Moluccas International Campaign for Human Rights

TRANSMIGRATION & MILITARY INVOLVEMENT WITH AGGRESSIVE MINING, ILLEGAL LOGGING AND ILLEGAL FISHING IN THE MOLUCCAS

 

TRANSMIGRATION: ANNEXATION BY OCCUPATION
by Bernard Nietschmann
Transmigration - the resettlement of people loyal to a central government - is the main tactic for "smokeless wars" of invasion and occupation by Third World states against Fourth World Nations and peoples. Java's war on the peoples it claims as Indonesian civilians is called transmigrasi (Transmigration). It represents the world's largest invasion force. The 1984 - 1989 Five Year Plan called for the movement of 5,000,000 people from Java, Madura and Bali specifically to those areas that resist Java's imposed sovereignty: Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Moluccas, East Timor, and West Papua. Over the next 20 years, some 65,000,000 more people will be moved to Javanize Fourth World territories claimed by Indonesia.

Java no longer gives overpopulation as the principal reason behind transmigration. Centralized political and economic goals - not humanitarian ones - are the justifications. The Jakarta government lists seven goals for its transmigration program: To promote national unity, national security, an equal distribution of the population, national development, the preservation of nature, help to the farming classes, and improvement of the condition of local peoples. (Survival International, Bulletin: March 2, 1985)

What transmigration has actually accomplished is very different: The spread of poverty, forced displacement of indigenous peoples from their homes, communities and lands; deforestation and soil damage at the rate of some 200,000 hectares per year (to total 3,600,000 deforested hectares by 1989); destruction of local governments, economies, means of sustainable resource use; forced assimilation programs; widespread use of military force to "pacify" areas and to break local resistance by bombing and massacres of civilians. 

Uprooting People, Destroying Cultures: Indonesia's Transmigration Program
October 1990
by Carolyn Marr
Despite objections by human rights and environmental organizations, the Indonesian government and the international lending community defend and continue the controversial transmigration program which moves poor farming families from the crowded islands of Java, Bali and Madura to less densely populated islands of the archipelago. Human rights organizations charge that the program destroys indigenous communities, and environmentalists focus on its ecological devastation, including deforestation.
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"The Indonesian government says it wants to professionalize its military, but we’ve seen little evidence of real change. Troops are breaking the law, violating human rights and hiding the money they make on the side. Military reform means getting soldiers out of business and prosecuting those who broke the law."
Lisa Misol, researcher with the Business and Human Rights Program at Human Rights Watch - June 21, 2006

Call to save 'dying oceans'
Aljazeera.net Thursday, May 14, 2009

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World Ocean Conference Burdened with Human Rights Violations  
13 May 2009
The WOC is burdened with violations of civil and political rights. Before the beginning of the WOC, traditional fisherfolks have not been given a place to express their basic rights. The police has in a repressive measure disbaned events of the civil society that criticize policies ......
 
WOC ignores main problems in ocean sector: Activists
2009-05-11 15:55:49
A long history of illegal fishing, the dumping of tailing from mining companies into the sea, and poor support for traditional fishermen are the three main problems in Indonesia's ocean sector. Continue.

Moluccan professor says action on illegal fishing inadequate
2009-04-22 07:08:40
Abraham Tulalessy, a lecturer at Pattimura University's Department of Fisheries and Maritime Science, in Ambon, Maluku, has commented that lax law enforcement in Indonesia has turned the country, especially the Arafura Sea, into a haven for illegal fishermen from overseas.
News Source

Indonesian waters open to poaching, looting
The Jakarta Post 19/07/2007
Indonesia‘s no-vote for the ILO Convention on Fisheries during the International Labor Conference early in June has sparked confusion among the public, particularly fishing communities and seafarers. The abstention gives the impression the government is turning a blind eye to theft in Indonesian waters and the abuse of thousands of underpaid seafarers.  
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Illegal fishing 'still a concern' after Aust-Indonesia operation
ABC Online 2008-05-05

There is Still Military in the Forest
27 Jun 2007
By Rully Syumanda
Security forces have become one of the parties profiting from various national forestry policies. The military/police have played an important role in consolidating and attempting to maintain New Order power, as well as their business interests, resulting in a conflict of interest in the enforcement of laws passed to regulate industry.
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Indonesian forest destruction- corruption plays a role
25 Nov 2006

The Human Rights Cost of the Indonesian Military's Economic Activities
Inter Press Service News Agency
Friday, June 30, 2006
Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jun 21 (IPS) - Until the Indonesian military is barred from pursuing its own business interests, civilian control over its activities will be limited, and human rights will suffer as a result, according to a major new report released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW).
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Indonesia Legalizes Mining in Protected Forests  
Science News 9 Jul 2005

IMF and deforestation in Indonesia  
WRM's bulletin Nº 95, June 2005

Toguraci gold mine in North Maluku Occupied
Laksamana.Net June 13, 2004
"There are large parts of the world [where] we as an industry can no longer go, such as Indonesia," Robert Friedland, chairman of Canada's Ivanhoe Mines, was quoted as saying Thursday (10/6/04) by Reuters. 
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Plundering the Sea
Inside Indonesia Jan-Mar 2003
Regulating trawling companies is difficult when the navy is in business with them.
Brian Fegan
It is widely known that illegal fishing by foreign-owned trawlers is a major problem for Indonesia. The Minister for Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Rokhmin Dahuri, estimated at an October 2002 press conference that the nation loses some two billion dollars (US) worth of fish every year because of illegal fishing. What is less well known is that the nation is also incurring substantial losses from the existing arrangements for legal fishing. In the Arafura Sea surrounding West Papua, hundreds of trawlers, most from Thailand, are legally looting massive quantities of fish.
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Plundering Indonesia's Rainforests
October 1990
by Peter Halesworth
A new sense of urgency is emerging about Indonesia's seemingly inexhaustible rainforests. Dubbed the Amazon of Southeast Asia, Indonesia is second only to Brazil in its holdings of tropical forests; ten percent of the world's total rainforest grows on the Indonesian archipelago of 13,667 islands that stretch across the equator from southern Vietnam to Australia. But years of uncontrolled logging are taking their toll and today the country's once abundant rainforests are rapidly being destroyed.
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