The move by some 4,000 Indonesian villagers to sue the Japanese government and its aid agencies over losses caused by the Kota Panjang dam is a sad repeat of earlier fiascos that, when the dam was first envisaged, were not supposed to happen.
When the dam project got under way in 1989, Japanese officials made much noise about making sure there would be no return to the ways of the scandal-ridden Kedung Ombo dam project in Central Java.
Kedung Ombo, near Boyolali in Central Java, was a hot issue through the '80s and remains something of a cause even today, with many residents continuing to claim that they never received proper compensation for their land, despite court cases that found in their favor.
Constrained by the overwhelming power of the Suharto regime, protesting villagers at Kedung Ombo found themselves branded as former communists, but still maintained a struggle for their rights backed by students and the late Father Mangun Widjaya.
At Koto Panjang, villagers allege that while 30 billion yen went to Japanese contractors and the Suharto family, residents were deprived of their homes and means of making a living, and a huge amount of debt has been placed on the shoulders of Indonesian people.
Sources close to the Japanese government say Tokyo is alarmed by the pressure from the villagers and is telling Jakarta to fix the problem. "The plan was fine, but the implementation went wrong," says one Japanese official in Jakarta."It appears to us that a lot of money was filtered off at local government level, just as at Kedung Ombo.
The 3,861 villagers are demanding $165 million in compensation for losses from Tokyo Electric Power Services, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) as well as the Japanese government."Local residents have not received adequate compensation," said Fumio Asano, a Japanese lawyer representing the group, Agence France-Presse reported.
Up to 23,000 people were forcibly resettled or lost part of their land during the dam construction process and when waters backed up behind it.
Construction of the 31.2 billion yen hydropower dam located in central Sumatra was completed in 1997, led by the government-run JBIC. Villagers say that land they were given in exchange for their flooded land was not suitable for farming and compensation levels for their rubber and palm oil trees were ridiculously low.
Indonesian lawyers said similar suits would be mounted against the Indonesian government.
The villagers are demanding five million yen ($42,430) each in compensation. Another 1,000 people are expected to join the class action suit.
Japanese supporters, including scholars and citizens' movement activists, say they believe the case presents the opportunity to put a strong spotlight on the use of Japan's official aid.