The Indonesian government is planning to implement, in Merauke in the south-east of the province of Papua, an enormous agricultural project. It is planned that the last virgin rainforest area of Indonesia should be removed to make way for the ‘Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) Project’. To enable the MIFEE project to take place, a huge area of over 16,000 square kilometres – comparable with the size of Thüringern– is meant to be leased out to native as well as to international investors. This area will be used primarily for the cultivation of rice, maize, sugar cane and soya, but also for animal pasture and palm-oil plantations . This highly-praised development should create employment, secure Indonesia’s self-sufficiency and regenerate the impoverished region via large-scale investment. However, the project is being implemented at the expense of the native peoples of West Papua. For them, the implementation of the project will result in dispossessions, evictions, cultural uprooting and marginalisation.

Traditionally this area has for centuries been owned by native families or villagers. AMAN (Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara - or the Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago), the leading coalition group representing indigenous peoples of Indonesia, pointed out to the Permanent Forum for Indigenous Affairs (PFII), that the project will lead to a systematic displacement of indigenous peoples. The native tribes are indeed dependent upon the rainforest for their basic means of subsistence. The development of such a huge-scale project will attract a huge influx of workers from other parts of Indonesia. NGOs fear that up to six million workers will be required for this project in West Papua, and therefore the population will dramatically increase from its current level of 4.6 million. Just in the town of Merauke, the population is expected to increase from its current level of around 175,000 to 800,000.

The original inhabitants of Papua have been campaigning for more than 50 years for more rights and self-determination. More than 100,000 of them have been victimised since the Indonesian army’s human rights abuses in the 1960’s. Through a deliberate promotion of immigration of inhabitants of other areas of Indonesia, the Indonesian governments have tried, under the cover of a ‘Transmigration’ programme, to change the population structure of Papua to the extreme disadvantage of the native peoples. Through this migration programme, the former dictator Suharto (in power from 1967 to 1998) planned on the one hand to relieve the population pressure on overcrowded islands such as Java, and at the same time to downgrade the native peoples of Papua to a minority status. The original inhabitants would thereby be forced to give up their struggle for independence. The agricultural project MIFEE is also a means by which the Papuans would be reduced to a minority in their own homeland. The enormous change to the population structure would bring about renewed conflicts between the native communities and the new immigrant labour force – or rather aggravating the existing social and religious differences. Furthermore, the loss of the rainforests as a living space, as well as the growing impact of immigration will result in cultural dislocation and uprooting.

The MIFEE project has been criticised, not just for these dire social consequences but also from an ecological point of view, for such an enormous project brings about a wide-ranging disruption to the ecological balance of the area. In many cases the suitability of the area for agricultural use is not being subject to adequate prior testing. Examples from the past give testimony to the dramatic potential consequences: In the province of Central Kalimantan in the 1990s, a very similar project failed. Ten thousand square kilometres of rainforest were cut down in order to make way for rice cultivation, although the area was totally unsuited to such agricultural use due to its topography and poor soil quality. As a result, the international community for environmental and development projects still has to invest in Kalimantan, for the area has been ecologically ruined and offers hardly any means of living for people or for wildlife. If the MIFEE project were to fail, it is likely that it would have similar consequences.

Please join in the appeal to the UN High Commissioner for human rights, Navanethem Pillay, to stop this project.

Link for the On-line appeal

Translated from Charlie und Gisela Russell