Harry Surjadi: from swords to mobile phones

Harry Bhaskara, contributor, Brisbane, Australia | People | Tue, June 18 2013, 12: 19 PM

Paper Edition | Page: 28

Farmers in remote villages in West Kalimantan have become formidable weapons to fight, land grabbing, illegal logging and illegal land clearing their cell phones.

For years violation after violation, often committed by plantation companies gone unpunished and farmers were forced out of their country.Things began to change last year after some farmers were mobilized to fight back; not with swords, but with words.

Harry Surjadi, a Jakarta-based freelance journalist and media trainer, worked a year in the province of journalism training to the farmers. While in Brisbane to collect an award from the University of Queensland he spoke to The Jakarta Post.

JP/Harry Bhaskara The Commission's communication for social change award from the University of Queensland, which is the creative use of communications technology, is managed by the school of journalism and communication at the University. It presents awards in two categories — organization and individual — both an A $ 2,500 prize.

This year Organization category, presented late last month was donated the Cambodia Centre for human rights for his website sithi.org and her work for monitor and document human rights problems in Cambodia. In total there were 65 nominations from 27 countries.

Surjadi, a former journalist from the Kompas daily, is the second Indonesian to win the individual price. In 2010 the award went to Tosca contraction Radio's Santoso Jakarta.

So far, the project has seen a total of 160 Surjadi farmers graduate from the course.

"Many are just graduated from high school, but students are really excited," he said, "although they quickly learned that only a dozen of them eventually became citizen journalists."

Surjadi moved from one place to another in the County, including Lanjak and Seruat Dua Ampaning, villages, to learn the farmers, non-violent, fighting back.

As soon as the farmers how understood writing a format for news, Surjadi invented a computer system that is connected to the local TV station, RuaiTV. Farmers record violations they find and send the information via their mobile phones to an editor before the messages are sent to RuaiTV where they appear as news tickers.

Surjadi also made it possible for cell phone owners in the villages to subscribe to news of the farmers.

"There are about 600 subscribers and 150 of them are top local government officials and members of the police," Surjadi said.

Surjadi told one copy as a police officer was offended by a news item and the farmer who wrote it. The system is not the author with a byline so the police officer never knew who the writer was.

Frustrated, the police officer called the head of RuaiTV and asked him to call the farmer but RuaiTV refused point blank.

"Finally, the police officer went to the village to talk to the farmers and they all agreed to cooperate to solve the problem" Surjadi said.

The farmers are not short of news. Over 300 palm oil plantation companies operate in West Kalimantan. About a third of the province of 14.6 million hectares of area — three times the size of the Netherlands — for oil palm plantations is cleared. Many companies have control over their assigned land for 160 years.

The practices of the land grabbing, illegal logging and land clearing without permits are rampant and farmers are helpless. Land grab influence economic and cultural communities. NGOs claimed that conflicts with local farmers spread by 2011 104 districts in West Kalimantan affected.

A similar situation happens in the whole Kalimantan to the provinces, an area of more than 60 million hectares. It is home to large numbers of mammals; one-third of which face extinction.

Surjadi of actions seem trivial given the scale of the problem of the huge Island stressed but it is a small step forward.

"Farmers will benefit from this newly acquired knowledge," Surjadi said, "when a company palm oil a passable place road in a pool of mud converted on fixed the way quickly thanks to a report of a peasant."

Asked about said how he came up with the idea of using mobile phones to help the project Harry "all farmers owned mobile phones, so it was a useful tool to empower them."

In answer to the question; What him the most impression on the farmers, which he likes to call "information brokers" Surjadi said: "it was a message from the cell phone of a farmer who said, ' for we mandau [traditional Dyacopterus swords] used in our protests. Now we use mobile phones. "