Indonesian mudflow damages claim fails

INDONESIA's environment watchdog has failed in its efforts to have responsibility for the disastrous mudflows that began in Java 18 months ago slated home to the Banjar Panji drilling joint venture. About 6000 villagers living close to Indonesia's second city of Surabaya in eastern Java had to be relocated after mud began flowing from deep underground.

The disaster has already cost millions of dollars, and experts believe the costs could rise substantially. The mudflows have led to claim and counter-claim as to who is responsible, and complaints that the Indonesian Government is not doing enough to resolve the issues, including providing compensation for the thousands whose livelihoods have been destroyed. Australian oil and gas exploration and production company Santos said yesterday the South Jakarta District Court had handed down a decision on proceedings brought by the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WAHLI) on the mudflows.

Santos is a non-operating 18per cent partner in the Brantas Production Sharing Contract in which the Banjar Panji well was being drilled when mud began flowing in late May last year. The other partners are Indonesian companies PT Lapindo Brantas and PT MedcoEnergi. PT Lapindo Brantas is owned by members of the politically well-connected Bakrie family, one of Indonesia's richest business dynasties. WAHLI began legal action in February involving the Brantas partners, the Indonesian Government and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and several other government and provincial officials, alleging major environmental damage from the mudflows. In its claim, WAHLI demanded the Indonesian Government direct PT Lapindo Brantas to allocate a budget and resources to overcome the mudflows and tackle the environmental damage they caused. The claim also sought to have the damaged environment restored to its original condition.

Santos said yesterday the Brantas PSC partners had successfully defended all claims brought against them. The company noted that WALHI had 14 days to appeal to a higher court.

Comments

Nine of Indonesia’s 11 richest families have found shelter in tropical tax havens

Billionaires Among Thousands of Indonesians Found in Secret Offshore Documents By Nicky Hager April 9, 2013, 8:15 pm Nine of Indonesia’s 11 richest families have found shelter in tropical tax havens, holding ownership of more than 190 offshore trusts and companies, secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists show. The nine families, worth an estimated $36 billion among them, are at the top of a wealthy class that dominates Indonesia’s politics and economy. Six were closely tied to the late dictator Suharto, who helped a special circle of Indonesians grow rich during his 31-year rule by granting economic fiefdoms to family and friends. The billionaires are among nearly 2,500 Indonesians found in the files of Singapore-headquart ered offshore services provider Portcullis TrustNet, which ICIJ has been analyzing and began reporting on last week. Although there is no evidence in the files of illegality by any of the ni...

Debate Islam in Indonesia

http://www.thejakar taglobe.com/ opinion/interloc utors-of- indonesian- islam/560447 Interlocutors of Indonesian Islam Ahmad Najib Burhani | December 08, 2012 A few months ago, the Japanese anthropologist Mitsuo Nakamura told me that studying Nahdlatul Ulama as an organization was beyond the imagination of any American scholar from the 1950s to the ’70s. But he is not the only academic to have noticed this. George McT. Kahin of Cornell University stated the same thing. Even NU-expert Martin van Bruinessen was not expecting to study NU as his primary focus when he came to Indonesia for the first time in the 1980s. During the early decades of Indonesian independence, NU was relatively unorganized and its management was largely based on the authority of religious teachers ( kyai ). Of course there were a number of scholars who studied NU-affiliated religious schools ( pesantren ) and its kyai, but not NU as an organization. Even though NU was one of the ...

is that true in Indonesia there freedom of religion?

The problems began shortly after Tajul Muluk, a Shiite cleric, opened a boarding school in 2004. The school, in a predominantly Sunni Muslim part of East Java, raised local tensions, and in 2006 it was attacked by thousands of villagers. When a mob set fire to the school and several homes last December, many Shiites saw it as just the latest episode in a simmering sectarian conflict — one that they say has been ignored by the police and exploited by Islamists purporting to preserve the purity of the Muslim faith. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, has long been considered a place where different religious and ethnic groups can live in harmony and where Islam can work with democracy. But that perception has been repeatedly brought into question lately. In East Java, Sunni leaders are pushing the provincial government to adopt a regulation limiting the spread of Shiite Islam. It would prevent the country’s two major Shiite organizations from ...

INDONESIA A NEWS

Search This Blog