Bambang Hero Saharjo. Photo credit: Nature.
Bambang Hero Saharjo has been serving as an expert witness in a series of lawsuits against Indonesian mining and agricultural corporations over their alleged damages to the environment. Recently, he acted as a state witness against the state-owned PT Timah tin mining company, testifying about the environmental damages caused by the company’s illegal tin mining practices. He is now facing a lawsuit arguing that his testimony “cast the local tin mining industry in a bad light” and that he is not fit to calculate the total environmental damages caused by the company.
Bambang Hero Saharjo is a professor at Bogor Agricultural University with expertise on fire forensics and their impact on the environment. He is also an environment advocate who has testified in more than 500 cases. He specializes in determining when and where fires start, how they behave and what kind of damage they do to the environment. In 2019, he received the John Maddox Prize for his scientific work in defense of the Indonesian people’s right to live in a safe and healthy environment.
The current lawsuit against Bambang is related to the biggest tin mining case ever in Indonesia. The tin mining company PT Timah is accused of laundering illegally mined tin from 2015 to 2022, causing immense environmental damage. According to numbers Bambang helped calculate, the illegal tin mining scheme has cost more than $16 billion in environmental damages and $1.6 billion in corruption to the Indonesian state.
After Bambang’s expert testimony, a lawyer claiming to represent “the wider community of Bangka-Belitung”, where the tin mining happened, sued him, claiming that he was in no position to assess environmental damage costs.
Bambang has faced similar lawsuits in the past. In 2018, the palm oil company JJP filed a $33.5 million lawsuit against Bambang after he played a role in the company being found guilty of negligence leading to forest fires. The lawsuit was eventually withdrawn by the company. Despite being targeted by multiple lawsuits, Bambang has stated in 2019 that he will “keep fighting for the people’s constitutional right to a healthy environment”.
Reportedly, Bambang also received death threats to himself and his family in the past due to his environmental advocacy with individuals showing up at his university to intimidate him. According to Henri Subagiyo, executive director of Indonesian Centre for Environmental Law, very few scientists accept becoming expert witnesses in such cases, out of fear for their safety. Even when they do accept, they have to face the pressure of being in the courtroom.
Companies often launch such lawsuits not with the aim of actually receiving money from the defendant but to intimidate and silence them. This practice is defined by critics as “strategic lawsuits against public participation” (SLAPP). In a recent report, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), defined SLAPPs as “lawsuits or threats of legal action which use abusive litigation tactics with the aim or effect of suppressing public participation and critical reporting on public interest matters”. The OHCHR report further stated that SLAPPs often target “activists, journalists, environmental campaigners, human rights defenders, academics, and non-governmental and media organizations”.
SLAPPs are now a global phenomenon. Recently in India, Bharat Biotech, the company that developed India’s local COVID-19 vaccine “Covaxin” in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICRM), sued scientists from Banaras Hindu University who published a study on the safety and efficacy of the Covaxin. After the company’s demand of $600,000 in damages and at the request of ICRM, the article was retracted by the academic journal that published it.
In the United States, Reinhold Martin, head of the Columbia University chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), stated recently that they were being targeted by SLAPPs over their antiwar statements and support for pro-Palestine student protests. A lawsuit filed in July 2024 argued that Columbia University AAUP Chapter’s statements in April 2024 contributed to Columbia University having to move classes online, restrict campus access and cancel the commencement. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also criticized the lawsuit as an example of a SLAPP aiming “to entangle people in expensive litigation, using the prospect of mounting legal fees and a potentially ruinous financial penalty to chill speech”.
Endangered Scholars Worldwide (ESW) condemns the usage of lawsuits as instruments for silencing academics. We call for lawsuits against Bambang Hero Saharjo and others like him engaging in scientific activity to push for social justice to be dropped immediately. Baseless lawsuits by corporations violate the academic freedom of professors because they burden them with expensive legal fees for engaging in scientific activity. We invite the global community dedicated to upholding human rights to join our call.
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