A House of Representatives' proposal to grant universities mineral and coal mining concessions seeks to make the institutions complicit in environmentally and socially harmful mining practices and stifle dissent from academics, activists say.
Indonesian Climate Justice Literacy founder Firdaus Cahyadi said on Friday that higher education institutions that accepted mining concessions would be more likely to promote discourse that justified or normalized destructive mining practices.
The House of Representatives Legislation Body (Baleg) held a series of meetings in Jakarta on Monday, as lawmakers were on an official recess, to discuss a revision to Law No. 4/2009 on minerals and coal.
The lawmakers discussed a stipulation that would make higher education institutions of at least B-level accreditation eligible to receive expedited mining licenses.
In May of last year, then-president Joko "Jokowi" Widodo issued a regulation permitting business entities owned by religious organizations to receive expedited mining licenses "to improve the people's welfare".
"The political elites who are granting mining concessions to religious organizations and universities seem to be giving them to these two [types of] institutions, which are symbols of morality and knowledge, to fool the public about mining's destructive power," Firdaus went on to say, as quoted by Kompas. Morning Brief Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning.
Baleg agreed on Monday to proceed with discussions on the revisions to the mining law.
On Wednesday, the body continued the meetings, this time with representatives of religious organizations Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, as well as the Association of Indonesian Nickel Miners (APNI) and the Indonesian Forum for Environment (Walhi). Walhi "strongly rejected" the revision.
If university scholars were made dependent on income from dirty mining practices, "how can we expect them to express clean thoughts?" Mukri asked at Wednesday's meeting, before urging the House to drop the revision.
NU executive board head Abshar Abdalla said the group would not ask for concessions for NU-affiliated universities.
"I assure you, we will not ask for concessions for NU universities because we want to focus first on working on the concessions that have been given to us," he said during the livestreamed meeting.
The lawmakers also discussed a plan to grant local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) mining concessions.