Old City Hall was witness to history

Old City Hall was witness to history

By Ida Indawati Khouw

Old Batavia is no less attractive than metropolitan Jakarta.
However, many of the area's finest buildings have been
demolished, neglected, poorly refurbished or are poorly managed.
Jakarta Historical Museum is one of the few historical buildings
that has been properly cared for by the authorities. This is the
second article in a series about Jakarta's historical buildings
to run in Saturday editions of The Jakarta Post.

JAKARTA (JP): The unwillingness of Jakartans to deal with city
officials might very well date back over a century.

Currently, most people do all in their power to avoid direct
dealings with City Hall, due mainly to the rampant corruption of
officials, according to a number of people, including Governor
Sutiyoso.

In the 18th century, the old City Hall, now known as Jakarta
Historical Museum or Fatahillah Museum, in downtown Kota was
saddled with this same image problem. Of course back then people
trod particularly carefully when approaching City Hall, since the
Stadhuis was also home to -- among other things -- courtrooms,
prisons and a marriage registration office.

According to literature, the vast building complex, built
between 1707 and 1710 as the center of the old walled-in Batavia,
was witness to a number of people -- including some innocent ones
-- being tortured to death in the square now known as Taman
Fatahillah, for their alleged crimes.

"There was too much injustice in this Hall because not all
people were equal before the law," noted historian Adolf Heuken
wrote in his book titled Historical Sites of Jakarta.

Seeing the old City Hall today, hidden among the hustle and
bustle of Kota, people might not believe the historical building
was once a house of horrors and home to corrupt and arrogant
officials.

The head of the archeology section at the city's museum and
restoration agency, Candrian Attahiyat, believes City Hall's
negative image at the time was mainly due to the role of its
courtrooms, rather than its administrative functions.

"Literature rarely elaborates about its administration
functions... or writers just pay greater attention to human
interest stories, such as the death penalties, scandals and
deceptions," he told The Jakarta Post recently.

House of Talk

According to Heuken, many people at the time regarded City
Hall as the House of Talk due to its role in various civil
affairs.

"A lot of talking had to be done there," the Dutch-born
historian said.

Heuken described the building, inaugurated by governor-general
Abraham van Riebeeck as the third City Hall built on the same
site, as a place for citizens to register their marriages, pray
and listen to sermons in French, Dutch or Malay and to fight for
their rights in courtrooms.

The City Hall also served as a refuge for orphans, as well as
a place where people were thrown into dirty prisons, put in
chains to serve as witnesses in pending cases, whipped and
tortured and killed in the square located in front of the
building, he said.

Heuken focuses his work on the prison and the cruelties which
occurred at the location.

The building, which has not changed physically since its
construction, resembles the old City Hall of Amsterdam, now the
Royal Palace, built half a century earlier, he said.

According to the historian, the City Hall in Batavia witnessed
scores of slaves, jawara (heroic outlaws) and other people from
various walks of life enter the narrow and stuffy prison cells
located in the basement of the building.

Heuken said more than 300 prisoners were often locked in the
cells, many of them slaves who had been sent by their masters for
any number of reasons.

"Most prisoners were also chained," he said.

The chains can still be seen today in the six cells in the
building.

Each of the cells is painted black with a curved ceiling that
is a mere 1.6 meters in height.

Sanitary conditions in the prison were poor, and in 1845, 85
percent of all detainees died within four months, mainly from
typhus and dysentery, he said.

There was reportedly also a "water prison" under the entrance
platform to the City Hall, where prisoners were ordered to stand
in dirty water all day and night for their crimes.

Water prison

However, Candrian disputes these reports, saying that scores
of experts believe the so-called water prison was just a water
channel.

"There's no adequate evidence for (the water prison reports),"
Candrian said.

A number of documents also reveal that some of the country's
national heroes, including Prince Diponegoro, Untung Suropati and
Acehnese heroine Tjoet Nja' Dien, were also detained here.

Heuken said executions in Taman Fatahillah, or Stadhuisplein,
were carried out with gallows, sword or a primitive guillotine.

"(Executions) took place every month in front of the portico,"
he wrote in his book.

The building also witnessed the massacre of 500 Chinese
citizens living in Batavia in 1740 for rebellion.

The rebellion was triggered by rumors the Dutch secretly
dumped unemployed Chinese immigrants into the Java Sea to limit
their numbers in the city.

Heuken said that at that time so many Chinese immigrants came
to Batavia that the government tried to limit their numbers
through a quota system. However, the Chinese easily circumvented
the regulations with the help of corrupt and greedy officials.

The building ended its function as City Hall in the early 20th
century under the authority of then Batavia governor-general
Herman Willem Daendels.

City Hall then moved to its current building on Jl. Medan
Merdeka Selatan in Central Jakarta.

The old City Hall was then used as the office for the West
Java administration, until Japanese colonialism in 1942.

Candrian said the decision to move the City Hall was mainly
due to an outbreak of cholera and dysentery which was decimating
Batavia at the time.

"Everywhere water was polluted because people relieved
themselves in rivers, forcing the government to release a decree
that human waste should first be contained in buckets and only be
released in rivers after 10:00 p.m.," he said.

However, Candrian said another possibility was that the move
occurred because Daendels, who was notorious for his corruption,
profited from the move.

During Japanese colonialism, the building was used as a
military office.

After Indonesia declared its independence in 1945, the
building continued serving as a military office before it was
taken over by the Jakarta administration and turned into the
Jakarta Historic Museum in 1974.