Bill Guerin – Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono this week pledged an "integrated crackdown" on military and police personnel and officials from the ministries of forestry and immigration suspected of involvement in the world's biggest timber trafficking racket.
The crackdown comes hot on the heels of a report by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and the Indonesian non-governmental organization Telapak that shows that Indonesia, which has the world's worst deforestation rate, is also the world's second-biggest exporter of illegal timber after Russia. The region's booming economic giant, China, has become the world's largest buyer of illegal timber.
The report, "The Last Frontier", said that around 2.3 million cubic meters of Indonesian timber were smuggled onto the Chinese market last year. The report accused the Indonesian defense forces (TNI) and government officials of smuggling 300,000 cubic meters of merbau timber every month, valued at US$1 billion, from Papua to China to feed the timber processing industry there.
Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban, National Police Chief General Dai Bachtiar, Home Affairs Minister Muhammad Maruf, operations assistant to the TNI chief Major General Adam Damiri, and the director general of immigration, Imam Santoso, were all summoned to an unscheduled meeting with the president on Tuesday.
Under ex-president Suharto's New Order regime, Indonesia's tropical forests were exploited to the hilt to reap as much foreign exchange as possible. Little has changed, except that the forests have been further depleted and the huge timber profits now go to international syndicates and not to the state.
Some 30 million cubic meters of logs are smuggled overseas annually, causing the state to suffer losses of about Rp40 trillion ($4.3 billion), according to the Forestry Ministry.
More than 70% of the country's original frontier forests have been lost, and an area the size of Switzerland is cut down every year. Illegal logging is said to have destroyed 10 million hectares (2.47 million acres).
The increasing degradation of the region's forests to meet China's demand is hardly surprising. Mainland China consumes nearly 280 million cubic meters of timber a year, but its domestic capacity is barely half of this. Imports and illegal logging make up for the shortfall.
Papua quickly became the new target for logging barons as forests in East Kalimantan province and Sumatra had been plundered through huge logging operations over the past decade.
The sparsely populated province, formerly known as Irian Jaya, covers an area nearly the size of France and forms the western part of the island of New Guinea, which, with intact forest cover at around 70%, contains the last substantial tracts of undisturbed forest in the Asia-Pacific region.
"Our research shows trade in merbau between Papua and China is being controlled by a few people, a few syndicates, so it's the biggest sort of smuggling racket in terms of the volume and value of the timber being smuggled," said Julian Newman, a senior investigator with the EIA.
Indonesia has banned the export of unprocessed lumber, and in December 2002 signed a memorandum of understanding with China to take steps to regulate timber imports by preventing illegal logging. But three years of investigations revealed a network of middlemen and brokers responsible for arranging shipments of the illegally felled logs to China. The majority of merbau logs stolen from Papua were shipped to the Chinese port of Zhangjiagang, near Shanghai, which in just a few years has become a major log trading port.
Merbau is prized for its strength and durability and feeds the demand for hardwood flooring and garden furniture in China, one of the world's fastest-growing economies.
"Papua has become the main illegal logging hotspot in Indonesia," said Telapak's M Yayat Afianto. "The communities of Papua are paid a pittance for trees taken from their land, while timber dealers in Jakarta, Singapore and Hong Kong are banking huge profits."
"The profits are vast as local communities only receive around $10 for each cubic meter of merbau felled on their land, while the same logs are sold for as much as $270 per cubic meter in China," said the report. Each cubic meter of merbau, when made into 26 square meters of flooring, sells for nearly $2,000 in New York or London.
The rest of the profit goes to criminal logging syndicates that oversee the trade and pay bribes of about $200,000 per ship to get contraband logs out of the country and ensure they are not intercepted in Indonesian waters. The EIA/Telapak report said illegal logging in Papua involves collusion with the Indonesian military, the support of Malaysian logging gangs, and the exploitation of indigenous communities.
Kaban, from the Ministry of Forestry, also admitted that powerful businessmen, whom he described as "slippery as eels in a pond of lubricating oil", have involved civil servants in his ministry, as well as the police and the prosecutor's office, in illegal logging practices.
Kaban said his ministry had reported 59 businessmen allegedly involved in a wide range of illegal logging practices to the police and the prosecutor's office, but not a single case had been investigated. He said rampant illegal logging practices by such businessmen led to the rapid rate of destruction of the country's forests, including those in protected areas.
Kaban said EIA and Telapak had given the government names of 32 financiers of illegal logging operations in Papua and other provinces. Most were Malaysians. He was quoted as saying that, according to the president, "personnel of the eastern navy, the police in Papua, the Trikora Regional Military Command [based in Papua's provincial capital of Jayapura], local offices of the ministries of forestry and immigration in Papua, all have indications of being involved in illegal logging in Papua."
Corrupt police and military officers are bribed to allow illegal logging boats to sail from Indonesian waters and help cut deals with local communities to fell the timber and guard logging sites, the report said.
"There is a question mark over whether Indonesia's military is serious to stop its involvement," Arbi Valentinus, a spokesman for Telapak, said. The TNI have previously denied the institution was engaged in the trade, but conceded rogue elements could be taking part.
A former police chief of Sorong regency in Papua and five of his subordinates are on trial for illegal logging in the province and National Police Chief General Bachtiar has promised "shock therapy" for any police personnel suspected of involvement in illegal logging.
Illegal logging also exacerbates potentially deadly natural disasters, such as floods and landslides, and is killing many of Indonesia's endangered animal species, such as Sumatran tigers and orangutans. In November 2003 then-president Megawati Sukarnoputri ordered a drive to catch illegal loggers eight days after a flash flood blamed on deforestation killed at least 136 people at the resort town of Bahorok in North Sumatra.
Senior officials including Nabiel Makarim, environment minister at the time, said rampant illegal logging in the neighboring Gunung Leuser national park helped cause the disaster. Makarim denounced illegal loggers as terrorists and hit out at their protectors in the police and army. He promised a new law making the crime of illegal logging a capital offense. Forestry Minister Muhammad Prakosa ordered the reforestation of 300,000 hectares of land across the country.
Environmentalists criticized Kaban last year when he said he would probably revoke a proposed government regulation that would have meted out severe penalties to illegal loggers, while financiers of illegal logging would have faced the death sentence or life imprisonment.
Kaban told a hearing with parliament's Commission IV on forestry that the judiciary lacks the courage to tackle illegal logging and said he would prefer to deal with illegal logging "through consolidation and coordination between the Forestry Ministry, the police, the Attorney General's Office and the courts".
"Nobody engaged in illegal logging will be immune from the law," presidential spokesman Andi Mallarangeng quoted Yudhoyono as saying after the meeting on Tuesday. But environmentalists have said illegal logging bosses are virtually never prosecuted due to endemic corruption in the country's judicial system.
Corruption is said to be worst in the Attorney General's Office and among the national police, environmentalists say. Collusion between the military, police, state prosecutors and the courts are the main reasons why illegal logging bosses have so far gone unpunished in Indonesia.
Bill Guerin, a weekly Jakarta correspondent for Asia Times Online since 2000, has worked in Indonesia for 19 years in journalism and editorial positions. He has been published by the BBC on East Timor and specializes in business/economic and political analysis in Indonesia.