The Nationalization of the Dutch Owned Plantations in North Sumatra: To Whom The Communal Land Belong?

Abstract

This article has been developed through an analysis of primary and secondary sources concerning the nationalization’s policy of the Dutch enterprises in Indonesia as had been conducted by Soekarno’s regime back in 1958. The impact of this said policy has been so much felt very strongly to these days, most especially on the ex-concessionary lands of the Dutch enterprises in North Sumatera. The flaws made by the Indonesian government in interpreting the terminology of Concession to the Cultivation Rights on Lands, in the said nationalization policy, have created various endless conflicts among central and regional governments, state-owned enterprises, the Sultanates (mainly the Deli and the Serdang), private-owned companies, the military and other interest groups. At certain ends, these critical disputes have left some saddening and murky situations whereas the ancestral lands belonging to Melayu people, which were put in concession by the Sultanate to the Dutch-owned enterprises, were gradually missing in terms of identity and without any compensation to this ethnic group.