Jakarta, Ekuatorial — Land grabbing in Indonesia has yet to decline in Indonesia as people used food and energy resilience as their reasons.
Land grabbing are usually in the forms of eviction, unfair land trading, minimum compensation, and development.
“Companies are opening lands and forests with different ways to grab people’s rights,” said Andik Hardiyanto, director of Merdesa Institute, in Jakarta, Monday (1/12).
Dahniar Andriani, executive coordinator of HuMa (The Association for Community and Ecologically-based Law Reform), said that land grabbing also caused by not transparent in giving permits. In addition, the indifference and obscurity of indigenous people’s rights to their lands have contributed to land grabbing. “Ironically, it happens almost in every region in Indonesia,” said Andriani.
She said that land grabbing for plantation companies resulted to 147 conflicts, 80 conflicts from forestry companies, and 29 conflicts from agrarian companies. “There must be social-economy impacts identification [over those land conflicts],” she added.
Hardiyanto said land grabbing was considered as human rights issues and government should have protected people’s rights. He criticized on the stagnation to deal human rights violation related to land grabbing.
“Human rights policies have not been effective [to deal with land grab cases]. Many human rights violations are not considered for better policy making in land grabbing,” he said adding that national and international companies were allegedly contributing to land grabs.
Sony Partono, director general of forest protection and natural conservation, Ministry of Environment and Forestry, agreed on current mode of operation from companies. Partono said that he met employees approaching local people using their traditional clothes. It was meant to earn acceptance from its elderly.
“If the chief had accepted, anything can happen, especially land grab,” he said adding that land grabbing was not about taking away people’s rights over their lands, but also their source of livelihood, economy, and social culture.
He added his office will try to minimize the issue as Siti Nurbaya, Minister of Environment and Forestry, has policy for people’s empowerment. “Our ministry aim is on the right track, the minister had also implemented moratorium on [forestry] permit to limit land opening,” he said adding they will be more open to critics and inputs on the issue. Januar Hakam