Palm oil conflicts in Indonesia are festering due to a lack of resolution mechanisms

According to a new report, Indonesia has no viable mechanism for addressing its epidemic of land conflicts between rural communities and palm oil firms.

Although Indonesia is the world's leading producer of palm oil, the industry's rapid growth has driven deforestation and accusations of land grabbing across the archipelago nation.

The study, which was conducted by Dutch and Indonesian academics in partnership with six Indonesian non-governmental organisations, is hailed as the first systematic documentation of a large number of land conflicts in the Southeast Asian country.

Researchers looked at 150 cases in four provinces — Riau, West Sumatra, West Kalimantan, and Central Kalimantan — that were chosen at random from a list of 554 incidents based on media and government reports from the previous decade.
They interviewed community members from each of the 150 cases, travelling to the afflicted areas in some cases to meet sources in person.

They discovered that existing channels for resolving conflict between villagers and plantation companies — such as informal mediation facilitated by local authorities, the courts, and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil — "fail to produce meaningful results for the affected communities" in most cases.

These processes seldom resolved disagreements, and when they did, it took an average of nine years.

In approximately 70% of the conflicts analysed, communities reported that they had not or had only just about succeeded in resolving their issues.
For an average of 11 years, these cases had been ongoing.

Communities often resort to organising demonstrations when they have no other option for redress.
According to the report, they usually take the shape of peaceful protests in front of government facilities, occasionally evolving into more aggressive acts such as land occupations and blockades in or near plantations.

"However, road blockades are typically brief, land occupations are rarely sustained, and we could find relatively few incidents of violence perpetrated by community actors," wrote the researchers from Indonesia's Andalas University and the Netherlands' KITLV Leiden and Wageningen University & Research.

"The majority of the violence we documented... was committed by either the police or security forces hired by palm oil corporations."

According to the report, 243 people were hurt and 19 died as a result of the 150 cases.

According to the researchers, "at least 30 rallies or blockades" were greeted with a violent response from security forces or local enforcers acting on behalf of the corporation.
They also discovered 55 incidences of violence that occurred outside of protests, such as when police "visited communities with the intent of intimidating residents."

Protest leaders are regularly "criminalised," or arrested and imprisoned on bogus accusations, according to the academics.
According to the report, community members were detained in 42 percent of the incidents, totaling 798 arrests, with many of the accusations being "fabricated or at least hyped up."

"In light of these data, we infer that the political rights of Indonesians affected by the expansion of palm oil plantations are being curtailed, particularly the right to peaceful protest," the report concludes.

"More efforts are needed to investigate (police) abuse and guarantee that crucial community leaders are not criminalised in order to defend these rights."