Jakarta – Scores of farmers were arrested and 11 were missing from villages in Indonesia's West Java province after a protest over a land dispute, a rights group said Friday.

Relatives of the missing farmers in the Agrabinta sub-district said the men disappeared after a protest on April 30, a member of the Legal Aid Council (LBH) in the province's main city of Bandung said.

"Wives, mothers and in-laws came here for help to find out where their relatives were," Suherman Iskandar of the Bandung LBH told AFP by phone.

"These women are afraid to go to the police and report their relative's disappearances, after what happened in their villages," Suherman added.

Some family members of the 85 men arrested by police said they had to pay local officials to have their relatives released.

"A woman said she had to pay 150,000 rupiah (about 19 dollars) for her husband's release. And another said she had to pay up if she did not want her husband arrested," Suherman said. Police have released all but seven men.

The farmers were protesting against a private plantation company they claim had taken over their land. Kompas daily reported that extortion linked to the takeover ranged as high as 800,000 rupiah.

Farmers have begun speaking out over land rights after the fall last year of president Suharto, whose regime cracked down harshly on public protests.