Fighting Back: How The Women of Lakardowo Involve in The Movement

'Pakde Karwo, our governor, save us and our children. Close down the factory!!'  shouted times and times again by the women of Lakardowo during the demonstration in front of governor office.

As written before, that Lakardowo villagers were facing a big company which is being rumored owned by a high military staff and doing the highest violation in environmental law, illegally dumping hazardous materials in the village. 

Who started the movement to stop the factory? Women started it all. As the factory hided the fact that they managed (and illegally dumping) hazardous materials. The only information villager knew  about the company was that they would build brick and paper factory. 

Their understanding about hazardous materials started with short talking between a women called Suji with a factory truck driver. This conversation is strongly imprinted in her mind the whole time. He said to her, ‘how could you let the factory dump hazardous materials to your village’. Because she didn’t know the meaning of hazardous materials, she just shut her mouth but kept the word in her head. 

During her visitation to the local doctor, she asked what is hazardous materials. When the doctor answered that it is a highly toxic materials, the answer opened her eyes. Small chat with neighbor From then on, the movement keeps on rolling. 

  

Back to the police abusing incident, you would ask where was the women participation. As the men were beaten up, the women stopped it by confronting the police and yelling at them furiously. And it worked!. The police backed down slowly. 

After the incident, the villagers became helpless, pessimistic, and began to accept the eerie condition. But not all of them surrendered to the condition, there was 3 men and 5 women who were continuing the movement in secret and looked for help. After numerous meeting, finally they met with a journalist who asked them to contact an environmental NGO called ECOTON.

Countless and late night’s meeting were done in secret, hiding from the company’s spies and villagers’ eyes. That time, the strategy and safety were their top priorities for the intimidation was stronger than ever. ECOTON built strategies with the group to prove the company violation and bring the tragedy into public and government eyes.

When ECOTON hold training to increase their knowledge or skill, these women, lying to their family for where they about to go. After awhile, the women was starting to gather and invite more women to join in the movement. Some women they’re invited was the wife or family of the factory worker which considered to be spies and or enemy. The purpose for doing this, was to open their eyes the impact of hazardous materials to their health. 

For them, the most crucial moment was when they saw Minamata Movie and reflected on their situation. When they saw themselves in the same situation, they know that they need to act fast. Avoiding bigger impact to their children. They fight for their children lives and will close down the factory with any cost. More women from different sub villages join to the movement. It’s a small winning, but it was worth all the effort.  For this women gains trust from other women and increase their awareness. After that, no more secret meeting and they’ve starts to show their movement. 

They started to identified their valuable network. One of their network is a women who is a head of women religious group (Fathayyat NU) and a member of national house of representative (DPR). While ECOTON identified their network in national government, especially in the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MEF). They need to report the situation to MEF as the one who give environmental permit for establishment of the factory and responsible in monitoring their activity. 

As a MEF letter which stated they’ve ready to met them arrived, the women started to collect money from the community to fund their advocacy to Jakarta. Knocking door to door to get funding, they’ve done it everyday in 2 weeks.

Skin irritation is a common disease among the Lakardowo children

While 2 of the women group representative went to Jakarta (Mrs. Sutamah and Sufi), more than 300 people, women and men demonstrated in front of Mojokerto regent office, but no one came to accept them. For both of the women representative, it’s their first time to visit the capital and meet with the higher up. Sadly, they had to deal with intimidation from one of the MEF staff during the meeting. As they see that the women representatives didn’t  have strong evidences and warned them that they’ve could get sued for this. The meeting gave them bad experience, yet it also opened their eyes and strengthened their motivation to collect more evidence. So where to look for strong evidence and more data? In depth participatory investigation and mapping of community health. 

After the visitation, MEF took sample in their community well twice. The first time they took sample, the factory forbade ECOTON and community to go near the factory  even though MEF invited  them to have joint sampling. They took sampling for community wells and checked it on provincial laboratory. To avoid any ’mistake’, ECOTON and community sent the same samples took by provincial EPA to other national certified laboratory. When the result came out, there was a big and crucial difference between the samples measured in provincial laboratory and private laboratory. When the provincial laboratory stated that the groundwater was suitable for drinking water (means its comply with national standard). The private laboratory result shown that the groundwater wasn’t suitable for drinking water and/ clean water supply due to the high level of sulphate, low pH (acid), and/ high level of lead (Pb).

Difference result becomes unsatisfying for the community, particularly the women. For the women, who have to deal the most with water (and it’s quality), the provincial laboratory result was unacceptable. For they had experiences the change of water quality and saw how their children had to experience unfinished skin irritation.

They asked another sampling which was being guided by the independent expert. The MEF appointed 2 experts from ITB to assist the sampling activities and invited ECOTON and community representative to have joint sampling. While waiting for the result, they’re started to formalize the women group and having advocacy activities in each sub-villages to gain support and educate community.