That hundreds of kilometers long road has prolonged the grief of the Malind or Malind Anim people, one of the largest tribes inhabiting Merauke, South Papua. In recent decades, various external threats have emerged, including corporations and national strategic projects (PSN). The entire landscape, which has long been meaningful as a living space, is slowly being forced into a new logic: becoming a commodity to be exchanged, exploited, and accumulated. This process alters the Malind people’s relationship with their environment, while simultaneously opening a new chapter of conflict between Indigenous communities and large-scale development projects.
The Malind Tribe’s Struggle Against the Threat to their Living Space by the PSN Road Project
The Malind people certainly did not stay silent when their land was parceled out and altered without their consent. On Thursday, March 5th, for example, five Malind Indigenous citizens accompanied by the Merauke Solidarity Coalition filed a lawsuit against the environmental feasibility permit at the Jayapura State Administrative Court (PTUN). The lawsuit was directed against the environmental feasibility permit issued by the Regent of Merauke for the construction of a 135-kilometer road connecting the Ilwayab District with the Muting District. This road is planned as supporting infrastructure for the rice field creation project (cetak sawah) under the national strategic project (PSN) scheme.
The lawsuit was based on several grounds. First, the road construction was preceded by the entry of numerous excavators and forest clearing by PT. Jhonlin Group, owned by Andi Syamsudin Arsyad (Haji Isam), without the consent of the Malind community. Second, the cleared area is the living space of the Malind people, which should be recognized and protected by the state as mandated by the constitution. Furthermore, procedurally, the environmental feasibility permit is deemed problematic because it was issued while the project was already underway.
The year-end report by the Pusaka Bentala Rakyat Foundation (2025) shows that the construction of this road corridor has cleared approximately 8,691 hectares of forest spanning 50 kilometers without an adequate environmental assessment. Road construction through large-scale forest clearing not only alters the forest landscape but also triggers spatial changes that have long been the foundation of the Malind-Anim Indigenous community’s life.
For the Malind people, the forest is ‘Mama’, the source of life that nurtures and sustains them. The forest is not merely an empty space, but part of a livelihood system that supports hunting, gathering, and the management of local food sources dependent on the sustainability of the forest and swamp landscapes. In this context, road construction not only triggers ecological destruction but also has the potential to deepen the social and economic vulnerabilities of local communities if it is not accompanied by the protection of their customary territories and traditional livelihood systems.
From MIFEE to PSN: Old Patterns in a New Guise
What is happening in Merauke today is actually nothing new. The customary lands of the Malind have long been the target of various national development projects. Through Presidential Decree Number 28 of 2010, the government of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) launched a massive project called the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE). This project was designed to develop food and bioenergy areas on a massive scale. Approximately 1.2 million hectares of land in Merauke were included in the state’s development project agenda, opening up investment space for the private sector.
According to Pusaka’s records (MIFEE: Unreachable by Malind’s Dreams, 2011), the presence of MIFEE actually caused multidimensional impacts, ranging from drastic land-use changes and forest exploitation that shifted the community’s economy from autonomous to labor-based, to demographic changes due to the influx of migrants that further marginalized local communities. Ecologically, land conversion triggered changes in soil structure, hydrological systems, and biodiversity, which subsequently impacted the socio-economic life of the community. The shrinking of hunting grounds and the reduction of wildlife habitats lowered protein intake, while the dwindling availability of sago increased the community’s reliance on rice.
Massive military deployment was also carried out to ensure the project kept running. In practice, the military did not only act as project security but also took over production control through a combination of coercion and manipulation—ranging from controlling tools and machinery and managing land to mobilizing unpaid civilian labor. This intervention created an unequal power relationship, where farmers and customary landowners lost control over their own production spaces. Furthermore, the presence of the military also produced deep-seated fear, making communities reluctant to demand their rights even when their land had been abandoned. (Savitri, 2025)
Although proven to be a failure, this project is actually being replicated through PSN. The patterns of large-scale land use, the displacement of local communities, massive deforestation, and military deployment remain the mechanisms used in its implementation. It is even supported now by various licensing facilities and spatial policy changes that further ease the execution of projects without adequate environmental and social analyses.
Such patterns enable the usurpation of living spaces and encroach upon the vital ecosystems of Merauke and the Malind People, yet again. The dispossession that once occurred through MIFEE has now changed its face to PSN. The project name has changed, but the impact remains the same.
A similar phenomenon is not only happening in Merauke. PSN projects across various regions in Indonesia also trigger conflicts with local communities. One example occurred in Mangkupadi Village, Bulungan Regency, North Kalimantan.
At the end of 2025, the community of Mangkupadi Village filed a lawsuit against a number of state institutions and private companies, including PT Bulungan Citra Agro Persada (BCAP) and PT Kalimantan Industrial Park Indonesia (KIPI). This lawsuit is related to the issuance of Building Rights Titles (HGB) and Cultivation Rights Titles (HGU) which are considered legally flawed and used as a basis to evict communities from the land they have long occupied and managed.
Furthermore, this green industrial park project is projected to cover an area of up to approximately 30,000 hectares, a massive spatial expansion with direct impacts on coastal areas. As a result, fishermen in Mangkupadi and Tanah Kuning Villages are beginning to feel the effects. Residents claim that since the arrival of the project, their fish catches have continued to decline, worsening economic conditions while threatening the sustainability of their livelihoods.
In many cases, policies such as environmental permits, HGU, and HGB are actually used to protect the interests of investors. The PSN status, regulated through various national policies—from the Job Creation Law and the RPJMN (National Medium-Term Development Plan) to various presidential regulations on the acceleration of strategic projects—gives these projects a highly privileged position in national development governance. In fact, these policies often become the reference for spatial planning from the regional down to the village level. Everything becomes permissible in the name of national strategic projects.
Moreover, the state’s imagination of developing Merauke and Kalimantan as national food and energy hub areas has marginalized the social and ecological realities that have long existed in those regions, all to secure the interests of investors.
The ease of investment granted to investors through large-scale land procurement, the weakening of environmental assessments, deforestation, and the involvement of security forces in guarding projects demonstrate how the state not only facilitates investment but also disciplines communities deemed to be hindering the projects—even though what they are fighting for are fundamental rights to life that have long lived and developed throughout their existence.
PSN Projects: For Whom?
From corn and sugarcane to palm oil, various strategic commodities are included in the National Strategic Project (PSN) scheme. With land allocations reaching millions of hectares, it is clear that the implementation of these projects is not aimed at smallholder farmers as the main actors. Instead, a number of big names have emerged as key players. Besides businessman Hj. Isam, who has major interests in PSN projects, Martias Fangiono—known as a palm oil tycoon—is also named as a crucial actor behind the development of sugarcane projects during Joko Widodo’s administration. Fangiono is the founder of First Resources, a Singapore-based palm oil company operating in Indonesia. In one of the sugarcane planting agendas at the PT Global Papua Abadi concession, President Joko Widodo was even seen accompanied by Fangiono and his daughter, Wirastuty Fangiono.
Findings by the Pusaka Bentala Rakyat Foundation (2025) show that there are at least 10 companies managing approximately 563,661 hectares of land for the development of sugarcane plantations in South Papua. This land originates from the release of forest areas and is spread across various districts such as Tanah Miring, Animha, Jagebob, Waan, Sota, Ulilin, Malind, and Kurik in Merauke Regency.
It does not stop there; the government, through the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/National Land Agency (ATR/BPN), has also issued a Decree for Cultivation Rights (HGU) to PT Agrinas Pangan. The total HGU area issued for this food self-sufficiency program reaches around 328 thousand hectares in the South Papua region, spanning from Merauke to Boven Digoel.
Overall, this large-scale land procurement heavily overlaps with the living territories of the communities surrounding the projects. The process of determining and acquiring land also frequently occurs unilaterally, without fulfilling the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) as a form of respect for the rights of Indigenous peoples.
In this context, the distribution of land concentrated among a handful of corporations further clarifies that PSN projects are directed more toward driving capital accumulation, rather than strengthening food sovereignty and the welfare of local communities.
Why Is It Worth Suing?
PSN projects have not only faced rejection from affected communities. Several civil society groups united under Geram PSN have also sued the PSN policy (Job Creation Law) through the Constitutional Court (MK). The lawsuit hearing, held on October 31, 2025, presented two expert witnesses: Dianto Bachriadi, a senior researcher at the Agrarian Resource Center (ARC), and Herlambang Wiratraman, an academic from Gadjah Mada University (UGM). During the hearing, Dianto Bachriadi stated that the logic of economic growth within the PSN is a fallacy. Development measured solely by economic growth does not automatically create prosperity. On the contrary, the process frequently increases inequality, expands unemployment due to automation and outsourcing, and strengthens economic integration that benefits the global elite.
This view was reinforced by Herlambang Wiratraman’s testimony, who assessed that the law is often exploited to legitimize the implementation of national strategic projects. Through various formal regulations, the living spaces of rural communities and customary territories can be reshaped for the sake of accelerating development.
In many cases, evictions, criminalization, and even violence are used to force communities to accept these projects. At this point, the law experiences what he calls a ‘humanity deficit.’ Land grabbing, violence, deforestation, and imprisonment are consequences of a national development policy framework that places economic growth as the primary goal, while the protection of communities and the environment is often neglected.
Development Leaves Scars
For a long time, development has always stemmed from the logic of economic growth through investment and the exploitation of natural resources. Land, forests, and various other landscapes are positioned as exchangeable commodities controlled by the market. This perspective has ignored the reality that for local communities, including the Malind people, land and forests hold values that go far beyond market logic.
For the Malind people, there is no such thing as land deemed productive or unproductive. The entire landscape is a single, unified entity that sustains the lives of humans, animals, plants, and other entities living within it.
Ultimately, the struggle of the Malind tribe is not merely an effort to defend their customary land. This struggle should serve as a reminder that development that ignores humans and nature will only leave behind a long road of suffering that never heals. Therefore, an effort to restructure the control of natural resources is needed to make it more equitable, while simultaneously considering the spatial planning of rural and Indigenous communities, rather than turning them into victims of projects designed for investment interests.
List of References
- Pusaka Bentala Rakyat Foundation. 2025. Catatan Tahunan: Satu Tahun Perampokan Alam.
- Zakaria, Y.,Kleden, E., Frangky, YL. 2011. MIFEE: Tak Terjangkau Angan Malind. Pusaka Bentala Rakyat Foundation, Jakarta.
- Savitri, Laksmi A. (2025). Nekropolitik Negara: Militerisasi Produksi Pangan di Tanah Malind Anim “loreng dong masuk.” Pusaka Bentala Rakyat Foundation, Jakarta.
- Pusaka Bentala Rakyat Foundation. 2025. PSN Merauke: Perampasan Tanah, Deforestasi dan Ancaman Etnosida (policy brief).
