BY BOB AIKEN
BANDUNG, Indonesia - "We are landless people," Osid said.
"We used to own the land, but it has been taken from us by
the government." Today, peasants from six kampung [villages]
have joined forces to regain their land from a state-owned
coconut, cocoa, and cassava plantation located in the
Agrabinta district of West Java, around 125 miles southwest
of Bandung.
These reporters, accompanied by students from Bandung who are building solidarity with the fight, met with Osid and other peasants in Agrabinta June 21-22. The nine-hour trip by landrover, along roads that got rougher the further we went into the countryside, took us through miles of rice fields and then through huge plantations of tea, teak, mahogany, rubber, bananas, coconut, and cocoa, winding through many villages of peasants and plantation laborers.
On our arrival at kampung Bojong Terong, we were welcomed in a gathering of more than 20 people that quickly became a discussion on the peasants' fight and the harassment they face from the police. The next day we rose early to be given a guided tour of some of the disputed land, and to visit Ranca Gempol, a neighboring village involved in the struggle. The peasants spoke most fluently in the Sundanese language, native to millions in West Java, with translation to the official national language, Bahasa Indonesia, and English.
Disputes over the land go back to the early part of this century. Peasants clashed with "Dutch colonialism" in 1910, Osid explained, shortly after the plantation was established, and in 1946 the armed forces took some territory in the district. Then in 1982, Osid said, the state-owned plantation "seized the land that we were using as rice fields." Another peasant, Maol, said, "The plantation has robbed our land," expanding from 3,000 to 10,000 hectares (1 hectare = 2.47 acres) over the last 20 years.
This expropriation was backed up by the police and people hired by the plantation, who "burned our houses and poisoned our crops," Osid said, so that the peasants "became afraid to work the land." The plantation managers, who wear a military- style uniform like most public servants in Indonesia, "usually act like military officers," Maol added.
Some of the stolen land is rented back to the peasants to farm and, in the case of Ranca Gempol, for housing. Maol explained the land available for them to rent - surrounded by state-owned forestry and coconut plantations, and land taken by the military - is constantly shrinking. There are now about 100 hectares left that the peasant families "take turns renting," Osid said. They grow food crops, primarily rice and peanuts, for the market.
Struggle to survive on the land
A sharp rise in rent over the last year helped to spur the
peasants' protests, while other costs have soared over the
last couple of years as well, making it harder to break even
on a harvest. Each family can farm between two and five
patoks - a field of about 400 square meters - and even up to
10 depending on their ability to finance, with each patok
producing about 200 kilograms of rice in the six-month
growing season. Their rice is processed at a nearby mill, and
they receive 120,000 rupiah per 100 kilos, or about 100,000
Rp if the season is good, selling to local brokers. By
contrast, the minimum wage for factory workers in West Java
is 230,000 Rp a month, or about US$35 at current exchange
rates.
The peasants explained the care they have to take in allowing for the costs of hiring labor for tilling, planting, and weeding, including the costs of hiring a contractor with a mechanical cultivator to prepare the fields for planting. Many also work as wage laborers in the fields themselves for 7,000 Rp a day, including tending each other's crops, especially since rents have risen and the available land has shrunk.
In late April and early May, their land struggle burst into wider view with protests of more than 3,000 people. They were organized, we were told, into "17 groups of 100 men," along with the women, who played "a strong part in the actions."
The events began on April 29 with a protest in the major town of Cianjur, coinciding with a visit there by a delegation of peasants to the district chief, Rachman Santoso. On four occasions since August 1997, Maol said, Santoso had promised to visit and investigate the land dispute, but he had never appeared. To make the six-hour trip from Agrabinta to Cianjur, the peasants demanded, and got, the use of vehicles from the government-appointed village chief, the local police, and a neighboring state-owned forestry company. The local police escorted them to Cianjur, where they were met by more police, sent to intimidate them at the request, they believed, of the plantation management.
Under pressure, Santoso gave the peasants a hand-written letter giving them his authority to use the land, with legal guarantees to be issued "later." With this letter in hand, the peasants moved into action. Later they discovered the letter lacked an official stamp and therefore was of questionable legal validity.
On April 30, they cut down trees marking the border between their land and the plantation. In addition, to show "that the people had the power to struggle for their rights" as one peasant put it, they wrecked and burnt several plantation houses.
After police arrested 80 peasants April 30, a smaller group returned to the disputed land the following day and began felling trees again. This time the cops fired warning shots and pursued them back to the village, kicking in doors and searching people's houses. Another 40 people were arrested that day. The police were looking for specific activists, said Osid, even searching for one man in the ceiling of his house, and coming back the following day to pick him up.
One of the arrested peasants, Tadjudin, told us that he had been held for eight days. While he himself had not been beaten by the cops, he said, many others had been. Seven of those arrested over April 30 and May 1 remain in police custody in Cianjur, charged with destruction of state property and spreading hatred against the state.
Maol and Osid explained that the peasants have faced frequent harassment by the authorities since the protests. The cops have confiscated every motorcycle in Bojong Terong, claiming that they are not registered. Motorcycles are an essential means of transport along the rough roads and narrow paths of the countryside. The cops also patrol through the village late at night, banging on people's doors. Shelters that the farmers had built in their rice fields were burned down, and they had been stopped from grazing sheep and cows on plantation land.
The plantation management threatened to mobilize the plantation workers against them if they continued their fight, the peasants said. The plantation bosses have had some success in dividing the plantation workers from the peasant struggle by, for instance, promising retired employees the use of the land.
One of the difficulties they face is the physical isolation of these villages. No newspapers are available, we were told, and the nearest phone is two hours' drive away. Portable generators and car batteries power TV and radio sets. The only water available is drawn from wells. The peasants, like other working people in Indonesia, are moving to use the political space that has expanded after the resignation of the dictator Suharto last year. Maol explained how they took the district chief's April 29 letter to an official at the government agrarian institute. "We are determined to keep up the fight for our land," he said.