The price of palm - Part 2
The farmers of Lunkjuk village
By Jeff Conant, international forests campaigner, Friends of the Earth U.S.
This is part two of a three-part series. Read part one here.
The land grab in Penaago Village is being carried out in ways that slowly erode the villagers’ ability to maintain their livelihoods, and the land’s ability to maintain the villagers. In contrast, Lunjuk Village, a day’s drive to the east, faces a more acute threat.
We were welcomed by three dozen farmers representing the local farmers’ union. A forthright, muscular man named Osian Pak Pahan, head of the union, immediately launched into the threats facing the village.
“The first palm company here was charged with fraud. The Bank of Indonesia seized their assets and sold their license to a company called Sandabi Indal Lestari, or SIL. Now SIL is taking our land. The fact is, they have this license to operate, but the land they operate on is ours. They use police to intimidate us and take more land. Now there is oil palm everywhere.”
Pahan said SIL sells its oil to Wilmar Group, the big palm oil trader that recently burnished its image with a comprehensive new sustainability policy. I was pleased to learn this — it meant we could hold the company accountable. But Pahan wasn’t impressed.
“Wilmar’s is not the only broken commitment here,” he said. “Based on national law, the company cannot produce without a land permit. SIL is selling to Wilmar, which makes it illegal. But sadly, the government will always side with the company. SIL knows the government will never resolve the conflict. The company’s been here four years, and we want them to go.”
In past years, activist groups such as Walhi and international NGOs have taken a variety of steps to pressure Wilmar and other palm oil companies responsible for these human rights violations, as well as the investors behind the industry, and the efforts are gaining ground and attention. One palm oil activist, Rudi Putra, won the 2014 Goldman Environmental Prize, for his efforts to stop illegal plantations and restore the delicate ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.
I asked if we could visit the plantations, and before I knew it the three dozen farmers were on their feet, mounting motorbikes, and revving their engines to go.
After kicking up dust for miles, we stopped and Pahan lead me to an oil palm with yellow caution tape wrapped around the trunk, with the words in Indonesian, “Police line, do not cross.”
“These are our trees,” he said. “They are claiming our trees for the company, and forcing us off the land.” He nodded toward the police checkpoint. “They are BRIMOB, the military police.”
The BRIMOB, or mobile brigade, is notorious for engaging in violence in the service of the palm oil industry. In the neighboring province of Jambi last year a village called Sungai Beruang was ransacked by 700 armed BRIMOB soldiers, working with Wilmar Group’s security forces. Hundreds of men, women and children fled in panic into the forest to escape the guns and bulldozers. One man was confirmed killed and 40 are still missing. Other villages have suffered the same fate.
The farmers of Lunjuk Village know the same fate could befall them. They know, too, that Wilmar’s connections to the BRIMOB run all the way to the top. A article in the German magazine Der Spiegel noted that the family that owns Wilmar maintains a former general, a former attorney general and a former police chief on the boards of Wilmar’s sister companies.
“Sometimes the police go out into the plantations,” Pahan said, “and they prevent us from working. This is how the company has taken our rice paddy lands. This is how they took our peatlands, where the water comes from. This is how they made our rice paddies dry up.”
Several miles later we came to an area of low wooden houses set along the road. In the middle of a hamlet known as Minggir Sari a few dozen people had gathered in front of a rickety tin-roofed school building where I was introduced to the mayor, a slim, small man named Ruslan Hadi.
“There used to be 115 families here,” Hadi told me. “But SIL frightens people. Our wells have dried up; we have no more rice stores. People lost hope. More than half of us have left.”
I asked Mr. Hadi where they went, and he just shook his head. “Different places. People asked for compensation for their homes, but the company provides nothing. There are no government policies. Without food, without water, people can’t stay.”
Pahan chimed in. “For four years , we’ve been struggling. We’ve protested to the regional government and the central government. We’ve had public hearings. They’ve made promises but they always break them. Now we’re worried they’ll answer our protests by giving the company a permit.
A week earlier at a luxury hotel in Jakarta, our delegation had met with executives from Wilmar to raise concerns of illegality, and they gave proof to Pahan’s concern: don’t worry, they told us, we’re getting our permits. This is typical: if a company is caught in illegal activity, they don’t stop it – they get the government to legalize it.
Wilmar’s inattention to land grabbing cases had left us disappointed, but Walhi and Indonesian activists have a multi-pronged plan to expose illegal plantations while empowering communities to protect their lands.
“We are farmers, not farmworkers,” Pahan continued. “We do not work for SIL. We work for ourselves. This company is destroying our lives. We will not let this go any further — if the government issues a permit to this company, there will be violence. We are ready to risk our lives if this land is threatened. This place is all we have.”
Update: In September, two farmers in Lunjuk Village were arrested for harvesting palm oil trees they own, but which PT SIL claims. After protests, the farmers were released, but PT SIL forcefully displaced several families from their homes in Lunjuk and Minggir Sari, resulting in further escalation.
To learn more about PT SIL’s activities, visit BankTrack.org.
This article was originally published in an abbreviated form in the Friends of the Earth summer 2014 newsmagazine. Read parts one and three.
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