SHIFTING SANDS

Tuesday, October 16, 2001

The sand of their beaches and surroundings is both a blessing and a curse for the Riau Islands. For the past six months the value that has been sent to Singapore has reached approximately Rp47 trillion—almost 19 times the sum of the region's budget. Imagine; this business has been ongoing since the middle of the 1970s. Fraught with temptation and opportunity, the sand business has given birth to corrupt bureaucrats and opened itself up to theft on a massive scale. The country has suffered a loss of Rp2 trillion a year. For the first time, Indonesia has no choice but to sit and watch five of its islands disappear due to vanishing sand. What a systematic way of selling the motherland.

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Alone tree stands in the middle of the sea. Nothing else is visible, the land submerged. There are no signs of life on the "former" island. "In the past, that was where we moored our boats when there were heavy winds. We called it Pulau Karang (the Coral Island)," said Ali, a fisherman at Moro Island in the Regency of the Riau Islands. "There was more than one tree, not like now," he added, remembering.

Pulau Karang is one of the five islands in the

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