This festering wound

This festering wound

The objection aired by the Indonesian police and military
faction in the House of Representatives to having the truth
behind the many human rights abuses of the past revealed is
certainly more than a bit disconcerting. It is especially painful
to have to learn of that objection on this particular day -- May
12 -- which is the day when, exactly five years ago, cold-blooded
snipers shot to death four Trisakti University students inside
their campus in West Jakarta, thereby triggering some of the most
vicious, bloodiest riots this nation has seen in its relatively
brief history.

Five years have passed. But it cannot be far off the truth to
say that the image of what happened in front of the university on
that day, May 12 1998, will remain forever seared in the memory
of those who have seen the television footage of that brutal
shooting. As thousands of students milled about in front of the
campus, yelling anti-government slogans and taunting the troops,
soldiers in full battle dress were standing high above on a
nearby overpass, rifles at the ready. The Asian economic crisis
was at its peak and Indonesia's economy was in a shambles.
Students all over the country were clamoring for political and
economic reform but despite all the clamor, the May 12
demonstration was peaceful.

Then, as the students were starting to withdraw and began to
move back into their campus, a single shot rang out, followed by
more. One student fell just as he had reached the campus grounds.
More shots followed and more students fell. In all, four Trisakti
students died on that day. But that was only the beginning of a
national tragedy that was to take thousands of lives in the next
couple of days and caused unmentionable grief to thousands of
individuals and their families.

The reason for the students' protest has always been clear: It
was the oppressive character of President Soeharto's dictatorial
New Order administration that finally led to the nation's
economic and financial bankruptcy through mismanagement and
unbridled corruption. But who fired the shots that felled the
four students, and at whose orders were they fired? Why were the
students killed while they were already back inside their campus?
Was it all part of a plotters' plan to lure the students out into
the street and provoke violence so that they could be blamed and
their protest movement crushed once and for all -- as some
observers have suggested?

Those are among the questions that have never been
satisfactorily answered. True, a number of junior officers have
been given light prison sentences, but the much more important
question of who or what was behind the May 14 and successive
incidents still remains unanswered, five years after the event.
It is little wonder the wounds the incident has left have
continued to fester for all those years. That is why reformers
and legislators have been calling for a truth and reconciliation
commission after the South African model.

Unfortunately -- although perhaps not very surprisingly -- the
military/police faction in the House of Representatives has
voiced its opposition to the use of the word "truth" in the draft
bill to set up such a commission, warning that any attempts to
reveal the actual truth would only lead the nation down the path
to new conflicts. "Finding out the truth will require a trial in
court, with all the impact (of this)," the faction's spokesman,
Maj. Gen. Djasri Marin, warned.

More pathetically, only 20 out of the House's 50 committee
members for the bill's deliberation in the House turned up during
the debate. It seems that with the passage of time, interest in
finding out the truth behind many of the human rights violations
of the past seems to be waning. It seems that not all of the
people's representatives in the national legislature share the
opinion of the Reform Faction's Mashadi, that any future truth
and reconciliation commission must clearly reveal the truth as
well as the people held ultimately responsible for those rights
violations.

Whatever the case, the road to getting at the truth for the
sake of reconciliation must be kept open. To achieve that will be
one of the important tasks for the incoming government and
legislature to accomplish. Unless that can be accomplished and
existing discontents resolved, the danger of festering old wounds
bursting open in the future is far from imaginary.