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Indonesian palm oil firm clashes with villagers it allegedly shortchanged

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JAKARTA — A dispute simmering for years has erupted into conflict between villagers and a palm oil company on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi over the latter’s failure to abide by a profit-sharing scheme. At least nine villagers in Buol district and one worker from plantation company PT Hardaya Inti Plantations (HIP) were injured in clashes on May 7 and 10 that began as protests. The villagers had since the start of the year formally objected to HIP harvesting palm fruit from the trees that the company was cultivating on the villagers’ land, noting that they hadn’t been paid for harvests going back to 2018, or even longer in some cases. When HIP workers arrived at the villagers’ farms on May 7 to cut down the palm fruit and load it onto trucks, the villagers attempted to stop them, leading to scuffles in which three villagers were pushed off a truck and injured. A similar scene played out three days later, this time leaving six villagers injured and one worker with machete wounds. Fatrisia Ain, a member of the grassroots organization FPPB that represents the villagers, said they’d been protesting peacefully and had no intention of assaulting the workers. “They only wanted to prevent the fruit from being taken out [of their land], because the oil palm fruits grew on their lands,” she said. She added they harbored no grievances against the workers, with the villager who slashed the worker with the machete turning himself in to the police because…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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