“After examining all the evidence, we have strong reasons to consider that the residents of the kampung have a right to access to a public road with a width of between 2.5 and 3 meters,” presiding judge Sugeng Riyono said Wednesday.

Last year, residents of Lengkong Gudang kampung sued PT Bumi Serpong Damai (BSD), developer of the 6,000-hectare BSD City satellite city in Tangerang, and its subsidiaries for allegedly walling off their zone with a 3-meter-high concrete fence.

One of the plaintiffs, Rizal S. Gueci, said BSD had in 2000 built a wall on one of the kampung’s streets, Jl. Kampung Dadap, and in 2006 had blocked another access road, Jl. Kemuning.

The only other street leading to the outside, a small lane, was walled up in 2007, effectively isolating the eight families living in the 2,200-square-meter kampung from the outside world, the plaintiffs claimed.

The only access out of the kampung is a hard scramble up a steep dirt slope that gets slippery in the rainy season, the residents said, and which leads to the bus stop outside the Swiss German University.

They also claimed to have written letters of protest to the Tangerang mayor and to have had the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) recommend their case to him, but to no avail.
The last resort, they said, was to take the case to court.

At Wednesday’s hearing, the judges also ordered BSD, PT Smart Telecom, which operates a factory next to the kampung, the Tangerang regent, the South Tangerang mayor and the Lengkong Gudang subdistrict head to jointly finance the construction of an access road connecting Lengkong Gudang kampung to the nearby village of Rawa Buntu.

BSD and Smart are both subsidiaries of the Sinar Mas Group, one of the country’s largest conglomerates.

BSD has been developing real estate in Tangerang since 1989.

Company spokesman Idham Muchlis said BSD would appeal the ruling.

He claimed the company had previously reached an agreement with the residents to let them keep one access road open while the company closed down the other two to establish its boundaries.

“But we found the last access road closed off with concrete,” he said.

“The residents accused us of closing it, but we suspect it was them who did it.”

Although the court insisted only the local administration had the final say on whether the walls were closed down, plaintiff Rizal said the verdict came as a relief.

“Finally, after more than two years, we’ve seen justice done,” he said.

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