Jakarta – The Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) is demanding that the government sign the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People to ensure they are given the same rights as all other Indonesians.
Followers of indigenous belief systems, such as animism and other faiths predating the arrival of the six official religions here, face frequent discrimination in Indonesia.
The draft of the UN declaration, formulated in 1985, stipulates that indigenous people must not be forced to leave their land and that they must be allowed to practice their traditions.
The government of Indonesia supported the adoption of the declaration in the first assembly of the Human Rights Council in July 2006. But in the UN general assembly in December of the same year, the Indonesian delegation agreed to postpone discussion and revise the declaration's draft.
Secretary general of AMAN Abdon Nababan said that the government and the Indonesian delegation should unite at this year's UN general assembly, which will take place in New York, the United States, in September, and focus on the welfare of the indigenous people.
Abdon added that by signing the UN declaration, the government would create a basis for formulating a national law acknowledging the rights of indigenous peoples.
"It is difficult for indigenous people to become Indonesian citizens. The government usually mistreats indigenous people, such as by evicting us from our land," Abdon said during a press conference on Thursday.
He added that the law on forestry did not incorporate the rights of indigenous people, which resulted in land dispute cases and evictions. He said that most Indonesian indigenous people faced colonization of their regions by transmigrants, the exploitation of natural resources by others and were forced to embrace unfamiliar values. Abdon estimated that the number of Indonesian indigenous people ranged between 50 and 70 million.
"The state doesn't have any data on the population of Indonesian indigenous people because it only gives identity cards to people who have adhere to one of the big five religions, while we have our traditional religions. If this estimation is correct, it would be a large number. In other countries, the number of indigenous people is usually below a quarter of the population," he said.
Melania, a member of AMAN from the Tara Gahar Tajo Mosan indigenous community in Sikka, East Nusa Tenggara, said that her people were evicted from their land when the government decided to conserve forests in the region.
After being evicted, she said, her community was forced to plant cacao by the government. The monoculturing of cacao turned out to be a failure, which made her people suffer from food shortages.
"We have to eat the inner part of sugar palm logs because we don't have other food. As a result, the children are suffering digestive problems," she said.
Yorry Karisoh from the Tondanau indigenous community in North Sulawesi said that allowing indigenous people to maintain their traditional diets would solve food scarcity problems.
"Most indigenous people don't eat rice, they eat various kinds of tuber. So let them grow and eat edible tubers. That doesn't make us a poorer people. We become poor because we're evicted," Yorry said.
Yorry suggested that the government empower indigenous people with simple technology to process natural resources. He said that his area had several waterfalls, which could be used to produce electricity, but the local administration did not provide the indigenous people with the technology and preferred to wait for the state-owned electricity firm to build an electricity installation.
"The government wants to handle everything, but it is already proven that they can't. Why don't we share the burden?" Yorry said.