DtE 29/30 August 1996
FINDING A VOICE
Indigenous peoples in Indonesia are sick of being treated as second class
citizens. Their voice is being heard more and more frequently as communities
from Kalimantan to West Papua oppose the forces that marginalise them.
A rare opportunity for indigenous people to gather together and air
their views in public was provided in March this year by a two-day public
hearing organised by the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable
Development.
Two indigenous representatives from West Papua were among the most
outspoken participants. Josepha, an Amungme woman, spoke about the struggle
for land against mining Freeport/RTZ. "What did we get for our demand? I
and some other native people were tortured and kept for weeks in a
container," she said.1 "We have lost a lot of our natural resources. We have
lost our land inherited by our ancestors," said Bartolomeus Magal, another
West Papuan participant.
The hearing also involved participants representing timber companies,
government and non-governmental organisations. (Jakarta Post 4/3/96, 5/3/96,
9/3/96)
On another occasion, in April, government development programmes in
Kalimantan were criticised by Dayak anthropologist Stephanus Djuweng.
"Development projects are occupying the Dayak Ancestral land, cutting their
commercial rubber plantations..their collective forests, [and] polluting
their rivers...". He accused government officials of forcing Dayaks to
change their culture and replace traditional longhouses with other houses,
the construction of which benefitted the officials.
Djuweng also said the World Bank, which has helped finance Indonesia's
development should also be held responsible for the environmental damage in
Indonesia.
He was speaking at the launch in Jakarta of a book published by the Bank
Information Centre, a Washington based NGO, entitled A Citizen's Guide to
the Multilateral Development Banks and indigenous People. The book is
designed to help indigenous people find their way around the procedures of
MDBs including the World Bank.
A Bank official, Benjamin Fisher, defended the Bank saying that it had
improved its development policy by encouraging indigenous people, like
Dayaks, to participate in development programmes.
Unfortunately Bank procedures, however progressive and acceptable to
indigenous peoples, are useless if the host government's policies conflict
with them, as do those of the Indonesian government. This "policy gap" is a
problem the Bank and other aid agencies have yet to address.
[box] Figures and targets
There are officially around 1.5 million people classified by the
government as "isolated tribes." They are divided into three categories:
nomadic, semi-nomadic and settled.
Officials of the Social Affairs Department, which is responsible for
'developing' them, typically divide indigenous peoples into those that have
been dibina or guided by the government (i.e the object of government
programmes) and those who have not. Such development schemes resettle
indigenous families on small plots, where they are expected to grow
commercial crops (typically in unsuitable conditions), live in regulation
housing and wear modern clothes, while abandoning traditional practices and
the customary ways of living.
The system of fulfilling targets, means that quantity rather than quality
is emphasised. It is not surprising then that there are frequent reports of
failure: once government assistance runs out, resettled indigenous
communities return to their former homes and lifestyle.
At the same time, indigenous peoples enjoy practically no rights of their
own. Lands must be yielded to the government in the interests of national
development (this is a catch-all including logging, mining, plantations and
other forest conversion projects.) Indigenous people are also supposed to
convert to one of the major world religions recognised under Pancasila, the
government's guiding philosophy. [end box]
The prevailing, ingrained attitude among government officials is still
based on the belief that indigenous peoples are 'backward' and need to
progress to catch up with the rest of society.
According to provincial Social Affairs official for East Kalimantan Dr
Wiyono, isolated communities in his area who have not been yet reached by
his office number around 4,000 families. "These isolated communities, in the
nomadic and semi-nomadic categories, generally still live backwardly in
several ways, socially, culturally, economically, and in their religion and
education," he said. (Suara Pembaruan 28/5/96)
Impacts of industrial forestry in Kalimantan
Kalimantan has been especially hard hit by logging and, more recently, the
development of timber estates for the pulp and wood industries. Dayak
communities are fighting the appropriation of their lands and destruction of
their villages.
Several major disputes have erupted in Kalimantan within the past few
years over such projects. One of them is the dispute between the Bentian
Dayaks of Jelmu Sibak village in East Kalimantan and PT Hutan Mahligai which
is developing a timber estate transmigration project on their traditional
lands (see DTE 28 for background).
The latest development in the dispute was the visit in May of a Bentian
representative, Nyeloi Adi to Jakarta. His purpose was to lodge complaints
with the Forestry and Transmigration Ministries over the illegal occupation
of Bentian lands by the contractor. The Jelmu Sibak villagers have already
presented their case to local authorities, Ministers in Jakarta and the
National Human Rights Commission.
According to Nyeloi Adi, as many as thirty government delegations have
visited his village to investigate the dispute. These visits all failed to
gain an objective perspective, partly because they never even met with the
villagers! (Republika 25/5/96)
Torture
A long-running dispute over traditional land in another East Kalimantan
village led to the torture of fourteen local people, by members of the
security forces. Three representatives of the residents of Menamang village
in Kutai district travelled to Jakarta in January to present their case to
the National Human Rights Commission. One of the three, Awang Ateh,
described how he had been beaten and burned with a cigarette after refusing
to accept compensation for land taken by a timber plantation company. The
dispute began in 1992 when the company, Surya Hutani Jaya, took over 1,663
hectares of traditional lands belonging to the 294 villagers. Crops, fruit
trees and rattan cultivated by the villagers were destroyed.
The company, which is a joint venture of PT Surya Raya Wahana, PT
Sumalindo Lestari Jaya and the state-owned forestry company Inhutani I,
plans to develop a 198,000 hectare timber plantation on the site. Promises
of compensation never materialised, while forged documents were used to
claim that villagers had accepted and received compensation. Finally, after
a new investigation by Kutai district authorities found that compensation
claims were justified, some villagers decided to accept the compensation.
Those who refused, were then subjected to torture. (Indonesia Media Network
3/2/96)
In appropriate circumstances, Forestry Minister Djamaludin has been known
to show sympathy for indigenous concerns, "We believe sustainable forest
management will be more successful if the natives' involvement is
intensified..." he said when opening the World Commission on Forestry and
Sustainable Development hearing. But he is powerless to change the balance
of power in their favour without a sea change in the thinking of Suharto
himself (or a change in the leadership of the country).
The President, who is ever watchful of safeguarding national unity at all
costs, is unlikely to start allowing indigenous peoples all kinds of rights
which challenge the centralised control he enforces.
DtE 32, February 1997
Central Kalimantan Dayaks call for rights body
Dayak leaders meeting in the Central Kalimantan provincial capital
Palangkaraya have called on the government to establish an institution to
protect the rights of indigenous people. (AFP 17/1/97)
The need to protect the rights of Dayak communities of Central Kalimantan
has become urgent as the million hectare mega-project proceeds.
DtE 28 February 1996
BENTIAN APPEAL TO HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION
The long-running dispute between the Bentian people of East Kalimantan and
the logging company PT Kahold Utama remains unresolved. The dispute reached
a new stage when indigenous villagers from Jelmu Sibak, in Kutai district,
accompanied by NGO representatives travelled to Jakarta to meet members of
the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM). They appealed to the
Commission to investigate their dispute which centres on the violation of
traditional (adat) rights over a 1,600 hectare area of land belonging to 72
families. The crops, forest resources, including honey trees and rattan
stands cultivated for generations by the Bentian have been destroyed by the
company, which has been licensed to develop a timber plantation and
transmigration site on the land. Ancestral graves have also been destroyed
and local water courses disrupted by the company's activities. To date, the
many protests lodged by the indigenous land-owners with the authorities have
met with no success. Instead, a number of protesters have been repeatedly
hauled before the police for interrogation on trumped-up forgery charges.
Meanwhile the logging of community forests and the destruction of precious
forest resources continues.
This is the second time the Bentian have approached the Human Rights
Commission. The first deputation, in January 1995, persuaded the Commission
to try and get the Kalimantan Governor to intervene on behalf of the
Bentian, but this achieved nothing concrete. This time Commission members
said they would send a mission to Jelmu Sibak to investigate and promised
that the case would be a priority.
Unfortunately, the Commission's powers to help the Bentian will be
limited by the fact that the company they are up against is owned by
Indonesia's timber boss, Bob Hasan, who is a close associate of the
President. The Commission will be free to call for action to help the
Bentian if its sympathies lie with the villagers, but whether those calls
would have any impact remains to be seen. (For a brief outline of the
Commission and its powers see DTE 27).
Despite all the intimidation they have suffered and despite the attempts
to bribe them to stop protesting, the villagers' demands remain forthright.
They want their land to be recognised and returned to them; they demand that
the company be made to pay fines according to customary procedures and
brought to book according to the law, that the project be moved off their
land and that their adat land rights no longer be disturbed.
(Sources: Republika 15/11/95, Informasi peremapsan dan penghancuran tanah
adat masyarakat Jelmu Sibak, Bentianbesar, Kutai, Kalimantan Timur,
Secretariat Promotion for Community based Forest System Management.
29/11/95) (For more background to the dispute see DTE 24 and 26)
West Kalimantan villagers attack pulp project
In West Kalimantan too, indigenous people are struggling to defend their
customary land against commercial interests. Early in 1995 a company called
PT Nityasa Idola started clearing land for a pulpwood plantation on a
120-hectare area belonging to Dayak families in Belimbing village, Sambas
district. The land had been signed over by the government-approved Village
Head and a few others the previous month. This agreement stipulated that the
company should respect the local customs, respect the local people's rights
and efforts, prioritise local people for employment on the project and pay
attention to village needs. A ceremony, led by the Village Head, was then
arranged in which ten villagers received Rp 500,000 (US $250). The
traditional [adat] leader and other villagers were not involved. Soon after,
the villagers were told rudely that they could no longer work on their
fields as the land had been bought by PT Nityasa Idola. The Village Head
threatened to send to jail villagers who trespassed.
Since then, repeated attempts by the villagers to resolve the dispute
through official channels have failed. In November 1995, their anger reached
flashpoint and they burnt down the company's seedling camp.
According to Lembaga Bela Banua Talino (LBBT), an NGO based in the West
Kalimantan provincial capital, Pontianak, this was the third such attack
against timber estate developers in the area in the past couple of years.
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Down to Earth
International Campaign for Ecological Justice in Indonesia
Carolyn Marr (dte@gn.apc.org)