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Community defy forced evictions amid divisive political climate

Resistance: Musdalifah stands in front of her tent, where she lives with 25 other people from eight families in Pasar Ikan, North Jakarta

Evi Mariani (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Wed, July 27, 2016

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Community defy forced evictions amid divisive political climate

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span class="inline inline-center">Resistance: Musdalifah stands in front of her tent, where she lives with 25 other people from eight families in Pasar Ikan, North Jakarta. More than 200 families chose to remain living on the ruins of their houses after the city administration demolished them for the Kota Tua revitalization project.(JP/Evi Mariani)

“This is disobedience,” said Sukarti, 40, a resident of the demolished Pasar Ikan area in North Jakarta. Her expression hardened when she said that.

Her life has been turned upside down after a forced eviction occurring in Pasar Ikan, a settlement that is part of Kota Tua that spans across North and West Jakarta. The reason for the eviction was “Kota Tua’s Revitalization,” as a city administration eviction notice stated.

Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama said in May that he planned to make Kota Tua pedestrian friendly so visitors could walk the 2 kilometers from Fatahillah Square in West Jakarta to the Maritime Museum, next to Pasar Ikan, in North Jakarta.

The city is to widen walkways and make Jl. Tongkol a parking hub. Ahok has targeted for the initial phase of the revitalization project to finish within a year, using funds collected from developers that had to compensate the city administration for increasing their building-floor coefficient permits. The project is estimated to cost Rp 270 billion (US$20.49 million).

To make way for this revitalization, the city evicted more than 400 families in Pasar Ikan. Ahok said they did not have land ownership certificates and their squalid conditions bred tuberculosis.

The city administration offered two low-cost rental apartments (rusunawa) as a relocation option for Pasar Ikan residents, one in Marunda in North Jakarta and another in Rawa Bebek, Pulo Gebang, in East Jakarta. Both are located about 25 km from their original homes or a one-hour trip by car, without traffic.

In the eviction’s aftermath, Sukarti’s family moved to a small boat along with four other families. Eight adults and 12 children crammed together there because they refused the rusunawa offer.

After about two weeks, the health of her malnourished daughter started to deteriorate, compelling the family to build a makeshift wooden shack on the Pasar Ikan ruins. They scavenged for wood planks and nails to build the shack. It has one window overlooking the sea and the boat that was their home for two weeks is parked outside.

The city administration later offered the family a unit in Kapuk rusunawa, which is closer than Marunda and Rawa Bebek. Only her daughter, Eka Juanti, 21, took the offer. Sukarti again refused because her youngest child, a junior high school student, goes to school in nearby Luar Batang.

The Pasar Ikan residents that have been resolute in their defiance to the eviction has attracted the support of political groups, who have taken to the area with their flags. These political groups are what netizens label “Ahok haters” for their opposition against the governor, a Protestant of Chinese descent.

Those who side with the governor say the “relocation” was a humane measure as the rusunawa is clean. “It even has a sitting toilet, not a squatting one,” they said on social media. Netizens have waged a bitter cyber war over the evictions.

Ahok is campaigning to remain governor in next year’s elections. His political enemies include Islamic hard-liners, who quickly jumped on the wagon to defend evictees in Pasar Ikan. On the other hand, his supporters insisted that the way the administration handled the evictions was acceptable.

Pasar Ikan residents are aware their plight has been politicized, yet they are open to any group willing to assist them.

Musdalifah, a new member of the Jakarta Urban Poor Network (JRMK) dismissed the rumors about rising negative sentiment against Chinese-Indonesians after the eviction. “No. It’s just rumors, we welcome anyone as long as they support us,” said Musdalifah.

The ruins now have several large tents and wooden shacks erected, where poles bearing flags of different political groups wave in the air. Musdalifah’s family live in one of the tents, donated by Gerindra Party chairman Prabowo, who endorsed Ahok as running mate of then governor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo for the city’s gubernatorial election in 2012.

Ahok later left Gerindra, purportedly souring the relationship ever since.

Musdalifah’s tent provides shelter to eight families or 25 adults and children. The floor of her tent is the rubble from demolished homes.

“We sleep next to each other like fish being dried in the sun,” Musdalifah said, laughing. She just recuperated from typhoid last week, she said. They made a public toilet from the remnants of someone else’s toilet. One tent has their own public toilet, and each family is entitled to one toilet cubicle.

On July 20 this year, the residents marched to the State Palace requesting a meeting with President Jokowi. Twice during his gubernatorial campaign in 2012 and later in his presidential campaign in 2014, Jokowi promised to help legalize urban kampung as long as the residents could prove they had lived there for more than 20 years.

There is footage documenting their march last week that shows Jokowi with his trademark checkered shirt, talking in 2012 to the urban poor and then promising he would not allow them to be evicted but rather have their neighborhood upgraded. The urban poor cheered when they heard his promise.

Musdalifah wanted the slum-upgrading program in her neighborhood. She said the residents had gone to the National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM) and the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta) to file for a citizen lawsuit. “Our hope is to have our neighborhood rebuilt here. But if that’s not possible we want the city administration to compensate our land and property,” she said.

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