Farmers plan to hold nationwide protest

JAKARTA (JP): Some one million farmers plan to stage a mass protest simultaneously in 11 cities on Monday to demand agrarian reform.

The protest is aimed at urging the People's Consultative Assembly's Ad Hoc Commission II on non-Constitutional Amendments to include agrarian reform as part of the agenda for the upcoming Assembly general session in August.

Muslich Ismail, the head of the Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA), acknowledged that the group is coordinating the mass protest.

Muslich claimed that the commission has gone back on its earlier pledge last year to take up the issue.

"We found out about it from our sources in the Assembly's secretariat general. They claim that the issue is too technical as there are already regulations about agrarian issues," he told reporters on Tuesday.

"So don't blame the farmers if they stage a protest," he asserted.

The 11 cities where protests are planned are: Jakarta; Padang, West Sumatra; Lampung; Bandung, West Java; Salatiga and Semarang in Central Java; Surabaya, East Java; Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara; Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan; Samarinda, East Kalimantan and Makassar, South Sulawesi.

Muslich pointed out that the issue of agrarian reform is very important as it touches the lives of up to 70 percent of the country's total population of over 200 million people.

The existing 1960 Agrarian Law needs to be revised as it only benefits investors and the business community, Muslich argued.

"Many farmers don't even have their own land and are poor. And what about communities who are still practicing traditional law? Their rights to own land need to be respected too as they have taken care of their forests and plantations," Muslich added.(09)