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.