"Trial starts for two people arrested on demonstration at PT Permata Putera Mandiri’s offfice", 24 July 2015

On 15th May..., dozens of students and others from the Iwaro ethnic group from Metamani and Inanwatan in South Sorong Regency, staged a protest action...blocking the offices of oil palm company PT Permata Putera Mandiri (PPM)...[in] Sorong City, West Papua Province. 

According to...one of the participants on the action, “the people were demanding that PT PPM offer a solution to the problems of land grabbing, the destruction of the forest and sago groves, illegal logging and an unfair level of compensation, and indications that illegal exploration for oil and gas were also taking place”. 

The company refused to meet with the demonstrators, and then police...broke up the action and arrested dozens of participants. After questioning, several detainees were released little by little, until eventually only two people were being held...On 14th July...Obed Korie and Odie Aitago attended the first session of their court process...

Justice appears to be very distant for the victims of PT PPM: the company has not met their demands, and now on the contrary the victims of development are criminalised by the government. PT PPM is a subsidiary company of PT Austindo Nusantara Jaya (ANJ) Group...The company obtained the land for their plantations through mechanisms based on Indonesian state law, ignoring local customary law mechanisms.

This...contravenes the provisions of the 2001 law concerning special autonomy for Papua, which state that if any party requires access to customary land, a meeting of indigenous people must take place to reach a consensus decision before any permits to operate or land title may be granted....The process of land acquisition takes place furtively and without transparency, with police and military involvement, and without the community having the opportunity to understand or find out what the wider impacts of forest clearance might be. [refers to PT ANJ Agri Papua, PT Pusaka Agro Sejahtera, Xinfeng, Xinyou Plantation, Wodi Kaifa]