I first visited Rempang island in Summer 2022. Greeting me were lush fields lined with coconut and banana trees, picture-book fishing villages with houses jutting into the water on stilts, and boats carrying people between the dozens of islands that dot the Riau archipelago in western Indonesia. I had made the pleasant, one-hour ferry trip from bustling, glass-and-chrome Singapore. This felt like another world.
But on reaching the islands, and visiting the sites named in the news reports, I saw no sign of green energy activity. The waters were placid. There was no solar farm in sight. I shrugged, met friends, ate the freshest possible seafood at a small Kelong restaurant that was half on land and half in the sea, and went back to Singapore on the ferry.
Alongside large and publicised confrontations, the residents of Rempang are resisting the everyday encroachments of the proposed project. In local, spontaneous opposition in affected villages, women, including mothers and grandmothers in veils, have blocked roads, preventing government officials from entering villages to measure their land. Videos show them wailing as armed police approach.
An elderly, mild mannered fisherman I spoke to in August, who was trying to organise resistance to what was then still a mysterious investment pushed by Jakarta and China said he was worried about the community being relocated: By the last week of August, there were demonstrations organised by the community at various locations in Rempang and Batam, and by civil society organisations in Jakarta. Soon, my contacts were talking about “clashes between the community and BP Batam” , and larger and larger demonstrations involving not just Rempang residents, but ethnic Melayus from the surrounding islands as well. At these early protests, police forces were present, there was tension, but no violence.
Ecocity and mega solar panel production facility Meanwhile, preparations for the Rempang development have continued apace. It appears that as early as 2004, the Indonesian company PT Makmur Elok Graha , which is part of the Artha Graha Group, secured permission from the Batam Regional People’s Representative Council to develop Rempang. The understanding at the time was for a tourism zone, covering 5,000 hectares. Existing villages were to be preserved in this plan.
In my previous research I called a similar zone of special economic interest in India, “hydra-like”. That’s because these sought after zones change shape, name and purpose according to what’s profitable at a particular point in time. And what’s profitable in Indonesia, and the world today, is the transition to green energy.