Evicted residents demand compensation from landownder
Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Camping on the rubble of their old houses on Jl. Pipa in Sunter Jaya, North Jakarta, the residents fear two things as night falls: the rain and the police who, on previous nights, forced them to vacate the land.
"We will insist on staying here until the person who claims to own the land gives us the compensation we were promised for our houses," Mahfud, a factory worker who lived in the area for four years, told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
With makeshift tents made from plastic sheets and cardboard boxes, about 80 families are living amid their destroyed homes in a little area surrounded by a three-meter tall wall.
After losing all their belongings, they now depend on donated rice and instant noodles for their food.
The residents are bewildered by the North Jakarta mayoralty's decision to bulldoze their houses last Tuesday, with the dispute over the ownership of the land still in the hands of the Jakarta High Court.
"There was no court verdict ordering us to leave the land. Moreover, we bought the land back in 1998 and 1999 from the workers here, who said their boss was halting plans to build an office for the Timor car company on the land," Mahfud said.
He was referring to PT Timor Putra Nasional, owned by Hutomo Putra Mandala, the youngest son of former president Soeharto. At the time, Hutomo held the right to import Korean-made KIA cars and sell them here under the name Timor.
The 4.5-hectare plot of land known as Catering hamlet, named after the profession of the first owner of the land, was handed to the now-defunct Bank Surya in 1997 by Anton Tjahayadikarta, the second person to own the land.
According to the North Jakarta office of the National Land Agency, the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) took over ownership of the land in 1999, along with other assets of Bank Surya.
It is not clear whether IBRA sold the land, but residents said that Anton held several meetings with subdistrict chief Sunyoto, in which he promised to pay Rp 500,000 (US$58) in compensation to the owners of each of the 140 houses in the hamlet for vacating the area.
Residents of the hamlet were not given notice that their houses were to be destroyed on Tuesday. One resident was hospitalized when he was hit be debris from one of the destroyed houses.
"There was no notice of the eviction. We were not given time to save our belongings before they smashed our houses," one resident, Marsum, said.
He said the North Jakarta public order officers who evicted them took everything, including television sets and piggy banks.
The public order officers also took the electricity and water meters that proved the residents were customers of the state- owned electricity company and the city-owned tap water company, he said.
"We were electricity and water customers. That is proof that we were legal residents," Marsum said.