T

he Centre for Orangutan Protection (COP) has learnt of a forthcoming Malaysian palm oil industry public relations event coming up next month in Australia.

We are some of the few people who can speak from first-hand experience of having witnessed the savagery of a Malaysian owned palm oil company in Eastern Kalimantan.

The company paid a reward to people they hired specifically to kill orangutans — a protected species in our country as well as in Malaysia.

Those employees who did not flee the country quickly enough were prosecuted for killing at least 20 orangutans.

We were called to the area where the killing had taken place and what we saw and what we were told by witnesses was horrific.

Orangutans chased by dogs, orangutans beaten to death with poles and others shot to death.

All this was paid for by a Malaysian owned palm oil company. Despite our pleas to the prime minister, the Malaysian government showed neither compassion nor interest.

Malaysian owned palm oil companies operate throughout Kalimantan. They tear down primary forests and slaughter every living animal in sight.

They leave nothing. No one should trust them or anything they say. Better to judge them by what they do.

The forests are replaced with palm oil plantations and local people are paid poverty-level wages for work few Malaysians care to do even in their own country.

All profits from the palm oil grown in our country are then channeled back to Malaysia.

This very same Malaysian palm oil industry refuses to endorse a “zero tolerance, no-kill policy”, which suggests they don’t care about the killing of orangutans.

For them it is all about money: greed at the expense of orangutans and other endangered species. This is totally unacceptable in our country.

The people of Indonesia are fed up and angry with Malaysians coming here, ruining our environment and killing our most iconic species.     

Hardi Baktiantoro
Jakarta