PONTIANAK, Oct 7 — Indonesia’s government was accused of “gross negligence” in a court case that opened today against the president and other officials over a toxic haze emitted by wildfires that blanketed parts of Borneo island.
Four plaintiffs, including a local chapter of Indigenous NGO AMAN, filed the class action lawsuit last month at a court in Pontianak in West Kalimantan province.
The region has been hit hard by fires and smoke that have shuttered schools and forced hundreds to seek medical help for respiratory ailments.
President Prabowo Subianto and the governor of West Kalimantan are among 10 defendants.
The plaintiffs’ lawyer Glorio Sanen said after the first hearing that the case was “a step to address the problem” of annual wildfires blamed largely on forest destruction and fuelled this year by an exceptionally intense episode of the drought-causing El Nino weather phenomenon.
