CLASS ACTION : AN UTOPIA?

The Indonesian heritage network discuss a lot about class action lately, triggered by the Trowulan case.

In law, a class action or a representative action is a form of lawsuit where a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court. This form of collective lawsuit originated in the United States and is still predominately a US phenomenon, at least the US variant of it (Wikipedia)

I do welcome the suggestion to do a class action in Indonesia although based on my own experiences so far it stays as an impulsive idea without a follow up action. Why?
First of all, the idea mostly came from a discussion platform where nobody has an authority to take an action. Nobody is responsible to follow up an idea. It is a free forum where freedom of expression is guaranteed.
Second, when my colleagues and I once were serious to do a class action in the case of Mega Eltra building demolition in Medan in 2002, we didn't have sufficient resources to do it properly. We have prepared some papers and documents and were in a good standing in winning the case. This case was succeed to wake up a lot of people and we all screamed loudly, protesting the government who launched the permit of demolition, the investor who had the capital and the owner who couldn't appreciate the historical value of the building. The press and as if the whole city of Medan stood behind us. The challenge was when we prepared the class action, all of sudden nobody left except Sumatra Heritage Trust. It was a whole lot of work to prepare documentations and where were all those people who went to the street and screamed so loudly? The lesson I learned : screaming and working are two different things. The second challenge, we couldn't find a lawyer who understood the heritage conservation law and most of all there was no lawyer who was prepared to work for completely free, as the heritage volunteers all did. Even after a very good discounted fee, we still couldn't find money to pay the lawyer. And all the lawyers we met were part of an NGO in laws so they were also lawyers with idealism and philantrophy spirit, but work for nothing at all?

I could completely understood the logic and blame nobody. I was just frustrated by a fact that we couldn't make a further step to draw a firm line when something wrong happened. We didn't have a jurisprudence in heritage case so far. I was told that in Yogyakarta there is a class action case at this moment. I do hope this news is true and I am curious to hear more about this. And I was told also that it is still possible to have and find lawyers who will back us up in the Trowulan case. I would believe it when the class action really happen. I do hope we all have strength and commitment to do it together; it has to be a collective effort, impossible to do it single handedly. Who shall start? (Why do I feel that I get back to the zero point?)

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