Death of an ideal

Remember May 12, 1998? Bagus Yoga Nandita did -- so agonizingly well, in fact, that the pain of that memory literally killed him. Last Friday, the 51-year-old man died of a broken heart and was buried the following day at Tanah Kusir Public Cemetery. His grave is only five meters away from that of Elang Mulya Lesmana, his son.

May 12, 1998, of course, was the day when snipers shot and killed four students during a massive rally in front of the Trisakti University campus in West Jakarta. It was past noon and the students, worn out after hours of protesting, were starting to withdraw from the streets to go back to campus when shots rang out from the direction of a nearby overpass, where security officers in full riot gear were lined up.

Elang fell and died not far from the university gates, his blue blazer crimson with blood. Three other students died in the bloom of their youth that day. This incident was the spark that ignited several days of rioting that ultimately led to the downfall of President Soeharto. In the months that followed, more students were to die by sniper fire under the brief tenure of Soeharto's successor, President B.J. Habibie.

None of these shooting incidents have since been satisfactorily explained. The investigation into the incidents, which the government had promised, appear to have stagnated with the primary culprits as of yet unidentified, much less brought to justice. The word reformasi seems to have lost its meaning and become little more than a cliche to pay lip-service to the students' pioneering efforts of 1998.

It goes without saying that for the bereaved families, such as that of Bagus Yoga Nanditya and his wife Hiratetty, the deadly shootings are a family tragedy of the greatest magnitude. For the nation as a whole, however, they mean much more. Even though the incidents may depict only one aspect of life, they illustrate, better than even words or pictures can, the arbitrary nature of power under an authoritarian regime.

This is why demands for the revitalization of the democratic reform movement, initiated by the students on May 12, 1998, have refused to die. This is also why Bagus Yoga Nandita's final message for Indonesians to "continue efforts to bring the perpetrators (of the Trisakti shooting incident) to trial at any and all costs," is relevant, especially in these days of declining idealism.

We must not allow Elang and his fellow idealists to have died in vain.