Legal Roulette in Surabaya

Posted by John
First impressions count for so much when you travel. In Indonesia, our most dramatic introduction occurred in Surabaya on May 10.

As we pulled into our hotel near Surabaya’s Kali River, we were stunned by what looked like the immediate aftermath of a hurricane or flood. Block after block, houses were reduced to rubble, destroyed down to their foundations. Men, women and children were still piecing through the wreckage, salvaging toys, photographs and other mementos.

After the initial shock of the first few blocks, however, we realized that the damage had all occurred on one side of the street — the side closest to the river. Houses on the other side appeared unaffected. Small shops had their doors open for business and people milled around as dusk approached. Yet how could one side of a street be completely destroyed, apparently by a violent act of nature, and the other remain virtually untouched?

The next morning, Danielle’s Indonesian research associate dispelled the mystery of this street with a split personality. The destruction was no act of nature, it was the act of a man — the mayor of Surabaya, who five days earlier had ordered the destruction of 385 houses on a 500-meter stretch along the river. The city displaced more than 1,000 people — all lost their homes and many lost jobs or small businesses in the process.

Details about this event slowly emerged in our conversations with Surabayans during our five weeks in the city. It turns out that Indonesian law stipulates that buildings need to be a certain number of meters away from the river for reasons of flood control. Still, Indonesian authorities have a history of applying laws selectively, and the middle of an election year seemed like an inopportune moment to forcibly remove people from their homes.

We received some answers when we spoke with individuals from the Wonocolo neighborhood directly affected by the Surabaya government’s forced relocation plan. Through Danielle’s contacts, we arranged a meeting with members of the Stren Kali association from the neighborhood on June 9. None of the people we met lost their houses in the May evictions, but their neighbors were forced out. Their own homes on adjacent streets remain at risk. When they walked us through what happened, the tale that emerged was one of individuals with little money or influence caught between overlapping layers of bureaucracy.

The Surabaya government had uprooted river communities before, forcing residents from 250 houses near the river in east Surabaya to move in 2002. The Stren Kali group knew their Wonocolo neighborhood was at risk and told us about repeated efforts they made during the last seven years to come to a negotiated settlement with the government. They enlisted the help of experts, including an architecture professor from Indonesia’s leading university. He testified to the Surabaya regional government that this group should not have to move since they were composting and engaging in sustainable sanitation practices. Several neighborhood residents paid to have their houses moved three to five meters back from the river in order to comply with Indonesian law. Others were raising money to do the same.

The Stren Kali group appeared to be making some headway, finding a sympathetic audience when they testified at the regional legislature in 2007. Regional legislators signed an agreement giving residents of the Wonocolo neighborhood five years to complete renovations designed to allow them to stay in their houses. Yet 2007 was also around the time the national government passed regional autonomy reforms handing more responsibilities to city governments. The Stren Kali group was caught in administrative limbo — they had an agreement with the regional government, but the city government could choose to assert its authority at any time.

The city began to do precisely that on April 23 of this year, when residents of the Woncolo neighborhood received letters from the mayor’s office saying that they would be evicted on May 5. The Stren Kali group sprung into action, contacting the regional legislature to inform them of this development. Regional legislators, mindful of the agreement they had made allowing for renovations, signed an order on April 29 overturning the mayor’s eviction plan.

The mayor’s office moved forward anyway, sending thousands of police officers to the river at 3 a.m. on May 4, telling residents to gather their belongings. Members of the regional legislature also arrived at the scene, calling for a halt to the eviction. By May 5, however, the evictions began as advertised. Ten to 15 police officers went to each house to remove residents.

We arrived on the scene in Surabaya five days later. By then, hundreds of the dislocated citizens were living in city apartments with no electricity or water. Others were staying in tents or in churches. Lawsuits on their behalf are moving forward, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs may also take up the issue.

Some critics have pointed out that river residents had no legal right to the land where they had set up their houses. Perhaps, but that doesn’t justify the heavy-handed way the city handled the situation before all questions of jurisdiction were resolved. Many of the river residents are economically marginalized people from ethnic minority groups who don’t have a lot of sympathy from the wider population.

I try to imagine an equivalent situation in the United States, where the mayor of San Francisco would evict more than a thousand residents who were in negotiations with the California Senate that would allow them to stay put. If nothing else, it seems like a legal appeals process would be allowed to move forward before evictions took place. Yet residents of Indonesia seem to have few enumerated rights and little recourse when they believe their rights have been infringed. Members of the Stren Kali group we met remain concerned with the fate of their displaced neighbors, and worry it’s a fate they could share unless the city government changes its policies.

Yesterday, our arrival in the North Sumatran capital of Medan turned out a much tamer affair than our first day in Surabaya back in May. Medan feels much cooler and calmer than the hurly-burly of Surabaya’s motorcycle-strewn streets. And unlike Surabaya, we didn’t encounter any destroyed city blocks. Yet Medan has a river of its own, with some residents living near the water. They’ll be watching the situation in Surabaya closely.