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Mataram. Members of two tribal communities in Sumbawa, West Nusa Tenggara, say they are being driven from their homes by the authorities as part of a land dispute with two mining companies.

Authorities, they say, burned down their homes after accusing them of illegal logging, charges they vehemently deny.

Members of the Pekasah and Berco Cek Bocek tribes on Sumbawa Island live in a protected forest in the villages of Lawin, Labangkar and Ai Ketapang.

But they say that is their ancestral land and deny any illegal activity.

In December, a joint team including the police, soldiers and forest rangers burned down Pekasah homes in Lunyuk subdistrict and evicted the 50 tribal families in the villages.

“We were accused of illegal logging but the truth is we have lived on our ancestral land for generations,” the Pekasah tribal chief, Edi Kuswanto, said on Sunday.

Authorities first attempted to evict tribal members in 1974, Edi said in Mataram, the capital of West Nusa Tenggara, on Lombok Island. Since then, he said, there have been at least three major attacks on the tribes.

After the first attack in 1974, he said, seven families returned, prompting a second attack in 1980. But he said the villagers stayed on and their numbers grew to 50 families.

The Sumbawa district head, Latif Majid, issued a decree in 2001 ordering the tribes to relocate to a new area provided by the government. Edi said the families ignored the order and stayed on their ancestral land. That, he said, prompted the latest incident, on Dec. 21.

“We choose to stay even though nearly all of our homes were burned. What is left is our mosque, which they tried to burn down too. We now live in the mosque,” Edi said.

He dismissed the accusation of illegal logging. According to Edi, before a member of the Pekasah tribe can chop down a tree, a tribal ritual must be performed. He added that for every tree cut down, three are planted in its place.

According to Edi, the authorities want to move the tribal families to make way for the operations of a mining company. He accused the company of already erecting barriers around their ancestral graveyard.

Jasardi, from the Sumbawa-based nongovernmental group National Tribal Community Alliance (Aman), described the eviction operation as traumatic. He said the authorities gave villagers just two minutes to pack up and leave their homes.

“In addition, the armed officers fired their weapons into the air, and a 5-year-old girl named Indah barely escaped after her house was set on fire,” he said.

The area around the villages is seen as a potentially rich mining site and gold mining giant Newmont Nusa Tenggara and Tambang Barat Nusantara already operate nearby.

Jasardi said the Berco Cek Bocek tribe also faced intimidation by the local authorities.

Tribal members who have left the area are not allowed to return to their villages and those who have stayed behind are prevented from leaving.

The Berco tribe, he said, is in conflict with Newmont over the use of the land.

“The planned mining site is located in an area where there are ancestral tombs, and it is feared that the mining activities will destroy 1,525 tombs of our forefathers,” Jasardi said.

The Berco tribe has about 1,500 families in three villages.

According to Aman, the tribe occupies around 25,000 hectares of land, around 17,000 hectares of which overlaps with Newmont’s exploration concessions.

“Aman calls on the government to protect the rights of its people, not the interests of companies,” said the group’s secretary general, Andon Nababan. “This is really a modern form of colonialism in our own land.”