JAKARTA — Critics have slammed Indonesia’s outgoing government over a plan to hand out mining permits revoked from companies to religious organizations — not on the basis of the latter’s mining competence, but simply because they played an important role in the country’s independence struggle nearly 80 years ago. The push is being led by the investment minister, Bahlil Lahadalia, who faces allegations of self-dealing and corruption in the revocation and reissuance of mining permits, according to reporting by investigative news outlet Tempo. The proposed handouts are more of the same, critics say: payback to religious organizations for their support of President Joko Widodo’s preferred candidate in February’s election. “Who were the liberation figures of our nation?” Bahlil said at a press conference at his office in Jakarta on April 29. “Now that Indonesia is independent, should we not give them some attention?” “It’s nonsense,” Muhammad Jamil, head of the legal desk at the National Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam), a watchdog group, told Mongabay Indonesia on May 1. “There is no legal basis” for such a handout, Jamil added. The Mantan River in Indonesia’s Jambi province is allegedly contaminated with mining waste from nearby coal operations. Image by Teguh Suprayitno/Mongabay Indonesia Questions remain over how the government can rearrange the country’s legal and regulatory framework to enable religious organizations, which are incorporated as charitable foundations, to hold mining permits, which may only be issued to commercial enterprises. Civil society groups told Mongabay that land clawed back by the state from corporate…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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