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