Watch your step: Visitors throng a stretch of the Kalijodo red-light district on the border between West Jakarta and North Jakarta, on a weeknight. Kalijodo is believed to be Indonesia’s oldest red-light district, dating back to the early 18th century. A combination of corrupt authorities and chronic urban poverty have contributed to its longevity. JP/J. Adiguna
A wealth of literature suggests the emergence of the Kalijodo red-light district can be traced back as early as the 18th century, following a mass influx of Chinese immigrants to Batavia, the Jakarta of colonial times.
Affluent Chinese merchants and low-skilled Chinese laborers would flock to the Kalijodo area, at the time already a popular riverside recreational spot for fishing and relaxing.
It also served as a courtship area, playing host to these men and their sweethearts. Over time, the men began inviting mostly impoverished Batavian women to dress in Chinese clothes and sing to them in the language — for a hefty pay, of course.
It was during this time that the word ca bau (or dating girl in Chinese) came into use to describe the sex workers operating in the area.
Nia Dinata film Ca Bau Kan, which took viewers to the Jakarta of the 1930s, was inspired by Kalijodo.
The film told the story of the relationship between a wealthy but coarse Chinese man and his mistress, a courtesan in Kalijodo famed for her beauty.
Transactions and intercourse with the sex workers at the time took place in “love boats” that
floated down the Grogol and Angke rivers.
“I know [from my grandparents] that Kalijodo served as a gathering place for youngsters, especially from the Chinese community, looking for a prospective date,” says Udin, 45, a resident of Kalijodo.
Udin makes a living distributing beverages to vendors around the area. He says people here once celebrated an annual boat fair along the riverbanks, at a time when the waters ran clear of the garbage that now chokes it.
The writer Alwi Shihab, in his book Betawi Queen of the East, says Kalijodo served as a place to celebrate peh coen, the 100th day after the Chinese New Year. The celebration took place along the Angke River.
It was not until the 1950s that makeshift and semipermanent brothels and pubs began cropping up, eventually putting the love boats out of business.
During the 1960s, the prostitution business at Kalijodo received a boost from gambling, turning the area into Indonesia’s largest gambling den for middle- and lower-income Jakartans.
The area attracted various ethnic groups all trying their luck in this brave new world of prostitution and gambling.
The five main ethnic gangs operating in the area were those from Madura in East Java, Makassar, Bugis and Mandar in South Sulawesi, and Banten, said Agus Banten, the kingpin of Kalijodo’s Banten gang, in an interview with The Jakarta Post published April 3, 2002.
Over time, the Madurese and the Bugis lost out to the Mandar in a fierce turf war that culminated in the 1990s, Agus said.
The turf wars were ignited as a result of the fast-shrinking territory following then president Soeharto’s order to clear much of Kalijodo in 1988 to make way for a toll road linking Jakarta to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
With limited space to fight over, the Makassar, the Mandar and the Banten gangs made a pact in the early 1990s to split up the area three ways and forged a truce.
The year 1994 was a watershed for the Mandar and the Makassar gangs.
The late Kamilon, who ruled between the 1970s and 1980s, handed down the Mandar crown to his nephew, Haji Usman.
The Makassar, meanwhile, crowned their new “godfather”, Haji Aziz, after their leader, Leang, was believed to have been killed by the Mandar in 1993.
Over at the Banten camp, Agus was anointed the new leader.
But business in the 1990s and into the 21st century would never be as booming as in Kalijodo’s heyday in the 1980s, when both prostitution and gambling thrived, Udin recalls.
“People were racing to build new cafés and pubs that provided prostitutes,” he says.
“Gambling was also an excellent business at that time.”
He adds a lot of visitors to the area came just for the gambling.
Things began going south in February 2002, when a huge fire, set in the middle of a three-way turf war, razed most of the red-light district to the ground.
The Jakarta governor at the time, Sutiyoso, vowed to shut down the den of iniquity for good. He had
all the illegal buildings in the area torn down and deployed public order officers to watch the place around the clock.
Sutiyoso even planned to build low-cost apartment blocks on the land. That never took place.
What did, however, was the rise of a phoenix from the ashes: Local businessmen, backed by the gangs, began putting Kalijodo back together.
JP/Irma
It seemed destined to relive its heady days of yore, until another turf war broke out in March 2003. Once again fire reduced it to cinders.
But it bounced back, the Kalijodo brand having become far too valuable for local players to let die, albeit not as boisterous as before.
In 2005, then National Police chief Gen. Sutanto launched an all-out crackdown on the gambling dens, derailing nearly half of Kalijodo’s money train.
The Banten gang, which focused exclusively on the gambling business, eventually lost its grip and left the area for good.
In 2007, the Makassar gang managed to chase the rival Mandar gang out of the area entirely, reportedly with backing from the authorities.
The Mandar gang was reputed to have recruited boys as young as 13 from villages in South Sulawesi to shore up its ranks of goons. This private army of 3,000, though, was no match for the 500 men of the politically wired Makassar gang.
No one benefited more from this shift in power than the bureaucrats and the police.
Gone are Kalijodo’s heady days of turf wars. The district today enjoys a more stable business environment, protected by a sole “godfather” steering it toward a revival of the golden age of the 1980s. (tsy/rch)
Kali Genit looking to rival Kalijodo?
A young girl in a red tank top and very short shorts sits beneath a shady tree on a chair by the Angke River. Her eyes scan the road before her as a man in black leather jacket and black pants parks his motorcycle nearby.
He walks toward the girl who is now standing up and smiling coquettishly. They talk for a moment, then the man puts his hand around the girl’s shoulders and they head toward a gloomy-looking place behind the shady tree.
The girl and the motorcyclist aren’t alone. A hundred other girls in skimpy clothing are lined up along Jl. Pangeran Tubagus Angke in West Jakarta.
There are no street lights here, just the dense canopy of the many trees lining the road.
Two traffic police officers are busy talking to each other while a group of women flirt with several men who have just parked their motorcycles nearby.
“People call the place Kali Genit,” says Aeruddin, a parking attendant of sorts in the area.
Kali Genit, or “coquettish river” in English, is less than 2 kilometers from Kalijodo.
Sex workers in the area charge their guests around Rp 30,000 (US$2.80) for a short time.
Unlike in Kalijodo, where guests can rent air-conditioned rooms in the brothels, Kali Genit only provides cramped, makeshift tents lined up on the grassy sidewalk. The tarpaulin tents measure 1.5 meters wide and 1 meter high. Several of them appear to be rocking gently.
Shoppers at a traditional market located just a few meters behind Kali Genit, across the Angke River, go on unperturbed by the sounds and scenes from this budget red-light district. Homes and shops surround Kali Genit, and right across the street is a church. (tsy/rch)
