Brawls remain top choice for dispute settlements
Brawls remain top choice for dispute settlements
JAKARTA (JP): The capital is not a jungle. But in some cases
it takes on the appearance of a real jungle where even a minor
dispute erupts into a fight.
One may speculate whether the kill-or-be-killed habit is
characteristic of human beings in general or is in the nature of
Jakartans as citizens of a metropolis.
Last year the worst brawl was probably the Ketapang incident
in West Jakarta between local residents and Ambonese security
guards of a nearby entertainment center.
Besides killing 14 people and injuring 23 others, the Nov. 22
outbreak spread to other areas, leaving 13 churches, scores of
school buildings and other premises including banks and a hotel
damaged or set alight.
Police later claimed to have netted 300 people of Ambonese
origin. But the date of their trial remains a mystery.
According to Ketapang residents and a police report, the clash
was first triggered by a minor problem over a parking area
involving a local youth and a group of the security guards.
When the youth's relatives came to intervene in the dispute,
they were beaten up by the guards of the Ketapang 11
entertainment center.
This treatment sparked the residents' anger which manifested
itself after 400 guards attacked their community on Jl.
Pembangunan Dalam I and broke the windows of the Akhirul Biqro
mosque.
Whatever the true cause, one thing that is clear to many
people is that the anger of many Jakartans, not to mention
security officers and protesting students, may explode at any
time and at any place and any cost.
Look at the June 4 incident in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta
when 19-year-old Rafiq was stabbed in the chest with an arrow by
a group of Irianese youths over a minor dispute during a football
game.
At the same site on April 26, a powerless kiosk owner was
badly beaten up by local hoodlums when he refused to meet the
demand of a member of the gang for a free bottle of liquor.
The city police alone recorded at least 16 clashes between
neighboring groups and 115 student brawls, claiming the lives of
at least five residents and 16 students. Hundreds of others were
injured during the incidents.
Among the types of weapons used were air rifles, Molotov
cocktails, arrows, samurai swords, firecrackers, machetes, iron
bars, stones and bricks.
Besides killing a resident, an all-night clash between
neighboring residents of Pegangsaan subdistrict in Central
Jakarta early November, for instance, set ablaze 35 houses.
At the same scene in late September, two people were killed in
separate clashes, one being stabbed and the other shot with an
air rifle.
On Nov.21 in the nearby Manggarai area of the Tebet
subdistrict in South Jakarta, two residents were killed during a
midnight clash.
Reluctance
These serious conflicts between neighboring groups of
residents have festered for years and the local security
apparatus is still unable to settle the disputes probably because
of the reluctance of the contending parties.
City Police chief May. Gen. Noegroho Djajoesman said: "In
general, the disputes were only sparked by misunderstandings."
On May. 4, a serious brawl between Kebon Melati residents and
Irianese youths living in the Mess Cendrawasih boarding house in
the Tanah Abang area was set off after the latter party had
severely beaten a local man for unknown reasons.
This clash then developed into a full-blown battle as a mob
attacked the boarding house with bricks and rocks, turning the
nearby Jl. K.H. Mas Mansyur into a war zone as the Irianese
youths responded with volleys of bricks.
The contending groups calmed down at about 2 p.m. after a fire
engine sprayed water over them and a police helicopter-borne unit
ordered them to go home. Some 200 police officers and 100
military personnel were deployed to secure the area.
A month later, a Kebon Melati youngster, Farid, who was about
to park his motorbike near the boarding house, was suddenly
attacked with a machete by an unidentified youth believed to have
been living in the boarding house.
Shortly after news of the attack on Farid spread through the
Kebon Melati area, the residents, including teenagers and
housewives, thronged to the boarding house armed with knives and
pans and began to throw stones at it.
Two hundred police officers and 300 military personnel were
dispatched to the scene to stop the fighting, but were greeted
with stones thrown by the Betawi residents of Kebon Melati.
As in many previous years, Tanah Abang, Manggarai and
Pegangsaan were still tagged the city's hottest spots for clashes
and neighborhood "wars" in 1998.
The subdistricts are overcrowded with people who are either
laid off, living below the poverty line, or both. For instance,
the neighborhood of Menteng Jaya in Pegangsaan is currently home
to 600 jobless families out of a total of some 2,000 that pack
the 28.3 hectare-subdistrict.
The city administration had even threatened, among other
things, to evict residents from their neighborhoods and proposed
to build a "Berlin Wall" to physically separate the subdistricts
unless they bring an end to the conflicts.
But such warnings have yet to lead the warring parties to
establish peace. (ylt/bsr)