NGOs accuse Indonesia of stymieing scientific research

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NGOs accuse Indonesia of stymieing scientific research

JAKARTA: More than a dozen NGOs have issued a letter accusing Indonesia of stymieing scientific research, after Jakarta banned a group of foreign academics who objected to an official claim that orangutan numbers are increasing.

Indonesia is home to the world's oldest tropical rainforest, where the critically endangered apes are losing areas of their habitat to logging, palm oil plantations and mining.

A letter of objection filed by 18 groups including Greenpeace and Amnesty International to the environment ministry on December 1 called for authorities to lift a ban on the five Western scientists and allow researchers to work freely.

NGOs can file a lawsuit if their demands are not met.

Five academics - all outside Indonesia - had written an op-ed in a local newspaper citing studies showing the orangutan population is in decline, countering official claims that their numbers were set to grow.

They were banned from the country the day the piece was published.

The ban on antiscience was condemned by the NGOs, which said it restricted academic freedom. They demanded a public apology from the government for what they said was an abuse of power by silencing dissenting opinions.

They said Thursday that it was a manifestation of power control of knowledge production, which has violated the academic freedom principle.

Arie Rompas, Greenpeace Indonesia's forest campaign team leader, said the ministry's move was authoritarian and that credible data was essential for sound environmental policies.

If data lacks credibility, policies won't solve issues such as deforestation, forest fires or the orangutan population, Rompas told AFP Friday.

The environment ministry did not respond to a request for comment from the AFP.

We are waiting for the ministry's response to see what are the next steps, said Rompas.

Poaching and habitat loss had already decimated the orangutan population in the Southeast Asian nation before the coronaviruses emerged as a threat to the mammals, who share 97 per cent of their DNA with humans.

Little more than 120,000 orangutans were estimated to remain in the wild before the recent dispute erupted, but the exact number was not known.

The population of orangutans in Borneo dropped from 288,000 in 1973 to around 100,000 by the year 2017 according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The letter from the NGOs calls for the government to work with scientists to reach an agreed estimate on current numbers.