Inside Indonesia's Highest-Profile Land Conflict
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Inside Indonesia’s highest-profile land conflict December 7, 2015 Masrani stood at the confluence of two rivers in Indonesian Borneo as his father recited the most dreadful oath. The extreme form of sumpah adat, a ritualistic nuclear option for Indonesia’s Dayak indigenous peoples, was reserved for dealing with crises nothing else could solve. The forest chattered to the post-daybreak sounds of hornbills and proboscis monkeys as the two-dozen men assembled for the rite. One by one, they beseeched the ancestors to punish those who had shifted their borders and robbed them of their territory. “They were brave enough to steal our land, but not to meet us at the river,” said Masrani, the deposed former chief of Muara Tae, a village in East Kalimantan province. “They didn’t come because they know they’re wrong.” Indonesia’s shambolic internal borders are a national emergency. No single map of land-use claims exists; contradictory references persist across the different levels of government. The problem impedes efforts to zone the country for sustainable development and underlies thousands of conflicts that pit communities against companies, the state or each other. Amid the chaos, oil palm plantations have sprung up at breakneck speed across Indonesia’s ravaged hinterlands, eating away at the forests and propelling this country of 250 million to become the world’s sixth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. At the start of last century more than four-fifths of the archipelago was covered by jungle; today it is fighting to stem forest losses even in its national parks as species like the Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) fall away into extinction. Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of palm oil and largest exporter of coal, both of which are ubiquitous to places in Kalimantan like where these two ancient rivers meet. Masrani’s father, Petrus Asuy, stands in front of a sacred object that was used in the sumpah adat last year. Photo by Philip Jacobson The destruction of more than 2.1 million hectares of land in this year’s devastating wildfires places additional pressure on reform-minded new president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to change Indonesia’s lax business-as-usual approach to forestry. Jokowi has shown himself capable of announcing decisive reforms from the Istana Merdeka in Jakarta, but in remote outposts a far cry from the capital, companies and powerful local actors continue to mold borders amid ineffective oversight. Here in Muara Tae, and in its neighbor Muara Ponak, opposing sides in a land conflict tell wildly contradictory stories about the two villages’ border, on one side of which – or on both, depending on whom you ask – a pair of oil palm developers have already set up shop. The companies are Malaysia-based TSH Resources Bhd and Singapore-listed First Resources Ltd, whose CEO, Ciliandra Fangiono, is scion of one of Indonesia’s wealthiest families. Both corporations preside over extensive holdings here in West Kutai regency, a subdivision of East Kalimantan province that lies at the center of Indonesia’s palm oil boom. Not only are the firms accused of employing tested tricks to enter Tae. Some say that more broadly in West Kutai, they are pioneering a new means of grabbing indigenous territory, the latest in an arsenal of tactics used by rapidly expanding agribusiness and extractive industries in the global land rush. The lay of the land It starts with Tae and Ponak, the site of West Kutai’s best-known land conflict. People from Tae, a community of 2,500, accuse people from Ponak, whose population is around 300, of selling Tae’s land to the aforementioned companies in a series of fraudulent exchanges. To enable the deals, the head or regent of West Kutai is said to have redrawn the Tae-Ponak border at Tae’s expense, and then tried to railroad Tae’s leaders into submission when they resisted. In 2013, Tae’s elected chief, Masrani, was stripped of office by a unilateral edict or decree from the regent, a politician from President Jokowi’s party named Ismael Thomas. The Ponak side counters that the land was always theirs. But the allegations from Tae mirror claims being made across West Kutai, where stories of border manipulation crop up again and again. One case, involving Bentian and Damai subdistricts, has gone to the Supreme Court. The area disputed there is home to a giant coal mine whose royalties were rerouted from one jurisdiction to the other when the regent shifted their border, the plaintiffs told Mongabay. Others have been highlighted by NGOs. In September, six villages that are involved in as many conflicts resulting from operations by First Resources and its sister companies sent representatives to Jakarta for a meeting with the Environmental Investigation Agency, a London-based nonprofit. These included four communities from West Kutai. In constructing a typology of the firms’ actions, the participants identified foul play with borders as a common thread. West Kutai’s cartography has even been flagged by Indonesia’s human rights commission, known as Komnas HAM. Last year, when Muara Tae was featured in Komnas HAM’s national inquiry into land conflicts affecting indigenous peoples, the commissioners singled out the regency with a recommendation that it review all permits held by commodities companies. Bentian residents who oppose their new border with Damai include, from left, Apung Barnel, lawyer Lirin Dingit, and Roesli, a local official. They say Bentian lost 40% of its territory when the regent published an official map of the two subdistricts. Photo by Philip Jacobson Long Hubung Ulu village chief Lawing Uning, left, and other residents say a Fangiono family company is encroaching on their customary territory. PT Fangiono Agro Plantation A received a permit from Ismael Thomas, the West Kutai regent, in 2010, but locals say it negotiated with residents of a neighboring village, Long Gelawang, for the rights to Hubung’s land. Photo by Philip Jacobson The chief of Benggeris village in West Kutai says a coal mining company and an oil palm firm have violated his village’s northern and southern boundaries. Such stories abound in West Kutai regency. Photo by Philip Jacobson A senior official in the regent’s office acknowledged the severity of the problem. Franky Yonathan said the issue needed to be rectified so development could be equitable and sustainable. But he downplayed the significance of village boundaries in determining who owns land. “The border is an administrative matter – it doesn’t affect land rights,” he stressed in Sendawar, the West Kutai capital. First Resources makes the same point. But that contention is only true insofar as one’s ownership is enshrined in a paper document, whereas Indonesia’s indigenous communities have traditionally held land communally. A certificate for collectively owned land has only recently been introduced and has yet to be tested. But indigenous lands are regularly leased to companies, with the government system allowing village chiefs to vouch for a transaction. The location of a border is therefore of paramount importance, because it determines whose chief can facilitate a deal. In practice, the reality of Indonesia as a country of legal pluralism, where state law must coexist with adat law – a term that refers holistically to indigenous peoples’ various life systems – has been neglected by the government, said Chip Fay, a fellow at the Samdhana Institute. “The vagueness and the lack of actions toward balancing these two legal systems serves business as usual, and people suffer as a result,” Fay said. The shaded area is under dispute between Muara Tae and Muara Ponak villages, but First Resources has already planted some of it with oil palm. The black line represents Tae’s own map of its territory; the regent drew the red borderline in 2012. The yellow line corresponds with First Resources’ location permit, which gives it the right to negotiate with locals to acquire their land. Not pictured is TSH Resources’ permit, which also overlaps with territory Tae claims. Image courtesy of Lingkar Komunitas Sawit When Muara Tae cried foul over TSH Resources, the first of the companies to strike a deal with Ponak residents, in 2011, the West Kutai government sent its special team for resolving border disputes to both villages. The team eventually recommended a compromise border, and this was cemented by a decree from the regent. Ponak accepts this decree. Tae challenged it in court. The community was represented by its chief, Masrani, a stocky 34-year- old with an implacable manner and a steely command of his subject. He also possesses a university education, a rare asset among these Dayak Benuaq people for whom subsistence farming and hunter-gathering remain the norm. Soon, the regent issued another decree to remove Masrani from office. This edict came, Masrani says, after he refused to be coerced into dropping the lawsuit, which judges in Samarinda, the provincial capital, ultimately rejected on the grounds that Tae lacked standing to challenge the border – a decision based on the assumption that land rights are unaffected by village boundaries. Masrani and others in the community have nevertheless continued to resist the oil palm companies as encroachers in Tae’s customary territory. Their battle has been an uphill one, even with support from a cast of NGOs and other groups, including the United Nations Development Programme, which recently named the Tae community a recipient of the prestigious Equator Prize for conservation. Masrani’s father, Petrus Asuy, accepted the award at the UN climate summit in Paris on Monday. Masrani and his wife and son before the sumpah adat last year. Photo courtesy of Masrani The picture is complicated by a lack of unity not just between Tae and Ponak but also within Tae over whether to enter into an agreement with the companies.