"Indonesia: Free Anti-Mining Activist in Sulawesi", 23 February 2023

The Indonesian authorities should immediately release Robison Saul, a fisherman and activist on Sangihe Island in North Sulawesi province, and quash his politically motivated conviction, Human Rights Watch said [...]. A court on January 17, 2023, convicted Saul under an emergency law of possessing a knife at a protest and sentenced him to nine months in prison.

The police arrested Saul, 45, on June 30, 2022, after two weeks of protests and roadblocks organized by villagers on Sangihe Island against the gold mining company PT Tambang Mas Sangihe. The company is an Indonesian subsidiary of the Vancouver-based Baru Gold Corp., which has been involved in a legal dispute in its effort to mine gold from the small island.

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In January 2021, Indonesia’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources granted PT Tambang Mas Sangihe a license to explore [...].

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The two licenses prompted the islanders to organize the Save Sangihe Island coalition and sue the government at the administration courts in Jakarta and Manado, the North Sulawesi capital. [...].

In June 2022, the Manado administrative court ruled in favor of the 56 Sangihe women who had filed the petition, ordering the provincial government to revoke the permit and the company to stop their activities. [...].

In September, the Jakarta administrative high court ruled against the government, directing the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources to revoke the permit. [...]

In August, the company filed a lawsuit against the Indonesian government [...]. The Supreme Court ruled against the company in January 2023.

PT Tambang Mas Sangihe has continued to move forward with its mining operations on the island. It stated in a news release that it intends to apply for a new permit, contending that: “Sangihe Island has a history of rampant illegal mining that has heavily polluted the environment, including the dumping of mine tailings into the ocean, reefs, and mangroves, and the polluting of the river and ocean with mercury. These illegal miners have had no permits and are largely not residents of Sangihe Island.”

The company announced that since October 2021 it has been clearing land, constructing waste dumps, and building a processing plant area and associated access roads. It sent bulldozers, drillers, and multiple other heavy machines to the island, moving them via 10-wheel trucks from a small port to the company’s base camp in Bowone village.

Many islanders responded to the company’s actions, which they consider to be in defiance of court rulings, by blocking the trucks.

On June 14, 2022, Saul, who had just returned from fishing, joined a peaceful roadblock set up by hundreds of villagers who were trying to stop several mining trucks that were heading to Bowone village.

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