Hello! dear visitors and welcome aboard our new ship travelling around IOC members histories.
We'll start with Indonesian Mr. Mohamad Bob Hasan (69), member since 1994, former dictator Suharto's minister.

In September 2000 Samaranch wanted Hasan free, to let him participate at the Sydney olympics...but Bobby, IOC member, was detained waiting for his historical trial about allegedly embezzling $US 75.5 million ($130 million) in state losses and $US 168 million in losses to the Indonesian Forest Concessionaires Association. 

And Samaranch asked the Indonesian gov. to free him for the olympics...
(News about Hasan's arrest and Samaranch pressures from Sydney Morning Herald Web, Sept. 12 2000).

Now, please go to the red-coloured text, read it. Then think if you still can believe in what IOC says and writes about environmental and human rights respect.(we do not, since  many years...).
 

March, 2001: Hasan definitevely sentenced 6 years in prison!

"Mohamad "Bob" Hasan, a member of the International Olympic Committee from Indonesia, now faces six years in prison in connection with a multimillion-dollar scam involving a state forest project...Hasan became one of Indonesia's richest tycoons during the Suharto era and was regarded as a close adviser to the authoritarian leader. He was convicted last month by the Central Jakarta District Court of stealing $243 million...IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch was criticized when he wrote a letter to Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid suggesting that Hasan be allowed to leave the country to attend the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia".

From "Deseret News", March 15th 2001.
 
 
 
 
 

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A Timber Tycoon's Trophies

Why is one of Asia's most unscrupulous foresters winning environmental awards?

by Leslie Weiss
November 18, 1997

 
If you didn't know any better, you'd think Indonesian timber tycoon Mohamad "Bob" Hasan was a champion of the environment. He's received at least three awards from U.S. groups for his contributions to the environment in the past year alone.

In April, Hasan's timber conglomerate, the Kalimanis Group, was recognized by Clinton administration officials for efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Then the dean of North Carolina State University's College of Forest Resources named Hasan an honorary professor at the August ribbon-cutting of his new pulp and paper mill in East Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo. "It is rare that a person emerges to have the potential of teaching the entire world," Dean Larry Tombaugh said.

 

Hasan also won the "Harry A. Merlo Award" for environmental achievements from the Oregon-based World Forestry Center. "In Indonesia, you are not allowed to own the forest -- the forest is owned by the government and its people," Hasan modestly notes in a WFC video tribute to himself. "We are only given time to manage it... If we manage it on a sustainable basis, we can continue."

Bob the Pyromaniac

What is sustainable to Hasan, apparently, is anything but sustainable to forests. Hasan, who heads Indonesia's forest industries, is the man behind the nation's destructive slash-and-burn forestry.

The Far Eastern Economic Review says that Hasan "has been unquestionably the strongest player in setting Indonesia's forest policies." These policies, says Stephanie Fried, a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, "have led to the liquidation of Indonesia's forest resource base, sparked major conflicts with indigenous peoples and other forest dwellers, and, in the final analysis, set the stage for the current fires."

In 1993, one of Hasan's companies, PT Kalhold Utama, bulldozed and burned hundreds of acres of forested land used by a community of indigenous Dayak people for rattan and fruit production. The company -- in a move documented by the World Bank -- also bulldozed graves of the community's dead.

According to Christopher Hatch of the Rainforest Action Network, Hasan's Kalimanis Group, with timber holdings spanning 7,700 square miles in Kalimatan, is "one of the most voracious, barbaric conglomerates in the world."

Even the Indonesian government -- a corrupt operation that normally scratches Hasan's back -- has begun to criticize his companies' practices. In September the Environmental Minister pegged three of Hasan's companies as being among those that deliberately set the forest fires that are still raging in Indonesia.

Hasan's responsibility, though, extends far beyond his own companies' practices. As chairman of Apkindo, a government-sanctioned cartel that regulates $3.7 billion in annual plywood exports, he plays a major role in establishing industrywide forestry practices. On behalf of the industry, he has denied any blame for the tragic fires, and instead blames peasant farmers.

Gurmit Singh, head of the Center for Environment, Technology and Development, a Malaysian environmental organization, says farmers clearing plots with fire are responsible for 10 to 20 percent of the damage at the most.

How Does Bob Get Away With It?

Worth an estimated $1 billion, Hasan is one of Indonesia's major industrial players. He owns interests in media, banking, and insurance corporations, and is chairman of Astra, one of the nation's largest auto manufacturers. He is also a confidante and golfing buddy of President Suharto (Hasan also putted around at last year's Bob Hope Classic) -- a profitable relationship in a country where the president's family and friends hold much of the wealth.

"Given the immense amount of profit accruing to companies involved in the forestry and plantation sector, there has been a lack of political will to enforce the most basic forestry regulations," Fried says.

One environmental worker in Indonesia, fearing bodily harm, would speak about Hasan only under the condition of anonymity: "He is very powerful. He is very close to the president. He is beyond the law."

Hasan's Gifts

Two of Hasan's timber operations are enjoying favorable treatment by the U.S. government. Last April, the United States Initiative on Joint Implementation (USIJI), a Clinton administration project, announced a new partnership with the two logging concessions and honored Hasan's Kalimanis Group conglomerate at a White House ceremony. The partnership was one of 10 new projects announced by USIJI, which facilitates investment by U.S. companies into foreign-based industries working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Indonesia project, USIJI officials say, will implement "reduced impact logging" on 1,480 acres of Hasan's timber concessions to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Over the next 40 years, 56,400 tons of carbon will be "saved" as a result. So far, though, nothing's been saved -- a U.S. investor for the project has yet to be found. (Fifty-six thousand tons of carbon is a "miniscule amount," notes scientist Darren Goetze of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Each year, he says, the U.S. alone emits close to 5.5 billion tons of carbon.)

Asked about the environmentally unsound practices of Hasan's companies, USIJI Deputy Director Paul Schwengels says the USIJI isn't supposed to look at a company's track record -- it just evaluates the proposed project for its future environmental benefits.

"We've heard anecdotal stories about Bob Hasan. We know what goes on in Indonesia," says the USIJI's Kurt Zwally. Adds Schwengels: "We don't necessarily say that this company -- everything it does -- benefits the environment.... We are asking companies to do something that benefits the environment that they wouldn't otherwise do."

That's pretty much Dean Tombaugh's explanation for bestowing an honorary professorship on Hasan at the opening of the Kiani Kertas pulp mill -- the largest in Southeast Asia. "I would be the last to proclaim to be an expert about Indonesia, but it has appeared to me... the environmental future of that country is in the hands of a few major industrialists. And Mr. Hasan is one of them," Tombaugh says.

He adds that Hasan, who made a "small gift" to North Carolina State University -- somewhere in the range of $100,000 to $150,000 -- is going to practice forestry no matter what, so he figured that a little award might open a dialog between the timber baron and the academic community in the West. Such a relationship might provide Hasan with an incentive to practice sustainable forestry, Tombaugh says.

In Oregon, meanwhile, Hasan's award for his extraordinary achievements in forest stewardship from the World Forestry Center can be explained in one sentence: He sits on the board of this timber industry front group.

Leslie Weiss is a freelance writer based in California.
Many, many thanks to you, Leslie !!

 
On January 9, 2003, we received an email from Mr. Kurt Zwally, cited above: he requested "that the quote attributed to me be deleted.  The web site is http://nolimpiadi.8m.com/hasaneng.html.  I do not recall making this statement".
Since we were just re-publishers, and it was 5 years after the article was first published and 2 after we had done so, we told him to deal with Mrs. Weiss if he really wanted to, and then, maybe, with us.
 
 
 

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From a mailing list retrieved on Finnish Forest Research Institute (Unioninkatu 40 A, FIN-00170 HELSINKI, Finland) web site.

"BOB HASAN GETS ENVIRONMENT PRIZE

President Suharto's right hand man, Bob Hasan, was awarded the prestigious
Indonesian environment prize - the Kalpataru - by Environment Minister
Sarwono on World Environment Day (June 5th). The Kalpataru awards were
created by the then Environment Minister, Emil Salim, over fifteen years ago
to acknowledge the achievements of ordinary people and public figures who
had protected the environment. Past winners include the radical journalist,
environmentalist and academic George Aditjondro, now in exile in Australia.

It is hard to imagine a less appropriate recipient of this prize than
Mohammad 'Bob' Hasan. Best known as Indonesia's top timber tycoon, who
controls numerous trade and producer associations in the forestry industry,
Bob Hasan has recently been playing an increasingly prominent role in the
country's strategic business affairs. Under his reign, Indonesia's forests
have been mercilessly plundered by a handful of well-connected businessmen
with total disregard for the environment and the rights of indigenous
forest-dwelling communities. Indonesians joke that he - not Djamaludin - is
the Minister of Forestry.

At least one Indonesian NGO is convinced that Hasan was awarded the
Kalpataru to counter publicity generated by the recent award of the
'environmental Nobel'  - the US Goldman prize - to the Bentian Dayak people
of East Kalimantan. There has been a long-running dispute between the
Bentian and Bob Hasan's logging company PT Kalhold Utama. The Bentian are
skilled agro-foresters who have been managing their traditional lands
sustainably for generations. Their rattan gardens, fruit trees and other
forest resources plus ancestral graves have been destroyed by the company in
order to establish a timber plantation and transmigration site. Indigenous
landowners have been intimidated by the authorities and some have been
forced to hand over their land. Others continue to protest. The villagers of
Jelmu Sibak in Kutai district have appealed to the Indonesian National Human
Rights Commission to protect their lands".
 
 
 
 

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THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS TAKEN FROM 'BOB HASAN CENTRE-STAGE' IN ISSUE No 33 OF DOWN TO EARTH'S NEWSLETTER. MANY MANY THANKS TO YOU!
 

"Bob Hasan began his assault on the forests in 1972 when, on the
recommendation of friends in the military, he was given a 10% stake in the
local subsidiary of US-based loggers Georgia Pacific. he soon acquired the
remaining 90% of the company and went on to build his Kalimanis timber
empire. In the 1980s he founded APKINDO, the state-sanctioned cartel that
controls Indonesia's plywood exports.

On several occasions Hasan has attempted to counter critics at home and
abroad by launching aggressive campaigns to convince the world that
Indonesian forests are being well-managed under in the timber industry's
capable hands. Such campaigns have included organising 'seminars' in
consumer countries, advertising in newspapers and TV channels in Europe and
the US. The UK television advertisement was withdrawn after complaints from
environmental organisations, including DtE, that it was highly misleading.
'Uncle Bob' has also accused NGOs campaigning against destructive logging
and violation of indigenous rights of being stooges of timber producers in
their own countries who want to gain a larger share of world markets.

The Indonesian Environment Forum WALHI is currently taking the Indonesian
President  to court for approving a loan of Rp250 billion (over US$100
million) from state reforestation funds to help build Bob Hasan's PT Kiani
Kertas paper and pulp plant in East Kalimantan. The funds were transferred
in December by Presidential Decree. This is almost half the government's
total revenue of reforestation funds for last year.

Hasan's influence is extending to other strategic areas of the Indonesian
economy. In February he took over as chairman of car-maker conglomerate
Astra International. He also brokered the deal to settle the interminable
squabble over the Busang gold mine, securing a free 30% stake before the
hoax over the samples was exposed. Bob Hasan, who is 66, has been a friend
of the President for more than 40 years and his role as Suharto's closest
confident has increased since the death of the  leader's wife, Tien,  last
April.

Hasan's prominent role means that his word carries more weight even than
ministers in the Indonesian government. In forestry, and now in other areas,
his and the first family's business interests are paramount. Hasan is well
and truly centre-stage and, as long as he stays there, this can only mean
bad news for forests, forest-dwellers and many others whose interests
conflict with his own.

Thanks to: DtE June 97 Down to Earth is the Campaign for Ecological Justice in Indonesia