Villagers in Riau province who fenced themselves in on ancestral land to back a compensation claim against Riau Andalan Paper and Pulp Company were driven from the area when heavily-armed forces of Brimob (Mobile Brigade), the special forces of the Indonesian police, attacked them with smoke bombs and tear-gas. Several villagers were wounded and hospitalised while others complained of being hit by bullets.
According to the Jakarta weekly, TIRAS (8 December 1997), the unprovoked attack has shattered the hopes of the more than four hundred families living in Delik Village, sub-district Ppangkalan Bunut in the district of Kampar, to obtain compensation from the company for their ancestral land.
Riau Andalan Paper and Pulp Company is owned by APRIL, the Indonesian conglomerate which recently created an alliance with the leading Finnish paper manufactuers, UPM-Kyemmene, for the construction of a paper mill close to the company's pulp mill. The contract which is to be finalised in the next few days has aroused widespread controversy in Finland, where a number of environmental and human rights organisations have called on the Finnish company to withdraw from the contract unless strict conditions protecting the local people are written into the deal.
Two days after Carmel Budiardjo of TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign, met UPM-Kymmene Vice-President for Environmental Affairs, Mr Hannu Nilsen, during a visit to Helsinki, she renewed her call on the Finnish company to withdraw from the deal.
'Mr Nilsen assured me that his company takes responsibility for the entire production process from the tree in the forest to the paper in the shop. It cannot therefore turn a blind eye to this blatant abuse of the local people's rights to compensation and the violence used against defenceless villagers by heavily armed crack troops of the Indonesian police force.'
During their meeting on Friday, Budiardjo warned the company that local communities are vulnerable to intense pressure from local authorities to surrender their land and could face violence from the security forces if they desist.
The villagers are contesting plans by PT RAAP to build a 25- kilometre road linking their pulp mill to an industrial timber estate in Pelalawan which cuts through ancestral land owned by the villagers.
In May this year, the villagers reached agreement with the company for payment of compensation. But doubts that the company would pay up grew when it became clear that compensation promised in 1993 for nearly two thousand hectares of land would never be paid. That land has already been used for the construction of company buildings. The company's failure to pay up has been raised on three occasions by Indonesia's National Human Rights Commission, but to no avail. The villagers now feel, with justification, that they do not want to be cheated a second time by the company.
A week before crack troops attacked the villagers, PT RAAP announced that it would no longer honour the earlier compensation deal. In a letter dated 15 October 1997 from company director, P. Daritan, the company argued that compensation was not called for as it had now obtained the necessary permit for erecting company premises on land owned by the villagers, thanks to a recommendation from the district chief and a permit from the local forestry office.