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Indonesian Justice Attacked Over Illegal Logging
Jakarta (AFP) March 28, 2007 Indonesia's weak and corrupt judicial system has severely undermined efforts to curb deforestation because timber smuggling masterminds go unpunished, activists said Wednesday. They issued a report alleging that corruption throughout the justice system "conspires to ensure the main culprits behind illegal logging in Indonesia remain at liberty." A television documentary accompanying the report contained interviews with traders in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and China about how Indonesian timber is smuggled. The testimony revealed one technique was to doctor documents to show Malaysia as the origin of the timber. A police officer on Indonesia's Sumatra island also confessed to illegal timber trading. "What we are showing is only the tip of the iceberg," said Yayat Afianto from Indonesian group Telapak, which issued the report along with the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). In 2005 Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono sent 1,500 security personnel to Papua province to clamp down on illegal logging. Afianto said the government released a list of 186 wanted suspects soon after the operation. But "the Ministry of Forestry complained recently that 26 suspects in major cases were released by the courts," he said, adding only 13 small operators had been convicted and that none of the financiers had been reprimanded. Campaigner Julian Newman from the EIA said many markets in Asia and the West were addicted to illegal timber. Industry took "great steps to ensure it gets cheap, illegal timber from Indonesia and (is) often backed up by politicians," he said. Newman alleged that Singapore offered a "safe haven" for timber barons identified as major players in Sumatra and Borneo. The Indonesian government estimates illegal logging has cost the country around four billion dollars and some 2.8 million hectares of forest cover per year over the last decade. Ten countries account for 80 percent of the world's primary forests, of which Indonesia, Mexico, Papua New Guinea and Brazil saw the highest losses in the five years from 2000 to 2005, UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has said.
Source: Agence France-Presse Related Links Save the Forests at Wood Pile Forestry News - Global and Local News, Science and Application
Uganda Approves Destruction Of Protected Rainforest
Kampala (AFP) March 21, 2007The Ugandan government has approved the clearance of thousands of hectares of protected rainforest for a sugar plantation, a state newspaper said on Wednesday. |
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