Jakarta – International non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday urged the city administration to enact a short-term moratorium on all evictions in Jakarta, saying it believed many of them were human rights violations.
The New York-based NGO recommended the administration impose the moratorium until it established a mechanism conforming the eviction process to international standards, in which evictions should never render individuals homeless or vulnerable to human rights abuses.
"Frequently, the eviction is conducted with little notice and inadequate compensation, leaving many poor people to be homeless. Sometimes, it turns in to violence, involving excessive power by the authority," HRW researcher Bede Sheppard said, quoting a one-month report about forced eviction in Jakarta made public at the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta).
HRW's report is based on five months of research, including 30 days of field research, scrutinizing 14 eviction cases that occurred between 2001 and 2006 and interviewing more than 100 people, including, victims, witnesses of forced evictions, government officials, academics, lawyers and local NGOs.
The report concludes that in all cases in four municipalities, – East, West, North, and Central Jakarta – evictions and human rights abuses took place at the same time.
HRW also urged the city administration to hold an independent investigation regarding the allegations of human rights violations. "At times, gangs of private thugs help the government to execute the eviction, making it vulnerable to turning into violence," Sheppard added.
The NGO also suggested that evictions should be carried out in coordination with relevant parties, not only the policy makers but also with the affected community, to ensure that all appropriate measures to ensure adequate alternatives for the community were available.
The administration should also carry out evictions without violence and with the provision of adequate compensation, the report states. The report says, "Taking land and property without adequate compensation is like the city government stealing from its poorest citizens".
The city administration has conducted many evictions since 1999 to acquire land for infrastructure development, such as monorail, flood canals, low-cost apartments, and turnpikes.
Even though the city administration justified evictions on the grounds that the land was required for infrastructure projects, Sheppard said, it still needed to guarantee that the execution of evictions would not violate human rights.
He said that Indonesia had an obligation under international law to respect individuals' rights to adequate housing and to refrain from forced evictions.
LBH Jakarta representative Taufik Basma said that his institution would urge the authority to heed the recommendations. "We can also use this report, with its sample cases, as a guideline for us to deal with any evictions violating human rights," he said.