October 23, 2025 | 10:20 am
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The convoy of excavators arrived uninvited at the Salam Epe and Nakias villages, Ngguti District, Merauke Regency, South Papua, at the end of August 2025. The heavy machinery had been moving eastward since the forest and land clearing began a year earlier in Wanam village, Ilwayab District. The project was part of a 139.85-kilometer road construction meant to support the Merauke food estate.
“It has now stopped at kilometer 54 because local residents blocked the project site,” said Simon Petrus Balagaize, Chairperson of the Marind-Anim Indigenous Community Forum, on Wednesday, October 15, 2025. “The villagers held a sasi (carved wood) installation ceremony and erected a wooden cross.”
The protest forced South Papua Governor Apolo Safanpo and Merauke Regent Yoseph Bladib Gebze to repeatedly fly on a military helicopter to Salam Epe and Nakias. On one occasion, September 8, they brought along Johanes Gluba Gebze, Merauke’s regent from 2001 to 2010, who now serves as a commissioner at Agro Industri Nasional (Agrinas).
The officials urged the residents to end their protest. But according to Simon, who accompanied the villagers alongside the Legal Aid Institute (LBH) of Merauke, the locals stood firm in rejecting the plan to build roads and rice fields that would consume their customary lands.
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