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.