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Hamburg, 5th May 2004 deutsche Version... Editorial Departments: Business / Environment Indonesian Environmentalists Accuse: PAPIER UNION is partly responsible for human rights abuses and forest destruction. The leading German paper trade company PAPIER UNION must immediately cease its dealings with the pulp and paper corporation APRIL, which is responsible for massive forest destruction and expulsions in Sumatra. Representatives of Indonesian environmental organisations made these demands in talks with PAPIER UNION, which at the instigation of ROBIN WOOD took place last week in Berlin. To support these demands, 50 environmental organisations from around the world addressed an open letter to the management of the paper company. Longgena Ginting, the director of the Indonesia environmental forum Walhi, made clear in talks with PAPIER UNION: "Those who buy products from APRIL are jointly guilty of human rights abuses and the destruction of our forests." Rivani Noor from the Alliance of Victims of the Pulp Industry CAPPA was indignant over comments by the marketing director David Wischmann. He had explained that PAPIER UNION does not use any written obligatory environmental and social standards for their paper purchase, but they have complete trust in the integrity of their business partner APRIL. "PAPIER UNION is arrogant and blindly believes the corporation that is destroying our environment. The company dismisses our arguments and data, or acts with indifferent", Noor complained. In Sumatra APRIL runs one of the largest pulp factories in the world, and uses around 6 million cubic meters of wood per year from natural forests. No other country worldwide is losing its forest as quickly as Indonesia. In order to stop this loss, ROBIN WOOD is putting pressure on German companies who are doing business with the destroyers of the rainforest. Over the last year, the German postal service Deutsche Post responded by removing paper from APRIL from their product selection. For over a year, however, PAPIER UNION has been ignoring environmental organisations' demands to end their dealings with APRIL, and continues to buy 15,000 tons of the corporation's paper brand 'Paper One'. APRIL converts thousand year old eat forests, the habitat of the rare Sumatra tiger, into monocultures to produce this paper. "By its rigid adherence to cowork with APRIL, PAPIER UNION has already become known to environmentalists around the world as a terrible example", says Jens Wieting, of ROBIN WOOD's Tropical Forest Unit. "The company will only be able to get rid of this negative image by a committed change in purchase policy." For further questions: Peter Gerhardt, Jens Wieting, 040-380892-18, tropenwald@robinwood.de Ute Bertrand, Press Officer, 040-380892-22, presse@robinwood.de A current research report on APRIL's destruction of rainforests can be found at www.robinwood.de/sumatrarecherche. An English version of this report will soon be available.