Police: Forest fires 'more difficult to tackle than terrorism'



JAKARTA: -- Indonesian police have charged more than 100 individuals and are investigating dozens of companies believed to be responsible for forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan, The Jakarta Globe reported.

But slash-and-burn cases are more difficult to solve than those involving drugs or terrorism, said national police chief Gen Badrodin Haiti.

“In terrorism and drugs cases, we have access to preliminary information, there’s the links and networks of offenders,” he said.

For forest fires, it is difficult to know who started them, Badrodin said.

Badrodin said that fire spots can now be detected with satellites, but it is not immediately clear whether someone set that particular fire on purpose.

“We can’t possibly install CCTV to monitor every spot in the forest,” the police chief said.

Scientists and businesses have called on the government to revise laws that allow small subsistence farmers to perform slash-and-burn practices.

The issue is becoming more and more pressing as haze blankets large parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan and also Singapore and parts of Malaysia.

National Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Suharsono said on Monday that the police in various parts of country have charged at least 107 individuals believed to be responsible for a number of forest fire cases.

Source: http://englishnews.thaipbs.or.th/police-forest-fires-more-difficult-to-tackle-than-terrorism


-- Thai PBS 2015-09-16

yes tourists usually don't bribe

If the fines were high enough, and properly enforced, a lot of these fires would go away.

Not too hard to find them.

Village headman sets the fire and he is the only one with a plowing tractor.

And so in the next couple of months he can buy his new pick-up.

The local policeman does the sergeant Schulz comedy, and so he can buy his pick-up. And so on and so on.

The RTP should be worried.

Those Indonesian BIG HATS look to be even higher than the RTP hats.

As well as that, the Indonesian guys say things that may be even more stupid than the RTP output . . .

It's been well-known for ages in Singapore that the people ultimately responsible for setting these fires are far more powerful than the police and most politicians, so by that token it really is harder to control than other forms of criminality.

There's so much money to be made out of "accidentally" burning virgin rainforest to plant palm oil trees (more biofuels, anyone?) that causing choking smog over neighbouring countries is a minor consideration.

http://www.scidev.net/asia-pacific/biofuels/news/indonesia-s-biofuel-subsidies-may-speed-up-forest-loss.html