Pressure for reform grows in
Indonesia
By DENNIS J. CODAY
Special to the National Catholic Reporter Bangkok,
Thailand
The news from Jakarta, Indonesia,
has taken on a certain chilling monotony in the last four weeks, and no one is
predicting a quick end to the violence.
The drum beat of recent news reports tells part of the story:
Indonesian security forces battled rock-throwing protesters,
and street mobs attacked suspected police informants with wooden staves and
stones.
Six die in Muslim-Catholic riots in Jakarta.
Churches vandalized, girls school ablaze.
Fifty-four were injured in Semarang, capital of Central Java
when security forces baton-charged a group of students marching on military
headquarters to protest recent violent treatment of students in Jakarta.
Mob violence is hard to comprehend at a distance, but
understanding is helped when that crowd takes on a single human face.
Bernardinus Realino Norma Irmawan, known as Wawan, was a face in
the crowds at Atama Jaya Catholic University, in Jakarta on Friday, Nov. 11. He
died that day at 6 p.m., a bullet from a soldiers rifle lodged in his
heart.
For the preceding four days, thousands of Indonesian students had
been in the streets protesting the Peoples Consultative Assembly (Majelis
Permusyawaratan Rakyat or MPR), which opened in special session Nov. 10 to
schedule national parliamentary elections and begin a restructuring of the
Suharto-era political system.
The students called the MPR special session a farce and demanded
true reform. Armed Forces Chief Gen. Wiranto called the protests unlawful
attempts to forcibly occupy the parliament by mobs.
Indonesian President B.J. Habibie, who pinned his international
reputation and political future on the success of the MPR special session,
instructed the armed forces to use whatever means necessary to control the
subversive forces.
The MPR assembly building was ringed with barb wire, tanks and
troops. The army supplemented their ranks with 125,000 Pam Swakarsa
(volunteer civilian guards) who received 25,000 rupiah (approximately $28) per
day. Human Rights Watch says that the Pam Swakarsa were recruited largely from
groups who disagree with the student protests.
What began as a tense standoff between students turned into
bloody, hide-and-seek street fights. Security forces were supposed to be using
rubber bullets and blanks. But bullets taken from 18 bodies on the night of
Nov. 13 were not rubber.
On that Friday a large group of student protesters sought refuge
on the campus of Atama Jaya. Soldiers took up positions outside the school and
began to shoot into the crowds.
Nikolas Simanjuntaks office is next door to Atama Jaya
University office. A lawyer active in Catholic intellectual circles, he wisely
stayed away from the office Nov. 13. But next day he found office windows
broken, the interior ransacked and stones and shell casings on the floor.
Real bullets
Simanjuntak says the shell casings were from blanks, rubber
bullets and live ammunition. I know they used real bullets, he
said. My security guard is a retired soldier. He knows what they are and
how to identify them.
Wawan, an economics major in his seventh semester at Atama Jaya
Catholic University, was on campus that day working with the Volunteer Teams
for Humanity. He was helping evacuate casualties from the field, carrying
bodies to ambulances and contacting victims family members.
At one point, racing to snatch from harm a casualty who had just
fallen, Wawan stopped short. He collapsed. He was shot through the heart.
Volunteer Team members rushed him to Jakarta Hospital where he died.
The Volunteer Team carefully documented the tragedy: the 18 people
who died on Nov. 13 were six university students, two high school students, two
police officers, a private security guard for the Hero Supermarket, four Pam
Swakarsa and three people still unidentified. Meanwhile, 456 people were
injured from gun shots and beatings, including a 6-year-old girl, wounded by a
stray bullet and still in critical condition.
I was there collecting names of the dead and injured,
one man told me over the phone. We had to collect the names and data
immediately so the bodies wouldnt be disappeared. They take the bodies
away so they cant be used at memorial services.
Who takes the bodies away?
He said he didnt want to talk anymore. You never know
what phone is safe, he said. He said he would communicate by E-mail using
a nickname.
Karlina Leksono, coordinator of the Voice of Concerned Mothers,
was in her office about three kilometers from Atama Jaya Catholic University on
Nov. 13. She was on the telephone calling for and dispatching ambulances for
the wounded. When we ran out of ambulances, we found private cars.
She also called embassies in Jakarta to tell them of the shooting and ask them
to pressure the government to stop.
At one point hospitals called in to ask Leksonos group to
find surgical supplies. They were running out of needles and sutures.
But the violence did not stop. A week later, on Nov. 22, a street
scuffle outside a late-night gambling den escalated into a
Muslim-against-Christian rampage that ended with 16 people dead, several
mosques stoned and 13 churches and a girls school run by Ursuline nuns
torched and ransacked.
St. Ursulines is my daughters school,
Leksono said. They had a day of recollection planned for that day. My
daughter didnt go, but her whole class was there. They were safely
evacuated.
No guarantees
Its so scary, Leksono said. There is no
guarantee that one day your school or your church or your mosque wont be
damaged by some group.
Officials explained it away as sectarian conflict that religious
leaders immediately tried to quell. But people were not convinced. Chat rooms
and bulletin boards on Internet Web sites that track Indonesian news carried
reports that this, too, was instigated violence against a vulnerable minority.
Less than 10 percent of Indonesias 202 million people are Christian.
For the next week, media reports coming from far-flung corners of
the 20,000-island archipelago told of student protests broken up or suppressed.
In a phone interview, one man in Jakarta described the violence. This
morning, he said, we got news that a mosque was burned in
Kalimantan (Indonesias Borneo Island). And just in the last two hours a
Catholic church was destroyed in Ujunpadang. I just heard the news
now.
On Nov. 30, a major confrontation erupted in predominantly
Christian Kupang in eastern Indonesia. Four Catholic and Protestant youth
groups organized a rally in Kupang meant to mourn the attack on Christian
churches in Jakarta. The rally began peacefully, but as the crowd swelled to
several thousand, it got out of hand. Kupangs largest mosque,
the Nurus-Saadah mosque, and two small mosques were attacked.
Jakartas Cardinal Julius Darmaatmadja and Bishop Petrus
Turang of Kupang, in Jakarta for the annual meeting of the Indonesian
Bishops Conference, asked Catholics to help rebuild burned mosques.
Darmaatmadja said he would organize a fund-raising campaign to reconstruct the
destroyed mosques.
One of the unanswered questions is who is behind the violence?
Could it be anarchy in a society ready to implode? In the last
year, 15 million to 20 million Indonesians have lost their jobs. Crops
devastated by the effects of El Niño last year, inflation running an
average of 70 percent for the year (the price of rice and cooking oil has
tripled), and a state-run food distribution bureaucracy near collapse means
nearly 50 million people find it difficult to feed themselves. UNDP and UNICEF
have documented rising malnutrition.
Last May, when the students took on the military government
structures and toppled Suhartos 32-year reign, they were supported by the
middle class and business people. The crowds who stood with the students in the
November confrontations were largely the urban poor, some observers noted.
Street crime is rampant. In the daytime, gangs swoop down on cars
stopped at traffic lights, stealing car mirrors and robbing drivers. Muggings
on public buses and in taxis are widely reported.
It is not recommended for you to go out, Simanjuntak
said. He is a big man, not the type who looks like he would be intimidated.
But, he said, Even me, I am scared to go out. He said he avoids
going to public places alone.
The situation now is very bad, said one source. He has
spoken on the record before, but now he wants to be anonymous. The
situation now is beyond any imagination. All is confusing, he said.
Another persons E-mail said, Were in a very
uncertain situation. There are too many questions. Too many issues. Too many
things covered up. And no solutions. It is very uncertain.
Outlook is gloomy
Al Adang of the Volunteer Team said, The near-term prospect
is gloomy. Some people have tried to use religious issues to get their power.
The last riots in Jakarta [Nov. 22] and Kupang [Nov. 30] showed how religion
was used.
Leksono admits that Indonesia has had ethnic and religious
tension, but this [spate of church and mosque burnings] is not genuine
religious conflict.
This has been manipulated, she said.
Darmaatmadja, the Jakarta archbishop, said he suspects that the
Nov. 22 incident was organized to serve certain parties political
interests, reported Tempo, an Indonesian weekly magazine that was banned under
Suharto and recently reopened.
Its difficult for me to accept that these attacks on
churches were spontaneous reactions to a rumor that a small mosque had been
torched, Tempo quoted the cardinal.
He said it appears that the people have been exploited for
political purposes. But whose purposes?
President Habibie has blamed his opponents for fomenting unrest to
topple his government. He ordered the arrest and interrogation of 11 opposition
leaders. The opposition suggests that Habibie is using students in the streets
to solidify his relations with the military. Others say that Suharto is trying
to engineer a comeback or at least that his supporters are behind the
troubles.
The Volunteer Teams issued a press statement Nov. 14 strongly
condemning the military as protagonists in the violence. The
statement, signed by Jesuit Fr. Sandyawan Sumardi, pointed to the fact that the
protests were peaceful until the students were attacked with baton, tear
gas and fired bullets.
The students, fully supported by the people, are not groups
of youth who are easily instigated by political brokers or hired agents roaming
around to desist their struggle for independence, the statement said.
The Volunteer Team statement said the engineered violence is
designed to divide society into many blocks. Now, two factions are vying for
political advantage.
The first are those who want the status quo. They are
Habibies faction, backed by the right-wing Muslems. The other side are
those who are usually called the prodemocratic faction. The students who rally
almost everyday are in this faction.
Western media report that the students are gaining momentum in
their demands for more political change. Not all Indonesians agree. Some say
public support for the students is waning. The students are becoming the
black sheep, a source said. The support from the people, which they
got especially since some of them were shot, is being destroyed.
Now there is a dispute if they should continue the
demonstration or stop for a while to minimize the victims, he said.
Leksono disagrees. Public support for the students remains strong,
she said. People gave members of her group food and drinks to give the students
during the Nov. 9-13 demonstrations. They believe the students are
genuine.
People believe the students came to take part in peaceful
demonstrations. And they trust the students because they have no vested
interests. [People know] they were provoked.
Leksono added, But the students will not stop. They will
keep up until there is justice.
Student demands are clear. They want former president Suharto
taken to court for corruption. They want the armed forces so-called dual
function ended. The military now occupies a number of unelected seats in the
government, and the students want that political function ended.
The students were in the streets again Dec. 3. Bus loads of
students in school jackets blockaded Jakartas main thoroughfare, as
Habibie announced national elections for June 9.
Nearly every source warned that elections would not reduce
violence. They all expect more. Simanjuntak said it most succinctly:
Were preparing for the worst. Were holding our breath.
Further coverage of the indonesian situation is available from
the Human Rights Watchs Web site; click the link below, then click the
Indonesia link under Current Events. Note that linking to other sites is a
service to readers and does not imply affiliation. Use your browsers Back
button to return here.
National Catholic Reporter, December 18,
1998
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