Trump's business partner in Indonesia exhumed graves in West Java to build resort
The Trump Organization’s foray into Indonesia was one of the last foreign deals Donald Trump signed before he was elected president in 2016. It was part of a lucrative and relatively low-risk foreign expansion — licensing his name to hotels and towers around the world — that he halted when he entered the White House. His company, now run by his two eldest sons, said it would not pursue new projects overseas, but would continue those already underway.
The ongoing struggle over land in the jungles of West Java shows that even as the global footprint of President Trump’s company has shrunk, he has continued to profit from deals with foreign developers, including some enmeshed in fraught local disputes.
MNC Land — the subsidiary building the project, including the Trump resorts — says some residents of Ciletuh Hilir had accepted the company’s proposal to relocate their relatives’ remains “to a new cemetery location that we provide, which is more appropriate.” The company also accused those who refused of exaggerating their concerns as a negotiating tactic to extract higher prices to sell their homes and unearth their ancestors. The village and its cemetery is located on land slated to become the resort’s theme park.
The Trump Organization did not respond to questions about whether it had been aware of the exhumations at the time or whether it had vetted MNC’s practices. A MNC official said that Trump’s company received regular updates. “They want to know what’s happening every month. They want to know the standards. They want to know who’s going to be the constructor, who’s going to be the banker, no different than a Hyatt or a Marriott,”
MNC had an “agreement stating that ‘if MNC at any time needs the land, then villagers must vacate the land without compensation from MNC,’ ” the company statement said.
full article at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/politics/trump-indonesia-resort-cemetery/?itid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_trumpindonesia-925am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans
= new reply since forum marked as read
