Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets this week in Indonesia to voice anger at what they see as their government’s failure to stop fires in rainforests that have blanketed their country in a sickening haze.
The demonstrations by students and members of civil society groups began on Monday and spread to more than a half dozen cities across the country including on the island of Borneo, where many of the fires are burning.
These are the latest in a series of protests that have been building since August, in which participants have demanded that the nation’s president, Prabowo Subianto, declare a national emergency and take steps to prevent destructive agricultural practices that many blame for fueling the blazes.
“I have the right to breathe,” read one banner at a rally in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. “Extinguish the fires immediately!”
“The situation has reached a level that is completely, utterly abnormal,” said one protester, Naomi Artika, a law student at the University of Palangka Raya in Central Kalimantan, a province on Borneo.
Government leaders defended their response, which has not been able to halt the fires.
“We are all trying our best,” the state secretary, Prasetyo Hadi, said on Tuesday, according to local media. “We have deployed ground troops, aircraft and volunteers to put out the fires.”
While fires appear every year during the dry season that begins in April, this year’s are the worst on record. Earlier this year, there was less rain during the usually wet months that precede April, which experts blamed on both global warming and an El Niño climate shift.
The size of the fires remains contested. In its last tally made in July, the Indonesian government said about 780 square miles had burned this year — twice the land area of New York City. But Nusantara Atlas, an open-access platform that tracks deforestation globally, estimates the amount of forest destroyed is closer to 7,400 square miles.
The smoke has spread into neighboring Malaysia and Singapore, which have also reacted angrily, blaming Indonesia for not doing enough to contain the blazes.
Within Indonesia, the smoke from the burning rainforests has created a growing health crisis that has closed schools, caused widespread breathing disorders and forced many to stay indoors.
According to the Health Ministry, more than 306,309 residents of Indonesia’s seven provinces most heavily affected by the smoke have suffered acute respiratory illnesses over the last two months. Nearly half of those — 146,037 cases — were children under the age of 10, the ministry said on Sunday.
Some medical experts say the figures undercount the actual number of people falling sick.
“Lately, we’ve been seeing more scans showing signs of pneumonia, particularly among children and the elderly,” said Sigit Riatno, a radiologist in Kandangan, a town in South Kalimantan on Borneo. Of the roughly 60 chest X-rays he examines each day, about a third now show evidence of respiratory problems. “This situation is really worrying.”
One of those forced to stay indoors is Davankan Khalid Bhumi, a 2-year-old who has been unable to leave his home in Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan Province on Borneo, to meet playmates or swim. The haze outside is just too thick for little Khalid, who has been sensitive to smoke since infancy and needs a respiratory device called a nebulizer three times a week to help him sleep, said his mother, Era Oktafiansyah.
“It breaks my heart to hear his ‘ngiik ngiik’ breath and coughing,” said Ms. Era, 30, using a word that describes the wheezing sound her son makes.
Indonesia’s burning rainforests are often pointed to as a symptom of an ailing planet, an environmental disruption on par with the deforestation of the Amazon. The fires are widely blamed on “slash-and-burn” clearing of rainforest for agriculture to grow cash crops including palm oil and timber. The flames jump to nearby areas of peat, a type of wetland made up of decaying plant matter that extends deep beneath the forest floor but that has dried out.
Once ignited, the peat can smolder out of control for weeks or even months.
Mr. Prabowo has ordered additional resources to reinforce firefighting operations across the country, calling it “a top priority for us.” At the same time, he has resisted declaring the fires a natural disaster, which would compel his government to take more action.
“Ultimately, the only real solution is rain,” he said last week.
His government has pursued other policies, including energy self-sufficiency, that opponents say are having an adverse impact on the rainforests.
The president’s special envoy for climate and energy has proposed using 49,000 square miles of degraded forest as feedstock for biofuel production. He said the plan wouldn’t cut down old-growth forest, but critics say it will still damage the overall ecosystem, leaving it more vulnerable to fires.
This week’s protests were also held on the second anniversary of the presidency of Mr. Prabowo, whom the demonstrators criticized for what they saw as a lack of action. “If we burn, you burn with us!” one banner said in Jakarta.
Last month, Nafas Kalbar, a coalition of civil society groups in West Kalimantan, filed a class-action lawsuit accusing the government of negligence in its failure to stop the blazes or to take preventive measures against the El Niño, which was foreseeable.
“Clean air and clean water are fundamental human rights,” said Glorio Sanen, the coalition’s lawyer.
In Malaysia, a former health minister, Khairy Jamaluddin, urged his government to push Indonesia to take action. “When somebody else is choking you, you don’t allow them to continue to choke you,” he said in a podcast.
Singapore’s prime minister, Lawrence Wong, said his country would punish private companies blamed for the destructive agricultural practices that cause the fires.
Dr. Sigit, the radiologist, says the prolonged haze will have health impacts reaching beyond even the proliferation of breathing ailments that he has observed. Many may suffer from chronic respiratory problems that will impose a long-term burden on their lives as well as on hospitals and Indonesia’s national health insurance program, whose budget is already strained.
“The impact of smog on health, especially the respiratory tract and lungs, will incur even greater costs,” he said.
Ms. Era, the mother of Khalid, looks forward to a day when the air is clean enough to allow her son to play outside again. In the meantime, she has closed gaps and openings around their home to stop the smoke from entering.
“We do stay indoors, but how do you keep a child from breathing?” she said.
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