Peasants’ houses in Mekar Jaya - the ‘‘hometown of agrarian reform’’ in Indonesia - razed down by a plantation firm
▻https://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu-27/human-rights-mainmenu-40/peasants-right-resources/2267-peasants-houses-in-mekar-jaya-the-hometown-of-agrarian-reform-in-
It is cruelly ironical.
Less than 72 hours after President Joko Widodo’s orders to implement the agrarian reform through land redistribution as a step to address economic disparity and inequality, peasant families of Mekar Jaya Village in Langkat District of North Sumatera Province in Indonesia were in for a rude shock.
Langkat Nusantara Kepong Ltd (LNK) a Malaysian firm with interests in palm oil plantations, did exactly the opposite by evicting these families from their own lands and razing their houses to the ground. 554 hectares of land have been forcefully grabbed from peasants by this Corporation, in a series of attempts made since the 18th of November 2016.
In the latest of those actions, carried out on Monday the 27th of March, seventy houses have been razed down to the ground.
The affected peasant families, who are members of the Indonesian Peasants’ Union (SPI), have so far been putting up a brave fight. But with nowhere to stay and their houses gone, the distress and despair is strikingly evident.
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