Jakartans witness unprecedented murder, robbery and blasts
Jakartans witness unprecedented murder, robbery and blasts
By Yogita Tahil Ramani
JAKARTA (JP): Violence in the capital has known no boundaries
this year.
With vicious murders, countless armed robberies, bomb blasts
and gruesome street justice, the year 1999 can be safely declared
a year of crime.
It kicked off with a blast, the first of many, when a strong
bomb extensively damaged the vacant three-story Ramayana
department store and shattered windows and billboards of nearby
shops on Jl. H. Agus Salim in Central Jakarta just two days into
1999.
Ten days later, hundreds of Jeungjing villagers in the Cisoka
district of Tangerang, west of the city, ran amok and pelted
stones at the house of the village head, Tatang Supriatna.
Villagers claimed that Tatang refused to distribute cheap rice
supplied by the government for impoverished villagers.
A mosque caretaker was found dead on Jan. 16, at the Al-Jihad
Grand Mosque compound on Jl. H. Juanda in Ciputat, South Jakarta.
The case was linked to robbery after a charity box kept by the
victim, believed to have contained Rp 150,000 (US$20), was found
empty.
On Jan. 23, Endang Kusnadi, 34, a resident of Jl. Parkit in
Kampung Sawah, Ciputat, was found dead and naked, with his left
foot and right arm missing. Endang was robbed of his clothes and
a wallet containing Rp 180,000.
January ended with the arrest of the suspected mastermind of
the blast which damaged Ramayana department store. Police
identified the alleged mastermind as Rosalina, 50, a director at
a real estate agency.
According to officers, the blast was one of Rosalina's tactics
to terrorize landowners into selling their land.
Separately, customs and excise officials at Soekarno-Hatta
International Airport declared they had foiled 24 smuggling
attempts during the whole month of January.
The confiscated evidence included 115 weapons, 1,884
pornographic video compact discs, 4.25 kilograms of heroin, two
kilograms of shabu-shabu (crystal methamphetamine), two yellow-
crested cockatoos, 4,684 Viagra pills and Rp 5.27 billion in
cash.
Ethnic clash
On the third day of February, a dispute between a pickpocket
and the crew of a public bus in the crowded Kampung Rambutan bus
terminal in East Jakarta erupted into a heated ethnic clash,
leaving at least one man dead and several others injured.
The capital saw its second bomb blast a week later when dozens
of shoppers were startled by an explosion in the parking lot of
Kelapa Gading shopping center in North Jakarta.
The next day, a man was mobbed and burned alive by dozens of
people in Cibening village, Bekasi, after he was apparently
caught attempting to steal a bike from a parking lot.
On Valentine's Day, seven robbers broke into an Ades mineral
water distribution office in Tanjung Barat, South Jakarta, and
make away with a safe after killing a security guard and wounding
two others on the early Saturday morning.
Two days later on Feb. 16, four armed men stunned passersby on
Jl. Haji Agus Salim in Central Jakarta by staging a daylight
robbery at a money changer. Police quoted executives of PT
Anugerah Adiarta money changer as saying that the robbers managed
to grab Rp 500 million in cash from employee Patmo.
On Feb. 21, a young pregnant woman was shot in the abdomen by
a city police detective, who mistakenly thought she was a drug
supplier. Jakarta Police chief Maj. Gen. Noegroho Djadjoesman and
two senior policemen hastily visited the 23-year-old victim,
Sandra Agustini, and asked her relatives for forgiveness.
March dawned with abhorrent revelations that 60 junior high
school students from SMP 49 and SMP 68 in South Jakarta had
received obscene and threatening phone calls late in February, in
which callers ordered them to mutilate their genitals.
"They ordered me to drink insecticide and to give myself
electric shocks. I didn't. But I did everything else she (the
caller) asked me to do, including sticking a needle in the skin
of my penis, tying rubber bands around my penis and putting glue
on my penis," Amir (not his real name), one of the victims, said.
March also saw the shooting of at least four alleged robbers
and one suspected drug dealer.
April was a significant month for crime, sudden death and
murder. It began with the deaths of nine supporters of Semarang
PSIS soccer team from Central Java when they were crushed by a
train. Another fan was electrocuted on a train roof only hours
before his team took the field on April 2 in a match here.
A dog
In Bogor, south of here, police on April 6 arrested Pono, 36,
for allegedly mercilessly killing businessman Didi Sasmita, 59,
and wife Susanti, 51, a month earlier because he was upset at
Didi for calling him a dog.
A week later, police in South Jakarta arrested a jobless man
for allegedly killing his five-year-old nephew and a housemaid in
a bungled robbery at his sister's house in Jagakarsa.
In the following days, the capital was rocked by two blasts
and dozens of bomb hoaxes.
The first exploded at the three-story Hayam Wuruk Plaza in
West Jakarta on April 15, shattering the windows of at least four
shops on the plaza's ground floor and panicking shoppers.
About 10 minutes after the explosion, an attempted armed
robbery occurred at a branch of Bank Central Asia (BCA), about
500 meters from the scene on Jl. Hayam Wuruk. Police insisted the
incidents were unrelated.
In the late afternoon of April 19, a powerful blast rocked the
ground floor of the Istiqlal Grand Mosque, the largest mosque in
Southeast Asia, in the heart of the capital, injuring at least
four people performing the late afternoon prayer.
Dozens of office windows of several Muslim-based
organizations, including the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), were
shattered. The explosion, which occurred at 3:20 p.m, also
cracked the walls of the 38-year-old mosque.
On the following day, a bomb hoax was received at the Jakarta
Cathedral, located opposite the mosque, while mobs attacked
churches in Ujungpandang (now Makassar), South Sulawesi, in
response to the Istiqlal blast.
Police captured the main suspects, including Surya Setiawan,
alias Wawan, in May. He was sentenced to 38 months in prison in
October. Until now, Wawan has been jailed at the city police
detention cells.
On May 2, customs and excise officials at Soekarno-Hatta
airport succeeded in foiling an attempt to smuggle Rp 2.68
billion in cash.
On the eighth of the month, a housewife was severely injured
after she was splashed with hydrochloric acid by two alleged
robbers who broke into her house in Tambun subdistrict, Bekasi.
A 29-year-old civilian guard at Anyar market in Tangerang
mayoralty was found dead with 13 stab wounds in several parts of
his body on the morning of May 23 by traders at the market.
The growing number of people killed and burned by people
taking the law into their own hands this year also shocked
Jakartans.
By the fifth month of 1999, 65 people had been killed, mostly
by local residents who said they caught the suspected thieves
red-handed.
Twenty of the victims were killed in January, 11 in February,
16 in March and five in May.
Since the killings involved too many local people, police
could only record the cases and were not able to take any
suspects to court.
Obscenity
Some businesspeople took advantage of the winds of change
sweeping the country following the tremendous demand for
reformasi total (total reform) by publishing erotic pictures on
tabloid covers. It, however, became a headache for the police.
Starting from June, police began questioning a number of
actresses and models, such as Sarah Azhari and Sophia Latjuba,
for what the police termed "daring poses" in certain tabloids and
magazines.
In the same month, Jakarta was stunned with the arrest of
Hendra Rahardja, one of Indonesia's most wanted white-collar
criminal suspects, by the Australian Federal Police in early
June.
July was a month of grisly murders, robberies and rape. It
began when the corpse of an unidentified woman covered with a
bedsheet was found by Curug villagers in Legok, Tangerang, on
July 4.
Based on evidence found at the scene, police believe the woman
was raped before being killed, and that the rape occurred a few
minutes before her body was found.
Probably one of the most grisly murders of this year was that
of Sumarsana, an employee of plastic household products
manufacturer PT Lion Star, whose dismembered body parts were
found at two separate locations in western Jakarta on July 12.
The discovery of his head, two legs and two arms was reported
at 1 p.m. by residents on Jl. Arjuna, near the Kebun Jeruk toll
road entrance in West Jakarta.
About half an hour earlier, locals in the Cikupa district of
Tangerang, about 30 minutes from where the other body parts were
discovered, found a human torso.
The murder remains a mystery, despite the questioning of
several witnesses, including two of Sumarsana's male
acquaintances, described in Sumarsana's diary as "intimate
friends".
Also on July 12, a gang of six car thieves stole a 47-year-old
woman's car and left her naked on the side of the Jelambar
highway in West Jakarta. The victim, housewife Julia of Tomang
Raya, also in West Jakarta, suffered a bruised back and head as a
result of a severe beating.
On July 30, parents of 12-year-old Bambang Arie Prasetyo, who
was kidnapped in November last year, identified a dismembered
body found in Bogor in late July as their son.
While the month of August saw shootings of thieves and mob
justice, it also saw the disclosure of the Asabri multibillion
insurance fraud.
National Police detectives investigated the alleged Rp 410
billion (US$55.4 million) insurance fraud at the military and
police insurer which reportedly involved three generals and a
businessman.
Then National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Togar M. Sianipar
said the investigation of malfeasance at Asabri was focused on
the suspected role of a two-star general and the businessman.
Togar refused to fully identify the suspects, but said the
businessman was HL and the two-star general was Maj. Gen. Sub.
Two rape cases that remain unsolved included the rape of a
four-year-old girl by two young males in Cakung, East Jakarta,
and that of a 20-year-old mentally disabled woman in Cilincing,
North Jakarta, by teenagers.
Antiforeigner
In September, antiforeigner sentiments marked a series of
demonstrations which took place across the capital following the
East Timor dispute.
Among the popular venues of protests were the Australian
Embassy on Jl. Rasuna Said in South Jakarta and the United
Nations office on Jl. M.H. Thamrin in Central Jakarta.
On Sept. 10, three cult members in Sukmajaya village, Bojong
Gede district, in Depok were beaten to death and two others
severely wounded by fellow cultists enraged after Sept. 9
doomsday prediction proved untrue.
The incident took place at the house of Saiman Koto, who,
according to cult members and villagers, was the local leader of
the cult, which believed the world would end at 9 a.m. on Sept.
9.
One of the year's biggest heists was probably the September
robbery at the state Perum Pegadaian pawnshop on Jl. Wijaya in
South Jakarta. Company executives claimed the losses reached Rp 8
billion.
It comprised mostly gold and diamonds pawned by over 3,000
customers.
The robbers included the pawnshop's security guard.
On Sept. 23, five of seven notorious armed robbers were killed
in a shootout with South Jakarta Police detectives in Kebayoran
Lama, South Jakarta. The other two died on their way to the
hospital.
On the next day, the nation was once again overcome with
emotion when security personnel fatally shot 22-year-old student
Yap Yun Hap of the University of Indonesia during a street
protest against the state security bill on the city's main
thoroughfare of Jl. Sudirman.
The third-year student of the Department of Electrical
Engineering of the School of Technology was one of six people
shot dead during the street protest.
The month ended with the capital and several other big cities
witnessing a wave of street protests ahead of the General Session
of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), which began on Oct.
1.
On Oct. 20, at least two strong blasts shocked thousands of
angry supporters of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle
(PDI Perjuangan), who were not far from the MPR compound shortly
after their party's chairwoman, Megawati Soekarnoputri, was
defeated in the presidential election by the only other
candidate, Abdurrahman Wahid.
Police said the number of injured reached at least 30 people.
Some suffered serious burns.
The first blast took place at 11:30 a.m. at the Hotel
Indonesia traffic circle in Central Jakarta, about the same time
that the 700 legislators were preparing to cast their votes for
the country's new president.
At least four people were injured, including two members of
the PDI Perjuangan security task force.
At about 4 p.m., when the announcement that Megawati had lost
the race had been relayed and disappointed PDI Perjuangan
supporters were heading toward the People's Consultative Assembly
to protest Megawati's defeat, another bomb exploded.
The blast came from an unoccupied jeep stationary in the
middle of the crowd in front of the Jakarta Hilton Convention
Center, about 1.2 kilometers from the MPR.
The driver of the jeep later said that shortly before the
deadly blast, a man in the crowd had handed the occupants of the
jeep a bag, saying that it contained bottled mineral water.
Crazy soldiers
The very next day, Jakarta Hospital on Jl. Sudirman was turned
into a war zone, when some 50 frustrated soldiers stormed into
the hospital searching for suspected militant students hiding on
the premises.
The armed security personnel rushed into the hospital's four-
story administration building, broke the windows and doors and
fired several gas canisters into the basement, leaving stunned
patients, night-shift nurses, doctors and other hospital staff
members in terror.
The attack of the military personnel sparked public anger.
Later, National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Erald Dotulong
tried to explain the soldiers' behavior by saying they had just
returned from chaotic East Timor.
At the end of October, approximately 40 soldiers, some wearing
uniforms and armed with -- among other things -- batons, bayonets
and tear gas canisters, angrily stormed Senen market in Central
Jakarta.
Three laborers at the market were seriously wounded in the
evening attack and were treated at Cipto Mangunkusumo General
Hospital. Later, city military command spokesman Lt. Col. D.J.
Nachrowi said six soldiers had been detained in relation to the
attack on Senen Market in Central Jakarta.
"They are from the Army's Land Transportation Battalion, which
is under supervision of the Army's Directorate for Supply and
Land Transportation," he said.
On Nov. 7, 46-year-old Taiwanese national Yu Lai Ho, a non-
English-speaking tourist in Jakarta, lost her left hand in a
savage robbery in West Jakarta. The robber cut off her hand to
steal her gold bangle and a 1.5-carat diamond ring.
On Nov. 12, six men stole a safe containing diamond and gold
jewelry worth Rp 1 billion and Rp 8 million in cash in a daring
robbery at a residence which also served as a hair salon on Jl.
Pejaten Mas, Jatipadang, Pasar Minggu.
The robbers were arrested exactly a month later, on Dec. 12.
On Nov. 24, the partial remains of a woman were found near
Kota Railway Station in West Jakarta by commuters and railway
personnel.
Forensic expert Zulhasmar Syamsu disclosed that the remains
consisted of the lower abdomen and legs, a small part of the
backbone and internal organs including the uterus, intestines,
kidneys, spleen and liver. The woman had been murdered.
At Soekarno-Hatta Airport, customs and excise officials foiled
a smuggling attempt to ship Rp 2.09 billion in Rp 50,000 notes to
Singapore.
On Nov. 28 in Tangerang, locals were horrified by the grim
report that four siblings, aged between 12 and 21 years old, had
allegedly killed their 45-year-old mother and 17-year-old sister
at the family's home in Cipondoh. Police are still investigating
the case after the suspects made confusing statements.
Tension gripped the mountainous resort area of Cipanas in
Puncak, Bogor, in late November and lasted until early December,
with widespread rumors of mobs gathering to attack nightspots
there following a mass gathering which declared war on vice.
Barbed-wire barricades were erected at several premises and
housing complexes. Some residents also armed themselves with
sharp weapons in preparation to fight off mobs.
Arts center
On Sunday, Dec. 5, four buildings behind the Taman Ismail
Marzuki arts center (Planetarium TIM) in Central Jakarta were
vandalized by hundreds of Cikini residents, who suspected the
places had been used by the occupants for drug transactions.
Three days afterward, hundreds of Kosambi district residents
ran amok and burned 28 dimly lit kiosks which they believed had
been used as prostitution dens in Sungai Tahang, Selembaran Jati
village.
A similar incident took place in Parung, Bogor, almost at the
same time.
December also recorded a new trend of street crime here in
which gang members armed themselves with axes to force motorists
to hand over their mobile phones.
At least two incidents were recorded in the first two weeks of
the month. No fatalities have been recorded so far, but one of
the gangs smashed a windshield with an ax after his demand was
rejected by the driver of the car.
On Nov. 11, two Gegana bomb squad members from the National
Police Mobile Brigade (Brimob) were fatally beaten and set on
fire by at least 500 local residents from Karang Sambung Nagasari
village, Serang, in Bekasi.
Eyewitness said the two officers initially attempted to take
away motorcycles from two ojek drivers by brandishing their guns.
Hopefully, the Dec. 15 barbaric attack on the Christian-owned
Doulos complex in Cipayung, East Jakarta, will be this year's
last mob attack in the metropolis.
Police have arrested nine suspects in the arson attack but are
trying to discover the motive of the incident, in which one was
killed and dozens injured. The complex, housing a school of
theology and drug and psychiatric rehabilitation centers, was
totally destroyed.