May won't go away
The month of May has increasingly become an annual struggle against the threat of collective amnesia; the threat that we will allow the May 1998 riots to disappear into the darker pages of our history.
The parents of the children who perished in department store infernos are among those who will not let us forget. Recently a number of the victims' mothers came to the National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM), urging that the masterminds be exposed and made to account for their actions that killed their children seven years ago.
Their children were among over 1,000 who died in Jakarta and other cities in the rioting that followed the shooting of students during demonstrations against the Soeharto government. Most died in the fires and on the streets during the riots; others died months later, from severe injuries and the shock of being attacked and raped. Some reports over the past few years have described the condition of survivors; those who became pregnant, others who became disfigured physically and also mentally, forever changed following the riots of May 13 to 15.
The official report authorized by the human rights commission clearly stated that there were indications that the riots "occurred consecutively and systematically" within the context of a struggle for power. The sacrificial lambs in that struggle included the urban poor, until now stigmatized as "mere looters". Certain unidentified people had, according to witnesses, broke into stores and incited locals to loot. Other victims were among the ethnic Chinese, or anyone that looked Chinese, and particularly Chinese women. In our past, both the poor and the Chinese have occupied the margins of Indonesian society, becoming disposable whenever a power struggle emerges.
Despite the official report, commissioned by the government itself, that urged further investigation and judicial processing of those involved in the riots, virtually nothing has happened. No-one has been brought to trial, and only low ranking soldiers have been punished for the shootings of students, reinforcing the invisibility of the victims. Every now and again high ranking officers serving at that time will proclaim their innocence, leaving us to doubt whether anyone will ever be held accountable for these evil deeds.
The new board of the human rights commission formed an ad hoc team to pry open the case, and concluded that the Attorney General's Office should launch an investigation into "crimes against humanity." No response.
There are certain people in our society who just wish that the memory of May 1998 would just go away. But like so many of our other unsettled legacies, it just won't. It sticks out like an ugly stain on a nation that is trying to be proud of its recent democratic achievements, and that is trying to be accepted by the global community. May 1998 sticks around like a bad smell, together with other incidents in our history that just won't go away either, and raising irritating questions: What really happened and who should be held accountable for what happened in 1965 and the years immediately subsequent? And if we apologize for the massacre of hundreds of thousands of suspected communists, how are families of the dead supposed to be compensated? And if all our generals get off scot-free for the atrocities that occurred in East Timor, then who exactly was responsible? And have our leaders forgotten the parents of those who were kidnapped and who remain missing to this day?
The list of unanswered questions just goes on and on. Of course, the message that is handed down to our young generation is that you don't need to be accountable, as long as you have money or power. And anyway, when you're so busy with issues of "reform" and economic progress, there is no need to dwell over the past, is there?
An absence of political will in facing up to the May 1998 riots opens wide the tragic possibility that history may repeat itself. After all, in struggles for political power there are always victims, nearly always those whom our society has marginalized. Life goes on as usual, and powerful criminals continue to walk away on technicalities, or simply because no-one can make them show up in a court.
So, we go on pretending that May 1998 was just an unfortunate incident that would be better just left alone, lest we provoke powerful interests. After all, wasn't it enough that we got rid of an authoritarian regime? If the answer is yes, then there is no need to boast that we have left the old habits behind: Impunity, and forever parading stability at the cost of humanity.