Channel 7’s Spotlight exposed horrible work practices in Indonesia’s nickel factories, blaming electric vehicles, while the Indonesian government reacts by cracking down on press freedom. Both are treacherous, Duncan Graham reports.
Australian media exposure of gross safety and pollution scandals at nickel mines on Sulawesi Island has forced the Indonesian government to act.
Our big neighbour is supposedly a democracy, so the response should mean launching an inquiry, sacking executives and forcing the Chinese smelter operators to protect the nation’s land and the lives of its citizens.
Instead, President Prabowo Subianto, a disgraced former general with an alleged human rights record, has resorted to the autocrat’s solution: Kill the messenger. Foreign journalists and academics will have to be authorised and monitored to work in the Republic, making free movement and inquiry almost impossible.
Spotlight distorted
This month, an Australian TV doco, The Great EV Con, about Morowali Industrial Park in Sulawesi, showed that foreign companies mining and processing minerals for electric vehicles pay little heed to workers’ safety and the poisoning of the rivers and forests.
The Great EV Con had presenter Liam Bartlett asserting, “Anyone who genuinely cares for the future of the planet would be horrified by the damage that is being done by our northern neighbour, Indonesia, with the financial backing of China.”
But the program also paid little heed to what Indonesia’s nickel is used for, claiming it all goes into electric vehicle batteries, ignoring how the majority of Indonesian nickel is low-grade nickel unsuitable for use in electric vehicle batteries. But hey, let’s not get facts in the way of pandering to Channel 7’s conservative audience with some climate change bashing.
And shame on Indonesia, a country where profit matters more than people. As if that makes it very different from, say, Australia.
Indoenesia supplies approx. 50% of the world’s nickel, a major contributor to the Indonesian economy. But the Sulawesi site is also one of the most dangerous and filthy industrial sites in a country where such issues barely register in the media. Pollutants are tipped into rivers, and workers die dreadfully in preventable accidents.
In late 2023, an explosion at a Chinese-run smelter killed 21 men and injured 38 others.
Last year, Jakarta-based Australian correspondent Amanda Hodge wrote ($): Inside Indonesia’s 21st-century version of England’s ‘dark satanic mills, “It’s the place EV buyers don’t see. An Indonesian fishing village transformed into an industrial epicentre designed to underpin the world’s electric vehicle sector.”
Tanya Plibersek is shocked!
Australian Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek broke a political rule that ministers go soft on allies’ domestic issues. She publicly admitted that the conditions in Indonesia’s nickel mines were “truly shocking” and claimed the government agreed better international standards were needed.
Australia’s mining industry has been brutally hurt by the Indonesian smelters’ disregard for costly cautions. Green Nickel plants that follow responsible environmental practices have shut and thousands have lost their jobs because Indonesian Dirty Nickel is much cheaper.
World prices surge and slump. They’re now around $16,000 a tonne; in March 2022 they hit more than $100,000.
Future made in Australia? China and Indonesia are listening, nickel and dime
The President reacts
The “kill the messenger” technique now wielded by Indonesian President Prabowo pre-dates Christianity. It deflects blame but also damages the accuser.
News of Roman general Lucullus’ advances so upset King Tigranes of Armenia that he had the messenger beheaded; that also cut off further information. So he lost the war due to a lack of intelligence. Much the same is happening in Washington right now, where the frank retain their heads, though not their careers.
It’s unlikely Prabowo is a classicist; he says he reads works like The Art of Propaganda that he and his colleagues “study”. George Orwell seems to be another favourite as Prabowo is pinching ideas from his imagined authoritarian world of Oceania; ironic because the English writer hated totalitarianism.
Yet to come is the Ministry of Truth, but in the meantime, Prabowo has bypassed the Parliament to give the police what one commentator is condensing as
sweeping powers to monitor foreigners, focusing on journalists and researchers through certificates, data collection, and vague prohibitions.
Local media workers are being seduced with 1,000 new homes on subsidised loans, a Prabowo idea to “support journalists in their work.” The Minister responsible reportedly said the scheme would not affect press freedom.
Following the Trump playbook
The bans are a logical extension of Prabowo’s paranoia and moves against democracy and accountability. He’s following Trump’s plans to defund public broadcasters and ban Associated Press from the White House media pool.
Commented ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, “By granting police the power to decide who can report and under what conditions, the Indonesian government is undermining media independence and silencing critical voices. This regulation opens the door for arbitrary denials, harassment, and even deportation of journalists,
creating an atmosphere of fear that weakens journalistic integrity.
The 80-page Police Regulation 3 of 2025 is already in place, meaning it applies to hacks and academic researchers legitimately in the country.
The alleged purpose of the Prabowo law is “to maintain public order and security, uphold the law, and provide protection and services to foreign nationals.” Few professionals in the news biz buy that reasoning.
“Foreign journalists” must now obtain clearance before reporting and letters of authorisation. Commented one media outlet: “The chilling effect will push reporters toward self-censorship, ultimately eroding investigative journalism and limiting scrutiny of political and human rights issues in Indonesia.
If such restrictions are normalized, local journalists could be next, accelerating the decline of media freedom in the country.
That’s happening already.
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Persecuting journalists
The Alliance of Independent Journalists reported 89 attacks in 2023. Most were against reporters investigating accountability and corruption.
This year, podcaster Francisca Rosana from Tempo, a weekly independent news magazine, got a parcel of a pig’s head and headless rats delivered to her office. Swine are considered unclean in Islam, and it’s been assumed the package was meant to intimidate and stop her critical reporting.
A spokesman for the President was more cynical than concerned – he suggested the journalist cook the head, only later claiming the incident had been reported to the police, the authority implementing the crackdown.
The regulation for monitoring foreigners leaves definitions up to the cops, such as in “certain (unspecified) locations”. “Administrative supervision” apparently means police certificates for journalists and researchers beyond visa requirements. Hotels and losmen (guest houses) must hand over foreigners’ personal data to the police, who’ll collect passport details and “other information”.
Legal Aid Foundation chair Muhammad Isnur reportedly responded, “This is clearly part of a spirit to close the door to information.
To close off the participation of international journalists in covering Indonesia. So this is truly a threat to democracy.
Reporters Without Borders‘ 2024 World Press Freedom Index ranks Indonesia at 111 out of 180 countries surveyed, dropping three places since 2023.
Anita Wahid, 47, an Indonesian PhD student at the Australian National University, has recorded 87 cases of violence against journalists in 2023; only 20 of the accused faced court.
Wahid is the daughter of the Republic’s fourth president, Abdurrahman ‘Gus Dur’ Wahid. Like her late dad, she’s an outspoken human rights activist, “Journalists who were targeted largely reported on issues of public accountability, corruption, social and criminal issues, and environmental issues. The attacks included verbal and physical threats (including torture, confinement and kidnappings), gender-based sexual harassment and assaults, terror and intimidation.”
Before the new rules, the US NGO Scholars at Risk had warned of working in the archipelago.
Orwell’s 1984 everyman hero, Winston Smith, would have no trouble recognising Big Brother in Indonesia 2025.
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Duncan Graham has a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He now lives in Indonesia.