Families living in eight houses within a military housing complex in Kedung Badak, Bogor, were evicted on Thursday.

The families resisted the eviction by building a blockade at 6 a.m., but Bogor Suryakencana Military Command chief of staff Lt. Col. Eko Saptono said the families needed to vacate the houses because no active soldiers, veterans or their widows lived there anymore.

“The descendants do not have the right to live in the houses, which should be returned to the state,” Eko said

He said warning letters had been sent on several different occasions since 2013, but that the families had refused to vacate the houses. 

Andrian Herdis, the head of the complex community unit (RW), said most of the families had lived in the compound since 1948. When the veterans and their widows died, the houses were handed down to their children or their grandchildren.

Andrian said the affected families would leave the compound only after the government had given them a substitute.

“They promised to give us low-cost apartments as a substitute but we have not heard anything about it since,” he said.

According to Andrian, the evicted residents had paid house taxes and water and electricity bills to the Bogor administration every month. (gis)

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