T

he city administration is moving against the environmental organization Greenpeace Indonesia as it plans to evict staff from their national headquarters in Kemang, South Jakarta.

Head of the South Jakarta Building Construction Supervision and Regulation Agency (P2B), Widyo Dwiyono, said Greenpeace has turned what should have been a private residence in Kemang Utara into an office building.

“If it does not immediately move out, we will seal the office for a building permit violation,” he said.

Officials from the agency have given Greenpeace three days to move out of the building before they move in to seal the office.

Head of the South Jakarta Spatial Planning Agency, Gamal Sinurat, added that Greenpeace had been asked to leave because it had become a security concern in the area.

“Office activities in a residential area can create a disturbance, such as when the FBR staged a rally in front of the [Greenpeace] office, which gave rise to security problems in the neighborhood. It would be better if Greenpeace moves to an area that is specifically designed for business or office buildings,” he said, referring to the native Jakartan organization, the Betawi Brotherhood Forum.

Earlier, the head of Bangka subdistrict also instructed heads of local neighborhoods in the area to keep an eye on Greenpeace activities.

Greenpeace media campaigner Rahma Shofiana said that the organization was surprised to learn that the city administration would seal the building as it had secured a permit to run its operations in the area.

“We have complete documentation for our operations here, including a permit that allows us to run an office, which is signed by the district and subdistrict office,” she said.

Greenpeace moved to Kemang Utara last year from Cikini in Central Jakarta.

Rahma said that Greenpeace was not the only organization which used residential homes as offices in the neighborhood.

“There are many buildings used as offices in this area,” she said.

Rahma said that Greenpeace received the notice of eviction on Tuesday, but it said nothing about what would happen if staff failed to comply in three days.

“We will check and re-check the building and operational permits. We will study what ‘residential area’ really means,” she said.

In July, the FBR staged a rally and claimed that Greenpeace was an illegal organization because it had not registered with the Jakarta administration’s National and Political Unity Agency.

Greenpeace responded by saying it was not a civil organization and should therefore be exempt from the law on public organizations, and be obliged only to register with the Law and Human Rights Ministry.

Lawmakers have also called on the government to review the existence of Greenpeace in Indonesia. They said the government had been too lenient with Greenpeace despite the absence of an official permit for it to operate in Indonesia and its reports on various issues, including illegal logging and forest conversions.

The lawmakers said Greenpeace tended to attack Indonesian companies and authorities but remained silent about environmental issues linked to giant US companies.

Earlier this month, Greenpeace UK’s executive director John Sauven was denied entry to Indonesia at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, in spite of Sauven holding a visa issued by the Indonesian Embassy in London. An immigration spokesman said the measure had been taken to run the “organization’s intelligence function”.