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The
Constitutional Court approved on Monday a request to drop two articles in the
2004 Law on Plantations deemed potentially discriminatory against indigenous
farmers in land disputes.
The request
was originally filed by four farmers from West Kalimantan, East Java and North
Sumatra.
Each farmer
had received jail terms of between six months and a year under Article 21 of
the 2004 law for protest actions they took to reclaim ancestral lands.
The article
prohibits any efforts to damage plantations or other assets, any use of
plantation land without permission and any other action that disturbs
plantation businesses.
The
punishment for violating the law is a maximum jail term of five years and a
fine of up to Rp 5 billion ($565,000).
The
plaintiffs were Sakri, a 41-year-old farmer from Blitar, East Java; Japin, 39,
and Vitalis Andi, 30, from Ketapang, West Kalimantan; and Ngatimin, 49, from
Serdang Bedagai, North Sumatra.
Chief
Justice Mahfud M.D. ruled that the two articles were unconstitutional and no
longer binding. He said land conflicts between indigenous farmers and
non-indigenous populations should be settled through the civil court system or
by mediation.
Wahyu
Wagiman from the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam), who
represented the plaintiffs, welcomed the ruling as a relief to more than 600
traditional communities in the country that were threatened by the law.
“Our next
step is to spread the word as wide as possible and to find a way to release
farmers currently charged under Articles 21 and 47, including Japin, Vitalis
and Ngatimin,” Wahyu said.
Japin and
Vitalis each served 10 months in jail for “displacing” an excavator that was
about to be used to clear land they were contesting in 2009.
The pair
filed an appeal in March. Ngatimin was sentenced to one year in jail for
planting trees in a disputed area in an effort to reclaim it in 2007.
“The ruling
can be presented as new evidence at the Supreme Court, which is now reviewing
their cases,” Wahyu said.
Sakri
already served six months of probation in 2008 for forcefully trying to reclaim
land.
The judges
agreed the law had ignored the historical context of land ownership in
Indonesia.
“The wide
variety of land disputes should be solved thoroughly by involving NGOs and
academics, and this is not reflected by Article 21,” Judge Achmad Sodiki told
the court.
The law was
widely criticized when it was passed for failing to protect the interests of
small-scale farmers and indigenous communities and for giving big business too
much power.
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