Indonesian Land Rights

Members of the small Pandumaan-Sipituhuta indigenous community are at the centre of a historic struggle that just might transform the rules of capitalism in Indonesia, affecting tens of millions of people. Along with a handful of other communities, they have cited indigenous rights provisions in the constitution in the hope that they will be granted legal control over traditional lands. According to the Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (Aman), an indigenous rights group, there are 70 million Indonesians – almost one-third of the population – who could be considered “indigenous” and theoretically in line for new land rights.

Other Indonesians in this vast country of rainforests and more than 13,000 islands are watching closely, lest the campaign should provide a model they can emulate. Many land experts, human rights activists and environmentalists believe the approach adopted by the Pandumaan-Sipituhuta community may be Indonesia’s best chance to sort out a muddled and exploitative system of laws that has been in place since a violent, US-backed dictatorship essentially took all the land to distribute to its cronies. But success is far from guaranteed. 

“We continue the battle. It’s the only option,” says Arnold Lumban Batu, as the group confers with two members of a local community rights organisation. “Honestly, many of us would rather die than lose.”

In Pandumaan, villagers proudly remember the night they raided a site where the Toba Pulp Lestari (TPL) company planned to begin cutting down forest, stealing all its equipment. They tell of the trauma when police descended on the community and arrested many of them. Their neighbours in the Aek Lung community planted “guerrilla crops” on traditional land technically controlled by TPL, entering just after the company had harvested its eucalyptus trees. They have received death threats, and accuse the company of burning down their huts, poisoning crops and calling in the military police, who beat them.

Sukarno, the father of the Indonesian nation, had been attempting some kind of land reform to resolve overlapping European and traditional ownership systems after the Dutch left in 1949.

But his government began to fall apart in 1965, when US-backed generals responded to an alleged coup attempt within the military by taking power and overseeing the systematic execution of up to 1 million civilians for being communist or accused of communist affiliation. The right-wing government that formed afterwards, led by Suharto, ruled the country until 1998. His government’s crimes, including vast corruption, have never been officially condemned, and many perpetrators remain in power.

“The problem in Indonesia is that you have overlapping claims to the same land, and you have concessions that tend to have been originally granted [under the Suharto dictatorship] to generals and friends of political elites,” says John McCarthy, a professor at Australian National University who studies land rights in Indonesia. “I would like to think we are on the road to real changes, but the challenges are immense. One important question is, would Indonesia’s investors ever let this happen? It’s like healthcare reform in the United States – no matter how good an idea it may be, you have to look at the coalitions of political support that stand to lose if things change.”

“Our territory is where our identity mainly comes from,” says Rukka Sombolinggi, secretary general of Aman, speaking in her Jakarta office. “These territories have never been recognised by the state, meaning crimes are committed against us and against the constitution which have been considered ‘legal.’”