Kidnapped activist: Violence a part of the illegal Indonesia timber trade

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com
July 07, 2010

An interview with Faith Doherty. The European parliament made a historical move today when it voted overwhelmingly to ban illegal timber from its markets. For activists worldwide the ban on illegal timber in the EU is a reason to celebrate, but for one activist, Faith Doherty of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), the move has special resonance. In early 2000, Doherty and an Indonesian colleague were kidnapped, beaten, and threatened with a gun by illegal loggers in Indonesian Borneo. “My colleague sustained injuries to his face and bruising to his body, while my fingers were broken on my right hand,” Doherty told mongabay.com. Doherty and her colleague had taken footage of a massive timber operation by the company Tanjung Lingga. The corrupt company had been illegally felling trees in Tanjung Puting National Park. After being beaten by the illegal loggers, the police were called in. However, they came not to arrest the illegal loggers, but for Doherty and her companion. “We were held in this police station for three days while negotiations continued between the Head of Police in Jakarta and Regional police, the UK Embassy, the US Embassy, many NGOs and the Dayak leaders of Central Kalimantan. While this was going on we were subjected to a mob of men posted outside the police station and at times outside the window of the room we were being held in with machetes, sticks and verbal abuse for the entire three days,” Doherty says, adding that “these men were paid by Tanjung Lingga.” Doherty’s nightmare ended when policemen helped her and her companion escape. After escaping, Doherty was able to present her findings to The World Bank and the new Indonesian government. “The major issue we were able to get across was that of how corruption was the root cause of illegal logging in Indonesia and that the billion dollar timber industry had been getting away in supplying illegally harvested timber to global markets for a long long time. Something had to change.” Rather than dampen her resolve, her terrifying experience only made Doherty more passionate about working to halt illegal logging, a practice which hurts people as much as it does species and forests. “Violence in the forest is common, and forest-dependent communities are threatened by so many different players. I wanted to use what happened to me to highlight the complexities of illegal logging,” Doherty says. …

Violence a part of the illegal timber trade, says kidnapped activist