Oei Eng Goan – This isn't the 1959 courtroom drama "Anatomy of a Murder." It was a real life tragedy that befell farmers in the Mesuji area in South Sumatra and Lampung provinces, where tens of people were allegedly brutally murdered in two cases of land disputes earlier this year.

News about the killings enraged the public after they were reported by the Mesuji farmers to the House of Representatives last week. According to the farmers, security guards of the local plantation companies, along with police and military officials, had often intimidated them as part of the companies' efforts to evict villagers from their land.

The farmers said that acts of violence sporadically broke out and some 30 villagers were murdered between 2009 and last month. To convince lawmakers, they produced a video that showed a decapitated body being dragged by an unruly mob. Both the military and the National Police have denied the accusations.

The public questioned the true number of victims killed in the conflicts and the rightful ownership of the land being disputed between the villagers and the plantation companies, Sumber Wangi Alam and Barat Selatan Makmur Investindo, as well as the involvement of police and military officials in the bloody violence.

Local media had earlier reported that at least eight people were killed in the Mesuji land conflicts this year. The first one took place on April 21 in Mesuji village, Ogan Komering Ilir, South Sumatra, where seven people were killed, five of whom were employees of the SWA palm oil plantation company, and a dozen others were injured. The second one happened on Nov. 10 in Tanjung Raya, Mesuji, Lampung, killing a villager and injuring six others.

Regardless of the number of victims, one thing is sure: as was acknowledged by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), a gross violation of human rights did take place in Mesuji. The commission pointed to the fact that thousands of villagers in Mesuji areas are now living in tents after their houses were demolished by security officials on the pretext that the villagers had illegally occupied land owned by the plantation companies.

Anang Prihantoro, a member of the Lampung council, told tvOne on Saturday evening that what was shown in the video about the demolition was true – he had witnessed how the police's Mobile Brigade (Brimob) personnel helped company security guards dismantle the houses, forcing more than 5,000 people to become refugees in their own land.

"It is evident that the police were on the company's side and they opened fire straight to the angry crowds without giving a warning shot first," said Komnas HAM member Johnny Nelson Simanjuntak, who conducted an on-the-spot investigation in Mesuji.

The public expects that the fact-finding team, specially set up by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to study the anatomy of the bloody incidents, will come up with concrete solutions and answers to questions like: How can people who have lived for generations in Mesuji areas be driven from their homes? How can they be accused of poaching the harvest yields in their own farmlands? How could SWA, which reportedly owned or had a concession of 30,000 hectares of land during its initial operation, now claim to have the right to cultivate 45,000 hectares of land, and from whom did it get the extra land? Was there "lunch money" paid by the companies to local police officers, like Freeport did in Papua?

District and provincial officials should also be held responsible for failing to prevent the tragedy from happening given that the conflicts had been going for years.

Unless the hearts of the country's leadership were made of stone, they should certainly be moved by the heartbreaking lament expressed at the Komnas HAM building by a woman who was victim of the forced eviction in Mesuji: "Your children are still going to school, but my children don't even know when their next meal is goingto be."

The government must take immediate action to help and protect its marginalized citizens in Mesuji and in other regions across the nation where similar incidents are likely to occur.

[Oei Eng Goan, a former literature lecturer at National University (UNAS) in Jakarta, is a freelance journalist.]