Police Charge Seven Companies Over Sumatra, Kalimantan Fires
Jakarta. The number of oil palm and logging companies charged with setting forest fires that have generated toxic haze spreading as far as Singapore and Malaysia has risen to seven, police said on Wednesday.
Police have received 148 reports of fires being set deliberately in Sumatra and Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of Borneo Island, and are investigating 27 companies, according to Gen. Badrodin Haiti, the National Police chief.
Investigators have charged seven of the companies for slash-and-burn clearing of peat forests, three of them in South Sumatra province, one in Riau province, and three in Central Kalimantan.
Badrodin declined to name the companies but said they would face the full force of the law if found to have set the fires deliberately.
“Hopefully the investigation goes well. The president’s order is clear that law enforcement must be carried out so that this doesn’t happen again in the coming years,” he said.
Police have charged the companies under the 2014 Plantations Law and the 2009 Environmental Protection and Management Law.
“I hope the government will also give extra punishment for the companies that acted with ill-intent,” Badrodin said.
The police chief previously said it would be difficult to prosecute the alleged violators, arguing that forestry crimes were more complicated to prove than instances of terrorism.
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