Kelapa Gading eviction victims tell tragic stories

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

With tears in her eyes, 45-year-old Rumondang Sinaga stood in front of her house, trying to prevent a bulldozer machine from destroying it. She was pulled away by some of her poor neighbors at the last minute.

"Where should I and my six children move to if my house here is demolished!" Rumondang cried, while the machine approached her temporary house built from plywood in a swampy part of Kelapa Gading subdistrict, North Jakarta.

Rumondang was widowed after her husband A. Simanjuntak died a year ago. She works as a vendor on the road located near the Sunter river, about 100 meters from her house.

She has to support five of her children -- four of whom are of school age -- as the eldest has a job and lives separately from her.

She said her family had lived in the area since 1989. "This is my only house. How could they do this to us, a poor widow with six children to support," Rumondang told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

It was the second day of demolition of riverbank slum houses, just across from Kelapa Gading shopping center.

The first day of demolition on Thursday was marred by clashes between public order officers and residents, leaving a number of people wounded from police rubber bullets.

Head of the operational section at the Security Order Agency in North Jakarta Esmar said that the people there had built their houses illegally on land belonging to PT Sari Kebon Jeruk Permai (SKJP).

But many of the residents have identity cards (IDs). Their houses are connected to the electricity mains of state-owned electricity company PLN and also have piped water, supplied by state water company PT Pam Jaya.

Rumondang is one of around 1,000 heads of families who will lose their home if the demolition process is completed. Most of the people there have no permanent jobs, working as street vendors, drivers, construction workers and in other jobs in the informal sector.

Darmaji, Toid and Subur showed their ID cards to the Post to prove that they were lawful residents of the neighborhood.

"District and subdistrict heads have, however, shirked their responsibility. We are being treated like illegal aliens although we were born here," said Darmaji, who has four children, three of them still of school age.

Nani, 37, who claimed she was born in the area, said that her father, Nazar, 80, was the first person to establish a dwelling in the swamp in the 1950s. She said her father had run away from his hometown in Cikarang, West Java.

Esmar refused to answer questions about the status of the land, saying that they should be put to the North Jakarta mayor.

"My task here is to lead the demolition work," he stressed.

He also refused to comment on the fact that people there were lawful residents as they had IDs, and their houses were supplied with electrical power from PLN and water from PAM Jaya.

The demolition plan was not carried out transparently as Espar refused to say where was the limit of houses scheduled to be demolished.

But a number of public order officers said that demolition would only be carried out within an area marked by red flags.