Indonesian government faces backlash over Riau land seizures

JAKARTA: A protest against the confiscation of land and plantations within the Tesso Nilo National Park in Riau has cast a spotlight on alleged state-sanctioned land grabbing practices, amid an increasing rate of seizures under the President Prabowo Subianto government.

On Thursday (Nov 20), thousands of farmers, activists and students staged a demonstration in front of the Riau High Prosecutor’s Office in the provincial capital of Pekanbaru, protesting the government’s forestry task force for seizing smallholder palm oil plantations within the national park vicinity.

A group of protesters calling themselves the Victims of Forest and Land Governance Forum rejected the relocation of people who are claimed by the government to be residing in Tesso Nilo.

They also pushed the authorities to legally recognize the land and plantations cultivated by locals for decades.

Another protesting group, the Community Coalition for the Dignity of Riau (Kommari), demanded the government’s task force return seized plantations to the residents.

“We object to our plantations being given to the PT Agrinas Palma Nusantara, with management later given to other third parties,” Kommari deputy head Datuk Tarlaili said during the protest, referring to the name of a state-owned palm oil producer.

“We have suffered many conflicts because the people have fought for land rights, which the government never responded to. Some of us have even been silenced and detained,” he went on to say.

Sabaruddin, 43, joined the protest from Pelalawan regency, where the national park is located. He said the backlash against the government’s move was partly because the residents had never been allowed to show historical evidence of their ownership of the land.

“We are fighting to defend the land where we live and that is our source of [income and] livelihood,” he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

No rush The protest was the latest chapter in the long-running land conflict in Tesso Nilo over unclear boundaries between the conservation of forest and community land, as well as the latter’s legal status.

The national park has been deemed one of Sumatra’s most degraded conservation zones.

Of 82,000 hectares of its total area, only around 12,000 ha remains as a pristine primary forest. Around 7,000 families are known to reside within Tesso Nilo’s border.

The forestry task force has seized all forest areas inside Tesso Nilo that have been converted into palm oil plantations, as well as residential areas.

Some of the plantations have been destroyed, while some others were given to Agrinas to be cultivated by the state-owned firm.

Task force head Maj. Gen. Dody Triwinarto met with representatives of the protesters during Thursday’s protest.

He acknowledged the people’s demand for the seized land to be comanaged by the smallholders, rather than given to Agrinas to be cultivated with third party companies.

“We are looking for solutions on this matter. We will communicate with Agrinas so that what the task force has seized can be managed together with the people,” Dody said after the closed-door meeting with some of the protesters.

With thousands of people living in the area, he also admitted the process to rearrange the land management within Tesso Nilo cannot be done haphazardly.

“The forest must be returned to its ecological function, but it needs time. [...] We’ll go slowly,” the two-star Army general said, reiterating Prabowo’s directive that the task force’s seizure of land should not harm the people.

People first Recent tensions in Riau came on the back of the government’s intensified campaign to reclaim lands across the archipelago.

As of early November, the task force has seized around 3.7 million ha of plantations across the country, half of which were transferred to Agrinas, transforming it into the world’s largest palm oil company by size of land managed.

Prabowo recently boasted the achievement to Steve Forbes, chair and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media, during the Forbes Global CEO Conference 2025 in Jakarta in October.

He also reasserted his administration’s commitment to seize 5 million ha of plantation found to be violating the law.

But the rapid pace of the action has alarmed environmental groups such as the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), which argued the government’s latest plan failed to note the importance of recovering the environment while recognizing the rights of communities who have settled in the area for decades.

Walhi Riau campaign manager Ahlul Fadli argued the government is “still focused on seizing so-called illegal smallholder land, but has yet to pursue financiers and brokers who control more than 100 ha of plantations”.

Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA) secretary-general Dewi Kartika said the incident in Riau followed a trend where the government often skirted the local communities’ consent and participation.

“Many of the country’s national parks [...] were established unilaterally by the state without meetings with, or consent from, local communities, as well as any socio-economic and cultural risk mitigation,” Dewi said.

She added that making agrarian inequality and local community’s social situation a priority is a must in dealing with the conflict, not by “coercion or the use of repressive and militaristic means [through a task force]". - The Jakarta Post/ANN