Indonesia's Palm Oil Industry Rife With Human-Rights Abuses

Photograph by Kumal Jufri

By E. Benjamin Skinner
“What kind of oil should we buy?” Luo Xiaohua shouts to her cousin from the cooking oil aisle in Yonghui Supermarket in the heart of Chongqing, a rising Chinese megacity. Luo, 50, is the quintessential Chinese shopper. She earns $3,250 a year and has an elementary education. She’s fiercely opinionated about her purchases.

Luo stands before amber-hued bottles loaded with a commodity that fuels China’s and India’s growing consumer classes. “From what I understand, all of these brands contain palm oil,” she says. “But they just don’t say it on the label.” She says she’d prefer to use olive oil but can’t afford it. “Corporations have the power in this country, and consumers have to make decisions based on limited options.”

Palm oil and its derivatives are found in thousands of products worldwide, from doughnuts to soap, lipstick to biodiesel. Globally, palm oil consumption has quintupled since 1990. Demand in Asia, where palm oil is widely used in cooking oil and noodles, has driven the growth of a $44 billion industry. In February, exports from Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of palm oil, hit a five-year high.

Shoppers such as Luo are at the heart of that boom. China is the world’s largest consumer of vegetable oil, of which palm oil is the world’s most-produced variety. Since the late 1970s, as the Chinese shifted away from traditional staples such as rice and grains and toward a higher-fat diet, palm oil imports have grown 150-fold.

Killers' life terms 'breach their human rights

The appeal was brought by three killers - Jeremy Bamber, Douglas Vinter and Peter Moore

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled the whole-life tariffs given to murderer Jeremy Bamber and two other killers breached their human rights.

The judges ruled by 16 to 1 that there had to be a possibility of release and review of the sentence.

But they said this did not mean there was "any prospect of imminent release".

Prime Minister David Cameron said he "profoundly disagrees with the court's ruling", adding he is a "strong supporter of whole-life tariffs".

On a website, Bamber, who murdered five members of his family, said the verdict was "hollow" as he was still serving a sentence for a crime he did not commit.

Bamber brought the case to the court's upper chamber, along with serial killer Peter Moore and double murderer Douglas Vinter, after losing a previous appeal.

BBC legal affairs correspondent Clive Coleman said the ruling, which applies in England and Wales, was significant both legally and politically, and it would now have to be considered by the UK government.

This judgement is very important legally - and politically. Legally, the court ruled years ago that states can lock up dangerous killers forever.

The government cannot appeal against this ruling but now has six months to consider its response.

Human rights foes cheered by Edward Snowden fiasco

By: Trudy Rubin
The global hunt for Edward Snowden is damaging U.S. interests in ways that go far beyond the intelligence data he leaked.

The wild flight of the fugitive leaker — from Hong Kong to the transit area of Moscow’s Sherymetyvo Airport, and perhaps on to Ecuador — has turned into a public humiliation for the White House. U.S. officials publicly threatened “consequences” if Snowden wasn’t returned, only to be openly rebuffed by Chinese officials and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. This made embarrassingly clear how little leverage President Obama has in Moscow or Beijing (and how much wiser it would have been to request Snowden’s return in private).

Most disturbing, the Snowden affair has enabled some of the world’s worst human rights offenders to portray themselves as champions of freedom by defending Snowden while denouncing America as a massive violator of rights.

China’s Xinhua news agency branded the United States as “the biggest (cyber) villain in our age.” Russian parliamentarians did likewise. You might think that such self-righteous claims would be dismissed as political posturing. Yet in today’s world, with America’s image sullied by Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and by our paralyzed politics, these charges can find a receptive audience, not only abroad but at home.

So let’s look at the records of the countries that are offering Snowden the greatest support.

For starters, there is something bizarre about the list. While Snowden claims to be defending personal freedoms, he has sought shelter from egregious violators of human rights, including China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador. Whatever his motives, this lends an air of hypocrisy to his claims.

He took refuge in Hong Kong, which is part of China, whose leaders control the country’s Internet portals, block content and monitor individual access. The Chinese censor print and electronic media and have “the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world,” according to Amnesty International. Chinese government hackers have conducted massive commercial and military espionage in the United States (and presumably elsewhere) and even breached Google’s computers.

Beijing is obviously delighted that it can fend off U.S. complaints by claiming America does likewise. Such charges are bogus — and they know it. Whatever your opinion about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, the fact is that Congress OK’d them and set up special courts to monitor them. The U.S. public can debate whether the controls should be tightened, and demand change.