moun­tains.
5. No con­sen­sus has been reached through a musyawarah sys­tem that would rep­re­sent an agree­ment between the peo­ple of Tabla­su­pa and neigh­bour­ing vil­lages.
6. The hold­ers of cus­tom­ary rights to the land have not giv­en their approval (under the Law on Min­er­al and Coal Min­ing 4/2009 arti­cle 135, com­pa­nies hol­ing a Mine Enter­prise Per­mit can only com­mence activ­i­ties if they have obtained agree­ment from the hold­ers of cus­tom­ary rights on that land).
7. The cus­tom­ary and human rights of the Soron­tou- Okoser­ay- Kiswait­ou eth­nic group must be respect­ed and val­ued by all.

A solu­tion to the devel­op­ment of kam­pung Tabla­su­pa which sup­ports the social econ­o­my and also con­tributes to local busi­ness could include:
-build­ing beach tourism and hotels
-devel­op­ing fish­ing
-sell­ing fresh water.

Such devel­op­ment would involve all the peo­ple of Tablsu­pa either as work­ers or tak­ing roles in a man­age­ment struc­ture and could take the form of an enter­prise or foun­da­tion that was formed by the peo­ple of kam­pung Tabla­su­pa.

This is the mes­sage that the Soron­tou- Okoser­ay- Kiswait­ou eth­nic group wish­es to be known by the gen­er­al pub­lic.

Tabla­su­pa, 07 Feb­ru­ary 2012 .

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WEST PAPUAN COMMUNITY ECOLOGICAL STRUGGLE

On the side­lines of the Papuan Peo­ple’s strug­gle for self-deter­mi­na­tion, at a local lev­el Papuan com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to resist the log­ging and min­ing indus­tries that are destroy­ing their forests. Here are two sto­ries of recent com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance from areas close to the Papuan cap­i­tal Jaya­pu­ra, trans­lat­ed from the Alliance for Democ­ra­cy in Papua web­site www.aldepe.com.

See­ing their for­est destroyed, Arso Vil­lagers Burn Five Log­ging Camps.

Annoyed by hear­ing the sound of chain­saws almost every day, and in addi­tion the reports of vil­lagers who reg­u­lar­ly enter the for­est telling of find­ing log­gers’ camps there, around 20 peo­ple from Arso, both young and old, agreed to check the for­est for them­selves.

This area of for­est is com­mon­ly called the ‘Gold­en Tri­an­gle’, and is divid­ed between the ter­ri­to­ry of three vil­lages, Arso, Work­wana and Wambes.

As they had guessed they would, once inside the for­est they found two sites used by log­gers, which had been con­nect­ed with a track made from off­cuts of wood which the log­gers would use, drag­ging the wood from behind a vehi­cle.

At the first site there was only one camp. At this camp they con­fis­cat­ed two chain­saws and took state­ments from three log­gers who were at the loca­tion. They then forced the log­gers to leave.

The group con­tin­ued to the next loca­tion. Pos­si­bly because the log­gers had received infor­ma­tion from their friends at the first site, there was only one per­son left, and they did­n’t find any chain­saws.

As their emo­tions rose some peo­ple almost hit out at the log­ger, but were held back by oth­ers. At this sec­ond loca­tion, four camps were found, com­plete with tele­vi­sions, speak­ers, sup­plies of food and cloth­ing and so on. Two vehi­cles used for drag­ging wood were also found. In their emo­tion­al state, the peo­ple destroyed and burned the camps and every­thing they found there, along with the camp at the first loca­tion. The two vehi­cles were also burnt.

Accord­ing to state­ments from the log­gers, they had been giv­en per­mis­sion by the cus­tom­ary chief of kam­pung Work­wana, although the Arso vil­lagers felt that they had been cut­ting trees far inside the Arso ter­ri­to­ry.

Sev­er­al peo­ple inter­viewed in kam­pung Arso on Tues­day 6th March explained that they were still angry “It’s so sad to look at that for­est, they even cut very small iron­wood trees.” said Wen­der­li­nus Tuamis, a youth who had par­tic­i­pat­ed that day.

Mean­while, accord­ing to Franky Borot­ian, they had been allow­ing the log­ging to con­tin­ue because pre­vi­ous­ly a vil­lager from Work­wana had asked to use wood to build her house “a sis­ter had asked for per­mis­sion to build a house, but then it turned out some­one used that per­mis­sion for busi­ness pur­pos­es”, he said.

The prob­lem has been passed over to the Cus­tom­ary Coun­cil (Dewan Adat). Vil­lagers asked the Cus­tom­ary Coun­cil to use their wis­dom to resolve the sit­u­a­tion so that con­flicts between the peo­ple would not emerge. Espe­cial­ly since the Gold­en Tri­an­gle had become the area which peo­ple rely on for food, as oth­er areas have been tak­en over by two big oil palm plan­ta­tions, state-owned PTPN II and PT Tan­dan Sawi­ta Papua (Part of Peter Son­dakh’s Rajawali Group)

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RE-POSTED FROM INDONESIAN ANARCHIST WEBSITE  http://hidupbiasa.blogspot.co.uk/