Reflecting after the 17th

Reflecting after the 17th

On Aug. 17, 1995, at 00:01 hours, fifty years of independence
will have come to pass. When the celebrations are over, however,
little will have changed.

Children will still plunder and pander in our city streets.
Some will be thrown into jail because we lack laws covering
juvenile delinquency.

The rivers and drains that dissect our cities will still be
filled with garbage. When the heavy rains come, some garbage and
waste will flow to sea. Of course we will continue to pay garbage
disposal fees every month without fail.

We will still fear to drink water from the tap in our own
homes since we still do not receive chlorinated and fluorinated
water. Do you realize that the price of bottled mineral water
represents almost twenty percent of the average minimum daily
wage earned by factory workers?

Farmers and villagers will continue to leave the land,
flocking to cities because of insufficient nationalized funds and
programs to help them work the land.

School children will continue to ride cargo bays of trucks
because of the lack of proper school buses. They might continue
to fight each other on streets and in public buses, in venting
their frustrations in a sense of hopelessness. Perhaps because
they have so little in a world around them that has so much more.

English should be actively re-introduced into all public
schools, beginning at kindergarten level so that each child, rich
or poor, will have the opportunity to develop into an 'English
literate' world.

Child prostitution exists in many cities. There are teenage
schoolgirls in the care of pimps and they operate from and in the
many 'Pondok Motels' scattered around Jakarta and other large
cities. Firm measures and rehabilitation programs should be drawn
up to stop this.

Torture as means of coercion is common practice in police
lock-ups and military-administrated correctional institutions.
Beaten, bruised and bloody, suspects attend court and come face
to face with judges. How many innocents have already passed
through this system?

Why is crime today so violent in nature? Maybe there are
criminals who believe in the necessity of violent action in any
crime. In some very sad and twisted manner, perhaps they realize
that if and or when they are caught by the police they will be
subjected to torture. There are no high or low differences in
terms of torture. For the thinking would-be criminal, any form of
torture would simply constitute a tremendous amount of pain.
Therefore the criminal will choose to do any crime with the same
vengeance, hatred and physical violence that he would expect to
receive at the hands of his captors and society in general.

The word captors is inclusive of a group or groups of people
who get lucky and catch a 'thief' and then decide within a space
of seconds, that they represent rightful justice. This group is
now called a 'mob' who, without second thought, proceed to beat
the suspect to a bloody death. From the time that the crime was
committed, up to the moment of his death, the suspect is legally
innocent. Simply because he had not been found guilty in a court
of law. No official arrests had yet been made. No member of the
public or representative of law of the government and state had
yet filed charges against the suspect.

There are many wrongs within the framework of our system and
society. Malpractice, corruption, economic monopoly, misplaced
public funds are rampant and the poor have no time to stop and
stare. Together our people and government must reach out to one
another, constructively acknowledge and remove the obstacles
rampant in our systems and way of thought. We must reinvent our
society to gather values that we have lost and rekindle the
essence of Pancasila -- the elements for liberty and equality for
all Indonesians. We must disperse the 'mob' within us, then
listen to our hearts.

FRANS C

Jakarta