On 7-Jan-07, Kompas, the leading national daily of Indonesia had an amazing full-page photo-story on Buyat fishermen. This photo documentation shows the pictures of Buyat community working as a team in the early morning hours to catch fish from Buyat Bay. The catch of course is quite handsome. And the overall message is simple—Buyat fishermen see the ocean as their friend, and the stock of fish remains high enough to support their livelihood.

Earlier in Dec 2006 Buyat fish had caught the national attention for winning a major culinary competition. The daily-Harian Komentar reported on 19-Dec-06 that “Fish from Buyat Bay which had been reported as dangerous because it was contaminated with mine waste, became the prima donna at a recent national “Healthy Menu” competition in Padang, West Sumatra.”

A book entitled An Underwater Guide To Buyat Bay and Surrounding Areas North Sulawesi was just published by the South Minahasa & North Sulawesi Tourism Office. I got permission to post the entire book on the site. I would like to invite you to take a look at this because one, the photography is extremely beautiful showing a wide variety of marine life and two, I see this as additional evidence of how ridiculous the charges are against my father.

This book was written by Jerry Kojansow, David Sompie, Laurentius Th. X Lalamentik, Msc and Djonline Emor, Msi. The beautiful photographs where provided by Jerry Kojansow and Robert Humberson.

The wheels may be falling off the justice wagon in Indonesia

If the prosecutors want to give three years jail time to my Dad because Buyat Bay is clean, fish are safe to eat, and public health conditions in the Buyat area is better than the national average, then logically, we are talking about recommending several life time of jail sentence for Lapindo, those that conduct illegal logging, or those that slash and burn the forests to create new plantations which produce so much smoke that the resulting impact shuts down local airports and influences the air quality of Singapore and Malaysia. But we all know that this is not going to happen. And it is this contradiction that speaks the loudest about the absurdity of the charges recommended by the prosecutors.

My Dad commented to the reporters regarding the charges against him that “Anything short of total innocence is excessive”. He also said that the charges make a mockery of the justice system.

I’m sure you have heard the old saying that rules are made to be broken. In most instances this is a relatively harmless idea if you are talking about a group of middle school children who fail to follow the instructions of their English teacher—at worst you might get a bunch of kids who can’t write well. However, what happens if the custodians of law in a country start to follow the same maxim? Unfortunately, you might get the Buyat case.

A justice system can fail in many ways. For instance, if a real criminal is not prosecuted or a criminal gets away with a disproportionately lenient sentence. But what happens when you are talking about a justice system that deliberately targeted an innocent man with the single minded determination to basically destroy his life, in this situation you are not talking about a justice system at all. However, this seems to be the situation exemplified by my Dad’s ongoing legal battles in Indonesia.

Now that the weekly hearings are over, it is possible for me to reflect on the Buyat Bay case from other perspectives. It has become clear to me that this case is much larger than a scientific debate or a legal squabble. Instead it raises the deeper and more complex question of morality, and about how something so unfair and unjust could happen at such a large scale. Questions like -- How could certain individuals be so cruel and uncaring? Is politics this heartless and insensitive? -- have haunted my mind for a while now.

It is evident through this case that political zeal can have an amazing blinding effect on human beings, and it can freeze the governance machinery from acting in a responsible manner. When the enforcers of law fail to follow the law themselves, public trust in the ability of the legal system and the rule of law to provide the basic security, safety and peace of mind to the general public gets shattered. This possibility is highly traumatic and unsettling in many ways, particularly for those individuals who are associated with the Buyat Bay case.

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The only thing predictable about some individuals within the Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment is that they act in unpredictable ways. Their paradoxical behavior is exemplified by contrasting responses to the Buyat Bay with the Lapindo environmental issue which still continues to this day in West Java. In the case of Buyat Bay, the “Technical Team” formed by the Ministry of Environment turned a blind eye to the findings of reputable national and international organizations that showed that the Buyat environment was clean. Instead they went out of their way to overplay the non-existent environmental risks (see Technical Team’s Report Makes it to the Hall of Fame for Pseudoscience). But in the case of Lapindo, where mud and polluted water is visible everywhere, leading to the displacement of over 8,000 people, some of those same individuals apparently are underplaying the true environmental and health risks.

There is clearly a double standard here. I wanted to focus on this idea to re-enforce the messages of my earlier blogs that the Buyat case is not about environment. It is high time everyone who is trying to decipher the reality of the Buyat case understand that emperor has no clothes.

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On the 1st of September 2006, my Dad successfully defended himself in the court in Manado. It was a long day but every question from the prosecutor gave a chance to show how unfounded and baseless the pollution charges are. It has become more than clear that my Dad is a victim of a well orchestrated misinformation campaign by certain individuals from NGOs and the government who have flagrantly violated the most basic ethical standards and their responsibilities towards the public.

When I asked my dad how he felt after his testimony, he replied, “There never was any pollution and we never broke any law, I have always known that. So to declare a victory after my 41st time in court in a two year battle that should never have been an issue to start with-provided others had upheld the law-is a very hollow victory to say the least, if you can call it a victory at all. I think everyone has lost something. Son, having said that, if you are asking me “did we send a strong message of integrity and lay out the true facts in the case, the answer is positive, yes we did.”

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I spoke to my dad over the weekend and he informed me that the prosecution and the defense presentation of witnesses ended Friday and he is scheduled to be questioned as the defendant next week.

Interestingly, he told me that the final two witnesses presented by the prosecutors on 25-August-06 provided a field day for his defense team, and when these witnesses left the court room after more than three hours of cross-examination, they had indelibly hurt their credibility in the eyes of the people and the members of the local, national and international press present in the court. The court had previously seen quite a few ridiculous testimonies by the prosecutor’s witnesses, but this Friday’s witnesses have clearly set a new low.

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