City late to evict residents

Zakki Hakim, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

"Sooner or later we will be evicted, we already knew that this was private land," said Ronny, a resident of Jembatan Besi, Tambora, West Jakarta, who was evicted on Tuesday.

Ronny is only one of some 10,000 residents who have occupied 5.5 hectares of an eight-hectare plot of land since early 1998, owned by PT Cakra Wira Bumi Mandala.

Cakra Wira started to clear the land to build in 1997 but it abandoned the project after the monetary crisis hit the country, Ronny told The Jakarta Post.

Initially a few people started to grow vegetables on the land and erected temporary housing. But within five years, at least 1,720 makeshift houses were erected and sadly many of the residents there rented the houses, he said.

Arief Fadilah, head of West Jakarta Public Order Agency, told reporters at the scene that the administration had warned the residents a year ago that their eviction was imminent if they did not leave the site. However, he declined to explain why the administration did not remove the squatters when there were only a few.

"It was the monetary crisis, people who lived there had just lost their jobs and some were trying to make use of the land by farming," he argued.

Using the monetary crisis as an excuse has become a cliche. Last month, the administration demolished some 400 makeshift kiosks used by around 1,000 street vendors along Jl. Pasar Senen in Central Jakarta.

The administration argued that it originally let the vendors occupy only the sidewalk next to Senen Market due to the monetary crisis, but eventually more vendors came and occupied up to third quarters of the street, causing heavy congestion.

Chairman of the Jakarta Residents Forum (Fakta) Azas Tigor Nainggolan blamed the administration for Tuesday's incident for two reasons.

The administration did not initially prohibit the people from occupying the land while the number was not so significant. Second, the public order officials did not approach the people who would lose their houses, instead they used violence during the eviction.