Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Look at this time-series data on evictions in Jakarta, compiled and processed by the
Jakarta Social Institute (ISJ) and the Jakarta Residents' Forum (Fakta). First, during
2001, the Jakarta municipality, in the name of law and order, evicted the urban poor
99 times.
Moreover, the brutal eviction wiped out at least 6,588 houses and five schools,
leaving 6,774 families, or over 34,000 people, homeless. ISJ and Fakta also say the
evictions contributed to the death of 19 people, injury to 67, depression of 1,000 and
unemployment of 4,252 people.
At least 2,700 worksites were destroyed and the loss was around Rp 540 million.
Second, last year, 26 evictions were carried out in residential areas, with a further 20
evictions of street vendors, in which 4,908 homes were demolished, 18,732 people
became homeless, 15 were injured and 11 were arrested.
At present, over 300 evicted families of fishermen in Muara Angke, North Jakarta, are
living on their boats with some 30 infants -- heaven knows how much longer they will
be able to do so.
In Surabaya and other big cities, the urban poor are repeatedly wiped out for the city's
"development."
While most of the capital's poor are evicted because they live and do business on land
categorized as "green, open space," business interests in the past few years have
converted 49,135 square meters of Jakarta's open land into 32 gas stations. Two-thirds
of the protected mangrove in North Jakarta was cleared for the construction of luxury
estates.
"Development" thus seems irrelevant because -- if anything -- it is simply an
unintended consequence of individual profit-seeking ventures carried out by
businesses.
The evictions usually involve the brazen seizure of urban land by commercial and
financial giants. The apparatus of the state are simply the loyal servant of these
economic oligarchs.
Saying that only the state is responsible is to ignore the capacity and the influence of
business power -- and this involves the deeper consequences on how we perceive
democracy and human rights.
We are nearing the end of 2003, yet our notions and practice of democracy and human
rights remain stuck in the 1900s -- when movements advocating civil and political
rights focused on making the state accountable.
For instance, privatization of basic services, involving giant business interests, has
deliberately been promoted as the best way of providing public services.
Often there are two typical reactions. First, the government alone becomes the target
of anger.
Thus, addressing the problem of economic human rights by simply targeting the state
is to bark up the wrong tree.
The need to raise awareness of social and economic rights in the country is therefore
an urgent challenge if we realize that it is not the state alone that wields the greatest
influence on our lives.