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)