Fri, Dec 26, 2003 page4

• Jakarta destroying squatters' homes

  ON THE STREET The poor are getting pushed out of slums to make way for construction, drawing criticism of the Indonesian government from housing advocates

  • AP
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  The jumble of shacks packed next to a six-lane highway and a stinking canal might not have looked like much, but to Kartini it was home.

  She lived there, along with her two children, for 10 years -- until last month, when hundreds of police and stick-wielding street toughs destroyed the settlement in west Jakarta to make way for luxury apartments.

  "We are human beings," Kartini said from a nearby bus shelter, where she and some of the other 400 evicted families now live. "Why are they treating us like animals?"

  

  Evicted Indonesians make their way through the wreckage of their former homes after bulldozers flattened all of the buildings in the Kali Adem neighborhood of Jakarta, Indonesia. The Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions listed Indonesia as among the world's worst violators of housing rights.

  PHOTO: AP

  Kartini and thousands of other Indonesians have been squatting on such lands illegally.

  With a massive deficit of low-cost housing and little or no assistance from the government, the poor of Jakarta have little choice but to squat where they can.

  The local government insists that all those forced from their homes were offered compensation and accuses the evictees of lying when they said they had bought the land.

  "The government had to act," said Muhayat, a spokesman for the Jakarta administration. "These people are a threat to our city and our future. If we don't move them, then how will our investment climate improve?"

  Indonesia is among the world's worst violators of housing rights, according to a recent report from the Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions.

  "Although few governments have done enough to enforce the widely recognized right to housing, this year Indonesia, Guatemala and Serbia-Montenegro stand out for their appalling disregard for housing rights," said the group's director, Scott Leckie.

  Indonesia's legions of poor were hit hard by the 1998 Asian financial crisis. Now, as the country's economy slowly creaks back to life and developers again eye prime real estate, the poor are paying a particularly heavy price.

  Rights campaigners say the evictions form part of a larger picture of callousness toward the needy.

  Last year, authorities in Jakarta banned pedicabs from city streets, throwing thousands of the city's poorest out of work. Security forces have raided low-rent districts of Jakarta and sent hundreds of people without Jakarta identity cards back to their villages.

  "These people are being thrown on the scrap heap, they are being chopped up," said Afrizal Malna, an activist with the Urban Poor Consortium.

  The evictions have triggered bloody street battles, pitting angry residents against police and gangs hired by land owners. Dozens of people have been injured.

  Kartini, who like many Indonesians uses a single name, said she bought her plot of land from officials claiming to be acting on behalf of the owner. She said that she and the other tenants -- mostly laborers, street vendors and drivers -- paid their bills and were offered no compensation for the loss of their homes.

  "Now we are left with nothing," she said. "What are my children going to do?"

  Since the evictions, men with sticks have guarded Kartini's destroyed housing complex and refused entry to journalists and ex-residents looking to salvage their belongings.

  Building projects were put on hold in Jakarta, a teeming city of 14 million people, when the Asian economic crisis hit in 1998 and the cost of building materials soared. Developers abandoned half-constructed buildings and left empty lots throughout the city.

  Since last year, economic growth of around 4 percent has triggered a small building boom, with several shopping centers, apartments and office blocks either under construction or already open.
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