Farmers from Pati Seek to Reclaim Ancestors' Farmland

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Three representatives of the Pundenrejo Farmers Community Movement visited National Commission on Human Rights or Komnas HAM in Jakarta on Monday, May 27. The movement, comprising some 140 farmers from the Tayu district of Pati Regency, Central Java, complained about their decades-long conflict with PT Laju Perdana Indah (LPI), the owner of the Pakis Sugar Factory, which is managed by the Salim Group.

The Pundenrejo farmers are calling on the Komnas HAM to urge PT LPI not to plant sugar cane on their 7.3 hectares of farmland.

"We are also asking the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/National Land Agency to immediately return the Pundenrejo farmers' ancestral land," one of the farmers' movement representatives, Sumiyati, told Tempo on Tuesday, May 28.

Sumiyato said the conflict began when the land cultivated by the Pundenrejo farmers was confiscated by the military, which was part of the Sari Diponegoro group, in 1965. After the expulsion, the residents no longer had access to the land they had worked for years. 

In 1973, the land changed its status to Building Use Rights (HGB) controlled by PT BAPPIPUNDIP (a company under the 4th Diponegoro Military Command). Since 1999, the land has been neglected. Based on the history of land control, the Pundenrejo farmers finally tried to reclaim the land.

Another representative, Suriyanto, said that in 2001, PT BAPIPUNDIP sold HGB land in Pundenrejo to PT LPI. And then in 2020, the Pundenrejo farmers were evicted again. At the time, he said that the eviction "was accompanied by the destruction of crops, with police and TNI officers present."

According to Suriyanto, PT LPI violated the Ministerial Regulation of ATR/BPN RI No. 18 of 2021 on the Procedure for Determining Management Rights and Land Rights by planting sugarcane on the land. In Article 86 of the above-mentioned ministerial regulation, building rights are granted for non-agricultural business activities.

Suriyanto said that as of September this year, PT LPI's BU status will expire. Pundenrejo farmers, who have no other land to cultivate, are urging all parties to return to the same land that once supported their ancestors.

"The farmers' pressure will continue with the 'Laku Mlaku' movement of farmers from Pundenrejo village, Tayu district, to the Pati Regency Land Office on May 30," said Suriyanto.

The Laku Mlaku, he said, is a form of community effort to fight for the return of their ancestral land, which has been snatched by big corporations, throwing Pundenrejo farmers into a pit of structural poverty.

TEMPO.CO

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