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‘For sake of humanity and public order’: Jakarta offers shelter to refugees sleeping on sidewalk

The Jakarta administration has taken measures to provide shelter for the refugees after they slept on sidewalks in Kebon Sirih for the past two weeks.

Sausan Atika (The Jakarta Post)
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Jakarta
Fri, July 12, 2019

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‘For sake of humanity and public order’: Jakarta offers shelter to refugees sleeping on sidewalk Asylum seekers stay with their children on the sidewalks along Jl. Kebon Sirih in Central Jakarta on July 5. The Jakarta administration relocated them to a temporary shelter in Kalideres, West Jakarta on Thursday. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)

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ozens of refugees circled around an officer of the Jakarta Social Agency who was shouting out approximately 300 names listed on papers through a loudspeaker on Thursday afternoon on Jl. Kebon Sirih in Central Jakarta.

The refugees, who had escaped wars in their home countries of Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan, listened carefully, making sure that the male officer called their names before getting on buses that would take them to a temporary shelter in a former building of the West Jakarta military command (Kodim) in Kalideres.

The Jakarta administration has taken measures to provide shelter for the refugees after they slept on sidewalks in Kebon Sirih for the past two weeks. The decision was taken after the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Indonesia made a formal request to the Jakarta administration.

City secretary Saefullah said the relocation was undertaken for reasons of humanity and to ensure public order.

“They stayed on the sidewalks in front of the UNHCR office in Kebon Sirih, which is not only not proper but also disturbs public order,” he told journalists on Thursday.

The empty building was chosen for the refugees because it was near the Jakarta Immigration Detention Center in Kalideres where they usually resided, he said. The refugees were staying in the immigration center before they began assembling on the street in Kebon Sirih as part of a protest to demand that the UNHCR speed up the processing of their asylum applications.

Based on an agreement with the UNHCR, the city administration is not only providing shelter, but also their other needs for the first week, including three meals a day. The money to pay for this is to be taken from the Social Agency emergency fund allocated by the 2019 city budget.

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