Indonesian soldiers have disrupted more than 20 screenings of Babi Pesta (“Pig Feast”), a documentary exposing state-backed deforestation and Indigenous land seizures in Papua, since the film’s release in early 2026. The crackdown coincides with satellite data confirming that at least 1,727 hectares of primary forest — including peat swamp — were cleared inside the Merauke food estate perimeter between January 2020 and December 2023, according to a March 2024 Greenpeace Indonesia and TheTreeMap analysis. Jakarta’s food estate program targets up to 2 million hectares nationally under Presidential Regulation No. 108/2020, with between 150,000 and 200,000 hectares proposed specifically in Papua and West Papua.
The real story is not the film itself but what it is exposing: legally contested forest clearance on Indigenous land accelerating behind tightening information controls. Papua remains one of the world’s most restricted regions for international journalists and human rights monitors.
At a university in North Maluku, soldiers walked into a screening of Babi Pesta and shut it down, citing “sensitive content.” At a separate event in Bogor, West Java, troops forced the audience to disperse mid-screening. The filmmakers behind the documentary — which chronicles deforestation, Indigenous displacement, and alleged human rights abuses in Papua — say they have faced more than 20 acts of intimidation since release, ranging from intelligence surveillance to forced dispersal. The Indonesian military has denied issuing direct instructions, attributing the disruptions to regional officials’ assessments of unrest risk.
The censorship campaign has backfired in the way censorship usually does: screenings are selling out across Indonesia, and the documentary is drawing international attention to a story Jakarta has worked hard to keep local. But the controversy over the film is a secondary concern. The primary one is what the film documents — a state-backed land clearance program in Papua that is legally contested, ecologically destructive, and now deliberately shielded from public scrutiny.
Indonesia began clearing forests and wetlands in Papua for food estate projects in 2024, targeting rice and sugarcane cultivation. Global Forest Watch data show Papua’s primary forest loss in 2023 alone released an estimated 14 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent, based on carbon-density analysis by the Woods Hole Research Center. That number sits awkwardly beside Jakarta’s pledge under its FOLU Net Sink 2030 plan to achieve a net carbon sink of 140 million tonnes CO₂-equivalent from forestry and land use by the end of the decade.
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The deforestation data behind the documentary
The Merauke food estate in South Papua is the program’s most advanced front. High-resolution satellite analysis by TheTreeMap for Greenpeace Indonesia identified 1,727 hectares of cleared forest in the Tanah Miring and Kurik districts between January 2020 and December 2023 — inside the food estate perimeter. The cleared land includes primary peat swamp forest, which stores disproportionately high carbon per hectare and, once drained, becomes a persistent emissions source regardless of what is planted on top.
Yolanda Rani, forest campaigner at Greenpeace Indonesia, argues the Merauke scheme risks repeating the ecological catastrophe of Indonesia’s 1990s Mega Rice Project in Central Kalimantan — a peatland drainage programme that triggered massive fires, released enormous volumes of stored carbon, and was ultimately abandoned after destroying more than 1 million hectares of peat swamp. The parallel is not rhetorical: both projects involve draining peat-rich lowlands for monoculture agriculture under government food security mandates.
Papua’s Indigenous land rights are formally recognised under Indonesia’s Constitutional Court Decision No. 35/PUU-X/2012 — which reclassified customary forests as non-state forests — and under Law No. 21/2001 on Special Autonomy for Papua. Both require implementing regional regulations to become enforceable, and those regulations remain patchy. Meanwhile, the Omnibus Job Creation Law (Law No. 6/2023) streamlines environmental approvals for “national strategic projects” including food estates, which critics at WALHI (Indonesia’s largest environmental federation) and the advocacy group Pusaka say has weakened the safeguards that existed on paper. Cases in South Papua where clearing began before robust Environmental Impact Assessments (AMDAL) were completed are documented in both organisations’ field reports.
Greenpeace Indonesia’s full analysis of the Merauke food estate expansion sets out the satellite evidence and legal critique in detail.
| Metric | Figure | Source | Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forest cleared inside Merauke food estate perimeter | 1,727 hectares | Greenpeace Indonesia / TheTreeMap | Jan 2020–Dec 2023 |
| Total licensed or prepared food estate blocks, South Papua and Merauke | 40,000–50,000 hectares | University of Papua / WRI Indonesia | 2020–2024 |
| Food estate land proposed in Papua and West Papua | 150,000–200,000 hectares | WALHI / Pusaka | Under Reg. No. 108/2020 |
| Primary forest loss, Papua provinces | ~20,000 hectares | Global Forest Watch | 2023 |
| Estimated CO₂-eq released by Papua primary forest loss | 14 million tonnes | GFW / Woods Hole Research Center | 2023 |
| Total tree cover loss, Papua region (all six provinces) | 1.37 million hectares | World Resources Institute | 2001–2022 |
How Jakarta’s food security mandate is overriding forest law
Indonesia’s food estate programme is anchored in Presidential Regulation No. 108/2020 on National Strategic Programs, supported by Ministry of Agriculture Regulation No. 14/2020, which designates food estates as priority projects eligible for accelerated permitting and direct state budget support. In theory, a 2022 circular from the Environment and Forestry Ministry required that food estates in forested areas complete full AMDAL assessments. In practice, WALHI and Pusaka have documented cases in South Papua where physical clearing preceded the completion of those assessments.
The tension runs all the way to Indonesia’s international climate commitments. Jakarta’s FOLU Net Sink 2030 plan permits some plantation expansion in “production” forests in Papua — a carve-out that allows the forestry ministry to count new plantations as part of its climate accounting even as primary forest is cleared to make way for them. This is the mechanism that makes Papua’s deforestation compatible, on paper, with Indonesia’s Paris Agreement obligations. Whether international partners accept that accounting is a live question.
From 2001 to 2022, the Papua region — spanning all six provinces including South Papua, Central Papua, and Highlands Papua — lost approximately 1.37 million hectares of tree cover, of which 471,000 hectares were primary forest, according to World Resources Institute satellite analysis. The food estate programme represents a new, state-sanctioned acceleration of that trend, with legal architecture designed to pre-empt the objections that slowed earlier projects. That is the pattern Yolanda Rani at Greenpeace Indonesia is pointing to when she invokes the Mega Rice Project: not the scale, but the institutional confidence that this time, the permits will hold.
Beyond the headline
The bigger picture
The clash over Babi Pesta is less about one documentary and more about who gets to narrate the future of one of the world’s last great rainforest frontiers. Jakarta’s drive to turn Papua into a breadbasket reflects a broader global pattern: central governments invoking food and energy security to override Indigenous claims and environmental limits on resource frontiers. The censorship of the film is not incidental to the land clearance — it is part of the same logic.
The reach
Papua’s forests are part of the same carbon accounting that underpins EU Deforestation Regulation compliance, US–Indonesia climate finance agreements, and Australian climate targets. If food estates normalise high-emissions land clearing in Papua behind a wall of restricted access, European importers, US investors, and Australian policymakers risk quietly underwriting a new deforestation hotspot while believing Indonesia is on a Paris-aligned trajectory. The special permit requirements and Level 4 travel advisories that already apply to Papua for Western journalists and researchers make independent verification of conditions on the ground structurally difficult.
Our take
Indonesia’s food estate experiment in Papua looks less like considered food security planning and more like a politically driven land rush insulated from scrutiny by design. The decision to send soldiers to university screening rooms rather than transparently defend the projects’ environmental assessments suggests authorities understand the public case is weak. Unless international partners — the European Union, the United States, and Australia chief among them — tie climate finance and investment frameworks explicitly to Papuan land rights and forest protection benchmarks, the combination of strategic branding and information control will keep erasing communities on the ground while preserving Jakarta’s green image in international negotiations.
What this means for investors, importers, and policymakers watching Indonesia
With Indonesia’s food estate expansion in Papua accelerating under legal frameworks designed to limit challenge, and with independent access to the region restricted for journalists and monitors, Western actors with exposure to Indonesian supply chains, climate finance, or bilateral partnerships face concrete decisions now — not at the end of the decade.
- EU importers and compliance teams: The EU Deforestation Regulation requires due diligence on forest-risk commodities including rice, sugarcane derivatives, and palm oil. Supply chains touching Merauke and South Papua concessions should be mapped against food estate polygon data available through Global Forest Watch’s Indonesia Papua dashboard — the most accessible public tool for tracking primary forest loss in real time.
- Asset managers and institutional investors: Review exposure to Indonesian conglomerates — including Rajawali Group and Sinar Mas — identified in the 2023 Profundo report as holding or seeking concessions in Papua food estate zones. Debt and equity instruments in parent companies create indirect deforestation and Indigenous land rights liability under emerging ESG disclosure frameworks.
- US and Australian government agencies: Both countries have active climate finance and green economy partnership discussions with Jakarta. The UN Human Rights Council’s next Universal Periodic Review of Indonesia is scheduled for 2027 — formal state submissions raising Papua land rights before that review window will signal whether multilateral pressure is building or dissipating.
- Journalists and researchers: Access to Papua requires a Surat Jalan (special travel permit) for journalists and researchers — a requirement that has no equivalent elsewhere in Indonesia. Western governments including the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia maintain Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisories for highland Papua due to ongoing conflict between the military and pro-independence groups. Standard tourist access to coastal areas such as Raja Ampat remains possible but should be planned with current advisory status confirmed through official government travel portals.
- Watch signal — Q1–Q2 2027: Indonesia’s Environment and Forestry Ministry typically publishes its national forest and land-cover map in the first half of the following year. If large new “non-forest” blocks appear in South Papua and Merauke aligned with food estate polygons in the 2025 map release, it will confirm that Jakarta is formally locking in conversion. If those blocks do not appear, expect internal project delays and possible financing gaps for the programme.
