Leader urges tolerance in speech
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia’s president urged his country to embrace its founding spirit of tolerance in an annual national address just days after choosing a divisive cleric as his running mate in elections next year.
Joko “Jokowi” Widodo told parliament on Thursday that independence fighters were able to throw off Dutch colonial rule by not being divided by political, ethnic, religious or class differences.
“It depends on the people itself whether the nation wants to unite or whether the nation is easily divided,” he said in the speech on the eve of a national holiday marking the 73rd anniversary of independence.
Indonesia’s image as a moderate Muslim nation has been undermined by flaring intolerance in the past several years, from the imprisonment of Jakarta’s Christian governor for blasphemy to the canings of gay men in Aceh, a province that practices Shariah law.
Originally elected on a moderate platform, Jokowi last week chose a conservative cleric, Ma’ruf Amin, who rails against secularism, liberalism, homosexuality and minority religions as his running mate in the presidential election set for April.
“I am sure if the Indonesian people want to remain united, tolerant and care for their fellow children of the nation, then Indonesia is no longer just a name or picture of a chain of islands on a world map, but rather a force respected by other nations in the world,” Jokowi said.
U.N. Human Rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein warned earlier this year that “strains of intolerance” once thought foreign to Indonesia are making inroads in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
In particular, he criticized a push to criminalize LGBT Indonesians, who’ve suffered an onslaught of inflammatory rhetoric from officials for the past two years and attacks by vigilantes.
In another development Thursday, the main global group for certifying sustainable wood has suspended plans to give its influential endorsement to Indonesian paper giant Sinarmas after revelations it cut down tropical forests and used an opaque corporate structure to hide its activities.
The Forest Stewardship Council said it had halted a process that could have enabled the Asia Pulp & Paper arm of Sinarmas to be readmitted to the organization.
The group said it is awaiting information from the conglomerate “related to its corporate structure and alleged unacceptable forest management activities” by companies thought related to it and wants full disclosure.
Three months ago, the council had sent a come clean ultimatum to Sinarmas, one of the world’s largest paper companies, and its billionaire Indonesian family owners.
The conglomerate said Thursday that it has hired an accounting firm to carry out a “comprehensive assessment” of all industrial forest plantation companies in Indonesia that would be supervised by The Forest Trust, a corporate backed group that says it promotes transparency in supply chains. The assessment would resolve “ongoing and unsubstantiated allegations of using opaque ownership structures,” Sinarmas said.
The FSC mark, a stylized tree, is sought by paper producers and other wood users as an endorsement they can use in the marketplace to promote their products as “green” and charge a premium. It is especially crucial for access to the lucrative North American market.