BY PATRICK BROWN
BANDUNG, Indonesia - The West Java Peasants Union (SPJB)
will "protect the poor from exploitation and oppression by
government, rulers, and businessmen," Darsono, the
chairperson of this new organization, told Militant
reporters on June 8.
Darsono, who grows coconuts on three hectares of land near Bandung, the third largest city in Indonesia, was joined for this interview by several other activists, including Kasmidin, who farms one hectare with seasonal crops like cassava, and Suhdin, who grows vegetables on his three hectares and "has been fighting [for his land] since 1984."
Darsono explained that the official peasants' organization, the HKTI or Association of Farmers' Harmony of Indonesia, is a "dummy," dominated by big landowners and headed by an army general. The farmers decided to launch the SPJB publicly three weeks after President Suharto resigned under pressure from his local and foreign backers and in the face of growing social protests.
Peasants had provided bananas and other food to students who had rallied against Suharto outside the regional parliament in Bandung during May, Darsono explained. He added that many "unemployed rural workers donated 1,000 or 2,000 rupiahs from their own pockets" to assist the students.
In Darsono's view, Suharto's regime was "a continuation of Dutch colonialism," which dominated the "Dutch East Indies" until Indonesians won formal independence in 1949. Suharto had granted land concessions to "businesses, and his friends and family," he said.
Land use for profit
Of the 200-plus million people in Indonesia, more than
half still live in the countryside, despite the trend for
millions to migrate to the cities in search of work. In the
last three decades increasing local and foreign capitalist
investment has left a deep mark on agriculture.
Dianto Bachriadi, the deputy chairperson of the Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA), told the Militant earlier the same day that under the "green revolution" of the late 1960s, "landless peasants increased in number, as did the number of landlords." He explained that the high yield crops introduced at that time required expensive fertilizers and other inputs that were beyond the means of many peasants.
In recent years, the government has worked with the World Bank to make it easier for capitalist investors to take over land. The World Bank's loans are coupled to demands to "simplify ... procedures for land acquisition," as a KPA pamphlet puts it.
Dianto explained that land on Kalimantan and other islands has been taken from indigenous owners and turned over to plantations and mines, creating "an important source of conflict." Millions have been displaced due to logging and other activities.
Peasants' land on Java, where more than half the country's population is concentrated, has been turned into real estate, tourist areas, dams, and golf courses, Darsono reported. He described how farmers had planted teak wood in one area, only to have the wood claimed by the forestry department 20 years later when it was ready for felling.
`Transmigration'
The government's policy of moving people off Java and
settling them on other islands has also been a disaster for
working people. These measures are also backed by the World
Bank. Under this "transmigration," the government has moved
millions of people to the outer islands, claiming that Java
is overpopulated.
The measures are also part of trying to subjugate the whole country - including areas like East Timor where people are fighting for independence - to Jakarta's control. Most of the land where the migrants are settled is already occupied by indigenous peoples, who are often displaced from the land they have worked for generations.
The migrants often use agricultural techniques from Java - a very fertile volcanic island - on "some of the poorest soils on earth," according to a report published in the May-June issue of World Watch, by the magazine's assistant editor Curtis Runyan. These transmigration projects "have increased poverty for both host communities and migrants, and worsened ecological destruction," he wrote.
In discussions with Darsono, Dianto, and others, Militant reporters were given a striking picture of the diverse and uneven development of agriculture in Indonesia.
The agrarian census of 1993 reported that nearly 50 percent of peasant households own less than half a hectare of land, while just over 1 percent own more than 22 hectares. Some own more than 100,000 hectares. According to the government's National Land Agency, 20 percent of land in Bekasi, an area in the most developed part of Java, belongs to absentee landowners. Rice and other crops are still produced overwhelmingly by manual labor. There is not a tractor to be seen along the miles of rice paddies that line the train route between Jakarta and Bandung.
Working people in the Indonesian countryside are exploited in a number of different ways. There are rice farmers who have to give a percentage of their crop to the landlord, small farmers who produce for the market, and laborers who toil for low wages on plantations.
Last year 2 million hectares of forest were sacrificed for these capitalist plantations. Fires on Kalimantan, Sumatra, and Sulawesi raged out of control, blackening the skies over much of Southeast Asia. In the article in World Watch, Runyan said, "Indonesian military police arrested more than 60 small-scale farmers for setting fires.... Satellite images revealed, however, that 80 percent of the fires began on timber and palm-oil plantations controlled by a few politically connected growers and timber barons."
Legacy of 1965-66 massacre
The SPJB's Darsono told Militant reporters that in the
years after 1965-66 peasants were "makanan empuk - easy
pickings -for the landlords and capitalists.
He was referring to the bloodletting organized by the Indonesian military, with the backing of Washington and other imperialist powers, that brought Suharto's "New Order" regime to power. Between 500,000 and 1 million workers and peasants were massacred, accused of belonging to or supporting the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI).
The killings were carried out not only by the crack army troops, but by reactionary mobs in the countryside backed by the landlords, who included a layer of the Muslim clergy.
The Communist Party had widespread support among peasants, as well as among workers in the cities. While there were spontaneous attempts to resist the assault in many villages, the PKI leadership proved incapable of mounting any organized defense and the party was crushed, along with the unions, peasant groups, and other other mass organizations.
The Indonesian toilers were led to this disaster - a defeat for the international working class on the scale of the victory of fascism in Germany in the 1930s - by the policies carried out by the Stalinist leadership of the PKI.
With the backing of both Beijing and Moscow, the Communist Party followed a policy of supporting the government of President Sukharno. They refused to organize workers and farmers in defense of their interests, especially where these came into conflict with the procapitalist and authoritarian Sukharno. Meanwhile, the massacre was prepared and carried out by the military officers, to the applause of the imperialists and the local exploiters.
The legacy of the massacre can be seen in the heavy presence of the repressive forces in the countryside. "There is military in the plantations - and gangs," said Darsono.
Dianto of the KPA described how over the years the military has staged exercises in rural areas, arrested peasant activists on criminal charges, and forcibly removed peasant families or entire villages from their lands.
Military officers have benefited from government agrarian policies, going back to the nationalization of Dutch properties in 1958 and extending to the more recent land- grabbing exercises. "The managers of estates came from army officers," said Dianto, emphasizing that "the army is a counterforce for land reform."
But the struggles of recent years demonstrate that the military's capacity to instill paralyzing fear has begun to weaken. SPJB activist Suhdin told us that in 1988 he was jailed for eight months, "charged with inciting hatred against the government. They thought this would discourage me," he said "but after my release I became more actively involved, because the law had been broken by those who made it."
Several days after the Militant spoke to these fighters, the SPJB was launched publicly in Bandung. A national conference of peasants' organizations is being planned for July. "Suharto's stepping down is a new hope," Darsono told the Militant in concluding our interview. "Finally we will have a chance to voice our concerns."