Old lady evicted after 7-year row

Old lady evicted after 7-year row

JAKARTA (JP): Eighty-four-year-old Mariam Muharam
Wiranatakusuma (seated) resigned herself to eviction on Wednesday
when she was forced by police officers to leave her house on Jl.
Cik Di Tiro in Menteng, Central Jakarta, following a seven-year
dispute over the house's ownership.

Mariam could do little more than watch as her belongings were
packed up under the watchful gaze of police officers.

Officers from the Central Jakarta District Court, guarded by
soldiers and police officers, broke down the 20-square-meter
room's door with a crowbar and took away her belongings before
ordering the old lady to go.

Mariam, who looked thin and pale, finally left the premises in
a relative's van at about 4 p.m.

She refused to be taken away in an ambulance provided by the
court.

Mariam's relatives had asked the officers to cancel the
eviction of the old woman since she was suffering from a heart
illness.

But the officers rejected the call, saying that they had to
implement the court order.

The court had agreed with a lawsuit filed by a woman, named
Ida Farida, who claimed that the house Mariam lived in belonged
to her father, Sanusi.

The court ordered Mariam to vacate the house and seized the
property in 1990. But the woman insisted on staying and locked
herself in the room in 1991.

Mariam, who used to be a high-ranking official at the Ministry
of Education and Culture, said that the house was bought by her
late husband, Muharam Wiranatakusuma, in 1964 from the Ministry
of Agriculture.

According to Mariam's lawyer Hindasih Syafarudin, the land was
bought by a foundation of the Ministry of Agriculture in November
1955 from Sanusi, who bought the house in October 1955 from a
Dutchman named Theodore Jacob Middledorp. (jun)