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The government will revise a number of laws in the wake of recent clashes on Sumatra and Sumbawa islands which left at least four people dead.

“We are studying the Law on Mining and Mineral Resources. We are also studying the Law on Local Administration,” Cabinet Secretary Dipo Alam said late on Thursday.

Dipo said that during a limited cabinet meeting at the state palace on Thursday, the government sought to review the Law on Farming and the Law on Land.

The Law on Local Administration, he said, will be revised to enforce tighter controls on mining and plantation permits, which are currently issued by local administrations.

“According to the law, district heads are allowed to make contracts, which are sometimes granted without the knowledge of respective governors and local government. We often hear changes in permit issuance. For example they first give permits to company X and then revised to company Y, which eventually leads to conflict,” he said.

Two people died after police opened fire on a group of protestors in Bima, West Nusa Tenggara, last week.

The demonstrators were occupying a seaport in protest over the presence of a gold mining company in Lambu village, on Sumbawa island.

The incident came just weeks after a group of farmers from Mesuji district, Lampung, reported to the House of Representatives that people have been killed for their land by police and a private militia employed by two plantation companies.

Human rights and environmental activists have said that there are dozens of land disputes that have the potential for violence.

Deputy Justice Minister Denny Indrayana, who heads a fact-finding team in the Mesuji case, said the team will summon representatives from three plantation companies believed to be at the center of the bloody dispute.

“Before January 17, we will submit our final report to the Coordinating Minister of Legal and Security, Djoko Suyanto,” he said on Thursday.

Denny said that the team had been struggling to confirm the number of people dead in Mesuji but added that “one person dead is one too many.”

The farmers say that 32 people were executed but police insisted that only one person was killed in Mesuji, while in a separate incident two farmers and five plantation workers were killed in a clash in Mesuji subdistrict, in South Sumatra.