Protecting Our Mother’s Land: The Fight for Environmental Protection in Indonesia
Or the stories of how women become the frontliners in the fight for their communities
The people of Mollo, East Nusa Tenggara, has a saying that goes:
Oel nam nes on na, nasi nam nes on nak nafu, naijan nam nes on sisi, fatu nam nes on nuif: “Water is blood, forest is hair, soil is flesh, stone is bone.”
Indonesia is standing at a very important juncture of environmental protection. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, massive protest have erupted in Jakarta on October 2020. These protesters took to the streets in anger directed towards the controversial Omnibus Law, which was newly ratified despite continuous rejections and protest from various civil groups.
The law, which comes into effect since November 2020, was especially opposed by activists and environmental NGOs such as Walhi and Mongabay because of its destructive impact towards environmental protection and Eco-activism.
Our Mother’s Land, created by Mongabay and the Gecko Project, features journalist Febriana Firdaus following a collection of stories of how various communities rise up against companies seeking control of resources in their land. Febriana visited several women who have become the figurehead of a new wave of grassroots female activists fighting to protect land rights and the environment.
The movie specifically highlighted three different struggles faced in Kendeng, East Java; Banggai, Central Sulawesi; and Mollo, East Nusa Tenggara. The stories run as a retrospective reflection of how these women coped with what happened after the spotlight had moved from them.
Cementing their resolution: The Nine Kartinis of Kendeng, East Java
In Our Mother’s Land, the story starts with Febriana Firdaus visiting a beautiful stretch of Hill in Kendeng, East Java. There she met with Sukinah, the leader of the group dubbed as the “the nine Kartinis of Kendeng” — Based on the name Kartini, a prominent feminist and national heroine. Her movement starts in 2014, when a state-owned cement company, PT Semen Indonesia, was in the middle of their plan to mine the karst in Kendeng. Unbeknownst to the villagers, Two years earlier, the governor of Central Java, Bibit Waluyo, had issued an environmental license to the company.
The karst was crucial for maintaining a steady supply of water to the surrounding region. The provincial government had prioritised mining the limestone, threatening to significantly reduce and pollute the water supply of the local community.
By April 2016, Sukinah and the other women had been staging protests outside the gates of the factory for almost two years. Out of desperation and frustration towards the government negligence of their protest, Sukinah and her friends decided to travel to the heart of the government, Jakarta. Outside the presidential palace, under the scorching heat of Jakarta, the Nine Kartinis of Kendeng sat in chairs and planted their feet in cement. The President finally agreed to meet the Kartinis and promised to stop the factory’s operation in Kendeng.
However, after several years of protests and legal battles in court, East Java Governor, Ganjar Pranowo, went against the central government’s demand and decided the mining operation is not harmful to the land. Today, Sukinah and her group still seeks to fight the cement factory in order to prevent further damage to her land.
From Jails to the Mountains: Eva Bande and her struggle in Sulawesi
In other parts of Indonesia, Eva Susanti Hanafi Bande was convicted of incitement and jailed in 2010 after organizing farmers against a palm oil company in Banggai, Central Sulawesi. She made the headlines in 2014 when Indonesia’s newly elected president, Joko Widodo, granted him a pardon. In 2018, Eva received the prestigious Yap Thiam Hien Award for his efforts as a human rights defenders in Indonesia.
Her story began in the village of Piondo, where she and the farmers have been working to reclaim land from a plantation company owned by Murad Husain, a powerful local family with military backing. In the early days of 2008, Piondo villagers found that their land was forcefully taken over by a palm oil company called PT Kurnia Luwuk Sejati.
Eva created a plan to unite the farmers in Piondo under the Piondo Farmers Union with a mandate to fight against land grabs. Their plan to reclaim the land begin by occupying and farming the land they knew was coveted by the company. As they farmed the land, they faced off against military, police, and hired thugs who tries to intimidate them. “It was an effort to terrorize the people,” Eva tells Febriana.
Since Eva and her community first protested against the land grab in 2008, Murad Husain’s plantation remains in place. Eva still continues her fight for agrarian reform, equality, and justice. She still maintains a belief in the power of struggles as a source of unity to bring people together and empower them about the power of their communities. She remains resolute and hopeful.
“Any of us can be afraid. But we can convert those fears into a massive power for the movement. I’ve seen it happen right before my own eyes.”
Aleta Baun and the weaving protests of Mollo
By mid-2007s, the villagers around Mollo had succeeded in stopping three companies from extracting marble and desecrating their sacred stones Since the late 1990s. One of them, Aleta Baun, received the 2013 Goldman Environmental Prize, a prestigious international award dedicated to grassroot activists.
In August 2006, Lodia Oematan, a woman from the local village, saw several policemen, excavator, and a member of the army gathering around Faut Lik,a sacred rock. “If you snatch the land, it’s like you take away our plates, spoons, food. Then how are we going to eat? Sure, you will eat as much as you can, but we people will suffer until our death” she protested.
In that same year, more than 100 villagers descended on the district parliament building, pleading to the members to protect Faut Lik. However, the excavator kept carving a road towards the mountain, ignoring their protest.
In a last bid effort to protect their sacred home, hundreds of women occupied the mining sites for months. They brought their looms to the site and weaved their traditional tenun cloth against the backdrop of the excavator. They did not survive through the protests unscathed, Lodia described being thrown to the ground and beaten hard by “thugs” they believe to be hired by the company. She said her injuries prevented her from working on the fields for months.
The Mollo people guard the sacred stones with their live because they know that these mountains are their lungs, roots, and the source of food and livelihood of their communities. Springs flowing from the mountains supply people with fresh water across Mollo.
Febriana ends her trip from Mollo with the sayings of Aleta Baun resonating accross the mountain, “And I have learned more from nature than from the humans who deceived me.” Till this day, the people of Mollo have yet to fail in their duties to protect their sacred mountains.
Omnibus Law, and the Future fights for our mother’s land.
The stories documented in “Our Mother’s Land” were made possible because of the vigour of these women in organizing their communities. They challenge the claims of these companies through protests and fighting them in court. As we have seen in Kendeng and Banggai, sometimes the law can still work against their favor and that is when woman like Aleta Baun shows an amazing tenacity to continue their fight.
An important part of the law on protecting environmental degradation from companies is the Amdal commission (environmental impact assessments for industrial and agribusiness projects), which made up from affected communities, environmental experts, and activists, among others.
The Omnibus law would change the members of the commission to include only officials from provincial and central government, along with hand-picked experts. To make matters worst, the law also scraps the public’s right to file objections against Amdal assessments. These crucial changes could set back the progress of cases such as the one we saw in Mollo because companies know that the instruments to challenge them in court has been severely diminished.
Minister of Forestry and Environment, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, rebuke the claims of weakening environmental protection law and instead said that the changes were made to centralize the process and make it simpler.
It also opens up the threat to more acts of deforestation and overexploitation to several forests in Indonesia. As we can see from Kendeng, Banggai, Mollo, and other struggles in indonesia, the locals will continues the fight to protect the forest that have become their home and livelihood. If the laws will not protect their rights, women like Sukinah or Aleta Baun will defend their home with sheer willpower and persistence.
New generation of Eva Bande will always rise so long as our mother’s land face dangers from companies seeking to destroy the mountains and forests. And they too will fight with the same intensity and tenacity just as the ones before them.
