An aerial picture made available on May 10, 2013 shows deforestated land in Indragiri Hulu, Riau province, Indonesia, on May 4, 2013. (EPA Photo/Bagus Indahono)
Jakarta. The arrest of farmers in Central Java and South Sumatra in the past week in separate land disputes has once again highlighted the perennial problem of agrarian reform — a point that neither of the two candidates running in the July 9 presidential election has yet addressed in depth.
Police in Central Java’s Rembang district arrested four farmers on Monday following a demonstration against mining that turned violent; while in Musi Banyuasin, South Sumatra, seven farmers were arrested and charged with trespassing in a wildlife reserve last Wednesday.
Officials from the Agrarian Renewal Consortium (KPA), which advocates for a reform of the country’s land management system, said the incident in Rembang stemmed from residents’ growing dissatisfaction with mining activities in the karst terrain of the Kendeng foothills, as well as a plan by local authorities to approve the building of a cement factory there.
“The residents’ opposition to the mining and the cement factory is fairly reasonable because it’s an issue that directly affects their own livelihoods,” said Iwan Nurdin, the KPA secretary general.
The residents have long argued that the mining is destroying the underground springs and rivers that they depend on to irrigate their farmland. They also contend that the cement factory will put a further strain on water supplies there as well as pollute the soil add groundwater.
Iwan said the residents felt compelled to blockade the road leading to the cement factory construction site after their objections to district authorities went unanswered for months.
The police responded by breaking up the blockade and arresting four farmers.
“The farmers who were protesting were subjected to violence, intimidation and detention by the authorities,” he said.
Lukito, the head of the KPA’s Central Java chapter, called on the authorities, including the province’s governor, to heed the farmers’ concerns and revoke the permits for the mining and the cement factory.
He noted that a 2008 government regulation on zoning clearly identified karst terrain, which is rich in quartz and limestone, as a protected geological topography, and that it was thus off-limits to commercial activities such as mining.
He also said that condemned the government’s arrest of the protesters and the “violence committed against them on behalf of the cement factory that is stealing their land and destroying their water sources.”
“We demand the release the four farmers who were arrested and the return of the equipment seized from the journalists covering the event,” Lukito said.
Musi mess
In Musi Banyuasin, meanwhile, police and officials from the South Sumatra Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) arrested seven farmers for allegedly trespassing on the Dangku wildlife preserve. Six of them were subsequently charged.
Iwan said the fact that the men, from the Tungkal Ulu indigenous group, may have been farming inside the wildlife preserve was beside the point.
He argued that the Tungkal Ulu had farmed that part of the district for generations, but that in 1986 the government unilaterally declared a 28,500-hectare swath of their land part of the newly established Dangku preserve and prohibited them from farming in it.
Given the lack of tolerance for dissent shown by the authoritarian government of the time, Iwan said, the Tungkal Ulu were powerless to object.
“Historically, that land has always been theirs, handed down from generation to generation. The problem, as is generally the case, is that they never had the deeds to it,” he said.
No redress
The land rights issue has simmered for decades, with the government giving out concessions to hundreds of thousands of hectares of land inhabited by indigenous people to companies involved in the mining, palm oil, and pulp and paper industries.
For years the dispossessed communities have had little or no course of redress, and conflicts between them and the security forces, often in the pay of the concession holders, have resulted in dozens of deaths and arrests.
But in a landmark ruling in 2012, the Constitutional Court took control of indigenous lands away from the state and put it into the hands of indigenous groups.
Iwan said the government in both the Rembang and Musi Banyuasin cases should hew to the court ruling and side with the local residents, who, though lacking title deeds to their lands, should be recognized as the rightful owners because of their stewardship of the land for several generations.
He also called for a complete overhaul of the country’s concession map to recognize indigenous groups’ right to their land and end the litany of conflicts arising from disputes between residents, on one hand, and miners, plantation companies and other commercial concession holders on the other hand.
Iwan added the security forces should also side with the locals instead of taking up arms for the concession holders.
“For so long they’ve been complicit in the eviction of residents and the criminalization of community leaders,” he said.
Rahmat Ajiguna, the secretary general of the Agrarian Movement Reform Alliance (AGRA), also condemned the involvement of the security forces.
“Land conflicts that pit residents against companies should always be resolved through dialogue. There’s no call to involve the police, and indeed their involvement has always given rise to more problems,” he said.
Campaign promise
The land issue is one that neither Prabowo Subianto nor Joko Widodo, the two candidates running for president, has addressed in depth in their rallies and debates.
Both candidates have offered up plans to reallocated degraded forest land — left over from oil palm plantations or mining operations — as farmland. Prabowo has offered four million hectares, while Joko is touting nine million.
The problem, observers say, is ownership of the land, much of which will undoubtedly be disputed land. That, observers say, will make it messy for the candidates, who have promised to issue title deeds for the land when handing it out to farmers, most of them from other regions.
By Jakarta Globe on 10:22 pm Jun 17, 2014
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