Those deemed the most dangerous to the State remain incarcerated. There are three categories of prisoners the government is opposed to releasing. They are the G30S/PKI prisoners [relating to the 1965/66 events]; those opposed to the state ideology of Pancasila and those inthe air pollution has been accompanied by early warnings of famine conditions in parts of East Kalimantan and a full blown famine in West Papua (Irian Jaya). B. Skanthakumar
In 1997 two million hectares of forest and non-forest lands were burned mainly by plantation companies and logging concessions in the Indonesian provinces of Kalimantan and Sumatra (International Viewpoint #295 December 1997), leaving an incalculable human, animal and environmental disaster in its wake.
This year new fires have been detected and old ones reignited in a rerun of last year and with the same underlying causes but far more serious consequen-
The tell tale smog which chokes the air and all who breathe it has been experienced by hundreds of thousands of people across Borneo and caused air pollution warnings as far afield as Singapore but not so far affecting Java.
Of the 176 companies identified last year as starting fires, only a handful had their licenses revoked and most of these were restored upon "further investigation" by the Forestry department. Thus no company has been punished and fined for its actions encouraging the culture of impunity that exists among these
No wonder that with plummeting revenues and the reduced value of their asset holdings owing to the depreciation of the rupiah and the wider economic crisis, many companies have intensified their unsustainable exploitation of the land by lighting new fires to clear more land without any fear of legal penalties.
Instead soldiers victimise indigenous communities who 'slash and burn, prewoman told The Guardian (23rd March
The Indonesian military which is the only state agency which has the human, technical and financial resources to do fire-fighting work is used instead to suppress popular protest and maintain in place the existing regime.
The only guarantee to put out the fires for good and revive the agrarian economy are the rains. And the monsoon
Meanwhile in West Papua (Irian Jaya), which was annexed by Indonesia in the 1960s, famine is killing thousands of
Last year's drought blamed on the El Niño weather pattern decimated food crops like sweet potato, dried up rivers and pools depriving villagers of drinking water and fish and killed livestock
Malaria deaths are on the increase as the Indonesian military forcibly move highland villagers to lowland areas in counter-insurgency operations against the separatist Free Papua Movement (OPM) and so they can profit from gold, timber and other natural resources in those areas in collaboration with the Freeport-Rio Tinto copper and gold
This combination of malnutrition and malaria has weakened the population and its ability to plant new crops let alone harvest them and to find alternative foods in the meantime. So there has been a sharp increase in reported
Many villages can only be reached by helicopter or small aircraft and food and medical supplies have been pitifully small in a province from which the media is excluded and relief agencies operate on the whim of the military high comvolved in armed rebellion and related venting them from planting new crops mand.
"criminal acts"
Twenty-five thousand people face severe yet to admit to the scale of the suffering
They include ex-P.KI members such as
Colonel Latief Tone of the key surviving actors in the September 30th 1965 putsch which provided the excuse for Suharto's coup d'état], the resistance leader Xanana
Gusmao and 120 other East Timorese, 24 and scapegoating them for the fires.
food shortages in East Kalimantan as
95% of this year's rice crop has failed
The Indonesian regime in Jakarta has and need and therefore to adequately respond to it; further evidence that its oc-