Long arm of law too short when it comes to drug lords
Long arm of law too short when it comes to drug lords
JAKARTA (JP): First it was Desy, now it is Doyok. The stick- thin entertainer, a star of television advertisements, was arrested at his home on Thursday for alleged use of shabu-shabu (crystal methamphetamine). Friday's edition of the country's leading daily,Kompas, showed him looking a little worse for wear at the police station.
A month ago it was Desy Ratnasari. The actress-cum-singer was hauled in for questioning after heroin was found in her car, but she steadfastly denied the drug belonged to her. She quickly embarked on a round of interviews in which she got her case across loud and clear even though her relations with the press have always been a few degrees below frosty.
After Desy's detention, tabloids ran sensational articles about drug use and the rich and famous. One did a bizarre checklist comparing Desy with sometime TV actress Zarina, convicted for having nearly 30,000 ecstasy pills in her home. Another told tales of a South Jakarta cafe where artists buy their drugs.
It all makes for juicy, undoubtedly prurient reading, but is it anything new? In the 1990s, there was a succession of drug scandals, beginning with actress Ria Irawan. A former boyfriend died in her home, reportedly from a drug overdose, and the actress was hounded until she left the country for several years.
Drug rumors also shadowed the untimely deaths of several artists, including Nike Ardilla. The teenage singer, the Britney Spiers of her generation for Indonesian youth except that she could really carry a tune, was killed when her car veered off the road and smashed into a wall in 1995.
It was still the dark days of the Soeharto era, when the press kept a lid on unsavory stories, but there were still a number of articles alleging Nike was involved in drugs and alcohol (one quoted the woman in the passenger seat as saying the only bad omen that night was that Nike ordered a rum and Coke at the discotheque instead of her favorite vodka orange).
What is new today is that the high and mighty, including in the entertainment world, are actually being put behind bars. Apart from the questioning of Desy and the arrest of Doyok, there was the apprehension of former president Soeharto's daughter-in- law last month. Promising soccer star Kurniawan has been sidelined after testing positive for drugs. Newspapers recently reported about a regent's son found dead in a public toilet with a needle in his arm. It, along with the conviction of Agus Isrok, a son of a former Army chief, would have been kept from the public only three years ago when Soeharto was still in power.
It all makes for great headlines, and the public laps up the stories of the beautiful people as slaves to drugs. We begin our own guessing game of who's who in the blind item stories, yet hope against hope that the dirt is not true when it comes to our own heroes.
Still, apart from the high-profile arrests, has anything really changed? The users are taking the heat, but the powers behind the drug trade are still on the outside and drugs are easily obtained. Occasional arrests of a few hapless drug traffickers do not count for much when those making the big bucks can operate with impunity.
The tragedy is that drugs are now everywhere in society yet law officers do not seem to be serious in tackling the problem. A mother recently told me of how her son descended into heroin addiction, changing from a bright teenager into a moody, emaciated wreck, with hair and nails yellowed from jaundice. She related how she returned from a short trip to Singapore to find he had sold almost everything in the house, down to his younger sister's powdered milk, for his habit.
"The police did not help at all," she said. "I asked them to help me find my son after he went missing for several days. They never got back to me, and I know it was because I didn't give them money at the start."
Her last resort was to seek out one of the city's major drug dealers and beg him to stop selling drugs to her son. A few days later her son returned home.
Which leads us to ask: If she could find the drug dealer, why not the police? Yes, of course, it's a complex issue, with lots of factors coming into play, but something more than a few token arrests are needed to stop the problem.
The flurry of headlines is worthless when lives are being lost and families destroyed. There has to be a real commitment to fight drug trafficking, and it has to start from the top. Otherwise, the police effort is all for show.
-- Bruce Emond