Indonesian authorities are wrongfully prosecuting environmental defenders and Indigenous leaders who protest deforestation, pollution and land grabs, says a new report by international nonprofit Human Rights Watch (HRW). In its 70-page report, HRW uses 15 publicly recorded cases from 2015 to 2025 as examples to suggest how police use complaints from companies and politicians to criminalize activists and community leaders demanding customary land rights. According to the report, while most cases were initiated before he took office in 2024, President Prabowo Subianto’s administration has escalated crackdowns on free expression. The government has increasingly deployed the military to expand state-owned mining operations, oil palm plantations, infrastructure projects and “food and energy estates”, which includes food and biofuel crop production particularly in Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, the Moluccas and Papua, the report says. “Successive Indonesian governments have sought to silence activists and Indigenous leaders protesting forced displacement, loss of customary land, and deforestation by prosecuting them for baseless crimes,” Elaine Pearson, Asia director at HRW, said in a press release. “The Prabowo government, while cracking down on corporate corruption, has ignored local community grievances and instead deployed the military and other heavy-handed measures to pursue its economic objectives”. Based on 69 interviews with Indigenous people, villagers, environmentalists and lawyers, the report says police and prosecutors use vague provisions in the Criminal Code to charge activists with defamation, treason, threatening violence and even “spreading communism” to silence protests over environmental harm. The report says authorities frequently use legislation such as the Plantation Law, the Mineral…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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