Indonesian way of dying<\/p>\n
Despite the long absence of natural disasters, bad news
\ncontinues to bombard us from different directions.<\/p>\n
The latest news of the drowning of 14 high school students in
\na Bogor river came after an apparent lull in ethnic clashes in
\nWest Kalimantan, which broke out after bloody religious conflict
\nin Ambon. Hundreds of people were killed in the two latter
\ntragedies.<\/p>\n
The Bogor accident took place on Friday when 14 students
\njumped into Cisadane River and drowned. They leapt into the river
\nin an effort to escape arrest after 41 of their colleagues were
\napprehended by police officers. The students traveled from
\nJakarta to avenge an alleged attack on a fellow student by Bogor
\nstudents. The tragedy was all the more tragic because the
\nstudents mission was based on rumor.<\/p>\n
However, student brawls are nothing new here. The ugly
\ntendency has become somewhat fashionable among our young people.
\nIn Jakarta alone, perhaps dozens of them have been killed in
\nbrutal brawls over the past years. Authorities have cracked down
\non brawling students, but police operations have not yielded a
\nlong-term solution.<\/p>\n
Experts have said that aside from having to cope with their
\nyouth and emotions, urban students -- especially those of less
\nprivileged families -- live under a lot of pressure. Many of them
\nregard violence as an effective solution to their problems.<\/p>\n
But in this case they are not the sole members of society to
\nblame because using violence or force to solve a problem is a
\ncommon phenomenon in Indonesia. So common is the trend that
\nparents and educators are finding it more difficult to educate
\ntoday's youth.<\/p>\n
Viewing the Bogor tragedy as a part of a national problem, one
\ntends to conclude that many of our people lose their lives in a
\nuseless and worthless fashion. Bogor itself had an earlier tragic
\nincident which claimed the lives of 10 young people. In 1992, 10
\nyouths drowned in Cikeas River during a training session
\norganized by a church.<\/p>\n
Two weeks earlier, 11 young people were caught in a flash
\nflood near Ciliwung River, also in Bogor. Only one of them
\nsurvived.<\/p>\n
And about two decades ago, some transvestites jumped into a
\nriver and to their deaths in Menteng, Central Jakarta, in fear of
\nbeing arrested by city security officers. The officers denied
\nstaging a raid, but an investigation later found they had lied.<\/p>\n
In all these cases, the most obvious cause is that most people
\nof this country, which is surrounded by oceans and criss-crossed
\nby many rivers, have never learned to swim.<\/p>\n
Many other tear-jerking incidents have in Jakarta through the
\nyears. In West Jakarta in 1987, 26 workers died in a fire which
\nswept through a clothes factory. The workers, who included five
\nwomen, met a fiery death because the exit door had been locked by
\nthe manager.<\/p>\n
On Jakarta roads, where reckless drivers behave like devils
\nbehind the wheel, the number of accident victims could surpass
\nthat of war casualties. The most frightful of them was the death
\nof 33 passengers and the injury of 29 others when a minibus
\ncareened into a river in North Jakarta in 1994.<\/p>\n
Although the driver was sentenced to 16 years in jail, it did
\nnot deter another reckless bus driver from getting behind the
\nwheel and causing an accident which claimed the lives of 35
\npeople three years later on a Jakarta-Bogor expressway.<\/p>\n
The list of the loss of innocent lives would be very long
\nindeed if we were to include those killed during an election
\ncampaign fire in South Kalimantan in 1997, riots in Jakarta and
\nin military operations in East Timor, Jakarta's Tanjung Priok
\nPort, Lampung and Aceh.<\/p>\n
The government saw fit to apologize to the Acehnese people for
\ninhumane acts by the military, but military authorities are still
\nreluctant to investigate last year's student killings at Trisakti
\nUniversity and on the Semanggi clover bridge, both in Jakarta.<\/p>\n
This reluctance shows that to military leaders, loss of
\ninnocent people's lives has ceased to have meaning and they are
\ntoo insensitive to care about justice and human rights. This has
\nalso made the people believe that many more such incidents will
\ntake place in the future.<\/p>",
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"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
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