Jakarta’s dispossessed
Andreas Harsono, journalist in Jakarta (Indonesia)
High-rise blocks in central Jakarta.
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Factfile Population |
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The idea of a global village is absurd; it’s in cities that tribes have been reborn. Stephen Frears, British film director (1941-) |
Victimized by speculative development
projects and arbitrary planning procedures, millions of Jakartans have had to start
their lives afresh
On a humid tropical evening in mid-April, Henry Muhamad Ali stood under
a tall billboard in southern Jakarta. “Look!” he said bitterly, pointing up to the
sign above his head. “It says everybody should apply for a building permit when constructing
their houses.”
Ali had good reason to be bitter. The billboard had been set up at an intersection
near the campus of the University of Indonesia, on a grassy spot where, exactly a
decade ago, he had been living in a house legally built on a 2,000-square-metre plot
of land. Then came the day when he and his family were forcibly evicted.
“Hundreds of police and army officers, some armed with machine guns, forced my wife
and children to leave our home,” he cried, adding that tractors had been used to
flatten his house.
All over the Jakarta agglomeration, many middle-and lower-class Jakartans could tell
similar stories. They were the legal owners of houses whose construction had been
authorized. Then they were driven out to make room for the skyscrapers, real estate
complexes and highrise condominiums that have transformed central Jakarta.
Land speculation in Jakarta—and in Indonesia in general—has been more intensive than
elsewhere in Asia. There are several reasons for this. One is that Indonesia has
no progressive tax system to discourage people from accumulating land holdings. (A
progressive tax system is one in which wealthy people pay relatively more tax than
the less wealthy.) Secondly, Indonesian people traditionally like to invest their
money in land, which is considered a yardstick of their social status as well as
a source of wealth. Government officials as well as private developers jostle to
accumulate land: the higher an official’s rank, the more land he is likely to possess.
Thirdly, Indonesian banks traditionally regard land as good collateral for loans,
and in the 1980s and 1990s competed with each other to provide credit for land speculation.
They did not realize that Indonesia’s economic structure was fragile.
Between October 1993, when the government issued a package of deregulation measures
which included the liberalization of land ownership, and June 1998, Indonesia’s National
Land Agency issued “appropriation permits” to scores of developers over a total area
of almost 250,000 hectares.
An appropriation permit allows development companies to approach residents in a target
area to negotiate and sell their land. In practice, developers often used strong-arm
methods to force small land-owners to sell up.
According to an estimate by the Ministry of Public Housing, by 1999 enough land had
been “released” by its owners to satisfy Indonesia’s demand for new houses for a
hundred years. In other words, the speculative bubble burst, and one reason why the
Indonesian banking sector is enmeshed in economic crisis today is because of its
non-performing property loans.
In this “land rush” the government ignored town planning blueprints it had helped
to prepare. Hence the story of people like Ali.
At the height of the forced evacuations, in the late 1970s and in the 1980s, Indonesian
newspapers were full of stories about developers using armed thugs to harass small
land-owners and soldiers strong-arming citizens opposed to what was going on. Human
rights lawyers tried desperately to negotiate but in some cases they too were prosecuted
and even jailed.
Not all threatened home-owners took things lying down. Some organized resistance,
and in one case soldiers on an eviction mission were attacked with sharpened bamboo
spears. “Many of these people were actually killed,” says Panangian Simanungkalit
of the Center for Indonesia Property Studies, who estimates that 4.5 million people
were evacuated from their homes in Jakarta during the authoritarian rule of President
Suharto between 1968 and 1998.
When officials
override planning blueprints
For 55-year-old Ali this was not the first time he had been evicted from his home.
In 1959, when Indonesia was preparing to host the Asian Games, his house was one
of hundreds in the Senayan district of central Jakarta that were bulldozed to make
room for the Senayan Sports Complex, the largest in southeast Asia.
On that occasion he received a small amount of compensation, and used it to buy a
plot of land about two kilometres away. Then, in 1979, he decided to sell up for
a profit and buy the 2,000-square-metre plot of land in Srengseng Sawah where he
would later experience eviction for a second time.
Before he made the purchase, however, he took certain precautions. He went along
to the office of the Governor of Jakarta and to the mayoralty of southern Jakarta
(see box) and consulted the Master Plan the authorities
had drawn up to deal with problems of Jakarta’s rapid urban growth. He was reassured
when officials told him that the Srengseng Sawah area was intended to be a housing
zone. Later he was issued with a building permit. Then, in 1989, officials simply
said that they had changed the Master Plan. When Ali protested the Jakarta authorities
ordered the soldiers to go in.
What happens to Ali and the millions like him who have been expelled? Where do they
go and how do they set about rebuilding their lives?
A lot depends on their means. The authorities provide compensation for evicted people,
but this is usually very low. On average it amounts to one-twentieth of the market
price of their property according to Panangian.
The government tried to introduce low-cost housing in certain areas, but its efforts
were a drop in the ocean and were soon dwarfed beneath the forest of high-rise condos
and skyscrapers.
Officials usually encourage displaced small landowners to move to the suburbs or
to join a government-sponsored transmigration programme designed to relocate people
from overpopulated islands such as Java, Madura and Bali to more sparsely settled
islands such as Irian Jaya, Kalimantan or Sumatra.
Those who can afford to do so move out to the suburbs. Many have settled in Bekasi,
to the east, and Tangerang to the west, which have become the main concentrations
for the growth of manufacturing employment and population on the outer edge of the
Jakarta agglomeration. For the poor it was, and is, a very different story (see below).
Compared to many, Ali was lucky. When he was evicted, he filed a lawsuit against
the authorities. At first he got free legal aid, but did not work while waiting for
his case to come up and spent a lot of time attending court sessions. After a protracted
legal battle his case was dismissed on appeal in 1996, but he was awarded compensation
of around 50 million rupiah ($19,230 at the then exchange rate). This was just enough
to buy the 150 square-metre plot of land where he and his family live today, a kilometre
away from the site from which they were expelled in 1989.
When he lost his house, Ali also lost his workplace—he used to be a welder. Like
other displaced households, the family has become much poorer. If Ali had been allowed
to keep the house he owned in Senayan in the 1960s and 1970s he would now be a very
rich man indeed since land prices in this desirable area of Jakarta have skyrocketed.
Ali is now out of work. His wife, Umroh Aini, tries to support the family and has
opened a small kiosk at a bus stop, selling soft drinks and peanuts. Their children,
aged between nine and 30, share the small house with their parents. The three oldest
sons dropped out of school and found work as bus drivers.
Displaced people like Ali lose their confidence as well as their homes. They feel
they have failed in life. They also leave behind them the tightly knit social support
network of neighbours and relatives which is a strong feature of Indonesian life.
People who live in Jakarta’s new suburban areas usually come from a patchwork of
ethnic and religious backgrounds. Many people do not know their neighbours.
Those who live in the suburb areas face many problems, ranging from longer commuting
hours to bad sanitation, inadequate telephone lines and low water quality.
Clean water
for 5% of the population
Water supply is an ever-present
problem in cities of the South and Jakarta is no exception. PAM Jaya, the water supply
operator, is perhaps Jakarta’s worst-run state-owned company. In spite of 170 per
cent growth between 1987 and 1997, it can only supply clean water to around 5 per
cent of the population. Displaced families have to rely on their well. The water
from Ali’s well is still drinkable, but many other families, especially in central
and northern Jakarta, have to buy their drinking water every day from itinerant vendors.
PT Telkom, Indonesia’s telecoms utility, has turned in a better performance. Between
1992 and 1997 it increased the number of telephone lines in Jakarta from 560,000
to 1.7 million, a 200 per cent increase. But supply is still far below the demand
of Jakarta’s nearly 10 million people.
The trouble is, Ali couldn’t possibly afford to be hooked up. When asked his telephone
number, he smiled and shook his head, “These shoes I am wearing are the only ones
that I saved from the wreckage in 1989,” he said. “If I can’t afford to buy new shoes,
how can you expect me to have a telephone?”
Later on that April evening, when Ali was about to leave to meet his wife, he described
how he had joined thousands of students occupying Indonesia’s parliament building
in May 1998. He shared their objective: to kick out Suharto.
“Suharto’s daughter built this intersection,” Ali said as he left the site where
his home and his dream were taken away from him a decade ago. One thing he didn’t
lose on that fateful day was his pride.
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Dismembered communities Ali may have been unlucky, but things turned out much better for him than for
millions of other Jakartans. |