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From: apakabar@clark.net
Date: Wed Aug 13 1997 17:29:00 EDT
From: John MacDougall <apakabar@clark.net>
Received: (from apakabar@localhost) by clark.net (8.8.5/8.7.1) id UAA18287 for reg.indonesia@conf.igc.apc.org; Wed, 13 Aug 1997 20:28:51 0400 (EDT)
Subject: [INDONESIAL] GJA Bob Hasan's Forestry Bisnis
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From ownerindonesial@indopubs.com Wed Aug 13 20:09:14 1997
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 18:01:55 0600 (MDT)
MessageId: <199708140001.SAA01302@indopubs.com>
To: indonesial@indopubs.com
From: apakabar@clark.net
Subject: [INDONESIAL] GJA Bob Hasan's Forestry Bisnis
Sender: ownerindonesial@indopubs.com
INDONESIAL
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 10:10:57 +1100
From: aditjond@psychology.newcastle.edu.au (George J. Aditjondro)
Subject: Re: Bob Hasan's forestry bisnis
To: Rainforest Foundation Norway <rainforest@online.no>
Cc: apakabar@clark.net
BOYCOTT BOB HASAN'S WORLWIDE FORESTRY BUSINESS LINKS !!!
Dear Norwegian friends Kim, Tarje and Mads;
Excuse me for me late reply. I just returned from a onemonth trip to
Portugal to attend a symposium on Indonesia and East Timor, and to teach at
a summer course on Indonesia organized by the University of Porto. While
still recovering from my jet lag, I first had to make sure that my classes
at Newcastle University's Sociology and Anthropology Department were
running well on the right track, before responding to your inquiry about
Bob Hasan's business connections in Norway.
PT Aspex Paper, it is indeed 20% owned by Mohammad ("Bob") Hasan, one of
Suharto's closest business crony. I did not know before that they were
importing waste paper from Norway. This in itself is an antisocial act of
Bob Hasan, because thousands of Indonesian urban poor people could assist
PT Aspex Paper with our own waste paper in the cities.
What I can tell you about this PT (PT is the same as your S.A.) is that it
is one of the two companies which monopolyze the supply of newspaper print
paper. The other one is PT Kertas Leces, a state company. Which means that
Bob Hasan is holding the "physical lifeline" of Indonesia's print media,
while another crony of Suharto, General Hartono, as Suharto's new Minister
of Information, controls the content of the media.
In addition, Bob Hasan was also the only person who Suharto trusted to
hijack journalists from the banned TEMPO magazine, to set up a new weekly
magazine, GATRA, which has become an additional instrument of the regime to
attack Indonesian environmentalists and other NGO activists, often accusing
them of serving foreign interests rather than Indonesia's socalled
national interests.
Boycotting Bob Hasan's companies in Norway, and if possible in the entire
Nordic sphere, is highly recommandable from the social justice as well as
ecological perspectives. He is currently often labelled Indonesia's "forest
king", since he controls about 3.5 million hectares of forests in Indonesia
2.5 million hectares in East Kalimantan (Borneo), Aceh, and the Moluccas
through one timber conglomerate he is heading, namely the Kalimanis Group,
and another million hectares through another conglomerate he is heading,
namely the Astra Group, which main business is in automotives, but also
controls timber concessions in East Kalimantan, Riau, and West Papua.
In both conglomerates, Kalimanis Group and Astra Group, Bob Hasan does not
only represent his own family interests, but also Indonesia's First Family
interests, through a company, PT Nusamba, which is 80% owned by three
foundations headed by Suharto, 10% by Suharto's eldest son, Sigit
Harjojudanto, and 10% by Bob Hasan himself. Apart from that, several
controls timber concessions in East Kalimantan, Riau, and West Papua.
In both conglomerates, Kalimanis Group and Astra Group, Bob Hasan does not
only represent his own family interests, but also Indonesia's First Family
interests, through a company, PT Nusamba, which is 80% owned by three
foundations headed by Suharto, 10% by Suharto's eldest son, Sigit
Harjojudanto, and 10% by Bob Hasan himself. Apart from that, several
armyowned foundations are also involved in the Kalimanis Group.
In addition to heading those two large Indonesian conglomerates (Astra
belong to the top five), as head of the Indonesian Timber Society (MPI),
the Indonesian Plywood Association (Apkindo), and the Indonesian Furniture
Association (Asmindo), Bob Hasan is also involved in a 1.5 million hectare
concession to harvest Central Sulawesi's ebony forests, as well as in a
50,000 hectares forest plantation in East Timor, which occupies the
customary land of the Maubere people in eleven villages in three
subdistricts of Viqueque. The latter project of Bob Hasan does not only
violate the East Timorese people's right to selfdetermination, but also
their sovereignty over their nature resources.
Based on my understanding of all the ecological and human rights violations
carried out by Bob Hasan in his capacities as the bosses of the Kalimanis
Group (which includes PT Aspex Paper) and the Astra Group, as well as head
of the three business associations mentioned earlier, I recently returned
the Indonesian national environmental award, Kalpataru , which I received
from Suharto on World Environment Day, ten years ago.
As I mentioned in my letter to Suharto, I felt insulted and shocked by the
various environmental awards which the US and Indonesian governments had
recently donned on Bob Hasan and his top executives. In early April 1997,
Bob Hasan received the Harry A. Merlo Award from the World Forestry Center
in the US, where Bob Hasan himself serves as one of the Board members,
supposedly for his contributions in linking forest conservation and
development in Indonesia.
Then, on April 28, 1997, in a ceremony in the White House, a top executive
of the Kalimanis Group received a Certificate of Recognition from the U.S.
Initiative on Joint Implementation (USIJI), for the "reduced impact logging
" which the Group has supposedly carried out in its more than two million
hectares timber concessions in East Kalimantan. According to estimates from
President Clinton's Climate Change Task Force, 56,400 metric tonnes of
carbon dioxide will be saved in the next 40 years from those timber
concessions.
Finally, on World Environment Day, June 5, 1997, one of the Kalimanis Group
member companies, PT Kalhold Utama Plywood, received a national award for
its water pollution treatment facilities, which was considered one of the
best in Indonesia during the last three years. This time Bob Hasan himself
received that award from the Indonesian authorities.
All those awards are a joke, since in all his capacities as Indonesia's
"shadow forestry minister," Bob Hasan has never ordered the executives of
his companies and members of his associations to carry out thorough and
sincere analyses on the social and environmental impacts of all those
timber concessions, plywood, paper and pulp factories, timber plantations,
and rattan monopolies under his control.
>From my own studies in Eastern Indonesia (in particular in Central
Sulawesi, the Moluccas, and West Papua), the plywood factories controlled
by Bob Hasan have had a tremendous negative impact to the indigenous
communities who have lived for generations from harvesting the copal from
the Agathis trees, without cutting down the trees as has happened now after
Indonesia under Bob Hasan's leadership became a major player in the
global plywood market.
As head of Apkindo, Bob Hasan is also responsible for the depletion of the
ebony stocks in Central Sulawesi by an Apkindo company, PT Fendi Indah,
which shares are coowned by an Indonesian army foundation, Yayasan
Trikora. From a forest ecology perspective, this ebony concession in
Central Sulawesi, which mainly caters for the Bali and Japanese markets, is
a major disaster, since techniques to rejuvenate the ebony forests are
still unknown to the silviculture community.
Likewise, in his capacity as head of Asmindo, which authored the export ban
for semiprocessed ratan products, Bob Hasan is also responsible for the
famine caused by this policy to the thousands of rattan collectors and
rattan mat (tatami ) producers in Central and South Kalimantan in the early
1980s, because all the rattan produced in Kalimantan had to be sold for
a very cheap price to Bob Hasan and Asmindo's rattan furniture factories
in Java.
Likewise, in his capacity as head of Asmindo, which authored the export ban
for semiprocessed ratan products, Bob Hasan is also responsible for the
famine caused by this policy to the thousands of rattan collectors and
rattan mat (tatami ) producers in Central and South Kalimantan in the early
1980s, because all the rattan produced in Kalimantan had to be sold for
a very cheap price to Bob Hasan and Asmindo's rattan furniture factories
in Java.
So, friends, feel free to publish this letter of mine in your newspapers
and bulletins, and do launch an international boycott of all Bob Hasan's
timberrelated enterprises. As I have often stated in my public speeches in
opposition to the Suharto oligarchy, Suharto fights with bullets, we the
opposition respond with bulletins!
Do not worry about the alleged unemployment effect of such an international
boycott, because actually all the paper recycling activities in Indonesia's
major urban centres as well as other more ecologically sound forest
management activities in Indonesia's tropical forests can provide many more
jobs than all the jobs currently provided by Bob Hasan's enterprises!
Newcastle, August 17, 1997
In commemoration of Indonesia's independence day,
when former independence fighters have enslaved the majority of Indonesians
to a selfserving politicobureaucratic elite,
and deprived the West Papuan and Maubere peoples from their right to
selfdetermination.
George J. Aditjondro
Environmentalist, dissident academic, and researcher on the globalization
process of the Suharto oligarchy.
phone/fax (h): (6149) 677 053
fax (w): (6149) 216 902
phonw (w): (6149) 216 536
email: aditjond@psychology.newcastle.edu.au