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Indonesia Sanctions Companies and Intensifies Firefighting as Haze Spreads Regionally

morning · · thread: Indonesia Deploys Additional Troops and Helicopters to Combat Borneo Wildfires

7 sources across 6 countries · 1 of them is linked to a state

Who reported this

  • Tempo English Indonesia · Centre-left · PT Tempo Inti Media
  • The Jakarta Post Indonesia · Centre-left · PT Bina Media Tenggara
  • South China Morning Post Hong Kong · Centre-right · Alibaba Group
  • The Japan Times Japan · Centre · News2u Holdings
  • Al Jazeera Qatar · Centre-left · State-affiliated · Qatari government funded
  • The Guardian United Kingdom · Centre-left · Scott Trust Limited
  • Associated Press United States · Centre · Non-profit news cooperative

What the colours mean

  • Left
  • Centre-left
  • Centre
  • Centre-right
  • Right
  • A hatched block means the outlet is affiliated with, or controlled by, a state.

Political lean describes where an outlet sits within the politics of its own country. It is never a position on a single global scale.

Political lean is comparable inside one country and not across them, which is why the bar groups by country first. Publicly funded broadcasters are not marked as state-linked.

The owner of each outlet is listed as a matter of record, not as a judgement about the outlet.

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has ordered the revocation of business permits for corporations found responsible for forest fires as toxic haze spreads across Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. The Ministry of Forestry has already imposed administrative sanctions on six companies in Kalimantan after monitoring revealed that 1,511.55 hectares burned within their managed areas. These companies include PT WEL, which saw the largest burned area at approximately 760.51 hectares, as well as PT MPK, PT WSP, PT FI, PT PSR, and PT NES. For PT MPK, the government suspended its business license due to the recurring nature of the fires.

The environmental crisis is being intensified by a prolonged dry season and a super El Niño pattern. In South Sumatra, where the highest number of hotspots have been detected, residents have turned to special Islamic prayers for rain to combat the hazardous smoke. In Riau, the city of Pekanbaru reported hazardous air quality with visibility dropping to 2 kilometers. Health data from West Kalimantan indicates a spike in respiratory symptoms, with approximately 5,000 people visiting emergency rooms weekly since July.

International tensions have risen as smoke drifts across borders. Kuala Lumpur was recently ranked as the most polluted city on earth by IQAir, and hundreds of schools in Sarawak, Malaysia, have closed. In response, Indonesia has granted Malaysia permission to enter its airspace to conduct cloud seeding operations. Indonesian authorities have also arrested 72 people suspected of using fire to clear land for plantations.

Outlets with a center-left lean emphasize the human health toll and the specific corporate sanctions imposed. Center-right framing focuses on the difficulty of enforcing fines and the historical failure to make land burners pay. Center-leaning reports highlight the regional diplomatic coordination and the president's public vows to hold corporations accountable.

How each side framed it

Centre-left
These outlets focused on the specific administrative sanctions against companies and the severe health impacts on local populations.
Centre
These reports emphasized the president's promises of permit revocation and the regional air quality crisis.
Centre-right
This framing questioned the effectiveness of government enforcement and the ability to actually penalize corporate land burners.

Sources

93% of the statements in this article were traced back to the source articles listed above.