Monday, 30 March 2009

Government Mum On Rights Report

This article has direct relevance to the previous email. It is a safe bet that palm oil from West Kalimantan reaches the USA and will continue to do so unless someone there is concerned enough to take on this issue. No one is saying 'ban palm oil'. What is needed is fully sustainable palm oil.

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March 30, 2009

Ismira Lutfia. The Jakarta Globe

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has refused to respond to a United Nation’s report that states Jakarta’s failure to respect the rights of its indigenous peoples, arguing that it is under no obligation to do so.

The ministry also argued that there was no such thing as an indigenous person, as every Indonesian citizen was equal in the eyes of the Constitution.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in a letter to Indonesia’s Permanent Mission in Geneva, says it is “concerned” about the Indonesian government’s failure to respect the rights of indigenous people in their own forests and the increasing conflict between local people and palm oil plantations.

The letter said that the government also failed to provide information on the way it had followed up recommendations laid out by the committee in August 2007, despite being asked to do so within one year. The request was in response to a complaint from a coalition of nine local and one international nongovernmental organizations regarding a planned palm oil plantation project in West Kalimantan that threatened to encroach on local Dayak people’s land.

The UN letter also noted the “high number of conflicts arising each year throughout Indonesia between local communities and palm oil companies.”

Wiwiek Setyawati Firman, the ministry’s director for human rights and humanitarian affairs, rejected the UN’s process and said Indonesia had its own internal mechanism to deal with such issues, such as the National Commission on Human Rights.

Wiwiek also said that she had checked with the West Kalimantan administration, which said the project did not exist.

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/article/14709.html

Hall of Shame for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the Palm Oil Industry.

Nothing can prepare one for the sight of the systematic extermination of orangutans by the government of Indonesia.

Look at the photos and news articles on these pages in the context of a statement the President made to the media on 10th December 2007.

“In the last 35 years about 50,000 orangutans are estimated to have been lost as their habitats shrank. If this continues, this majestic creature will likely face extinction by 2050,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the launch of an orangutan conservation plan at the climate talks in Bali.

“The fate of the orangutan is a subject that goes to the heart of sustainable forests … To save the orangutan we have to save the forest.”

Statements like these are most welcome, but unless backed up by action, such words fall on deaf ears within the Ministry of Forestry....who are busy granting licences to cut down the very forests the President says they should protect!

When you think you are to busy to help, please could you reflect for a moment on .........

The following extract refers to environmental problems in general. I just hope you find it as thought provoking and relevant to orangutans as I have.

"This is such a shocking and unpalatable fact that most people deny it, or they just don't want to think about it. They believe as individuals, they can do little about it, so push it to the back of their minds. But I can't do that.

When something has to be done, we need to do it. It doesn't matter how big the challenge is or how hard the solution; if I know something is wrong, and I am in a position to help, I will do my best to make it right." Duncan Bannatyne, successful British businessman.