Markus Junianto Sihaloho – Dozens of villagers from North Sumatra appealed on Wednesday to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to help them reclaim land that they claim was stolen from them.
The villagers, from the subdistrict of Sirandourung in Central Tapanuli district, held a peaceful rally in front of the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration in Jakarta.
They asked Yudhoyono to intervene after they claim their land was annexed by the subdistrict administration and a plantation company.
In a news conference at the offices of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), Rantinus, a Catholic priest and spokesman for the villagers, asked Yudhoyono to look into the claims of the 839 families.
"The government should protect us and guarantee that we will have our land returned to us," Rantinus said.
He said that since 1983 the families had been living in the area and cultivating 1,143 hectares of land, which they had been given a permit to as part of the government's transmigration program.
The dispute emerged in 2004 when PT Nauli Sawit announced plans to turn the land into a plantation. In June of that year, it began growing oil palms, without securing a permit from the local government or the villagers already working the land.
Nauli Sawit is believed to be owned by businessman Adelin Lis, who has been linked to illegal logging cases in North Sumatra and is wanted on suspicion of money laundering.
Another spokesman for the villagers, Ustadz Sodikin Lubis, said the head of Central Tapanuli, Tuani Lumbantobing, issued a permit to the company in December 2004 without compensating the villagers. He said the local legislative council declared the permit illegal and asked the police to investigate the district head, but no action was taken.
Usman Hamid, the coordinator of Kontras, said some villagers who opposed the company's operations had been subject to intimidation. He claimed that one villager, Partahian Simanungkalit, died after allegedly being tortured by company workers in December 2005.
He said the company brought 10 villagers to court for setting fire to the company's office in 2008. After several trials, which Usman described as "strange" because even the prosecutors could find no evidence for the indictment, the Central Tapanuli District Court and the North Sumatra High Court handed out jail terms.
"The judges failed to consider that no one witnessed the villagers burn the office," Usman said. "We filed a complaint with the Judicial Commission and asked that it investigate the judges."
Usman also asked Yudhoyono to honor his promise in 2008 to implement land reform. "If the president is serious about land reform, he must order the return of the land to the villagers or relocate them to new land," he said.