"Ahead of AIIB Annual Meeting, Indonesian Civil Society Demands Bank Ends Reprisals & Intimidation of Indigenous Communities in Mandalika" 25 October 2022

Ahead of this week’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) annual meeting (26-27 October), the Indonesian Coalition for Monitoring Infrastructure Development has published a statement exposing the evictions and intimidation carried out against Indigenous Sasak people on the Indonesian island of Lombok, as a result of the AIIB-funded Mandalika Urban and Tourism Infrastructure Project.

In the statement, the organizations “expressly condemn AIIB’s May 2022 statement on retaliation, which is entirely inconsistent with the pattern of intimidation and coercion of Indigenous populations we have monitored on the ground during the implementation of the Mandalika Urban and Tourism Infrastructure Project”. A total of 43 local and international civil society organizations have criticized AIIB and its shareholders for failing to take all necessary steps to stop reprisals and intimidation campaigns against the Indigenous peasants and fishers who have been negatively affected by the Mandalika project. [...] AIIB’s client, the government-owned Indonesia Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC), presented botched environmental and social assessments that did not correspond to the reality on the ground, which the AIIB accepted at face value. Most problematic was the ITDC’s claim that 92.7% of the land was clean and clear in the Mandalika area, despite a decades-long history of violent land disputes connected to previous large-scale development projects in Lombok. 

From the months preceding the loan approval in 2018 onwards, those who resisted involuntary resettlement in Mandalika have been subject to repeated and repressive intimidation and reprisals by the ITDC and other components of the Indonesia government, according to accounts given by local communities, Indonesia’s human rights body, and the special procedures of the UN Human Rights Council. Hundreds of families have been forced by the government and the security forces to leave their homes for temporary resettlements unfit to support their livelihoods. [...]