In September 2023, Syarifah Fadiah Alkaff, a middle school student from Jambi, located on Indonesia’s largest island Sumatra, was reported by local authorities after airing her grievances about China-owned wood pellet processing company Rimba Palma Sejahtera Lestari (RPSL), on social media platform TikTok. Syarifah spoke about the impacts on her family house which suffers from cracked walls and floors due to heavy trucks from RPSL transporting materials and passing close by. Her TikTok profile was reported to the police under the country’s strict online speech law.

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre invited RPSL and its parent company ELL Environmental Holdings Ltd. to respond. Their responses can be found here.