Indonesia’s armed forces chief yesterday dismissed a US federal court judge’s ruling that ExxonMobil must face a lawsuit over alleged killings and torture by troops in Aceh Province.
General Djoko Santoso said he was not even aware of the suit filed in the US by 11 villagers alleging atrocities took place in Aceh near the US oil giant’s Arun natural gas project in the early 2000s.
The suit accuses Exxon Mobil Corp and two of its US affiliates, Mobil Corp and ExxonMobil Oil Corp, and its Indonesian subsidiary, ExxonMobil Oil Indonesia (EMOI) of “killings and torture committed by military security forces protecting and paid for by EMOI,” a court document states.
US Judge Louis Oberdorfer ruled in Washington on Wednesday that the plaintiffs had provided “sufficient evidence, at this stage, for their allegations of serious abuse.”
Oberdorfer denied Exxon Mobil Corp’s and EMOI’s request to throw out the lawsuit, but he dismissed the suit for the group’s two US affiliates, Mobil Corp and ExxonMobil Oil Corp.
The lawsuit was filed in June 2001 by the 11 villagers, using pseudonyms.
Santoso, however, shrugged off the ruling.
“Until now I had no idea about that. If it’s true I’ve just learnt about it from you,” he told journalists.
He indicated that the matter did not concern the armed forces because they were not being sued.
“Just go ahead [and sue]. The one who will be sued is Exxon, right?” he said.
Aceh, which lies at the northern tip of Sumatra, saw nearly three decades of bloody conflict before the Indonesian government signed a peace pact with separatist rebels in August 2005.
ExxonMobil has argued that the lawsuit sets a dangerous precedent for US firms operating overseas and contravenes “well-established constitutional principle” that foreign affairs should not be handled by the courts. It says it does not condone human rights abuses.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema