I first visited Rempang island in the summer of 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.

My hosts (an environmental lawyer and an indigenous Melayu community organizer) and I had reached Rempang from the economic hub of Riau Islands province: the special manufacturing, trade and logistics zone of Batam.

We had gone from Batam to Rempang by crossing one of the six metal bridges that connect the islands of Batam, Rempang and Galang. This network of bridges has turned the islands into an economic zone, now called the Barelang region.

My ongoing research is investigating how the international quest for green energy is reliant on “sacrificial zones” in developing countries. The transition to green energy, far from creating a green new deal for all, is actually reinforcing entrenched inequalities and hierarchies.

I became interested in Rempang when I saw news reports heralding a renewable energy revolution. Companies from Singapore, Portugal and beyond were signing agreements to build vast floating solar farms in local reservoirs in the Batam region. The plan was that the clean energy produced would be transported from the sunlit western Indonesian islands of Batam, Bulan, and Rempang to energy-intensive Singapore via undersea cable.

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.

‘A state-backed land grab’

My return a year later could not have been more different. The atmosphere was tense and the roads were lined with armed police. Large military trucks moved ominously on the tar, monitoring the situation. Villagers stood around in clusters, anxious and clutching at straws of information trickling through on WhatsApp and word of mouth about what seemed to be a state-backed land grab.

People were protesting because the 16 villages and 7,500 inhabitants of Rempang are facing eviction, as plans to transform their home into the latest hub for the global green transition gather apace. The Indonesian government and a Chinese-backed business consortium want to move the entire community to another island and turn their home into a huge solar panel manufacturing center, solar farm, and “ecocity”.

Videos filmed by residents from sites of protest show armed military and police clashing with the farmers and fishers of Rempang. The videos, some of which have been posted on social media, show people being thrown to the ground, bleeding, apparently roughed up by state forces. There have been many arrests.

I regularly hear from friends and acquaintances who tell me that police and government authorities have taken to summoning suspected protestors, examining their phones for incriminating evidence, and looking into their home, work lives and tax affairs. Residents are clear this is “harassment” and “pressure” to give up their land and withdraw from the struggle.

Alongside large and publicized 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. In others, young girls and old women can be seen in a semi-conscious state, being taken to hospital after apparent tear gassing.

But how did things move so fast? From April 2023, news had begun to filter in that a well-connected businessman from Jakarta, who reportedly made his money and reputation through businesses operated on behalf of the Indonesian military, before turning to banking and real estate, was to build a “township” on Rempang.

By August, the better informed in the community had gathered that the planned Rempang project was to be a collaboration between Tomy Winata’s Artha Graha Group, and a Chinese “glass manufacturer.”

By September, Winata himself was granting interviews and talking about his plans for an ecocity. The project – which has the enthusiastic blessings of the Batam economic zone authorities, the provincial government of Riau Islands, and importantly, the central government in Jakarta – is imminent.

It will displace 16 villages on Rempang island and will cover a mind-boggling 17,000 hectares (one square hectare is roughly equivalent to one rugby field). As residents discussed these figures among themselves, they lobbed questions at me: “Why do they need so much land?” and “what will they even do with it?”

An elderly, mild-mannered fisherman I spoke to in August, who was trying to organize resistance to what was then still a mysterious investment pushed by Jakarta and China said he was worried about the community being relocated:

People here have history. Their whole story is in this area. They love this land. They live here. You can make your project here. Welcome. But build it in an empty area. Whatever you do, don’t disturb us. Keep us here, give jobs to our children … When people ask me, where is your village, I say it is Bapke [pseudonym]. Later, what will I say? Our identity will be lost.

From trickles of information to violence

On first learning about the Rempang project, residents petitioned different layers of government, sought meetings, and even went to Jakarta to try and meet officials. Finding them unresponsive, people contemplated taking to the streets.

By mid-August, groups were meeting at local cafes and in the homes of community leaders. They were determined not to give up their land. One member of a group that was congregating in Batam told me “there is a meeting of Melayu youth to plan a protest at Barelang [bridge], and at the mayor’s office [in Batam]. We are here to discuss the situation. We will protest in the coming days”.

By the last week of August, there were demonstrations organized by the community at various locations in Rempang and Batam, and by civil society organizations in Jakarta. Soon, my contacts were talking about “clashes between the community and BP Batam” (the authority in charge of the Batam free trade zone), 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.

Despite growing opposition, authorities dismissed popular discontent as “miscommunication”. As reported in the press, increasingly incensed residents began to resort to violence, using rocks and glass bottles. These were desperate measures from increasingly desperate people facing the might of the state.