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Jakarta. Fishermen’s rights advocates have called on the government to intervene in a spat between shrimp farmers in Lampung and the major producer buying from them, or risk the conflict escalating out of control.

In August, a farmer from the Tiger Shrimp Plasma Growers (P3UW) in Tulangbawang district, Lampung, was arrested after Aruna Wijaya Sakti, the company managing the Dipasena Citra Darmaja shrimp farm, pressed charges against him for selling to other distributors.

That prompted hundreds of other P3UW farmers to ransack the AWS office on Sept. 2. Ten farmers, including P3UW head Nafian Faiz, were subsequently arrested for assaulting security guards and damaging property.

On Tuesday, some 1,200 of the farmers took their grievances with the company to the authorities by occupying the Lampung legislature building.

The Fisheries Justice Coalition (Kiara), a national advocacy group for traditional fishermen, has also taken up their cause.

On Friday, Riza Damanik, Kiara secretary general, said the farmers’ protests stemmed from “a string of disappointments about the stalled smallholder switch, which they feel is burdening them.

“There have been no serious measures taken by the government to help them,” Riza said, adding that Lampung shrimp farms accounted for up to 30 percent of the country’s exports of tiger prawns.

Riza also called on the authorities to investigate the allegations being made by the farmers against the company.

“For one thing, there’s the issue of price-fixing and unfair agreements,” he said.

“If the government doesn’t take immediate action, this case will grow out of control.”

For the past two days, he said, a group of around 1,500 shrimp farmers had staged rallies to protest the arrests of their colleagues and to demand their release.

Jumi Rahayu, the legal advocacy and policy head for the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), said the police had overreacted by arresting the P3UW members, “considering there were no direct links between the [Sept. 2] protest and the damage caused to the AWS office.”

“There’s no proof that the P3UW gave its members orders to run riot, only to stage a protest,” Jumi said.

Dipasena began operating its shrimp farm in Lampung in 1989, and initially employed 8,872 local farmers with a promise to allow them to purchase small parcels of the farm and manage them as smallholders.

Loans for the purchases were to be made available exclusively through Bank Dagang Nasional Indonesia, which, along with Dipasena, was owned by tycoon Sjamsul Nursalim.

However, the bank folded during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, despite receiving a $3 billion bailout from the central bank. Sjamsul later fled the country after being accused of embezzling the rescue funds.

The farmers said that since 2000, Dipasena had done nothing to help them become smallholders.

In 2007, the management of the shrimp farm was transferred to AWS, but the farmers said the promise to make them smallholders was still not being honored.