MPI's TV advert

MPI's TV advert

In Europe, MPI's highly controversial TV adverts are likely to
be a prolonged disgrace for Indonesia over the question of the
sustainable management of the country's rain forests. The Dutch
independent advertising committee (RCC) decide on Oct. 12, 1994
to suspend MPI's adverts in the Netherlands, due to formal
complaints from numerous environmental, human rights and
developmental organizations.

SKEPHI Support Office, an independent work group of SKEPHI in
the Netherlands, has sent out a press release concerning RCC's
decision. It has been widely distributed to the Indonesian press.
The release mainly calls on the Indonesian government, as well as
to the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR), to intervene
and prohibit such adverts in the future, since they would further
jeopardize the sincere effort in sustainable forest management
undertaken by the Forestry ministry.

MPI's aggressive and highly manipulative adverts have had an
international history dating back to 1990. MPI's adverts in
international newspapers at that time, such as The New York
Times, cost approximately US$ 50,000 and claimed that there was
143 million hectares of Indonesian rain forest remaining. This
was deceit. Internal ministerial forestry documents and respected
international agencies concluded that much less remained: 86
million hectares.

MPI and IMPACT in Jakarta, and the advertising distributing
company Mediacom International in London, were given two weeks to
appeal against the Dutch ban. The RCC has informed us that MPI
just submitted their request. Instead of two weeks, MPI requested
20 days to prepare their appeal.

Staff and members of SKEPHI Support Office were relieved to
read Forestry Minister Djamaluddin's statement in this newspaper
(Oct. 13, 1994), admitting some of the misleading information
conveyed by MPI's adverts and the ongoing ban of the advert in
Japan. It can be concluded that the ministry has begun to take a
stance amid inconvenient advertising affecting Indonesia
internationally.

The decision by MPI to appeal against the RCC ban is unwise
because many more organizations will be submitting their second
phase complaints to the RCC. We appeal again to members of DPR to
intervene to save Indonesia's image internationally.

HASJRUL JUNAID

Rain forest Campaigner

SKEPHI Support Office

Amsterdam

The Netherlands