Dianto, what brought you to undertake your current fight?
I was born in a small village en the island of Sumatra. When I was a year old, my parents moved to Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, where I grew up. I’m a big city boy! (laughs)
My parents are not peasants but my grand-parents were farm labourers. My father is a door-to-door salesman and my parents had to work very hard to feed and educate their family. I finished high school at Jakarta and in 1984, I moved to Bandung to study anthropology at the university. Up to then students who tried to express their political views or demonstrate were censured by Suharto. But in the mid 80s a new mobilization took place; students were trying to make their political demands heard and I joined them. We were committed to the fight for the right to land and I met with peasants from different regions of Java. Some people were living in areas completely neglected by the government, who wanted to expand their plantations [ of tea and palm oil, ndlr] and build processing plants.
What were your first political activities?
There were elections in 1982 while I was still in high school. The only 3 political parties allowed to run all annoyed me. I thought to myself “why only three?”. It was my first time voting and I said to myself “maybe young people should have their own political party because we are young and we have different points of view.” So I campaigned for my own political party. I called it the Stones political party, after the Rolling Stones whom I love (laughs). And you know what the logo was? The Rolling Stones’ tongue (laughs). I put up posters around my high school to avoid the three political parties. It was crazy…
Then my teacher and the high school principal caught me putting up posters. Under Suharto the rules were strict, and my teacher was very scared. They immediately took down all the posters and took me to the office, where they questioned and scolded me, with no violence but very firmly. In the end I received three or four days of suspension. It wasn’t fair. It was my first vote and I decided not to participate. There have been 7 elections since and I’ve never voted, because in Indonesia the elections are not just, even today under a democratic government.
Today you are very active in the fight for land ownership. What made you want to speak out and act?
As a student I wanted to study development, and I came across a book translated into Indonesian, Fatal Development. The author had worked in a German development aid agency and acknowledges that certain aids offered by governmental agencies to underworld countries actually lead these Southern populations to their death. Why? Because these types of aid comprise technical elements: goods manufactured in German industries including chemical products. Local populations become dependent on goods that they actually don’t need. The book concludes by saying that development aid offered by industrialised countries like Germany can be a kind of slow murder from which government and industry profit. The author then suggests that we must stop this kind of unequal relationship which further damages issues between North and South. This book really made me stop and think; it changed many of my thoughts and ideas.
To know more about actions led by Frères des Hommes in Indonesia, click here
This project is conducted with funding from the European Union.
