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View all search resultsDecade-old video casts food minister as ‘villain’ in Sumatra flood
Coordinating Food Minister Zulkifli Hasan has suddenly become the target of public ire after a decade-old video of his interview with actor Harrison Ford resurfaced online, which for some netizens, made him a convenient scapegoat for the deadly floods in northern Sumatra.
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Coordinating Food Minister Zulkifli Hasan visits houses impacted by floods on Sunday in Lubuk Minturun, Padang, West Sumatra. (Antara/Iggoy el Fitra)
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oordinating Food Minister Zulkifli Hasan has become the sudden target of public ire after a decade-old video of his interview with Hollywood actor Harrison Ford resurfaced online, which for some netizens made him a convenient scapegoat for the deadly floods sweeping northern Sumatra.
Zulkifli, who also chairs the National Mandate Party (PAN), was among several ministers who visited Aceh, North Sumatra or West Sumatra following last week’s massive floods and landslides.
The disaster has claimed more than 800 lives as of Thursday, according to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), and is widely believed to have been worsened by years of deforestation and weak environmental enforcement.
Amid renewed scrutiny over environmental degradation in Sumatra, a video clip of an interview between Zulkifli and Ford has resurfaced and is making the rounds on social media. The footage comes from a 2014 episode of an environmental documentary series called “Years of Living Dangerously” produced by New York-based climate nonprofit the YEARS Project, which was uploaded to its YouTube channel in 2022.
In the segment, Ford grilled Zulkifli, then the country’s forestry minister under former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, on the rampant deforestation in Tesso Nilo National Park in Riau province.
Ford, speaking in English and visibly upset, pressed Zulkifli on how a supposedly protected national park had ended up riddled with illegal plantations, repeatedly asking why the government had failed to stop the destruction.
Zulkifli, speaking in Indonesian, responded that while the government was trying to address the problem, Indonesia had only recently undergone political reform and was still adjusting to “a surplus of democracy”.
