4.4.2 Land disputes in Riau - APRIL in the focus

There are continuously tens of acute land disputes between local communities and plantations companies (mainly oil palm business) taking place all around Riau, each covering hundreds or thousands of hectares. As Indonesian society is currently moving away from "the new order" regime, land control disputes are gaining more attention. Many problems Indonesian society is facing are a central part of issues concerning control of land. Which party will decide about the use of natural resources? Central government, local government, the army or Riau inhabitants? Whose interest are the companies rushing to Riau serving? Is the concept of "development" that central government is promoting beneficial or detrimental for ordinary people?

Land use of Indonesia is based on so-called land use by consensus (abbreviation TGHK). It regulates the use of government owned land, which includes nearly all land. The ministry of forest controls use of forestland. Land use in the official sense means still in most cases rights for companies to exploit an area, such as logging or plantation concessions for forest companies. Negotiations about the use of land areas are normally held between companies and government. Overall limits are decided by the central government, but in the case of single concessions also local government has power. Renting of the areas is not a great business for the official budget, but the corrupted elite that decides over the land leases gets richer from the bribes by companies. One player in this game are the leaders of the armed forces, who grant themselves concessions or join the companies. The army has a role also in protecting the results of this "decision process" in case any conflicts arise between companies and previous users of the land. Land use by consensus is thus mainly a consensus between short sighted extraction policy of natural resources by companies and elite and more long term land use planning. Unfortunately the end result is much closer to previous option and unsustainable at bottom.

In areas outside Java, where population density is low, such as Riau, previous users of land are ignored in decision making process. Their right to use traditional land is not recognised or taken into account. When companies start to exploit areas they have received fully "legitimately" from the government, conflict between old and new land users is born. In these cases locals are in a weak position and often accused of being "illegal land speculators" as APRIL puts it (APRIL Dec. 17, 1997).

The concession areas of APRIL are not an exception of the problems described above. In fact APRIL is well known in Riau for its exceptionally indifferent attitude to locals claims. The company is in a sense regarded as a symbol of land disputes between locals and large companies in Riau. An estimation of the scope of problems can be found in a study ordered by APRIL, conducted by SGS certifier. The study states that of the concession area under estimation (164 165 ha, all concession areas in Riau nearly 300 000 ha) a third (53 705 ha) is or has been object of land disputes. A fourth (41 609 ha) of the estimated area was an object of unresolved disputes. Rest of the disputes had been solved, mainly by giving loans to villages so that they could grow oil palm for APRIL subsidiary Indosawit and by paying financial compensations. The report is not covering all land disputes even in the estimated area (e.g. about 2000 ha of lands of Lubuk Jambi in sector Cerenti) and does not seem to be reliable when making social assessments. The real area under dispute may well be much higher. (SGS 1998)

APRIL's operations are based on grabbing of local communities' land because a major part of its concessions has already long time been used by locals. If APRIL would really respect local communities' land use rights even for the part of cultivated land, its concessions would diminish so much that their feasibility from the point of view of the company would be minimal.

Read more about the following cases:

Delik, Sering and Kerinci - The history of the land dispute in the site of RAPP factories
Lubuk Jambi - Land disputes culminate to stabbing by RAPP
Indorayon - media coverage on the problemacy