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IX. Consequences of Evictions

Let me put it this way: in the old place, I could eat rice with chicken. Here, only rice with salt.

—Kasan Percaya, a sixty-one-year-old businessman³⁰¹

Effects of Evictions on Women and Girls

Women evictees face particularly adverse consequences from evictions, most notably interruptions to income-generating activities they run out of their homes. Several such cases are detailed below. Women also face heightened exposure to sexual and gender-based violence³⁰² and, because they make up the majority of internal Indonesian migrants to Jakarta,³⁰³ are disproportionately exposed to abuses to which migrants are susceptible (see “Effects of evictions on migrants,” below).

As the principal targets of sexual and gender-based violence, women and girls are particularly exposed to such abuse by forced evictions.³⁰⁴ The chaos during an eviction, and the disruption of community structures and the change to less secure living circumstances in the aftermath of an eviction, may all increase the risk of such violence. During the eviction at Cengkareng Timur in West Jakarta, a public order official is reported to have raped a thirteen-year-old girl, according to the National Commission on Child Protection.³⁰⁵ Reports of sexual and gender-based violence may be underreported due to the stigma involved.

Many evicted women told Human Rights Watch they used their homes, or shops connected to their homes, as part of their income generating activities. Susi Setyowati showed us her new shop as she related the story of her life prior to the eviction of her community from Kapuk Muara in 2003: “I had a food stall in my old house. My house had two levels. I used the second level to sleep, and the first level for a food stall.” Following her eviction, Susi Setyowati was fortunate to receive assistance from a private charitable foundation that helped her move to a new apartment in the city’s periphery. She has now opened another small food stall near her new home. However, she noted:

I now earn between Rp. 150,000 [US$16] and Rp. 200,000 [US$21] per week. That’s [income] not profit. My profit is only like Rp. 50,000 [US$5]. It’s less than at the other place. Back then, in the previous place, I could earn Rp. 400,000 [US$42] per day. This shop is only for the people who live here…At the other place there were offices, factories, supermarkets, so they’d all come and buy something.”³⁰⁶

Sinta Suryana used to run a series of rental homes, another occupation common for Indonesian women.³⁰⁷ Local security forces demolished all of her rental houses during the clearance of the community in Pisangan Timur. She told us, “I earned Rp. 2,500,000 [US$262] per month from all seven of my rental houses. That was my only business.”³⁰⁸

Ani Fatah used to work as a tailor from her home. She told us about her eviction:

I was just grabbing whatever I could: some clothes, but most of them were burned; my sewing machine, but it got damaged along the way; and my papers….I did part-time tailoring in my house. That’s why I had my sewing machine. Sometimes, when there was a good day, I would earn Rp. 10,000 [US$1.20]. But I couldn’t work [following the eviction when I was camping out at the] National Commission for Human Rights…It was five to six months after I moved here before I could start doing sewing again. That was sixteen months after the eviction.³⁰⁹

Sri Suharti told us about the destruction of her shop by the public order officials along with her house: “It took maybe six months to rebuild my small shop. We had to do it little by little.”³¹⁰ These testimonies indicate that once an eviction disrupts an individual’s domestic-based income activities, it may take many months to restart that kind of work.

Losing work may also effect a woman’s children and her extended family, because many Indonesian women are likely to remit part of their income to family members in other parts of the country, often contributing to a sibling’s education.³¹¹

Effects of Evictions on Children

I didn’t know what to do with my children. My little girl kept crying, “Mom, our house is destroyed.”

—Atin Rukiyah, a thirty-one-year-old unemployed woman³¹²

My children are not going to school anymore. I’ve asked for permission from the school to take them out for a little while because they are still traumatized. All their school books have been destroyed. Also, now that we are living here, the school they went to is very far away.

—Dian Yusif, a forty-seven-year-old former businessman³¹³

The sheer noise, confusion, and scale of an eviction can be a terrifying experience for any child. The loss of possessions such as school books and uniforms during evictions, and the disruption to parents’ lives can have a serious effect on the ability of children to attend school. Adequate housing and secure living conditions are integral to children’s welfare, and are guaranteed by Indonesian and international law.³¹⁴

Eddie Hariyanti was brought to tears when recounting the emotional impact of the eviction on his young daughter: “[The thugs] went and destroyed everything, including my children’s books and my children’s things, and my daughter kept asking me, ‘What are they doing? What are they doing?’ And I had to tell her just to be patient. And she saw the bulldozers coming in, destroying her house. She will definitely always remember that, and never forget.”³¹⁵

When Human Rights Watch visited Budi Santoso just four days after local security apparatus destroyed his home in Pisangan Timur, he was concerned that the eviction had caused his daughter to run away:

One of my children has not come home since the day of the eviction. We don’t know where she is. We’ve been looking for her. It’s been four days since we’ve seen her….She’s a high school student. We looked at school, and asked her friends about her, but they don’t know where she is. I don’t know what happened to her…She was at school during the eviction. But she didn’t come home on that day. Normally she comes home at 11 a.m. I think the reason has to be the eviction.³¹⁶

Reflecting on her experiences, Lastri Sukainar, who was twelve years old when government forces evicted her from her home in Teluk Gong, told Human Rights Watch: “I was scared seeing the eviction.”³¹⁷ Three years after the eviction, Lastri is doing well, thanks largely to a private charitable foundation that helped her family find a new apartment and provided Lastri with affordable schooling.

Impact on Children’s Education

Evictions frequently cause disruption in children’s abilities to access their right to education as guaranteed by Indonesian and international law.³¹⁸ Many evicted children had their school books and school supplies destroyed or lost during the eviction process. Other children lost their school uniforms, which are mandatory for attending school. We met Pramana Prihatin who told us: “I lost…our children’s school books and uniforms.”³¹⁹ One father, Santoso Mulyani told us: “Our children were supposed to go to school, but because [the public order officials] had destroyed our house we could not find the clothing and books, so they could not go to school.”³²⁰ The three school-age children of Sri Suharti experienced a similar problem. As their mother describes: “My children’s school things were gone. They couldn’t go to school for three weeks.”³²¹

Schools in Indonesia charge a variety of fees for starting and attending classes. A number of parents complained that the disruption caused to their own livelihoods by the eviction meant that they could no longer continue to pay such fees for schooling. As Kersen Saptono explained, “The consequence of the eviction is that the education of our children has been disrupted…Our employment has been cut off, so now we don’t have any money to send our children to school.”³²² When we interviewed Kersen his children had not been able to attend school for almost five months. In her 2002 examination of the Indonesian education system, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Katarina Tomaševski, concluded that poverty and costs are the key obstacles to Indonesian children’s access to education.³²³ A recent investigation by Human Rights Watch further concluded that direct and indirect school costs play a role in forcing Indonesian children to drop out of elementary and lower secondary school and is a contributing factor to children being pushed into the labor force, including the worst forms of child labor.³²⁴

When evictions force families to move to new locations, parents must choose between enrolling their children in a new school or keeping their children in their old schools. Transferring children to a new school can require paying registration fees that may be prohibitive, or at the very least entail a delay in the schooling until the family can raise sufficient funds. After government forces and gangs of thugs evicted Ani Fatah from her home in Cengkareng Timur, it took her ten months before she could find another permanent place to live and work:

My child, every time he saw school children he would cry because he couldn’t go to school…Where would we find the money to send the children to school? I approached a school, and they said [I would have to pay] Rp. 5 million [US$535] up front. Then another school wanted Rp. 2 million [US$214] up front…But we had to prioritize food.³²⁵

Even taking the time to fulfill the new school’s administrative requirements can lead to an interruption in children’s schooling. Chahaya Utari told Human Rights Watch about his experiences when moving his children to his old home village after the government destroyed the fishing village where he and his family were living: “I have five children…Before the eviction they were in elementary school, they went to a school nearby. They didn’t go to school for two months after the eviction before starting school in my village….My children did not go directly to school because we had to take care of administration matters, letters of recommendation, and so on.”³²⁶

When parents choose to keep children in their old schools for the time being, despite the family being moved, this may necessitate long and expensive travel for the children and the parents. Arti Sudewo, who has two daughters, explained: “When we moved here, they didn’t go to school for three months. Then my husband bought us a bicycle so I could take them to school. Then I would wait all day to bring them home. After [my daughters] finished their semester, I put them in a closer school. We got assistance from some of the families to pay for the school.”³²⁷ When we met Budi Santoso, he was still sending his children to their old school: “My children are still going to school here, but [where we are now staying] is quite far away, so now we have to pay to take them here which is expensive.”³²⁸

Effects of Evictions on Migrants

This problem is actually the affair of the central government because they are not Jakarta residents. They are not my people.

—Governor Sutiyoso³³¹

Migrants who have moved to Jakarta from other areas of Indonesia are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of forced evictions. Some will be vulnerable as they will not have acquired the legal documentation required under Indonesian law to reside in the Jakarta district, while others who have obtained the necessary documentation may still lack extensive social support networks within their new communities to aid with the displacement.³³² Rather than providing additional support to evicted migrants, the Jakarta government instead uses the fact that migrants are not originally from Jakarta and that some lack residency identification cards as an excuse to deny them compensation and assistance.³³³ For all affected by forced evictions the overriding criteria for compensation and assistance should be that the individual has in fact suffered harm or loss because the government evicted him or her from the house and land where he or she was living. Within any scheme of assistance or compensation, provision can be made to distinguish between categories of evictees on objective criteria such as ownership or length of residency. However arbitrary criteria, or criteria which cause undue hardship on certain categories of victims or lead to significant difference in the way in which victims are treated are incompatible with international standards.³³⁴ For example, while it might be appropriate to establish minimum residency requirements for certain forms of assistance, it should not be done exclusively by way of showing a Jakarta ID cards as some have great difficulties in obtaining ID cards, despite their long time residency in Jakarta. Instead residents should be allowed to establish residency through other forms of proof, and allowed to access compensation and assistance where they have suffered harm or loss through eviction.

Excluding rural-to-city migrants from compensation and assistance after an eviction on the basis that they do not possess Jakarta ID cards can be seen as part of a wider pattern of arbitrary treatment of migrants by the Jakarta government. For example, the Governor recently promulgated a regulation whereby Indonesian citizens who move to their capital city but fail to register with the city’s population agency and obtain a visitor’s identity card within fourteen days of their arrival—a process which requires proof of permanent employment and residence—are liable to imprisonment for up to three months or a Rp. 5,000,000 (US$550) fine.³³⁵

Jakarta is Indonesia’s capital, and as such, it should be accessible to every Indonesian citizen. Because the government does not provide shelter for poor and migrant communities, these communities rely on informal settlements when moving to the city in search of jobs and a better life for themselves and their families. Destroying those settlements without providing adequate compensation or adequate alternative shelter only makes it more difficult for them to integrate fully into the city. Urban growth is an inevitable part of economic development, and Jakarta’s government should not limit access to the enormous potential for human development that urban life can offer to many.

As a representative from an NGO that works with Jakarta’s poor explained to us: “If people stay in their village, they cannot eat, they cannot live. There’s so much development happening in Jakarta, but not in their village, and that is why people come to Jakarta. And that is why they come and use the empty land.”³³⁶ Yet, as a leading Indonesian NGO activist put it to us, “You can’t stop urbanization, you can only manage it.”³³⁷ As well as being ineffective, Governor Sutiyoso’s attempts to restrict migration to Indonesia’s capital violates both Indonesia’s constitution and international law, which guarantee individuals freedom of movement and freedom to choose where to establish a residence.³³⁸ 

It is also important to stress that many of the residents that Human Rights Watch met in informal settlements were in fact Jakarta natives, or had moved to Jakarta decades before and had registered as Jakarta residents and held Jakarta identification cards. Even such long-term residents, however, can lose their status as a result of an eviction. One of the requirements for getting a new Jakarta identity card is to present an introductory letter from the local neighborhood official verifying where an individual is living.  As Jullieta Indrivanti told us: “I have an ID from my village, but my children have Jakarta IDs. I used to have a Jakarta ID, but it was burned in 2001 during one of the evictions. After that I needed another ID from my village. After I was evicted I wasn’t recognized by the government here, which is why I had to get an ID from my village.”³³⁹

Inadequate Shelter Following Evictions

We were forced to leave but that night we came back. We slept on the ground and we slept here. It was raining and everything got wet. We came back here because we had nowhere else to go… It was about three months before we could build again. The public order officials were constantly patrolling the area. We couldn’t build a tent or a fence that could be seen from the road. The public order officials said “Later. Later, you can build, but now it has to be clear”…We still have no roof, just a tarpaulin.

—Arti Sudewo, thirty-seven-year-old housewife³⁴⁰

In the days, weeks, and months following an eviction, many evictees have no choice but to live in sub-standard facilities. Some become homeless. The local government in Jakarta is failing to fulfill its obligations under international standards to ensure that evictions do not result in individuals becoming destitute or homeless.³⁴¹ Human Rights Watch visited families who were living under blue tarpaulin beside the remains of their houses that had been destroyed a week earlier (see Photo 9 on page 97).³⁴² Evicted residents frequently stated that they lacked the necessary financial resources to provide permanent forms of shelter for themselves in the immediate aftermath of an eviction, and that it can take between one and six months to save enough to rebuild a semi-permanent or permanent shelter. Some evictees are still living in temporary shelters years after their eviction.

Human Right Watch met with a number of evictees who were living on the sides of the streets adjacent to the lot in Jembatan Besi where they had been evicted two-and-a-half years earlier. Joenna Susandra was living in a very narrow, basic shelter made from blue tarpaulin and some light wood. When asked why her shack was so narrow, she explained that she had tried to build no wider than the covered sewers running below, believing that this meant she was on government land and would therefore be afforded more protections. But, as Joenna Susandra explained to us: “Sometimes the public order officials will come and we have to take down this tent, and then recreate it when they’re gone. It’s very sad really.”³⁴³

Sri Suharti, a forty-three-year-old shopkeeper, shared her experiences in the aftermath of her eviction from her house under the railway flyover in Cikini:

We slept here that night on some tarpaulin. We had to sleep like that for a very long time. I think it was about two months before we had collected enough wood to build again…We had to wait about three months for the electricity to come back because the public order officials had cut the electricity lines.³⁴⁴

Praman Prihanti, a forty-nine-year old salvager of second-hand materials from Pondok Kopi, had a similar experience: “We slept in emergency tents for one month. Then we built just one room to sleep in. We rebuilt in the exact same place. We wonder why we were evicted in the first place. There’s been no development here since 2001.”³⁴⁵

Photo 9: Evicted residents live under blue tarpaulin next to the burned remains of their home

(c) 2006 Bede Sheppard/Human Rights Watch

Evictees from Cakung Cilincing also resorted to temporary tents following their eviction. As Atin Rukiyah, a thirty-one-year-old unemployed woman, related to us: “We started making shelter at about 8p.m. Not just me, the whole community made some tents out of some blue tarpaulin that we had.”³⁴⁶

Some residents from the eviction at Cengkareng Timur in 2003, and from Siliwangi, Pasar Baru in 2005, took to living in the parking lot of the National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas-HAM) in an attempt to bring greater attention to their plight.³⁴⁷ Sujatmi Wadud, a twenty-three-year-old homemaker, was one of these people following her eviction from Cengkareng Timur. “I was at the National Commission for Human Rights. I went there to seek protection. I stayed there ten or eleven months, from September until July. It was not until late July that we found this [other] place and moved,” she told Human Rights Watch.³⁴⁸

One NGO representative who worked with evicted residents from Jembatan Besi explained her frustration at the government’s practice of evicting residents without providing meaningful alternatives or solutions, thereby forcing them to continue living in informal settlements. As she put it, the government’s approach flatly contradicts its stated goal of ending informal settlements:

Those people were Jakarta citizens, and after the eviction, the government just said they were illegal, didn’t give them compensation, didn’t relocate them, it just treated them like animals. If only [Governor] Sutiyoso had a little brain in his head, he would realize that these people, if they become jobless, they will increase criminal activity. He just evicted the marginalized people but he didn’t give any solution after the eviction. Some of the people of Jembatan Besi are [now] living under highway flyovers.³⁴⁹

Cyclical Nature of Evictions

I have been living here thirty-five years, and we’ve been evicted many many times. But we just come back because we have nowhere else to live.

—Ibnu Darmawan, a fifty-year-old salvager of second-hand goods³⁵⁰

The fact that government forces have evicted some individuals again and again from locations all over Jakarta illustrates the sheer futility of conducting evictions without adequate consultation and compensation. A number of evicted residents told Human Rights Watch stories of being evicted from one location, moving to another place, and then being evicted again, or of returning to the very same piece of land that they were originally evicted from. These serial and cyclical displacements highlight the fact that often the government does not put the cleared land to productive forms of use, and it also shows that evictions—absent coordination with other assistance—are not addressing the government’s stated concerns with informal settlements. 

One woman that Human Rights Watch met with claimed that the government had evicted her from four separate locations.³⁵¹ Residents who remain at Teluk Gong explain that evictions for them have become almost routine. Jullieta Indriyanti told us that as far as she was concerned, the eviction that had occurred just days before we met her was nothing exceptional: “It’s already been thirty times, including this one. Thirty times over five years.”³⁵²

Human Rights Watch was able to meet with two groups of former evictees living in exactly the same place from where the government had originally evicted them. Ibnu Darmawan, a fifty-year-old seller of second-hand goods told us how her family reacted after the public order officials arrived in force at her community: “We just left voluntarily, there wasn’t any violence. We just went to the other side of the road, waited there all afternoon until [the forces] left, and then we came back.”³⁵³ A nearby neighbor, Soleh Atmaji, waited a little longer until his return: “After the eviction I came back here five months later. I was renting a house for those five months. After five months I didn’t have enough money and I came back here.”³⁵⁴

Arti Sudewo explained that the government had evicted her from two different locations, although she was once again living in the same place as her last eviction:

We were evicted from the last place [that we lived too]. That land was empty when we got there, and we made a house from tarpaulin and then they wanted to put a hospital there, so we were evicted and moved here. We were there about one year….Less than a year ago there was an eviction…We were forced to leave and that night we came back…We came back here because we had nowhere else to go.³⁵⁵