Integrated agency to deal with environmental crimes

Integrated agency to deal with environmental crimes

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The National Police, the Attorney General's Office and the Office
of the State Minister for the Environment supported on Friday a
call to establish an integrated agency to supervise, investigate,
and prosecute cases of environment law violation.

Sudarsono of the Office of the State Ministry for the
Environment, Yuzyar Yahya of the Attorney General's Office, and
Brig. Jen. Edi Darnadi of the National Police, agreed that such
an agency could help overhaul the current ineffective mechanism
for dealing with environmental crimes.

"We are supporting an integrated system to handle environment
cases... It's OK if our prosecutors are borrowed by the agency,"
said Yushar, pre-prosecution director in the Attorney General's
Office, at a seminar held by the Indonesian Center for
Environment Law (ICEL).

Edi, head of the National Police's special crimes division,
said such an integrated agency could help unify perceptions and
action among officials from the environment department, the
police and prosecutors.

Mas Ahmad Santosa, an ICEL senior counsel, hoped that the
support to establish an integrated agency would be enshrined in a
Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

"The State Minister for the Environment, Nabiel Makarim, and
National Police chief Da'i Bachtiar must sign an MoU on the
integrated agency," he said.

It was the ICEL that first proposed the idea of establishing
such an agency.

He said Canada had been successful in implementing such an
approach to the handling of environmental crimes.

Without such an agency, environmental crimes would end up
being treated differently by the environment department, police
and Attorney General's Office, he said.

For example, state prosecutors have recently demanded that a
number of dredgers allegedly involved in the smuggling of sand
from Riau to Singapore pay fines of Rp 30 million for each
vessel, although their operations caused billions of rupiah in
damage to the environment.

Last month, the National Police also issued an order halting
an investigation into PT Maspion in Sidoarjo, East Java, which
was accused of polluting the environment with hazardous waste.

The police argued that they could not continue the pollution
investigation as the case occurred before the issuance of Law No.
23/1997 on the environment.

State Minister Nabiel was reportedly disappointed with the
police decision to stop the investigation into Maspion.

"These are only few examples that show how poorly
environmental crimes are handled here," he said.

Ahmad also said ICEL had proposed five options to the Supreme
Court for improving the prevailing mechanisms for the prosecution
of environmental violations.

Among the options were that judges be trained in environment
law, and environmental problems and solution, the establishment
of an ad hoc court, the setting up of a special court chamber for
environmental matters, and the setting up of a special court
similar to the State Administrative Court.