Researcher-editor
Prasetyohadi
A. Introduction
The Kedung Ombo case relates to a political movement during the period of 1984-1990s carried out initially by the local villagers of the Kedung Ombo villages in eastern part of Central Java, when the central government, with its officials in the province, financially supported by the World Bank, constructed a huge dam to improve rice production and generate hydropower. In Indonesia such daunting grass-root resistance from below against the authoritarian state rarely unfolded. Starting from the initial demands of fairer compensation of the land appropriated, later the movement broadened up to an issue of democracy, mostly spearheaded by the radical students.
The construction, one of the largest projects of its kind in Asia, has induced the government to unilaterally resettle local villagers, after their land and properties submerged under water. It prompted local people's resistance against the project. The movement started by NGOs with the organizing of local villagers to make them aware of their rights. In a period of several years legal activists helped the villagers to learn the ways to demand their robbed rights.
After the damn doors were closed in formal inauguration in January 1989, the students from the neighboring towns and cities in Central Java gathered to raise their concern over the fate of the Kedung Ombo people in venturous demonstrations. It has caused a breaking of the top political roof in Jakarta, as they joined solidarity with larger student activists in other cities out of the province.
A notable involvement of a local social activist, Mangunwijaya, and his humanitarian aid group has helped propelling further movement with a moral force to enhance the people's resistance. Through informally educating local abandoned children, the movement involved the students who then helped the people to find their ways to shoulder difficulties in the villages at Kedung Ombo.
This case, occurred in a remote area far away from Jakarta, has attracted international attention after the delegation of Indonesian NGOs raised the issue in the International Non-Governmental Forum for Indonesia (INGI) conference in Belgium in 1989. In the aide memoir of the fifth INGI, the Indonesian delegation sent their concern to the government of Indonesia, and of the Inter-Governmental Group on Indonesia (IGGI)'s members, and also to the World Bank.
The actors are:
Jhony Simanjuntak, a legal aid activist who worked for the Social Welfare Guidance Foundation (YBKS, Yayasan Bimbingan Kesejahteraan Sosial), a protestant church based NGO, located in Surakarta, Central Java. He started in mid 1980s to educate local villagers to be aware of their land rights, while politically organizing them to prepare for local protest, resistant movement. Later he set up his own legal institute known as Yaphi (The Indonesian Conscientization of Law Foundation, Yayasan Penyadaran Hukum Indonesia).
There are some NGOs involved in this case. The first to mention is the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute Foundation (YLBHI) of Jakarta with its networking in Central Java and Yogyakarta involved with long time assistance to Kedung Ombo people to support their legal battle at courts and development campaign in the international level. The second was the Salatiga-based Gemi Nastiti Foundation that took important role in assisting student movement. The rest of other organizations worth mentioning were (a) the Jakarta-based Skephi (Indonesian Network for Forest Conservation), (b) the Yogyakarta-based Legal Aid Study Group of KSBH (Kelompok Studi Bantuan Hukum), (c) Surakarta-based Bhakti Satria Foundation from the Surakarta king circle, (d) Volunteer Defender Association (GPS, Gabungan Pembela Sukarela), (e) Semi-governmental NGO calling themselves BKPH MKGR team, and the minor involvement of political parties of the Islamic-oriented United Development Party (PPP) and the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI).
University students, most of them may be compared to the radical democrats, coming from various towns mostly in Central Java, such as student towns of Salatiga, Yogyakarta and Semarang, and Surabaya in East Java. Later, students from other localities, such as Jakarta and Bogor joined the protests, as they raised anti-government protest.
Mangunwijaya, a diocesan Catholic priest, based in Yogyakarta, founded a group of young social activists to teach the abandoned children of Kedung Ombo. Apart from the group movement, he personally had a strong voice as his statements directly or indirectly attacked the government's mishandling of the Kedung Ombo case.
Local villagers turned to have an important role as actors as well. The first was village head Djaswadi who led about 600 displaced people to nearby plot of land. However, after the latter was considered to have betrayed his co-villagers there appeared at a hamlet in "the green belt area" another respected man called Darsono, who kept resisting any government's development program by staying in the dam areas.
B. THE RESEARCHER'S ANALYSIS OF THE POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE
(a) the relative openness or closure of the system
At high level politics, in early 1988 a split-up of the military factions emerged when powerful officer General Benny Moerdani openly criticized President Soeharto of his family business. Moerdani lashed out Soeharto for not being able to control his family's monopolistic business up to an intolerable state in the national economy. As Moerdani gradually withdrew from the key political stage into less powerful positions he also was critical toward Soeharto's move in appointing another faction of the military officers loyal to him, maintaining that the military meddling into politics had gone too far. The openness onset that was also apparently partly agreed by Soeharto and later the strengthening of the House of Parliament in the time when the Kedung Ombo case reached its high momentum were widely attributed to Moerdani's influence. As Moerdani cultivated ties with civilian politicians and intellectuals, he seemed also to support dozens of retired generals who tended to give their support to opposition party of Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI). Such elite political split created a perceived space for the pro-democratic actors to move forward for their causes. Diverse movements made use of this openness such as taking Kedung Ombo case that proved itself among the first significant movements to break the existing repressive political system.
As the dam doors were closed in January 1989 and gradually local villagers who decided to remain on their land closer to water level were submerged under water, the students drove themselves into solidarity movement. Soon the students saw clearer space for them to break the structure through further demonstration. Moreover, many of the villagers raised their disappointment to the NGOs that previously helped them but after the water filled the dam, they abandoned the villagers. The students saw that the government's measure was simply unfairly unilateral and therefore, to the students, it was enough to make them marching to the villages in Kedung Ombo to raise their concerns. Naked injustice so that the villagers had been suffering in an appalling condition plainly raised the students' sense of solidarity with the villagers. They braved themselves to raise protests against the government and its allies, particularly the military. They further saw openness as the government and the military did not put harsh measure until April 1989, which then made the students further heaped the protest actions.
(b) the relative stability or instability of the alignments among dominating groups constituting the basis for the established polity
The government in general eventually succeeded in completing the dam construction, a fact implying that the dominating groups were able to maintain stability among them. Their main target of constructing the dam, constituting the established economic and political policy has been achieved until the World Bank announced the dam project was closed in December 1993, considering the fund disbursed, the construction finished and the undertaking was considered completed. By the time the dam was filled already with water and ready for its main function to the prospect of better agriculture in the surrounding areas of mostly northern East Java and hydropower project may also be initiated.
The military was involved in the case when the government closed the dam gates in January 1989, an action that needed to be guarded by security personnel. Since then the military closely co-ordinated with local government in dealing with any development during the process of filling the reservoir with water, as they wanted to secure the dam would eventually be in scheduled function. The military worked together with related police officers in diverse towns and cities in trying to clamp down the student solidarity movements. There were a lot of threats and intimidation toward local peoples, particularly from local government officials up to the level of local sub-districts around the dam location.
(c) the possibility for actors to link up with sectors of the elite
Although later they were disappointed, the students succeeded in approaching a part of the central government, particularly the ministry of home affair, as Minister Rudini was comparatively one of most progressive government's figures having broader understanding of the position of the students with possible political reform.
The Jakarta-based NGOs reached out to partners in Europe, the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia. The international alliance brought the concerns of the Kedung Ombo villagers to the media in many countries, the offices of the World Bank, the U.S. Congress and Treasury, and many other governments, then eventually also the Indonesian government in Jakarta.
Nationally and morally Mangunwijaya gained some leverage by helping to educate unattended children in the dam's neighborhood, as he drew even the top level of the government's attention, President Soeharto personally, representing the weight of the problem. He personally tried to relate the Kedung Ombo case to the government officials. Of particular notice was his attempt to meet the Boyolali regent M. Hasbi, former Yogyakarta military command's head, Central Java governor Ismail, Minister of Home Affairs Rudini. And particularly at local level in a district of the dam neighborhood he succeeded in making some arrangement, by sneaking into the dam areas, but generally the government flatly turned his movement down. Provincial military office also threatened local Muslim leader, whom Mangunwijaya invited to support his movement, by linking him to rebellious protest in Lampung, southern part of Sumatra.
(d) the capacity and propensity of the state in particular to repress actors
The government gathered Kedung Ombo villagers at the local district council and warned them not to refuse to transmigrate or they could be charged under criminal code. They would be regarded as the enemy of the state and anti-development program. Local government officials threatened them that those who stayed would likely suffer income losses, on the contrary with the World Bank's policy advising the government to withhold information about possible livelihoods in the area. They applied any way available to intimidate the villagers to sign the resettlement program.
The state, represented by the government and the military and police, threatened resisting local people by stigmatizing them of the banned Communist party's members. They used the banned ideology of communism to repress the former strong communists cluster in the area carrying a social sanction in the neighborhood. More than that, they were the target of direct repression and intimidation related to such accusation.
The government and its security personnel flatly turned down any outsider's involvement to the local people living at the surrounding of the dam, including the actors of democratization process in the case. Local NGOs involved in helping local people with legal conscientization finally pulled their assistance as intimidation, threats and terror from local officials and security officers increased.
Toward the protesting students the government and the military applied repressive measures alike. The military strongly guarded the dam location and along with local government officials rejected any outsiders entering into local community of villagers without permission. As the students rallied protests in neighboring towns, military officers followed them behind and tried to stop with unnecessary beatings. After continuous demonstrations police and military officers chased the students and dragged them to their precincts to interrogations. Plainclothes officers were reported often threatened the students. Diverse university rectors also then reported to have been threatened. Local government's officials also flatly rejected any approaches made by the students in resolving the impact of the dam construction. Meanwhile, central government's officials looked a bit softer to the protesting students, although there were no progress on the ground among the victims of the dam construction.
C. Actors' Real Perspectives
1. Content:
Why does democratization make sense to the actors? That is, what are the actors really out for and why is it, then, that struggle for democratization becomes instrumental?
The Kedung Ombo people insisted to mean that democracy implies that they no less have to maintain their rights to land property from any outsiders' appropriation. Land ownership is the first and the last meaning for all they have done, mostly in the action of dwelling in the dam areas. Crystalized by the Kedung Pring stubborn villagers, they mean of their rights to stay in the green belt area, even building water village in the surface of the reservoir.
Lawyer Jhony Simanjuntak, who initiated the NGO movement specializing in legal matters in the community around the dam areas, said that democracy makes sense for him when he organized local simple villagers to raise their political awareness starting from the issue of land appropriation. The content of his efforts, consequently, was the empowerment of the people so that they were able to face their problems vis a vis the government officials who are responsible for the unilateral appropriation dispute without fair compensation. However, as Simanjuntak worked for the Protestant-based Social Welfare Guidance Foundation (YBKS), he referred the content of his work in Kedung Ombo to also Christian orientation of "option to the poor" by "taking side with the weak and oppressed to restore their deprived human condition, democracy, justice and peace, while stressing the necessity of the integrity of creature."
While the legal aid activists maintained that the preferable meaning of democratization laid on playing role with favorable but strict, compressed space of legal affairs by channeling the people's demands to the government to complying private land property rights and respecting basic human rights.
Radical students, who were mostly "action instigators", plainly raised the issues of "anti-military" and therefore, in such repressive polity to guard diverse development projects, they also raised "anti-government" issue. They did not yet raised the word "democracy" as such at the time. Combined with their first choice of politicization in daring demonstrations, they found the real meaning of all what they did, as they tried to circumscribe shortcuts to breaking the seemingly rigid political structure in always mobilizing radical students into facing their perceived first enemy, that was the military. They deepened the meaning of what they did every time they marched down to the streets, crystallizing and representing the spirit of resistance against any repression that entailed fear towards the military and its allies in all their business.
For them the Kedung Ombo case was only among other cases they tried to relate into daring movements. They found very eminent to relate their causes as they marched down in protest of how the government damped Kedung Ombo villagers. When asked what was the main content of the movement, one of student protesters, known for his staunch stance against the military, said that "it was the government's unilateral measure in such blatant injustice endured by poor people (in Kedung Ombo) who were deprived of their rights, be economic, in voicing out their concerns, cultural, or political in associating themselves." As their own freedom to association was deprived, they wanted to make the military and the government and also Kedung Ombo people understand that "they had every right to politics because they also own this country." They claimed of not having any other interests but only for the poor people, purely for the sake of the poor people's good. They refer all of the involvement with the Kedung Ombo on behalf of "truth that they had been treated unfairly" by the government and its allies."
Mangunwijaya said that the very content of the movement he led was mostly of "humanity concerns", claiming that he and the volunteers "based their work (among the community around the dam areas) on the second foundation of the state ideology of Pancasila, which is the principle of civilized and just humanity". He said that the movement targeted at actively finding as far as possible up to the roots of the problems that caused local people's suffering.
2. Precondition
What (according to the actors) is necessary to fight and change in order to promote democracy and democratization? What preconditions for democracy and democratization have to be created?
At least there were five conditions that were raised by the actors in the course of time during the struggle to gain their causes toward democratization.
Fair compensation for land appropriation: The villagers demanded since the beginning of their struggle against the dam construction that their land taken by the government had to be replaced by fair compensation. They wanted to guarantee that their private property rights be respected.
Rights to organize: This became an urgent condition as raised by Johny Simanjuntak and also student activists, when they tried to educate the villagers with the need of organizing themselves in order to fight for their causes, based on land rights. The activists saw that organization was the only means effective and efficient to reach the demos rights. Later as the villagers formed organization such as Group Nine, Group Eight and in further development such as Kedung Ombo People Association, spearheaded mostly by the stubborn villagers of Kedung Pring, such condition is further emphasized to strengthen their resistance.
No violence and intimidation: Human rights groups, represented by legal aid workers, raised this precondition and it formed the basic stance in front of the regime. The government officials accompanied by local police and military officers applied intimidation, threats and often beatings against villagers resisting to be migrated to other locations. The fact raised the NGOs, who specialize in legal matters, to require that democracy in such circumstances of fear would never be realized.
No military dominance in the government: the radical students clearly set a precondition, that democracy exists when the military power in civil life is much reduced. They even crystalized such precondition by demanding former President Soeharto to step down, maintaning that his presence is the condition of the existence of democracy. The civil matter should be firstly managed by civilians, and any interference of the military perpetrate democracy.
Integrity of human being: This precondition was asserted by priest Mangunwijaya and the volunteers to frame human rescue scheme to helping mostly the abandoned children of Kedung Ombo, deprived of formal education as elementary school buildings were submerged in the rising water. The priest mentioned that the prerequisite of democracy was respect of "integrity of human being", otherwise it would become a mischievous political program for the sake of the establishment. He said that people who were affected by the dam construction became an unnecessary, illegitimate "sacrifice" (tumbal) or protective guarantee, even better, human shield for development program. In addition, children were the most vulnerable to impact of the change of circumstance, the fact that made the priest and the volunteers put into their first priority in helping the Kedung Ombo villagers.
Respect for the local cultural life: Some of them demanded farther for respect of the cultural values being lived out for generations from any outsiders who want to take part in local life. The government's plan to simply remove all extended families, affected by the dam construction, to other localities, implies that the whole members of each families had to move to an inhospitable new place, a menacing life that the elders were vulnerable.
3. Extent:
How much should be democratized? That is, what sectors of the country or the locality (with the political, social and economic spheres) do the actors like to democratize?
(the government was the main target of the extent of democratization movement)
Most of the actors targeted their involvement in democratization process to the existing rigid structure controlled by the government and the military and their associates. By asserting the idea of "clean government and good governance over public policy", they combated government's model and policies of development to major alteration.
(legal aid activists aim at alternating the judiciary system)
The legal aid activists particularly targeted to alternate the existing, instrumental legal system as a tool of the government and its allies to impose repression to the society, particularly the government regulation concerning public policy and its implementation. By consistently demanding for justice, by filing lawsuits to the unfair government's implementation of development program and human rights abuses, they aimed at changing the judiciary system into its supposed proper, outright stance on behalf of truth and righteousness. The activists forwarded the idea of equality in front of law, as guaranteed by the national constitution.
(the curbed media in Indonesia)
They wanted also to target the tight control of the government over the national press. The actors comparatively succeeded in drawing their attention to disseminate information over the Kedung Ombo affairs. Indonesian newspapers require licenses to operate, and the government may use its ability to revoke a license in order to pressurize the editor in chief firing journalists who report too much on sensitive issues. As a result, there is continual self-censorship. The majority of the press reports were critical of the government's approaches to the problem, a fact suggesting that public opinion tends to take a position on the side of the farmers and their legal advocators, the YLBHI. They argued that the existence of the government-preferred local Suara Merdeka daily as a prove of the need to democratize the media. The actors deliberately tried to strongly invite journalists to come to the site to take a look so as to be able to report what had happened to the farmers. The students also enticed individual journalists to witness the demonstrations they daringly staged, although they knew what they wrote could not always be published or aired.
(democratizing neighborhood level)
The directly affected villagers, along with community development activists, targeted to democratize their neighborhood at village level, because it was their social and political life that also had immediately impact on their property and basic rights. They realized that the government and its allies had gone far into intervening the lowest layers of the society. Many village heads manipulated the compensation, supposed given to the owners of the plot of land, and therefore at least they want to target a better share with people in the neighborhood, apart from resisting against them as local government officials.
(democratizing local culture)
As a minor priority, villagers also saw their culture as a sector to be democratized. They saw the feudal structure of the Javanese culture might be still be formed in a local community as in more democratic fashion. They cultivated new ways in expressing egalitarian style of language by introducing new meaning of old, obsolete expressions.
4. Forms
a) What democracy do the actors prefer?
b) What general process of democratization do the actors go for?
c) What ways, according to the actors, the above should be accomplished?
Jhony Simanjuntak
a)
In delineating democracy, Simanjuntak set in mind an idea of the form of democracy in which the local people should have capability to directly manage and control their own affairs in their reachable surroundings, as much as possible without any outside parties meddling, worst eliminating their very existence. Democracy refers, for him, to the people's sovereignty in taking any concerned political decision, more crucially if the matters concern with their own business.
b)
In the follow-up of such idea in the first place he took the general process of intervening the rural people, strengthening their community, because most of them are not capable enough, having low education and narrow perspectives, to carry out a responsible sovereinty. He, then, consciously helped them as he considered the villagers need a necessary intervention to make them aware of their strength, while relating their local problems with the larger ones within the existing rigid political system. But he mainly focuses his effort at local problems faced by villagers, as an outset of people's further social, political consciousness. He said it was needed to break the villagers' tendency to close up their own interest of fair compensation.
Therefore, according to him, the actors, while minimalizing his own role but along with the villagers, should firstly grasp the whole undertaking by limited but direct control of the people towards necessary mass mobilization. He did support the ways of mass upheaval to gain democracy, as he actually primarily worked with open, direct and yet wide controling and including as many grassroot people as possible.
c)
Simanjuntak directed his involvement within the villagers' community to politically organize them to face continuous, direct external intimidation of the government and all of its allies, including the military and police,
taking the ways of never compromising with the government and its allies. While bearing such position he did not take any attempt of filling lawsuits against the government, particularly when the dam was still in the initial stage of construction. By strengthening the farmer community to directly facing the intimidation, such as forced "thumbprinting", he targeted that the dam construction immediately be stopped.
To support such actions and awareness, Simanjuntak, former student activist, however, directed conscientization program towards external purposes of handling continuous intimidation from local bureaucracy and military personnel, and thereby he mainly directed the villagers to resist against the dam construction project in progress. This is the basic demands carried during the mass mobilization, of "fair land compensation", toward the government and its associates, implying the termination of the dam construction.
He clearly drew the line of relating "human rights issues" with "private property" and the very existence of the villagers. "Once the villagers were removed (or "resettled", in the government's term) their life was over," he said. To advocate struggle towards such self-respect, he injected the people the idea of what he calls "the demitologization of the state power", delegitimating indiscriminately all the structure of the existing regime. He drew the villagers to see that all government officials and its allies, in a feodal structure of Javanese society, from upper structure to local level at neighborhood, were "not to be feared of and no less no more as human as themselves", by bringing them into direct experiences. However, strong emphasis was put against the local level of the structure.
YLBHI
a)
The YLBHI prefers that democracy refers to "general values or situation in which the concerned people, in any public policy and its implemantation, are included into decision making process," implying the people sovereignty. The result of truthful process toward democracy, meaning democratization, should be a just rule of law serving the people. Ideally democracy always exists as a given nature of the people, and in accordance with it the people have no need of any outside intervention, however, such condition has been taken away from them through power manipulation.
b)
The foundation officials, from empirical experience, believe that they could no longer trust and thereby do not rely on the existing repressive system of the New Order, including such as electoral system. Therefore, the general path of the democratization process they opt is to delegitimate the government and its allies which establish such illegitimate system. The foundation, then, took the general way of working out of system, and selectively intervene the legal dispute cases mostly from those who become the casualties of the repressive system, the less advantaged, poor people, meaning struggle from below, expecting to gain more causes and people's support.
c)
The main mean they prioritize in struggling for democracy is to disclose in public attention the government's mishandling in public policy, engendering the main perceived target in deligitimating the government, chiefly the implementation of the development program. They prioritize such mean because they are fully aware of facing a rigid, deaf bureaucratical government.
The lawyers dominated foundation took the path toward democratization by working on the people with channeling local problems, that are land disputes, in legal affairs at courts, generating larger accesses toward public disclosing injustice and human rights abuses. Legal battle is considered to be the prime instrument towards deligimating the government, to gain an enhanced awareness of the people in general, heaping slowly for their trust and support. Local government actually took benefit from such pigeonholed approach, as they may expect more that "local people's protests" may likely be locked up into only legal matter, and not abrupt, uncontrolled political movement.
The main officials at the foundation, limited by their specific professions as lawyers, are very conscious of the non-popular-mass-based orientation of its organization. They do not stress on working in mass mobilization, and therefore they prefers to build networking channel with those activists active in intervening the villagers into necessary mass upheaval.
The students
a)
The radical students, supported by radical-oriented NGOs, preferebly called radical democrats, opt the form of democracy that refers to a social and political condition in which the system guarantees the basic rights of the less powerful and downtrodden people, such as farmers, indigenuous people, ethnic, religious minorities. They perceived such democracy did not exist, but an authoritarian, rigid government dominating all aspects of public life, backed by the military. As for the softer stance students, most of them agree that democracy implies negotiation in adequate positions among parties involved in managing a certain social and political problem, which would refer to people's land rights and the management of local resources in Kedung Ombo case. To both types of students, there could be indirectly represented through elections at national level, however, at local or regional level, direct representation to manage the people's own business is necessary.
b)
The radical maintain the general process that has to be taken toward such democracy is that initially people should strive for the rule of law, which guarantees their basic rights. The radical democrats, however, are of the opinion that such rule of law is not enough, because the government and its allies may still argue that "the rule of law does still exist". On the contrary, according to them, such "rule of law" is actually void rethoric because government-defined rule of law does not guarantee people's basic rights since perpetration still continues. Therefore, to sharpen the implemantation of democratization, "people should strive for equality of all people and citizens, regardless their background, in front of law" as the general process of democratization.
In addition, at the level of running nation-state building, to gain such democracy, there should be a general process of democratization toward a clear-cut power sharing among the legislative, judicative and executive bodies. There should not be "family affairs" within the executive institution and the institution of the president of the republic should be clearly regulated in line with direct elections, no nepotistic and cronyism involved; the legislative should not deal with representativeness of the people, while actively employing their respective rights, that so far have been eliminated; and the judicative should be independent from excessive interference of the executive. Other parties, such as the media and the NGOs and other importantly but underrepresented people, like women, should also be included in the process of such democratization.
The softer stance students add information, as compared to the radical, that the representative bodies should be also be controlled, for the time being, as they have stong tendency to be absorped in the dominance of the executive of the government and its associates.
c)
Because normal ways of gaining democracy was impossible under such repressive regime, while general elections at that time were no guarantee of representativeness, these radical democrats, firstly, prefer to directly taking any course pertaining to mass upheaval demanding immediate change. They experienceed that the people had been prevented from any political participation process in public decision making during the New Order regime. Secondly, the radical may also prefer to take negotiation with the regime as another mean toward democratization, but such option was always turned into deaf ears, which made them finally take the mass upheaval as the first priority of political options. As for softer stance, they also agree with mass mobilization but mainly directed towards negotiation.
However, according to the radical democrats, a blatant mass upheaval does not always guarantee the implementation of such perceived democracy. If such democratic channels are already satisfactorily fulfilled, or in the mean time, while mass upheaval does not match to the actual condition of the people, the radical democrats opted to strengthen the existing civil institutions, ranging from the state's institutions pertaining to the rights of the people, such as the legislative body, upto any institution within the framework of invigorating the civil society.
They, then, tried to break the existing oppressive structure of the government and the military (including police) and their associates. They hard forced to delegitimate the repressive government for mishandling development programs by imposing the general idea of radical, confrontational resistance so far as they also put forward the ideal of clean government and good governance. While the government itself just imposes the development program as its very mean in clamping down any movement from below. They maintain that the government and its allies did not have any consideration of real idea of democracy from the people to participate in the development program.
To support such approach, the radical students preferred the general process of virtually, as the military prevented them from working with the villagers, associating solidarity movement toward their suffering to related political structure in the government, trying to break the petrified relationship between lower people and the upper structure.
However, it should also worth taking note that radical-oriented NGO Skephi, although it did not directly involve, supported intervention program to the villagers, by assisting the radical students in their further development. Even the KSBH activists, although only very few of them, further supported to radicalize the villagers by never getting involved with any protest out of dwelling in the areas, which much resembles "sitting-in" actions.
In their first involvement, the radical students, soon after the dam gates were closed, concentrated their involvement on taking shortcut to immediately breaking the rigid structure, of course, also from below with daring demonstration, or even they perceive of the possibility of conducting mass upheaval as their first option, delegitimating the repressive government. They started with taking the lead to dialog with government officials at their respected officers. But as they found the government officials turned deaf ears to their demands, they directed a confrontational stance by marching in daring demonstrations, that pitted them to face harsh treatment from the military and police officers.
Later student involvement, at least one year after, performed divisions among the networking groups, one group still remained with daring demonstrations and the other preferred to take softer stance as they realised the regime persisted in turning into deaf ears. The previous preferred to take option of deeper working with the villagers to take them together to larger structure of the existing system, and therefore also brought them to direct demonstrations against the government, although they got also stuck as they failed to resolve rivaling, competitive student groups appeared in various cities in Central Java. In general, regardless the timing of their involvement, the student divisions might be desribed according to the origin of their grouping formation, that are the action maniacs, the study group students, and the student press groups. Study group students tend to take soft stance, while the press groups may have two directions, either turning into direct actions or softer stance.
Mangunwijaya
a)
Mangunwijaya and NGOs opted a kind of ideal democracy in which the good will of all participants should prevail in the building process of nation-state, mostly of those who have the power to political decision-making. According to him, such ideal democracy has always been prevented from materializing, because there are hindrances, one of which Mangunwijaya pinpointed was "the low level of intelectuality of the Indonesian people". In term of the form of democracy, Mangunwijaya, then, preferred that the people should be indirectly represented in raising their demands and interests.
b)
Mangunwijaya and his humanitarian groups took the general process of strengthening the villager community from below, with the idea that may be compared to the so-called "civil society". They worked internally with and within and for the sake, firstly, of the villagers' community, while realizing the weakness and suffering of the people due to long-standing resistance. But he combined also the process with breaking the oppressive in his capacity to personally work from above.
Another general path he took was to endorse the uncompromising position of the villagers in term of how they could live in their own surrounding, undertaken by the stubborn villagers to dwell in the green belt areas. He was of the opinion that the villagers after the dam flooding still could live in such environment, even building water villages on the dam water surface, that the government officials claimed to be dangerous.
c)
In contrast with radical students' daring demonstration and also community movement organizer Johny Simanjuntak, he much opposed to way of mass mobilization, confrontational to the government, apart from staging local resistance at the villagers' neighborhood, although he urged the villagers to never compromise with the government, also with acceding of legal affairs by filing lawsuits. Both this priest's group and NGOs converged in taking the villagers into "conscientization" approach to raise their political awareness starting from local level. The difference between both referred to means they adopted in which NGOs mostly took legal aid matters while Mangunwijaya internally strengthened the community disguised in social, almost charitable approach.
Mangunwijaya and his group, in the mean time, took the way of struggling from below, directly among the villagers, while internally strengthening the communal life of the community. A self-help scheme, hence, was also applied but in the way of internally organizing them as farmers, starting from educating the attended children. Apart from that he personally tried to relate the Kedung Ombo people's problem to the ruling elite.
Kedung Ombo people
a)
To Kedung Ombo people, the form of the opted democracy was that they could arrange local problems as their own level of political sphere, having an adequate representative say in solving them, particularly concerning land appropriation. Most of them long to have an enough bargaining power against any outside interference, mostly from the government and its allies, not less the NGO activists who want to help on whatever behalf. They want to have a capability to manage their own environment and social and political life at local level.
b)
Kedung Ombo people took democratization process through the way of self-strengthening their community from below. As repressive measure in intimidation and terror continued, they took the ways of defending themselves and their properties, as much as possible. They relate their struggle to whatever help they found out of their scope to intervene, as they realized their weakness in political bargaining, but always based on what they perceived as just measure.
Although the stubborn were more critical towards any outsider intervening the community, most of the villagers took the path of patronage to NGOs and outside individuals, be they radical or having cooperative stance, which since the early stage of their struggle in early 1980s had already entered the communities around the dam areas. On civil lawsuit they take representation to lawyers from outside of their isolated community. This option was taken because in the beginning stage of their struggle, most of them need a better political understanding, training, contact, networking and help from outsiders.
c)
The less stubborn maintain that such process would preferably be implemented through negotiation with related government's offices. Later, as negotiation stuck in vain, they took the strategy of long standing process of filing lawsuits against the government, even though they realize their cause would be turned down. They are still willing to accept government's offer. Concerning elections during the New Order under Soeharto regime, they still want to participate.
While the stubborn prefer to firstly filing lawsuits, and instead of mass demonstration they took the way of dwelling in the green belt, an area claimed by the government. The stubborn will never accept to negotiate with the government, flatly rejecting any offer, never compromising with the government and its allies within the regime by persisting to dwell in the green belt areas.
Most villagers did not perceive mass upheaval as their primary way to support such process of democratization. They sustain that mass demonstration would only harm themselves. However, they are willing to march to government offices, legislative body or other related offices, only to raise and press the demands.
D. Actors' own politics of democratization
1. Space
How do the actors analyze the political opportunity structure? (i.e. what, according to the actors, is possible to do -- and why is that?) (E.g. can one work inside the established political system or not? Does one have to politically create or liberate civil society before working there?)
(insensitive measure of the government and its allies engendered local people's resistance)
The villagers almost did not see any external opportunity or space for their very existence. Some of them had been struggling to gain fair compensation, but they failed as the dam construction continued on the way. However, considerable sum of villagers quickly responded that "no space almost means 'internal space' for them to resist." They refer "internal space" to the fact that they have nothing else, even their basic property of tiny land appropriated, but their soul and body, meaning that they would do anything available to regain their land. The reasons, according to villgers who might be categorized as "stubborn", was very imminent and they described as "unacceptable". Local government officials at the village and district level have engaged in an unrelenting campaign of pressure, threats and intimidation to get the villagers to accept the official compensation rates and join the official resettlement plans. The government and its allies dismissed any democratic or persuasive schemes in the land eviction, but instead they used any means available to force the people out of the dam area. All of this had caused to escalate the frustration of the villagers, and engendered their firmer resistance.
(space in the tightly controlled legal affairs for NGOs)
NGOs activists specializing in legal matters entered into the villagers community on behalf of their profession as consultants in legal aid. Although legal aid activists and the villagers were fully aware that the government-sanctioned judges in the court would most likely turn them down, the land dispute in legal affairs was the only space he could take to initiate further involvement chiefly in conscientizing the villagers of their land rights. They saw that in the legal affairs there was still enough space for the villagers to raise their demand of better compensation of the land appropriated and also on the issue of defamation for being labeled as former communist party member.
(how Johnny Simanjuntak saw the space)
Apart from channeling the villagers' demand of fair land compensation, legal activist Johny Simanjuntak still saw a space within the community to development the awareness of the people over their actual conditions. He went further on behalf of the villagers' cause engendering the agenda of strengthening the villagers by organizing them to resist against intervention of the government and its allies. It was very his bravery to work with the villagers in a very tight space, because direct intimidations and threats along with the implementation of resettlement and land appropriation were very ofthen, so that they had still to prepare facing further repression. In the village community life, gripped by fear and anxiety, there was still possibility to fool around the government officials and their military allies.
(the students' success in networking as the main opportunity)
In the midst of government's overwhelming repression, actually the students did not see enough opportunity to take as an endorsement of the actions. At least it was very tight controlled, as they never any student group conducted daring demonstration. "Gathering even 100 students for staging protest was already a big thing," Stanley said. At the same time they saw that no other way but daring demonstrations were the only way to support the suffering villagers, pressuring the government to break the repressive development polity. Students noticed that the local military officers did not stop and beat protesting students when they staged a relatively big demonstration in Jakarta in late 1988, demanding for the justice of their friends who were beaten in a racial conflict involving skinhead youth in France, as a sign of likely a soft stance of the military. "We just wanted to try staging demonstration," many of action maniacs would unhesistatingly say. However, as they succeeded in building network of solidarity among university students in the neighboring cities, they were propelled to proceed the actions directly among the displaced villagers in the site, while continuing the actions in the streets in neighboring localities.
(minor regional influence to the students)
In the network buiding the students acknowledged they later have bought ideas of democratic struggles, but apparently as a minor influence for their movement, such as happened with their friends in mainland China after the Tianmen crackdown in June 1989, some months after the student networking attempted to march to the streets protesting the military. They learned also from the bravery of the Korean students, still in the same course of breaking the rigid structure.
(the government's mishandling as a space of opportunity)
As already developed among student circles, most of them saw that the government's mishandling of the dam project as a relative space that they might take as an opportunity to raise the people's concerns. By pinpointing the fallacy of the government's calculation in compensating the affected villagers in the dam project, it was comparatively feasible for them to logically raise the cause of the villagers.
(deeper military rift)
After initial daring movements in the early months of 1989, the radical students soon perceived that the military rift was quite deep as they found that even a military general from the Armed Forces's headquarters in Jakarta took time to show their political support by visiting their secretariat at Salatiga, offering them relatively considerable amount of cash. Such a gesture was further interpreted as political space to be grabbed, either at national or local levels, by blatantly refusing such supports.
(and still, relative local space for radical students)
On the lower political stage, particularly the students saw a political openness only at the local politics, as they realized that government applied repressive policy almost in every aspects of people's life in the center of power in Jakarta. The students did not stress on such a space, as they believed their bravery in such repressive polity was the main reasons for their actions. But historically, radical student activities had long been banned since 1974 after the government applied the curbing policy of "the campuses normal life" (NKK/BKK). New student movements flourished, grouped in at least three kinds of groupings: (1) study groups, (2) university press groups and (3) action-oriented or radical groups. And later, as the radical students, many of them were from the third kind of student groups, turned to be fed up of only years of talking in study groups, they moved to the only free political space at local politics. The Kedung Ombo case, in Central Java, proved to be suitable attempts in which the students took the opportunity to forward democratization issue.
(local space to sneak into the villages)
The actors also saw that in the midst of the local officials at the village level, there were still space or possibility for them, including comparatively much older actor like Mangunwijaya, to sneak into villagers' community to give them conscientization and direct participatory actions in the villagers' daily life as farmers. In fact, there were some instances in which even though the military officers knew about their presence in the villagers community, they did not arrest and detain them. It was seen a further space for the concerned outsiders, either students, Mangunwijaya group, or NGO activists. Local military officers maintained the arrest of those activists would only harm their reputation because wandering journalists would soon report such incident to form public opinion.
(local space for intervening the villagers)
Student activists still saw further space for working at local level with the villagers. It was partly also because of that soft stance in front of the government resulted in nothing, as the government failed to respond satisfactorily to their criticism, they turned to see that local space was still available while working to intervene the Kedung Ombo villagers. Although there were reported many intimidation against those involved in the resisting against government's Kedung Ombo project, the military comparatively was still less harsh in gripping the movement. The actors, mostly radical students, considered this as rather soft measure of the military, that might be taken opportunity to further move forward the villagers' cause.
After the government changed its policy over Kedung Ombo project, such as seen when Central Java's governor agreed to relocate some villagers to the forestry area, the actos further proceeded to take benefit from such space. It was clearer seen in the second phase of student involvement, while their options were already divided, their movement was prompted also by their vision that there was still possibility working at local level with the people. Some government officials at the Public Work department, working directly at local division, performed an alternative opinion, saying that irrigation system does not necessarily need a huge dam such as Kedung Ombo. Mangunwiya dan his group were also not harshly treated by the military. He experienced himself a policy changed by the local government officials after then Environment Minister Emil Salim supported his stance, coupled by media campaign, over the possible relocation of the Code river bank inhabitants in 1986 in Yogyakarta.
(local veteran activists support the student movement and democratization process)
Behind the students, in the normally peaceful university town of Salatiga, which was taken as the secretariat of the student movement, there resided some social, politically active individuals such as veteran activist-cum-intellectuals Arief Budiman, George J. Aditjondro and Ariel Heryanto. These lecturers of the Protestant University of Satya Wacana provided the students with moral and movement strategic supports and understanding on the current issues of Kedung Ombo so far as related to democratization process. Their present and contribution proved to be encouraging the student movement. Budiman's comments and public relation role, particularly, on the current issues were abundant in the then media report and related, concerned organizations.
(the World Bank's support)
Most actors also saw that the World Bank actually did not directly control the dam project, it financed, a fact that later strongly addressed by the bank's officials after Mangunwijaya who took to opportunity to observe in the site of the project. The bank itself recommended that the resettlement should be well implemented. The World Bank's position had become Mangunwijaya's prop in further raising the villagers' concern over compensation and partly also the feasibility of the project.
D.2. Politicization of issues and interests
What issues do the actors politicize? How is that done?
(a) Issues and interests
Most of the actors involved in the Kedung Ombo villagers' struggle agreed with the basic issue of "unfair compensation for land taken for the dam construction". It was the starting point issue, firmly raised by the villagers, and later snowballing into further issues. NGOs, specializing in legal aid, sharpened this persistently-maintained issue with channeling it through legal dispute at courts. YLBHI particularly spotted light to the issue by relating to and thereby uttering it to the universal value and also political claim of "the right to private property", that was the main problem the villagers with little or no land have always had to face in any land appropriation. But, then, at local level, propelled by feeling of solidarity with the villagers mostly from and along with university students' daring demonstrations, the actors also directly raised the issue of "clean government and good governance" as they, again with the students as the spearhead, further carrying heralded anti-government issue that was propelled by "anti-military" issue. This development of issue management implicated later in the issue of sheer wordy "democracy" to the government and its allies, and thereby also propagating "anti-government issue" to the public in general. In the mean time, Mangunwijaya and his humanitarian aid group raised the issue "save the unattended children first", bolstering it with further issue voicing out "the government and its allies had not grossly treated the villagers as human beings".
(b) Ways of politicizising issues and interests
1. Generally agreed ways of the actors in politicizing issues
(Using the mass media to create public pressure)
Most actors used the information disseminating function of the mass media to heap public support and therefore also its created public pressures to the government over mishandling of the development project. Villagers were very keen on conveying witness-related news to the journalists who visited their villagers. Journalists' role, that makes their affairs publicly known, is among reasons that motivate the farmers to proceed into resolving land dispute at courts, although they knew it was in vain enterprise.
YLBHI particularly made intensive use of the media in order to draw public attention to the case. The frequency of media coverage of the case in Indonesian newspapers was very high, three times a week, especially during 1989 when the dam gates were closed. Such large publication in its turn legitimized the foundation's representation of the farmers' legal rights. Students invited local journalists to follow the demonstrations and they also guided foreign journalists sneaking into security-controlled dam areas. A notable use of publication stratagem was carried out by nine local NGOs which published and circulated about 5,000 copies of satirical cartoon disguised in a form of calendar, exposing Soeharto regime exploited of the poor disguised in a form of calendar, apart from anti-oppresive global capitalism. The publication drew more public attention, as the government persecuted the activists. It is worth noting that Mangunwijaya has made use of his well link with the most circulated Jakarta-based Kompas daily newspaper. He drew particular protest knowing upon journalists were also barred from entering the dam site to get information.
2. How the villagers politicized issue
(Fair land compensation as starting point single issue)
At the very first phase, the villagers raised the issue of "corruption of the compensation" supposed to be given to affected villagers. Those who lived in the downstream of the Kedung Ombo dam sporadically directed the issue at mostly local levels of the related government officials, mainly the land registration agencies. The issues of "fair compensation" only came to public stage when the dam construction directly affected the villagers living very close to the raising water level of the dam construction on the way to completion.
3. How Jhony Simanjuntak developed issues
In the first period of his involvement before the dam flooding, along with his advocacy intervention to the villagers, he made the villagers understand that basic assumption that the dam construction would never stop, as the government's project continued on the way. Then he elaborated issues and demands that were consequently, and logically related to fair compensation, meaning that as compared to the stubborn ones, Simanjuntak directed the villagers to accept the Central governor's offer to be willing to be relocated. He trained the villagers to grasp issues, pertaining to their demands, pointing out the issue of fair land compensation into three specifications: (1) appropriated land should be replaced by the same size of land, (2) all facilities destroyed together with the dam flooding has to be replaced also with the same measures, such as school buildings, market place, worship buildings; (3) villagers have to get rights to manage the economic resources of the dam water. While doing so, he tried to disseminate information concerning the issues by inviting local and foreign journalists to the dam areas and networking with students and activists, trying to avoid the media publicly exposing himself and thereby also evading intimidation. In the second period, after the dam gates were closed, as government's intimidations continued, Simanjuntak spefically took the criminal legal battle issues by representing villagers charged with swindling community's consignment for personal interest.
4. How issues were politically developed by YLBHI
(Sticking to filing lawsuits)
As the NGOs were the first outsiders being involved in the villagers' cause before the closing of the dam's gates, they started from the issue of "unfair compensation", and sticking to it by filing lawsuits at courts. What makes the difference was that the YLBHI sharpened the issue by further entrenched it to the international level. As the foundation activists campaigned in that level the issue of "anti-huge dam construction" which has proved damages to most related people in any location in the world, they had to promote a more pungent issue of "the right to private property", that was the main problem the villagers with little or no land have always had to face in any land appropriation. The "anti-huge dam construction" campaign was a unifying issue proposed by the YLBHI that was firmly held by diverse NGOs involved at the INGI forum vis a vis the IGGI, particularly its member of the World Bank that financed the Kedung Ombo dam. The Indonesian NGO delegation pinpointed the collaboration of the Indonesian government and the World Bank resulted in a lack of benefits for the Kedung Ombo who were excluded from the project's target group. The NGOs who moved forward on behalf the interest of Kedung Ombo people, and thereby also other development-affected people, raised their interest by demanding their participation in the decision-making mechanism on the development projects, at least in the case of the huge dam construction. In turn the univeral value of "right to private property" also gained its momentum in such international community, but at the same time particularly also gave a passage to the interest of Kedung Ombo people. Meanwhile, at the local level, the Yogyakarta and later the Semarang branch of the foundation, strengthened such elaborated issues with consistently wedging the government with "the fair compensation" demands at courts.
(Through discussions, reverberated by the media)
YLBHI elevated the issue of "good governance and clean government" by, very often, staging open discussions to disclose its broader concerns of how the government mismanaged the development project and how the government harmed the affected people. As the media were responsive to such maneuvering issues, public opinion was conducted to put pressure on the government.
5. How the students politicized issues
(Students simply raised "anti-governemt" and, subsequently, an implicit but very clear sentiment of "anti-military")
The very issue of "fair compensation" was also taken by the networking students with their particular way of politically networking pressure movements in daring street demonstrations. And both, the students and sooner also the NGOs in more explicit terms, simply related the issue as an entry point for broader issue of "anti-government" to the public at larger scope, as the government held more repression particularly to the students. As it did not very harshly materialized, they further heralded the issue of "anti-military" to put more pressure to the regime. The students dared to hoist banners carrying personally harsh words against government officials and military officers, including President Soeharto himself, to show that "grassroots people have every rights to participate in taking role in decision-making process over public polity", while creating solidarity movement with the suffering Kedung Ombo villagers.
(Drawing attention by staging daring demonstrations)
Meanwhile, street demonstrations were of particular importance for the students as far as the politicization of issues is concerned. They directly pinpointed which part of the government that committed corruption and mismanagement over the development project in Kedung Ombo. They further specified what kind of anti-government wordings they hoisted in banners at the related offices. The students dared to wave banners carrying personally harsh and odious messages against government officials and military officers, including President Soeharto himself. Another example was when the students marched to the Ministry of Home Affairs bringing forth a banner saying: "You are liars".
6. How Mangunwijaya's elaboration of issues
Mangunwijaya elaborated the above mentioned issue to politicize it by ways following:
the compensation was unfairly very low, disregarding that their life depended on the land they possessed and therefore they simply reject the government's offer,
the villagers with each of their entire households were just forced to move to inhospitable new places, which will very soon threaten life, mostly of the elderly; thereby resettlement was mainly government's tricky, unilateral public policy to meet its own economic ends. The actor raised the fact that the government attempted to remove villagers, but they later were just dumped in the street in the way they went to the destined new locations of the migration project
the government inhumanly sacrificed the weak on behalf of development project (tumbal), which the villagers saw only for the benefit of government officials: (a) the government did not consider that "life quality should be first respected", (b) the forced resettlement will take out the villagers from their original culture.
(Comparing the struggle with the Kedung Ombo villagers with the situation in the early stage of the Republic of Indonesia in the making)
Mangunwijaya raised the historical perspective of the struggle, by referring it to the revolution era shortly after the Indonesia's independence in 1945 with its paramount achievement of acclaimed national ideology of Pancasila. The raised perspective had double edges, firstly, mainly to draw more attention of larger public participation, but secondly, to dodge the possible government's intervention by also labeling his and the volunteers' movement with communist stigmatization.
There were three issues related to the historical perspectives:
He resembled the motive behind the volunteers' movement with the Red Cross in the war during the Indonesian revolution.
Back to the original value of unifying state ideology of Pancasila, which was proclaimed just in state's independence in 1945. The volunteers' movement claimed to preserve and live out the second principle of Pancasila of "just and civilized humanity".
Specifically he wanted to pinpoint the betrayal of some villagers who eventually accepted the government's offer of land belonging to the Ministry of Forestry in the neighborhood of the dam location. Mangunwijaya named them the co-operative villagers, resembling some faction co-operated with the Dutch colonial oppressors during the Indonesia history of 1945 until 1950.
D.3. Political inclusion
How do the actors try to mobilize people? I.e. with what means do they try
to organize and rally people? E.g. do they use populism or clientelism or
alternative patronage? Or do they try to integrate (rather than incorporating) people into politics by using some kind of networking with informal leaders or more structural organizing with formal leaders?
Generally agreed ways among the actors in mobilizing people
(Direct protests on the ground and surroundings)
Most actors did not disagree with public protests at various places related to the case. The Kedung Ombo people resisted to stay in the villages, especially those who remained at the green belt implies public protest as government officials and military and police officers guarded them and many other onlookers and aid activists and journalists were present. As the government joined forces with local military and police officers in implementing the dam project, they employed all ways available to resist against intimidation, such as physical force for "thumbprinting" of the compensation registration, ad-hoc arrests in the subdistrict military office, prison arrests. Apart from them, the students were the most conspicuous groups carrying out rowdy public protests in diverse places, also when the protest site not directly related to the Kedung Ombo dam, such as heroes cemetery of Kalibata in Jakarta. Jhony Simanjuntak encouraged the people to resist when intimidation occurred. Mangunwijaya at times advised the villagers not to follow suit the students demonstrations for its harm implication for them, who had endured local intimidation.
Jhony Simanjuntak
People politicization
(Introducing legal consciousness for building solidarity among villagers)
Since the beginning of Simanjuntak's involvement in assisting the Kedung Ombo villagers, he concentrated on educating them with legal training concerning regulations on land compensation and also basic human rights. The option of the legal training among the villagers based on the rejecting the compensation and resettlement. Helped by five staff members of his NGO and some law student volunteers, Simanjuntak focused on so-called "legal consciousness raising" through which a number of the villagers' informal leaders in the Kedung Ombo community were trained on various aspects of agricultural law, regulation for compensation, as well as juridical procedures for land acquisition.
(Weekly training in a progressive way)
The training was conducted weekly in a rather progressive way where concrete problems, unfair treatment and intimidation were discussed by confronting them with contrasting laws. Among methods of the training were participant-centered discussions, simulation training helped by audiovisual, educative programs on group dynamics, training of public speaking for the villagers for their causes ahead of government's program of land acquisition, etc. Such training courses have quite successfully stimulated a sense of solidarity and progressiveness among the farmers to continue their resistance, because the farmers felt disillusioned by the state's indifference and also repression.
(Relate local problems with larger, repressive political structures)
In the content of the training, Simanjuntak also tried to broaden the direct conflicts that the villager faced up to larger problems in the existing system of the country. It was needed to hinder the tendency of the villagers only to question immediate fairer land compensation, which weakened the virtual merit of organizing themselves. The (ideological) background was that the ruling elite imposed their exploitative project to the grassroots people in the remote areas such as Kedung Ombo. The training tried to open the villagers' mind of larger repressive political structure that was on the way to the villages among farmers' daily life.
(Asked for YLBHI branch in Yogyakarta for litigation)
However, as the situation became more serious and Simanjuntak still wanted to concentrate on legal training for the villagers, he asked help for Yogyakarta branch of YLBHI and therefore he advised the villagers, especially those whose relatives were interrogated or arrested by the military. The reason for this advise was simply because the NGO where Simanjuntak worked did not provide any direct litigation activity for a group facing conflicts with the government, but rather merely functioned as a legal consultation agency. In 1986 the Yogyakarta LBH began to arrange various legal administrative procedures needed for filing the case in the courthouse, while adopting Simanjuntak as its "field worker" to function as mediator between the Yogyakarta LBH and the villagers as legal clients.
(Starting himself litigation strategy)
Later, as he got litigation license from the government, Simanjuntak started himself helping the process of filing lawsuits at courthouses, join working and in the same line with the Yogyakarta and Semarang branches of the YLBHI. He named his own legal institute known as Yaphi (The Indonesian Conscientization of Law Foundation, Yayasan Penyadaran Hukum Indonesia).
People mobilization
(Started to organize the people)
The first organization held was the Kemusu People Association (Paguyuban Masyarakat Kemusu), consisting of about ten villagers mainly to face intimidation along with the land registration process of the government officials. But Simanjuntak also bolstered the villagers to form a second group organization of about 30 people in order to replace the first if they dissolved as intimidation for land registration intensified.
(Spreading activities to other villages in which compensation not fully accomplished)
As he regularly visited the villagers in Kedung Ombo, this activity then spread during 1985 to other villages, especially those where the compensation transaction was not fully accomplished, like Nglanji, Ngrakum, Klewor, Kedangsari and Kemusu villagers.
(setting up immediate mobilization)
When the government officials and military personel forced the people to giver their thumbprint as a prove to their agreement with the resettlement, usually they started mobilizing in a hidden way, in which women took part in communicating with repeatedly stricking bamboo drums over the happenings to each others, and men started to hide somewhere or directly face them with necessary, prepared answers of rejection. Simanjuntak directed the villagers to set up an immediate mobilization of concerned people, every time arrests, intimation, and terror took place. As a lawyer he took the initial lead to address the case to police. Even, once they had to escape after an intensive intimidation to the wood, and many of them took resort to Simanjuntak in Surakarta, before Johny took initiative to bring them along the way to Yogyakarta-branch of the YLBHI.
(c) How the YLBHI politicized people
The foundation did not work with mobilizing people, but sticked to litigation strategy. Therefore in this section all description on the foundation remains to the utmost of people politicization. This strategy is in line with the foundation's orientation of a non-mass-based organization.
(Concentrating on legal disputes)
In the initial period, YLBHI delegated its provincial branches of Yogyakarta and Semarang to mostly concentrate on legal dispute over land appropriation at courts. Despite understandable knowledge that they likely lost the case, they kept proceeding with the litigation activities. The Yogyakarta branch took the representation of the Kedung Ombo people living under the jurisdiction of the Sragen district court and the Semarang one for the people living under the Boyolali district, that also included the Grobogan people. In September 1990 the foundation's lawyers developed two accusations on behalf of the villagers in separate lawsuits.
Civil lawsuit: The legal struggle maintained that the villagers channeled their demands of fairer compensation over their land taken for the dam was the very proper venue in such a repressive situation created by the government and its associates. They set to fine the governor to fine amounting to 2,0638 billion rupiah, much higher than the government's offer of the compensation. They took the civil lawsuit to be filed at provincial level court because it directed against the governor of the province.
Criminal lawsuit: The lawyers also filed a criminal suit for defamation against some villagers of being members of the outlawed Indonesia Communist Party (PKI) as their identity cards were stamped with social stigma of "ex-political prisoners", demanding the district head and sub-district head to 2 billion rupiah. Specifically the lawyers filed the suit at a local district level court in order to put more pressure on local government, expecting that the villagers' neighborhood be socially strengthened against unreasonable pretext of the government's officials.
(Relating Kedung Ombo case in the international campaign)
Later YLBHI and the networking NGOs started to relate the villagers' demands up to the international level with channeling the concerns to the International NGO Forum on Indonesia (INGI). INGI is the rival forum vis a vis the Inter-Governmental Group on Indonesia (IGGI), the largest international body regularly giving official development aid to the Indonesian government. IGGI's members also include the World Bank. By relating the case to INGI, YLBHI expected that the World Bank was also achieved. YLBHI itself with its counterpart Novib (Netherlands Organization for International Development Cooperation), a Dutch-based human rights NGO, initiated the establishment of INGI in 1985, whose main objectives were to endeavor to ensure that IGGI fully takes account of important issues affecting the poor and disadvantaged.
To keep INGI high profiled, YLBHI outspokenly asserted the need of sustainable development and socioeconomic justice as the fundament of development in Indonesia. The foundation also included other Indonesian NGOs to get more support from among its counterparts in Indonesia. In the framework of INGI, YLBHI led all the Indonesian NGOs involved in the form of Indonesian Governing Committee (ISC) and the non-Indonesian NGOs committee was led under NOVIB. The two committees proved their pungent move in raising the Kedung Ombo case as their token to pressurize the World Bank improving its financial policy. For YLBHI and also other Indonesian NGOs it was very strategic maneuver to channel their voice over Kedung Ombo case through INGI. Apart from directly confronting the repressive Indonesian authorities, YLBHI took a stronger position by putting pressure on the World Bank, which in turn would later question accountability from its client, the Indonesian government.
In the period of one year from when the dam gates were closed until February 1990 the foundation launched continuous campaigning to pressure the government, either nationally in the country or internationally through INGI, on changing its handling of the social impact of the Kedung Ombo dam construction. Here are some steps during one year taken by YLBHI:
sending letter of strong concern of the damaging social impact of the dam construction to the Minister of Home Affairs,
holding broadly reverberated panel discussion on the social impact of the development,
organizing pressure meeting of INGI in Nieuwpoort, Belgium, to get international support from international NGOs and members of IGGI,
launching letter of concern, signed by international NGO activists to the President of the World Bank through the Indonesian ambassador in Belgium,
organizing a meeting between INGI delegation, presenting Kedung Ombo farmers as witnesses, with the team of the World Bank in Washington, USA, in which they discussed the possibility of the World Bank influencing the development model in Indonesia to benefit the disadvantaged,
holding a meeting between INGI delegations and the World Bank in Jakarta, in which the bank was to improve its project in the country concerning resettlement.
(d) The role of other NGOs and political parties in including people into politics
There are some outside organizations trying to assist the Kedung Ombo people's resistance and thereby provided them with alternative patronage. In that way the NGOs help politicizing the villagers. They might be divided into these categories based on the kind of their involvement:
(1) NGOs intervening the villagers by strengthening the community
Surakarta-based Bhakti Satria Foundation from the Surakarta king circle developed legal aid service with Palamarta legal aid institute and art group of Lembaga Studi Kebudayaan Timur. They started helping the Kedung Ombo people, along with Mangunwijaya, by firstly conducting humanitarian aid works sending to the farmers several tons of rice, one ton of sugar, and clothes. Palamarta served legal aid for some villagers at Kedung Pring.
The Yogyakarta-based Legal Aid Study Group or KSBH (Kelompok Studi Bantuan Hukum) assisting villagers by intervening them to increase their social and political awareness. There are only few activists with a leniency of closed organization with an apparently strong command line towards their superiors, compensated by "politically very conscious" with cell system recruitment and direct commands of political agenda. The few activists focused on framing local politics, encouraging the villagers to resolve their own problems only up to local government and military officials, as compared to the radical students who marched with the villagers even to Jakarta. Along with the stubborn villagers they insisted to only performing protest by dwelling in the green belt areas. They stressed on organizing the villagers, mostly at Kedung Pring and Miri villages, after the dam gates were closed. The activists worked together with Surakarta-based Bhakti Satria Foundation for legal aid assistance and also developedart group, and later with Yogyakarta-based Samin Foundation that focuses on educating abandoned children.
legal assisting related NGOs:
Volunteer Defender Association (GPS, Gabungan Pembela Sukarela). The activists very soon dropped the Kedung Ombo people's representation from the court session as they saw deadlock solution,
Semi-governmental NGO calling themselves BKPH MKGR team. They also dropped their patronage after its Jakarta council warned them not to further help the anti-resettlement farmers.
Political parties recognized by the existing system: Some villagers also tried to take patronage from other organizations, such as the United Development Party (PPP) and Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), but they eventually turned in vain, because the government-sanctioned political parties declined to relate their causes. The Surakarta chapter of the PPP was the only responsive party to the villagers cause.
The outside organizations, put under the second and third categories, opted for approaches by ways of clientelism, as they mainly promoted the government's interest in development program, and that was why they retreated early from their involvement in the Kedung Ombo case as the villagers tended to be more stubborn to any government's intervention.
(e) How students activists mobilize themselves and the villagers
The political inclusion carried out by the students may be divided into at least two phases. The first focused on organizing themselves into daring demonstrations during the first months after the dam gates were closed in January 1989. The second phase is characterized by a split of their ways in dealing with the case, which consequently affected their ways in including people into politics. Some students mostly from their bases in Surakarta dan Yogyakarta insisted the ways in intervening the villager community to include them into active participation and demonstrations by the end of 1989 mostly by stundents from Surakarta and Yogyakarta. The other students, from Salatiga and Semarang, preferred to take soft stance, focusing on including only student circles and did not include the Kedung Ombo people into politics.
The first phase
Several mobilizing steps taken by the students after the dam gates were closed in January 1989:
1) small group of students raised concerns and conducting immediate investigation
The political inclusion started when some student activists raised concerns over the fate of the Kedung Ombo villagers facing the raising water as they did not want to move from the dam area. Students from Salatiga, Yogyakarta and Surabaya gathered at Salatiga, investigating the case, collecting data about the people threatened by raising water, and spreading information throughout the students networking and other sectors of people concerned. Most of them were actually quite aware that behind all of irregularities in the governance in Indonesia was the overwhelming presence of the military. They had earlier had almost anti-military perception, which then quickly also drove them into no other way than staging daring demonstrations.
2) organizing immediate movement co-ordination, networking in several cities
They soon formed a loose but radical networking group they named with "the Solidarity Group for the Development-Forsaken Kedung Ombo (People)", campaigning anti-military and also anti-development movement. They created quick networking communication in several cities of Salatiga, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Surabaya, Surakarta, Jakarta and Bogor. The key junctures of networking circles laid at Salatiga as it is close to Kedung Ombo, and in Semarang as the capital of Central Java where the governor resided, and also Jakarta for closely pressurizing the central government.
3) sending strong letter of concern and supports to government officials and student circles and media
Asking larger people's support in a letter of concern over the fate of the villagers, gathering hand signs from various people, as many as 961, from diverse cities in Java. The range of support came from various people's professions, such as students from 45 universities in Java and Lombok, artists, social workers, university lecturers, priests, laborers, housewives. They sent the letter to the Minister of Home Affairs Rudini, with carbon copies sent to related government officials, namely President Soeharto, House Speaker Kharis Suhud (among critical retired generals), diverse concerned ministers, Central Java governor, and also Kedung Ombo people, all student institutions throughout the country and mass media. The letter contained several demands (1) to stop the water filling into the dam, (2) to legally prosecute corrupt government officials and military and police officers committed human rights violations, (3) to raise compensation, (4) to form an independent controlling body over government's development projects.
4) staging continuous and simultaneous demonstrations
* the first demonstration: simultaneous protests in three locations pressurizing on the government and the military
They launched simultaneous protests on 6 February 1989, putting direct pressure on the central government, provincial government and the military in the dam area. They stressed issue that government's development project had caused damages to the people, instead of prosperity and peace. Inviting journalists to be involved, about 100 students marched in Jakarta to the Ministry of Home Affairs, in Semarang about dozens of students went down to the office of the provincial council, and about 70 students held solidarity action at Kedung Cumpleng village in Kedung Ombo.
* the second demonstration: returning to the Minister of Home Affairs Rudini, to demand his promise to meet
As the minister was present in the meeting, the students were eagerly opened a debate over (1) the wrongdoing of the government officials and its allies in implementing the Kedung Ombo project, (2) the allegation of communist activity was groundless as the party had been crushed. They agreed (1) to form a volunteer group instead of staging street demonstration, although they ignored the minister's demand to co-operate with the security officers at the dam area, (2) to open a hot line communication with the minister over the implementation of Kedung Ombo dam project. Subsequently, they soon demand the military to give them permission to set up a volunteer group post at the dam area, co-ordinated by the Yogyakarta students.
* third demonstration: further pressuring the government with demonstrations and demands
Turned a deaf ear to their request, either from Rudini in Jakarta or district military command, and upon knowing of prominent food shortage in Kedung Ombo, they marched again in protest to the dam areas. Braving even warning from President Soeharto and Central Java military commander, on March 24, 1989 they went to Boyolali sub-district military command's office to question their unresponded request to set up a humanitarian command post at the dam area. Bringing with them all food stuff, medicines, clothes and ropes, they yelled anti-government exclamations, directly challenged the sub-district military commander, sang patriotic songs, performed Islamic Friday community prayer in the street, attracting surrounding people to join the solidarity movement. In the midst of emotional tension, their yelling exclamations turned from defaming sub-district military commander to Central Java governor and immediately to President Soeharto. The military officers did not move forward to beating them but only tried to disperse the mass gathering due to the student protests and realigned the traffic jam. Students moved driving a dozen of cars, but always barred from taking paths leading to the dam areas as military officers cordoned accesses. As students boldly tried to get into Kedung Ombo, the military and police mobile brigade officers were about to open fire against them at Sruwen crossroad next to Salatiga, the widest path towards Kedung Ombo. Surprisingly, they turned to understand the students' position as stressing their role of humanitarian aid volunteers who wanted to help the Kedung Ombo villagers.
* the fourth demonstration: to follow up their failure with demonstrations in the province's capital
Because they failed to enter into the dam areas, they agreed to further continue the demonstration, targeting the governor to demand access to the Kedung Ombo and appealing larger networking solidarity in Semarang, the capital of the province. Turning around strategic locations in Semarang, about several dozens of students directed their way to the governor's office. Although some student representatives were invited to talk with the governor's officials, they were flatly turned down, as police and military officers rounded them up.
* the fifth demonstration: sharpening anti-government protest by imploring to the dead in the Jakarta national heroes cemetery, referring to the Indonesian independence history
They launched stronger anti-government overtone by imploring to the dead, the Indonesian heroes, for the "living" government officials had turned a deaf ear to their very demands of improving development policy. They planned to hold seven days of mourning, inviting about 5,000 students and other participants. They took the issue of "people's distrust to the (living) government's officials", relating to the heroes who were involved in the struggle to liberate the country into justice and welfare. On the same day some students representatives from various cities visited the Ministry of Home Affairs wearing mourning dress to show their grievance over dying Kedung Ombo people, yielding banner saying: "You are liars." They twisted the original wording of the historic Youth Pledge in 1928 by exclaiming: "We are the Indonesian students pledge to hold united country without oppression, to hold united nation loving justice and to hold one language of truth." At the cemetery hundreds of students prayed to the heroes to ease their grievance and disappointment to the way the national development implemented. Police arrested several students for not having permission to hold such activity at the cemetery.
In a meeting with the local military command's officer on April 26, 1989, in which Boyolali district head was present, students simply raised high demands: (1) open the dam areas for any body, (2) quickly compensate the farmers with lands owned by the Ministry of Forestry, (3) to hold a comprehensive meeting involving all parties involved in the dam construction and its impact. The district head objected the student's demand to help the Kedung Ombo villagers but the students were willing to be accompanied to visit the dam areas.
(Setting up an NGO)
To assist radical movement, the students, in the initial period, agreed to set up an NGO, based at Salatiga, called Gemi Nastiti Foundation (Geni). Geni was not a real NGO as commonly known. It was actually only a mantle for the students' base of radical activities at Salatiga. It was set up because the government at the time banned any political organization, apart from those recognized by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Geni's involvement was mainly to support the radical student movement, although they had always to conceal such activities from public expose. The office of Geni was also used for the secretariat, and most of all for preparatory meetings before daring demonstrations related to Kedung Ombo case. Therefore it had to provide charitable, self-help scheme activities for grassroots people, such as the Salatiga town's street vendors, pedicab drivers, horsecart coachmen, neigborhood's children, open training for electronic and entertainment magic. They mostly financed the activities from the benefit of setting up an electronic reparation stall. But Geni also provided conscientization activities for Kedung Ombo villagers, supporting the villagers' resistance, apart from providing medicines and staple food. Arief Budiman, a notable activist-cum-lecturer of the University of Satya Wacana, played a major role in bolstering Geni's activities. Financed by other donor organizations, Geni provided self-held scheme activities to the villagers.
(Support from Skephi)
In the meantime there was an outsider hand assisting the radical students. The Jakarta-based NGO network organization Skephi facilitated the radical students of the KSKPKO, in organizing conscientization training for the villagers and supported villagers to also march to the streets. Skephi, a radical environmental organization, has developed an intervention scheme in assisting people. It specified its work in acting as the catalytic supporter in the Kedung Ombo case. The Kedung Ombo villagers often used its office in Jakarta as a stop before they launched protests to the central government's offices. Skephi's director Indro Tjahyono deliberately did not plan major involvement in the case, as he found there was a greater importance to be involved in the similar construction dam case in Kotopanjang, Riau, Sumatra, while keep stressing on holding larger anti-huge dam issue.
The second phase
In this period, from the end of 1989 until at least the 1992 general elections, the students' involvement, still under the networking name of KSKPKO, but mostly from Yogyakarta and Surakarta bases, was strongly marked with their intervention to break the local structure among the villagers, that was long petrified by prevailing fear as a result of systematic intimidation by government officials and military officers. The student networking in diverse towns actually split up already, as the regime remained unapproached. The Salatiga and Semarang based students preferred to only approach the government officials in relating the villagers' cause, and thereby they focused on including student circle into politics. They formed their own circle in February 1991, which lasted until December 1991, naming themselves the Student's Communication Forum for Kedung Ombo People (FKMMKO, Forum Komunikasi Mahasiswa untuk Masyarakat Kedung Ombo).
The hardline students no longer put emphasis only on organizing themselves among the students to march into daring demonstrations, but they attempted to include also the villagers in the demonstrations. And even better, they stopped carrying charitable aids to the villagers, which the students themselves percieved as a mean to enter intervening the villager community, and they focused to holding social, political analyses among the villagers to make them aware of their own problems and starting from that they organized them to gradually break the overwhelming fear to show their own popular strength. The protests they successfully held with the villagers had proved to the villagers to furher breaking the fear for demanding and carrying out their own rights. They realized the benefit taken from organizing themselves and it proved to be the effective way to stop the government officials intimidating them.
(d) How Mangunwijaya politicizes and mobilizes the villagers
* People politicization
(Mangunwijaya and his group categorized villagers into two camps based on attitude)
Mangunwijaya, who was involved soon after the students, categorized the villagers into two groups, firstly, those who accepted the increase of compensation and the land belonged to the Ministry of Forestry though not legally certified, and secondly, those who totally rejected any offer from the government. He called them the co-operative villagers and the so-called "non-co-operative" ones. By dividing them into two camps, Mangunwijaya targeted at sharpening the political attitude of the villagers, and therefore it increased the degree of the villagers' resistance against the government.
(Stressing that he was not against the development, however the model of development that the government applied was not in favor of the Kedung Ombo people)
He named the nature of his and his group's movement as also non-governmental organization (NGO), however he put more qualification to it. He added the word "development" in the abbreviation of NGO into "non-governmental development organization" (Lembaga Swadaya Pembangunan Masyarakat, abbreviated into LSPM). With this stressing he strongly criticized the development model conducted by the government, which deprived the affected local people. He stressed that in the dam project case, the government's neglect of local people, even actually the government applied the depopulation or people annihilation project.
(Focusing on the non-co-operative villagers and thereby included more volunteers)
Mangunwijaya and his volunteers focused on helping the non-co-operative villagers, since he maintained that they were the most suffering villagers, and therefore they deserved the priority. Apart from that, he said the capacity of the volunteers he gathered was limited. By focusing on the base of such reasons, he further also included the volunteers and would-be volunteers to willingly involve with helping the villagers.
(Claiming the humanitarian aspect of his and the volunteers' involvement)
He also claimed that the volunteers would concentrate their involvement on what he called "the aspect of just and civilized humanity", which consequently put aside the NGOs which he claimed to focus their attention on legal disputes over chiefly land appropriation. He compared such humanitarian involvement with the function of the Red Cross in a real war field, regardless racial, religion or ideological backgrounds. He suggested that the volunteers and other outsiders involved in the struggle had always to face the intimidation of the government and its allies. Therefore, by comparing the struggle with real war, he would pinpoint the harsh measure employed by the government.
(Conducting alternatives of self-help scheme by [1] informally educating abandoned children of Kedung Ombo villagers and [2] forming economic self-help)
Apart from directing the volunteers to informally educate Kedung Ombo children, Mangunwijaya organized them the Kedung Ombo people strengthening their village community in term of intensifying the neighborhood relation. The volunteers involved in villagers daily life by fostering to develop agricultural techniques that were firstly orientated to their own needs, either immediate or long term program, and were strongly adapted to local conditions. Instead of taking chemical fertilizers imposed by the local office of the Ministry of Agriculture through government-backed agricultural co-operatives, they developed environmental friendly of organic fertilizers taken from local components, such as leafs and home garbage. In village internal movement Mangunwijaya fostered correct, just moral code while directly practicing real life involvement with agriculture, strengthening trust among each others. While using community-centered agriculture, they also developed resistance and exploitation implanted by the government. Meanwhile, they developed socio-agricultural community based on just relationship, through for example helping and sharing harvest of each others when the time to reap crops came.
* People mobilization
(Actively inviting and including local Muslim leader into his movement)
Mangunwijaya took this kind of political inclusion because he was alleged of practicing proselytism along his way to Kedung Ombo people. By including acclaimed Muslim leaders, such as Kiai Hamam Dja`far, the head of Islamic boarding school of Pabelan at Muntilan, Central Java, he dodged the allegation of the government and its allies from the Muslim side that he intended to christianize the villagers. It was a kind of political attack by taking sectarian leniency. Along with that movement, he included some outstanding local figures such Suwarno, the head of Indonesian Red Cross, Prof Slamet Sahardjo, the head of 1945 Generation Group, and also lecturers from the state-owned University of Diponegoro in Semarang.
(Mangunwijaya tried to give a hand while villagers of the Kedung Pring)
Apparent people movement was carried out when the stubborn villagers were already entrapped into increasing dam water, as they had to movemet uphill inch by inch. While they were watched and guarded by military personel, as the villagers refused their help, or even sometime they were involved in quarrel and fighting with soldiers, the villagers, assisted by the volunteers, performed movement which attracted public attention as journalists were also around. The same scene took place several time until the reservoir was filled with river water.
(Accompanying volunteer Catholic youth to protest the regent)
As a humanitarian aid group the volunteers, about 70 people, many of them were priest candidates, nuns, Catholic students and youth, marched to the Sumber Lawang sub-district's office to protest the government's attempt to stop their effort, after the government officials and the soldiers destroyed their boat, in June 1989, supposed to help tranporting assistance for the villagers. They were allowed to operate the boat, but then they had to repair the boat. About couples of dozen radical students from KSKPKO group accompanied Mangunwijaya while reparing it. Soldiers with guns who followed them marching did not do harm.
(e) How the villagers included themselves into politics
* Politicization
(limiting actions to concrete needs and local context)
The Kedung Ombo farmers preferred to limit goals and actions to their concrete needs and the local context, representing fairer compensation and better resettlement schemes. They did not demand farther as the NGOs and the student asserted respectively the development model policy and the democratization. However, the villagers realized their causes coincided with other actors involved in the case. They of course deliberately made use of their services and helps and interests. They were also aware of the possibility of being used by other actors for their limited perspectives and the more mobile modalities because other actors did base on and live in the dam areas, which were the target of intimidation of the government and its allies. Limiting themselves to concrete needs and local context and later channeled them in legal battle made them surer of their position.
(take representation to legal aid institutes)
They agreed to file civil and criminal lawsuits against the government's officials, respectively at provincial level and district level, through the representation of legal aid institutes. They knew that the lawsuits would not serve their demands, however, they believed their sense of justice would be satisfied. They openly stated that "it did not matter of having lost the case at courts, but the important thing was that the case would be documented by the media as historical events and that their offspring would later realize the struggle of their forefathers and foremothers." When they felt they were fooled around by the Supreme Court's justices, the fact even made them firmer in resistance.
(pull out legal representation, whenever they found they were dumped in vain, and trying to find other patronage)
However, the second advantage of limiting themselves to concrete needs and local context was to have more ability to skip if they found legal representation was unsatisfying. The villagers were also aware that NGOs specializing in legal affairs were also other co-actors in struggling against the repressive government. However, as nobody could really provide them with satisfying patronage and because of increasing intimidation, they preferred to limit the actions to what they could immediately grab, that is their own resistance. Therefore, they took critical towards NGOs and other outsiders who wanted to help them, and but so far as outsiders were helpful to them, they took their patronage. They took patronage to other NGOs as explained later in the section of how NGOs took their politicization maneuver.
(using local mythology to reinforce their resistance)
The villagers were referring their suffering to Javanese rich sayings and poetry to keep persevering the suffering as their houses and properties submerged under water, to staying in their villages, and never stop rejecting the government's offer, thereby resisting any intimidation. The saying was taken from the Javanese literature, lived out by the villagers, and also from particular messianistic poet Ranggawarsita of the last century, exploring millenarian myths, which inspired them to remain calm despite tribulation and promised of a better future as the millenium turns. The villages' elderly people reinterpreted the poetry depicting the details of the happening while the dam construction affected their daily life. Among the famous saying was "the bader fish eats the coconut flower" (iwak bader mangan manggar), which they interpreted as legitimating their decision to stay on the banks of the dam. When water level raised, the bader fishes were swimming freely among the drowned coconut trees, according to the saying it was the prosperity came to the people in the river valley.
(Staging folk opera to give meaning to resistance of some Kedung Ombo people)
Village head Djaswadi invited local folk opera ketoprak to perform the story of a popular Central Java folk hero Jaka Tingkir to commemorate his people's successful struggle against the governor, as the latter agreed to create new resettlement sites close to the dam, above the green belt. The story has given new meaning for resettling (thereby according to them also "resisting") the upper site of the dam in forestry land. Djaswadi intended to transform some of Kedung Ombo people from being "victims" into "victors" by staging the ketoprak story.
(Other radically resisting people stuck to earlier saying)
Darsono and about 600 people at Kedung Pring stuck to the former saying, after realizing that village head Djaswadi accepted the government's offer to dwell in the forestry land, and thereby he needed to twist the saying for his beneficial solution. Darsono did not want to reinterpret the saying in order to maintain the unity of his people's resistance against the project of depopulating the green belt area.
* Mobilization
(openly resisting against intimidation)
As compensation related issues became already pointed, they further sharpened their demands with staging demonstrations that involved people into mobilization. Common form they adopted was (1) resisting to stay at green belt areas removing their properties only at the last minutes as water inundated and shifting slowly uphill of the river banks, (2) public protests to the House of Representatives in Jakarta, (3) accompanying plaintiffs to the sessions at courthouses, either at the district level of Boyolali or at the Semarang district court, (3) staging open protests at their neighborhood when government officials and military and police officers intimidated them.
(involving women to better protect the households and village neighborhood)
There was no specific emancipative women issue developed in the Kedung Ombo case, however, the role of women were quite instrumental in protecting village community. As women's voice was underestimated in local community, even yet in such repressive situation under government and its allies, they only had to actively support men's role to resist resettlement. Intimidation and threat were a matter of daily challenge they faced. As the government officials did not reckon women's thumbprint for land registration and also agreement for resettlement, the women agreed to protect men's as mostly householder from being forced to accede government's programs. They maneuvered to hide men whenever government's intimidation took place. Many harsh incidents were recorded when they lied to government officials of having hidden men somewhere only around the villages.
(women's role in staging demonstration)
Women also took communicative role among villagers in the neighborhood as they had culturally more mobile in such difficult time of intimidation and direct threats. They braved themselves to resist in demonstrations against government officials and military and police officers when the latter forced the community to surrender to government's program. Several times were reported women publicly put off their clothes in protests when officials raided into their neighborhood.
E. The constituents' view of democracy
In this case, the very supporters, to hinder the use of the word "constituent" as such in mass politics that was not the case in such a repressive government's policy, were the Kedung Ombo people themselves. Most of them perceived that "democracy" means "protection guarantee for private property" because most of them much hang their life on their tiny land as only resource of their earning. Once their properties were taken they found their existence was uprooted and finished. Basically their idea of democracy was not different from their local leaders such as Darsono from Kedung Pring village and Ngrakum village head Djaswadi, as already mentioned above. Common people's opinion coincided with their local leaders opinion, meaning that the villagers much took patronage to the leaders in such a traditional farmers' way of living.
That was why they raised the demanding issue "fairer compensation for land taken for dam construction" or "for any other their properties damaged for the cost of development program". They materialized the idea of democracy in term of that they should have rights to voice out their concerns for defending their property. They actually had been long struggled for this cause. Democracy would entail that any outsiders should respect their locally comprehensive life including environment.
The extent of their struggle of such democracy remains on their very instant circumstances in the neighborhood so far as they had also to relate their causes to district level government. But later their scope of forwarding the idea that they should have acknowledged of their rights developed when there were trained of legal land rights by NGOs and solidarity movements coming from students and humanitarian aid group. Outsiders increased the villager's meaning of democracy, in term of that they finally could also relate their causes to wider sector of particularly still the government, the officials of them they perceived responsible for their land appropriation.***
Bibliography
George J. Aditjondro, The Media as Development "Textbook": A Case Study on Information Distortion in the Debate about the Social Impact of an Indonesian Dam, A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University, January 1993.
Edward Aspinal, "Student Dissent in Indonesia in the 1980s", Working Papers 79, Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University Clayton 3168, Australia, 1995?
YB Mangunwijaya, "Permasalahan dan Saran-saran tentang Resettlement Penduduk Kedung Ombo", (The problems and suggestions over the resettlement of Kedung Ombo inhabitants), undated, a paper presented to the government and circulated among wide ranged of activists, NGOs and other related local figures.
M.B. Damairia Pakpahan, "Mitos dan Ideologi Pembangunan: Studi Kasus Pembangunan Bendungan Kedung Ombo" (Myth and Development Ideology: A Case Study of the Kedung Ombo Dam Project), graduate termpaper presented to the Faculty of Letter at the Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, 1994.
Stanley Prasetyo Adi, Seputar Kedung Ombo, a monograph published by Elsam (the Institute for Social and Policy Studies), Jakarta, 1994.
Augustinus Rumansara, paper prepared as a chapter in Jonathan Fox and L. David Brown, "The Struggle for Accountability: The World Bank, NGOs, and Grassroots Movements", June 1996.
Adam Schwarz, Nation in Waiting, NSW: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd., 1994, p.
Kastorius Sinaga, NGOs in Indonesia, A Study of the Role of Non-Governmental Organizations in the Development Process, Saarbrücken: Verlag für Entwicklungspolitik Breitenbach GmbH, 1994.
Olle Törnquist, "Democracy in Indonesia? Of Popular Efforts at Democratisation under Authoritarian Rule", incomplete manuscript, Uppsala and Kungshamn, June 1996.
Wahyu Susilo, "Pengorganisasian Paska Penggusuran Kedung Ombo" (Organizing activities after the Kedung Ombo eviction), compilation published by YLBHI, 1995, p281-287.
Anders Uhlin, Democracy and Diffusion: Transnational Lesson-Drawing among Indonesian Pro-Democracy Actors, Sweden, Lund University, 1995.
The case-related news and news analyses from local newspapers Kompas, Media Indonesia, and newsweeklies Editor and Tempo.
Interviews with
Johny Simanjuntak, Salatiga, July 28, 1998, conducted by Danang Widoyoko and Jorge Manuel Pinto Soares.
Mangunwijaya in Yogyakarta, 9 May 1998, conducted by Prasetyohadi.
Then YLBHI director Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara, Jakarta, November 20, 1998, conducted by Benny Subianto; and in Jakarta, 30 July 1999, conducted by Prasetyohadi.
Luhut MP Pangaribuan, then YLBHI official, Jakarta, 28 July 1999, conducted by Prasetyohadi.
Benny K. Harman, then YLBHI official, Jakarta, 30 July 1999, conducted by Prasetyohadi.
Nur Ismanto, Yogyakarta, 3 August 1998, conducted by Danang Widoyoko and Jorge Manuel Pinto Soares.
Puspo Aji, activist of the Semarang branch of the YLBHI, in Semarang, 3 August 1998, conducted by Danang Widoyoko and Jorge Manuel Pinto Soares.
Stanley Prasetyo Adi, former student organizer, Jakarta, 22 June 1999, conducted by Prasetyohadi.
Brotoseno, one of former student protesters, in Yogyakarta, 11 November 1999, conducted by Prasetyohadi.
Bagus Purseno, student activist, conducted by Prasetyohadi, Jakarta, 9 July 1999, and email correspondence, 5 August 1998, conducted by Susiyanto Prakoso.
Eri Sutrisno, former student activist, Jakarta, 16 July 1998, conducted by Prasetyohadi.
Damairia Pakpahan, female student solidarity activist, Jakarta, 25 July 1998, and email correspondence, 6 July 1999; both conducted by Prasetyohadi.
Indro Tjahyono, Jakarta, 13 July 1999, conducted by Prasetyohadi.
Veronica Indriani, a woman activist who worked with Mangunwijaya, now active at the Women Solidarity for Human Rights organization in Jakarta, conducted by Prasetyohadi, in Jakarta, 18 April 1999.
Wahyu Susilo, former student activist, conducted by Prasetyohadi, Jakarta, 8 July 1999.
Wuryanti, former schoolteacher at Kedung Ombo and a woman activist who worked with Mangunwijaya, now active at the Women Solidarity for Human Rights organization in Jakarta, conducted by Prasetyohadi in Jakarta, 18 April 1999.
Sigit Pranowo, who was involved with organizing Miri villagers, Jakarta, 15 July 1999, phone interview conducted by Prasetyohadi.
Sita Darmayanti, who has been mostly involved with the Kedung Pring villagers, phone interview Jakarta-Surakarta, 19 July 1999.
Samin Foundation's director, Muhammad Farid, Jakarta-Yogyakarta phone interview, 15 July 1999, conducted by Prasetyohadi.
Villager Darsono from Kedung Pring hamlet, conducted by Helio Maria Pinto Soares and Susiyanto Prakoso, at Kedung Ombo, 23 July 1998.
Former village head Djaswadi at Kedung Mulyo village, 4 July and 24 August 1998, conducted Jorge Manuel Pinto Soares, Danang Widoyoko, Helio Maria Pinto Soares and Prasetyohadi.
Kedung Ombo villagers Jumadi, Aat and Wagimin, farmers from Klewor village, at Kedung Ombo, 23 July 1998, conducted by Danang Widoyoko and Jorge Manuel Pinto Soares.
Kemusu villagers Paino, Hasim and Munzakir, at their village at Kedung Ombo, 1 August 1998, conducted by Helio Maria Pinto Soares and Susiyanto Prakoso.
This article was made possible with the help of assistant researchers: Helio Maria Pinto Soares, Danang Widoyoko, Jorge Manuel Pinto Soares and Susiyanto Prakoso, Benny Subianto. Academic supervisors: Olle Törnquist and Arief Budiman; Host organization: The Institute for the Studies of Free Flow Information (ISAI), Jakarta.
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