"The Conquest and Pillage of Halmahera: IWIP as the Display of Corporate-State's National Strategic Crime", 5 August 2024

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Nickel mining and nickel manufacturing (downstreaming) businesses have seriously impacted the people and the environment. The damages include the disappearing food reserves and water sources, deforestation, the diminishing biodiversity, the widespread pollution smearing water, air, and sea, as well as continuing social conflicts.

For the last four years, JATAM has been intensely visiting Halmahera, recording and capturing the portraits of local people’s living space within the mining area. These portraits tell stories about their situation within the context of degrading social, economic, history, and cultural conditions.

These portraits are getting more and more murky from time to time. Pollution is getting thicker in the dusty air and in the cloudy, chocolate-coloured river water. Local residents’ health are degrading, while their gardens and mangrove areas along the shore started disappearing. Their productive lands, one by one, are annexed by the mining companies leading to the disappearance of the transmigration areas which once served as their food reserves. Even sea fishing is now an expensive task. They have to go further to the deep sea because the fishes refuse to swim among the high traffic of mining company barges harboring in the Weda Bay.

The companies tend to commit cunning schemes to win their intentions. To take over lands, for example, the companies always conduct a breach-and-destroy crime before agreeing to sit for negotiation. This scheming leaves the local people with no option than to let go of their damaged land. This evil practice left the local people with no room for negotiation because the value of their agricultural land as their families’ main source of income had gone.

The companies will claim that the people’s land they usurped are owned by the State, despite the fact that the people have cultivated the land for decades and routinely paid land taxes. Many people said they received intimidation and threats when they refused to sell their land. The land owners also only would receive money equal to the land price, without regard to the precious plants growing on that land.

People who eventually decided to sell their land to the companies said they were left with no choice. They have lost access to their land, on top receiving pressure, threats, and intimidation from the authorities.

Meanwhile, almost all clean water sources for Central Weda and North Weda residents have been polluted by the sedimentation of nickel ores. Gone were the days when the local residents enjoyed free flowing, clean water from the rivers. Now, after the companies operate their business, the people have to dig deep into their pockets and spend money to buy clean water. The poorer people, however, have to withstand the humiliating condition and keep consuming the polluted water.

Lack of transparency and intricate network of actors make it difficult for the people to identify which nickel company to blame for these perils. To add salt to the wound, the central government and the Regional People’s Representative Council (DPRD) rolled out the red carpet for the investors by boosting the expansion of industry estate as well as adding industry estate reserves through Spatial Planning 2024-2044.

It shows complete ignorance to the people of Central Weda and North Weda whose livelihood depend on the natural sources — the sea fishers, rice farmers, and hunters who get their meat from wild boars and deers in the forest, among others. Deforestation and land conversion along with river and sea pollution, make life difficult for the local people who wish to preserve their traditional way of life. Ironically, fate forces them to pivot their occupation to be construction workers, mining laborers, and even land plotter officers.

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