According to the Republic of Indonesia's Constitution, as defined by the Pancasila's 5th principle, land is fundamentally a provider of food and clothing, as opposed to Western law whereby land has economic and commercial value and may, as such, be sold or bought for money.
The Basic Agrarian Law (24th September, 1960), BAL :
Adat Community Lands (art. 3) : land tenure is adjusted to the law and interests of the nation.
Rights Authorized (art. 4) : several types of land rights are guaranteed to persons and corporations, under state supervision and control.
Adat (art. 5) : it is applied to agrarian issues unless it is in conflict with national and state interests, Indonesian socialism and the law.
State Regulation of Natural Resources Exploitation (art. 8) : any exploitation of natural resources shall be regulated by the state.
Rights of Indonesian Citizens (art. 9) : Indonesian citizens, male or female, have full rights of land, water and air resources of the nation.
Description of Rights (art. 16) : right of ownership, right of exploitation, right of building, right of use, right of opening up land, right of collecting forest products.
Presence of the Directorate for Land Registration (DPT).
There are two types of land : state owned and privately owned land : if there is no title over the land, it is presumed to belong to the state. Private land may be held without title or registration under the adat. If it has been registered, it may be titled under the BAL or under the former civil law. State land may be titled or not, but with the implementation of the BAL, all land must be registered. If land is under the adat system, and since the adat's legitimacy is dependent on the BAL, the latter takes precedence when conflicts arise over land that is under the adat.
In fact the BAL does not provide any kind of legal guarantee of the ownership of land since the certificates of rights over land are only strong (but not final) evidence of ownership (MAC ANDREWS 1986 : 28).
Registration as ordered by BAL for land not previously registered : This concerns first of all land put under customary law by individuals or corporations. Secondly, these lands are converted, i.e. the rights over them are converted from customary law to rights as set by the BAL. These lands must be claimed before hand in order to be recognized once the BAL's implementation process has begun. In this case, the claim has no legal value because if not claimed before 24th September, 1960 (year the BAL was introduced), land was considered to belong to the state.
The law protects ethnic minorities, but the government does not enforce its own laws and regulations (SUPOMO, 1954, Provisional Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia) :
Art. 57 : those belonging to minority groups are citizens. The Dutch and other Europeans, the Chinese, and the Arabs are not citizens and are not considered as minority groups. They are foreigners.
Art. 7 : "all persons are entitled to equal protection against discrimination."
Art. 18 : "everyone is entitled to freedom of religion, conscience, and thought."
Art. 25 : "authorities shall not attach any advantage or disadvantage to the fact that citizens belong to a particular group of the population" (i.e. against racial discrimination). "The difference in terms of legal and social needs of the various groups will be taken into consideration."
Art. 32 : "everyone in the territory of the State owes obedience to the law, including the unwritten law (customary law, hukum adat), and to the public authorities."
Art. 104 : "all judgments shall state the principles on which the judgments are based and in penal cases the legal provisions and customary law rules on which the conviction is based."
Art. 40 : "authorities shall protect the exerting of cultural, artistic and scientific freedom."