Raid hoodlums, but not vendors, warn experts

JAKARTA (JP): The city administration should discriminate in its handling of hoodlums and street vendors. The city should not arrest street vendors and other informal traders as the police arrest hoodlums, experts said on Tuesday.

Noted criminologist Mulyana W. Kusumah and Muslim scholar Azyumardi Azra said that unlike hoodlums, the so-termed people with social welfare problems (PMKS), such as street vendors, singers and informal traders burdened neither the city nor the people.

On the contrary, they provided jobs amid the current high unemployment rate, and consequently could reduce the crime rate in the city. Therefore, they deserved help rather than being arrested.

"Arresting them would not solve the problem. The city would do better to assist them, like giving them more places to do business," Mulyana, from the University of Indonesia, said.

He said the main problem for street traders and similar people was poverty, and therefore arresting them and putting them in social institutions would not solve their problems.

If possible, the city administration should create more job opportunities for them.

Unless the city can provide places or job opportunities for these street people, it should simply let them carry on their businesses in the capital.

The city administration has actually differentiated the actions it takes against hoodlums as opposed to street vendors and other PMKS. The city has asked the Jakarta Police to arrest hoodlums, while the city's public order office is responsible for dealing with PMKS.

The Jakarta Police have arrested at least 600 thugs since April 16, of which 36 were shot dead for resisting arrest.

The public order office has replicated what the police have been doing and arrested PMKS and sent many of them to social rehabilitation centers in Kedoya, West Java, and Cipayung, East Jakarta.

As many as 20,946 PMKS, including prostitutes, street singers and vendors, transvestites and the homeless, have been netted by public order officers in the capital since mid-April. Many of them were street vendors, totaling 7,791 people.

The city has allocated Rp 12 billion (US$1.09 million) for a nine-month operation against thugs and public regulations offenders.

Mulyana agreed on Tuesday that the Jakarta Police should conduct raids against hoodlums, suggesting that they should focus more on organized hoodlums. But he did not provide a further explanation of who the organized hoodlums might be.

He said the city administration should involve the public in evaluating raids against hoodlums to get feedback on whether they had reached their targets.

Meanwhile, Azyumardi Azra, rector of the Syarief Hidayatullah State Islamic Institute, supported Mulyana's suggestion and said that the public, especially religious leaders, should be more involved in the operations against thugs.

"We see that religious leaders have a small function in these matters, including the handling of hoodlums," Azyumardi said in the same seminar. (jun)