Agrarian reform is not a technical policy issue. It is a question of justice.
At its core, agrarian reform seeks to restructure land ownership and use so that land is distributed more fairly, poverty is reduced, and rural livelihoods are protected.
For decades, Indonesian agrarian thinkers such as Gunawan Wiradi have insisted that real agrarian reform must be democratic, participatory, and oriented toward the landless and the poor—not toward political elites or existing landowners.
Yet in Indonesia today, agrarian reform has been increasingly reduced to little more than land certification.
Since President Joko Widodo administration, the distribution of land titles has often been promoted as agrarian reform itself. This is misleading. Certification merely legalizes existing ownership; it does not redistribute land.
As a result, landowners benefit, while landless farmers remain excluded. This policy reversal undermines the very principle of agrarian reform.
This distortion becomes even more troubling in Flores, where the Catholic Church plays a central social and moral role.
Historically, Flores did not recognize landlords. As Emilianus Y. S. Tolo notes, land was governed under the principle of land guardianship: land was protected for communal continuity, not accumulated for profit.
That changed after colonial plantations were transferred to institutions—most notably the Catholic Church—under state law.
For decades, the Church’s control over land rarely sparked conflict. Churches, schools, and hospitals were built on land donated by Indigenous communities, reinforcing the image of the Church as a partner of the people.
But the unanswered question has always lingered: what about those who have no land at all?
That question explodes into view in Nangahale, Sikka Regency. There, Indigenous communities from the Soge Natarmage and Goban Runut groups have been locked in a prolonged land conflict with PT Krisrama, a plantation company owned by the Diocese of Maumere.
This is no ordinary dispute. It pits Indigenous communities against the most influential religious institutions in Flores, where Catholicism make more that 90 percent of its two million population.
The company claims hundreds of hectares based on a state-issued cultivation right (Hak Guna Usaha, HGU). The communities reject this claim, stating that the land is customary territory—inhabited, farmed, and passed down for generations.
Homes, food gardens, and cultural spaces already existed long before the HGU was issued. Here lies the heart of the conflict: formal state legality versus unrecognized Indigenous rights.
Forced evictions and the destruction of homes and crops have followed. Worse still, residents have faced criminalization for defending their land.
These actions reveal a deeply unequal power relationship: a church-based corporation backed by legal instruments confronting Indigenous communities struggling to protect their living space.
For the people of Nangahale, land is not an economic asset—it is identity, history, and dignity.
This is where the moral crisis emerges. When the Church deploys corporate power, legal force, and intimidation against its own people, it not only abandons its pastoral mission—it actively contradicts it.
Eviction becomes not just a policy choice but a moral failure.
The tragedy of Nangahale raises an unavoidable question: whose side is the Church on?
At this juncture, the Catholic Church can in fact assume a meaningful role.
First, the Church should exercise restraint and refrain from using forced eviction as a policy instrument, in any form or for any purpose, including the pursuit of economic self-reliance. Evictions only serve to escalate conflict and shut down spaces for dialogue.
Second, the Church can take on an advocacy role by accompanying agrarian conflicts in Flores and urging the state to implement genuine agrarian reform—namely, by redistributing unused state land to landless communities or those with extremely small landholdings.
Third, if the Church is not yet able to distribute its own land, it can at least open access by enabling landless residents to cultivate Church-owned land under fair sharecropping arrangements—for example, seventy percent for farmers and thirty percent for the Church.
In addition, the Church can promote the formation of community cooperatives, provide accompaniment and capital, and facilitate access to state subsidy programs that have long been difficult for poor communities to reach.
If the Church continues to act as an agent of land dispossession rather than a defender of the poor, trust will inevitably erode. In an era of escalating land grabs, the Church cannot afford neutrality.
Agrarian reform is not only a demand to be addressed to the state. It is also a moral challenge from within. The question now is not whether the Church is capable—but whether it is willing to choose justice over power, and people over property.