PNG’s International Justin Olam scored the first try (penalty try) for Melbourne Storms.
Fijian International Suliasi Vunivalu through individual effort intercepted a long pass and ran 80m to score the second try.
PNG government and about 90% of NRL followers in PNG supported cheering for Melbourne Storms because Justina Olam was playing in the grand finals.
Suliasi Vunivalu was playing his last NRL game, he will be switching codes to rugby union next year.
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Justin and Suliasi should be given the opportunity to speak on camera by fox sports commentators and sideline commentators on the field.your content [/text-box]
The two Melanesian brothers should be given the opportunity speak to promote the spirit of the game in PNG and Fiji and Pacific as a all.
There is racism in NRL, all Pacific Islanders playing in NRL should follow the footsteps of Tonga, refuse to play for Australia and represent the Pacific Islands in any International matches.
Several major studies, published today, concur that virtually all current global human populations stem from a single wave of expansion out of Africa. Yet one has found 2% of the genome in Papuan populations points to an earlier, separate dispersal event – and an extinct lineage that made it to the islands of Southeast Asia and Oceania.
A new study of human genomic diversity suggests there may have in fact been two successful dispersals out of Africa, and that a “trace” of the earlier of these two expansion events has lingered in the genetics of modern Papuans.
Three major genetic studies are published today in the same issue of Nature. All three agree that, for the most part, the genomes of contemporary non-African populations show signs of only one expansion of modern humans out of Africa: an event that took place sometime after 75,000 years ago.
Two of the studies conclude that, if there were indeed earlier expansions of modern humans out of Africa, they have left little or no genetic trace. The third, however, may have found that ‘trace’.
This study, led by Drs Luca Pagani and Toomas Kivisild from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, has found a “genetic signature” in present-day Papuans that suggests at least 2% of their genome originates from an even earlier, and otherwise extinct, dispersal of humans out of Africa.
Papuans and Philippine Negritos are populations that inhabit Papua New Guinea and some of the surrounding islands in Southeast Asia and Oceania. In the genomes of these populations, the researchers discovered more of the African ‘haplotypes’ – groups of genes linked closely enough to be inherited from a single source – than in any other present-day population.
Extensive analysis on the extra 2% of African haplotypes narrowed down the split between African (Yoruban) and Papuan lineages to around 120,000 years ago – a remarkable 45,000 years prior to the very earliest that the main African expansion could have occurred.
The study analysed genomic diversity in 125 human populations at an unprecedented level of detail, based on 379 high resolution whole genome sequences from across the world generated by an international collaboration led by the Cambridge team and colleagues from the Estonian Biocentre.
Lead researcher Luca Pagani said: “Papuans share for most part same evolutionary history as all other non-Africans, but our research shows they may also contain some remnants of a chapter that is also yet to be described.
“While our research is in almost complete agreement with all other groups with regard to a single out-of-Africa event, this scenario cannot fully account for some genetic peculiarities in the Papuan genomes we analysed.”
Pagani says the sea which separates the ‘ecozones’ of Asia and Australasia may have played a part: “The Wallace line is a channel of deep sea that was never dry during the ice ages. This constant barrier may have contributed to isolating and hence preserving the traces of the otherwise extinct lineage in Papuan populations.”
Toomas Kivisild said: “We believe that at least one additional human expansion out of Africa took place before the major one described in our research and others. These people diverged from the rest of Africans about 120,000 years ago, colonising some land outside of Africa. The 2% of the Papuan genome is the only remaining trace of this otherwise extinct lineage.”
The Estonian Biocentre’s Dr Mait Metspalu said: “This endeavour was uniquely made possible by the anonymous sample donors and the collaboration effort of nearly one hundred researchers from 74 different research groups from all over the world.”
Metspalu’s colleague Richard Villems added: “Overall this work provides an invaluable contribution to the understanding of our evolutionary past and to the challenges that humans faced when settling down in ever-changing environments.”
Researchers say the deluge of freely available data will serve as future starting point to further studies on the genetic history of modern and ancient human populations.
Forest degradation nearly doubled in the Brazilian Amazon last year, rising from 4,946 square kilometers in 2018, to 9,167 square kilometers in 2019. Experts say this is likely due to soaring illegal timber harvesting and export under President Jair Bolsonaro.
To facilitate illegal harvesting of rare and valuable timber, like that of the Ipê tree, whose wood can sell for up to $2,500 per cubic meter at Brazilian export terminals, Bolsonaro’s environment officials have reversed regulations that formerly outlawed suspicious timber shipments, making most such exports legal.
Experts say that the relaxation of illegal export regulations not only protects the criminal syndicates cutting the trees in Amazonia, but also shields exporter Brazil, and importers in the EU, UK, US and elsewhere, preventing them from being accused of causing Amazon deforestation via their supply chains.
Activists fear overturned timber export regulations will embolden illegal loggers, who will escalate invasions onto indigenous and traditional lands, as well as within conservation units. More than 300 people were assassinated over the past decade as the result of land and natural resource conflicts in the Brazilian Amazon.
IBAMA logging inspection in Uruará, Pará state in October 2017. Since Jair Bolsonaro came to power on 1 January 2019, budget cuts have resulted in regulatory field operations being severely curtailed. Image courtesy of IBAMA.
At the end of last year, Brazilian environmentalist Carlos Rittl sent out a perplexed tweet, accompanied by a graph, showing that forest degradation had almost doubled in the Brazilian Amazon in 2019 under the government of Jair Bolsonaro.
Forest degradation soared to 9,167 square kilometers (3,540 square miles) last year as compared to 4,946 square kilometers (1,910 square miles) in 2018, based on data obtained from Deter-B, the satellite monitoring system used by Brazil’s International Institute for Space Research (INPE) to detect near real-time deforestation.
Forest degradation in the Amazon and elsewhere in Brazil often gets its start when loggers hack out rough tracks into the forest to cut and remove valuable timber. Even though the loggers leave most trees untouched, the forest loses almost as much biodiversity as it would if it were clear-cut. It also becomes more vulnerable to drought and forest fires.
In recent years, forest degradation was significantly curbed by Brazil’s strict rules blocking suspicious timber exports. What changed and caused the sudden surge in 2019, Rittl wondered?
Amazon timber allegedly illegally harvested in Pará state. Note the lack of license plates. Image by Sue Branford.
Rejiggering timber export regulations
The environmentalist got the answer to his query last week when Reuters reported that during 2019 Brazil exported “thousands of cargoes of wood from an Amazonian port without authorization from the federal environment agency [IBAMA], increasing the risk that they originated from illegally deforested land.” An IBAMA employee told Reuters off-the-record that at one port in Pará, over half of the timber exported last year was not authorized.
According to a report published by the news website, Intercept Brasil, the IBAMA office in Pará tried to fix this embarrassing revelation, not by tightening its monitoring procedures, but by relaxing its regulations, turning what looked suspiciously like illegal imports into legal shipments abroad.
The report revealed that, in February, Walter Mendes Magalhães Junior, a retired military police officer from São Paulo state, who last October was appointed IBAMA Superintendent for Pará State (despite lacking experience in environmental regulation), had issued a retroactive export license for five containers of suspicious timber being held by customs authorities in the U.S., Belgium and Denmark.
The timber belonged to Tradelink, a British company, which boasts on its website of its “27 years of experience” and “its high quality product lines.” With Magalhães’ action, Tradelink salvaged cargoes together worth R$795,000 (US$168,258). In a document written at the time, Magalhães said that his help to Tradelink was not a one-off, as he would take similar “emergency action” to help “other companies that found themselves in a similar situation.”
When questioned by Intercept Brasil, Magalhães said that Tradelink had asked for export authorization, but IBAMA had not been able to deal with the request in a timely fashion. Magalhães explained that, with “very few employees,” IBAMA could not respond adequately to the “huge demands” it faced. As a result, the agency’s investigative oversight was summarily bypassed.
IBAMA Superintendent for Pará State, Walter Mendes Magalhães Junior. Image by Denis Bonelli / SSP.
Legalizing deforestation with a pen stroke
These irregular exports of hard timber are not limited to Pará state. Alexandre Saraiva, head of the federal police for Amazonas state, sounded an alarm at a press conference after carrying out two operations to combat export fraud last September. He estimated that 90% of timber leaving Legal Amazônia was being illegally harvested. Legal Amazônia is vast — covering all, or parts, of nine Brazilian states.
After a public outcry surrounding events in Pará, environmentalists expected Eduardo Bim, IBAMA’s president under the Bolsonaro administration, to allocate more staff to monitor timber exports to ensure that such flouting of regulations didn’t occur in future. However, Bim reacted very differently, navigating a bureaucratic exit from the conundrum similar to the one adopted by Magalhães.
Bim took advantage of the lack of press scrutiny during Carnival at the end of February by quietly revoking a 2011 IBAMA policy requiring agency authorization before forest products could be given an export licence. Now authorization will only be required for species of trees threatened with extinction or in other special circumstances. In effect, he opened the spigot wide for large scale illegal timber shipments from the Brazilian Amazon.
Annual area of degraded Brazilian Amazon forest through selective logging from 2015-2019. Data provided by INPE, image by Carlos Ritll and Infoclima on Twitter.
With the stroke of a pen, Bim ensured that all future unauthorized timber exports, previously regarded as illegal, would become legal. But, despite this bureaucratic sleight of hand, the likelihood remains just as high as ever that this now “legal” timber will have been illegally logged from indigenous territories or protected land, as nothing on the ground has changed. The rule revision horrified some IBAMA staff. According to Reuters, Bim overruled the opinion of five IBAMA experts.
According to Intercept Brasil, Bim made his decision in response to demands from Brazil’s timber industry. The Centre of Pará Industries, a lobbying group, celebrated Bim’s action in a press release saying that the measure “put in order exports of legal and authorized timber from Brazil and, particularly, Amazônia.”
But Bim’s actions made many IBAMA staff very unhappy. One employee, who spoke to Intercept Brasil off-the-record, said that personnel burst out laughing when Bim told them they will have access “a posteriori” (that is, after the event) to export data provided by the companies. “What use will it be then?” lamented the employee.
What some IBAMA staff and environmentalists fear is that this regulatory manipulation will effectively “launder” questionable timber, not only protecting illegal loggers at the wood’s point of origin, but also sparing the nation of Brazil from deforestation accusations. At the same time, it will shield countries and major retailers receiving the valued timber at the far end of the supply chain in the EU, UK, US and elsewhere, preventing their green reputations from being linked to, and tarnished by, illegal Amazon deforestation.
Bim was the first major appointment announced in December 2018 by Ricardo Salles, the soon-to-be environment minister under President Jair Bolsonaro. Salles has never hidden his siding with the timber industry, even when illegal loggers attacked IBAMA staff. Following the minister’s guidelines, Bim has made it difficult for IBAMA staff to talk to the press. After the recent reports by Reuters and Intercept Brasil, Bim reacted by repeating his demand that staff refer all press requests to IBAMA’s Department of Communications.
Ipê (Handroanthus albus), one of the most valuable tree species in the world, and a popular target of illegal loggers. Image by Hermínio Lacerda / Banco de Imagens do IBAMA.
Threat of violence
The lax new regulations will allow illegal logging crime syndicates to operate with a free hand in the Amazon, not even having to maintain a veneer of legality, say human rights activists who fear that violence will escalate as timber cutters invade the lands held by indigenous and traditional communities.
At the beginning of 2019, Amazon activists Osvalinda and Daniel Pereira, whose story has been reported by Mongabay, had to leave their plot of land in the Areia Settlement in the west of Pará due to increased death threats from illegal loggers. “The number of trucks transporting timber increased and with it the pressure on us,” said Osvalinda.
The couple lived at the center of an illegal timber hotspot. In 2017 alone, loggers using the road passing through the Areia Settlement illegally extracted an estimated 23,000 cubic meters (812,237 cubic feet) of ipê, an extremely valuable hardwood, from the Riozinho do Anfrísio Extractivist Reserve, according to the Brazilian NGO, Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA). The shipments were worth R$208 million (US$168,258).
Ipê is among the most valuable tree species in the world. The high value of Ipê wood —made into flooring or decking for upscale European or US homes — can sell for up to $2,500 per cubic meter at Brazilian export terminals. Loggers must penetrate deep into rainforests to harvest the trees, creating roads later used by other invaders.
The Human Rights Watch report, Rainforest Mafias – How Violence and Impunity Fuel Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon, analyzed 28 assassinations and 40 cases of death threats in the region, and offered strong evidence that criminals see activists and resistors as an obstacle to illegal logging. One reason for the authorities’ failure to stem the violence, the Human Rights Watch concluded, is the recent weakening of environmental crime monitoring.
One indication of this weakening is the decline in penalties imposed by IBAMA for such crimes. In 2019, the number of environmental fines fell by 34% to 9,745, the lowest in 24 years. The value of the fines fell even more heavily, by 43%, to R$2.9 billion (US$614 million). This is the lowest level of fines since 1995, when Brazil was setting records for Amazon deforestation. If the past is any indication, those fines will go mostly uncollected, and eventually may be forgiven altogether.
Meanwhile, over the past decade, more than 300 people, many of them leading activists and leaders, were assassinated as the direct result of land and natural resource conflicts in the Brazilian Amazon, according to the Catholic Church’s Pastoral Land Commission (CPT).
People living in the forest today, in the midst of this brutal conflict and often far from law enforcement, now worry that the Bolsonaro administration’s weakening of regulations governing timber exports will leave them at the mercy of emboldened timber harvesting crime syndicates.
Osvalinda fears that human tragedy will come hot on the heels of 2019’s record levels of forest degradation. “With so many indications of growing impunity,” she says, “I can only think in great sadness that the next record to be broken will be the number of deaths in the countryside.”
Banner image caption: A raid by IBAMA agents — conducted previous to the Bolsonaro administration — seized this timber illegally harvested in an Amazon indigenous reserve. Image courtesy of IBAMA.
Police in Indonesia have charged two indigenous men with vandalizing heavy equipment after a confrontation with a company accused of illegally logging their ancestral land.
The company, CV Sumber Berkat Makmur, has a concession to cultivate nutmeg trees in East Seram district, Maluku province, but it’s unclear whether the ancestral land of the Sabuai indigenous community falls within the concession.
Activists and local lawmakers have called for a halt to the company’s activities while the uncertainty about its permit is cleared up.
The case is just the latest in Indonesia in which local authorities have opted to pursue criminal charges against communities mired in land disputes with companies.
AMBON, Indonesia — Activists in Indonesia have called on police to drop criminal charges against two indigenous men who took part in a confrontation against a company accused of illegally logging their ancestral forest.
Police in East Seram district, in the province of Maluku, have charged Stefanus Ahwalam and Khaleb Yamarua, of the Sabuai indigenous community, with causing damage to the property of plantation company CV Sumber Berkat Makmur.
They were among 26 indigenous people arrested by the police on Feb. 17 following a confrontation over the company’s logging activities in forested area deemed sacred by the community. The 24 others were released without charge on the complaint filed by the company, while Stefanus and Khaleb face a possible prosecution that could see them jailed for more than two and a half years.
“This can’t be tolerated. This is an environmental crime that must be resolved,” Usman Bugis, director of the environmental group Nanaku Maluku, told local media. “After damaging our customary forest, [the company] is now persecuting our people.”.
A map of the Maluku Islands province, in red, in eastern Indonesia. Image by TUBS via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
The case is the latest in a long list of disputes between forest communities and the companies laying claim to the land. As with most of those other cases, the authorities appear to have prioritized the company’s grievances over those of the community, according to the Sabuai.
The community says it had previously consented to CV Sumber Berkat Makmur, which has a permit to cultivate nutmeg trees, operating in three other locations in the area, but not in the ancestral forest on Mount Ahwale, where the Sabuai bury their dead. On the morning of Feb. 17, a group of Sabuai men observed workers from the company loading up a truck with logs at the site in question. They demanded the workers stop and leave the area, but the workers refused.
A scuffle broke out, during which the indigenous men reportedly vandalized the heavy equipment on site and confiscated the keys. The company subsequently reported the incident to police, leading to the arrests. But the community says it plans to fight back, and has secured a March 12 court date for a pretrial motion to get the charges against Stefanus and Khaleb thrown out.
“How dare the company encroach into a location that’s prohibited by the community?” Niko Ahwalam, the Sabuai chief, said in a statement received by Mongabay on Feb. 22.
“Our action is solely to defend our rights on the forest and mountain that the company has grabbed. The forest is highly sacred. There lie the graves of our ancestors, and the site itself was the old village of the Sabuai people.”
Sabuai men at the disputed site amid logging equipment belonging to CV Sumber Berkat Makmur. Image courtesy of the Sabuai indigenous community.
A key question in the case, and one obscured by the opaque permitting process in Indonesia, is whether the Sabuai ancestral forest falls within the concession awarded to CV Sumber Berkat Makmur in 2018. Mongabay has been unable to access the company’s plantation maps as of the time of this writing.
Imanuel Darusman, a director at CV Sumber Berkat Makmur, told reporters that the company had all the required permits to operate in the forest, including to clear trees ahead of planting and sell the timber. He said the company had also fulfilled all its promises to the Sabuai community as agreed on by both sides, including employing 70 community members. Imanuel said this was the first dispute to arise between the two sides since CV Sumber Berkat Makmur began operating there, and suggested other parties were to blame for inciting opposition to his company’s operations.
Here, as in much of Indonesia, the driving factor behind the dispute over indigenous land is the lack of formal title. Prior to a landmark 2013 court ruling, all indigenous lands across the country were considered state land, and were parceled out accordingly by the authorities for plantations, logging concessions, mines and more. The court ruling relinquished the state’s control over the land, but notably did not order it handed back to the respective communities. Instead, the government has had to do that on a case-by-case basis, and progress has been slow.
In the case of the Sabuai, the local government must first formally recognize that the Sabuai are an indigenous community, said Leny Patty, head of the Maluku provincial chapter of the Indigenous People’s Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN). This recognition, issued in the form of a bylaw, can then be used by the Sabuai to apply to the central government for formal indigenous land rights and a title to their forest.
“If we have this indigenous rights bylaw, companies won’t be able to just come in and grab the rights of the Maluku people,” she said. “All of the forests in Maluku are customary forests.”
Police release most of the Sabuai men arrested after the Feb. 17 confrontation with workers from CV Sumber Berkat Makmur. Image courtesy of the East Seram Police.
With the case shrouded in uncertainty, pressure is growing for a freeze on CV Sumber Berkat Makmur’s operations to investigate the complaints by the Sabuai.
The Sabuai Student Alliance has filed a police report against the company, alleging illegal forest clearing without the requisite permit. It says the community was left out of the process of carrying out an environmental impact analysis for the plantation, and thus any permit issued to the company on the basis of that analysis cannot be valid.
Abraham Tulalessy, an environmental law expert at Pattimura University in Ambon, the provincial capital, has backed the calls for a police probe into the permit issue.
“The company must be investigated,” he said, adding the Sabuai community was the victim in the dispute.
The provincial legislature has also called on the company to temporarily halt its forest-clearing activity on the disputed land. It says the provincial forestry department should evaluate the company’s operations.
“The conclusion is that we must visit the site to cross-check the claims by NGOs and by officials from Sumber Berkat Makmur,” Richard Rahakbauw, a provincial legislator, said on Feb. 23.
This story was first reported by Mongabay’s Indonesia team and published here on our Indonesian site on Feb. 28, 2020.
Israel’s chief Rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, has stoked controversy by describing Afro-Americans as “monkeys” during one of his weekly religious lessons.
The remark, which will prompt further discussion about entrenched racism within the country, was reported by Israeli newspaper Ynet News.
Yosef, whose status as chief rabbi is constitutionally recognised, is no stranger to inflammatory remarks having previously issued a “religious edict” encouraging the killing of any Palestinian armed with a knife.
While Yosef’s incitement of violence against Palestinians may have been overlooked his description of Afro-Americans as “monkeys” has drawn wide attention.
Yosef made the remarks as he cited a hypothetical story about encountering a black person in the US. He referred to black people using the pejorative Hebrew word “kushi”, which refers to a dark-skinned person usually of African descent, and called a black person a “monkey”.
“We don’t say a blessing for every negro,” said Yosef while explaining that praise and blessing is only said for the “negro” whose father and mother are white. “If you know, they had a monkey for a son, they had a son like that,” blessing shouldn’t be offered to them, he explained.
An area nearly the size of Paris has already cut a hole in a vast stretch of rainforest on the island of New Guinea, as the companies clearing the forest insist their permits are legitimate.Indonesian government officials have alleged that permits underpinning a multi-billion dollar plantation project in Papua province were falsified, leading to the criminal clear-cutting of a vast area of rainforest.
The land is being opened up by investors whose identity is hidden behind anonymously owned companies, as part of a plan to develop an oil palm plantation almost twice the size of London in the remote region.
Officials from Papua province’s investment agency say that permits that could only have been issued by their office were falsified at a critical stage of the licensing process. While the permits bear the signature of the former head of the agency, he has reported in writing that it was forged.
Approximately 83 square kilometres (32 square miles) of rainforest has been cleared on the basis of the permits, deforestation that is described in internal government correspondence as a potential criminal act.
The allegation has been formally raised within the government on at least three occasions and multiple ministries are now aware of it, The Gecko Project and Mongabay have found.
Instead of reporting the allegation to law enforcement, however, officials have struck an agreement allowing the developers to continue operating, provided they reapply for their permits.
Informed of the case, Laode Syarif, a deputy head of Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency, said it merited an investigation.
“If the signature of the investment agency chief was forged, that’s a crime,” he said in an interview.
In a separate allegation, the head of the investment office of Boven Digoel district, Papua province, has claimed that a key permit for a sawmill built to harvest timber from the project was also falsified. The allegation was made public last month by Pusaka, an Indonesian nonprofit that advocates for indigenous peoples’ rights.
The case provides a window into how President Joko Widodo’s administration is wrestling with the consequences of two decades of poorly regulated plantation expansion.
Indonesia is the world’s top producer of palm oil, an edible oil found in everything from cosmetics to biofuels. But recent government audits have shown that licensing in the sector has been plagued with irregularities, covering the country in a patchwork of unlawful plantations.
If the signature of the investment agency chief was forged, that’s a crime.
Laode Syarif, commissioner, Indonesia Anti-Corruption Commission
The industry’s unchecked growth has driven the clearance of rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands on a massive scale, contributing to Indonesia becoming one of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters and fueling annual wildfires that blanket the country and its neighbors in a toxic haze.
In the wake of the 2015 fire and haze crisis, President Widodo announced a freeze on new permits for oil palm plantations, a policy that took effect in September 2018. He also instructed his cabinet to carry out a review of all existing oil palm licenses, in an attempt to bring order to the chaotic sector.
But as the review got underway, government officials quietly papered over an allegation of criminality in Papua, at the heart of the largest remaining tract of rainforest in Asia.
“This is a potential criminal offense,” said Franky Samperante, the director of Pusaka. “It could be a priority for the permit review, and for the permits to be cancelled.”
Alarms raised, then silenced
For more than a decade, the Indonesian government has aspired to transform the southern reaches of Papua, from a region of pristine forests sparsely populated by indigenous peoples to a vast expanse of industrial farmland that would provide the nation with food, biofuels and export earnings.
That vision has largely foundered, leaving most of Papua’s forests untouched by industrial-scale activities. But over the years, speculators have sought and hoarded plantation permits from district politicians, in the hope that changing economic conditions would spark a development boom.
In 2009, one such investor, a Sumatran named Chairul Anhar, arrived in Papua with ambitious plans to create the world’s largest oil palm plantation.
Chairul, then 43, and his firm, the Menara Group, had no apparent track record managing plantations. But he convinced Yusak Yaluwo, then the head of Boven Digoel district, to issue permits to seven shell companies under Menara’s control.
It was the first step in a plan that would entail clear-cutting 2,800 square kilometres (1,080 square miles) of rainforest close to Indonesia’s border with Papua New Guinea, in a remote and isolated area that encompasses the ancestral territory of the Auyu people. It would come to be known as the Tanah Merah project.
An analysis commissioned by investors in the project suggested it could generate almost $6 billion from harvesting precious hardwoods as the forest was cleared, even before the plantation began producing palm oil.
The permits from Yusak were only the first in a succession of approvals the companies needed, from different levels of government, before they could begin operating. Among the most important were plantation business permits, known as IUPs, from the Papua provincial government.
The IUPs were purportedly issued in January and February 2011, according to copies of the documents seen by The Gecko Project and Mongabay.
Instead of developing the land itself, however, Menara proceeded to sell off majority stakes in all but one of the seven companies.
By the end of 2012, two of the companies had gone to a publicly listed Malaysian logging and property conglomerate, Tadmax Resources, for a total of $80 million. Four more were sold to anonymously owned firms registered in the United Arab Emirates cities of Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah, two of the world’s secrecy jurisdictions, where regulations are deliberately crafted to enable shareholders to hide their identities.
Stock exchange announcements made by Tadmax show that the issuance of the IUPs was fundamental to its decision to invest the $80 million.
The permits were also used to secure a string of decrees from Indonesia’s then minister of forestry, Zulkifli Hasan, that rezoned the land for plantation development.
Papua is the last bastion for saving Indonesia’s forests. The parties involved must be brought to justice.
Arie Rompas, head of forest campaigns, Greenpeace Indonesia
It is these IUPs — the basis of a multimillion-dollar deal and seven ministerial decrees — that the Papua province investment agency believes were falsified.
The circumstances that led to both the forgery allegation and the agreement to paper over it have been pieced together by The Gecko Project and Mongabay through interviews with numerous government officials in Papua and Jakarta.
Jamal Tawurutubun, the head of licensing at the Papua investment agency, raised the allegation at a meeting in Jakarta in May this year, in front of senior staff from several government bodies, including two ministries. Also present were executives representing four of the seven companies, that are majority owned by the anonymous investors.
According to Jamal’s account of events, the alleged forgery was first discovered no later than 2013, after his agency learned of the existence of the project by word of mouth.
Jamal was responsible for processing permits, but he had no record of the project in the agency database. When photocopies of the permits began to circulate within the provincial government, it emerged they bore the signature of Purnama, then the head of the Papua investment agency. (Purnama did not respond to requests for comment for this article).
Purnama himself raised the alarm in February 2013, in a letter to the governor of Papua and the Ministry of Agriculture stating that his signature had been forged. There is no evidence that any action was taken. Within months, one of the seven companies — PT Megakarya Jaya Raya — began bulldozing the rainforest.
For several years, Megakarya was the only one operating. In an interview last year, Chairul Anhar said the project had been stymied because his co-investors had yet to finish building the sawmill. Without it, billions of dollars’ worth of timber would be left to rot as the developers cleared the forest.
But, in 2017 and 2018, permits held by four of the other plantation companies were revoked by the Papua investment agency. Internal government correspondence shows the decision was driven by frustration that the firms had yet to start operating and by a desire to reassign the land to new investors who would.
Chairul and his partners tried to retain the vast land concessions. In early 2019, they mounted a formal challenge to the permit revocations, writing to the Ministry of Law and Human Rights questioning the legality of the decision.
This challenge culminated in the May meeting in Jakarta, where Jamal Tawurutubun raised the forgery allegation. He cited a clause in the 2014 Plantation Law that stipulates a prison term of up to four years for anyone clearing land for a plantation without a valid permit.
The officials present at the meeting agreed that six of the seven companies should not be allowed to operate. But they were hesitant to cancel Megakarya’s permits due to the investment it had already made in clear-cutting the forest and planting oil palms.
As the meeting wound down, the other officials encouraged Jamal to provide more evidence underpinning the allegation. In the meantime, the decision on what to do with Megakarya would be left to the district and provincial governments.
Three months later, Jamal and Jhoni Way, Purnama’s successor as the head of the Papua investment agency, said in an interview that the provincial and district governments had come to an agreement with Megakarya, and with a second company, PT Kartika Cipta Pratama, after discovering that it too had started clearing and planting land. These companies, they told us, could keep operating, provided they redid the entire permit process from the beginning, starting at the district level.
The meeting in Jakarta, Jamal said, was part of a process to “find a solution, the best solution to make the investment work, because they have already spent money.”
He added, “We don’t want it arising again, the idea that Papua is not conducive to investment.”
Jhoni Way speculated that the falsification might have been abetted by someone inside the investment agency. But he insisted the matter had been resolved by the agreement with the companies. “The most important thing is they fix their permits,” he said.
In response to requests for comment on our findings, Megakarya and Kartika each wrote in a letter that their IUPs were “genuine and not falsified.” Both companies said they had “never been informed” of the allegation and that their activities were based on valid permits. They also claimed to have submitted regular progress reports to the relevant authorities, without any issues having been raised.
Other government bodies that are aware of the allegation have done little, if anything, to follow up on it.
Suratmin, a Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning official who attended the May meeting, told us the ministry had no role in the matter.
Widodo Ekatjahjana, the director general of legislation at the law ministry, declined to comment on the case, adding that any allegations of criminality should be reported to law enforcement.
Agus Ahmad Kurniawan, a forestry ministry lawyer who advises officials on licensing, who was also present at the meeting, said nothing could be done unless the Papua investment agency officials provided more evidence to support the allegation.
“It’s the [provincial] government who can prove whether or not [the permits] were faked,” he said. “But as it stands, they haven’t followed up.”
Djukmarian, the head of the Boven Digoel district investment office, said he was content for the project to go ahead on the grounds that it was in line with the local zoning plan and that local communities were supportive of it. “Look, the people who say [the permits were] faked are from the province,” he wrote in a text message. “So why doesn’t the province bring it into the realm of law?”
Jamal and Jhoni Way, however, took the view that the agreement with the companies had put the matter to rest.
“It’s done,” Jamal said.
A controversial project
The claim that the IUPs were falsified is not the only allegation of impropriety that has been levelled against the Tanah Merah project.
A cross-border investigation published in November 2018 by The Gecko Project, Mongabay, news portal Malaysiakini and Tempo magazine revealed a litany of problems in the way the rights to the concessions had been obtained and traded.
Yusak Yaluwo, the district chief, had granted Menara the rights to more land than a single firm is allowed to control in Papua, blowing through the legal limit of 2,000 square kilometres (772 square miles).
In April 2010, soon after Menara began began the licensing process, Yusak was arrested on unrelated corruption charges. But our investigation found that he continued to sign documents shepherding the project through after he was convicted, while languishing in a prison cell.
The Menara Group used the names of front shareholders on company documents, including those of Chairul’s driver and a low-paid debt collector.
Menara then sold two of the companies, to Tadmax, via a pair of Singapore-based shell companies that also had front shareholders, obscuring the recipients of the $80 million that flowed offshore as rights to the project changed hands.
Villagers have complained that basic information about the project, including its boundaries and scale, was withheld from them. Menara’s representatives were accompanied by police officers and soldiers during their interactions with local communities. On one occasion an Auyu man was reportedly beaten up by a police officer in a meeting about the project at a local schoolhouse.
NGOs have been unable to obtain copies of the environmental impact assessments the companies were required to carry out as part of the permit process. “It’s like there’s a mafia hiding them,” Ronny Tethool, who until recently ran the WWF office in southern Papua, told us in 2017 after trying and failing to obtain the assessments.
Jamal cited some of these findings as he detailed the forgery allegation during the May meeting in Jakarta.
But even as Menara and its partners pushed to retain their rights to the land, a new allegation was emerging.
Soon after buying into the project, one of the anonymously owned UAE firms formed a joint venture with Shin Yang, the Malaysian logging and plantation giant, to build a sawmill to process timber as the forest was clear-cut. Among the key approvals the joint-venture claimed to have obtained was an environmental license, purportedly signed in 2014 by Wempy Hutubessy, then the head of the Boven Digoel development planning agency.
But in March this year, as construction on the sawmill neared completion, Wempy reportedly issued a statement claiming the environmental license had been falsified. That allegation prompted Djukmarian, the head of the district investment agency, to write to the sawmill firm on November 5, ordering it to stop all activities in the field. Djukmarian’s letter was made public by Pusaka on November 20. The NGO has also called for an investigation into that alleged forgery. (Wempy did not respond to requests for comment for this article.)
There are no indications as to who may have carried out the alleged falsifications, for either the plantation or the sawmill. The Menara Group, Tadmax and Shin Yang, all of which have invested in parts of the project at various stages, did not respond to questions or requests for comment for this article.
Despite the growing questions surrounding the Tanah Merah project, district and provincial officials maintain that in allowing the plantation companies to keep operating they are acting in the interests of the Auyu people.
Djukmarian, Jamal and Jhoni Way all cited this as a key rationale for letting the plantation companies redo the permit process despite the forgery allegation.
“The community already consented to the companies operating,” Jamal said. “We’re prioritising the interests of the government, and the people.”
Franky Samperante, the Pusaka director, however, has found that many Auyu people remain steadfastly opposed to the project. On a recent trip to Anggai village he found residents divided over whether the project should proceed. To signal their opposition, they had erected symbolic wooden crosses at the borders of the project.
Ultimately, Franky said, local communities had been deprived of the ability to make an informed choice of whether they wanted the project because the state had failed in its duty to protect their rights. He called on the government to investigate the circumstances that gave rise to the project rather than rushing into reissuing the permits.
“This legal problem must be solved first,” he said. “If this sort of thing continues, it will be dangerous for the country.”
President Widodo and his forestry minister, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, have been at pains to signal that they are ready to curtail deforestation and bring order to the plantation sector.
The stakes are highest in Papua and neighboring West Papua province, which together hold more than a third of Indonesia’s intact forest. Last year, the governors of the two provinces pledged to protect 70 per cent of the land under their jurisdictions, a measure they promised would be supported by “uphold[ing] law enforcement in natural resources.”
The success or failure of that commitment alone could determine whether Indonesia meets its targets for curbing greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Agreement on climate change, according to the World Resources Institute.
Arie Rompas, the head of forest campaigns at Greenpeace Indonesia, has been monitoring the Widodo administration’s ongoing review of oil palm plantation permits. A comprehensive investigation of the Tanah Merah project, he said, would demonstrate the government’s commitment to stemming deforestation and corruption.
“Papua is the last bastion for saving Indonesia’s forests,” he said. “The parties involved must be brought to justice.”
Communities in north Tanna are suffering from water and food shortages due to a long period of dry weather.
Communities in north Tanna are suffering from water and food shortages due to a long period of dry weather.
Over 700 villagers from Louital, Laos and Lounabaiu had to travel to the coast to get water because their water sources have dried up, Daniel Ben Talap, a resident and owner of the Blue Cave Tour conveyed.
“There hasn’t been any rain for several months,” he said.
“It’s normal for the area to experience low rainfall that can last for a long time but this year is the worst.
“The low rainfall has resulted in withered crops. A lot of cattle are also dying.
“People have to go fishing so that they can sell their fish at the market and buy food and water.
“I have been transporting villagers to nearby rivers to wash their clothes and to the coast to search for water coming out from the rocks.”
Mr Talap is appealing to the government and any humanitarian organisation to assist the people in north Tanna with food and water.
According to the Climatologist from the Vanuatu Meteorologist and Geo-Hazards Department (VMGD), Kalo Abel, the whole island of Tanna is currently experiencing what is known as meteorological drought.
“This can affect pastures and livestock. The rainfall predicted for the next coming months will be low in the southern part of the country.
“Villagers are encouraged to report issues associated with the meteorological drought such as water shortage for authorities to address them,” he added.
The National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) said it did not receive any report about the water and food scarcity in north Tanna.
NDMO conveyed that it has received reports about water shortages only from communities in Aneityum and Efate.
Pakistan’s leading lady Mahira Khan has let her inner fan girl out over acclaimed music icon Bob Marley.
In her latest Instagram post, the 33-year-old Raees star pays tribute to the Jamaican music legend by sharing a clip of one of his old interviews.
In the video, Bob was asked if he has made a lot of money through his music to which he said: “Money? I mean what is a — how much is a lot of money to you?”“Have you made, say, millions of dollars?”, the interviewer asks and is responded with a resonant “no.
”He is then asked if he is a rich man, Bob says: “What do you mean by rich?” “Do you have a lot of possessions, a lot of money in the bank?,” he is asked.
“Possessions make you rich? I don’t have that type of riches,” he responds.
Sharing the video, the Verna actor tells her fans what a massive Bob Marley fan she is, as was suggested by a poster in her room.
“Bob yaar,” Mahira said, adding: “P. S In college the only thing we had up on our wall was a life size poster of Bob Marley, courtesy @hissankhann.”
Kepulauan Solomon telah menjadi berita utama di sejumlah media internasional pekan lalu, termasuk di New York Times, mengenai perjanjian sewa pulau di Kepulauan Solomon.
Menelaah kesepakatan empat-halaman, perjanjian kerja sama strategis atas Pulau Tulagi, yang dipersiapkan dengan buru-buru penuh kecerobohan, antara pemerintah Provinsi Tengah di Kepulauan Solomon dan perusahaan Tiongkok, Sam Enterprise Group Ltd, terlihat jelas bahwa apa yang disetujui termasuk hak pembangunan eksklusif kepada konglomerat Tiongkok itu sebenarnya jauh di luar wewenang pemerintah provinsi.
Sumber daya mineral, perikanan, hutan, tanah – ini semua adalah ranah pemilik tanah adat, sementara pemerintah pusat hanya berperan sebagai tuan tanah secara teoretis atas lahan yang terdaftar serta pemilik bersama sumber daya mineral, yang bertugas memberikan izin usaha pertambangan.
Pemimpin provinsi itu juga kemudian dengan lekas membantah perjanjian itu setelah liputan New York Times, mengakui dalam wawancara dengan Radio New Zealand bahwa mereka tidak mungkin menyewa Tulagi, dan bahwa tidak ada apa pun dari perjanjian itu akan terjadi.
Namun, meski Xi Jinping tidak akan mungkin memerintahkan pembangunan tempat rahasia di Pulau Tulagi, proyek tersebut mungkin akan diteruskan namun dalam bentuk lainnya, terutama jika Sam Group berhasil mengamankan pendanaan di Tiongkok. Jika berhasil, kurangnya pengalaman perusahaan itu di Pasifik, dapat menyebabkan situasi yang mirip dengan Pacific Marine Industrial Zone di sebelah utara Papua Nugini, upaya pertama oleh perusahaan Tiongkok untuk mendirikan kawasan ekonomi khusus di Pasifik.
Di kawasan itu, politisi-politisi dan kontraktor setempat sedang bersengketa dengan perusahaan Tiongkok tersebut. Manajemennya bersembunyi di sebuah kantor di Madang karena pendanaan mereka dari Bank Exim Tiongkok perlahan-lahan dibuang untuk hal-hal trivial seperti gerbang yang bernilai Kina 4 juta ($ 1,7 juta).
Juga luput dari perhatian media-media besar adalah kasus lainnya, yang membuktikan bahwa kesenjangan antara pemerintah nasional dan provinsi seperti ini ada positif dan negatifnya bagi Tiongkok. Pada 17 Oktober kemarin, Pemerintah Provinsi Malaita, juga di Kepulauan Solomon, menerbitkan Komunike Auki, menegaskan adanya proses bagi mereka perihal hak untuk menentukan nasib sendiri.
Alasan yang memicu keinginan kelompok-kelompok di Malaita, untuk membentuk pemerintahan sendiri adalah karena keputusan pemerintah pusat, untuk mengalihkan pengakuan diplomatik dari Taiwan ke Tiongkok, yang dianggap sebagai proses yang tergesa-gesa tanpa konsultasi yang memadai dengan masyarakat. Di bawah anak judul ‘core beliefs and freedoms’ komunike itu tertulis kebebasan beragama, dan ‘oleh karena itu Malaita menolak Partai Komunis di Tiongkok dan sistemnya yang didasarkan ideologi ateis’.
Keputusan pemerintah nasional Kepulauan Solomon untuk beralih ke Tiongkok, telah menimbulkan desakan oleh pergerakan Malaita for Democracy (M4D) dan beberapa kelompok lain, agar Malaita dapat menentukan nasibnya sendiri, menyatakan keinginan mereka untuk menjauhkan diri dari ikatan diplomatik dengan Republik Rakyat Tiongkok, seperti yang diputuskan oleh pemerintah pusat, serta komitmennya untuk melindungi tanah dan sumber daya alam mereka dari ‘investor yang amoral’.
Aspirasi untuk kemerdekaan Malaita dan keinginannya untuk menentukan nasib sendiri ini, punya sejarah yang panjang. Pada 1940-an, gerakan Ma’asina Ruru di Malaita berusaha menuntut hak untuk menentukan nasib sendiri. Pada 1970-an, pergerakan Western Breakaway dibentuk, dimana Provinsi Barat memboikot perayaan Hari Kemerdekaan Nasional pada 7 Juli 1978. Gerakan ini lalu bangkit kembali pada 2000 sebagai Western State Movement, yang berakhir dengan apa yang disebut sebagai kudeta yang tidak diketahui oleh siapa pun. Pada 2015, Majelis Provinsi Malaita meresmikan resolusi tentang kedaulatan Malaita.
Provinsi Malaita memiliki jumlah populasi yang besar dibandingkan dengan provinsi lainnya di Kepulauan Solomon, namun ia tetap terbelakang. Hanya 4,71% lahan di provinsi ini yang terasing, ini berarti sebagian besar tanah dan SDA di Malaita berada dalam domain adat, di bawah wewenang langsung pemilik tradisional. Meskipun demikian, pemerintah pusat memiliki kuasa atas alat-alat dan proses transaksi atas lahan tersebut.
Instrumen-instrumen seperti itu sering kali lebih menguntungkan investor, sementara pemilik sumber daya dibiarkan menjadi rent seeker (pemburu rente) dan penerima royalti. Hal ini juga menyebabkan adanya jurang pemisah antara pembuat keputusan di tingkat nasional dan provinsi. Keputusan pemerintah pusat untuk beralih ke Tiongkok, dan segera mengundang investor Tiongkok ke Kepulauan Solomon tanpa masukan dari pemerintah provinsi dan pemilik sumber daya, adalah bukti kesenjangan ini.
Pemerintah Provinsi Malaita meminta MP-nya untuk datang ke Auki dan berpartisipasi dalam pertemuan tinggi pemimpin-pemimpin yang diadakan pada 16 Oktober, untuk membahas persoalan seputar peralihan ke Tiongkok, termasuk di antaranya desakan untuk menentukan nasib sendiri. Majelis Provinsi Malaita dan lima MP dari Malaita turut hadir, dan sebuah komunike dikeluarkan pada hari berikutnya. Sejumlah MP dari Malaita yang pro-Tiongkok tidak menghadiri pertemuan itu.
Desakan Provinsi Malaita untuk hak menentukan nasib sendiri ini bukan hanya datang dari daerah ini. Provinsi-provinsi lain di negara itu telah mengutarakan sentimen yang serupa, semua diakibatkan oleh pemusatan kekuasaan di tingkat pemerintah pusat, tanpa adanya kemajuan yang berarti terjadi di tingkat provinsi. Ada kekhawatiran yang masuk akal dari kedua pihak, menegaskan jurang pemisah yang umumnya terjadi di negara-negara dengan sistem pemerintahan federal.
Ketika kewenangan yang dilimpahkan ke pemerintah tingkat provinsi terbatas, ada ruang bagi oknum-oknum dari luar untuk menargetkan hubungan pemerintah nasional yang lemah, ke provinsi-provinsi yang lalu berujung ke destabilisasi. Hal ini mungkin dilakukan demi keuntungan atau sebagai langkah ekonomi yang diinginkan oleh negara.
Namun, pemerintah provinsi juga dapat menjadi sasaran yang lebih baik, karena ia lebih jarang diawasi oleh media dan diamati oleh masyarakat sipil. Faktor ini mungkin dapat menjelaskan kenapa negara-negara yang kewenangannya terpusat seperti Korea Selatan, yang juga homogen dalam hal etnik dan bahasa, secara umum lebih sulit dipengaruhi Tiongkok.
Peralihan hubungan diplomatik, dari Taiwan terhadap Tiongkok, diharapkan akan membawa pembangunan dalam berbagai sektor di Kepulauan Solomon. Pemerintah pusat harus melakukan analisis yang cermat, sebelum menandatangani perjanjian apa pun terkait pembangunan yang penting seperti ini. Legislasi dan mekanismenya harus diperkuat atau dirombak, untuk memastikan wewenang antara pemerintah pusat dan provinsi dijaga dengan baik, agar bisa melindungi kepentingan masyarakat setempat yang merupakan pemilik SDA di tingkat provinsi. (Lowy Institute/The Interpreter)
Many of us have at least a little Neanderthal DNA inside us
Marcin Rogozinski / Alamy Stock Photo
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2220381-long-strand-of-dna-from-neanderthals-found-in-people-from-melanesia/#ixzz630AemCaX
Many people have DNA inside them that they inherited from extinct hominins like the Neanderthals – and now we know that in some cases it isn’t just tiny snippets but long stretches.
Over the past decade, genetic analysis of human DNA has revealed that ancient humans must have interbred many times with other hominins such as Neanderthals. The result is that DNA from these extinct groups can be found in many human populations today.
However, these studies were limited to small pieces of DNA. “Most people have focused on looking at single nucleotide changes,” says Evan Eichler at the University of Washington in Seattle. This means just one “letter” of a gene has been altered.
Now Eichler and his team have gone further. “This is one of the first papers that looks at bigger events like deletions and duplications of sequence,” he says. These larger genetic changes will have had more important effects on human biology.
The researchers looked at the DNA of people from Melanesia, as the levels of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA are highest in these populations. They found evidence of much longer chunks of archaic DNA in this population.
Two large pieces of DNA were found that originate from ancient hominins. One is on chromosome 16 and comes from Denisovans. It contains two duplicated sections. The other is on chromosome 8 and comes from Neanderthals. It includes both a deletion and a duplication.
Duplications are significant because they allow the original gene to be kept, if it is useful, while the copy is free to change and potentially develop a new function. “A duplication is a type of mutation that lets you have your cake and eat it too,” says Eichler.
Both chunks of DNA show signs of having been selected for by evolution. They seem to have been advantageous and thus become more common in the Melanesian population over the centuries.
Test run
“The archaics have contributed to the success of humans that left Africa,” says Eichler. Neanderthals and Denisovans lived in Europe and Asia for hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans emerged from Africa, so they would have evolved adaptations to the different climates, foods and diseases. These useful genes “were kind of test-run in our precursors”, says Eichler. “They’re basically borrowed.”
However, it is unclear what the advantages have been. “I think the biggest challenge is proving the function,” says Eichler. This will be difficult because the genes are only found in humans, so animal studies will not help, and they have been duplicated and then subtly altered. “You’re talking about a set of genes which are a geneticist’s worst nightmare.”
