Paper industry accused of rights abuses

Paper industry accused of rights abuses

Agencies, New York/Jakarta

Indonesia's booming paper industry is responsible for widespread attacks on indigenous communities in Sumatra, said a Human Rights Watch report released Monday.

The New York-based watchdog said police are helping suppress protests against the seizure of forest land.

Land seizures and "brutal" assaults on local residents were commonplace and the human rights group urged international donors to Indonesia to pressure Jakarta into taking action.

The Consultative Group on Indonesia, a major donor meeting convened by the World Bank, is scheduled for later this month in Bali.

"Donors should urge President Megawati Soekarnoputri and her government to take immediate steps to end these abuses," said Mike Jendrzejczyk, Washington director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division.

"They should also call for longer-term measures to curb the problems of impunity and land confiscation underlying conflicts in the paper industry," Jendrzejczyk said.

Indonesia's pulp and paper industry has rapidly expanded since the late 1980s to become one of the world's top 10 producers.

But the industry has accumulated debts of more than US$20 billion and Human Rights Watch said expanding demand was consuming wide swathes of Sumatra's lowland tropical forests.

Much of the land is claimed by indigenous communities, who depend on it for rice farming and rubber tapping.

"The loss of access to forests, together with companies' hiring from outside the province, has been devastating to local livelihoods, leading to violent conflicts," the 90-page report said.

The report detailed cases where protesting local residents had been attacked by club-wielding militias paid by the paper companies.

The report, for instance, singled out Indonesia's largest pulp producer Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) for being "complicit" in a string of bloody attacks by security forces on villagers demonstrating against logging activities by APP and its forestry unit, Arara Abadi.

"APP and its sister company Arara Abadi have been complicit in human rights abuses," the report said. "They also benefited from state security forces that intimidated, harassed, and assaulted villagers who opposed the company's operations and its acquisition of land."

"The acquiescence of state security forces and, sometimes, their direct assistance in the company militia attacks has meant that villagers have nowhere to go for help," said Jendrzejczyk.

"The lack of rule of law and spiraling rural violence threatens not only the well-being of rural communities, but also foreign investment and national economic growth," he added.

A spokesman for Indonesia's Sinar Mas Group, which controls APP, said he was unaware of the Human Rights Watch report.

The land disputes are likely to complicate the Singapore-based company's efforts to restructure its US$13.9 billion debt with international creditors, the group said.