Trisakti 4 remembered four years on

Trisakti 4 remembered four years on

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak and Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post,
Jakarta

Fresh roses and bouquets of flowers were carefully placed on
Saturday upon the black gravestones belonging to former Trisakti
University students Elang Mulya Lesmana and Heri Hartanto, who
were buried side by side in Tanah Kusir cemetery in South
Jakarta, as well as that of Hendrawan Sie in Kamal cemetery, East
Jakarta.

Chants and prayers by the parents, relatives, university
officials and several colleagues who could hardly hold back their
tears highlighted the modest ceremony held to remember the deaths
of the four students as a result of the 1998 shooting at their
campus, an event that led to the resignation of Soeharto.

The remembrances began earlier this month as the university's
extended family laid flowers on the grave of Hafhidin Royan in
Bandung, West Java.

It was part of the commemoration of the Trisakti tragedy
culminating at the university's campus on Sunday, as the
university and other student groups planned to revive the
people's memory of that gray, chaotic evening on May 12 four
years ago, by holding a peaceful vigil in the capital.

The four were shot dead at their campus after military troops
forced them and their fellow demonstrators to disperse from an
antigovernment protest that turned violent.

They are not dubbed as "the reform heroes" for nothing since
their deaths added the fuel to the fire which expanded into a
nationwide movement protesting Soeharto's military-style regime.
It also fueled hopes that the nation could become a more
democratic republic without the existence of a repressive
military regime.

But have their deaths been repaid in full?

"Not yet. We better take the Trisakti tragedy as the spirit of
reform movement...it will roll on although there are still people
who resist reform and even hamper it. This commemoration is an
event for us to reaffirm our commitment to the development of a
civilized society," Trisakti rector Thoby Mutis said during
Saturday's ceremonies.

The Trisakti shooting was followed by widespread rioting,
chaos and looting across the country on May 13 and May 14, with
common criminals and thugs joining in to target Chinese-
Indonesians' shops and homes. Many were killed, raped or had
their houses or businesses burned to the ground.

It has not yet been made clear to the public as to why
security officers seemingly made no attempt to stop the chaos.
The Supreme Court is expected to give its legal opinion on this
matter. But many people believe the security apparatus set out to
"teach" the public a lesson to the public on how powerful the
security institutions can be when they want to act, or in that
case what occurs when they refuse to act to secure the country.

Within four years, the nation has had three presidents:
bureaucrat B.J. Habibie, humanist and activist Abdurrahman "Gus
Dur" Wahid and now the daughter of founding president Sukarno,
Megawati Soekarnoputri. It has also seen six different Cabinets.

But none of the new leaders have taken the initiative to
determine whether there were human rights abuses in the killings
and the riots -- neither against the students or the Chinese-
Indonesian victims. Instead, they preferred to see it merely as a
part of history or the rebirth of the country.

Human rights activists have consistently called the targeting
of Chinese-Indonesians genocide, and that the government should
put a great number of military and police officials on trial.

According to some, the reform movement seems to have stagnated
as very few serious political changes have been made to develop a
strong democracy. Thousands of people throughout the archipelago
are fighting against others for a variety of reasons while the
military remain extremely powerful despite the phasing-out of
their dual function in politics.

It was the Trisakti parents' unrelenting demands for
investigations of the shooting of their children that persuaded
Gus Dur's administration to bring the triggermen to a military
court. But the court's decision was not seen as satisfactory as
only low-ranking personnel, who were merely carrying out their
superior's orders, were sent to jail.

Lasmiyati, mother of Heri, said that sentencing the troops did
not solve the case because "their superiors should be held
responsible for the shootings and brought before the court
first".

Hafhidin's father, Enus Junus, said the efforts to bring the
case to the human rights court was not revenge against the
military. "But if we keep it quiet, then we give a bad precedence
where in the future the state may use arms to repress their
intellectual youths."

The human rights commission completed an investigation into
the tragedy and two other incidents that took place at the
Semanggi overpass on Nov. 13, 1998 and on Sept. 24, 1999, in
which more students and residents were killed.

In the recommendation to the Attorney General's Office, the
commission underlined that the three incidents are closely
related to the riots that followed.

Also present at Saturday's commemoration was the Community of
May Victims' Relatives, the Commission for Missing Persons and
Victims of Violence (Kontras), Kalyanamitra and Nusa Bangsa
Solidarity (SNB). They issued a joint declaration demanding the
government to pay attention to the case.

Asmara Nababan, secretary-general of the National Commission
of Human Rights, expressed his pessimism of the current Attorney
General's Office, and said they would probably find another
loophole to delay the probe of the Trisakti shooting.

"The law does not provide a timeline for the Attorney
General's Office in looking at the investigation result from
Komnas. That will serve as another excuse to delay the probe,"
Asmara said on Saturday.

But Komnas was not surprised as it had faced a lot of
stumbling blocks in the last four years.

"We all knew when we started with this case that we would
constantly be banging our heads against the wall as it involves a
lot of political interests," he remarked.