En koalition af 27 indonesiske og internationale NGO’er dokumenterer i en ny rapport, at et stort statsligt projekt i den indonesiske provins Papua har efterladt indfødte samfund afskåret fra deres traditionelle levebrød, skriver miljøsitet Mongabay.
Land grabs and environmental destruction linked to an agricultural megaproject in Indonesia’s Papua province are devastating indigenous communities and causing severe food shortages in some areas, alleges a coalition of NGOs.
Agro-industrial development in Papua, on the island of New Guinea, has left indigenous communities cut off from their traditional livelihoods and living in abject poverty, the coalition said in a report released on Monday calling for the suspension of the project.
In a submission to the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), a group of 27 Indonesian and international organizations documented numerous abuses against indigenous Malind communities linked to the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) project, an agro-industrial project covering an estimated 2.5 million hectares of customary land and forests in Indonesian New Guinea.
The submission calls on the UN committee to urge Indonesia to immediately suspend any part of the project that may put the Malind or other indigenous groups at risk and to provide support for affected communities.
Under the government-initiated MIFEE project, plantation and timber companies have acquired large swaths of customary Malind land without obtaining free, prior and informed consent and without providing adequate compensation to communities, the NGOs said in the submission.
Without access to their traditional lands, Malind communities have been left living in poverty. In the Zanegi and Baad villages near an industrial tree plantation operated by PT. Selaras Inti Semesta, a unit of Medco Group, the coalition reported acute hunger and chronic child malnutrition, including the deaths of five malnourished infants in the first half of 2013 alone.
“Disease and undernourishment are rampant,” said Sophie Chao, a project officer with the UK-based coalition member Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), who visiting Zanegi in May 2013. “[In] 2013 alone, five infants have died from malnutrition.”
“Generalised emaciation, water-related skin infections, infant and child lethargy and bloated stomachs are all flagrant evidence of the severe food insecurity faced by the community as a result of the loss of their customary lands and livelihoods to incoming investors,” Chao added, in a press statement released on Monday.
Yosefa, a 31-year-old Malind woman from Zanegi village, said the malnutrition problems began after the company arrived, causing pollution and ecological changes that destroyed food supplies in the village.
“Before the company, there was little illness,” Yosefa said, as quoted by FPP. “We would eat sago and walk the forest all day without being weary. Now, the sago dies and the earth is dry. The rivers are dark and oily, and the fish drunk on pollution. Our children are dying because our sacred mother land has been ripped away from us. Soon, the Malind people themselves will cease to exist. When the forest disappears, the Malind will disappear.”
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