Transmigration program

The transmigration program (transmigrasi in Indonesia) was an initiative by the government of Indonesia to move landless people from densely populated areas of Indonesia to less populous areas of the Indonesian archipelago. This meant moving people mostly from the island of Java, also Bali, and Madura to areas including Papua, Kalimantan, Sumatra, and Sulawesi.

The stated purpose of the program was to reduce poverty and overpopulation on Java, provide opportunities of hard-working poor people, and to provide a workforce to better utilize the natural resources of the outer islands. Critics of the program accused it of racism, violation of Fourth Geneva Convention principles by transferring its own civilian population into territory under military occupation or declared as a "military operational zone", and the government of Indonesia of trying to make indigenous populations a minority before any decolonization process is attempted. The program is a cause of considerable controversy and conflict, including violence between settlers and indigenous populations.

History

Indonesian lobbyist claim the Indonesian transmigration policy is an extension of a was started by the Dutch colonial government in the early nineteenth century to provide a workforce for plantations on Sumatra involving several hundred families. During the Sukarno era transmigration was proposed as a means to reduce the overpopulation of Java and to alleviate the food shortages and weak economic performance exasperated by Sukarno's nationalizing Dutch businesses in support of his demands for possession of West New Guinea.

Under the President Suharto, the program continued and was expanded to send migrants to new areas such as West New Guinea outside the Malay archipelago. Between 1979 and 1984, 535,000 families, or almost 2.5 million people, moved under the transmigration program. It had had a major impact on the demographics of some areas; for example, in 1981 sixty percent of the three million people in the southern Sumatra province of Lampung were transmigrants. The World Bank, Asian Development Bank and bilateral donors funded the program during the 1980s.

The height of transmigration expansion come during the 1990s with World Bank and IMF funding the movement of some six million transmigrants to farm areas cleared of indigenous townships. Beginning in the 1990s, there were violent conflicts between transmigrants and indigenous populations; in Kalimantan, hundreds were killed in fighting between Madurese transmigrants and the indigenous Dayak people.

In August 2000, after the Asian financial crisis and the fall of the Suharto government, the Indonesian government decided to officially cancel the official large-scale transmigration program, funding no longer being available to underwrite it. A video report in May 2005 ^* confirmed large scale transmigration had continued along with other ethnic cleansing programs funded by the Indonesian military (TNI).

Aims

The stated purpose of the program, according to proponents in the Indonesian government and the development community, was to move millions of Indonesians from the densely populated inner islands of Java, Bali and Madura to the outer, less densely populated islands to achieve a more balanced population density. This would alleviate poverty by providing land and new opportunities to generate income for poor landless settlers. It would also benefit the nation as a whole by increasing the utilization of the natural resources of the less-populous islands.

The program may have been intended to encourage the unification of the country through the creation of a single Indonesian national identity to augment or replace regional identities; whether this change would be desirable remains hotly disputed in Indonesia.

Criticism

Indonesia's transmigration program was the target of extensive opposition, particularly from indigenous populations in the regions where transmigrants settled. Some foreign and domestic observers also criticized the program's intentions or implementation.

Many indigenous people saw the program as a part of an effort by the central government on Java to extend greater economic and political control over their region, by moving in people having closer personal ties to Java. This was particularly resented in areas such as Papua that had an active movement to end what was seen as an unwanted military occupation by Indonesia. The government agencies responsible for administering transmigration were often insensitive to local customary or adat land rights.

Transmigrants were also blamed for accelerating deforestation of sensitive rainforest areas, because of the greatly increased population in formerly sparsely-populated areas. Migrants often moved to entirely new "transmigration villages," constructed in regions that had been relatively unimpacted by human activity. By settling on this land, resources were used up and lands was severely overgrazed which lead to the deforestation.

The program was also not consistently beneficial for the migrants. While they had access to substantially more land than would be possible on their home islands, the soil of most of the outer islands is not nearly as fertile as the volcanic soil of Java and Bali. Despite major government spending—in some years thirty to forty percent of the entire budget for the outer islands—promised investment in transportation, water, and education was lacking.

Current Status

Under the restructured Department of Manpower and Transmigration (Bahasa Indonesia: Departemen Tenaga Kerja dan Transmigrasi) the Indonesian government maintains the transmigration program, although on a far smaller scale than in previous decades. The department assists in annually relocating approximately 15,000 families, or nearly 60,000 people. The rate has shown gradual increases in recent years with funding for transmigration activities at $270 million (2.3 trillion IDR) and a target of relocating 20,500 families in 2006.^*

History

Aims

Criticism

Current Status

See also

Further reading

External links

References

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History

Aims

Criticism

Current Status

See also

Further reading

External links

References