Our children and violent behavior
Our children and violent behavior
Yulia Wardhani, Jakarta
The traffic light stopped me exactly in front of two children
fighting on the side of the Rawamangun bypass. I was in a bajaj
(motorized pedicab) at the time. The children were scrambling for
a coin, thrown by a taxi driver.
They started to bite each other and cry. One boy, about seven
years old intervened. He tried to separate the boys and advised
them to stop fighting. One of the boys attacked him, biting him
on the head. The fight soon resumed and didn't stop until the
boys were bruised and bloody.
Another story recently was the violence between groups of
students along Jl. Salemba in Central Jakarta. They destroyed
traffic lights, cars, public phone booths and other facilities,
causing street vendors and pedestrians to flee in panic.
The biggest story, however, was the bomb attack outside the
Australian Embassy in Kuningan, Jakarta. The attack damaged
buildings, the embassy, trees and cars on the road. But these
could be repaired or replaced.
What couldn't be replaced were the lives of the 10 people
taken in the blast and our hearts bled as their families cried.
These stories are the present reality of Indonesian streets.
The stories at the traffic lights, the public markets or the
business districts.
And the message of these stories is that our children; our
people -- our society -- is under stress.
The poor, the largest segment of the Indonesian population,
have had to contend with increasing hardship and suffering in
their daily lives. The children of the very poor must work to
help their families and feed themselves -- along the street as
sidewalk vendors, itinerant cigarette sellers or beggars. One of
the few legitimate ways to alleviate their status, through
education, is not available to them.
The more privileged youth in society, meanwhile, are
destroying their futures by senseless fighting, or drug abuse
and, like their elders, student leaders often prefer political
maneuvering to studying or real work.
During her tenure, Megawati's democratically elected
administration could not alleviate the nation's poverty or
improve the quality of life for the average citizen.
Entrenching poverty has caused a parallel moral decline, which
is seeping into all facets of contemporary life in Indonesia,
especially in Jakarta, the nation's capital. The violence and
injustice of poverty begets more violence; social conflicts in
which murder, kidnapping, rape, and even terror attacks -- the
Bali Marriott and Kuningan bombs are the three most well-known
examples -- spread their poison through the archipelago.
The social conflict reflects the social stress, the fractured
nature and the disequilibrium in our society. The youth do not
trust their leaders because they seem to be concerned only with
themselves and their parties. This leadership crisis affects the
attitudes of the young, the children, who are the most vulnerable
to forms of violence.
And it is not just poor children that are feeling the stress.
Broken families, rich families, or single parents who
economically have more than enough often neglect their children.
Fighting and other antisocial behavior are a way for youths to
release their tension and gain attention.
Children are our future. They are an investment in our
country. But what kind of country will this become if they are
stressed.
Antisocial behavior among youth is a cry for help -- a
manifestation of the trauma besieging the national psyche. It is
a call to reach out, to love -- and to work -- so we as a nation
can all share in a brighter, less-stressful future.
We should keep these ideas in mind when we celebrate National
Mental Health Day.
The writer is a lecturer on psychiatric nursing at STIK
(nursery institute) St. Carolus Hospital.