Indigenous rights advocates petition to overturn Indonesian conservation law

Indigenous rights advocates petition to overturn Indonesian conservation law

JAKARTA — For years, Mikael Ane, an Indigenous farmer from the island of Flores in eastern Indonesia, has faced prison not for harming the environment, but for trying to protect his ancestral land. In 2013, he was sentenced to 1.5 years in prison for cutting trees in his ancestral forest in Ruteng, which the government had designated a nature park, despite his family having lived there since 1932, before Indonesia became a nation. A decade later…