16 held over plan to reopen pulp plant

16 held over plan to reopen pulp plant

JAKARTA: Sixteen protesters are under arrest and around 500
have fled a town in the Indonesian province of North Sumatra amid
controversial plans to reopen a polluting pulp plant, police and
a human rights lawyer said on Sunday.

Police arrested 21 people and are still holding 16 after a
protest on Thursday against the reopening of the plant, which was
closed in 1999 following years of often violent protests that it
was damaging the environment.

"There are still 16 people detained and two others have
already been released," a duty officer of the North Tapanuli
district police force in Tarutung, North Sumatra, said on Sunday.

The policeman, who identified himself only as Barus, said the
men were arrested following a protest in front of the Porsea sub-
district administration on Thursday which lead to the office
being damaged.

He declined to give more details.

Lawyer and human rights activist Johnson Panjaitan said
hundreds of people had fled Porsea for the district town of
Tarutung because the police, backed by the elite Brimob unit and
soldiers, were terrorizing locals who oppose the reopening.

"What is taking place in Porsea smacks of the New Order
(former president Suharto's rule) with state terrorism returning
to the stage," Panjaitan, of the Jakarta-based Indonesian
Association for Legal Aid and Human Rights, told AFP.

The protest on Thursday followed news that the government
wanted to reopen PT Inti Indorayon (IIU), closed down in 1999
following increasingly violent protests, under a new name, PT
Toba Lestari Indah.

IIU was closed down after years of protest and violence, often
deadly, with the local population accusing the plant of damaging
the environment. --AFP