Monthly Archives: June 2015

Mairisi and Miere Tribes: We won’t sell our land

In mid-April 2015, the Wondama Bay Regency government and the Environment Management Board gathered community representatives from the Mairasi, Miere and Wamesa tribes, who live in villages around Naikere, Kuriwamesa and Rasiei (all in Wondama Bay Regency) for a meeting in the Rasiei District Office meeting room. From the meeting’s outset, the community didn’t particularly […]

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Minister announces 500,000 hectare new sugar plantations in Merauke, Aru, SE Sulawesi.

Officials in Jakarta can’t seem to stop making pronouncements promising vast new agricultural expansion along the eastern frontier of the Indonesian state. In May President Joko Widodo announced 1.2 million hectares of rice fields to be developed in three years in the Merauke area of West Papua. Now his agricultural minister, Amran Sulaiman, has apparently […]

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Malind Ezam tribal chief: Disappointed by government, wants to give back Kalpataru prize.

Amandus Yoliw Kaize, A Malind tribal chief from the Ezam group in Kaisa Village, Malind District, Merauke, wrote to President Joko Widodo on 18th April 2015 and sent Pusaka a copy in early June. The letter concerned a report of a land grab. In the letter, Amandus reported his problems with an oil palm plantation […]

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Protest against PT Papua Power Indonesia, developer of Urumuka hydropower station

The article below from Majalah Selangkah describes a a protest in Deiyai Regency against a company called PT Papua Power Indonesia ((actually in the article it is referred to as Power Papua Indonesia, which has been corrected here)), but doesn’t mention what the company is actually doing in the region. In fact it is the […]

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Felda Global Ventures buys Rajawali’s Sugar Operations, 37% of all Plantations.

Malaysian company Felda Global Ventures has finalised a deal to buy 37% of PT Eagle High Plantations Tbk, the plantation company in which the Rajawali Group held the controlling stake. The company was created last year after Rajawali’s reverse takeover of BW Plantations. It’s a huge deal. Felda Global Ventures claims to be the world’s […]

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What the Kamoro are opposing: briefing on planned industrial developments for Timika

The Kamoro indigenous people living near Poumako port, Timika have had to live with the effects of toxic tailings from the Freeport mine for decades. Now that a plan has emerged to build a smelter to process the copper and gold the mine produces, they have stated that enough is enough, and have held a […]

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Kamoro People Resist Freeport Smelter Development on their Ancestral Land

PT Freeport Indonesia is planning to build a smelter in Mimika, in Papua, but this plan has met with opposition from the Kamoro indigenous people because their ancestral land will become even more polluted by the company’s waste. Their environment has already been destroyed by mine tailings from Freeport’s ongoing operation. And the plans are […]

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The people of Nikiwar object to PT Berkat Setiakawan Abadi’s plans.

In early 2014 the Forestry ministry gave permission to release 8937.39 hectares of land from the state forest estate to PT Berkat Setiakawan Abadi (BSA) for a rubber plantaion near Werabur, Weianggi and Kurei villages in Nikiwar District, Wondama Bay Regency, West Papua Province. In 2008, local people had already rejected PT BSA, which is […]

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