Just a few days after the Indonesian Defense Forces (TNI) announced plans to form new battalions in Papua, a prominent environmentalist has warned that illegal logging mafias are joining forces with crooked officials to plunder the province's rainforests.
State news agency Antara on Tuesday quoted Forest Watch Indonesia (FWI) director Togu Manurung as saying foreign mafias have entered the country via cooperatives supported by Indonesian officials. He declined to name the foreign mafias or the Indonesian officials.
Environmentalists say Indonesia is losing nearly 2 million hectares of forest annually, largely due to corruption and lawlessness. Manurung said about 60,000 cubic meters of timber have been smuggled out of Papua during the past month. Another 600,000 cubic meters were traded illegally over the past year, he added. He urged the government to take measures to stop the illegal trade, which is worth about Rp30.4 trillion ($36 million) annually.
A report released in February 2002 by the World Resources Institute (WRI), Global Forest Watch (GFW) and FWI said the rate of deforestation in Indonesia had doubled over the past decade. The report said forest cover fell from 162 million hectares in 1950 to only 98 million hectares in 2000. It warned that lowland forests had almost entirely gone from Sulawesi and were likely to disappear in 2005 from Sumatra and in 2010 in Kalimantan. Manurung, who lectures at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture in West Java, said Indonesia now only has only 96 million hectares of forest cover left and the level of deforestation is increasing.
Military budget
In October 2002, TNI commander Major General Endriartono Sutarto said the government was only able to meet 30% of the military's budget, while the remaining 70% comes from "a range of sources". Some of those sources are legitimate businesses and foundations. But some of the money allegedly comes from sources such as illegal logging, extortion, drug dealing and prostitution.
The military also provides security services for multinational companies such as gold mining giant Freeport and oil giant ExxonMobil. Some soldiers also profit by moonlighting as contract killers.
Critical non-government organizations, such as the Australia West Papua Association, say Papua has become the military's main source of illegal funds, with concessions being mapped out and allocated to a handful of powerful generals. And there may soon be more generals in Papua, with Sutarto keen to increase the number of permanently stationed battalions in the province from three to six.
Trikora Regional Military Command chief Major General Nurdin Zainal, who oversees security in Papua, last Friday claimed certain groups that initially opposed the plan had since changed their tune after talks with the military. He claimed that Papua Governor Jaap Salossa is among those who support the creation of the new battalions. Some district administrations have even expressed their readiness to provide land for the headquarters of the new battalions, he added.
The Trikora Regional Military Command's three battalions each have an average of 752 personnel and are supported by personnel from six non-organic Army battalions. Zainal said that in addition to the creation of the new units, the three existing battalions would be beefed up to 1,039 soldiers each.
'We must help the poor Papuan people!'
Local human rights groups say the presence of more battalions in Papua will only serve to increase the level of violence and deforestation in the province. The government has passed a decree to split Papua into three new provinces, each with its own military unit, claiming the move is necessary to boost development in the resource-rich province.
Critics say the cliche of "We must help the poor Papuan people!" is one of the main slogans used by government and military officials who support illegal logging. "Commercial logging has always been a loss deal for the community and a huge profit for the timber company," says the Papua branch of the Forest Peoples Alliance (FPA). The FPA says most of the logging business operators in the province are from Malaysia and China.
While Manurung did not name local officials who collude with the timber mafia, the FPA has singled out the Bupati (regent) of Sorong regency, John Piet Wanane, who is alleged to have issued logging permits for conservation forests. The FPA says Forestry Ministry officials have little motive to attempt to enforce the law "because bribes are regular practice".
Citing an example how forest destruction takes place on traditional lands, the FPA recounts the case of Kapatlap village on Salawati island. The village community intended to build a new church but had no funds and could only obtain money by finding a logging investor. The local district officer of Samate, Abdullah Fattah, sent a request to his boss Regent Wanane, who issued permits for four landowning families to each exploit 100 hectares of forest, the maximum size permissible under government regulations. The concession was picked up by PT Wahana Papua, an Indonesian company of Malaysian-Chinese investors. The company entered a contract with the village to pay the landowners Rp30,000 ($3.50) for each cubic meter of high quality timber. According to the FPA, the company ended up taking 14,000 cubic meters of logs from an area much larger than the concession of 4x100 hectares. The company is estimated to have sold the timber for $150 per cubic meter, while the village ended up with its new church (generously valued at Rp150 million) and an outboard engine. Each of the landowners reportedly received an initial payment of an outboard engine and Rp15 million in cash.
"Such appalling discrepancy between the mean income for the traditional forest owners and the entire community on the one hand side, and the profit made by the logging company, on the other side, is standard practice," says the FPA. "In quite a few cases companies not even fulfilled their contracts – knowing too well how little power and legal means the villages possess," it adds. For so many Papuans, who have for centuries lived from the forests, the increased presence of Indonesian soldiers in their province does not bode for a promising future.