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Activists in the dock over protests
Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) executive director Berry Nahdian Furqon and water and food campaign manager Erwin Usman stood trial Tuesday, following their public protest of the inaugural World Ocean Conference (WOC) and Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) Summit in Manado
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Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) executive director Berry Nahdian Furqon and water and food campaign manager Erwin Usman stood trial Tuesday, following their public protest of the inaugural World Ocean Conference (WOC) and Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) Summit in Manado.
They were charged with violating Article 216 of the Criminal Code on public order.
Presiding judge I Made Sukanada said the trial of the two activists would have to be postponed, pending the summoning of two witnesses put forward by the defendants' lawyer.
"They staged a rally of protest, had an oration at Malalayang Beach, and refused to desist when the police came to disband the action," he said.
"They were deemed to have caused a public disturbance."
Made added that should the activists be found guilty, they could face a maximum sentence of 20 weeks in jail.
The prosecution witness presented in Tuesday's hearing was the local police's Comr. Sudjarwoko, who testified that the event staged by Walhi violated regulations because no permit had been requested for it earlier.
"We negotiated three times, asking for proper documents, but they did not respond. They even taunted us to settle the matter in court," he said.
Outside the courthouse, dozens of protesters rallied in support of the activists.
Similar shows of solidarity also took place in Denpasar and Bengkulu.
The Walhi protest was spurred by a gathering of some 200 fishermen from 17 provinces and four Southeast Asian countries at Malalayang Beach on Monday at 9 a.m. local time (8 a.m. in Jakarta) to hear the reading of the "Manado Declaration".
Two hours later, the police broke up the gathering and arrested Berry and Erwin.
Early Tuesday, 16 Philippine activists and members of the Manado Alliance were deported for attending the "illegal activity", although some were official delegates at the WOC and CTI Summit.
In its statement, the Manado Alliance said the activists were grouped under SEAFISH, an important civil society network that has been very outspoken against injustices toward traditional fishermen in Southeast Asia.
The alliance demanded the summit take notice of its five key issues: The initiative must ensure human security from climate change impacts; the conference should be able to guarantee access and control of resources for traditional fishermen; industrial nations and multilateral financial institutions must be responsible for ecological debts caused by Indonesia's resources exploitation; bilateral and multilateral agreements issued at the summit must be able to respond to the food crisis caused by climate change; and finally, a demand for the legal settlement of problems in the ocean sector, including illegal fishing and overfishing by foreign vessels, and land-based pollution caused by foreign mining companies.
