Malaysian timber barons involved in Papua forest looting

Ridwan Max Sijabat The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Ecologists have called on president-in-waiting Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to take emergency measures to terminate rapid deforestation in the country's easternmost province of Papua.

John Handol M.L., spokesman for an alliance of local environmental groups, said here on Thursday that many Malaysian timber barons, who corrupted senior government and security officials to plunder the tropical forest in the province, have smuggled around 200,000 cubic meters of illegal logs from the province to China and India through the Southern Philippines.

"The smuggling has gone on for nine months. It has involved local loggers and been backed by politicians from Jakarta and security officials from the Navy and the National Police," Handol said in a press briefing to announce the results of their investigation into the smuggling of illegal logs from Papua.

Handol, also coordinator of the environmental group Aliansi, said the timber mafia had used this year's elections to shield illegal logging activities from the public's attention.

He explained that the modus operandi of the illegal loggers was simple, as they were paid cash by timber barons to log virgin forest under "the custody" of security personnel from the local Navy command and local police units.

"We have the names of several Malaysian timber barons, known to be powerful and untouchable in Papua as they have paid local security authorities to guard them and their business," he said, citing those names as William Wong, Budi, Patrick Cong, A Hong and Joe Sorong.

According to the press statement, the illegal logs were shipped with fake documents from Papua New Guinea (GNP) through Mali in the Southern Philippines to China and Indonesia, two major countries believed to have supplied illegal logs from Indonesia.

"The fake documents are used to deceive port authorities, Indonesia's patrol ships and the police, they state that the logs were taken from PNG forests," he said.

The timber barons have used many Thai flag-carrier vessels MV Natcha Naree, MV Ranbow Spring, KM Bulu Kumba, MV Porto Cayo, MV Mexico and KM Gunung Damai to transport the illegal logs and their crew who are mostly Chinese and Thais.

Handol said much of Papua's forest would be gone within a few years, unless the illegal logging activities were halted.

The ecologists said the timber barons had emerged as a powerful and dangerous threat as they had begun to log the forests of Sumatra and Kalimantan.

At a meeting to present videos and photographs, which they say points to a "timber mafia" backed by security forces and top politicians, the ecologists called on the next government to halt illegal logging.

"The national parks have been invaded by loggers paid by big timbers barons, this is organized crime," Dave Currey of the British Environmental Investigation Agency, told AFP before the presentation of the new evidence here on Wednesday.

The agency, working with a coalition of local groups, hopes the photos and films depicting the destruction of forests across the archipelago will help spur the country's next president to take action.

Indonesia is estimated to be losing nearly two million hectares of forests annually -- an area half the size of Switzerland -- up from one million hectares in the 1980s. Forested area decreased from 162 million hectares in 1950 to only 98 million hectares in 2000.

Despite the new evidence, Indonesia's environmental groups say they are powerless to stop one of the world's largest expanses of forest, after Brazil, from vanishing, because of the level of corruption.

"The rate of deforestation keeps increasing. We are running out of time," said Togu Manurung of Forest Watch Indonesia. "There is no proper law enforcement because of corruption. It is the core problem."

Manurung said the Army and police were in many cases involved in tree felling in certain areas, adding that up to 80 percent of Indonesian wood sold in Western countries came from illegal trade.

Arbi Valentinus of environmental group Telepak said several senior government figures were widely known to be involved in the illegal logging but were untouchable by law enforcers.

"The biggest barons walk free. They maintain and build corruption, from the regions up to the central government," Valentinus said.