Trump business partner is exhuming Indonesian graves to build a hotel: report

On Thursday, The Washington Postreported that a business associate of President Donald Trump is desecrating gravesites in West Java in order to build a Trump-branded hotel.

"In January 2019, gravediggers came to unearth corpses where his Muslim ancestors had rested since the 19th century, said Mulyana and two others who witnessed the excavations. The remains were being moved to make room for a mega-resort that will include a Trump-branded hotel and golf course," reported Joshua Partlow and Krithika Varagur. "At least one person had agreed to the exhumations, but other families had not given consent."

"One woman, Iyum, said the remains of her two daughters had been disinterred without her permission," continued the report. "'Who did they think my children were — dogs?' she said in an interview with The Washington Post."

"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,'" said the report. "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 Trump Organization’s 600-acre portion of the property — encompassing the future site of an 18-hole golf course, a 120-room hotel and 461 luxury villas — begins less than half a mile from the cemetery, according to GPS coordinates taken there overlaid with MNC and Trump Organization project maps," said the report. "The marketing materials MNC has produced for years tout the Trump connection, as key components for the 1,700-acre first phase of MNC Lido City, the project that envelops Mulyana and the 200 families of Ciletuh Hilir."

A letter in 2014 bearing the signatures of several residents of the area stated that locals “have no objection to and approve of the request for the site permit." However, the village leader, Djaja Mulyana, whose signature is on the letter, said: “We never signed anything agreeing to that."

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