Corry Elyda, Jakarta – A discussion initiated by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) on Thursday urged the Jakarta administration use a participatory approach before evicting residents.

One of the commissioners, Siane Indriani, said that communities and organizations affected by evictions should "force" the city administration to engage in dialogue before evicting residents.

"We need to show them [the city administration] that what they do is inhumane. There must be a way to manage the city without the necessity of [forced] eviction," she said.

The Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta) lawyer Yunita said during a forum group discussion on evictions on Thursday that 50 percent of the 30 forced eviction cases recorded between January to August this year had affected 3,433 families and 433 businesses.

"Many of the victims had nowhere to go after their houses were torn down and Rusunawa. Not all the victims receive rusunawa [low-cost] apartments," she said.

Yunita highlighted the example of a recent case where more than 36 families who lived on the banks of the Sekretaris river in Kebon Jeruk, West Jakarta, had successfully negotiated with the city administration.

According to Yunita, the residents negotiated with the city spatial agency and the agency agreed to provide apartments at two nearby Rusunawa in Rawa Buaya in West Jakarta and KS. Tubun in Central Jakarta. However, the apartment complexes would only be ready in 2016.

"As the apartments are not completed, the residents are still allowed to live in their houses and the dismantled parts of their houses to ease the normalization project. However, without any notice, the excavator was already there and began to tear down the houses," she said, adding that the residents did not know where to go.

She also highlighted the case of dozens of families relocated from the Kali Gendong riverbanks in North Jakarta. The families were forced to live on the ground floor of the Muara Baru Rusunawa in North Jakarta even though the floor is designated for shopping stalls as well as social and public facilities.

Yunita regretted the methods used by the city administration to evict the residents as many evictees had not been informed about whether or not they would be relocated to another apartment.

Yunita said the biggest problem regarding eviction practices was that there were no guidelines or minimum standards.

"Another important problem is that the government does not acknowledge the right of occupants. Residents are labeled based on their legal ownership of the land," she said.

Gugun Muhammad of the Urban Poor Consortium (UPC) said that poor people in Jakarta had been labeled "illegal" so that the city administration could throw away their property rights during eviction proceedings.

"The city administration feels that it has done a good thing by relocating us to rusunawa and we are not allowed to demand anything," he said.

Separately, Jakarta Housing and Administration Building Agency head Ika Lestari Aji said that her agency always tried its best to provide Rusunawa for evictees.

She said, however, that many evictees refused to be relocated to certain Rusunawa because the location was often too far away from their previous settlement.

"However, the supply of our apartment is limited. Not all evictees can get to the nearest location," she said.

Ika said her agency still had more than 100 apartments spread around the city. "As many as 2,443 apartments are now being built," she said, adding that her agency targeted to build another 25,000 next year.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/11/13/dialogue-eviction-komnas-ham.html