In January 2013 at least 14 pygmy elephants were poisoned. The finger of guilt both then and since has been pointed many times at the palm oil industry, with considerable justification.
No one has ever been arrested or prosecuted. A hideous crime, allowed to go unpunished by the Sabah Wildlife Department who are known to be close friends with, you guessed it, the palm oil industry.
Fast forward to a week or so ago and the savage attack on an orangutan.
The perpetrator was found, arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned within about one week.
Is it a coincidence this case was wrapped up days, hours even, before a major conference on great apes was to be held in Sabah? We believe not.
It’s not unlike the announcement days before the same conference of two baby orangutans being confiscated and the dealers arrested. You wait 20 or 30 years for something like this to happen and then by some remarkable ‘coincidence’, an arrest takes place days before the conference. Amazing.
Do you really believe these two separate arrests were nothing more than a coincidences?
The positively eye-watering speed at which the alleged orangutan slayer was dealt with has left some wondering if this hasn’t been a bit too easy and hasty?
The accused is an impoverished Indonesian. Did this make it easier for the Sabah authorities to deal with him compared to, say a Malaysian individual or palm oil company?
Did the authorities not hold the Indonesian’s employer in any way responsible for the actions of its employee?
As usual, no blame is attached to palm oil companies for having destroyed the slain orangutan’s habitat. Who is more guilty: One man for killing one orangutan or palm oil companies for having murdered hundreds if not thousands of orangutans?
Did the accused Indonesian worker receive fair legal guidance and representation?
It’s hard, bordering on impossible, to believe the accused, a foreigner, could have been given a fair trial and hearing all within about a week.
It sticks in our gut, that a after two years, no one has ever been prosecuted for killing 14 elephants, when most reasonable people believe it was a palm oil company responsible.
Any police rookie could trace the relevant company.
But, when someone attacks an even more high profile species, namely the orangutan, ‘justice’ can be and is administered extremely swiftly. It’s quite a contrast isn’t it? Was it really justice?
One law for immigrants, another for palm oil firms?
Is it one law for immigrant workers with no financial means, and another for the almighty palm oil companies who just happen to be best buddies with the law enforcement authorities?
Has the right man been prosecuted and imprisoned and did he receive a fair trial?
Let’s hope so, but the speed and coincidence of it all has to be a concern for any fair-minded person.
If the arrest, prosecution, trial, and imprisonment, had not happened at breakneck speed only days before the major great ape conference, we’d probably feel justice was not only done, but seen to be done.
Perhaps the government of Indonesia might take an interest in the fate of their citizen.
All this at a time when at the conference Masidi Manjun asked the public to help save the orangutan. For countless years we have asked him to do the very same thing, but he hasn’t, which presumably is why he now wants others to do his job for him.
SEAN WHYTE is CEO, Nature Alert.
