A license to kill

The most controversial buzz phrase in Indonesia today is perhaps "shoot on sight". The order, given by Armed Forces Commander Gen. Wiranto over the weekend to police nationwide, sounds lawless to law-abiding citizens. So it is quite rational that it provoked protests from lawyers and political activists.

Most people did not expect such an order to be issued by the Armed Forces' top leader, because no thinking person had the slightest inkling that the law and all it stands for would be pushed aside, especially since the 1945 Constitution says the state will respect the supremacy of law.

However, some people who see the police's impotence in facing the orgies of killing, looting, robbery and arson say they can understand Wiranto's order as an effort to protect innocent people.

And nobody reacted negatively when Jakarta Police chief Maj. Gen. Noegroho Djajoesman announced early last month that officers had shot 191 suspected criminals, killing 90 of them, in 1998. The reason is that people may have long become accustomed to cliche statements from the police like "the action was justified in the incident", or "the officers had no choice but to fire because the suspects were endangering the lives of the victims and trying to attack the officers", or "the officers fired three warning shots before they shot the criminals who tried to resist arrest". Of course, no witnesses are needed in the incidents because -- unlike other civilized countries -- Indonesia does not have a law which forbids officers from shooting an unarmed suspect.

So world reaction was quite vigorous when suspected criminals mysteriously started to disappear and their bodies wash up on riverbanks between 1982 and 1985. Even despite such a drastic measure, it failed to bring down the crime rate. And the world was reluctant to condemn president Soeharto when he defended the operation in his authorized autobiography, which was published a decade ago.

We are afraid Wiranto's order could produce the same number of fatalities. We are also concerned that the order could be used as justification to kill innocent people in the country's trouble spots, such as Aceh and East Timor or on campuses. What the authorities should do to handle the growing number of riot cases is to find the provocateurs and the masterminds, rather than merely claim that they exist.

Wiranto's order seems illogical, if not proof of authorities' frustration in combating crime. Many people are starving in the current economic crisis, and they know that, ironically, so many officials have robbed the state of its wealth and have gone unpunished.

When people start taking the law into their own hands, does that mean police officers should do the same? What kind of people we are? Have we lost our senses and gone back to the Stone Age?