A picture of lawlessness

The pain our nation has endured since the onset of economic collapse last year is so severe that it has seemingly caused serious metal decay among our people.

The ruthless criminal offenses committed by wild mobs have tragically painted a dark picture of the nation. Hair-raising stories about murder and rape, looting and arson have sent shock waves not only across the country but also to many parts of the globe.

Worse still, the people most affected by the tragedy see no light at the end of the tunnel because there is still a criminal presence in various places, practicing different brutalities. There were reports earlier this week of 2,000 people raiding a three-hectare shrimp pond in Teluknaga district, some 20 km west of Jakarta, causing the owner Rp 180 million (US$12,000) in financial losses. At the same time thousands of people in East Java stole crops from coffee plantations, and highwaymen ambushed trucks carrying food along the Jakarta-Bogor expressway. There have been no immediate reports on the losses suffered by the owners of the plantations and food owners, but they would surely reach hundreds of million of rupiah.

The grim fact of the people taking the law in their own hands, which would have been unimaginable before the monetary crisis, leaves a bitter question: How could this peace-loving nation have committed such inhumane acts?

According to the first reports, the thieves, members of underprivileged groups of society, seem to have been hard hit by the economic crisis. However, the devil-may-care mentality of the shrimp pond raiders and the way they mocked security officers, who tried to drive them away by firing warning shots, shows another angle to the change in values. Some of them went so far as to challenge the officers to keep on shooting because it was a "festivity".

This act of mockery would also have been unimaginable over a year ago. Have our people become so daring and disrespectful in nature? Or has the military lost its honor in the eyes of the public?

Up until last year, the presence of security officers was a cause for awe among the populace. Now people seem to have a different attitude. The shrimp thieves seemed to believe that the troops -- who consisted of Army and police members -- would not dare shoot at them because the Armed Forces was in trauma after it had been disclosed that some of its personnel had been involved in kidnapping political activists and the killing of innocent students.

However, the thieves' motives are sure to be further investigated. But the failure of the officers to stop the acts of lawlessness gives us a pessimistic picture of the capability to keep law and order, especially when the catastrophic decline of our economy will push more people to commit unlawful practices. So the failure, if not addressed immediately, augurs the reoccurrence of more violence, which will possibly lead to another explosion of mass unrest.

When this happens our country will be even less attractive to foreign investors, whom we have invited here to help put our economy back in motion.

And then there is the concern of one expert, who has warned that the continuation of a lawless situation would only be abused by the military and government as a pretext to sustain power.