Photo illustration. Credit: Jonathan McIntosh
Dozen of officers from the Satpol PP (the municipal police) tore down 100 illegal homes located underneath a bridge in the Pejagalan neighborhood of Penjaringan, North Jakarta, this morning.
Unlike the violent protests police officers sometimes face while dismantling illegal slum buildings, most residents seemed resigned to losing their homes. Many even helped the police to tear down the buildings.
“From this illegal settlement of 100 building, 30 of them were taken down by the residents themselves. So there were 70 buildings that had to be dismantled by members ofSatpol PP,” said Penjaringan subdistrict head Yani Wahyu Purwoko.
Explaining why they would help police take down their own homes, a 38-year-old man named Joni, who said he had been living under the bridge for about 20 years, told Merdeka, “Instead of forcibly being destroyed, it’s better to take them down ourselves. The Satpol PP demolish the buildings carelessly. They don’t understand our ways. And the foundations can still be used for a while.”
