Parents remember daughters killed in a1 fan stampede

Parents remember daughters killed in a1 fan stampede

By Yogita Tahil Ramani

JAKARTA (JP): It is often said that daughters are closer to
their fathers, and that the only man in the world a girl can
trust is her father.

This is just one of the reasons that the will to live is being
slowly sucked out of Joni Siantani, 45, a vegetable trader who
finds it difficult nowadays to sell his vegetables, or anything
else for that matter.

"His daughters were the world to him. We were really poor, but
he would never allow his daughters to go hungry. Since the deaths
of our daughters Rani and Eka, he has rarely talked," Joni's
wife, Wartini, said tearfully, at her residence in the Petir
subdistrict of Tangerang.

The teenage girls died in a stampede during a recent meet-the-
fans event with the British pop band, a1, in Jakarta.

"He wonders why he didn't stop the girls from going to see
that stupid boyband. He keeps on remembering how the girls were
when they were kids, how they moved ... how both of us, husband
and wife in our poverty, had worked to keep them happy."

Wartini said that her other daughters, Yulia and Sari, have
tried to reason with Joni but he turns a deaf ear.

"Nothing effects him. It's as if he refuses to get over what
happened."

Can a father really ever get over the senseless death of his
daughter?

It is hard to imagine anyone getting over something as heart-
wrenching as the deaths of one's own teenage daughters,
especially ones who had solely aspired to be photographed
alongside the a1 boys.

Four teenage girls died in the stampede, on the rainy
afternoon of March 18, and all in a matter of 15 minutes.

Greater Jakarta residents seem to have moved on, forgetting
the bruised corpses of Rani Siantani, 15, Eka Wanti, 20, Indri
Ayuningtyas Dharmawan, 17 and Nurdiana Wali, 15.

The lives of these girls were stamped out, when hundreds
struggled to catch a glimpse of their idols at the meet-the-fans
event staged at the Disc Tarra music store, located on the third
floor of Taman Anggrek Mall in West Jakarta.

The incident, ironically, does not seem to fill the mind of
Joni either, Wartini said.

"It's not really the incident that he thinks of I believe ...
it's the girls. He cannot get over what, for instance, Rani used
to write in her notebook," she said.

According to Wartini, Rani loved to play her music loud, loved
to dress like her friends, loved life, but was still trying to
find her place in the world.

Rani, she said, liked to quote William Shakespeare in her
notebook, and wrote her own thoughts in it as well.

Excerpts included: "If you want to find yourself, do not try
to find it in a mirror. You'll just find your shadow there. Which
is better, to be alone and not have many problems, or have many
friends, and live with the consequences they bring in a society?"

Several media reported at the time that Tarra Megastore (PT
Nara Mitra Tarra), which was responsible for providing security
guards for the event, and Sony Music Indonesia (SMI), which
brought the boyband here, wasted no time pointing fingers at one
another.

The West Jakarta Police have declared five suspects in the
case for culpable negligence leading to death, but has refused to
detain one of them, on the grounds that the suspect, a female
executive of SMI in her 70s, is "too old" to be detained in
police custody.

Old fashioned

These details, however, seem to be lost on the parents of the
girls.

"What can I say about the loss of my daughter? I had told her
not to attend the fans' gathering. She called me so many
things ... she said I was old-fashioned, stubborn and a square
for not allowing her to go," Yoseph Dharmawan, father of Indri,
said earlier this week.

"My wife is still beside herself. She is so torn over this ...
we cannot live normally now. I blame myself ... like a fool I
allowed my girl to go to that function. Why did I allow her?"

Yosef, an entrepreneur and resident of Duri Kepa in Kebon
Jeruk, West Jakarta, said that he had gone to fetch his daughters
Indah and Indri from the mall. He found Indah, but no Indri.

"We searched everywhere for her ... then my wife and I heard
about the dead girls. We steeled ourselves and went to the (Cipto
Mangunkusumo General Hospital) morgue."

Nurdiana Wali's father, Amir Wali, combed several hospitals on
that tragic day, at first still clinging to the hope that he
would fund his daughter, lying hurt, but at least not dead.

"Her mother had told her not to go ... she told Nurdiana that
if she went, I would get angry. But she went anyway," Amir, a
resident of Jl. Kesatriaan in Matraman, East Jakarta, said
tearfully.

Nurdiana's family had finally relented. Then, over 12 hours
after the incident occurred on March 18, they found themselves on
the way to the Cipto Mangungkusomo General Hospital morgue.

Morgue staffer Rachman told the Post that Nurdiana's family
were beside themselves when they saw their daughter lying in the
morgue.

"It was so heartbreaking to see how these parents reacted.
Some refused to see the corpses of their daughters first ... some
were just not talking. Some even fought with the pathologists ...
they didn't want an autopsy to be carried out on their
daughters," Rachman said.

"As if there was still life in the girls ... the girls were
dead! Their parents were behaving as if anything else were to be
done to the corpses, the girls would feel pain."

It's a tragedy that an event like this, which should have been
enjoyed by these four teenagers, ended up taking their lives.

Yoseph however said that a bigger tragedy would be to forget
this incident and the girls, because the city had been taught a
tough lesson, which was paid for with the lives of the innocent.

"I wanted my girls to grow up, make something of their lives,
live well and see their children. I cannot accept all this,
because some company has been so dumb and careless as to not
apply for a proper police permit to secure the area."