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.