0 German’s life threatened, police probe road dispute

The Kuta Selatan police are currently investigating a land dispute in which a German national was threatened with a knife by a local Balinese family residing in the Puri Gading residential estate in Jimbaran. “I have signed all the letters to summon witnesses. We are currently still investigating this case, and there are some witnesses who have not come. Only after the witness statements are complete can we proceed to the suspect, either by summoning him or arresting him if we have sufficient evidence,” Kuta Selatan police head Comr. 

I Wayan Nuriata told Bali Daily on Monday. On the afternoon of Feb. 12, German national Christoph Kaffanke, 47, was threatened by a family of angry locals, residents of Banjar Unggasan Cenggiling, who had been demanding Kaffanke to pay Rp 100 million (US$10,300) for the use of the road in front of the property Kaffanke is constructing. “They built a wall from batako [breeze blocks] on the street, so I couldn’t get through with my car. So I took my electrical machinery and broke down the wall. Then, suddenly they came and threatened to kill me with a knife,” Kaffanke told the Daily recently. 

He stated that three people had shouted at him, put the knife to his neck and threatened to kill him. Kaffanke regretted that around 20 people had watched the incident, but all turned a blind eye. “Instead of helping, they turned around. No one helped or told them to stop. My mandor, he was hiding in my grounds. And the 10 workers I employ went away, not looking. Ten other people are the families who live there, women and kids,” he said. The station’s crime investigator, I Gde Anom Nuraga, who has been overseeing the case since it was reported on Feb. 13, said that last week a summons had been handed to Hasan, one of the laborers working on Kaffanke’s property. 

“Hasan and a friend of his should have come today, on Feb. 25. But he has not showed up,” said Anom. Nuriata issued reassurances that the police would pick up the witnesses themselves if no response was made to the first and second summons letters. “There’s a procedure to follow,” he pointed out. Kaffanke and his Indonesian wife, Fera, are deeply disappointed with the police’s apparently sluggish action since they filed their first report on the threats in November last year. “We had received threats before, but we did not take it seriously. Then they blocked the street, so then we took it seriously. In December, they burned the trees and the furniture of the people who work for us,” recalled Kaffanke. 

Kaffanke acknowledged the threats had started since he and Fera had purchased the some 500-square meter plot of land in Puri Gading Jimbaran in March last year. The previous land owner was I Muntja, the father of I Wayan Arka, one of the men who allegedly approached Kaffanke and threatened him with a knife. In June, the family began demanding Kaffanke to pay Rp 100 million if he expected to keep using the road, namely Bukit Bintang, in front of his property. 

The local family claimed the street belonged to them. Kaffanke acknowledged that there were complicated issues surrounding the land prior to his purchase. The local family, Kaffanke said, was heavily in debt to another local man, who had bought the land and sold it. The notary provided a two-week notice period to the son of the former owner to buy the land back, but he failed. “Then the notary said we had the right to buy it. We bought the land. The next thing they said was the street is private, we cannot use it.” 

“My wife checked with the notary to see if this really was a private street and found out that this is a public road. It’s in the blueprints of the BPN documents. It’s a public road not a private road, so we decided not to pay anything,” said Kaffanke. Wayan Agus, a member of staff at the office of public notary Triska Damayanti, who oversaw the land transaction, confirmed that the road appeared as a public road in several official documents, including the initial land certificate which belonged to I Muntja, the National Land Agency data and Cipta Karya office data. 

“I was assigned to check this land’s status in 2012, before the land transaction took place,” said Agus recently. “The fact that this road appears in these documents shows that parts of the land had been released for the road, otherwise the road would not appear in these documents,” said Agus, adding that if the local residents persisted declaring that the road was privately owned, they should have documents from their previous notary to demonstrate no part of the land had been released for a road.

source : bali daily