Tears for our students

Once again our students have shed blood on the streets while reaching for an ideal. The changes that are at present stimulating our life as a nation were achieved at the cost of the lives of four Trisakti University student martyrs who died in the May 1998 tragedy. The nation shed tears because of deep feelings of grief and sympathy.

In 1966, our students took on a formidable task to bring about changes that were no less formidable. On the streets, they offered their blood and their lives in order to open an era that became known as the New Order era. Then, too, the nation shed tears for them.

After the New Order felt itself firmly established, it forgot the students as having been its strategic partners. As a consequence, students once again took on the task of bringing the New Order to an end, even though that had to be paid for with their lives.

Fifty-three years after we became an independent nation, we still don't deserve to call ourselves an intelligent people. We still let ourselves to be tempted to settle conflicts by means that are precious and risky. Strange, that at a time when we have become more free to express our views, we seem to be lost for words to find compromises.

An intelligent nation is one that does not squander its blood searching for compromises. Therefore, every time that students spill their blood on the streets in conflicts, we shed our tears for them and offer them our sympathy.

-- Media Indonesia, Jakarta