Forestry Ministry Probes Series of Elephant Deaths in Sumatra | The Jakarta Globe

The Forestry Ministry is investigating the series of 12 elephant deaths in Sumatra since March, according to Novianto Bambang, the ministry’s director for conservation and biodiversity.

“Our strong suspicion is that those elephants that died in East Aceh and the Tesso Nilo National Park [in Riau] were poisoned, but we do not yet know what the motive could be,” Novianto said on Wednesday.

He said that a team had been deployed to Aceh and Riau to investigate the deaths.

“So far, we still have to await the results of a forensic laboratory examination in Medan in relation to the type of toxin, study the feces and what other things they carried,” he said.

The statement came as a report of another elephant found dead in Riau came from Petani village in Mandau, Bengkalis. Local villagers said the carcass, without its tusks, was found already in an advanced stage of decomposition on Wednesday.

Novianto cautioned that even though the tusks of the dead elephants were missing, it did not necessarily mean that the killings were for the ivory.

“It can also be that the tusk are cut intentionally to create the image that they were done by elephant tusk hunters, or they were poisoned because they are considered pests. It is not certain that they were killed for their tusks only,” he said.

Regarding the dead elephants in Riau’s Tesso Nilo National Park, Novianto said not all elephants were inside the conservation area and that it was very difficult with the limited human resources available to supervise about 30,000 hectares to make sure that no elephants were killed.

In Aceh alone, five elephants were found dead between March and June — two in Aceh Jaya in March and May and three in East Aceh on June 2. In Riau, seven elephants were found dead in the Tesso Nilo forests between March and June.

The number of Sumatran elephants in the wild has dropped dramatically in the past four years. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has said the species is now “critically endangered,” or one step away from extinction.

There are an estimated 2,400 to 2,800 elephants remaining in the wild, down from the 3,000 to 5,000 reported in 2007.

Aceh to do away with harsh punishments

07-06-2012

The governing party in the Islamic Indonesian province of Aceh has announced plans to do away with the harshest punishments associated with Shariah law. The Aceh Party intends to abandon plans for the stoning of adulterers and says it will abolish public caning for all other offences - including gambling and drinking alcohol. It says the punishments have been ineffective and have not been applied to corrupt officials.

Three rare elephants found dead in Indonesia

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BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Three critically-endangered Sumatran elephants have been found dead in an oil palm plantation in western Indonesia and are believed to have been poisoned, an NGO said Saturday.
Villagers found the dead animals on Thursday in a government-owned oil palm plantation in the eastern part of Aceh province. They were estimated to be four and five years old, local environmental group Fakta said.
"We suspected that they died after consuming bars of soap laced with poison we found near the carcass," the group's chief Rabono Wiranata told AFP.
"It seems that the elephants have died around one week," he said.
The animals are usually either killed by villagers, who regard the beasts as pests that destroy their plantations, or by poachers for their tusks.
Early last month, two other Sumatran elephants were found dead in the west of the province.
There are fewer than 3,000 Sumatran elephants remaining in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, marking a 50 percent drop in numbers since 1985.
WWF changed the Sumatran elephant's status from "endangered" to "critically endangered" in January, largely due to severe habitat loss driven by oil palm and paper plantations.
Conflicts between humans and animals are increasing as people encroach on wildlife habitats in Indonesia, an archipelago with some of the world's largest remaining tropical forests.
Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

BBC bodyguard burned baby's corpse after tsunami

Mr Summers, 52, swore two witnesses to secrecy and was recently urged by senior figures at the BBC not to publish his book, called Bodyguard: My Life On The Frontline
By Martin BeckfordLast Updated: 3:59PM BST 03/06/2012
A BBC bodyguard has admitted that he burned the corpse of a baby because he feared it was a threat to his journalists’ health.

Craig Summers found the body of a one year-old old boy outside the house in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, where he was staying with a reporter, Ben Brown, and his production team.

He believed the had been purposefully left on the doorstep of the “BBC house” in the aftermath of the Boxing Day 2004 disaster, which killed more than 200,000 people across south Asia.

But rather than reporting it to the authorities or trying to contact any surviving relatives, Mr Summers has told in his autobiography how he set fire to it on a pile of rubbish as it was rotting and unidentifiable.

He doused the corpse in petrol and lit it, because he believed otherwise it could have led to his team becoming infected.

Mr Summers, who is now head of security at Sky TV, wrote: “Nobody got sick on that trip. Nobody even came close to diarrhoea and I knew that I had done my job keeping everyone else healthy.

"I ran a tight ship ensuring everyone always washed their hands with wet wipes.

“The baby was an obstacle to their health; the next day it would be a blocked toilet. I hadn’t known it was coming but I had to deal with it and I would do the same again.”

Mr Summers, 52, swore two witnesses to secrecy and was recently urged by senior figures at the BBC not to publish his book, called Bodyguard: My Life On The Frontline.

Neither the Corporation nor those with Mr Summers on the trip wished to comment on his claims.

PT Investa Aceh

Triangle registers Company for award of Pase PSC 30 May 2012: Triangle Energy (Global) Limited (Triangle Energy) (ASX: TEG) is pleased to announce the incorporation of Aceh Global Energy Pte Ltd (AGE), a company registered in Singapore and jointly owned by Triangle Energy (80) and PT Investa Aceh (PTIA) (20) an entity wholly owned by the Government of Aceh for the operation of the Pase Block. TRIANGLE ENERGY (GLOBAL) LIMITED has issued similar announcements seven times before, most recently about 0 minutes ago on Thursday 08 December 2011. The announcement 'Triangle Registers Company for Award of Pase PSC' was issued to the ASX on Wednesday 30 May 2012. Notice Type: Mergers, acquisitions, takeovers

Papuans ‘should have their identity recognized by govt’

Margareth S. Aritonang, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Thu, 05/31/2012 7:45 AM

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Papuan activists and scholars have called on the government to allow the use of the region’s traditional symbols and stop prosecuting locals who promote them.

Franz-Magnis Suseno, a Catholic priest and philosophy professor at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy, said that the Indonesian government should stop treating the hoisting of the Bintang Kejora (Morning Star) flag as an act of treason. The flag has long been associated with the Papuan separatist movement.

“Why not let Papuans fly the flag as a symbol of their land? We must also allow them to express their opinions in an assembly,” he said.

Papuan peace activist Neles Tebay said that the close association between the flag and the Papuan separatist movement had often been used as an excuse to abuse the human rights of native Papuans.

Neles also said that the central government should drop its security approach and start a dialogue with the locals.

“All elements in Papua from the local governments, the natives, and the business community, must sit down and start a dialogue. Dialogue is the key to end what has been happening there,” he said.

Farid Hussein, a former mediator in the talks between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) said that the dialogue should also include discussion about the flag.

“One of the most arduous issues [in the Aceh talks] concerned the GAM logo,” he said.

Papuan activist Filep Karma is serving a 15-year prison sentence for promoting separatism. Filep was first detained in 1998 when he led a ceremony to raise the Bintang Kejora flag in Biak.

In the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Universal Periodic Review last week, Germany in particular challenged the government on whether it intended to release Filep and other political detainees who have been held arbitrarily and accused Indonesia of violating Article 20 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which states that “everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association”.

Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told members of the House of Representatives on Wednesday that Indonesia continued to promote and protect human rights in the country, including in Papua, and that some foreign governments had changed their views on the issue.

“Several countries have changed their stance regarding our policies in Papua. The Republic of Vanuatu, for example, has encouraged us to continue implementing the special autonomy program there,” he said.

Editorial: Thank you, EU

The Jakarta Post | Mon, 05/28/2012 9:00 AM

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On a hot December day in 2006, the people of Banda Aceh gathered in a field, to watch the unimaginable: The handing over of weapons by the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) to the Aceh Monitoring Mission (AHM), joined by Indonesian police and military personnel. Since then, the war of the past three decades, fought with bullets, has been replaced by the ballot.

The European Union (EU) was one of the parties actively involved in peace attempts before the historic signing of the MoU in Helsinki, Finland. It proceeded to set up the AMM; its weekly meetings with former combatants, led by Pieter Feith, helped build trust in the early years of peace building.

Despite the occasional acts of violence, residents, now led by the second directly elected Governor Zaini Abdullah, largely enjoy peace, while expectations have risen to not only survive the post-war but to also rebuild lives after the 2004 tsunami and earthquake. Witness the happy, proud faces of Acehnese students at a Malaysian flying school, published Friday in the local daily Serambi Indonesia — these future pilots are a tiny part of Aceh’s new generation which the administration has invested in through scholarships.

Investing in Aceh’s future generation is the ultimate contribution to sustainable peace in Aceh, initially enabled by the support of the international community in efforts to end the war and to reconstruct and rehabilitate a devastated land.

What the EU provided was an acceptable role to the conflicting parties, the Indonesian government and GAM. Indonesia did not want to internationalize settlement of the conflict, in the wake of the violence preceding Timor Leste’s separation after the UN-sponsored referendum. Finland’s Crisis Management Initiative then brokered the Helsinki agreement, which catapulted its leader, former president Mastti Ahtisaari, to the Nobel Peace Prize.

As in the independent Timor Leste, Aceh is not free of internal conflict, as recent regional elections have shown. However within a democratic Indonesia, Aceh largely has the tools to at least suppress any incentive that might lead to a recurrence of ethno-nationalist sentiments, the main fertile ground for the recruitment of the former GAM.

Along with Papua, the province is entitled to a larger share of revenue from its natural resources compared to other provinces, and it has its own special autonomy law.

Aceh leaders now face the challenge to live up to the high expectations of the electorate, who will boot them out at the next elections if they cannot overcome poverty and unemployment, and manage political conflicts, partially related, observers say, to the lucrative projects perceived to be available under donor-sponsored programs.

The Acehnese have not been left alone on Thursday, EU representative Giovanni Serritella said the EU will continue to support forestry, environmental, climate-change and economic development programs in Aceh, even after its seven-year mission to monitor peace ends next month.

Apart from the challenge of ending corruption, Aceh still faces other uncertainties — that of sharia laws. The new governor has not detailed what he meant by his commitment to “replicate” the rule of 16th century ruler Iskandar Muda, a time which he described as prosperous and harmonious while based on the Koran and Prophet’s sayings.

In the meantime, from the bottom of our hearts, we would like to express Indonesia’s gratitude, to the people and leaders of the EU for its assistance in Aceh; and to the dedicated men and women who have returned a sense of security and confidence among people who had lost so much.