A matter of human rights
A matter of human rights
The Jakarta administration's promise to build low-cost
apartments for the evicted Muara Angke fishermen and to take care
of 256 children of the Kampung Baru and Muara Angke families,
will not make up for the forced demolition of thousands of houses
in recent months.
Promises will not eliminate the sad stories of the evictees,
who have not yet found another place to live. Besides, these
promises were made only after a series of protests from evicted
families and criticisms from groups and institutions concerned
with the administration's arbitrary action.
Early this week, North Jakarta Mayor Effendi Anas said a five-
story block of low-cost apartments would soon be built on a 1.9
hectare plot of land to provide shelter for the Kali Adem
fishermen, whose homes have been demolished. He said only those
with Jakarta IDs would be housed in the apartments, but he could
not provide details of the plan.
Unlike the North Jakarta mayoralty, the West Jakarta
administration was not sure if it could build apartment blocks
for evicted families -- because there is no more vacant land left
in the area.
Governor Sutiyoso, who appears determined to follow through
with his policy on squatters, donated Rp 76.8 billion to buy
school uniforms for the evicted children. He said on Thursday
that the administration would make funds available for the
children's school tuition.
These hasty promises make it obvious that the city
administration was certain that eviction was the best solution
for squatters, but that it had no integrated plan ready before
the evictions were carried out.
The saddest thing of all is that the administration has
ignored and neglected the basic principles of human rights.
Apartments should have been prepared well before any eviction
was carried out, and the administration should have set aside
funds for evictees to pay their children's tuition.
Furthermore, by failing to prevent people from trespassing and
illegally occupying other people's property at the earliest
stage, the administration has failed to uphold law and order.
While no one will deny that occupying land belonging to
another is against the law, the administration should have known
that the right to shelter is a basic human right.
The government of Indonesia adopted the principle of human
rights in its 1945 Constitution. It also signed the United
Nations Declaration of Human rights in 1948, while the People's
Consultative Assembly (MPR) issued Decree No. 17/1998 that
guarantees all citizens a place to live.
Unfortunately, the government has yet to issue a human rights
law based on the Constitution.
Both basic rights -- the right to property ownership and the
right to shelter -- could have been respected by prohibiting
people from ever illegally occupying land that did not belong to
them.
What has happened over the past few days, however, is that the
squatters were allowed to occupy the land for decades without any
legal action being taken to stop them.
The fact that the 2001 and 2002 city budgets were carried over
to the successive years makes it clear that the administration
need not have complained about lacking the money for low-cost
apartments.
From the 2001 city budget, at least Rp 1.6 trillion of the Rp
8.14 trillion development fund was left over; from the 2002
budget, around Rp 2 trillion remained unused.
To ensure that the 2003 budget is used toward better ends, the
administration could set aside a fund for squatters without
Jakarta ID cards to be returned to their home towns.
What we also need is the administration's political will and
sensibility in order to draft an integrated program to deal with
urbanization problems so that basic human rights are respected.
In this context, it is understandable that the Association of
Anti-eviction Citizens (Pawang) has warned that the inhumane,
forced evictions of squatters could eventually lead to a
systematic elimination of the basic rights of citizens.