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