- An Indonesian forensic scientist whose testimony has proved crucial in securing rulings against environmental violators faces a third potential lawsuit.
- A complaint filed with police alleges that Bambang Hero Saharjo lacked competence to assess the damages in an illegal tin laundering case, which he calculated had caused more than $16 billion in environmental damages.
- Bambang’s testimony has led to several convictions in court, including for the CEO of Indonesia’s biggest tin miner.
- Prosecutors have defended his assessment, and activists say the campaign against him is a systematic attempt to silence him from speaking out against environmental crimes.
JAKARTA — Prominent Indonesian environmental forensic expert Bambang Hero Saharjo faces yet another potential lawsuit for serving as a state witness against alleged violators, this time in a high-profile tin laundering case.
Lawyer Andi Kusuma filed a police report against Bambang on Jan. 8, alleging the veteran forestry professor lacked the competence to assess the total environmental damages incurred in the case — a convoluted corruption scheme involving illegal mining in the tin hub of the Bangka-Belitung Islands.
Several people have been charged in the case, many of them already convicted and sentenced. Bambang, as a witness for the prosecution, testified in court that the illegal mining component of the scheme alone resulted in total environmental damages of 271 trillion rupiah, or about $16.6 billion. The corruption component amounted to nearly 30 trillion rupiah ($1.8 billion) in losses to the state, according to prosecutors.
Andi, who doesn’t represent anyone charged in the case but claims to represent the wider community of Bangka-Belitung, alleged in his police report that Bambang’s assessment had cast the local tin mining industry in a bad light. Bambang, he said, was no financial expert, and the figure that he came up with made it seem “as if an extraordinary crime has occurred in Bangka-Belitung.”
Bambang, who has successfully fended off two previous lawsuits brought by palm oil companies hit with record fines for forest fires as a result of his assessments in those cases, said this latest threat gave credence to his jihad, or struggle, in service of the environment.
“An academic must tell the truth,” he said during a radio discussion. “Otherwise we’re complicit in the destruction [of the environment].”
Laundering illegally mined tin
A professor at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) and recipient of the prestigious John Maddox Prize in 2019, Bambang has given expert testimony in more than 500 cases of environmental destruction.
The tin mining case is by far the biggest in terms of the assessed value of the environmental damage. Indonesia is the world’s No. 2 tin producer, behind only China, and its biggest miner is state-owned PT Timah. Prosecutors allege that top Timah executives, including its former CEO, colluded with private parties to launder illegally mined tin through a series of shell companies.
According to Bambang’s assessment, the illegal mining inside Timah’s own concessions, which ran from 2015-2022, led to widespread devastation of the environment, affecting protected forests and marine ecosystems. Studies have long shown the industry’s environmental toll is severe: deforestation, biodiversity loss, and degraded water systems have harmed Bangka-Belitung’s ecology and traditional livelihoods, particularly those of fishers.
Both Bambang and the Attorney General’s Office, which commissioned him to conduct the assessment, have defended his findings from critics.
“If my calculations weren’t in line [with the regulations], then they would have been rejected from the beginning,” Bambang told Mongabay.
The AGO has also said the way that environmental losses were calculated was done carefully using legally and scientifically rigorous standards. It denounced Andi’s police report as “a grave mistake.”
Those same calculations were critical in securing convictions for those implicated in the corruption scandal, including former Timah CEO Mochtar Riza Pahlevi Tabrani, who was sentenced to eight years in prison.
A coordinated attack
But there appears to be a coordinated attack on Bambang, going beyond just the police report. A viral post on the social media platform X on Jan. 6 similarly questioned Bambang’s qualifications and spawned the hashtag #BambangHeroSalahHitung, or “Bambang Hero counted wrong.”
“How can a professor specializing in forest fires calculate mining [damages]? He doesn’t understand it, he counted wrong. And now the country suffers losses,” the post read. It was accompanied by an animated video that purported to show the math yet somehow failed to mention any damage to the environment — the very thing that Bambang was commissioned to assess.
Two days later, protesters demonstrated outside the office of the Bangka-Belitung provincial audit agency to again denounce Bambang’s findings.
These attacks appear to be systematic, said Okto Yugo Setiyo, coordinator of environmental NGO Jikalahari.
“This shows that there are parties who try to evade responsibility and silence the voices of environmental defenders,” he said.
SLAPP and rising threats
Activists have labeled the latest police report against Bambang, like the previous ones, a classic example of a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP — the use of the justice system to intimidate and silence critics.
Auriga Nusantara, an environmental NGO, recorded at least 133 SLAPP incidents against environmental defenders between 2014 and 2023 in Indonesia. Such cases, activists warn, could deter future whistleblowers.
“We should treat environmental defenders as heroes, not criminalize them,” said Sekar Banjaran Aji, a forest campaigner with Greenpeace Indonesia.
The rising trend comes as the role of environmental defenders grows increasingly important now that the government has rolled out policies making it easier for companies to exploit natural resources in Indonesia on a large scale, said Andi Muttaqien, executive director of Indonesian environmental and human rights advocacy group Satya Bumi.
“This is related to the massive exploitation of natural resources by design. There’s going to be lots of victims [of this exploitation],” he told Mongabay.
Without environmental defenders like Bambang who can speak up against environmental crimes, violators will enjoy greater impunity to keep polluting and exacerbating the ongoing climate crisis, Sekar said.
“SLAPP is very dangerous because our Planet Earth is not doing fine. You must have heard about the fires in Hollywood or the floods in Mecca,” she added.
A litmus test
Sekar called the case against Bambang a litmus test for Indonesia’s commitment to environmental governance under Indonesia’s new president, Prabowo Subianto.
“If the president is serious about addressing the climate crisis, he must protect environmental defenders like Bambang,” she said.
Unfortunately, she added, she hasn’t heard any statement from Prabowo committing to protect environmental defenders.
“So I’m not sure that Prabowo understands [the importance of environmental activism] and has a view on this,” Sekar said.
Indonesia has measures in place to combat frivolous SLAPP attempts, including a 2009 law and a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that both protect environmental defenders. In September 2024, the environment ministry also introduced a long-awaited anti-SLAPP regulation aimed at protecting environmental defenders from such lawsuits.
These regulations alone should be enough for the police to drop the case immediately, said the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL).
However, implementation remains poor, as there’s lack of coordination among law enforcement agencies to implement these regulations effectively, Sekar said. Noticeably missing is a separate anti-SLAPP regulation in the police code, which leaves the police without a mechanism to identify SLAPP cases, Sekar said.
“The Ministry of Environment, the Supreme Court and the Attorney General’s Office have to work with the police so that the anti-SLAPP mechanism can work to prevent SLAPP lawsuits from going to court,” she said.
A personal toll
For Bambang, the legal battles and public attacks cut deeper than professional challenges — they also strike at his family.
“This morning, my daughter asked, ‘What’s going on, Dad?’ My wife asked the same thing,” he said.
Despite the strain, Bambang said his family understands the risks he faces as an environmental defender. “This is not the first time I’ve been targeted,” he said. “Because this is the third time I’ve faced legal action, they understand. I told them that this is my way of mitigating environmental damage and creating a better planet for future generations.”
Bambang acknowledged his worry for his family’s well-being, but he vowed to continue his work as an environmental forensic expert.
“I intend to keep doing this because it’s useless if an academic knows [about environmental crime] but colludes [with violators] instead and turns a blind eye,” he said.
Sekar said she hope Bambang’s resilience inspires others to join the battle against environmental crimes.
“Your voice is not a crime,” Sekar said. “So there’s no reason to be afraid to voice your opinion and concern about the environment.”
Banner image: Bambang Hero Saharjo, a forestry expert from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), speaks during a press conference in Jakarta, Indonesia. Image by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.
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