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| Members of the Central Kalimantan's Dayak tribe are saying that palm oil companies are encroaching on their ancestral lands. (Agency Photo) |
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Representatives
of the Dayak indigenous group from Central Kalimantan on Monday said their
ancestral land was being taken over by palm oil companies, becoming the latest
group to air such grievances.
The group,
from Seruyan district, met with a handful of legislators from the House of
Representatives’ Commission III, which oversees legal affairs, to make their
case.
Arkani, the
head of the tribe, said the Dayak people were fast losing their land to palm
oil plantations and that he and his people wanted the House to know what was
happening in his district.
Budi Yardi,
a member of the Seruyan legislative council who accompanied the Dayak
representatives at the hearing, said the practice of land-grabbing had been
occurring in the district since 1997, but had taken a turn for the worse in
2005.
To date, he
said, more than 50 palm oil companies had laid claim to 500,000 hectares of
disputed land there.
“There was
no coordination whatsoever with the local people when local authorities issued
permits for the plantations,” he said.
The Dayaks’
claim comes on the heels of allegations by villagers in Mesuji district, Lampung,
about deadly attacks against them by security forces acting at the behest of
palm oil companies there.
The Mesuji
villagers’ case has been championed by a former military officer, Maj. Gen.
(ret) Saurip Kadi, who also accompanied the Dayak representatives.
Syarifuddin
Sudding, a Commission III member from the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura),
said he would recommend that the government stop issuing plantation and mining
permits until all such land disputes were settled.
“If we want
to resolve the problem thoroughly, then the government must impose a moratorium
on these land-grabbing permits,” he said.
The final
decision, he said, could only be made during the next plenary meeting of the
commission, which is scheduled for next week.
Eva Kusuma
Sundari, a Commission III lawmaker from the Indonesian Democratic Party of
Struggle (PDI-P), agreed that the chronic problem of land disputes required an
immediate response and said legislators were trying to establish a House
special committee to look into the issue.
She added
that much of the support to date had come from the opposition PDI-P, with the
ruling Democratic Party continuing to reject the idea.
Separately,
Malik Haramain, a member of House Commission II, which oversees domestic
affairs, said his commission had set up a working committee to deal with the
cases. He added the committee would start calling in people to testify next
week.
The
committee will focus on examining five key cases, including Mesuji but not
Seruyan. The other cases center on similar land disputes in North Sumatra, West
Nusa Tenggara, Jambi and East Kalimantan.
Malik said
the committee planned to summon officials from the local police and
administrations, the Forestry Ministry and the Finance Ministry.
Land
disputes were the number one factor in rights abuse reports filed with the
National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) last year, accounting for 738
of the 4,502 reports.
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1 comment:
Nice blog, please put dark green text instead of light green. Thanks.
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