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Letter: What was the cause of Wasior tragedy?
To avoid total confusion regarding the real cause of the Wasior flood, let’s take a look at the facts and the statements government officials have made
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o avoid total confusion regarding the real cause of the Wasior flood, let’s take a look at the facts and the statements government officials have made.
Last week, Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan stated that the gigantic flood in Wasior was to be blamed on illegal logging, which he alleged was rampant in West Papua.
But on Oct. 11, this same minister said that illegal logging was not to blame, and that “Wasior was supposedly a conservation area that suffered from settlement encroachment, among other things”.
Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta quickly chimed in and said that Wasior’s forests “were in good condition”.
After a Cabinet meeting chaired by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Coordinating Public Welfare Minister Agung Laksono stated, on behalf of the government, that there was no evidence of illegal logging near Wasior, although some locals had cut down trees, “but on a very small scale”, and that “loose soil and heavy rains had combined to displace entire trees along with their roots during the flood.”
Green Indonesian Institute chairman Chalid Mohammad, however, strongly criticized the declarations of denial made by government officials, and emphatically stated that there were many (processed) logs found in the flood zone near Wasior. “If there was no logging, where did the logs come from? If the trees collapsed because of the flood, they would still have roots and branches,” he said. Surely Chalid has pictures and accounts from the locals as evidence to back up his statements.
Anyone who has painstakingly read all these reports cannot help but ask several burning questions. What in heaven’s name is going on here?
Why did the forestry minister suddenly issue a totally different statement several days after he made his first one?
Why did Minister Agung say that “there was no evidence of illegal logging” after he attended a Cabinet meeting chaired by President SBY, and not before?
What important information that the people of Indonesia and the world needs to know is so hurriedly, and ineffectively, being covered up here?
What are the names of the logging companies that have been denuding the forests in the vicinity of Wasior?
Who are the people who have vast interests in these logging companies? Who stands to reap an enormous profit from this logging? What are their names? Are there high level officials and their families among them?
If there are, they should be exposed and face justice, as they too are responsible for the deaths, destruction and human suffering caused by the Wasior flood.
Thomas Cooper (1759–1839) said it well: “Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.” That goes for all of us, also those who occupy high and lofty places.
Tami Koestomo
Bogor, West java
