R

ecently circulated video footage displaying brutal killings purportedly by security personnel in Lampung and South Sumatra have shocked the nation. Allegations of human rights abuses have been thrown at the government. The Jakarta Post’s Hasyim Widhiarto traveled to the provinces to investigate the cases. Here is the first of two reports:

Tugu Roda hamlet inside the so-called Register 45 area in Mesuji Regency, Lampung, is located in the middle of a deserted plantation area some 500 meters from the east lane of Sumatra’s busiest highway.

A line of makeshift tents have been set up since earlier this month to accommodate hundreds of Tugu Roda residents who were displaced in September after the authorities tore down their houses. The residents were allegedly occupying land belonging to plantation company PT Silva Inhutani Lampung.

The Mesuji area has come under the media spotlight after former army officer Maj. Gen. (ret.) Saurip Kadi, led a delegation of local residents to the House of Representatives’ legal affairs commission on Dec. 14, to show lawmakers a video that he claimed were of killings, including a beheading, in the area.

The Mesuji advocacy team claims that at least 32 people have been killed since 2008 in violence between Mesuji villagers and palm oil companies allegedly backed up by the police. The group alleges gross human rights violations committed by the authorities and law enforcement officials.

But based on the Post’s investigation at the scene, the claims may have been exaggerated, and suspicion is rife over the group’s real motives in publicizing the video footage of the killings, some of which was actually of an incident in Thailand.

The deadly incidents as reported by Saurip actually took place in three different areas, and were unrelated and involved different actors and causes.

The first killing occurred on Nov. 6, 2010 at Tugu Roda’s neighboring hamlet Pelita Jaya, where the police allegedly shot dead a villager resisting an eviction.

The second fatal incident occurred some 80 kilometers north of Tugu Roda on April 21, 2011, in a Sungai Sodong village in Mesuji district, Ogan Komering Illir, where seven people were killed — two allegedly shot dead by the police. Two of the victims were decapitated and filmed in this area.

The third incident occurred on Nov. 10 in Tanjung Raya district in Mesuji regency, located some 40 kilometers north of Tugu Roda, in which the police and the military allegedly shot dead one villager.

The clashes in Tugu Roda and Pelita Jaya were triggered by massive illegal land occupation by farmers, while those in Sungai Sodong and Tanjung Raya, were related to a long-standing dispute over land status between local farmers and plantation companies.

But how did a controversy over local incidents spread like wildfire to eventually stun the nation?

The answer may center on the Megou Pak tribe, an indigenous community from northern Lampung that is alleged to have illegally sold PT Silva’s idle land to outsiders, who then formed Tugu Roda and Pelita Jaya hamlets.

Megou Pak’s highest leader Wan Mauli Baheramsyah Sanggem said he and several of the tribe’s leaders first approached Saurip several months ago in support of their legal battle against Silva over the ownership of 9,600 hectares of sanctuary land in the Register 45 area.

He confirmed that they had never made any official contact or met with the residents of Tanjung Raya and Sungai Sodong.

“We are actually open to forming a joint-advocacy team with Sungai Sodong and Tanjung Raya residents but up to now no one from those two places has called or visited me to offer legal cooperation regarding our separate land disputes,” Mauli said.

Mohammad Ayub, a community leader in Tanjung Raya, said he did not know either Saurip or Mauli, saying the government’s fact-finding team led by Law and Human Rights Deputy Minister Denny Indrayana was the only one working with his community.

Mauli claimed he had no knowledge of the origin of the video presented by Saurip to lawmakers.

“But the video has opened the eyes of the public to the massive land conflicts in Mesuji,” he said.

Tugu Roda resident Ponidi, 33, one of the evicted villagers, however, provided another side to Mauli’s story. He said the Megou Pak community leaders had twisted crucial facts regarding the dispute.

“Not everyone appearing in the media or visiting high-ranking officials are the real victims of the land dispute. Many of them are members of the Megou Pak tribe who have been instructed by their leaders to mislead people about how those leaders have tricked newcomers into buying the land, which is legally owned by Silva,” he said.

Moving to the hamlet in 2009 from his hometown in Lampung Timur regency, Ponidi said he had sold his motorcycle and his family’s last 2,500 square meters of land to buy 10 hectares in Register 45 area from Effendi, a Megou Pak leader. He hoped to make a better life in the newly established Mesuji regency, which used to be a district under the administration of Tulang Bawang regency.

“The leader told me and other prospective buyers that the land they offered was part of the tribe’s sanctuary land, and by buying it we would be automatically considered as members of the tribe,” said Ponidi, who then built a wooden house and grew cassava in the land he bought for around Rp 80 million (US$8,729).

In less than a year, more and more people, mostly poor farmers from Lampung, Java and Bali, flocked to the hamlet, creating a community of more than 800 families.

These newcomers, who are mostly uneducated, bought the land at around Rp 5 million per hectare, and received a land gift (hibah) certificate signed by the Megou Pak community leaders.

However, most of them did not realize that such land transactions were illegal, until last year when the local authority repeatedly warned thousands of families living in a dozen hamlets in Silva’s plantation area to immediately move out, otherwise they would be evicted.

Most farmers thought the land gift letters were sufficient to allow them to stay on the land, and they could someday be converted into official land certificates.

“Our camp coordinators warned us to say nothing about the land sales to journalists or government officials who visited us,” said Warsidi (not his real name), 63, another Tugu Roda resident.

Warsidi spent his life savings to buy four hectares of land in the hamlet, also from a local community leader, two years ago.

The residents believe that the widely publicized incident was part of the tribe’s attempts to strengthen its bargaining power to force PT Silva to make over more of its idle land to the tribe, which will illegally sell it in stages to outsiders. Mauli denies the allegation, saying it was his job to reclaim part of the tribe’s sanctuary land which he believed had been illegally occupied by Silva since the late 1990s.

Mauli also refused to acknowledge complaints from poor farmers who feel deceived after spending their life savings to buy the disputed land from Megou Pak community leaders,

“Members of the Megou Pak tribe can give part of their land to other people as a gift, but is strongly prohibited to sell it,” said Mauli.

Silva estate manager Ahmad Safari said thousands of families had moved on to more than a quarter of the company’s 43,000-hectare plantation area during the past few years.

Overwhelmed by the situation, the company, according to Safari, had received support from Lampung governor Sjachroedin ZP, who formed last year a joint team consisting of officers from Lampung public order agency and Lampung police, to persuade the villagers, who claimed they were members of the Megou Pak tribe, to leave the area.

“After no progress in the persuasive approach, we had no option other than to evict these illegal farmers from our plantation area,” Safari said, denying allegations his company had used violence to intimidate the villagers.