User:Mujinga/DraftSquattinginAsia

Squatting in Asia

Afghanistan

 * Squatting in Afghanistan

By 2003, 70 per cent of Kabul had been destroyed by the ongoing war in Afghanistan and Médecins Sans Frontières reported there were tens of thousands of squatters, living without adequate food supply and medical facilities. Conflict has also displaced many people from their homes across the country. In 2019 alone the United Nations estimated 600,000 people had been forced to move. In addition, three million Afghans have returned from neighbouring countries Pakistan and Iran since 2015. Many of these people have ended up in squatted informal settlements.

As of 2018, 78 per cent of the people living in 34 cities were slum dwellers and most of the housing stock was informal. In the 2000s, the Afghan authorities had attempted to provide housing through the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing (MUDH) but demand far outstripped supply and so in the 2010s, the policy switched to slum upgrading. The Special Land Dispute Court was founded in 2002 to arbitrate cases regarding disputed land ownership (including squatting). Adverse possession can be achieved after 15 years of continuous possession, although there are exceptions to the rule.

Armenia

 * Squatting in Armenia

Azerbaijan
Squatting in Azerbaijan

In 1994, Armenian forces displaced around 800,000 people from Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory surrounded by Azerbaijan and claimed by Armenia. The refugees were forced to take any option for accommodation such as squatting by the roadside, paying for hotels or living in tent cities. Thousands of refugees squatted Azeri homes and were tolerated by the authorities, which insisted that they would return home eventually to Nagorno-Karabakh. By 2010, residents of the capital Baku were protesting that they wanted their homes back. A World Bank report on housing in Baku stated there were various types of informal settlements including inner city squatter housing and upgraded squatter settlements.

Bangladesh
Squatting in Bangladesh occurs when people migrate to cities such as Chittagong and Dhaka. They live in informal settlements known as "bastees". As of 2013, almost 35 per cent of Bangladesh's urban population lived in informal settlements. In Khulna, the largest squatted area was Supraghat, with 15,875 residents.

Bahrain

 * Squatting in Bahrain

Bhutan

 * Squatting in Bhutan
 * https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0301420786900188
 * https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-16-0578-9_2

Brunei



 * Squatting in Brunei

Brunei is a country on the north coast of the island of Borneo. There are three distinct legal traditions, namely indigenous beliefs, common law and Islamic law, which all have their own dispute resolution processes.

Indigenous peoples such as the Dusun, the Iban, the Penan, the Murut and the Kedayan who traditionally lived in wooded areas and made a living from forestry have moved to the cities in recent years. They live in apartments and houses rather than squatted shacks.


 * Kampong Ayer
 * Kampong / Kampung
 * Villages of Brunei

Cambodia
In the Khmer language, "squatter" means an anarchist and "squatters settlements" literally translate as "places where anarchy and confusion reign" therefore officially squatters are referred to by different names, such as the "urban poor" or "temporary residents". After the Khmer Rouge was ousted in 1975, many people returned to Phnom Penh and began living in their old houses or squatted informal settlements if their homes were already occupied. One example of a squatted building was the White Building. Until the end of the 1990s, the Phnom Penh authorities did not recognise squatters and tended to evict squats. As of 2003, an estimated 25 per cent of the city's population were squatters.

China
Urban village (China)

Hong Kong

 * Squatting in Hong Kong
 * Rooftop slum
 * Kowloon Walled City
 * Shek Kip Mei fire
 * Housing in Hong Kong

India

 * Dharavi
 * Illegal housing in India
 * Border - Squatting in Bhutan
 * Border - https://www.telegraphindia.com/west-bengal/chamurchi-squatters-refuse-to-vacate-on-bhutan-border/cid/1676564
 * Towards a Participatory Society: New Roads to Social and Cultural Integration - page 184 - “According to UN-HABITAT, the world’s highest percentages of slum-dwellers are in Ethiopia (an astonishing 99.4% of the urban popula- tion), Chad (also 99.4%), Afghanistan (98.5%), and Nepal (92%). Bombay, with 10 to 12 million squatters and tenement-dwellers, is the global cap- ital of slum-dwelling, followed by Mexico City and Dhaka (9 to 10 mil- lion each), and then Lagos, Cairo, Karachi, Kinshasa-Brazzaville, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, and Delhi (6 to 8 million each)”.20
 * 3 mentions -
 * https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=wuVADgAAQBAJ
 * https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-02-10/india-chinese-army-squatting-arunachal-pradesh

Indonesia
Squatting in Indonesia


 * According to UN-HABITAT there are 17 different forms of land tenure in Indonesia. These include Hak Milik (freehold without ownership), Hak Milik Adat (tenure under the Basic Agrarian Law which is often not respected), Hak Guna Bangunan (building right), Hak Guna Hutan (permitted land use), Hak Pakai (use right) and Hak Garap (squatting on state land). Until 1960, people paying land tax had girik rights (land rights), and although this is no longer legally true, it is sometimes still assumed by those who pay land tax. Adverse possession exists as a doctrine and squatters can apply for it after ten years of continuous possession of state land.

Iran

 * Squatting in Iran

Iraq

 * Squatting in Iraq
 * http://www.aina.org/news/20151203044630.htm

Israel

 * Israeli outpost (West Bank)
 * Israeli land and property laws

Japan



 * Squatting in Japan
 * https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/may/31/japan
 * https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/squatter-found-after-living-in-closet-in-japan-for-year/
 * https://en.squat.net/tag/japan/
 * https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-64938-8_7

After World War II, squatter zones emerged which were made up of a mixture of Burakumin, Korean migrants, Okinawans and foreigners. There were two types, one was composed of people occupying buildings and the other was shack dwellers. The shanty towns were tolerated and the squatters were forced into emergency housing. One example was Barrack Town in Kobe City. Others were Korean encampments beside the Kyoto military airport and Osaka International Airport. By the 1950s, there were public housing schemes being established but the number of squatters also continued to increase.

The numbers of both squatters and homeless people rose in Osaka in the 1990s. Most of these people were male day labourers with an average age of 56.

Jordan

 * Squatting in Jordan

Kazakhstan

 * Squatting in Kazakhstan

Kuwait

 * Squatting in Kuwait
 * https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0197397579900444

Kyrgyztstan

 * Squatting in Kyrgyztstan
 * Cramer
 * Nasritdinov

Laos

 * Squatting in Laos

Lebanon

 * Squatting in Lebanon
 * https://brill.com/view/journals/puan/1/2/article-p171_171.xml

Malaysia

 * Squatting in Malaysia

Mongolia

 * Squatting in Mongolia

In Mongolia, pastoral nomads live in ger (yurts). Severe weather disasters known as dzuds have resulted in herds dying and many nomads have moved to living in their ger in informal settlements ringing the capital Ulaanbaatar. The majority (61 per cent) of Ulaanbaatar's population of 1.1 million people live in ger, which tend to have electricity but not sanitation.

In 2005, the New Internationalist interviewed orphaned children living in holes in the ground who kept warm using heating pipes.

Myanmar

 * Squatting in Myanmar


 * https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/statecrime.7.2.0278


 * https://www.bnionline.net/en/news/squatters-removed-hlaingtharyar-township


 * https://www.myanmar-now.org/en/news/i?id=15af2551-98ae-4b69-bc63-9091702da2fa

Nepal

 * Squatting in Nepal

North Korea

 * North Korean famine
 * Kotjebi

Oman

 * Squatting in Oman

Pakistan

 * Squatting in Pakistan

Singapore

 * Squatting in Singapore
 * User:Mujinga/DraftSiSing

South Korea

 * Squatting in South Korea

Sri Lanka

 * Squatting in Sri Lanka

Syria

 * Squatting in Syria
 * https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/7/syria-absentees-law-could-see-millions-of-refugees-lose-lands

Before civil war
Syria has a history of squatting which reaches back to ancient times, when Tell Brak was founded 7,000 years ago. In the 1950s, there were squatters on the periphery of Homs. The Yarmouk Camp was set up in 1957 to house Palestinian refugees who had previously been squatting and Aysh Warrwar is a squatted area on the periphery of the capital Damascus which was established in the 1970s by internal migrants. Hafez al-Assad ruled the country as a dictator from 1971 until his death in 2000. He oversaw the development of the country, building houses for squatters who moved from the countryside to cities. Whilst officially land in Syria was either owned privately (38 per cent) or owned by the state (62 percent), in reality tenure was determined by customary, tribal, Islamic, informal and statutory arrangements. It was noted in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies in 2016 that Syria had very little slums in contrast to other neighbouring countries; this was explained by the fact that most people could afford to build rudimentary homes in informal settlements or make illegal constructions on land they had bought. In 2005, local authorities estimated that Aleppo had 22 informal settlements which covered 45 per cent of the city's area.

During civil war
During the Syrian civil war which started in 2011, 2.3 million Syrians fled the country and only 20 per cent of this total entered refugee camps, with the rest finding other housing solutions which included occupying derelict factories in Lebanon. At the beginning of the war, around 40 per cent of Damascus' population and 50 per cent of Aleppo's had been living in informal settlements.

Taiwan

 * Squatting in Taiwan
 * Taoyuan, Taiwan - 2020 -https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202008110015
 * Daan Forest Park
 * Lin Family Mansion and Garden

Tajikistan

 * Squatting in Tajikistan

Thailand

 * Squatting in Thailand

Timor-Leste / East Timor

 * Squatting in East Timor
 * Anarchism_in_East_Timor
 * Dili
 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dili,_East_Timor_(314805425).jpg

East Timor became an independent country in 2002, after previously being occupied by first Portugal and then Indonesia. Following the conflict involved in becoming independent, East Timor has no land registry and no process for squatters to be evicted. This created problems as people displaced by war returned to their homes to find them occupied by squatters, who in some cases had rented them out and wanted a monetary settlement before leaving. Land claims can be broken into four groups, namely those who currently possess land, those claiming land they owned under Portuguese rule, those claiming land they possessed under Indonesian rule and people asserting customary or traditional land rights. In 2006, conflict again broke out and 100,000 people were displaced; as had happened before, when they returned to their homes to find that in many cases they had been squatted.

Turkmenistan

 * Squatting in Turkmenistan

Turkey

 * Gecekondu

United Arab Emirates
In the sixth or seventh century, churches were constructed on the islands of Dalma, Marawah and Sir Bani Yas in the Persian Gulf. When they fell out of use, there is evidence that squatters occupied them. In 1981, there were 20,000 migrant workers squatting in the city of Al Ain. They had self-built housing on government land. The shacks are constructed out of corrugated metal, plywood and palm leaves.

Uzbekistan
In Uzbekistan, squatting is not common. From 1989, some properties owned by Russian-speaking Jews have been occupied as part of broader ethnic tensions.

Vietnam

 * Squatting in Vietnam

After the French conquest of Vietnam, the French colonial empire introduced land tenure rights which favoured settler colonialists. The 1946 constitution introduced by Hồ Chí Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam set up private land ownership and this was then overturned by the 1980 constitution which gave ownership of all land to the state. A 1963 Government circular had regularized squatting on land owned by the state by making the squatters tenants. The state then introduced the possibility to buy and sell land with the 1993 Land Law, although by 2001 it had not still given out titles; despite this confusion over ownership rights, Ho Chi Minh City has a thriving real estate market.

Hanoi
In Hanoi, from 1975 onwards there were increasing land encroachments and illegal constructions, particularly in the areas of Giang Vo–Thanh Cong, Cao Sa La and Trung Tu–Kim Lien. A 1987 city ordinance regularized squatter houses on state-owned sites, with the conditions being payment of taxes and a promise to leave if the state needed the land in future. In the 1990s, two squatted informal settlements were the Thanh Nhan precinct in Hai Ba Trung district and the Trung Liet precinct in Dong Da district, the latter on the site of a rubbish dump. The city authorities intended to move the squatters into rented accommodation elsewhere. In the 2000s, there was the Chuong Duong informal settlement beside the Red River. The city at first wanted to evict the squatters then decided to tolerate them. Consequently, the squatters decided to take community action to improve the banks of the river. From 2000 onwards, the Cities Alliance worked with the authorities on a slum upgrading and a National Upgrading Investment Plan. The Hanoi Municipal People's Committee announced in 2013 that there were over 650 villas and 600 semi-detached homes standing derelict in Hanoi. Some of these had been squatted.