Fidelis E Satriastanti & Budi Otmansyah – Eleven foreign nationals will be deported and 21 Indonesians have been charged by police following a Greenpeace action at a large pulp and paper concession in Riau that resulted in a giant Finnish paper company halting the purchase of pulp from the concessionaire.

Ari Rahman Nafarin, head of the Pelalawan district police, said the 11 foreign activists – from Spain, the Philippines, Thailand, Brazil, and Germany – had been handed over to the Department of Immigration for deportation.

The 21 local activists have been charged with defamation but have been released subject to regular reports to the police.

On Thursday, 50 Greenpeace activists rallied at a tract of forest in Riau's Kampar Pensinsula that was recently cleared by PT Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper, a subsidiary of the Asia Pacific Resources International Holding (April). They installed a large banner that read "Obama, You Can Stop This." Some chained themselves to excavators owned by the company.

Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace Southeast Asia's rainforest campaigner, on Friday said Finnish company UPM-Kymmene Group had decided to cancel purchases from Riau Andalan as a result.

Bustar said Greenpeace estimates that UPM-Kymmene, which supplies paper products to the global market, including the United States, China, Europe and Australia, has a contract with April worth more than $55 million per year – more than 4 percent of April's total pulp production.

"We consider [the paper company's decision] a good side-effect of our actions because it means there is increased awareness of the destruction taking place in this area," he said, adding that the information had come from Greenpeace in Finland.

However, Bustar said the main objective of the campaign was to push the government to review all concessions rights, a major contributor to the destruction of peatland in Sumatra.

The concession, covering almost all of Kampar's 400,000 hectares, mostly vulnerable peatland, is being logged to make way for acacia plantations to feed the world's demand for paper.