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)