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owing to pressure from the city administration, which has twice issued a notice of eviction against its national headquarters, the environmental organization Greenpeace Indonesia has decided to find a new location for its office.

“We support the city administration in upholding the regulation. The rent for our office will expire in June 2012 and, in the meantime, we will find a new location for our office,” the head of Greenpeace Indonesia, Nur Hidayawati, told a press conference in Jakarta on Monday.

Nur said that Greenpeace Indonesia would send a notification to the South Jakarta Building Construction Supervision and Regulation Agency (P2B) about the plan.

The agency had said that it would seal the building for a violation of zoning regulations.

Head of the South Jakarta P2B, Widyo Dwiyono, said Greenpeace had turned what should have been a private residence in Kemang Utara into an office building.

The agency had earlier said that an eviction would take place on Saturday. It did not.

Widiyo said that Greenpeace representatives had met Governor Fauzi Bowo to discuss the planned eviction.

“The governor asked Greenpeace to abide by the city’s regulations and gave the organization time to move to a new site,” he said.

Widiyo said that Greenpeace was only one among many outfits violating the zoning regulation in Kemang.

“In the four main streets of Kemang, there are a total of 275 building owners who abuse their building permits. We have sent reprimands to them calling for the buildings to be returned to their original function as residential houses,” he said.

The eviction is the latest move against Greenpeace by the government. Last year, Greenpeace’s flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, which was slated to dock at Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta, was not allowed to enter Indonesian waters.

Last month, lawmakers from the Democratic Party and the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) called for a review on the existence of Greenpeace in Indonesia.

They said that the organization did not have an official permit to operate in Indonesia.

The lawmakers accused Greenpeace of attacking Indonesian companies and authorities but remaining silent about environmental issues linked to giant US companies.

Also in October, Greenpeace UK’s executive director John Sauven was denied entry to Indonesia at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, in spite of Sauven holding a visa issued by the Indonesian Embassy in London.

A few days later, immigration officials tried to deport British Greenpeace campaigner Andrew Ross Tait at Halim Perdanakusuma Airport in East Jakarta as he was setting off with Mas Achmad Santosa, a member of the presidential Judicial Corruption Task Force, Greenpeace Indonesia activists and several UK officials to inspect deforestation in Kalimantan.

Nur also alleged at the press conference that the eviction had something to do with the organization’s stepped-up campaign against deforestation.

“We received the notice of eviction soon after a number of companies cut their contracts with paper company Asia Pulp and Paper [APP]. After so many media reports about the issue, we received the letter. It was originally directed to the owner of this building,” Nur said as quoted by kompas.com.

Greenpeace Asia Pacific had earlier claimed that APP used Indonesian rainforest fiber in toy packaging.

The organization said that toy companies Mattel and Disney were using packaging produced by APP, which Greenpeace has accused of destroying rainforests.

APP denies the claims, saying that the packaging contains both recycled fiber and sustainably certified fiber, which means the mixed tropical hardwood may have come from overseas.