"West Papuan Indigenous Win As Jakarta Court Rules Against Palm Oil Company", 6 Sept 2023

Awyu Indigenous landowners and environmentalists have welcomed the Jakarta Administrative Court decision announced yesterday to reject a lawsuit taken by two palm oil companies, PT Kartika Cipta Pratama and PT Megakarya Jaya Raya, against a decision by the Minister of Environment and Forestry.

This verdict has the potential to save 65,415 hectares of pristine rainforest, six times the area of the city of Paris. After this decision, the two companies will not be legally permitted to continue deforestation beyond the 8,828 hectares of Indigenous forestland that has already been cleared for palm oil plantations.

“This is the decision we’ve been waiting for... Our hope is that we can resume control of our customary forest, so we can manage it for future descendants of the Awyu tribe,” said Gergorius Yame, one of the six members of the Awyu People who undertook a legal intervention in the court case.

PT MJR and PT KCP, located in one contiguous block in the new province of South Papua, registered their lawsuits with the Jakarta court earlier this year on March 10 and March 15. Through their lawsuits, which were handled together by the court, the two companies aimed to overturn a decree by the Minister for Environment and Forestry regarding state forest release permits, which, among other things, required the companies to refrain from further clearing of forested land for oil palm plantations.

Gergorius Yame and five other Indigenous Awyu people registered as intervening parties in the lawsuit on May 9, 2023. During hearings the Awyu people and their legal team presented evidence, witnesses, and experts in support of their land rights and to support the Minister of Environment and Forestry in rebutting the case by the two palm oil companies...

The legal intervention arises from the struggle by West Papua’s Indigenous peoples to defend their customary forests from land grabbing by plantation companies, the scale of which is documented in a recent Greenpeace International report...