A-Infos (en) Indonesia, Anarchist call for Global Solidarity and Call to ACTION AGAINST MINING INDUSTRY

A Tale of Sand, and Those Who Feed From It: History and Etnographic explanation of Kulon 
Progo's Village and Resistance ---- Sand defines the life story of those who live along 
Kulon Progo's southern ---- shoreline. Upto the present day, this sand has nourished 
thousands of souls along the coastal fringe of Kulon Progo regency, Yogyakarta province. 
The story starts before 1942, when coastal dwellers were already trying to turn the sand 
into a source of sustenance. Notes taken from the oral history of Arjo Dimejo, a villager 
from Karang Sewu, reveal that before that date many of his fellow villagers survived by 
planting rice, sweet potatoes, potatoes and beans on the coastal sands. ---- Yet when the 
Japanese colonisers arrived, the inhabitants were forbidden to use the sand as gricultural 
land, as the Japanese suspected that they were secretly making sea salt.

But after Indonesia was proclaimed an
independent nation, as soon as Japan no longer stood watching over the
sand lands, a few villagers moved back to once again look for
sustenance from the sand. Arjo Dimejo relates that in 1948 President
Soekarno made a visit to the coastal strip, and invited the people to
make use of the land. So the local people, most of whom were farmers,
thronged to work this land whose soil was merely sand. At one point in
the 1970s storms wreaked havoc on the land and the homes built upon it.
Yet despite these bad conditions the farmers managed to survive, still
determined to eat from what the sand could provide.
? ? ?  [A boycott?]

Those that live from the sand are called 'cubung' by other people, a derisory
stereotype which means backward or inferior village people, prone to
sickness. And in fact, in past decades, the combination of the sun's
heat and strong blasts of wind meant that many inhabitants experienced
diseases of the skin, respiratory system, stomach or eyes.

The coast dwellers farmed land without soil, only sand, hoping that the
rainwater that falls for free onto the earth would be make the land
fertile; their living conditions were always precarious. Until the
1980s agriculture along the coastal zone remained extremely marginal.
All that would grow on the sand were certain vine plants. And then only
in the rainy season; in the dry season they would all die. Drought
forced many farmers to instead look for work as wage labourers in other
places, even if it meant leaving Java *** usually they would return 6 to
12 months later. Until the 1980s the term 'cubung' was still being
frequently used. However, during those years the inhabitants greatly
increased their effort to find natural ways that the sand could provide
food, every day inhaling sand to for the sake of survival.

Visiting your neighbours breeds collective wisdom.

Nearly every evening, the people mocked as 'cubung' greatly enjoy
'Endong-endongan'. This is a custom of the villagers to gather together
at neighbours' houses, and relate their experiences to the others
present(1). According to Iman Rejo, a villager from Bugel, this is
their way to strive to fulfil all of life's needs, whether material or
spiritual, and whether they are directly conscious of doing so or not.
When the inhabitants meet each evening they create the feeling that
they are no longer on their own. Moments like these are embryos from
which the farmers' motivation can grow, the will to persevere and
enhance their lives. These 'endong-endongan' are meetings of friends,
tend to be non-hierarchical, and they happen spontaneously and
habitually each evening. They are a moment to take heart and to find
new ideas together.

On the positive side these heart-to-heart meetings
to support each other and share experiences came from an idea of three
villagers (Iman Rejo, Pardiman, Musdiwiyono) to try to find different
techniques and systems to make use of the extremely marginal sand
lands. (2)

Nightly endong-endongan meetings in different
people's houses create relationships of trust between individuals in
these difficult conditions. They start to speak together about the
problems they face and look at ways to solve them together. Before each
farmer would cultivate the land on their own, but later they felt the
need to work together instead to find new ways of cultivation. It also
turned out that their experiences from other places when they were
working on the land or as skilled labour gave them new points to share
and discuss.

Various ideas also emerged from the meetings of
individuals and from farmers' groups to study the nature of the land
and the possibilities it offered. In 1984 a group of farmers helped
each other out to build simple wells in the fields. Because sand moves
so easily, they dug very wide, with a diameter of up to 5 meters and a
depth of 5-8 meters and inserted a tube made from bamboo. The well was
completed with a bamboo hoist. As soon as each well was completed in
turn, the farmers started to prepare the land: hoeing, building dams,
fertilising with manure, and then later planting. All this technology
and land preparation was carried out by the community themselves,
working together.

The farmers experiments are always based on close observation of nature.
They tried planting corn using different methods of watering, and
different ways and locations to grow acacia trees - each careful
attempt in accordance with their observations of the nature of the
land. Until one day when one farmer walking in the field noticed a
chilli plant growing well near a coconut tree. This discovery prompted
other farmers to start planting and tending chilli, building up their
experience as they went. Eventually they built up an in-depth knowledge
of how to cultivate the land, without the need of any teachers the
impetus came from their initiative to organise the farmers' groups.
Nowadays the number of farmer's groups has expanded greatly, currently
there are several dozen.

The farmers solved their shortage of water by building wells. These were
originally very simply made, making holes 5 meters deep and retaining
them with bamboo. Later the bamboo was exchanged for cement and finally
concrete. Previously they dug each well very deep, and needed a bucket
for watering. However the farmers felt this method was not effective.
Later farmers tried building a principal well with a water pump,
connected by bamboo to tanks made from a concrete box/pipe. As this was
still inadequate, the bamboo canalization was later exchanged for PVC.
Although the products used may be modern, they are used with an
understanding of the natural characteristics of the coastal zone.

The problem of strong winds is tackled by using plants that act as
wind-breakers around the cultivated plots, such as castor oil plant,
bitter gourd or aubergine. They also plant coconut near the fields to
help breaking the wind so the plants are not blown away by strong
gusts. Before cultivation, the land was terraced sand dunes which
looked like a desert strewn with bushes and thickets, always moving
around whenever the waves hit. But this natural condition can be
managed by the farmers co-operating, flattening the land and removing
the undergrowth, making sure to leave one row of sand dunes between the
ocean and the cultivated land.

There are many ways in which
their experience leads to knowledge worth relating, but they do not
need to be mentioned one by one. What is sure is that the farmers have
undergone a long and dynamic process, where the key to survival on the
land was never obvious. They had been forbidden to farm, battered by
wind every day and sometimes by storms, their land dominated by sand
dunes, and troubled by sickness. Yet by the custom of meeting together,
discussing and sharing, they found they were no longer buried by the
sand, emerging to find new survival strategies and share their
strengths with each other every day.

For a long time the farmers have had difficulties to face, yet they have
always been able to resolve their problems in an independent and
autonomous way, without the help of outsiders, especially the
government. Even the roads to the fields, which previously were
difficult to pass, they built on their own. First they built simple
roads by laying stones, but eventually laid asphalt working together
to build the roads themselves, pooling their money to meet the costs,
all with no help from the government. That is how the farmers will
always explain it when asked what's the role of the government.
Moreover they never experience conflict over who can work which land.
The farmers know that the right to farm is something they hold in
common, and there are never disputes about the status of the land, they
just sort it out between themselves. The relationships of trust between
individuals and the farmer's group is a long way beyond that of
businessmen who have to sanctify everything with legal contracts,
stamped and sealed.

The careful efforts of more than 40 years have made the wasteland a fertile
and productive zone. All sorts of plants can now thrive due to the hard
work and care put into their cultivation. On the sand a range of
horticultural crops can grow in both the rainy season and the dry
season. Chilli, aubergine, bitter gourd, castor bean, green beans,
rice, corn, watermelon and many other types of vegetables are grown
along the 25km stretch of shoreline; the hands of the farmers have
turned the landscape green. The key to their success is collective
knowledge, whether it be knowledge of modern technology or local wisdom
about when and how to plant, tend and harvest the crops.

The chilli has become the prime commodity for farmers in the area. However
they also plant other crops according to the season. Each group of
farmers continues to discuss which crop to plant first, followed by
which other crop. Every year farmers in each group discuss when to
plant. Their discussion takes in various perspectives, from their
belief in the Javanese calender, to the condition of the land, sea and
sky, and the possibility of clashes of harvesting time with other
plants they may want to grow on the land.

Businessmen and landowners can also consume sand.

In 1964 a study analysing the composition of the sand was carried out by
the geology faculty of ITB university. Led by In Junas, it measured the
iron content of the sands and ground water depth. They made boreholes
in the sand to a depth of 4-7 metres. Some local people were asked to
work on this study as manual labour, and they remembered that below the
sand lay iron and water.(3)

This memory was what the farmers would eventually use when they started to
make changes in their lives 20 years later, almost as if they were
stealing the knowledge from the outsiders' research. Iman Rejo,
Pardiman and Musdiwiyono took the initiative to get people together to
build wells to sustain life. Under the soil they found fresh, clear,
not salty water, although they were only a few metres from the beach.
With the wells built, the villagers work brought life to the wasteland.

But this memory becomes very different when it is written into an academic
report, then read by a land owner and passed on to corporations. Just
as the land started to become fertile, provide food, and even allow
farmers to be able to send their children to higher education, was also
the moment when a stroke of enlightenment suddenly shook the brain
cells of a certain entrepreneur and those that claim authority over the
land of Kulon Progo. They want the sand to nourish their needs as well.
The partnership they created was given the name of PT JMM (Jogja Magasa
Mining).

On Thursday, 6 October 2005, at 20.15 West Indonesia Time, an imaginary
voice ripped through the dreams of the farmers. There is iron within
the womb of the sandy shoreline, and it is time for it to come out, to
be exploited, to be enjoyed not only by farmers, but by us all, for the
sake of our society at large, for the race and for the nation is more
or less how the voice in the imaginary meeting room sounded, a moment
before the arrival of a notarised document from PT Jogja Magasa Mining.

To attain these aim and objectives the company can carry out
  business activities as follows:

a. Business activities in the sector of general mining, including the
mining of iron sand, iron ore, sea sand and coal.

b. Carry out trade, including import, export and interinsular trade,
acting as a representative agent, sole agent, distributor, supplier of
the products of mining such as iron sands, iron ore, sea sand and coal,
whether on its own account or on another's account, by means of
commission.

c. Establish industrial facilities for the obtaining
and processing of mining products such as iron sand, iron ore, sea sand
and coal.

d. Provide services in the mining sector.

e. Undertake transportation of the products of mining activity, by means
of truck.(4)

 From the sound of the document, PT JMM appear to have been granted legal
authority by the state for the total exploitation of the land through
their mining enterprise. But this company,PT JMM had only just been
formed and was still new to the mining business. They needed experience
in mineral exploitation and additional capital(5), and so needed to
join with another company as business partner. In an interview with
Lutfi Hayder(6) (commissioner of Jogja Magasa Iron) the company joined
with an Australian company, Indo Mines Limited(7), and the corporation
Australia Kimberly Diamond also made capital investments, as did other
investors. The collaboration between the companies PT Jogja Magasa
Iron, Indo Mines and the other investors was called JMI (Jogja Magasa
Iron)(8), although recently this name changed again to JMI (Jogja
Magasa International).

Systematic steps have already been taken by the business partnership and those who
claim authority over Kulon Progo to ensure the success of their iron
mining venture. Lufti Hayder, acting as commissioner for Jogja Magasa
Iron claims they have already found considerable financial backing,
although the world economy is hit by recession. Funding to complete the
feasibility study is already available; it is estimated this is
sufficient for 12-18 months.

Farmers fight the corporation.

At the start of 2007 the shoreline residents were becoming restless about
the planned mining project. This nervousness soon spread, as farmers
worried about losing the land that had supported them for so long. They
shared their fears from one to another and also within their farmers'
groups. Finally different farmers' groups, from various villages along
the coastal strip, decided to meet and discuss the problem. So one
night in April hundreds of farmers, delegates of their groups and
villages, got together to determine attitudes towards the plans. That
night farmers exchanged opinions and analysed their fears about the
news of the mining plan. Clear evidence of the problem this iron mine
would have on their livelihood was revealed that night.

The discussion revolved around 3 possible approaches. Firstly, farmers
could unconditionally accept the mining plan. Second, that they could
accept but with certain conditions and stipulations. Thirdly, they
could unconditionally reject the proposal. In the end it turned out
that not a single individual was in favour of the first option, and not
a single individual was in favour of the second option. All the farmers
present that night made clear their unconditional opposition to any
plan to mine iron sand from their land.

That night the farmers also started planning their strategy to resist the
iron mine. Their first act was to establish an umbrella organisation,
which they named PPLP (Paguyaban Petani Lahan Pantai = Association of
Shoreline Farmers). The organisation had an unusual structure. Aside
from a chair, secretary and treasurer and their deputies, they also
appointed older farmers as advisors. There is also a field coordinator
in each village, who acts as a delegate, uniquely this coordinator is
only ever one person, and they often rotate in a quite flexible way.
Each village also has an autonomous PPLP unit, each with its own
structure. What is clear is that there is no-one that holds authority
in the PPLP structure. The whole coastal community are members of PPLP
and their feelings about new information in the mining plan is always
discussed at the meetings of each PPLP unit as well as the umbrella
meetings. One more unique feature is that there is no office for either
the umbrella organisation or for each PPLP unit, as each household
along the coast is a space for coordination.

PPLP henceforth started organising many actions. Initially they undertook
traditional forms of struggle, involving old and the young in local
traditions such as mujahadah, casting magic spells, farmers' rituals
and night watch on the land. But neither their attempts at dialogue,
nor their movement which declared itself anti-mining was considered as
well behaved by the corporations or the local government (who are also
involved as they administrate the local budget). On the quiet the
villages were infiltrated by intel agents and paid thugs to intimidate
the people.

Before the Ramadan fast, 24 August 2007, farmers agreed to attack the local
authority of Kulon Progo. They were annoyed at this symbolic existence
of authority over a land where there was never any justice or
understanding of the people's aspirations. That day the farmers were
able to fight the police and in the end thousands of people were able
to enter the grounds of the symbol of power of the government of Kulon
Progo regency. The farmers tore down the fence and forced the police to
back away from the mass action. That day, not one key local official
would meet with farmers, least of all the mayor. The farmers from PPLP
threatened the mayor 5 times that day to come out with a declaration
cancelling the mine project.

The farmers actions and demonstrations continue until
now. They plan their strategies and tactics to foil the plan to mine
iron from the coastal sands of Kulon Progo. The case of the farmers'
resistance in Kulon Progo is an authentic example of a struggle against
power characterised by anti-politics, autonomy and self-management.
With regards to politicians and NGOs that want to get involved, we can
say that there is a kind of agreement that the farmers' struggle should
not become dependent on anyone. Between the sand and the iron it
contains there is a raging fire, a fire that can
not be subdued, resisting exploitation and dehumanisation in whatever form
it takes.

1. Iman Rejo
2. Iman Rejo
3. Iman Rejo
4. Document Founding Limited Company PT. Jogja Magasa Mining No. 40.
Buntario Tigris Darmawa NG, SH, SE
5. In the notorised document is noted the total startup capital of Rp
600,000,000
6. Interview 12 March  2009
7. Application For Contract of Works from Government of the Republic of Indonesia
8. Plan of Work 2009 JMI, Jogjakarta 12 March 2009
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WHAT INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY COULD DO?

1. Boycotting every corporation or organization that is involved in the
project.
2. Send Letters to Indonesian Embassy regarding the Issue to end the
MEGAPROJECT.
3.
Boycotting Jogja National Museum: which is a big art-space owned by
Sultan and have been a space for many artists, local and international,
to do exhibitionsFand of course ensure
Sultan's hegemony over cultural
production. And for information, many international radical artists
connected to Taring Padi***which is a so called radical artists group
who benefitted from that space and never have any position towards the
issue that is grossly collaborated blindly and ignorantly in that
space. Many of whom even call themselves ***anarchists!*** (which is of
course the anarchist from abroad still assumed that JNM in the 90's was
a squatted space inhabited by leftists and socialist realism artists)

WE ARE CALLING FOR INTERNATIONAL BOYCOTT OF JOGJA NATIONAL MUSEUM AND
THOSE RADICALS WHO SHAMELESSLY COLLABORATED AND BENEFITTED FROM THAT
SPACE. THE TENSION MUST RISE BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!

Art is dead, don't consume its corpse. SI



- Saksi (free association of anarchists and friends of Kulon
Progo***s Brave Peasants)

Email: petanimerdeka@yahoo.com

http://kulonprogotolaktambangbesi.wordpress.com

Brief Introduction of SAKSI

SAKSI (Solidaritas Anti-Kejahatan Korporasi) : Solidarity Against
Corporate Crime

SAKSI
is a network of solidarity that was initiated by collectives and
individuals since the beginning of 2009. Its focus and aim is not to
mediate between grassroot struggles, but how to connect them directly
through shared experience of struggles and without involvement of
NGO'S or any form of institutional political organization. As a network of
solidarity SAKSI don't have any fixed programs to impose, instead it is
worked out through consensus meetings between SAKSI participants in
which different struggles can apply their own methodes locally. The
only basic structure and foundation that was agreed upon is that SAKSI,
as a network, and community of struggles, is should be horisontal and
autonomous in a very loose and close to the concept of Free
Association. Up till now SAKSI have connected struggles of peasants and
other opressed communities in three areas.

Kulon Progo (Central java Yogyakarta)

-
Community of peasants struggling against reclamation of their land by
feudal landlords and local government to create Iron Ore Mining.

PATI (Central Java)

-
Community of peasants struggling against the cement industry project
that will take over their water resources land and environmental health.

Porong (East java)

- Communities that was
evicted from their land by mud disaster caused by Lapindo Corporation,
which is owned by Bakrie Group. It has caused enormous damages on the
vast land of Porong and have made thousands of people losing their
homes and properties.
_________________________________________
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