Jakarta – A four-day operation by Indonesian police to crack down on teak-wood looting in central Java has left one dead, several injured and forced hundreds of villagers to flee their homes, sources said Friday.
"The police operation has caused fear and panic among the villagers. The security apparatus cracked down too hard," the head of a Yogyakarta-based legal aid institute Suparman Marzuki told AFP by telephone Friday.
The felling of the valuable wood is restricted in Indonesia and police launched the 600-man "Bina Wana Semeru" search operation in several East Javan villages between September 3 and 6 following mounting cases of mobs pillaging teak forests in the surrounding area. "Troops not only arrested people who were caught red-handed stealing teak wood, but also seized people on the streets, when they were eating in foodstalls or working in the fields," Marzuki said. One villager, identified as 50-year-old Manut died, apparently while in police custody, and his family was not notified until two hours before the police buried him without soliciting a post mortem examination, Marzuki said. "I am not justifying looting because people do steal, and some of the clashes did take place when police caught the teak-fellers red-handed," Marzuki said, referring to an attack by hundreds of teak-fellers on three car loads of intelligence operatives who caught them looting. "But an arrest must be made with a solid proof of a criminal action. This operation is like burning a barn to kill a mouse," Marzuki said, adding that one of the scores of people injured by police for resisting arrest was a 15-year-old boy hit by a rubber bullet.
Forest Ranger administrator Pudjo Siswohadi on Wednesday said that the pillagers were mostly village youngsters, who were paid around 70,000-to-100,000 rupiah (five to eight dollars), or 25 times a day laborer's wage, for each tree felled.
The state Antara news agency reported Madiun Regional Police Chief Colonel Sugiri as saying that 82 of the 115 people arrested during the operation had been released for lack of evidence. Antara said that so far police had confiscated 600 cubic meters of teak worth 1.5 billion rupiah (some 85,000 dollars), some stacked in houses and some buried in fields.
Meanwhile Marzuki said that the hundreds of residents who fled their villages were still hesitant to return home after the troops, including the members of the local mobile brigade, combat infantry and Air Force special forces, were pulled out on September 9. "At least four villages are still deserted. Ironically, robbers took advantage of the situation and looted their homes," Marzuki added.