[Onthebarricades] Miscellaneous articles, part 1

[Andy]

*  NICARAGUA:  Cocaine enriches indigenous villagers
*  BRAZIL:  Destruction of Amazon surges despite outcry
*  CHINA:  Inner Mongolian nomads dispossessed, displaced
*  PERU:  Tech-savvy activists and indigenous people launch eco-lawsuits
*  INDONESIA:  Indigenous peoples tricked out of rainforests for palm oil
*  US:  Alaskan indigenous village files lawsuit over flooding, blames 
climate change
*  VENEZUELA:  Exxon-Mobil cut off from oil after legal attack on regime
*  WEST PAPUA:  Gas plant brings misery despite early benefits
*  WEST PAPUA:  Radio station targets highland isolation
*  PAPUA NEW GUINEA:  Law undermined by local kinship security
[The ethical loading of the article is upside down - supporting the 
superficial belief in law rather than the social actuality of warding it off 
for example.  But it is revealing that law is being warded off in this way.]

Publicly Archived at Global Resistance: 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/globalresistance

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=272&objectid=10491443&pnum=0

Catch of the day: Cocaine
5:00AM Saturday February 09, 2008
By Jonathan Franklin

At first glance, Bluefields in Nicaragua looks like any other
rum-soaked, Rastafarian-packed, hammock-infested Caribbean paradise. But
Bluefields has a secret.

People here don't have to work. Every week, sometimes every day, 35kg
sacks of cocaine drift in from the sea. The economy of this entire town
of 50,000 tranquil souls is addicted to cocaine.

Bluefields is a creation of the gods of geography. Located halfway
between the cocaine labs of Colombia and the 300 million noses of the
United States, Bluefields is ground zero for cocaine transportation.
Nicaraguan waters are near Colombian territorial limits, making the area
extremely popular with cocaine smugglers using very small, very fast
fishing boats.

The US military calls them "go fast boats", which is a bureaucratic way
of describing these mini-water-rockets. Typically these 12m boats have
800 horsepower of outboard motors bolted to the stern. A Porsche 911
Turbo, by comparison, has 485 horsepower.

While they are very fast, they are also very visible to the array of
radars set up by roaming US spy planes, Coastguard cutters and
helicopters which regularly monitor the speeding cocaine traffickers.

"With night vision equipment, I have seen a lit cigarette from two
miles," a US Navy pilot said. "Or the back light from their GPS screen?
It looks like a billboard."

When the Americans get close, the traffickers toss the cocaine
overboard, both to eliminate evidence and lighten their load in an
escape attempt.

"They throw most of it off," says a Lt Commander in the US Coastguard.
"I have been on four interdictions and we have confiscated about 6000
pounds [2720kg] of cocaine, and I'd say equal that much was dumped into
the ocean."

Those bales of cocaine float, and the currents bring them west right
into the chain of islands, beaches and cays which make up the huge
lagoons that surround Bluefields on Nicaragua's Atlantic coast.

"There are no jobs here, unemployment is 85 per cent," says Moises
Arana, who was mayor of Bluefields from 2001 to 2005.

"It is sad to say, but the drugs have made contributions. Look at the
beautiful houses, those mansions come from drugs. We had a women come
into the local electronics store with a milk bucket stuffed full of
cash. She was this little Miskito [native] woman and she had $80,000."

Hujo Sugo, a historian of Bluefields, says the floating coke has created
a new local hobby.

"People here now go beachcombing for miles, they walk until the find
packets. Even the lobster fisherman now go out with the pretence of
fishing but really they are looking for la langosta blanca -- the white
lobster."

Given the remote setting and lack of infrastructure, there are few
roads, few cars and the biggest shop in Bluefields sells nothing more
sophisticated than a washing machine or TV set.

So what do the locals do with all this cocaine? They sell it to
travelling buyers who cruise the coast, disguised as used clothes vendors.

"We know there are small shop owners who do this," says Yorlene Orozco,
the local judge. "We are talking about people without a profession, no
home, no job. One day later they have a new car, go to the casino and
are building a home that costs I don't know how many thousands of dollars."

Law enforcement in Bluefields is practically invisible "I just had a
Swiss tourist tell me that when she went to the supermarket they tried
to sell her cocaine," says Orozco.

The police and Navy have few resources and less trust from the local
public. Bluefields is effectively an anarchist nation -- no Government,
no organised institutions and the rules are made by community groups.

Given the massive amount of cocaine in town, violence is surprisingly
rare. Gunfights are nearly unheard of and most of the town seems to
lounge around or play baseball all day and then erupt into a frenzy of
energy by late afternoon, fuelled by Flor de Cana, a Nicaraguan rum,
fresh fish, an endless supply of native oysters, and "the white lobster".

"Down by Monkey Point, a family found an entire boat ... they stashed it
and bought up houses all over town. It was 57 sacks [about 1995kg],"
says Jah Boon, a local Rasta man. "Those people have money and still
have coke buried in them hills. It is another way of having money in the
bank."

At a local price of $3500 per kg, the typical 35kg sack nets a cash sale
price of $122,500, which by all accounts is spent immediately.

"Last time bags and bags washed up, everyone [felt like] a millionaire,
but that money does not last." explains Helen, who runs a university
research institute in Bluefields. Asked how the locals unload their
cash, she said: "Beer, beer, beer. You should see the amount they drink
here. Go to the pier and see how much alcohol goes out to the islands."

"When the drugs come in, everyone is happy, the banks, the stores,
everyone has cash."

Arana, the former mayor, recalled one month when the village bought
28,000 cases of beer.

With literally tonnes of cocaine buried in the hills, stashed in yards
and piled up around town, why doesn't the Colombian mafia storm into
these remote communities and repossess their coke bales by coercion or
brute force?

"Hell no," says Peter, a local businessman. "The Miskito [local Indians]
are guerrillas. They have been through war. They have AK-47s and up."

The US Drug Enforcement Agency, in a report to Congress, noted: "A
unique historical situation and civil conflicts have left Nicaragua with
a tradition of armed rural groups and institutionalised violence that
greatly complicates counter-drug enforcement."

For hundreds of years, the local Miskito Indians have fished this
stretch of the Caribbean. They are master sailors, capable and brave.
They endured hurricanes and storms back when GPS still meant "God Please
Save me".

Many of their 4000 small fishing boats are still wooden canoes with
sails made of coloured plastic, hand-sewn and fragile. But the pros have
gone Japanese and switched to the 200-horsepower Yamaha outboard motor,
a six-cylinder beast that is the region's connection to the world.

Because the Miskito often live in isolated communities, they maintain
their own rules, independence and traditions, including the belief that
whatever treasures arrive in a river or from the sea are gifts, blessed
by God and to be enjoyed and shared. That includes the Caribbean lobster
and the white Colombian variety.

The cocaine business is reshaping the face of these Indian communities.
Tasbapauni Beach is now nicknamed "Little Miami", because so much
cocaine washes up on its long shoreline that it has fuelled a
construction boom. Luxurious oceanfront condos protected by security
guards now sit side by side with wooden fishing shacks.

"If shit washes up on your shore it belongs to that family. Every family
owns their turf," said a Miskito fisherman.

But when a fisherman finds white lobster the entire village shares the
treasure, with a percentage going to the community, a smaller percentage
to the church and the majority split among the crew of the small boat
that found the loot.

"It is like a municipal tax," says Sergio Leon, a local reporter who has
been writing about the drug situation in Bluefields for many years. "The
schools and churches are not built by the Government, that money comes
from the fishermen and their finds."

Drug money has been used to build a school and replace the church roof.
"The pastors here get mad when they don't get their cut from the find,"
says Francisco a court official. "If a member of the congregation has
found 15kg, the church calculates 15 times $3500, that's $52,500, and at
10 per cent they are saying: where's the $5250?"

At night, Bluefields wakes up. The locals wander down to Midnight Dream,
a reggae bar that locals have nicknamed Baghdad Ranch because of the
surreal nature of its party scene. Young black men wear baseball hats,
NBA sleeveless shirts and Nike Air sneakers. They are bedecked in gold
chains.

My new drinking buddy says: "I got protection," and lifts his Houston
Rockets NBA shirt to show off the butt of a pistol. "You won't get
thieved here."

Tribal music echoes from across the bay while darkened skiffs navigate
the shallow waters. Half-sunken boats dot the horizon. Blown in by
Hurricane Joan in 1988, these rusty wrecks are now used as guide buoys
for captains entering the pier and as mini-apartments by locals.

The waiter offers carne de tortuga -- a grilled slice of endangered
Hawksbill Sea Turtle. While locals insist they only slaughter the older
specimens, that did little to ease my sensation that here in Bluefields
pleasure trumps morality.

When the lyrics scream out "I feel so high, I can touch the sky",
practically on cue the three girls at the next table pile coke on the
back of their ebony hands and snort openly, laughing. Then they start
the maypole dance the traditional fertility festival for this month,
May, which has evolved into a wickedly sexy dirty-dancing routine. A
stunning line of 1.8m black women swirl on the dance floor. A Rasta man
stumbles by, his nose white, clumps of coke stuck in his beard.

This party is all paid for by the white lobster, which sells for $5 a
gram. "Those guys over at that table, they are Miskito, they found seven
bags," explains the waiter with the hint of jealousy usually reserved
for lottery winners. "He will buy a couple of ranches, two boats and
have someone else fish for him."

As the night progresses, the winners slowly disappear behind a wall of
Tona beer bottles. No one ever seems to get tired.

* For the well-being of individuals, some names and locations have been
changed in this report.

Humble town living in the slow lane

Bluefields is a humble town. Electricity is sporadic: the main generator
has been under repair for nine months.

Residents remain so isolated from Central America they speak English and
feel closer to Kingston than the Nicaraguan capital of Managua. To get
here the traveller must fly a 25-year-old plane that looks like a fat
pigeon and doesn't fly much faster. The outside of the fuselage is
tagged with instructions on how to rescue victims after a crash "Cut
Here for Easy Entry".

Even today, the Nicaraguan central government classifies Bluefields as
an "Autonomous Area", meaning the government pretty much ignores the region.

At the local casino the payoffs are far less if the bet is placed in
Nicaraguan currency, the cordoba. A roulette win, for example, pays 30-1
if the bet is in cordoba and 36-1 if the original bet was made in dollars.

"We don't even use the Nicaraguan currency here, to the South we use the
colon (from Costa Rica), in the North we use the lempira (Honduran) and
everywhere else it is the dollar," said Eugenio, a local fisherman.

"We only see politicians when there is an election -- or a hurricane."

The daily schedule rarely changes in Bluefields. The light comes up at
5am though there aren't a whole lot of people who notice the town is in
slow motion. Streams of children in pressed blue and white uniforms
amble off to the Moravian school, their mothers and grandmothers
spreading the scent of fresh coconut bread through the village.

The shops sell rum, bananas, sneakers and baseball hats. A man sits by
his store, cuts the calluses off his feet with a small knife, then
immediately slices into a fresh coconut. The loudest noise is the shriek
of a magpie or the yap of a dog.

Snagging shrimp and trapping lobster are the principal -- maybe the only
form -- of legitimate work in Bluefields. But by all reasonable
observations, work itself is barely considered legitimate.

Why not just enjoy nature's bounty? With so much fresh fish, coconut,
bananas and mangoes, the idea of sweating or long-term planning seems
foreign. Especially when the daily heat shoots into the upper 90s, and a
two-block walk leaves you drenched in sweat. About the only work tool
needed in Bluefields is a Yamaha outboard motor. Everyone who wants to
search for white lobster has a V6 Yamaha 200 horsepower engine. Often
these machines are racked up side by side on the back of a 25-foot
fishing canoe so the lightweight wooden or fibreglass craft can
practically fly.

By noon, the streets are filled with men playing cards, laying their
bets on a card table, and sitting on stools made out of used Yamaha or
Johnson outboard motors. On the streets, one man walks around with a bag
of white powder the size of a golf ball, dipping his fingers in like he
was snacking on popcorn or chips. Casual to an extreme, he strolls up to
his friends who dip in for a snack.

Outside the Bluefields prison, two maximum security prisoners have been
brought out to the street -- no handcuffs -- and told to cut the grass
with huge machetes. These prisoners are each serving a 30-year term for
murder, but they hardly work and instead idly chat with pedestrians,
occasionally whack the grass but usually just watch the girls and life
go by.

Most of the guards are inside a classroom studying Nicaraguan history
with their classmates, the inmates. For the more hands-on prisoners, a
workshop churns out jewellery, crafted chairs and green and yellow
Rasta-style beanies.

http://environment.independent.co.uk/green_living/article3348001.ece

Destruction of rainforest accelerates despite outcry

By Daniel Howden, Deputy Foreign Editor
Published: 18 January 2008

The destruction of the Amazon rainforest has surged in the past four
months, raising the prospect of 2008 being a disastrous year for the
world's most important eco-system, a senior Brazilian government
scientist has warned.

Dr Carlos Nobre, a scientist with a government agency that monitors the
Amazon said thousands of square miles of rainforest had been destroyed
since October, after four years in which deforestation rates had begun
to slow.

"I think the past four months is a big concern for the government and
now they are sending people to do more law enforcement," Dr Nobre, told
a seminar in Washington yesterday. "But I can tell you that it
[deforestation] is going to be much higher than 2007."

The claims from the head of Brazil's National Institute for Space
Research appear to undermine the government's record on environmental
protection and come in the same week as a major report was released
detailing the growth of cattle ranching in the Amazon.

Dr Nobre said 2,300 sq miles of forest had been lost in the past four
months. That compares with an estimated 3,700 sq miles in the 12 months
that ended on 31 July, which Brazilian officials hailed as the lowest
deforestation rate since the 1970s.

Those figures had already been hotly disputed by conservationists who
point to increasing pressure from sugar cane plantations to feed the
ethanol boom, illegal cattle ranching for beef exports, soybean
production and illegal logging operations. "All those drivers of change
are there," said Dr Nobre. "The three years of reduced deforestation...
did not bring by themselves a cure for illegal deforestation."

Roberto Smeraldi, from Friends of the Earth Brazil, said the surge was
part of the same cycle of destruction that has seen so much of the
forest cleared in the past. "We had a real overdose of deforestation
between 2002 and 2005, which led to abundant availability of cleared
land," he said. "Now this land has been occupied, the process heats up
again."

Friends of the Earth released a report this week which revealed that 74
million cattle are reared in the Amazon basin where they outnumber
people by a ratio of more than three to one.

Deforestation has emerged as the second leading source of the carbon
emissions driving climate change. Brazil is now among the four main
carbon polluters in the world and deforestation accounts for more than
three quarters of its emissions.

Despite its acknowledged role as one the largest carbon sinks on the
planet, its unrivalled biodiversity and the fact it stores half the
world's fresh water, one fifth of the Amazon basin has been destroyed in
recent years. There are serious concerns that the very survival of the
world's largest rainforest is threatened and, last month, the WWF
published research suggesting the Amazon could be wiped out by 2030.

A record drought two years ago reduced the Amazon to less than a trickle
in large sections and fires last year, caused in part by forest-clearing
for ranches, scattered tonness of ash over Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay.

Now in his second term Brazil's President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva,
has made a series of commitments to safeguarding the Amazon and his
Environment Minister, Marina da Silva, has been feted for her stance on
conservation.

But there is serious criticism of the government's record: that it has
tended to favour industrial growth over environmental concerns.
President Lula's administration has signed off on a rash of questionable
infrastructure projects.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080306.wmongolia06/BNStory/International/home

"Infrastructure is associated with aggressive and progressive land use
change," said Dr Nobre.
Mongolian herdsmen no longer free to roam

In an effort to fight desertification, China has forcibly moved
thousands of Inner Mongolians off traditional pastures and into crowded
cities

GEOFFREY YORK

>From Thursday's Globe and Mail

March 6, 2008 at 4:44 AM EST


WU XING, CHINA --- For as long as anyone can remember, Bator and his
ancestors were horse-riding herdsmen, free to roam the vast grasslands
of Inner Mongolia with their animals.

On a spring day in 2002, his freedom was abruptly cancelled. A Chinese
official drove his jeep to Bator's pasture, brandishing a piece of paper
and announcing that the government was terminating the Mongolian way of
life.

Since then, Bator has not been on a horse. Today he lives in a small
brick house in a new Chinese village, crowded among hundreds of other
dispossessed herders. He survives on a paltry income from three dairy
cows that the government forced him to buy, supplemented by labouring
jobs at a railway station.

He yearns to go back home to his grasslands and his horses. "I feel like
a bird in a cage," Bator says. "We have no freedom and no land."

Bator is among thousands of Inner Mongolians who have been forcibly
moved off their traditional pastures in the past few years as China
fights desertification, the ecological disaster that has triggered
massive dust storms across northern China, sending clouds of pollution
toward Japan, Korea and even as far as British Columbia.

The Mongolian herders, like millions of other impoverished people around
the planet, have become environmental refugees.

Their ranks are rapidly growing. There are already an estimated 24
million environmental migrants around the world, twice as many as the
number of refugees fleeing wars or political persecution.

By 2010, the United Nations has warned, as many as 50 million people
could be displaced by crises such as desertification, deforestation,
droughts, famines, floods and climate change. And by mid-century, the
number of environmental refugees could swell to 200 million.

Around the world, examples abound. In the low-lying river deltas of
India and Bangladesh, global warming has forced thousands of villagers
to flee from islands that are threatened by severe storms and rising sea
levels.

In Africa, desertification is triggering an exodus by farmers abandoning
barren fields. Regions such as Darfur are suffering from water shortages
that contribute to their refugee crises.

In the Pacific Ocean, whole islands are on the verge of disappearing.
Rogue waves have sometimes swept across the entire length of populated
islands.

In East Asia and Southeast Asia, droughts and floods are expected to
grow worse as climate change accelerates, with millions more losing
their homes. Many people are still in refugee camps after the giant
tsunami of 2004.

And even in North America and Europe, thousands have died or lost their
homes because of bushfires, heat waves, hurricanes and floods, believed
to be linked to climate change.

For those forced to migrate, the dislocation is traumatic. The herders
of Inner Mongolia, who found themselves on the front lines of the
desertification crisis, were among the first to pay the price for
China's belated efforts to tackle the problem.

Since 2001, more than 800,000 people in Inner Mongolia have been
relocated from their pastures in an attempt to reduce overgrazing and
sandstorms. Grazing has been prohibited in more than one-third of Inner
Mongolia's territory.

"Ecological immigration is a painful, disruptive and involuntary process
that is not only against the will of the local Mongolians but also
against nature," said a report by the Southern Mongolian Human Rights
Information Centre, a U.S.-based group.

It said the relocation policy has endangered the very existence of the
Mongolians as a people. Those who resisted the relocation were arrested,
detained or assaulted, and their property was destroyed or confiscated,
the report said.

China insists that the heavy-handed tactics are necessary. More than 27
per cent of its territory is now covered by deserts, compared with 18
per cent in 1994. China's grasslands have shrunk by 15,000 square
kilometres every year since the early 1980s. Sandstorms from the
expanding deserts are blowing into China's northern cities, choking
millions of people and causing respiratory diseases and eye infections.
Beijing alone is hit with a million tonnes of desert dust annually. The
dust binds with airborne pollutants from factories and coal plants,
creating a toxic haze that drifts to Korea, Japan and North America.

Much of the desertification is a result of overgrazing by new farmers
from the Han Chinese ethnic majority, who poured into Inner Mongolia to
raise goats when the cashmere industry became lucrative in the 1980s.
Today the number of Han Chinese in Inner Mongolia is five times greater
than the number of Mongolians who traditionally lived on the grasslands.

By the 1990s, cashmere had become a highly profitable business, allowing
China to export millions of cheap cashmere sweaters to Western
consumers. And by 2004, there were 25 million goats in Inner Mongolia,
more than 10 times the number in 1950. With their sharp hooves and
voracious eating habits, the goats denuded the grasslands.

But while the newly arrived farmers were responsible for much of the
overgrazing, the targets of the relocation campaign included many
Mongolians whose ancestors had lived here for centuries. Among them were
Bator and his brother, Bayila. (Like most Mongolian herders, they use
only one name.) Throughout the 1990s, Bator and Bayila could see the
desert spreading into the land of their neighbours, getting closer every
year. The grass was disappearing, replaced by barren plains.

Their own pastures managed to survive, but the government ordered them
to leave anyway. "We didn't want to move," Bator says. "But we weren't
given a choice. The government wouldn't allow any grazing of sheep or
goats after 2002."

They were forced to live in the newly built town of Wu Xing, created
from scratch eight years ago to house the dispossessed herders. More
than 130 families are jammed together in the dusty streets of the town,
living in small brick houses built close together in Chinese style,
constructed so cheaply that they don't have running water or bathrooms.

"It's no good," Bator says. "We're not used to living together like city
people. We prefer to live in the grasslands; that's the way we've always
lived."

Before their relocation, Bator and his brother owned more than 200 sheep
and goats, 20 cows and five horses. The government confiscated their 60
hectares of pasture land and ordered them to get rid of their animals.
In the new town, the herders were given their brick houses at a
discount, but they were also required to pay $2,100 for each of the
dairy cows that they were allocated. Most have been left with debts they
cannot repay.

Their net income has dropped sharply. The revenue from their milk is far
less than the income from their sheep and goats, and the milk produced
by each cow is only half of what the government promised, they say. The
two brothers have been obliged to take part-time jobs on construction
sites or the railway station, carrying bricks and cement, to make ends
meet. They say they can't even afford to buy new clothes.

"Life is getting harder," Bayila says. "We are barely keeping alive. In
the past, when we were short of money, we could always sell a sheep or a
cow. Now we only have the milk." He suspects that corrupt officials are
stealing the money that was intended to compensate the herders. "We
watch the television news and we hear about the huge investment in
relocating the herdsmen. But after the money arrives at our local
government offices, it disappears."

Even more painful than the loss of income is the loss of their
traditional way of life, their cultural identity. In the past, they
always welcomed a guest with fresh food from a newly killed sheep or
goat. "Now we can't welcome our guests in the traditional way," Bator
says. "We feel embarrassed and uncomfortable."

They can't adjust to the cookie-cutter houses and the loss of privacy in
the crowded new town. "If one family does something, the gossip is
immediately everywhere," Bator says. "It spreads so quickly."

A group of doctoral students at Inner Mongolia University who studied
the relocated herders in several new towns concluded that they were
suffering heavy stress from the traumatic change in their way of life.
Most of the ex-herders are confined to 100 square metres of land. "Their
small living space and suppressed life is a torture to them," the
students wrote in a report.

The unhappiness of the Mongolian herdsmen has fuelled a quiet mutiny
against China's relocation policies. Just a few kilometres from Wu Xing,
thousands of goats and sheep are grazing on the meagre remains of the
grasslands. Some of the herders have refused to leave their land. Others
sent their animals back onto the land, defying the new rules.

"We are desperate to move back to our old pastures, but it's forbidden,"
Bayila says. "In the past, we could ride our horses and graze our sheep,
and we felt free. Now we are landless, and we've lost all our animals.
It's sad."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/30/AR2008013003744.html

For Peru's Indians, Lawsuit Against Big Oil Reflects a New Era*
*
Outsiders and High-Tech Tools Help Document Firms' Impact*

By Kelly Hearn
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, January 31, 2008; A14


NUEVO JERUSALEM, Peru -- Tomás Maynas Carijano strolled through his tiny
jungle farm, pinching leaves, shaking his head. The rain forest spread
lushly in all directions -- covering what oil maps call Block 1AB.

"Like the trunk of that papaya, the cassava and bananas are also dying,"
said the spiritual leader of this remote Achuar Indian settlement in
Peru's northern Amazon region. "Before Oxy came, the fruits and the
plants grew well."

Oxy is Occidental Petroleum, the California-based company that pulled a
fortune from this rain forest from 1972 to 2000. It is also the company
that Maynas and other Achuar leaders now blame for wreaking
environmental havoc -- and leaving many of the people here ill. Last
spring, U.S. lawyers representing Maynas and 24 other indigenous
Peruvians sued Occidental in a Los Angeles court, alleging that, among
other offenses, the firm violated industry standards and Peruvian law by
dumping toxic wastewater directly into rivers and streams.

The company denies liability in the case.

For indigenous groups, the Occidental lawsuit is emblematic of a new
era. The Amazon region was once even more isolated than it is today, its
people largely cut off from environmental defenders in Washington and
other world capitals who might have protected their interests. Now,
Indians have gained access to tools that level the playing field -- from
multinational lawsuits to mapping technologies such as Google Earth.

Oil companies that once traded money and development for Indians'
blessings are increasingly finding outsiders getting involved. "History
has shown that oil companies will cut corners if someone isn't
watching," said Gregor MacLennan of Shinai, an internationally funded
civic group in Peru. "We try to get to local communities first to help
them make informed decisions about oil companies and the changes they
bring."

Lured by global energy prices, Peru is placing record bets on Amazon
energy lodes: Last year the country's concessions agency, PeruPetro,
signed a record 24 hydrocarbon contracts with international oil
companies. EarthRights International, a nonprofit group that is helping
represent the plaintiffs in the Achuar case, says half of Peru's
biologically diverse Amazon region has been added to oil maps in the
last three years.

Occidental pumped 26 percent of Peru's historic oil production from
Block 1AB before selling the declining field to Argentina's Pluspetrol
in 2000. "We are aware of no credible data of negative community health
impacts resulting from Occidental's operations in Peru," Richard Kline,
a company spokesman, said in an e-mail statement.

Kline said that Occidental has not had operations in Block 1AB in nearly
a decade and that Pluspetrol has assumed responsibility for it.
Occidental made "extensive efforts" to work with community groups and
has a "long-standing commitment and policy to protect the environment
and the health and safety of people," he said.

The California-based group Amazon Watch has joined the suit as a
plaintiff, and the case is now inching through U.S. courts. In a federal
hearing scheduled for Feb. 11, company lawyers will ask a judge to send
the case to Peru, where Indians say corruption and a case backlog will
hurt their chance of winning.
Learning Their Rights

The primitive trumpet -- a hollowed cow's horn -- brayed over this
gritty river community at sundown. Residents of Nuevo Jerusalem, the
Achuar settlement on the Macusari River, trudged up a path, toting
shotguns and fishing nets. Some stepped down from palm huts, walking to
the meeting in twos and threes. Soon, Lily La Torre was on stage.

"I've come to give you news of the Oxy suit," said La Torre, a Peruvian
lawyer and activist working with Maynas's legal team. Barefoot women in
dirty skirts circled the room, serving bowls of homemade cassava beer.

La Torre distilled legal strategies into simple terms. She told
villagers that the case had been moved to the federal level in the
United States. "Now they are trying to move the lawsuit to Peru," she
said in Spanish, pausing for an Achuar interpreter. "But we must pray
that the suit stays in the U.S. We know it cannot survive in Peru."

Later, as people approached her with questions, a man who was looking on
said in broken Spanish: "When Oxy came, we did not know our rights. Now
we do."

In addition to alleging that Occidental illegally dumped toxic
wastewater, the Achuar suit accuses the company of generating acid rain
with gas flares, failing to warn Indians of health dangers and
improperly storing chemical wastes in unlined pits.

The "irresponsible, reckless, immoral and illegal practices" left Maynas
and his people with poisoned blood, polluted streams and empty hunting
grounds, the suit says. Plaintiffs want damages, declaratory and
injunctive relief, restitution and disgorgement of profits. One woman is
suing on behalf of her child, whose death she alleges is related to
environmental contamination.

Last spring, before the Achuar case was filed, a team of health experts,
lawyers and scientists funded by EarthRights International said in a
report that the wells, pipelines and other infrastructure built here by
Occidental had directly caused water and soil contamination, which in
turn has caused health problems for many local people in Block 1AB.

Kline said the report contained "inflammatory misstatements, unfounded
allegations and unsupported conclusions" and failed to provide basic
information that would help determine whether oil operations contributed
to the alleged environmental and health problems. "Nonetheless . . . we
will evaluate the claims and the lawsuit and respond accordingly," he said.
A Technological Assist

Environmental groups are going beyond word of mouth and lawsuits to
assist indigenous groups.

One day last fall, Guevara Sandi Chimboras was bouncing a pickup truck
along a remote oil road near the Achuar community of Jose Olaya.
Carrying a digital camera, notepad and a Global Positioning System
transceiver donated by the civic group Shinai, Sandi walked through a
grassy field to a pool of stagnant water. With a stick, he dug up a
clump of glistening, pungent mud, and sniffed.

"The companies say these sites are clean," he said. "They won't believe
us without documented photos. With words, they don't believe us."

There are no mass media in the rain forest. But Shinai has translated a
U.S.-made documentary about the Achuar's problems into Machiguenga, the
language spoken by Indians in southeastern Peru, where a U.S.-backed
natural gas project is underway. The group uses DVD players powered by
solar panels and generators to show the film to Indians considering
agreements with oil companies.

Meanwhile, Google Earth is proving to be an omniscient eye. Peter
Kostishack, a Colorado-based rights activist, uses the application to
record coordinates and satellite images of rain forest erosion and post
them on his blog. With help from the U.S.-based Amazon Conservation
Team, Indians in Brazil's Amazon Basin have used Google Earth imagery to
spot river discoloration caused by illegal mining operations.

"Many times a company claims natives don't have the technical knowledge
to understand that it is doing the best it can, when in fact it may be
doing as little as possible," said Bill Powers, chief engineer of E-Tech
International, a nonprofit engineering firm based in California that
provides Indians with technical expertise.

"We make it a battle of equals, at least in the knowledge area," he said.

"Foreign Exchange," a weekly public broadcasting program, will air a
segment about the Achuar and Block 1AB beginning this week. For local
listing times, go tohttp://foreignexchange.tv.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/02/11/eaindo111.xml

Indonesians being tricked out of rainforest land

Native peoples who depend on the rainforest for survival are being
tricked out of their land by corrupt officials so they can grow
lucrative biofuel crops, according to environmental groups

By Paul Eccleston
Last Updated: 1:01pm GMT 11/02/2008

Forests that have supported generations of native peoples are being
snatched and levelled for palm oil plantations, says Friends of the Earth.

Unscrupulous companies are using force or conning families in the
Indonesian rainforests into giving up their rights to the land by
promising jobs and new developments.

In its report Losing Ground FoE claims people end up in poorly paid work
and locked into debt while the companies profit from palm oil
plantations which destroy the forest and pollute village water supplies.

It blames the rush to biofuels for fuelling demand for the huge amount
of land needed to grow oil palm and calls on the EU to scrap its 10 per
cent target for road transport biofuels by 2010.

The report claims that although the EU wants to use biofuels sustainably
it has not addressed the problems caused by its production and this will
lead to more of the types of problems seen in Indonesia.

More than 85 per cent of the worlds palm oil is produced in plantations
in Indonesia and Malaysia. Indonesia alone plans a further 20m hectares
of plantations by 2020 - an area the size of England, Holland and
Switzerland combined.

The palm oil industry says that plantation expansion is vital for
economic development and methods used are both environmentally
sustainable and benefit the local people. In reality little else
survives in the plantations and half the habitat of the orang-utan lost
in the last decade has been linked to palm oil plantation expansion.

The deforestation and drainage of peat swamps for palm oil production
has made Indonesia the third highest emitter of green house gases after
the USA and China.

FoE, which worked with environment groups Sawit Watch and LifeMosaic on
the report, says there is mounting evidence that biofuels cannot deliver
on the reduction needed in CO2 emissions to combat climate change.

Hannah Griffiths, Friends of the Earth biofuels campaigner, said: "This
report shows that as well as being bad for the environment, biofuels
from palm oil are a disaster for people. MEPs should listen to the
evidence and use the forthcoming debate on this in the European
Parliament to reject the 10 per cent target.

"Instead of introducing targets for more biofuels the EU should insist
that all new cars are designed to be super efficient. The UK Government
must also take a strong position against the 10 per cent target in
Europe and do its bit to reduce transport emissions by improving public
transport and making it easier for people to walk and cycle.".

The environment groups have been helping communities affected by palm
oil plantations in Indonesia since 2005 to give an insight into the
social, economic and cultural impacts of oil palm plantations.

Serge Marti from LifeMosaic said: "Indonesia is a uniquely diverse
country whose communities and environment are being sacrificed for the
benefit of a handful of companies and wealthy individuals.

"This report should help the Indonesian government to recognise that
there is a problem, and to step up efforts to protect the rights of
communities. In Europe we must realise that encouraging large fuel
companies to grab community land across the developing world is no
solution to climate change. The EU must play its part by abandoning its
10 per cent target for biofuels."

Abetnego Tarigan, deputy director of Sawit Watch, said: "Oil palm
companies have already taken over 7.3 million hectares of land for
plantations, resulting in 513 ongoing conflicts between companies and
communities.

"Given the negative social and environmental impacts of oil palm, Sawit
Watch demands reform of the Indonesian oil palm plantation system and a
re-think of plantation expansion plans."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/us/27alaska.html

February 27, 2008

Flooded Village Files Suit, Citing Corporate Link to Climate Change

By FELICITY BARRINGER

map: The New York Times - Flooding is forcing Kivalina, Alaska, to
relocate.

SAN FRANCISCO --- Lawyers for the Alaska Native coastal village of
Kivalina, which is being forced to relocate because of flooding caused
by the changing Arctic climate, filed suit in federal court here Tuesday
arguing that 5 oil companies, 14 electric utilities and the country's
largest coal company were responsible for the village's woes.

The suit is the latest effort to hold companies like BP America,
Chevron, Peabody Energy, Duke Energy and the Southern Company
responsible for the impact of global warming because they emit millions
of tons of greenhouse gases, or, in the case of Peabody, mine and market
carbon-laden coal that is burned by others. It accused the companies of
creating a public nuisance.

In an unusual move, those five companies and three other defendants --- 
the Exxon Mobil Corporation, American Electric Power and the Conoco
Phillips Company --- are also accused of conspiracy. "There has been a
long campaign by power, coal and oil companies to mislead the public
about the science of global warming," the suit says. The campaign, it
says, contributed "to the public nuisance of global warming by
convincing the public at large and the victims of global warming that
the process is not man-made when in fact it is."

Kivalina, an Inupiat village of 400 people on a barrier reef between the
Chukchi Sea and two rivers, is being buffeted by waves that, in colder
times, were blocked by sea ice, the suit says. "The result of the
increased storm damage is a massive erosion problem," it says. "Houses
and buildings are in imminent danger of falling into the sea."

The estimated cost of relocating the village is up to $400 million, the
suit says.

Some lawyers in the case participated in the long-running litigation
against American tobacco companies in the 1990s, and some of the same
legal theories echo through the complaint. But the hurdles may be
greater than those in the tobacco wars. Global warming is a diffuse
worldwide phenomenon; a successful public nuisance case requires that
defendants' behavior be directly linked to the harm.

"Public nuisance law has been used from time immemorial to address
issues that have not been addressed by the political branches," said
Kirsten H. Engel, a law professor at the University of Arizona. But
Professor Engel added, "It's very difficult to get a court to jump in
here and say that what these companies are doing, and have been doing
for years, is unreasonable and creating a public nuisance."

Two similar lawsuits, one brought by California against six automakers
and another by a coalition of Eastern states against utility companies,
have been dismissed by federal judges. Both judges said the issues
involved were political and did not belong in the courts. Those
decisions have been appealed.

Matt Pawa, a lawyer for Kivalina, said this case was different because
it sought monetary damages for an injured party. "The kind of harms to
property and public welfare caused by global warming are classic public
nuisance injuries," Mr. Pawa said.

He added that the other cases had no conspiracy claims, which he said
courts routinely addressed.

Reached late Tuesday, spokesmen for three defendants --- Jason Cuevas of
Southern, Vic Svec of Peabody and Gantt Walton of Exxon Mobil --- said
they would not comment on the substance of the lawsuit.

But Mr. Svec said, "Rather than unreasonably suing companies for the
weather, we would encourage everyone to join Peabody in supporting
aggressive development of carbon capture and storage projects and other
technologies that help us provide both energy security and carbon
solutions."

Of the accusation that Exxon Mobil participated in a disinformation
campaign, Mr. Walton said, "The recycling of this type of discredited
conspiracy theory only diverts attention from the real challenge at hand
--- how to provide the energy to improve living standards while also
reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/02/12/venezuela.oil.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

February 12, 2008 -- Updated 0138 GMT (0938 HKT)
Exxon Mobil cut off from Venezuela's oil
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Venezuela's state oil company said Tuesday that 
it has stopped selling crude to Exxon Mobil Corp. in response to the U.S. 
oil company's drive to use the courts to seize billions of dollars in 
Venezuelan assets.
President Hugo Chavez has said Exxon Mobil is no longer welcome to do 
business in Venezuela.

Exxon Mobil is locked in a dispute over the nationalization of its oil 
ventures in Venezuela that has led President Hugo Chavez to threaten to cut 
off all Venezuelan oil supplies to the United States.
Venezuela is currently the United States' fourth largest oil supplier.
Tuesday's announcement by state-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, was 
limited to Exxon Mobil, which PDVSA accused of "judicial-economic 
harassment" for its efforts in U.S. and European courts.
PDVSA said it "has paralyzed sales of crude to Exxon Mobil" and suspended 
commercial relations with the Irving, Texas-based company.
"The legal actions carried out by the U.S. transnational are unnecessary ... 
and hostile," PDVSA said in the statement.
It said it will honor any existing contracts it has with Exxon Mobil for 
joint investments abroad, but reserved the right to terminate them if 
permitted by the terms of the contracts.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/19/fossilfuels.indonesia

Shattered illusions
When BP set out to build a £3.5bn natural gas plant in remote West Papua, 
local villagers hoped for a bright future. But all is not well.
John Vidal
The Guardian,
Wednesday March 19 2008
Article history
About this article
Close
This article appeared in the Guardian on Wednesday March 19 2008 on p8 of 
the Society news & features section. It was last updated at 00:10 on March 
19 2008.
Recently, with hundreds of Indonesian troops just out of sight in scenes of 
intense security, Prince Andrew, the government's official business envoy, 
dropped in on Bintuni Bay, one of Indonesia's mots remote corners. The plan 
was to inspect BP's new £3.5bn natural gas plant. What the Duke of York 
probably did not know was that he had walked straight into a row between the 
giant oil company and local villagers.
The British firm had promised its new neighbours, who live on the edge of 
the pristine Papuan rainforest, better homes, long-term jobs and full 
environmental protection when it started several years ago to build its 
giant plant to extract 14 trillion cubic metres of gas. But with the gas 
about to flow, village leaders have now complained bitterly that the company 
has reneged on its agreements.
In a long letter sent to the Guardian and in telephone conversations, Papuan 
leaders requesting anonymity have complained that the company has blocked 
off their fishing grounds, attracted a flood of migrants to the villages, 
provided very few jobs for local people and is now siding with the 
Indonesian authorities against native Papuans who are engaged in a long 
struggle for independence.
"Everything we feared when BP came to the area has come true," claims one 
community leader. "People are not allowed to catch any fish or shrimps in 
the exclusive zone established by BP. More and more migrants are coming 
because of the plant. There is very high inflation because there is lots of 
money around. The number of local people from Bintuni Bay who work in the 
project is very low. Local Papuans are never recruited as full-time members 
of staff."
BP has been desperately keen to avoid the experiences that it, Shell and 
other oil companies, have had in Africa and Latin America, where oil and gas 
extraction has left a trail of pollution, human rights abuses and distressed 
people with no share in the wealth extracted from their land. The company 
pledged from the start to set new social and environmental standards, and to 
be a model of corporate social responsibility. It hired some of the best 
development NGOs to offer advice.
Papuan leaders say they were initially impressed when BP completely rebuilt 
one fishing village, poured money into the nearby communities, and employed 
leading environment, human rights and health groups to advise them on how to 
avoid conflict and bring prosperity to the villages. But as the project has 
come closer to opening, people have flooded into the area. "Conflicts 
between local communities and migrants have begun," says the leader. "The 
migrants [from all over Indonesia] have come here to look for jobs, and are 
staying. There are about 1,500 in the village of Babo and 1,200 in Bintuni. 
They are the majority now in all the villages," he says.
The Tangguh gas field, believed to be eventually worth more than £100bn to 
BP and the Indonesian government, is one of the largest in the world. Known 
as a "super giant", it is contracted to provide gas for China, Mexico and 
the US, and should last 30 years.
But the Papuan leaders, who have long been pressing for independence from 
Indonesia, say they fear that BP is taking sides with the Indonesian 
government, as they are bypassed from all the lasting benefits. According to 
documents seen by the Guardian, less than £30m was budgeted for the Tangguh 
social programme over six years, including money for resettlement and 
security; nearly £15m was earmarked for "consultants" and administration. 
The nine most affected villages in the area are being given £15,000 a year 
for five years, and others in the area £5,500 a year.
"BP has built 100 houses for 100 heads of families. All looks wonderful," 
another village leader says. "But the people actually suffer mentally from 
their new settlement. Their access to the sea is limited because of the 
company's exclusion zone, and they cannot expand their gardens. They do not 
have enough [space] to expand their families."
Criticism of BP's employment policy was levelled at the company last year 
and the Tangguh Independent Advisory Panel, chaired by Lord [David] Hannay, 
to monitor the project, encouraged BP to employ more Papuans and to educate 
the local population about the "demobilisation" process when the 
construction work is complete.
Although nearly 6,000 people have been employed in constructing the plant, 
fewer than 500 will be employed by the company after the building is 
complete later this year. Of these, only around 50 are expected to be 
Papuan.
"People's dependency on BP is very high. There will be problems when the 
work ends. There will be economic and psychological degradation," say Papuan 
leaders in their letter to the Guardian.
"We predicted that BP and Indonesia would not care about the very survival 
of the Papuans on their land and their nation. We expected that BP and 
Indonesia would continuously destroy our forests and our trees and pollute 
the rivers and seas," they says. "And we feared that BP and Indonesia would 
bring misfortune for the Papuans by employing skilled workers from outside 
West Papua, claiming that we Papuans are not 'skilled workers'. I have to 
tell you that our worst predictions and fears have come true."
BP denies that it is causing environmental damage, or that it is favouring 
non-Papuans. The company said it is bound by strict guidelines about how 
many Papuans should be employed. A spokesman says: "We think about 30% of 
the construction workforce is Papuan. The intention is that there will be 
long-term employment for Papuans. We are prioritising the most affected 
villages," says a BP spokesman.
But he also concedes that Papua is large and that it has been difficult to 
identify who is an original inhabitant of these villages. On the fishing 
situation, he points out that BP has provided outboard motors to some people 
so they can travel further to fishing grounds. "We believe we have set new 
standards for the BP group. There has been a lot of progress but there is no 
complacency," he says.

http://insideindonesia.org/content/view/1056/47/

Radio Pikonane

Connecting Papua's Central Highlands

Tessa Piper
In the Jayawijaya mountains of West Papua live some of the most isolated 
communities in the world. Lack of access to information resulted in the 
death of 55 people from hunger in the district of Yahukimo in December 2005. 
Two years later, a radio station has been built there to help bring an end 
to this isolation.

   Radio Pikonane
    Tessa Piper

The sub-district of Anyelma is like many across Papua's Central Highlands. 
Largely cut off from development, poverty is rampant, basic services such as 
water, electricity and telecommunications are unavailable, literacy is low, 
health services almost non-existent, and subsistence farming is the norm.
As part of its efforts to extend access to information in remote locations 
such as this, Indonesia's only independent national radio news agency, KBR, 
proposed to build a radio station there. This initiative is part of a six 
year program to set up radio stations as a means of disseminating 
information to some of the least developed parts of Eastern Indonesia.
The station in Anyelma, Radio Pikonane, was to prove the most challenging 
yet. As well as the obstacles presented by the isolated location - the only 
road into the area from the nearest town, Wamena, is periodically cut off by 
flooding - limited local human resources, and the lack of any nearby power 
source, the KBR team first had to overcome some deep suspicions among 
members of the local community that there might be a hidden motive behind 
their initiative. West Papua is, after all, one of Indonesia's most 
naturally resource rich, yet paradoxically deeply impoverished, provinces, 
that has yet to benefit from any sustained and substantial development.
First steps
Initial meetings in August 2006 to reach agreement in principle on the 
benefits of establishing a radio station in this remote area were followed 
by many more hours of deliberation as local leaders and the KBR team 
discussed the practicalities of its establishment. In order to ensure 
genuine commitment on the part of the local community, KBR required that 
they contribute some time and resources towards its establishment. For its 
part, KBR agreed to cover the cost of building the radio station and 
training local staff to run it.
But even with agreement reached on these aspects, there remained one huge 
obstacle that KBR had never before encountered. Lack of electricity has been 
a challenge in one or two other locations where KBR has built stations, but 
in Yahukimo the prohibitively high cost of fuel - five times higher than in 
Jakarta - meant that a generator could not be relied upon to power the 
station if it was to have any chance of long-term sustainability.
After some investigation, hydropower was determined to be the most practical 
alternative, and a 9000 watt micro-hydro plant was commissioned and built on 
the nearby Kut river. This was a major undertaking, and broke entirely new 
ground for KBR, but the results are striking. For the first time, Anyelma 
has electricity and, in addition to the radio station, the local school, 
church, village hall and several homes are all now also being hooked up to 
the supply.
Station content
Interestingly, despite Anyelma's isolation, its inhabitants were very clear 
about what they wanted to hear on their radio station. 'We want to know what 
is happening elsewhere in Indonesia, even in the region, and we also want 
people to know what is going on here,' a village elder confirmed.
As the only source of entertainment in the area, Radio Pikonane's music 
programs are proving popular too
Despite the steep learning curve for the Radio Pikonane staff, none of whom 
had any previous radio experience, the impact of the in-house training 
provided by KBR is already evident. By early 2008, the station was already 
producing a weekly farming program, a regular health program, and another 
program in which village and sub-district leaders respond to questions and 
complaints from listeners.
But while elsewhere in Indonesia people can simply pick up the phone or send 
a text message in order to have their say, lack of phone access means that 
this is not an option for Radio Pikonane listeners. This does nothing to 
deter them. Following a news report the station broadcast in early 2008 
about the closure of the Anyelma village school, women from two other 
villages walked several kilometres to inform Radio Pikonane staff of the 
same problem and requested the station to report on this too.
As the only source of entertainment in the area, Radio Pikonane's music 
programs are proving popular too. A satellite dish and receiver also allows 
the station to access KBR-produced programs and to select for live broadcast 
those of most relevance and interest to their listeners, whether national 
news bulletins, or talk shows on issues ranging from human rights to the 
environment, and from education to health.
By broadcasting on an AM frequency, the aim is to maximise the station's 
reach to the scattered populations that inhabit the surrounding hills, and 
an estimated 70,000 people are believed to be within range of its 
transmitter. Nevertheless, ownership of radios is limited, so group 
listening is encouraged and 1500 radios are being distributed, mostly to 
women, to facilitate broader listening.
The official launch of the station in September 2007 proved to be a major 
event that underlines its significance for the inhabitants of the area, with 
some 5000 men, women and children walking for hours or even days to witness 
Radio Pikonane go on air. As one local leader commented, 'We have received 
promise after promise from the government to provide development here. This 
is the first time anyone has delivered on their promise.'
The future
Hopes are high for a positive impact now that the area has both a radio 
station and electricity and their isolation has ended. 'We have new 
opportunities to help ourselves,' commented Kores Weitipo, a teacher who 
donated the land on which the station is built. 'We plan to have farming 
programs on the radio to help improve our crops. And with electricity those 
crops can earn more income because we can sell not just the raw product. Now 
we can also grind our coffee beans or blend carrot juice for sale.'
Military officers present at the launch were guarded in their response to 
the station
Although the positive response from the government to date - exemplified by 
the attendance of a government minister, the deputy provincial governor and 
representatives from the national and local parliament at the station's 
official launch - is welcome, it is unlikely to be all smooth sailing. 
Military officers also present at the launch were guarded in their response 
to the station and, in a part of the country where human rights violations 
are rife and have been taking place until now largely unreported and 
unchecked, a radio station seeking to broadcast the truth is bound to 
encounter problems.
This fact is not lost on those working at Radio Pikonane, who are very 
conscious of the close eye that the military is likely to keep on the 
station and the risks involved. KBR, too, is aware of the potential danger. 
Although it cannot guarantee its security, KBR Director Santoso believes 
that the radio news agency does offer a level of protection and support for 
the station. 'We had an experience with a station we built in Tual, South 
East Maluku, after it exposed local government corruption. Ironically, the 
regent who had fully supported the station's launch, was later the one 
trying to close it down. But we broadcast reports about this and listeners 
all over the country protested against the regent's actions. Today the 
station is still on air.'
For now, Radio Pikonane is focusing on overcoming some technical problems 
and on steadily increasing the quality and quantity of its output. KBR will 
also continue to offer mentoring to station staff over the next 18 months, 
not only to raise journalism standards, but also by providing technical and 
management training.
Sustainability
Key to the survival of Radio Pikonane is long-term financial self-reliance. 
For now, the station receives a subsidy to cover operational costs, but this 
will be phased out over time. In its place will be station-generated income.
In a remote location such as this one a common source of income for radio 
stations elsewhere - commercial advertising - is not a viable option. 
However, there are alternative solutions. For example, radio is one of the 
only means for family members living apart to convey messages to one another 
about marriages, births, deaths and the like. By setting modest fees for 
broadcasting these announcements the station can secure vital income. 
Similarly, the station's enormous potential for local government and 
national and international NGOs to disseminate critical public education 
messages that may otherwise not reach these communities can also serve as an 
important revenue stream. Thus, while providing listeners with access to the 
information they need, the station can simultaneously secure necessary 
income to ensure its sustainability.
KBR and the Indonesian non-profit media development organisation, PPMN, plan 
to use Radio Pikonane as a model for the establishment of two more radio 
stations in Papua in 2008. If successful, these stations have the potential 
for replication in other parts of the country where lack of information 
access is similarly hampering development.     ii
Tessa Piper (tessa.piper at mdlf.org ) is the Indonesia Country Program 
Director for the Media Development Loan Fund (www.mdlf.org ) that is 
supporting the radio building program in conjunction with the Royal 
Netherlands Embassy in Jakarta. For further information about KBR and PPMN 
contact info at ppmn.or.id , telephone +62218573388, sms +622198279935, or fax 
+62218515891.
For information about human rights in this area, see Out of Sight: Endemic 
Abuse and Impunity in Papua's Central Highlands, Human Rights Watch, June 
2007 (http://hrw.org/reports/2007/papua0707/papua0707web.pdf ).

http://www.thenational.com.pg/021508/lead_editorial.htm

Supporting the law
THE quest for a solution to the unrest that is evident within Papua New 
Guinea today has predictably drawn a popular solution.
Those who are disgusted at our murder and rape statistics clamour for 
"tougher" laws.
Those who want an end to incest and the sexual abuse of children demand "far 
more effective" laws.
Papua New Guineans alarmed at the rise of tribal confrontations and ethnic 
group clashes insist on "new laws" to control these scourges.
In most cases those behind the demands, while they are invariably 
well-meaning, have made few attempts to familiarise themselves with the laws 
we already have.
And that's one part of our problem. In many cases, the existing laws of PNG 
are more than adequate to meet the demands of the public and the decisions 
of our courts.
Wilful murder has for nearly two decades been punishable by the death 
penalty and a small number of condemned Papua New Guineans continue to 
languish in PNG cells awaiting execution.
Theoretically, the only obstacle barring their death at the behest of the 
State is the ongoing lack of a decision about the appropriate form of 
execution and the provision of equipment to carry out the sentences.
Crimes seen by the public as marginally less serious can still result in 
life sentences or many years behind bars.
Theft, armed assault, kidnapping and abduction and a host of other crimes 
have for many years, attracted severe sentences.
PNG's laws are an amalgam of borrowed and home-grown legislation drawn from 
British common law; and, the laws of various Australian states, notably 
those of Queensland and the increasing body of laws drafted and approved by 
our own Parliament.
While they may have a variety of backgrounds, the provisions of our laws 
relating to serious crime rarely lack severity.
Yesterday we carried a statement by the mayor of Kimbe concerning the 
current ethnic and tribal violence in the West New Britain province.
Making a plea for peace, Leo Kalasi said that the ethnic problem had existed 
for more than 20 years "and past leaders had failed to enact laws that would 
have allowed settlers to abide by them when clashes broke out".
We find it hard to subscribe to that belief.
The laws of any country can only be effective if first, the people both 
believe in them and try to observe them and second, if those laws are 
enforced without distinction by properly empowered groups such as the RPNG 
Constabulary.
Laws cannot effectively be superimposed upon a society against the wishes of 
the majority of the people.
If a majority of citizens regard the laws as an irrelevant to daily life, 
then those laws will be consistently flouted and over time will become part 
of the huge backlog that are still on the books but are never used.
In PNG we have become the victim of our own social security, the wantok 
system.
Policeman, village court magistrates and even judges can find it gravely 
troubling to pursue the arrest, charging, prosecution or sentencing of a 
relative or clansmen.
In too many cases, it is simply an impossibility.
It seems to us that this inability or unwillingness to enforce the existing 
law lies at the root of the perceived "weakness" of court decisions and the 
penalties that flow from them.
Many, perhaps the majority of those who are most vocal about the need for 
"stronger" penalties, would quail at the prospect of a son or brother being 
handed down the death penalty under existing laws, no matter how just that 
decision might seem to others in the community.
If we want to have a society that lives within the framework of the law, 
then we must respect those laws.
We must support those who try to enforce them.
And we must recognise that the strength of those laws is only as great as 
the extent of our willingness to see them enforced.
The strongest possible body of laws is meaningless unless all involved in 
the judicial and legal chain can honestly support their implementation - and 
the public can acknowledge the justice and value of the penalties imposed.
The strength to shape PNG society lies in our own hands.