[Diggers350] Article on current land reform movement in Indonesia

[ilyan]

What is this?   Is Ram out to totally discredit the Diggers list.?
The only reason to attack Elenor Roosevelt was that she hated  Fascists 
and racial segregataion.   We expect attacks on her from the Nazi ilk 
and from racist bogots.

If what Ram is saying is that there are no human rights only human 
duties he should say so, and advocate reducing the human population to 
what the Earth can support sustainably.    Those agents of Satan, the 
Sage of Omaha and Gates, are putting up 'charity' millions to maintain 
the growth in the human population that will ensure pollution will 
destroy Earth's ability to support Life.

It probably is too late for any of that already.    Manmade CO2 has 
warmed the Earth enough to start Methane being released from bogs and 
seabeds.    Methane is much  more efficient as a greenhouse gas and will 
feed back to greater releases to cause tempertures to increase to levels 
at which crops fail.

The population growth rate that indian economists boast will make them 
economic world leaders will put them well ahead in the race to the 
extinction of EarthLife.

*Even if the Lord's Resistance Army was able to wipe out 90% of the 
human population tomorrow the changes already underway might have 
already determined Mass Extinction of Life on  Earth.*

Read "The High Frontier" but it might be too later for that,
Regards
Ilyan



b
On 17/03/2012 14:16, Ram Selva wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> One of the issue is the definition of Human Rights has been so badly
> tarnished right from inception.
>
> Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted in 1948 with
> segregation in Alabama and apartheir in South Africa and what not,
> spearheaded by a socialite idiot, Elanor Roosevelt.
>
> The European nonsense (ie, contrained by the continental land mass - I
> never understood how the borders of Europe are defined in the first
> place), ECHR, that followed soon after is nothing better.
>
> Having written that ... yes I agree that land is a key right.
>
> Maybe we need to include bees and birds and flowers including humans
> and come up with the new definition -- Natural Rights (?)
>
> Ram
>
> On Thu, 15 Mar 2012 17:41:56 -0700, Colin Donoghue wrote:
> > Why can't people say the crucial words: *Land is a Human Right?*
> > Many
> > people, like the Indonesians highlighted in this article, understand
> > the
> > importance of land for justice and freedom, yet they don't hit on or
> > promote the crucial truth that can actually make that a reality:
> > claiming
> > your fair share of cost/tax-free land as your birthright. I don't
> > recall
> > ever hearing anyone in this group saying it either... what gives?
> > Clarity
> > and speficity are crucial for positive change to occur; I hope those
> > 5
> > words become a more commonly heard phrase, otherwise it will
> > basically just
> > be more of the same (i.e. empire).
> > -------------------------------
> > "Fighting for land"
> > (article with photos here:
> > http://boilingspot.blogspot.com/2012/03/fighting-for-land.html)
> >
> > Rural social movements have a rich history in Indonesia, and they
> > have
> > recorded significant achievements in recent years
> > Dianto Bachriadi | Inside Indonesia | 18 January 2012
> >
> > Jakarta, 1953: DN Aidit, one of the young and rising stars of the
> > Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) launches his analysis of Indonesian
> > agrarian society. He says agrarian revolution must be the essence of
> > the
> > people’s ‘democratic revolution’ in Indonesia. At the fifth party
> > congress
> > a year later, the PKI adopts Aidit’s analysis as the core of it new
> > agrarian program. The program calls on the party to build mass power
> > in
> > rural areas, and to make the struggle for land reform central to its
> > appeal, using the slogan ‘land to the peasants’.
> >
> > Twelve years later, Aidit is dead and the PKI is in tatters. A wave
> > of
> > killing has swept through rural parts of Indonesia, with the military
> > and
> > its allies targeting many of the cadres and activists who had been at
> > the
> > forefront of the PKI’s struggle for land reform. The New Order regime
> > which
> > comes to power, with the military at its core, sets in train a series
> > of
> > policies that aim to depoliticise the countryside, permanently
> > eliminate
> > the left, and proscribe independent organisation of the peasantry.
> >
> > Yet the repression of 1965-66, despite the intentions of Suharto and
> > his
> > comrades, did not negate the centrality of agrarian problems to
> > Indonesian
> > political life. Nor did it stamp out for all time rural social
> > movements.
> > The core problems that Aidit identified in his analysis in 1953 –
> > such as
> > landlessness and stark inequality in rural areas – have continued to
> > characterise much of rural Indonesia to the present day. As the New
> > Order
> > regime consolidated, it added new problems by opening up land to
> > commercial
> > agriculture and other business interests, displacing entire rural
> > communities. As the years and decades passed, and despite great
> > repression,
> > new movements of poor and dispossessed farmers erupted in many rural
> > parts
> > of Indonesia.
> >
> > Rural mobilisation accelerated further after the collapse of the New
> > Order
> > in 1998. Around the country, peasants occupied land that had been
> > taken
> > from them – or from their parents – over the preceding thirty years.
> > Peasant unions and other rural social movement organisations gained
> > thousands of members. Even though they are now fragmented and
> > localised in
> > their orientation, these groups have succeeded in once more putting
> > the
> > idea of agrarian reform onto the national political agenda. Aidit’s
> > dream
> > of agrarian revolution has not been realised, and perhaps it never
> > will,
> > but rural social movements are back as part of the Indonesian
> > political
> > landscape, and as part of the Indonesian left.
> > A tradition of rural radicalism
> >
> > When the PKI made its shift toward the countryside in the mid-1950s,
> > it
> > faced an uphill struggle. In 1953, less than seven per cent of
> > peasants
> > were organised. The PKI and its affiliate, BTI (Indonesian Peasants
> > Front),
> > began their work with moderate actions to help peasants improve their
> > livelihood and social and cultural life. Many poor farmers were
> > attracted
> > by these programs, and by the party’s vision of social justice.
> > Others were
> > driven into the arms of the party by the severity of rural poverty
> > and
> > inequalities in land ownership and control. Both the PKI and BTI grew
> > rapidly in rural areas. In 1955, BTI declared its membership had
> > reached 3
> > million and the PKI was placed fourth in the 1955 general election,
> > with
> > much of its vote garnered in the countryside.
> >
> > When a new share-tenancy law and the basic agrarian law were
> > promulgated in
> > 1960, the left gained another opportunity for rural mobilisation.
> > These
> > laws provided the PKI and BTI with a legal basis to escalate their
> > demands
> > for the destruction of feudalism. The BTI called for ‘land to the
> > tiller’,
> > and it campaigned for tenant farmers to receive a fairer share of the
> > crops
> > they produced (it wanted a 60:40 ratio in favour of tenants, or least
> > 50:50, in contrast to the the traditional 20:80 or 25:75 division in
> > favour
> > of landowners). By 1962 BTI had around 5 million members.
> >
> > When landowners and their allies in local governments resisted both
> > the new
> > share tenancy regulations and the land reform program, rural
> > radicalisation
> > was the result. The PKI launched a campaign targeting the ‘seven
> > village
> > devils’ (such figures as ‘wicked landlords’ and ‘blood-sucking
> > money-lenders’) and the BTI tried to lead a campaign of land
> > occupations by
> > poor farmers, the so-called ‘unilateral actions’ (aksi sepihak).
> >
> > But many of their opponents in the countryside were affiliated to
> > other big
> > political parties, including the PNI (Indonesian National Party) and
> > NU
> > (Awakening of the Islamic Scholars, a traditionalist Islamic
> > organisation).
> > The rural campaign thus compromised the PKI’s national-level
> > ‘political
> > front’ as part of its commitment to President Sukarno’s ‘Guided
> > Democracy’
> > regime, and the party called off its campaign.
> >
> > This was the background to the anti-communist massacres of 1965-66.
> > Rural
> > radicalisation prompted the PKI’s opponents to convert class-based
> > conflict
> > into religious-based confrontation: sympathisers of the left’s
> > agrarian
> > revolution were condemned as ‘atheist’ – a deadly political
> > stigmatisation.
> > These rural anti-communists provided many of the shock troops who in
> > 1965-66 carried out the killings of PKI and BTI supporters, in
> > cooperation
> > with the army. The New Order came to power. Mass-based rural
> > mobilisation
> > for radical social change suddenly ended.
> > Resisting developmentalism
> >
> > But the New Order did not permanently end rural upheaval. Its support
> > for
> > commercially-oriented ‘development projects’ caused massive land
> > dispossessions across the archipelago. Thousands of rural people
> > experienced brutal evictions from their land and sole source of
> > livelihood.
> > Often, they received terribly unfair compensation for their losses.
> > Serious
> > human rights abuses abounded.
> >
> > The regime’s repressive political control over rural life did not
> > stop
> > resistance by the victims of these policies. Beginning in the 1970s,
> > land
> > conflicts began to erupt, as local communities resisted
> > dispossession. The
> > conflict database compiled by the agrarian advocacy organisation KPA
> > (Consortium for Agrarian Reform) recorded more than 1,750 such land
> > conflicts during the New Order period. Komnas HAM (National
> > Commission for
> > Human Rights) has reported that since its establishment in 1993 land
> > conflicts have constituted the single largest category of complaints
> > it has
> > received.
> >
> > Political repression in rural areas, and the absence of press freedom
> > and
> > of independent peasant organisations, stacked the cards against local
> > protests against land evictions. Many of them would have flared and
> > died
> > without leaving a lasting legacy, were it not for the fact that, from
> > the
> > 1970s, critical urban-based middle class activists became anchors and
> > organisers for rural protest movements. Such activists articulated
> > local
> > concerns about land expropriation and rural human rights violations
> > to
> > national audiences, and they linked land protests to wider political
> > contention against the New Order regime.
> >
> > Thus, in the mid to late 1970s university student councils spoke out
> > against the brutality of forced land transfers. In the 1980s and
> > 1990s,
> > activists from NGOs and informal student groups organised themselves
> > into
> > action committees to campaign on numerous individual land conflicts
> > around
> > the country. Such groups in effect stood in for the absent peasant
> > organisations and political parties that might otherwise have
> > defended
> > farmers’ land rights.
> >
> > Then, in the 1990s, some youth activists with a leftist political
> > orientation – though without links to the old communist movement of
> > the
> > 1960s – tried to revive the left movement in rural areas. They tried
> > to
> > transform local instances of peasant resistance against land loss
> > into
> > autonomous local peasant organisations. These activists developed new
> > programs of political education for rural activists, and tried to
> > push the
> > orientation of peasant struggles beyond immediate goals of reclaiming
> > lost
> > land or gaining fair compensation. Many young leftists tried to
> > position
> > the peasants and rural masses once more as the pillar (soko guru) of
> > radical social change in Indonesia and they revived the idea of
> > agrarian
> > reform (pembaruan agrarian) as the central goal for rural social
> > movements.
> >
> > At the start of the 1990s, SPJB (The West Java Peasant’s Union) was
> > formed,
> > the first autonomous peasant union in the post-1965 authoritarian
> > era. It
> > was a coalition of urban-based activists and local peasant leaders in
> > land
> > conflict cases. The goal was that it would be a step in building a
> > national
> > peasant union. Next, a network of student and NGO activists centered
> > around
> > a string of cities stretching from North Sumatra to Central Java
> > (Asahan-Bandar Lampung-Bandung-Yogyakarta) formed several others
> > local
> > peasant unions. These included the Independent Peasant Union of
> > Central
> > Java (SPMJT), the Lampung Peasant Union (PITL), and the North Sumatra
> > Peasant Union (SPSU).
> >
> > This network, along with other student groups, NGOs and some leaders
> > of
> > local peasant groups committed to develop the embryo of independent
> > peasants’ organisation at the national level. In Lembang, West Java
> > in 1993
> > they declared the foundation of the Indonesian Peasant Organisation.
> > In the
> > same year in Central Java, some other radical left activists formed
> > STN
> > (The National Peasants Union) as part of their attempt to form a
> > broad
> > radical movement centered around their left political party, the PRD
> > (People’s Democratic Party).
> > Scaling up
> >
> > In short, despite sustained repression, violence and arrests, over
> > the long
> > term the New Order failed to prevent the re-emergence of movements
> > that
> > challenged its supremacy, including in rural areas. By the mid-1990s,
> > not
> > only were embryonic peasant unions emerging, but a new national
> > coalition,
> > the KPA (Consortium for Agrarian Reform) was formed (in 1994) with
> > its
> > central goal being the promotion of the long-neglected idea of
> > agrarian
> > reform.
> >
> >
> > When Suharto fell in 1998, formal restrictions on independent
> > organisation
> > ended and social movements of all types expanded rapidly. Effort to
> > build
> > national peasant organisations accelerated. The key initiative was
> > taken by
> > SPSU activists from North Sumatra and, in mid-1998, just a few weeks
> > after
> > Suharto resigned, a Federation of Indonesian Peasant Unions (FSPI)
> > was
> > formed. Within the next few years several other peasant organisations
> > –
> > such as API (Indonesian Famers Alliance), AGRA (Alliance of Movements
> > for
> > Agrarian Reform) and PETANI Mandiri (Self-Reliant Indonesian Peasant
> > and
> > Fisherfolks’ Movement) – were formed, and claimed a national
> > presence.
> >
> > However, these efforts did not consolidate a movement at the national
> > level
> > because the dynamics of peasant mobilisation were instead leading
> > toward
> > localisation. Moreover, these ‘national’ organisations competed with
> > each
> > other to claim the title of ‘representative of the Indonesian
> > peasants’.
> > Many local unions did not affiliate to just one national
> > organisation.
> > Instead, double or triple memberships were common, as a kind of
> > strategy
> > for local unions to multiply their links with national dynamics.
> > Democratisation and localisation
> >
> > Over the long term, one of the most important developments in peasant
> > movements has been the reappearance of a strategy of occupation of
> > contested land. Beginning in the 1980s and accelerating dramatically
> > after
> > 1998, throughout Indonesia numerous peasant groups have simply taken
> > over
> > and started to cultivate land they claim as their own. This strategy
> > of
> > direct action has similarities to that of the radical peasant
> > movements of
> > the 1960s. Unlike in the 1960s, however, peasants rarely target land
> > owned
> > by landowners who are themselves part of local rural communities.
> > Instead,
> > they occupy vacant state land – including state-forest lands – or
> > land that
> > is being used by plantation companies or other commercial operators.
> > Most
> > of them are reclaiming land they have previously been pushed out of,
> > but
> > some simply take over land they claim they need as part of their
> > economic
> > and social rights for a decent livelihood.
> >
> > Land occupations flourished above all in the context of weakening
> > state and
> > security force power after the fall of Suharto. Many groups of
> > farmers
> > reclaimed land that had been denied them by the New Order. Through
> > this
> > strategy, many local peasant organisations became stronger. They now
> > provided their members with control over the land they had long
> > craved, and
> > hence with a concrete material resource to defend. For instance,
> > local
> > peasant unions SPP (Pasundan Peasant Union) in West Java and STaB
> > (Bengkulu
> > Peasant Union) in Sumatra were each able to consolidate memberships
> > of
> > about 25 thousand peasant households and controlled around 20 to 30
> > thousand hectares of land that was legally part of large plantation
> > estates
> > or state forest.
> >
> > Their successful land occupations made these local organisations more
> > independent than previously. They now had greater bargaining power in
> > national coalitions and networks. National leaders began to
> > experience
> > difficulties in controlling them. A sense of a unified national
> > agrarian
> > movement began to break down. Meanwhile, the implementation of
> > decentralisation politics and the blossoming of local democracy drew
> > these
> > unions into local politics. Their mass memberships made them a
> > valuable
> > resource for mobilisation in local elections and they began to be
> > courted
> > by local elites.
> >
> > For the ordinary peasants who are part of such unions, participation
> > in
> > elections is above all a way to secure their control over land. They
> > hope
> > to back winners who will in turn recognise their claims to occupied
> > land,
> > even if securing formal title can be a lengthy, onerous and uncertain
> > process. For some union organisers and leaders, local elections are a
> > bridge for them personally to enter formal politics as candidates.
> > Others
> > try to become brokers in the ‘market of democracy’, selling their
> > capacity
> > mobilise voters to local politicians. Sometimes this engagement in
> > local
> > politics has led to positive consequences in terms of the security of
> > occupied land, and access to the local budget and policy-making if
> > the
> > candidate wins. But in many cases it has also led to the destruction
> > of
> > local unions because of contention among union activists and members.
> > A long and winding road
> >
> > While there has been some dramatic rural mobilisation at the local
> > level,
> > left-wing political parties have struggled to establish themselves at
> > the
> > centre or to link themselves to the new peasant unions and other
> > rural
> > activism. As a result, peasant movements have evolved in ways that
> > are not
> > connected to wider political struggles or to the contest for state
> > power.
> > They have developed in ways that make them localised and fragmented.
> >
> > Meanwhile, while local struggles to reclaim land lost in the New
> > Order
> > period have recorded considerable achievements, the ironic result of
> > such
> > successes is that many of the participants have lost their enthusiasm
> > for
> > yet more struggle. Many farmers simply want to be secure as they
> > return to
> > the agricultural production that has always been their goal, and they
> > want
> > to enjoy normal social life rather than engaging in perpetual
> > political
> > mobilisation. As a result, a gradual de-escalation of peasant
> > movements has
> > been occurring.
> >
> > Yet it has not all gone the peasants’ way in the post-1998 period.
> > State
> > policies have facilitated large-scale investment in land by
> > corporations,
> > and hence concentration of corporate control over large tracts of
> > land.
> > Land grabbing and dispossession is once again on the increase. Many
> > autonomous local governments do little to help, and are often
> > effectively
> > bought off by the corporate interests. Using the power of their
> > money,
> > plantation owners, miners and other business interests are able to
> > pay
> > police and civilian militias to evict local people. Patterns of
> > massive
> > land conflicts involving violence and human rights violations very
> > reminiscent of those witnessed under the New Order are occurring once
> > more.
> >
> > These conditions pose a challenge for the left. Indonesia has a rich
> > tradition of peasant mobilisation in defence of the interests of
> > landless
> > and marginalised rural people. It is time for yet another revival of
> > that
> > tradition.
> > Dianto Bachriadi (dianto.bachriadi at gmail.com 
> <mailto:dianto.bachriadi%40gmail.com>) is a researcher at the
> > Agrarian Resource Center (ARC), Bandung.
>
> 
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