City police in Jakarta began demolishing an historic Dutch-era football stadium Wednesday, sparking protests from lawyers for the Indonesian capital's main football team and squatters at the site.
Using sledgehammers and an excavator, more than 200 municipal police tore down the Persija field in the upscale Menteng area, ignoring pleas by some 100 people living in makeshift homes inside the 85-year-old stadium.
Victor Sitanggang, a lawyer for Persija's football team, said Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso and his administration were violating an ongoing court dispute over the use of the field.
"This is an outrage! Not only has the court not yet issued a ruling on the matter, city officials had promised us that they would not do anything to the field until there is a ruling," Sitanggang told reporters outside the stadium.
Local officials have been planning to convert the field — a rare open space on Jakarta's polluted cityscape — into a complex of cafes, shops, galleries, landscaped gardens and a four-storey parking lot in a 55-billion-rupiah (six-million-dollar) project.
Besides being a popular recreational area, the pitch has a history stretching back nearly a century.
Piles of old trophies, pictures, scoreboards and football salvaged by long-time residents and Persija's youth team were stacked near the rubble of the stadium's entrance gate.
Police demolished the wooden bleachers as those squatting underneath them rushed to save their belongings.
No city officials supervising the demolition were willing to comment.
For 64-year-old Langgir, the pitch's most famous resident and former greenkeeper and lightman, the eviction "destroys all my life and hopes."
"I began working here in 1960 for Persija despite not having a pension plan and earning a small salary. Now they are destroying my only place to live," Langgir, who is strapped to a wheelchair because of a stroke, told AFP.
