Vaudine England – Up the Mahakam River in East Kalimantan, hundreds of Dayak farmers have been occupying the base camp of an oil-palm plantation company since November.

Now two of their number are detained by local police and several have gone missing.

The company arrived in 1996 as part of a plantation expansion project supported by the International Monetary Fund.

"Indonesian national policy sees the land as empty," says Niel Makinuddin, of the Institute for Environment and People Empowerment. "But the land is not empty – it is full of indigenous Dayaks who are the natural protectors and managers of the forest.

"Its produce is their savings in the bank – it is the collateral for their future."

In the district of Jempang, Kutai, upriver from Samarinda, huge fires were lit in 1996 to clear the land.

"Lots of protests were lodged but there was no response as usual," Mr Makinuddin said. "So by mid-1998, people were very angry. They decided to occupy the base camp and confiscate the company's equipment to force some negotiations. But still there was no response."

Matters came to a head in February when two village elders made the long journey to Jakarta to discover, at the ministries of agriculture and of forestry, that various company operations in their area were not yet legal.

Then on April 24, two community representatives were "kidnapped". A deputation to the local police post was eventually allowed to see the two men at a distance, one of them the apparent victim of beatings. They are still detained. On May 7, mobile police arrived at the base camp, disrupted a traditional ceremony and arrested seven people. Four remain missing.