Looking over the concession (/awasmifee.potager.org)
Jayapura, 29/10 (Jubi/Awas Mifee) – The forest villages of Merauke are as remote as it is possible to imagine in the twenty-first century. Nowhere in Indonesia is further from Jakarta – 3700 kilometres as the crow flies. 662 km of forest and a high mountain range separate Merauke from the Papuan capital, Jayapura, which is also the focus of most of West Papua’s social movements. Many of the villages are not accessible by road, and have no electricity or telecommunications links either. Local indigenous people, who mostly identify as belonging to sub-ethnic groups of the Malind people, get most of what they need from the forests, grasslands and swamps that cover the area.
When a convergence of national and local political interests decided that this area was to be intensively developed as a new centre of industrial food and biofuel production, the Malind people faced an immediate threat to their cultural survival. Since the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) was officially inaugurated three years ago dozens of companies have applied for plantation permits, and proceeded to try and get control over the Malind People’s ancestral lands.
