Sixteen protestors are under arrest and around 500 have fled a town in the Indonesian province of North Sumatra amid controversial plans to reopen a polluting pulp plant, police and a human rights lawyer said.
Police arrested 21 people and are still holding 16 after a protest on Thursday against the reopening of the plant, which was closed in 1999 following years of often violent protests that it was damaging the environment.
"There are still 16 people detained and two others have already been released," a duty officer of the North Tapanuli district police force in Tarutung, North Sumatra, said on Sunday.
The policeman, who identified himself only as Barus, said the men were arrested following a protest in front of the Porsea sub-district administration on Thursday which lead to the office being damaged. He declined to give more details.
Lawyer and human rights activist Johnson Panjaitan said hundreds of people had fled Porsea for the district town of Tarutung because the police, backed by the elite Brimob unit and soldiers, were terrorizing locals who oppose the reopening.
"What is taking place in Porsea smacks of the New Order [former president Suharto's rule] with state terrorism returning to the stage," Panjaitan, of the Jakarta-based Indonesian Association for Legal Aid and Human Rights, told AFP.
The protest on Thursday followed news that the government wanted to reopen PT Inti Indorayon (IIU), closed down in 1999 following increasingly violent protests, under a new name, PT Toba Lestari Indah. IIU was closed down after years of protest and violence, often deadly, with the local population accusing the plant of damaging the environment.
"The people of Porsea have already suffered for more than 10 years from the pollution caused by IIU. Now that they are just begining to enjoy a pollution-free environment, the central government is planning to end all that again," said the lawyer.
He told AFP by telephone from Medan that 21 protesters arrested face charges of incitement to violence, damaging property and disturbing public order.
Panjaitan had visited Porsea for a few days before going to Medan. The police, he said, had also guarded places of worship in Porsea which had been gathering points for locals when problems arose.
"At the local level, we will form a crisis center and provide help for the refugees, including setting up soup kitchens," Panjaitan said.
He said lawyers and rights activists in Jakarta will compile a report on the incident to alert the authorities, including President Megawati Sukarnoputri.