ELEPHANT MURDER Three people will face trial in connection with the death of a dozen wild elephants that had invaded a palm-oil plantation in Riau province, Central Sumatra. To protect its young palm trees against rats, pigs and elephants, the private plantation company PT DPN had applied poison to the trees. It buried the carcasses in four large holes without notifying the authorities. Wild elephants cause millions of dollars of damage to plantations in Sumatra.
Antara 6 January 1996, AFP 13 March 1996

MORE HOSTAGES OPM guerillas took hostage 14 Indonesian timber workers north of Timika, in Irian Jaya, on 14 August. Two were murdered and their bodies abandoned shortly after they were captured. Three managed to escape and were found by Indonesian troops, one not till 16 September. The remaining nine were freed at the end of August after two shootouts that left one rebel dead.
Suara Pembaruan 1 September 1996, Jawa Pos 17 September 1996, Suara Pembaruan 19 September 1996

IRIAN GAS A huge gas field has been discovered by American company Atlantic Richfield in Wiriagar Deep, on the northwest coast of Irian Jaya. It contains a minimum of 7 trillion cubic feet of clean and cheaply extractable gas. Worth US$22 billion at present prices over 20 years, it may become Irian Jaya's biggest resource project after Freeport. Indonesia is already the world's biggest exporter of natural gas. Wiriagar Deep could be producing by 2003.
Far Eastern Economic Review 12 September 1996

ARY'S BRIDGE President Suharto's eldest grandson Ary Sigit (25) wants to construct a 60-km long toll bridge linking Java and Sumatra. The President personally instructed Works Minister Radinal Mochtar to conduct a feasibility study. However, the latter cast doubt on the project because of its cost and technical difficulty. Ary Sigit hit the news earlier this year when a company he owns over- charged on a beer levy it was granted in the tourist mecca Bali. Beer companies boycotted Bali until the practice was abolished. Ary Sigit then tried to gain an officially sanctioned monopoly on the trade in birds nests, again with limited success.
Asia Times 13 September 1996

LAST REFUGEE The last Indochinese refugees left Galang Island near Singapore on 2 September. With UNHCR assistance, Galang has sheltered more than 120,000 refugees since 1979. The remaining 4,570, having been rejected by third countries, were forcibly repatriated to Vietnam since June this year. The refugee facilities were turned over to the Batam Authority, which plans to develop the island into an industrial and tourist resort.
Kompas 16 September 1996

BLIND MILLIONS Indonesia has the highest rate of blindness in Asia - 1.47% of the population - according to parliamentarian and eye specialist Prof J H A Mandang. Bangladesh is next with 1.00%, while India has 0.69% and Thailand 0.31%. Cataracts account for most cases.
Antara 19 September 1996

BURIAL BLUES Jakarta has run out of land to bury its dead. Its current 556 hectares of cemetries are insufficient for the 80-100 deaths per day in a city of 12 million, not counting those deaths that are never reported. The government has approved regulations allowing repeated burial in the same plot as well as double-decker burial, and is glad that many families take their dead back to the village.
Media Indonesia 14 September 1996

STAGING POINT Syndicates from Iran and Morocco are using Indonesia as a staging point for illegal migrants from the Indian Subcontinent, the Middle East and Africa to go to Australia or Canada. Candidates arriving in Jakarta on a tourist visa are issued with a false passport. From Labuhan Ratu in West Java, from Bali or from Kupang in West Timor, fishing boats then take them to Northern Australia. The Australian Embassy complained to the Indonesian Immigration Department that 24 Iraqi and 28 Pakistani illegal immigrants had been caught in Australia during the first week of October. The syndicates, thought also to be running drugs, charge US$ 4000-7000 for the service.
Surabaya Post 10 October 1996, Suara Pembaruan 22 October 1996

THROWN OUT Three East Timorese who entered the French Embassy in Jakarta in October were unceremoniously thrown out by a Frenchman and local security guards after spending less than two hours there, according to one of the Timorese, Alberto da Silva, 23. The French Embassy later denied the Timorese had been there. The eviction contravenes the right of asylum written into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since September 1995, 89 Timorese have been given asylum in Portugal after entering embassies in Jakarta. In September and August other Timorese were granted asylum after entering the Spanish and French embassies, but failed in a bid to enter the Japanese embassy when threatened by security guards.
AFP 20 August 1996, Reuters 24 September & 17 October 1996

STOLEN ART Police have so far managed to recover 22 of 25 valuable paintings stolen from the National Museum in Jakarta. The theft became known when some of them were offered for auction at Christie's in Singapore. They were probably stolen by Museum employees and bought by ML, a Singapore resident with property in Jakarta. Some of the paintings were foreign gifts to President Sukarno in the 1960s. Most famous among the stolen art were an 1867 portrait of Governor-General van den Bosch by Raden Saleh, three landscapes by Affandi, and two paintings by Basuki Abdullah. There were also works by Cezanne, Renoir, Picasso, Toulouse and Kandensky.

Kompas 27 September & 5 October 1996

FISH FUSS The Navy in one week in September expelled 50 mainland Chinese trawlers with 1000 crew for fishing illegally in the area around Irian Jaya. The Chinese were equipped with false papers authorising them to fly the Indonesian flag. They obtained them from corrupt harbour officials in Gresik, East Java. In October the Navy arrested another 24 Taiwanese and Thai boats with 300 crew operating illegally in Eastern Indonesian waters. Navy patrols in the rich fishing grounds there have been increased but remain inadequate.
Media Indonesia 26 September & 7 October 1996

GIFT QUERIED Indonesia became a major issue in the feverish last days of the American presidential election, when Republican campaigners faulted the Democrats for accepting a US$425,000 gift from James Riady. Riady has spent time in Little Rock, Arkansas, and has ancestral ties to mainland China, but is an Indonesian citizen. The Riadys own Lippo Bank in Indonesia and hundreds of companies throughout Asia. James Riady appears to be an important unofficial link between Presidents Clinton and Suharto.
New York Times 11 October 1996