Rights commission proposes agrarian dispute committee

Rights commission proposes agrarian dispute committee

A. Junaidi, Jakarta

The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) and a number
of non-governmental organizations (NGO) suggested on Tuesday that
a national commission to deal with agrarian conflicts be set up.

"We will soon meet with President Megawati Soekarnoputri to
convince her of the urgency of this commission," Komnas HAM
member Amidhan told reporters after a seminar on the need for an
agrarian disputes resolution commission.

Amidhan acknowledged that Komnas HAM was unable to settle land
disputes across the country due to its lack of expertise, staff
and powers.

He said the new commission, if established, would need to be
an independent body with retroactive authority.

The rights body and the NGOs, including the Indonesian Forum
for the Environment (Walhi), the Agrarian Reform Consortium
(KPA), the Ecology and Community-based Law Reform (HuMA) group,
and Bina Desa, have drafted a presidential decree on the
establishment of the commission.

The draft, which consists of 15 articles, stipulates that the
commission would be entitled to resolve land disputes dating back
as far as 1967.

It also provides that the commission must set up an agrarian
court to resolve land disputes fairly within one year after the
submission of the case.

Syaiful Bahari of Bina Desa said conflicts between farmers
attempting to reclaim land that had once been theirs and was now
being used for plantations, and the companies that claimed
ownership of the plantations, would become a major problem in the
future.

"If fair solutions are not find, conflicts will erupt in the
near future. The commission should be made responsible for
dealing with this problem," Syaiful said.

Rikardo Simarmata of HuMA said the proposed commission, like
Komnas HAM, should be allowed to take up cases that arose before
the law was enacted as many land conflicts between members of the
public and the state had their roots in what happened in the
past, especially after 1967.

"During our discussions, many suggested that the commission be
empowered to handle cases occurring even before 1967. However,
based on our data, most of the cases arose from 1967 onward,"
Rikardo said.

During the era of the country's first president, Sukarno, in
the 1960s, many poor farmers across the country were awarded
grants of state land under the land reform program.

After 1966 and the rise of the New Order regime under
president Soeharto, a lot of land was forcibly confiscated by
military officers and reclassified as state plantation land.

The fall of Soeharto in 1998 did little to reduce the number
of land disputes between poor farmers and companies backed by the
state.

Over the past two years, Komnas HAM has recorded many human
rights violations involving land disputes across the country,
including major outbreaks of agrarian strife in Bulukumba, South
Sulawesi, Garut in West Java and Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara.

Since the onset of the economic crisis in 1997, thousands of
squatters have been evicted for illegally occupying vacant land.