Singapore weighs action against companies behind Indonesia's worst fires in more than a decade as haze chokes the region

Singapore is looking into which companies are responsible for the most intense wildfires in Indonesia in more than a decade and may pursue them, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said, as smoke from the blazes blankets much of Southeast Asia.

"At the same time, we are looking into which companies may be responsible for the fires," Wong wrote Thursday on Facebook, adding that he was exploring "joint action with other countries," Oliver Holmes reported in The Guardian. Singapore has no plantations of its own, but several companies with concessions in Indonesia are reportedly based there.

Drier-than-usual conditions have pushed the haze into Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei and Timor-Leste and as far as the Philippines and Vietnam, closing schools and driving up respiratory illness. The fires are worsened by slash-and-burn land clearing for agriculture, including palm oil, which Indonesia produces more than any other country.

Indonesians are bearing the heaviest toll. The country's health ministry has reported nearly 280,000 people with fire-linked respiratory infections, more than 60,000 of them children under 5. Four firefighters were killed in a national park on Java, the forestry ministry said Friday.

After initially saying it could handle the fires, Jakarta said this week it would accept foreign help. Syahganda Nainggolan, head of Indonesia's government communication agency, pushed back at critics: "We don't only send haze, the oxygen in Singapore and Malaysia comes from our forests."

Rights groups and some Indonesian politicians are pressing the government to declare a national disaster, which would unlock funds for medical care.

This brief is based on an article published Oct. 16, 2026, by Oliver Holmes in The Guardian. Read the original: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/16/singapore-threatens-prosecute-indonesia-fires-toxic-haze-smoke