Marianne Kearney – When members of East Kalimantan's timber mafia, or cukong, need some illegally logged timber smuggled through the province's forests and rivers, they usually contact Pemuda Pancasila, or another group of well-connected thugs for hire.
Often they do not even bother to buy illegally logged timber. Rather, they pay Pemuda Pancasila to organise a roadblock and redirect a truckload of timber to their mill. Employing a bit of muscle from Pemuda Pancasila or other groups, such as the United Region of East Kalimantan (PDKT), the cukongs are able to avoid paying for costly forestry licenses or tax on the logs, and obtain their timber at a fraction of the cost. No one dares oppose Pemuda Pancasila, a group once patronised and used by the leading Golkar party, or the boys from PDKT, which has high-level connections to East Kalimantan's politicians.
Another tactic deployed by these cukong and their thugs is to persuade village heads to hand over their small community forests for a small fee or in exchange for the party drug Ecstasy. This payment system fuels the villagers' dependence on the drug, and, therefore, their need to keep logging. At the same time it keeps them dirt poor, says Diah Rahardjo, a researcher for non-government groups.
One village which refused to accede to a logging company's overtures was attacked and all the residents fled, she says. The people of these villages have little recourse to the law or the local government because everyone, from the military to the local forestry department and the police, is involved in the logging and smuggling business, says Ms Diah.
Through a tidy system, stolen timber confiscated by forestry police is auctioned off at a low cost, then snapped up by representatives of the same cukong that arranged for the theft in the first place.
Other money-spinning businesses in East Kalimantan, such as illegal gold mining, have been snapped up by ethnic Banjar gangs of thugs, say local journalists. As the competition for timber, natural resources and land has intensified over the past few years, so too have the violent conflicts between communities, thugs for hire and members of the securities forces hired to protect companies, say observers such as Ms Diah.
Non-government groups say this is largely a result of regional autonomy. Since the central government is providing less funding to local governments, local elites, including parliamentarians, are focusing on making money wherever they can. "One problem is that those who are involved in the process of destroying forests are strategically well placed in government, or else they are party leaders, so they get protection from their party," says Edi Suprapto, from Arupa, a non-government group based in Central Java.
In Blora, central Java, at least one villager has been killed in a clash over logging rights. Last October, villagers clashed with forestry police after they were caught logging in a state-owned forest. Wiji, a 40-year-old farmer from Blora, was so badly beaten by the forestry police that he lapsed into a coma and died five days later. In the eyes of the state forestry company, the villagers are stealing the state's forest.
But Mr Edi says the villagers believe they have a right to that timber, as according to adat, or traditional law, the villagers living near a forest have the right to use it and the responsibility to protect it. "This is a historical problem because since the Dutch land rights were not clarified. The Dutch took over the land that, according to traditional laws, belonged to the villagers," says Mr Edi. The state forest company, Perhutani, argues that under Indonesian law, it owns this land and refuses to negotiate.
Watching their ancestral forests being destroyed with the backing of the local elite and corrupt police officers, the villagers reason that they, too, might as well take their share, according to Mr Edi. Clashes occur every month throughout the forests, with villagers often burning down the offices of Perhutani in retaliation for using the riot police to stop illegal logging. The villagers are well aware that these same troops, brought in to stop them stealing timber, are also involved in providing protection for the transport of illegally logged timber.
In a one-month period after the downfall of president Abdurrahman Wahid in 2001, when police and military were occupied elsewhere, local villagers took the opportunity to log at least a 1,000 hectares in a week, says Arupa.
The fight over natural resources has become equally brutal in other resource-rich regions, such as Riau on Sumatra, home to a Caltex oil refinery and dozens of paper and pulp companies. Last October, two security guards at a pulp and paper company were murdered during a demonstration by local villagers. The company had hoped the guards would stop theft of its timber. Security experts say they suspect that a local parliamentarian – whose logging business relied on timber stolen from the company – was behind the mob violence.
Other plantation and palm oil companies in Riau, who were given land at ridiculously low prices during the Suharto era, are in conflict with the original landowners, who are demanding compensation. But instead of negotiating with the landowners, many companies prefer to use force. "Companies often engage and hire preman [thugs] to protect their firms. These people are not concerned with human rights, have no training, and it's quite risky [dealing with them]," said one western security expert.
[Marianne Kearney is the Post's Jarkata correspondent.]