08/11/2012 (Jakarta Globe) - Most of the oil palm companies operating in West Kutai District, East Kalimantan, stand accused by local residents of some kind of land infraction, the national human rights body revealed on Tuesday.

Mimin Dwi Hartono, the head of a team from the National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM) investigating the residents’ grievances, said that “almost all” of the 45 companies were caught up in disputes and even conflicts with the locals.

“From our observations in West Kutai, these companies are at loggerheads with indigenous communities, including in the upstream Mahakam and Muara Tei areas, where both sides are actually engaged in conflicts,” he said in Balikpapan.

He added that in most cases, the underlying cause of the tensions was the fact that the companies were operating in areas that the communities had long considered their ancestral land, but for which the locals had no title deeds.

Mimin said that even though the companies had legitimate permits to operate there, they should do more to communicate their intent to the locals so that the latter would be aware of what was going on.

He added that in other cases, the companies only had preliminary permits to survey the areas, but had proceeded with clearing the land and planting.

In a few cases, he went on, the companies appeared to be selling the timber from the trees that they cut down, in violation of the terms of their planting permits.

“We believe that these kinds of companies are just there to illegally log the valuable tree species that West Kutai still has a lot of,” Mimin said.

The Komnas HAM team also raised suspicions that some of the ongoing disputes were actually stoked by the companies, who would pit one community against another over the issue of their shared border, and profit from the ensuing confusion to illegally expand their concessions.

Mimin urged the district authorities to weigh their decisions to award oil palm concessions more carefully. He warned that if permits continued to be issued at the current rate, West Kutai would lose a significant amount of its forest cover.

This, he said, could lead to massive flooding and severe landslides, given that much of the district acts as a catchment area for the Mahakam River.

Komnas HAM will use its findings to lobby for greater protections for forest residents under the indigenous communities bill being drawn up in Jakarta, as well as a curb on the discretionary power of district heads to issue plantation, mining and logging permits.