Indonesia’s top court on Friday rejected an appeal by an Indigenous tribe in its lawsuit against a palm oil firm, leaving it at risk of losing vast swathes of ancestral forest, rights groups said.
The Awyu tribe, whose roughly 20,000 members rely on the land for their subsistence, had sought to freeze the operations of PT Indo Asiana Lestari (PT IAL) in the eastern Indonesian province of West Papua.
But Indonesia’s Supreme Court rejected their final appeal, according to a document published on its website Friday, upholding the company’s 36,000-hectare (89,000-acre) government concession, more than half the size of the Indonesian capital Jakarta.
“I feel heartbroken because I am left with no other legal avenue to protect the land and the people of my ancestral homeland,” said Awyu tribe plaintiff Hendrikus Woro.
“I am shattered because throughout this struggle, there has been no support from the government, local or central. …