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Article

1 Feb 2020

Author:
Forest Peoples Programme

Indonesia: Indigenous community requests for dissociation of Roda Mas from Forest Stewardship Council due to its alleged human rights violations

"Press release: Indigenous community files FSC Policy of Association complaint against Roda Mas Group in Indonesia", 27 January 2020

Forest Peoples Programme has lodged a Policy of Association (PfA) complaint against Roda Mas Group and requested that the group be disassociated from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) due to violations of traditional and human rights in their forestry operations. The PfA complaint is brought on behalf of the Dayak Bahau Busaang indigenous community of Long Isun...

Long Isun has been embroiled in a land conflict with members of the Roda Mas Group since 2011. The dispute escalated in 2014 when community members were arrested for attempting to parlay with company workers who had begun felling trees in their ancestral lands without the community's consent. One prominent community activist was jailed for three months without charge for his involvement in the altercation...

[Roda Mas Group]... has been embroiled in numerous controversies relating to human rights violations and illegal deforestation in Kalimantan over the past decade...

...[I]n 2016, a complaint was lodged with FSC against one of Rodamas's logging firms, PT Kemakmuran Berkah Timber, for breach of the FSC's Principles and Criteria. The investigation found evidence that companies associated with the Roda Mas Group had manipulated legal processes to annex land from Long Isun. The result of which was the destruction of precious customary forest and the community's ancestral grave sites.

In 2017, the FSC passed the complaint to the company's certification body, Rainforest Alliance (RA)...

...RA's findings...found Roda Mas Group associated companies to be in breach of FSC Principles and Criteria. The result was the termination of one company's FSC certificate. This was followed in 2018 with the suspension of another Roda Mas Group company's FSC licence. In spite of this, no remedy was provided to the community for these past harms.

...[I]f the community wished to pursue remedy for past harms then a PfA complaint would need to be filed...[T]roubling information emerged of renewed attempts by company staff to intimidate Long Isun community members into signing paperwork that stated the long-standing conflict had ended and that the community would not seek any remedy for past abuses...