TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The death of Salim Kancil is proof that the police slogan, 'to protect and to nurture', seems to be nothing more than grand words. The police at Lumajang, East Java, ignored previous threats on Salim and other citizens of Selok Awar-Awar village, two weeks before he died.
Salim was attacked by 22 people last September 26. He was abducted and dragged to the town hall, where he was tied up, tortured with electrodes, kicked and beaten until he could run no more. Tosan, a colleague of Salim was also abducted on that same day. He was tied up and laid on the floor so a motorcycle could be driven over his body, again and again. Tosan did not die, but he now needs intensive care because of a broken spleen.
The murderers have now been arrested and charged with premeditated murder. The killers are village chief Hariyono and his like-minded villagers who felt upset that their Rp2 billion sand business may go belly-up.
The sand mines in the concession area belong to Indo Mining Modern Sejahtera. The license to export was issued by the Regent of Lumajang in 2012. But since then, Indo Mining has done nothing else except to map areas containing bauxite, for prospective investors and biding for the right time to apply for a mining license. At the time, Hariyono obtained his sand from the beach facing the Indian Ocean.
Originally, he was able to get five to 10 truckfuls a day. Eventually it came to 360 trucks a day. He sells the sand to agents in a village, to be resold again at a number of cities in East Java.
In the meantime, Salim and the villagers work hard to transform their brackish paddy fields into land for planting crops. Salim farmed on two hectares to feed his small family. But Hariyono's illegal sand mining ruined their farm with the holes they made. Since 2014, Salim began actively opposing the illegal miners.
Yet, the police and related officials seemed to have closed their eyes to the problem. The police did not move when Tosan was threatened on September 10, neither when his being beaten up was reported to the police at Lumajang that self-same day. The regent and district chief failed to settle the conflict quickly by letting Salim and Tosan struggle by themselves. They also should not have allowed Hariyono and his cohorts to dig on space that he had no right to. The police even ignored Indo Mining's report on Hariyono mining illegally on their concession area.
Clearly, the Salim Kancil tragedy is an all too evident problem that started at the upstream. The law on Minerals and Coal gives full authority to regional and chief executives to determine areas to be mined and issue licenses to interested companies. But many areas are unprepared to do the required complicated processing of issuing licenses, let alone manage conflicts that tend to flare up among local people over land use and land ownership. As a result, the incident at Indo Mining, led to companies unable to mine, although they own the concession. Soon, illegal miners began coming, many of them at the order of a local influential man, further triggering tensions.
The death of Salim Kancil reminds us yet again of the need for the government to manage natural resources effectively. Continuing to dig without any thought to environmental conservation will only lead to new crimes and inter-personal conflicts. Abuse of power accorded by the regional autonomy policy, has led to many conflicts in villages like Selok Awar-Awar, whose small farmers like Salim, become victims of small-minded officials who ignore their duty to protect and to nurture. (*)
