The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) says that eighty percent of the land destroyed by forest fires in Indonesia this year will be converted into plantations, pointing the blame for the fires at unsustainable practices in the country’s agriculture industry.

Jakarta – The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) says that 2,087 out of 4,258 hotspots recroded between January and July were located on concession land. Concession land is land for which the government has given land use rights or permits to companies or other agencies.

Purba Wirastama, Jakarta – Two decades have passed but the whereabouts of poet-activists Wiji Thukul is still unknown after he disappeared mysteriously in 1998.

His two children, Fitri Nganthi Wani and Fajar Merah have tried to present anew the memory of the figure Wiji Thukul through their latest works.

KoPi – The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), a social organisation concerned with the environment, has released a list of big companies causing the forest and land fires in Indonesia.

Parliza Hendrawan, Palembang – The bad old practices of the New Order dictatorship of former President Suharto are still being applied in some government agencies in Indonesia.

Despite repeated pledges by the government that it will put an end to the massive forest fires sweeping across Riau, Kalimantan and Sumatra, which have been widely blamed on big and usually politically connected wood pulp and palm oil companies clearing land ahead of the planting season, the choking haze blanketing a large swathe of South-East A

Environmental activists say that in order to avoid legal liability for the massive forest fires sweeping across Riau, Sumatra and Kalimantan, big palm oil and wood pulp companies pay local people to start fires that conveniently spread onto their concession areas providing a cheap way to clear land ahead of the planting season.