Waka shorea Resort Hotels: Warning!!!

(Bali Barat National Park)

Waka Shorea: Warning: death threats!

After waka shorea wrongly sought to use our public travel forum to advertise their resort, we took the opportunity to investigate claims against them made by the local Balinese. When Waka Holdings (the parent company) learned of this, they threatened to sue us. When we said "Sue us!", we received this response from their management representative Mr. Bayu Wardoyo:- "BTW, the way I want to sue you is not by any law, but mine. I believe you have seen how Indonesian sue each other? They slash about 1cm below your neck..."

As of today's date (18th May, 2001), we have asked the British Embassy (we are a British organisation) in Jakarta to demand the Indonesian police press charges against Waka Holdings and arrest / prosecute Mr. Bayu Wardoyo for his death threats (there have been subsequent threats). Also, as of this time, we have e-mailed the general manager of this company seeking to allow them to mitigate their corporate liability, but have not had any response. We are therefore of the presumption these death threats were made with their knowledge and blessing.

The report we advised this company that we were about to publish, is as below. We would like to point out, that neither Waka Holdings nor WakeaShorea itself denied any of the specifics of our report / findings as they were allowed / able to. They simply stated their claim that they are an environmental hotel and employ local Balinese. These claims you will see we repudiate.

Many local (original / true Hindu Balinese) people are incensed at what they see as the theft and misuse of their heritage by Javanese businessmen and settlers with odious connections to the Soeherto family. By International agreement and by Indonesian law, no hotels are meant to be built / operated on National Park land. Proof of this is the Park's own homestay (small hotel) which they shut down voluntarily after they concluded it's mere presence was illegal. Why then was Waka Holdings allowed to build their hotel on National Park land?

The most likely answer is that a large percentage of the money paid by Waka Holdings went to Soeherto and his family (he was still in power when the permit was issued). What makes this even more of a disgrace, is that the Park Department's own (now closed) hotel was on much less sensitive land. You see, Wakashorea is actually built on a peninsula where previously Park officials had banned any human (trekking etc.) presence due to it being the last remaining habitat of the near extinct Bali Starling and Mouse Deer. The hotel's presence is therefore an abhorrent extra liability for the continued existence of these species. We do not consider that to be environmental in the slightest.

Waka Holdings claimed that they are a Balinese company employing Balinese people, and that Mr Bayu Wardoyo is himself Balinese. However, when we raised the point that Bayu Wardoyo has a Javanese name, and the village they said they employed hotel staff from is actually a Javanese Muslim settlement, they were not able to deny this. If you travel around the North Western area of Bali, you will find many Javanese (and also now, Timorese) settlements. The indigenous Hindu Balinese quite rightly resent this due to how their island was settled in the first place. Javanese simply turned up in large numbers, cut down trees to build homes and claim the land as their own.

Even to this day, Javanese migrants try to continue this practice. However, now, Balinese locals form lynch mobs to evict them. This is why you often find very large combined police and army road checks in these areas. They step in not only to protect the Javanese, but also now to evict / send them back to Java.

Part of the reason that Javanese settlers used to get away with such actions was due to a policy of tolerance by Soeherto. This was primarily due to the fact he compulsory purchased much Balinese land from the Balinese owners (whose families often owned that land for centuries and had temples there which were subsequently desecrated) to sell to developers at huge profits (often on the pretence that the hotels that were built on this land would employ local Balinese - instead, they largely were run and staffed by Javanese). Now many of the original Balinese land owners are claiming their land was stolen from them and are asserting their claims to it. The commencement of this, which basically stopped Soeherto from further profiteering by these methods, coincides with when the permit for WakaShorea was issued. In other words and in all likelyhood, unable to steal land from his citizens individually, Soeherto stole land from the people as a whole! And this being the case, Waka Holdings would have known this and been a partner in that theft.

We actually visited the hotel and confirmed many things by talking to their staff. Included in this was a confirmation that WakaShorea uses chemicals at its hotel. We do not call that being environmental either. Especially given its location in such a sensitive area.

Therefore, if anyone is considering staying at any of this company's hotels, or using any of it's tour / dive facilities, we would ask you not to. Not least as a reaction to the death threats they made alone. After all, would you want to pay good money, have a problem and make a complaint to these people?! This company's other operations are listed below. Of course, we are still prepared to remove this warning. But ONLY if first this company makes amends for and retracts its death threats (this will require them to press police charges against each management member who played a part in these threats, plus reasonable compensation to the family of the person within our organisation they threatened and distressed so). Secondly, and only after the first part, if they can provide substantive evidence that any of the above is not correct, we will amend it as appropriate (due to the circumstances, we will now require this evidence to be verified by an independent body such as the WWF). Therefore, if you still can find this warning, they have not so responded.

We would be grateful if any reader would advise us of any travel agent offering reservations at this hotel, as we would like to contact them and ask them to stop. We will maintain a Travel Agent List of all such travel agents that we have so contacted. Together with an indication of their response (so as to identify solely for profit agents that may best be avoided completely.

Mark Austin
Travelforum.Org
(mark@travelforum.org)