Libcom.org Jan 4, 2010
In moments of occupation there is a
temporary freedom when the company
cannot operate, and the people have
to decide how best to use that
freedom.
Oil Palm: the ill-famed monoculture
converts the islands of South East
Asia into one big plantation, as
commodity capitalism continues its
troublesome advance over Indonesia and
Malaysia's rural areas. The rainforests
fall, to be replaced by oil-fields, as
in distant capitals politicians with their eyes shut proclaim a new green
biofuel, and thetrees keep falling. Yet the effects of the industry are not
limited to ecology. Where there is oil there is conflict, and that is true
for the oil that grows on the ground just as much as for the oil that is mined
from under it. In the Indonesian Province of North Sumatra, nearly every
oil palm plantation is a zone of friction. The palm trees are all planted
on stolen land, and farmers are desperately fighting to get their land back.
Sunday, November 22 2009: Around 20 people are in the bamboo shelter they
built, at the entrance to the oil palm plantation, at the edge of the land
which they are trying to reclaim. This 525 hectares of land belongs to
these people. They own the land title, and a Supreme Court ruling
confirmed that the land does indeed belongs to them. Nevertheless, the
discussion this afternoon is about the best way to continue with the
occupation of the land. There is no time to waste. Tomorrow will have to
be action day.
It's a serious discussion because there are deadly dangers: over the last
months the company has employed many armed thugs to work on their behalf,
as well as police and military and any occupation could quickly become a
bloodbath. And numbers are low - in the week since the first phase of
occupation started, not all affected farmers have been active in their
support. Since the last attempt to regain the land ended in eviction, it
has taken a long time to build up motivation again. Where is everyone? Do
they no longer believe it is possible to win?
Already it has been ever such a long battle. It started back in 1972, in
the grim early days of the Suharto dictatorship, when 525 hectares of land
was stolen from the farmers who worked it and given over to one of the
state-owned plantation companies, PTPN II. Their crops were destroyed,
their homes burnt to the ground.
The people complained, demanded compensation from PTPN II. They were
offered a tiny amount, and then only if they would surrender to the
company the right to work the land; otherwise they would be labelled as
communists. They refused, of course, but that was effectively the end of
the matter, because at that point in history there was nowhere to run once
such a label had been conferred. General Suharto had come to power seven
years before supported by the US and UK, and (apparently with the consent
of those two western powers), proceeded directly to slaughter at least
half a million members of the Indonesian Communist Party. His military
government kept the population living in terror for the next few decades,
that massacre an enduring threat looming over any who should contemplate
resistance.
Then in 1998 the economy collapsed, and the rebellion which had been
itching to break out for a few years was finally ignited. The uprising
quickly spread across the archipelago, and by and by Suharto had to go. In
the wake of his fall from power new movements blossomed throughout
Indonesia, as people everywhere seized the opportunity to readdress past
injustices and ride the euphoric wave toward a different future. In North
Sumatra, the many different communities that had been dispossessed from
their land started trying to get them back. Twenty-eight years working for
someone else in a factory or a plantation, or eking out a living selling
things on the streets, had not diminished the desire to be a farmer once
more. One of these communities was the rightful owners of the 525 hectares
that had become known as Persil IV, in Deli Serdang regency.
For the first several years the battle took place in the courts, but it
got nowhere. Or more properly put, nowhere concrete, for despite winning a
technical victory, the farmers did not get access to freely farm their
land. It is true, the decision of the Indonesian Supreme Court did uphold
the farmers' claim to land ownership. But when PTPN II appealed, the court
also conceded the plants that they had sown on that land belonged to the
company. By that point the whole area was under oil palm, the emerging new
wonder crop that promised to transform the Indonesian economy.
If the people own the land but the company owns the trees – who gets to
farm the land? The answer will not surprise many: whoever can wield the
most force. The company simply made a deal with the police, military and
local mafia to work together and the farmers were denied access to their
land once more. The crops they sowed between the palm trees, clearly
within their legal rights according to the court's decisions, were ripped
out of the ground.
The cold war ended and new wars started, but the pattern of repression
didn't change. Indonesia has not yet gone through a process of addressing
the massacres and genocides of the Suharto New Order Regime – too many
politicians and generals in power today were too deeply involved back
then. So Indonesian state companies can continue with impunity to reap a
profit from land stolen under the threat of mass murder. The violence of
the present draws its authority from the violence of the past.
In 2006 the farmers of Persil IV asked for support from students from
nearby universities, and together with them made the decision to shift
their focus away from the false hopes of the courtroom, where justice is
handed out to those with money and power, and towards direct action
instead. Land occupations had also taken place during the legal battle,
but now it became the main strategy to recover the land. A new, less
hierarchical organisation was formed, GerakanTani Persil IV Deli Serdang
(Persil IV Farmers' Movement) and eight students opted to live in the
community and on the occupied land, to support the struggle and as an
attempt to deter aggression from authority.
In 2007, people employed by PTPN II destroyed the crops that farmers had
planted between the palm trees. A few months later their field office was
also burnt down, in a moment when it was empty. Through such events the
farmers began to lose patience and there were several instances of open
confrontation.
But it was this momentum allowed for a longer lasting occupation to take
place towards the end of 2007 lasting into 2008. A wide range of crops
were planted: cocoa, chilli, corn, cassava and rubber, and some oil palm
trees were destroyed making a chaotically fertile liberated zone amidst
the sterile rows of oil palm monoculture.
In moments of occupation there is a temporary freedom when the company
cannot operate, and the people have to decide how best to use that
freedom. There was some disagreement on what to do with the oil palm
fruit. Part of the community were in favour of harvesting the company's
fruit, and selling it themselves. But another part of the community
resisted this tendency. They fervently believed that stealing this fruit
would only lead to dependency on the oil palm trees, and would therefore
weaken the militancy of the resistance.
This other camp believed that the way to beat PTPN II was to kill the palm
trees. Various methods were tried – they experimented with lighting fires
at the base of the palm trees, and this worked, but too slowly. Chainsaws
are very loud, it draws too much attention to use them. In the end they
reluctantly accept that using poison is the only viable way to kill trees
in sufficient numbers, but they experiment to choose a poison that will
not destroy the land after the trees are dead.
The 2008 occupation was eventually evicted by over 100 company thugs,
chasing away the people, burning their shacks once more and cutting down
the plants. Since that time there has been a high level of intimidation to
dissuade the people from trying anything new. Almost every night these
thugs would drive along the local roads on motorbikes, dragging their
swords along the road so that the loud scraping noise and a trail of red
sparks would scare people.
There have been several violent incidents in the course of the Persil IV
struggle. In 2003 Pak Jali was severely injured on both arms in a clash.
He had to remain in hospital for a month while his arms were filled with
metal and even now his movement is limited. In 2006 there was another
incident where police drove a tractor into a group of women who were
trying to defend their land.
These incidents are serious, but other villages fare even worse. In 2008,
in the neighbouring village of Bintang Bulan, Adi Surianto was killed
while being tortured by a policeman and company guard. PTPN II also
controls the land there. Just a few months ago in Kecamatan Salapian, just
the other side of Medan, a man was stabbed to death by a sword during a
clash on a land occupation. I asked the local human rights NGO about other
cases, they said that there were so many conflicts that it would be almost
impossible to track all the cases of violence, but there were many. It is
a war to be able to live as a farmer. Everybody knows the risks and still
they fight.
After more than a year without being able to maintain an occupation,
spirits had been starting to dwindle. Many of the students had to return
and finish their courses, and the level of repression on the land was
continuously high. Those who still had energy had to struggle to convince
the others that it was still worth fighting, but in the end people stuck
with it. The day of the occupation phase II over 100 people showed up to
take the land, and the company stayed away. But people now are not in the
mood for prolonged struggle any more. This time they have to win, and
people unanimously agree, the only way to do that is by militancy and
killing the oil palm as fast as possible. There have been so many
well-meaning attempts at advocacy, at courtroom battles, at peaceful
occupations, but the only case nearby where farmers have successfully got
their land back was when they went for all out war: faced the company down
with long swords whilst cutting down the palm trees. It is a dangerous
path to take, but the people of Persil IV see no other. They take the
land, defend themselves with bows and arrows and destroy the trees as fast
as possible.
According to someone who works on land conflicts in a Medan-based NGO, in
nearly every oil palm plantation in North Sumatra there is a community
that has been dispossessed and in nearly every case that community is
still struggling to get the land back again. Several land occupations are
ongoing at any one time and there are heavily armed police, military and
private thugs that defend the company's investments.
Some of the problems associated with the rapid spread of oil palm are
becoming increasingly well known outside of South East Asia, largely due
to the actions of some large international NGOs which draw attention to
the rapid destruction of the forests. They do also draw attention to human
rights abuses, but what sometimes escapes attention by the time the story
travels around the world is that these human rights abuses are in the
context of popular struggles for land. People across North Sumatra decided
back in 1998 to rise up and reclaim their land, and with much bravery and
resilience are resisting to the present day. They run great risks, but
consider it worthwhile in order to return to the relative security and
autonomy of a farmer's life.
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