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.