TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Directorate General of Law Enforcement at the Ministry of Environment and Forestry continues to address the rampant cases of land fires in the country.

Rasio Ridho Sani, the director general, said that one of the actions taken by the ministry is the sealing off of burned land.

Rasio said the objective of sealing off the locations is to allow investigators and forest police to collect enough evidence for the court.

"In addition, we can also find out who the perpetrators are," Rasio said on Thursday, September 3.

Muhammad Yunus, the Ministry's director of criminal law enforcement, said the location of the burnt forest could provide clues and information about the individuals and/or companies that committed the crime.

After finding out who owns the land, authorities could ask the landowners what whether they have implemented fire-prevention strategies.

Investigators will also seek for a pattern in the landfires, which will “provide clues what the perpetrators did it for," he said.

A lot of the lands that were burnt were not sealed off by the ministry. As a result, Yunus said, by the time of the hearing the lands had been turned into plantations. "There is no proof that there was a fire there," he said.

Both Rasio and Yunus believe that 99 percent of the forest fires that have occurred were mostly due to human activities. Yunus said that usually large the lands were deliberately set on fire by large plantation companies to be turned into plantations.

To date, Yunus said that there are two thousand hectares of lands in Riau and 520 hectares in Jambi that have been sealed by the Ministry of the Environment because of fire.

MITRA TARIGAN