Indonesian lawmakers have called for a government fact-finding probe into a long-running conflict between an Indigenous community in Borneo and an industrial timber company linked to one of Indonesia’s largest recent deforestation cases.
The call came at the end of a parliamentary hearing in Jakarta on June 30, where lawmakers said testimony presented during the session strengthened indications of alleged structural and systematic human rights violations in the conflict.
Responding to the hearing, Indonesia’s Ministry of Human Rights said it would conduct a more comprehensive review of the case, including field monitoring and coordination with other government agencies, as it prepares to investigate allegations of human rights violations linked to the conflict between PT Mayawana Persada and the Dayak Kualan community in Ketapang district, West Kalimantan province.
The Dayak Kualan community alleges the company’s concession overlaps with its customary lands and forests, and that Mayawana proceeded to clear the area without obtaining its meaningful consent.
Despite the community’s longstanding objections, Mayawana razed lands and forests that the Dayak Kualan community says form part of its customary territory, according to Tarsisius Fendy Sesupi, the customary chief of Lelayang, one of the Indigenous hamlets overlapped by the concession.
“The company never sought the community’s agreement. It simply moved in and cleared everything,” he said at a recent press conference in Jakarta.
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Indonesian law, everyone has the right to a good and healthy environment. When customary cemeteries are destroyed, the company is not merely damaging physical sites. It is also taking away an essential part of the identity of Indigenous communities.
Riezcy Cecilia Dewi, campaign officer, Satya Bumi
In cases where community members agreed to relinquish their land, they did so under pressure and received only 1.5 million rupiah (about US$83) per hectare, or US$34 per acre, regardless of whether the land contained crops, according to Ahmad Syukri, executive director of local NGO LinkAR Borneo.
The community says some of the cleared areas included sacred sites. Among these is Bukit Sabar Bubu, a 1,200-hectare (3,000-acre) hill traditionally used for customary ceremonies, whose forest also provided resources for residents.
Because the hill is considered sacred, community members used to patrol it about three times a week, according to Sutalion Combeng, the customary chief of Sabar Bubu hamlet.
“We had already heard how aggressively PT Mayawana Persada was operating in our area,” he said.
But during the farming season, community members had to suspend those patrols while tending their fields.
“That was when the company took the opportunity to enter the area and clear the forest on Bukit Sabar Bubu,” Sutalion said. “When we eventually returned to patrol the hill, we found that dozens of hectares had already been cleared.”
Community documentation reviewed by Mongabay indicates that forest clearing at Bukit Sabar Bubu began in June 2020 and continued through May 2023.
The community also alleges that Mayawana bulldozed another sacred site, the Kek Juing ancestral cemetery, in 2020.
“Accordingly, we imposed customary sanctions [on the company]. When all of the required customary obligations were calculated — including restoring the cemetery and conducting the necessary customary ceremonies — the total value exceeded 100 million rupiah,” or about US$5,500, Sutalion said. “To this day, however, none of those obligations has been fulfilled.”
In a public summary prepared by Mayawana, the company said it sought to minimise conflict with surrounding communities while creating positive impacts. It also said Mayawana is committed to protecting human rights.
However, Sutalion said the company’s actions showed little respect for the community’s customary laws.
He also described the level of intimidation experienced by the community as excessive.
“We constantly feel intimidated. Even during the Japanese occupation [during World War 2], we did not experience treatment as harsh as what we have experienced from PT Mayawana Persada,” he said. “[The Japanese] never disturbed our cemeteries. They never disturbed our sacred hills.”
Mayawana did not respond to requests for comment by publication.
Criminal charges against community members
Besides losing land that they say is part of their customary territory, members of the Dayak Kualan community have also faced a series of criminal cases that they and their advocates describe as retaliation for resisting Mayawana’s operations.
One of the earliest cases involved Daniel Ariyanto, the son of a customary leader, who was arrested in December 2021 for uprooting acacia trees planted by Mayawana on land that he said belonged to his family before it was cleared by the company.
He was convicted and sentenced to six months in prison.
Tarsisius, the customary chief of Lelayang hamlet, later became the focus of another criminal case. According to the community, Mayawana cleared disputed land in the Lelayang and Sabar Bubu hamlets in 2023 without notifying residents beforehand. In December that year, the company and Indigenous representatives reached an agreement to resolve part of the dispute through customary law.
Under the agreement, Mayawana was required to provide customary ceremonial items — including a tempayan (traditional earthenware jar), plates, bowls and other ritual objects — as part of the customary sanction imposed by the community.
The company reportedly said it could not procure those items and instead proposed paying the equivalent value in cash.
Following the agreement, Mayawana transferred 16 million rupiah (about US$1,000 at the exchange rate at the time) to Tarsisius’s bank account, so that the customary council could buy the required ceremonial items.
The community and its lawyers say Mayawana later cited that bank transfer when reporting Tarsisius to police, accusing him of extortion and making threats. They argue the payment formed part of an agreed customary settlement, not the result of criminal extortion.
Police began questioning Tarsisius in 2024, initially as a witness before charging him in August 2025. In December that year, police attempted to arrest him in Pontianak, the West Kalimantan provincial capital, and briefly placed him on a wanted list before calling off the arrest after negotiations. Instead, investigators issued a new summons requiring him to appear on Dec. 15, 2025.
Tarsisius said he has now received at least 28 police summonses. He added the charge against him remains in place.
Clearing of peatland and orangutan habitat
The conflict has unfolded alongside one of Indonesia’s largest recent episodes of forest loss.
Between 2016 and 2024, Mayawana cleared 42,512 hectares (105,049 acres) of forest within its 136,710-hectare (337,818-acre) concession, according to analysis presented by the NGO Satya Bumi, drawing on satellite-based forest monitoring data.
More than half of that forest loss occurred in just two years, with nearly 20,000 hectares (49,400 acres) cleared in 2023 and 2024 alone.
Much of the clearing took place on peatlands, which store vast amounts of carbon dioxide accumulated over thousands of years. Once drained for plantations, the thick peat soil oxidises and releases the CO2 into the atmosphere, while becoming far more susceptible to fire.
According to Mayawana’s own public summary, nearly half of its concession consists of peat soils.
According to Satya Bumi, Mayawana cleared approximately 27,500 hectares (68,000 acres) of peatland between 2016 and 2024, including about 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres) classified as protected peat ecosystem. The group also documented its construction of an extensive network of drainage canals to dry out the peat in preparation for planting of industrial timber species.
The environmental impacts extend beyond climate emissions. Much of the concession also overlaps habitat for the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus), a critically endangered great ape whose populations continue to decline across Borneo because of habitat loss, hunting and other pressures.
According to spatial analysis, Mayawana cleared 34,657 hectares (85,639 acres) of orangutan habitat between 2016 and 2024. Field surveys conducted by the group also documented 31 orangutan nests within the concession, suggesting the area continues to support the species despite extensive forest loss.
Riezcy Cecilia Dewi, a campaign officer with Satya Bumi, said the environmental damage should not be viewed separately from the conflict affecting the Indigenous communities.
“Environmental degradation has also resulted in impacts on the human rights of Indigenous communities,” she said. “Under Indonesian law, everyone has the right to a good and healthy environment. When customary cemeteries are destroyed, the company is not merely damaging physical sites. It is also taking away an essential part of the identity of Indigenous communities.”
Uli Arta Siagian, campaign coordinator at the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), said the environmental damage alone warranted a comprehensive review of Mayawana’s operating permit.
“There is no reason not to evaluate Mayawana,” she said. “There are already several indicators that warrant such a review, including deforestation, degraded peatlands, river pollution, biodiversity loss and other environmental impacts.”
Long battle
The June 30 parliamentary hearing marked the culmination of years of advocacy by the Dayak Kualan community and NGOs, which have raised the conflict with government agencies since 2022, including the Ministry of Environment, the National Police Commission, the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM), and the West Kalimantan provincial legislature.
So far, the advocacy hasn’t resulted in the recognition of the Dayak Kualan community’s rights, or compelled Mayawana to provide remedies for the harms it has allegedly caused.
On March 28, 2024, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry issued a directive ordering Mayawana to stop logging in its pulpwood concession and focus on restoring damaged peatlands. Despite this, the company has continued planting acacia trees on cleared peatlands, including in areas designated as protected.
And recently, pulp and paper giant APRIL announced that it would start sourcing pulpwood from Mayawana in July 2026 due to a supply shortage, despite the ongoing allegations of environmental damage and human rights violations linked to the concession.
APRIL said it would only source pulpwood from parts of Mayawana’s concession cleared before the company’s new deforestation cutoff date of December 2020.
Parliament’s response
At the hearing with the parliamentary commission that oversees human rights issues, the Indigenous community urged lawmakers to support their battle and their demands.
Among the demands are for parliament to recommend that police halt all criminal proceedings against Indigenous community members; establish a joint fact-finding team to investigate alleged human rights violations; review Mayawana’s permits; and revoke the company’s concession.
The commission agreed with several of the recommendations. In its official conclusions, the commission said testimony and evidence presented during the hearing “strengthened indications of alleged structural and systematic human rights violations” in the agrarian and environmental conflict involving the Dayak Kualan community and Mayawana.
The commission called on the Ministry of Human Rights to lead cross-sector coordination to establish a joint fact-finding team involving Komnas HAM, the Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPSK), relevant ministries, law enforcement agencies, and regional governments to gather evidence and seek a resolution to the conflict.
“If necessary, revoke the company’s business permit,” Franciskus Sibarani, a lawmaker from the Golkar Party, part of the ruling coalition, said at the hearing.
Rieke Diah Pitaloka, a lawmaker from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), not part of the ruling coalition, said the case should become a national priority as part of implementing the constitutional mandate of recognising and protecting Indigenous rights.
Lawmakers also urged law enforcement authorities to halt criminal proceedings against members of the Dayak Kualan community, including Tarsisius, while ensuring that efforts to resolve the conflict prioritise the protection of human rights.
“Commission XIII urges law enforcement authorities to end all forms of criminalisation against the Dayak Kualan Indigenous community in West Kalimantan,” said Andreas Hugo Pareira, the commission’s vice chair.
Government response
Responding during the hearing, Munafrizal Manan, the director-general for human rights services and compliance at the Ministry of Human Rights, said the ministry had not previously received a formal complaint concerning the Dayak Kualan case.
He said the ministry would now conduct a more comprehensive review of the allegations, coordinate with relevant ministries and agencies, carry out field monitoring, facilitate dialogue between the parties, and prepare recommendations based on its findings.
Munafrizal said the allegations raised during the hearing potentially involve a range of rights protected under Indonesian law and international human rights instruments, including the rights to land, territory, natural resources, a healthy environment, livelihood, and protection from intimidation, as well as the rights of Indigenous peoples.
He also said the ministry would examine the case through the framework of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which set out the state’s duty to protect human rights, companies’ responsibility to respect them, and the need to provide effective remedies for victims.
The NGOs advocating for the rights of the Dayak community welcomed the outcome of the hearing, even though not all of the community’s demands were accommodated by parliament or the ministry.
“Commission XIII’s plan to establish a joint fact-finding team under the coordination of the Ministry of Human Rights could pave the way for resolving the conflict in line with the community’s expectations and demands,” said Ahmad of LinkAR Borneo. “At the same time, we must continue monitoring the commitments expressed today by members of parliament.”
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com.
