Ulma Haryanto & Arientha Primanita – Wednesday's violent clash between the North Jakarta municipal forces and Muslim residents in Tanjung Priok centered around the former tomb of an 18th-century Muslim ulema, a site considered as sacred to his heirs and followers.
Habib Hasan bin Muhammad Al-Haddad, or Mbah Priok, was born in Palembang in 1727 before sailing to Java to spread Islam in 1756.
According to local lore, the Dutch bombarded his boat with cannon fire before he managed to land in North Jakarta, then part of the Dutch colonial city of Batavia.
The cannon balls missed their mark but later a big wave hit the boat and overturned it. His body washed ashore and when people found him, a rice pot, known in the Malay lingua franca of the time as a periuk was found next to him.
It is believed that the finding of the pot led the area where Habib's body was found to be called Tanjung Periuk, or the Peninsula of the Pot, which later became known as Tanjung Priok.
Because of his legendary struggle to propagate Islam, Habib was viewed as a respected Muslim figure and over the centuries, his tomb became a pilgrimage site.
On March 18, the North Jakarta municipal authorities announced that, after issuing three warning letters between February 16 and March 9, they intended to proceed with clearing the land surrounding the tomb.
The city said that it had promised to leave the grave site untouched but would clear away buildings around it, including the site's entrance gate. Port management company PT Pelindo II, one of the claimants of the land, wants to acquire it for road and railway tracks to the port.
However, the message that spread through the community via leaflets, text messages and Facebook was very different, saying that the government was planning to demolish the sacred tomb.
Mbah Priok graveyard, a 20-square-meter building with an adjoining 300-square-meter pavilion, is located on land under dispute between Pelindo II and other parties claiming as his theirs.
The heirs of Mbah Priok claimed that they held rights to the 54,000-square-meter plot, as stipulated by an old Dutch certificate issued in 1934. However, city authorities had issued a title to Pelindo for the same piece of land in 1987.
The Mbah Priok heirs sued the port company in 2001, but the North Jakarta District Court ruled in 2002 that it Pelindo held rights to 1.45-square-kilometer parcel, saying that the Dutch property certificate's origin was unknown.
Deputy Governor Prijanto said on Wednesday that, based on the ruling, the land belonged to Pelindo, the state-owned firm that manages the port in Tanjung Priok.
"The disputed land based on the certificate issued by the National Land Agency and the court verdict belonged to the company and the heirs did not propose appeal to the court," he said.
Prijanto said Pelindo had paid compensation to the heirs of Mbah Priok of Rp. 2.5 billion ($277,500) and 5,000 square meters of land.
Governor Fauzi Bowo pointed out on Wednesday that the Jakarta Park and Cemetery Agency had moved the remains of Mbah Priok to the Semper cemetery in North Jakarta in 1997.
Ida Ruwaida Noor, a sociologist from the University of Indonesia, told the Jakarta Globe that the city administration should have weighed the socio-cultural aspect of the eviction before acting. "[The Mbah Priok heirs] would want to maintain their land, even though it's illegal," she said.