Muhibar Sobary Ardan, Muara Kate, Indonesia – More than eight months after the bloody killing of an Indigenous elder in eastern Borneo, police in Indonesia have yet to name a suspect, while community leaders in the country's coal heartland continue to demand justice.
"Our concern is that the problem hasn't been resolved," Yusuf, a community leader, told Mongabay in the hamlet of Muara Kate, in East Kalimantan province, following a visit by Indonesia's vice president in June.
Dayak elder Khahirnawati and Yusuf, her husband, explained the troubling chronology to Gibran Rakabuming Raka as Indonesia's vice president sat cross-legged on the veranda of their home during the visit on June 14.
Tensions in the community are running high because of the heavy coal trucks passing through from a nearby mine. In October last year, a coal truck failed to power its way up Mount Merangit, a short walk from the home of Khahirnawati and Yusuf. The truck stalled, rolled backward, and crushed a young motorcyclist behind it.
The victim, named Veronika, was a trainee pastor with the Protestant Church of Western Indonesia (GPIB in Indonesian). She died at the scene. She had ordained in the church less than a year earlier.
Yusuf recalled that none of the dozens of other coal trucks in the convoy had stopped at the scene. Instead, they drove past Veronika's body, inflaming tensions further with the population in Muara Kate.
Prosecutors in Paser district have filed criminal charges against the coal hauler. However, the local community took matters further immediately after the accident by blockading access to all coal trucks, citing rules enacted by the government of East Kalimantan province.
The community in Muara Kate kept vigil every night following Veronika's death, with many attributing blame to the coal industry.
On the 27th night of that vigil, unknown assailants approached the guard post established by the community and cut the throat of Rusel, an elder from the Dayak community. Another man, Anson, survived the attack and was photographed dazed and bloodied.
Police disclosed that both men were asleep at the time of the attack, around 4:30 a.m. Rusel, who was 59, was buried beneath a simple cross under a timber shelter in Muara Kate.
Test of institutions
The killing of environmental defenders in Indonesia remains relatively uncommon compared with Southeast Asian neighbors like the Philippines, where impunity for the political violence deployed by elites has proved familiar.
But observers have long warned of democracy in decline in Indonesia since the election of Joko Widodo as president in 2014.
Three environmental defenders were recorded killed in relation to their work in Indonesia in 2023, compared with 17 in the Philippines, according to Global Witness, an international nonprofit that tracks killings of environmental protectors.
The coal truck that killed Veronika was reportedly owned by PT Mantimin Coal Mining (MCM), a controversial mining firm that was the subject of a 2018 Mongabay report.
The Samarinda Legal Aid Institute (LBH in Indonesian), a civil society organization, has said the company's hauling activities are in violation of a 2012 regulation enacted by the East Kalimantan provincial government meant to restrict roads passable by extractive and plantation industry logistics.
"Based on these legal provisions, we at LBH Samarinda take the view that the activities carried out by the Muara Kate community are a form of resistance against the environmental crisis," Fathul Huda Wiyashadi, a lawyer at the institute, told Indonesian daily Kompas last year.
Abriantinus, chair of a Dayak customary council in Balikpapan, the largest city in East Kalimantan province, said last November that the failure to resolve the murder in court could be a "ticking time bomb" for community relations.
The East Kalimantan province police chief, Endar Priantoro, told Mongabay Indonesia in June that residents had pressed officials to resolve both outstanding cases: the death of Veronika and the killing of Rusel. Prosecutors are seeking a three-year prison term for the suspect in Veronika's death, Endar added.
"It's a decision for the court," said Endar, who took over as provincial police chief in March, four months after Rusel's killing.
In the latter case, he added, police have interviewed 36 witnesses and have sent samples for forensics testing to a lab in laboratory in Surabaya, on the island of Java.
"We will do our best, using all means," Endar said. "And we ask for your support."
International implications
Paser district, where Muara Kate is located, is among the highest-ranking districts for coal output in a country that produced 831 million metric tons of thermal coal in 2024, an all-time high.
The 2018 Mongabay report on Indigenous Dayak opposition to MCM operating in the area near Muara Kate disclosed that the company was majority-owned by a notorious Indian infrastructure development group.
MCM received an exploration permit in 2008, which enabled the Indonesian owners of the company to flip it to PT Bangun Asia Persada (BAP), a holding company registered to a small apartment on a thoroughfare in downtown Jakarta.
At the time, the MCM concession was the sole Indonesian asset under an Indian development organization that became the focus one of India's largest financial scandals.
BAP was the Indonesia unit of Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS), a development company founded in 1987 by a heavyweight trio of India's largest asset manager, its biggest mortgage lender, and the oldest private bank owned by Indian nationals.
This tie-up afforded IL&FS investment-grade clout to bankroll and construct a string of expressways and energy projects.
However, in 2018 the Indian government took the extraordinary step of appointing a new board as the company's debt payments surged on liabilities exceeding $12 billion. The government said its actions were taken to "protect the public interest" amid fears of contagion in the wider banking system.
In 2019, serious fraud investigators arrested IL&FS's former chair and managing director for allegedly authorizing lines of credit to non-creditworthy businesses – as well as new loans to pay down existing debt, a process known as "evergreening" that can hide financial ill health.
IL&FS once described itself in assured terms, writing on its website that it was "widely acknowledged as the pioneer of Public Private Partnership in India."
"IL&FS has turned infrastructure building into a sustainable and commercially viable proposition," IL&FS described itself on its website.
The masthead of the IL&FS website today states simply: "Resolving India's Biggest Financial Crisis."
Among the assets IL&FS has sought to dump amid one of the largest restructurings in Indian corporate history is its Borneo coal mine near Muara Kate.
Documents showed MCM remained on the books of an IL&FS subsidiary until at least 2023, as management resisted creditor attempts to wind up a subsidiary in Singapore that owned the Indonesian holding company.
In November 2023, IL&FS published advertisements in Indian newspapers seeking expression of interest in assets under its IL&FS Tamil Nadu Power Company Limited division.
A company prospectus showed that MCM remained an IL&FS asset at that time.
The South Kalimantan-based Hasnur Group, the largest company in the province, had divested its 5% stake in MCM by 2018, Hasnur told Mongabay in 2018.
The case continues
In January, the chief detective of the Paser district police said officers had questioned local organizations involved in coal hauling, as well as staff from MCM.
It remains unclear the extent to which the company remains active in South Kalimantan.
In 2019, Indonesia's Supreme Court canceled an MCM permit in the Meratus Mountains, citing the importance of the karst aquifer to the landscape.
An appeal against that decision was rejected in 2021, and today the company finds itself part of a different investigation.
A day after Indonesia's vice president visited the community here, the East Kalimantan provincial government announced that MCM would be banned from using the public road that passed Muara Kate. Company trucks would instead have to use a haulage road routed through South Kalimantan province.
Al Muktabar, an aide to the vice president, said during the June 14 visit that officials would work "to ensure a harmonious economic system that is expected to run smoothly."
"We are committed to uncovering this case," Endar, the police chief, told Mongabay.
However, police have yet to name a suspect in Rusel's killing, more than eight months after the attack. There's no evidence of involvement by anyone connected with PT Mantimin Coal Mining. The company could not be reached for comment.
"The murderer hasn't been revealed," Yusuf told Mongabay in Muara Kate. "That is still bothering us."