Jakarta – President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has a few tough decisions ahead of him in the wake of a recent spate of land disputes involving the Indonesian Military (TNI) and civilians.
"The president, as the head of state, must decide who will have the land," Isono Sadoko from the Akatiga Foundation told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
Akatiga is a non-governmental organization that specializes in social analysis at which Isono is a researcher.
He said that according to the 1960 Agrarian Law, the state has the right to manage land for the benefit of the Indonesian people. He added that the state must choose between defending the rights of civilians or the military in the case of the current land disputes.
Isono explained that the Indonesian government had committed a major error early on in its agrarian history by allowing the military to confiscate tracts of land held by the Dutch colonial administration in the early years of independence.
He added that even though the civilian government under President Soekarno did not agree to those measures, the government nonetheless failed to determine the true ownership status of the acquired land.
He added that not all the land claimed by the military has been put to use. In many areas, the military land had been left unoccupied, which led to the surrounding communities resettling on it. This eventually led to disputes between the military and civilians.
This situation, he said, has persisted for decades because of the lack of synchronized regulations on land ownership.
"If we refer to the Agrarian Law, it is the people who deserve to own the land. But the military has also claimed the land and recorded it as their asset. The National Land Agency (BPN) must map out all of the military-claimed land and check its status," Isono said.
National Land Agency chief Joyo Winoto said that each allotment of contended land had a unique history and that his office would map all military-claimed land to highlight the areas under dispute.
To land with unclear ownership status, he said, BPN would apply an agrarian reform program.
"We can't just make the military relocate to other plots of land in more secluded areas. We have to look at the problem and the context of each piece of land," Joyo said Wednesday at a press conference on the BPN plan to map TNI land.
Isono said simply reallocating land to the military would not solve the current disputes. Instead, the state must unearth the history of the land to achieve a sense of justice for the people. "If the land was owned by poor people, unless the state has a higher purpose for it, the state should give it back," he said.
Maj. Gen. Abi Kusno, logistical affairs assistant to the TNI chief of staff on general affairs, said the military had more than 3.76 billion square meters of land spread through 12,600 plots, but that only 14 percent of it was certified.
He said that the Rp 3 billion (US$333,333) allocated in the 2007 state budget for the military land certification program was insufficient to process the remaining 3.2 billion square meters of uncertified land.
"This land is located all across Indonesia. If any of it were adjacent to other people's land, it would have the potential for conflict," Abi told the press conference.
Joyo suggested that the government allocate more funds to certify state and military-claimed land through the BPN certification program. "Our office program will facilitate the certification process," he said.