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We Need a Global Movement to Unrig the System Exploiting Indonesian Nickel Workers
Labor activist Raraa Rahmawati argues that the hazards in her country’s nickel industry are part of the broader problem of a global economy rigged to favor the wealthy
Dec 09, 2025
Electric vehicle sales are rising rapidly around the world. But few people who purchase these cars know anything about the workers who produce them.
Labor activist Raraa Rahmawati is trying to change that for one group of e-vehicle supply chain workers: the more than 230,000 Indonesians who toil in the nickel mining and processing industry. Recently, she reported on the reality of these workers’ lives at an international “People’s Summit” held parallel to the G20 leaders meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Indonesia boasts the world’s largest reserves of nickel, a key component of the lithium batteries that power electric vehicles. To capture more of the value of this essential mineral, the national government banned raw nickel exports in 2020. This has triggered a boom in domestic nickel processing.
Who’s benefiting most from this boom? The Chinese firm Tsingshan ranks as the top investor in Indonesia’s nickel processing operations. The company has contracts to supply carmakers around the world, including a $5 billion deal with Tesla.
“People who buy electric cars think they’re contributing to a ‘just transition’ away from fossil fuels,” she told the international crowd in Johannesburg. “But they should know this is really just another form of extractivism."
Tsingshan’s founder and chairman, Xiang Guangda, has accumulated a fortune worth an estimated $3.7 billion. Known as the “Nickel King,” the Chinese tycoon closely guards his privacy. But Bloomberg last year spilled one revealing tidbit: that Xiang had purchased a $62 million mansion for his daughter in Singapore.
The contrast between the living and working conditions for Xiang’s family and his employees could not be more extreme. Rahmawati works with an organization, Sembada Bersama, that is documenting the severe workplace hazards in this industry.
In a new report, Sembada Bersama reveals disturbing information about the Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park, a massive nickel mining and smelting complex in a former rainforest in the northern part of the Maluku Islands. Tsingshan owns the largest share of the project.
The most disturbing finding: an apparent pattern of “sudden deaths” among the plant’s workers, who are mostly 25 to 35 years old. Nearly every worker Sembada Bersama interviewed was aware of these tragic incidents. Rahmawati said that while lack of transparency and oversight make it impossible to prove, these deaths are likely the result of cardiac arrests related to grueling working conditions.
Smelter operators typically work two 12-hour shifts over two days, often having to rotate between day and night shifts, with a third day off. To document additional hazards, Sembada Bersama collaborated with workers to take meter readings inside the smelters. The data they collected reveal workplace heat temperatures of as high as 108.5°F, excessive levels of inhalable dust particles that can cause respiratory disease and cancer, and noise levels high enough to cause permanent hearing loss.
These occupational health risks come on top of the Indonesian nickel industry’s devastating environmental costs and high accident rates. Two years ago, an explosion at a Tsingshan plant left 21 workers dead.
Tsingshan recently signed an agreement with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization to improve ecological practices and industrial skills training at its Indonesia operations. This suggests the firm is feeling some pressure. But with few alternative job opportunities, local communities and workers remain vulnerable to the enormous power of Tsingshan and other nickel corporations.
The Sembada Bersama report ends with detailed recommendations for the Indonesian government and corporations. Rahmawati also argues that the hazards in her country’s nickel industry are part of the broader problem of a global economy rigged to favor the wealthy. International solidarity and cooperation, she feels, will be key to unrigging the system.
“People who buy electric cars think they’re contributing to a ‘just transition’ away from fossil fuels,” she told the international crowd in Johannesburg. “But they should know this is really just another form of extractivism. We need a cross-border movement. It’s time for us to be united.”
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Flooding Kills 1,000+ Across South Asia as Climate Crisis Fuels More Extreme Rain
“We need to confront climate change effectively,” Indonesia's president said.
Dec 01, 2025
More than 1,100 people across South Asia have died after torrential rains fueled by warming temperatures caused widespread flooding and landslides in recent days.
Following days of unprecedented cyclone conditions, people across Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand have been left with their homes destroyed and forced to flee for their lives. A separate cyclone in Sri Lanka has left hundreds more dead.
The worst devastation has been seen in Indonesia, where Cyclone Senyar has claimed over 500 lives as of Sunday. On the island of Sumatra, rescue teams have struggled to reach stranded people as roads have been blocked by mudslides and high floodwaters. Many areas are still reportedly unreachable.
As Reuters reported Monday, more than 28,000 homes have been damaged across the country and 1.4 million people affected, according to government figures. At least 464 were reported missing as of Sunday.
Other countries in the region were also battered. In Thailand, the death toll was reported at 176 as of Monday, and more than 3 million people are reported to be affected. The worst destruction has been in the southern city of Hat Yai, which on November 21 alone experienced 335mm of rain, its single largest recorded rainfall in over 300 years.
At least two more have been killed in Malaysia, where nearly 12,000 people still remain in evacuation centers.
Sri Lanka has witnessed similar devastation in recent days from another storm, Cyclone Ditwah, that formed around the same time as Senyar. Floods and mudslides have similarly killed at least 330 people, and destroyed around 20,000 homes, while leaving around a third of the country without electricity. More than 200 people are missing, and over 108,000 are in state-run shelters, officials say.
Work has begun in Indonesia to restore damaged roads, bridges, and telecommunication services. But after he visited survivors in Sumatra, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said that the work will extend beyond merely recovering from the storm.
“We need to confront climate change effectively,” Prabowo told reporters. “Local governments must take a significant role in safeguarding the environment and preparing for the extreme weather conditions that will arise from future climate change.”
Southeast Asia was top-of-mind for many attendees at last month's COP30 climate summit in Brazil. As Winston Chow, a professor of urban climate at Singapore Management University and part of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told the Straits Times, this is because the region "is highly vulnerable to climate change."
"As a whole, it faces multiple climate risks and hazards, such as rising temperatures, sea-level rise, increasing droughts and floods, and the intensification of extreme events like typhoons," he continued.
In recent years, the region has been hit by annual devastating heatwaves, resulting in record-shattering temperatures. In Myanmar, where temperatures exceeded 110°F last April, Radio Free Asia reported that 1,473 people died from extreme heat in just one month.
Floods have likewise grown more deadly in recent years. Just this month, floods killed dozens more people in Vietnam, and a pair of typhoons killed hundreds more in the Philippines and forced over a million people to evacuate their homes.
While it's difficult to determine the extent to which any one disaster was caused by climate change, in aggregate, they are growing more intense as the planet warms.
"As the world’s oceans and atmosphere warm at an accelerating rate due to the rise in greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, tropical cyclones are expected to become more intense," explained Steve Turton, an adjunct professor of environmental geography at CQUniversity Australia in The Conversation on Sunday. "This is because cyclones get their energy from warm oceans. The warmer the ocean, the more fuel for the storm."
According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, part of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, October 2025 was the third-warmest October on record globally and had above-average tropical cyclone activity.
"The warming atmosphere is supercharging the global water cycle, and peak rainfall rates are increasing," Turton said. "When more rain falls in a short time, flash flooding becomes more likely."
At COP30, protesters from across Southeast Asia assembled to demand action from global leaders. On November 10, shortly after her home in Manila was battered by a pair of typhoons, 25-year-old activist Ellenor Bartolome savaged corporations and world leaders who have continued to block global action to reduce fossil fuel usage.
“It gets worse every year, and for every disaster, it is utterly enraging that we are counting hundreds of bodies, hundreds of missing people... while the elite and the corporations are counting money from fossil fuels," she told attendees as they entered the conference.
Ultimately, many climate activists and scientists left the conference enraged yet again, as the final agreement stripped out all language related to fossil fuels.
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'Intolerable': Global Outrage as Israeli Forces Fire on UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon
"Attacking U.N. personnel and property is a major violation of International Humanitarian Law," said the foreign minister of Indonesia.
Oct 11, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Friday joined human rights organizations and the foreign ministers of major countries in condemning the Israeli military's targeting of U.N. peacekeeping forces stationed in Lebanon, where Israel has killed more than 2,000 people in bombings and ground attacks in recent weeks.
"This incident is intolerable and cannot be repeated," said Guterres after the U.N. Interim Peacekeeping Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)—an international body of more than 10,000 military and civilian personnel from dozens of countries—issued a statement accusing Israel of "deliberately" targeting the operation's positions. UNIFIL has been present in southern Lebanon since 1978.
On Thursday, UNIFIL said, "two peacekeepers were injured after an IDF Merkava tank fired its weapon toward an observation tower at UNIFIL's headquarters in Naqoura, directly hitting it and causing them to fall." The two injured soldiers were from Indonesia.
"Indonesia strongly condemns the attack," Retno Marsudi, the country's foreign affairs minister, said in response. "Attacking U.N. personnel and property is a major violation of International Humanitarian Law."
Global outrage soon followed, with the top diplomats of Spain, France, Italy, China, Turkey, and other nations issuing statements forcefully condemning the attack.
The United States, Israel's top ally and arms supplier, offered a more muted response, with the Biden White House saying it was "deeply concerned" by the attack while repeating Israel's claim that it is conducting "targeted operations" against Hezbollah, the Lebanese paramilitary group and political party.
Asked about the attack during a briefing on Thursday, Pentagon Press Secretary Patrick Ryder said he would "refer you to the IDF to talk about their operations in that regard."
Israel's attack on the peacekeeping force came after the IDF requested that UNIFIL relocate from the Israel-Lebanon border—a request that the U.N. mission denied.
"The peacekeepers are currently staying in their position, all of them," Jean-Pierre Lacroix, U.N. under-secretary-general for peace operations, told reporters last week. "The parties have an obligation to respect the safety of and security of peacekeepers, and I want to insist on that."
Israel has killed U.N. personnel in unprecedented numbers since late last year, mostly in the Gaza Strip. Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Friday demanded an urgent international probe of Israel's attack on peacekeepers in Lebanon, calling it an "apparent violation of the laws of war."
"With over 2,000 people killed and over a million people displaced in Lebanon since mid-September, it is crucial for UNIFIL to be allowed to fulfill its civilian protection and humanitarian functions," Lama Fakih, HRW's Middle East and North Africa director, said in a statement. "Attacks on UNIFIL not only impede the peacekeeping forces' work but also the ability of civilians in the south to access much-needed humanitarian aid."
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