INDONESIA: Papuan tribes are to be driven out to make room for oil-palm plantations

Burning forests, smouldering tree-stumps, heavy bulldozers to prepare the scorched land for the oil plantations… Where a short time ago Papua tribes lived in harmony with nature, today oil-palm plantations are being laid out. They are seen as ecologically „particularly valuable”, are being subsidised by the state and are to be used as providers of raw materials for combined heating and power stations to quieten our climate consciences. However for the native inhabitants of the west of the island of New Guinea they mean extinction. {bild1}

20 million hectares of forest threatened with clearance by fire

In West Papua and Borneo huge areas have already been changed into oil-palm plantations. Indonesian human rights organisations declare that these plantations are not only the cause of forest clearance and forest fires, but also of the increasing contamination of the water and land and of a rise in the number of conflicts over land rights. In the past three years alone 350 conflicts over land for new oil-plantations have been registered.

Indonesia is now planning a huge new project: 20 million hectares of rain forest are to be cleared to raise the national oil-palm production 43-fold. Chinese and Malay investors are among those intending to set up in West Papua several large plantations, each of which encompassing one million hectares. The consequence would be that hundreds of Papuan tribes in the west of the island of New Guinea would lose their entire means of subsistence.

Victims of suppression for decades: Papuan tribes in New Guinea

The several hundred Papuan tribes in the west of the island of New Guinea have been fighting for more than 40 years for the independence of West Papua. Some 200,000 Papuans have in this period been the victims of the Indonesian crimes of genocide.

Massive violations of human rights continue up to the present day. The number of Indonesian soldiers stationed there, who can do what they please without any real fear of sanctions and some of whom who are actively involved in illegal mining operations, is continually rising. Anyone calling for land-rights or standing up against the exploitation of the raw materials by international companies risks being arrested.

It looks as though the palm-oil boom will increase the suppression, for it is making West Papua a much more profitable place for Indonesia.

Europe blind to the problem of palm-oil

In many European countries the demand for cheap palm-oil from South-east Asia is rising sharply. Thus Italy for example is jumping on the palm-oil band-wagon and the markets for environmental technology and renewable energy are booming just as in Germany. Combined heating and power stations fired by cheap palm-oil are being built everywhere. In Switzerland too the demand for bio-diesel and palm-oil is rising – although things are looking better on the bottom line. At least half of the 17,000 tons of palm-oil which is imported annually is certified as sustainable by environmental and social minimal standards. {bild3}

Austria appears to be particularly blind to the problems of the Indonesian palm-oil production. It has been reported in the press that Austria made an agreement with Indonesia a few weeks ago concerning the sale of eleven Austrian bio-diesel installations. Thanks to Austrian know-how about 1.3 thousand million litres of bio-diesel – chiefly from palm-oil – are to be produced by 2010 for the domestic fuel market.

Germany is meanwhile the fourth largest importer of palm-oil in the world. Particularly bitter is the fact that the run on the Indonesian rain-forest is partially financed by the German tax-payer. Every year the operators of the power stations using palm-oil receive some 200 million euros in subsidies in accordance with the law on renewable energy (EEG). The price for the fact that we can with a good conscience drive with „environmentally friendly” diesel and can use „environmentally friendly” electricity is being paid by thousands of indigenous people who are losing their inherited habitat.

Please call on the Minister of the Environment, Sigmar Gabriel, to make sure that in power stations subsidised by the government not palm-oil but sustainable domestic raw materials are used and that the law on renewable energy (EEG) is changed accordingly!

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