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| Palm Oil Plantation |
October 24, 2011
On August 10, police and security
for the massive palm oil corporation Wilmar International (of which
Archer Daniels Midland is the second largest shareholder) stormed a
small, indigenous village
on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. They came with bulldozers and
guns, destroying up to 70 homes, evicting 82 families, and arresting 18
people. Then they blockaded the village, keeping the villagers in -- and
journalists out. (Wilmar claims it has done no wrong.)
The
village, Suku Anak Dalam, was home to an indigenous group that observes
their own traditional system of land rights on their ancestral land
and, thus, lacks official legal titles to the land. This is common among
indigenous peoples around the world -- so common, in fact, that it is
protected by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
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| Rafflesia arnoldii |
Indonesia, for the record, voted in favor
of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. Yet the
government routinely sells indigenous peoples' ancestral land to
corporations. Often the land sold is Indonesia's lowland rainforest,
a biologically rich area home to endangered species like the orangutan,
Asian elephant, Sumatran rhinoceros, Sumatran tiger, and the plant Rafflesia arnoldii, which produces the world's largest flower. READ MORE
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