More illegal logs seized in Sumatra, Sulawesi waters
Fadli and Andi Hajramurni, The Jakarta Post, Tanjung Karimun/Makassar
Government officials have again confiscated thousands of undocumented logs from several ships in the waters off Sumatra and Sulawesi.
Lt. Col. Bambang Wahyudi, the chief of Tanjung Balai Karimun Naval Base, announced on Wednesday that Navy personnel had apprehended the Sandi Dewa Samudera boat carrying over 2,500 logs of meranti early on Tuesday morning. The boat was arrested, while sailing in the waters off Tanjung Balai Karimun regency in Riau Islands province.
During the arrest, the boat captain earlier claimed that the logs, which were said to be on the way to Jambi province, were documented logs. But, after a thorough check, it was discovered that the types, the weight and the volume of the logs were different from what was stated in the ship's manifest, explained Bambang. He added that nine boat crew members were arrested after the irregularities came to light.
In the past week alone, the Navy has apprehended four boats carrying thousands of undocumented logs.
Separately, a similar seizure occurred on Tuesday night by officials from the South Sulawesi provincial forestry agency. The forestry agents were holding several crew members for questioning after the Padaidi Putra ship was found carrying 150 undocumented logs while docked in Paotera port in Makassar. Khairuddin, an official with the forestry office, said that the office was still investigating the case.
The series of arrests of crew members and their ships carrying illegal logs was intensified nationwide after two environmental groups published a high-profile report in February, which documented the smuggling of about 300,000 cubic meters of timber a month from Indonesia, mostly Papua province, to China.
The report, entitled The Last Frontier, revealed the largest timber smuggling case of a single species ever discovered, an operation estimated to be worth more than US$900 million a year.
The exhaustive paper, prepared by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and its Indonesian counterpart, the environmental group Telapak, alleged that the operation was supported and managed by high-ranking Indonesian Military officers, government officials, businessmen and the police.
Soon after the report's release, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called for a nationwide, integrated crackdown against the illegal loggers. The crackdown has resulted in the arrest of at least 105 illegal logging suspects in Papua alone, some of them police and military officers.