Whither justice?

One year ago today, a tragedy which proved to be a turning point in our history struck this nation. On May 14, 1998, massive rioting erupted in Jakarta. The security forces stood by and watched as ugly scenes of looting and arson spread throughout the capital.

The full extent of the damage inflicted by this massive orgy of violence was not established until many weeks later. Several days after the worst of the carnage, the nation watched in horror as hundreds of charred bodies were removed from buildings gutted by fire. Weeks after that we learned in disbelief that many women, mostly of ethnic Chinese origin, were gang-raped by the rioters.

The catalyst for these ugly scenes on May 14, 1998, was the shooting of four Trisakti University students during a peaceful anti-government demonstration two days earlier. The nation was already deeply embroiled in economic and political crises and the shooting of the students fueled public anger at the government, setting of a chain of events which rocked Indonesian society and forced President Soeharto to bring an abrupt end to his 32 years of tyrannical rule.

In retrospect, one could say that the May 14 affair, with all its tragic consequences, was a blessing in disguise. Until then, the aging despot had refused to be unseated, even when hundreds of thousands of students and youths took to the streets across the nation to demand his ouster. It took an upheaval on the scale of the May riots for Soeharto to get the message that he had, by then, become the problem, and could never really be part of the solution.

One could also point to May 14 as the dawn of the era of reform. The nation owes a large part of its newfound freedom to the victims of the two May tragedies -- the Trisakti shooting and the subsequent riots. The victims made possible the approaching multiparty general election, the first truly democratic poll in Indonesia in over four decades.

The road to democracy and a civil society will be long and hard. Furthermore, the last remaining vestiges of Soeharto's New Order regime are doggedly resisting every concession made in the name of greater political freedom for the masses. They are still out there, still in power, and bent on derailing the reform movement.

By marking the first anniversary of these tragic incidents, we are sending the message that those who died last May did not give up their lives in vain. The anniversary serves as a reminder that the struggle for reform must continue. In the light of the strong rearguard action being fought by those supportive of the status quo, we should use this anniversary to reforge our commitment to pushing ahead with the reforms which are so desperately needed by this nation. We owe this much to those who gave their blood, sweat and tears to the cause.

Indeed, we owe them much more. We owe them, and their relatives, a truthful explanation of these tragic events. Why did they happen, and who was, or were, responsible? To date, one notable absentee from the era of reform has been justice. The dearth of a sense of justice, the hallmark of Soeharto's New Order regime, continues to haunt our everyday lives nearly one year after the aging dictator was cast out of office.

Two junior police officers have been tried and convicted for following the "wrong procedures" in the shooting of the Trisakti students. They were not the real gunmen, nor the officers who ordered fire to be directed into the unarmed crowd of students. Although there is evidence to suggest that the riots were orchestrated, no one has been tried for this unspeakable crime, and the gangs of rapists who relentlessly sought out Chinese- Indonesian women are still at large.

In the 11 months since President B.J. Habibie came to power, a series of similarly mysterious incidents -- no less bloody and no less tragic -- have reduced the country to a state of chaos. Instead of working to heal the wounds of last May, Habibie has allowed the list of unexplained and unresolved tragedies to grow. The list has been expanded to include bloody clashes in the Ketapang district of Jakarta, shootings at the Semanggi cloverleaf junction in Jakarta, and mob violence in Kupang, Ambon, Sambas, East Timor and Aceh. The list continues to grow ever longer.

Unfortunately, violence breeds violence and injustice begets injustice. In the eye of this vicious circle, it appears the Indonesian public has lost confidence in the ability of the country's courts and law enforcement agencies to dispense justice, with many taking the law into their own hands as a result.

The Habibie government has demonstrated that it lacks the political will to draw these as yet unresolved tragedies to a satisfactory conclusion. Bringing those responsible for the Trisakti shootings and the May riots to justice would have gone a long way to restoring confidence in the government and the courts of law. Any such move could even have prevented some of the riots which have subsequently blighted other parts of Indonesia.

Justice lies at the core of democracy and civil society, and it must also lie at the heart of the agenda of all forces supportive of reform. Freedom in itself is not an adequate guarantee of a democratic future, and we must work to unite it with the principles of justice. This we owe not only to those who died last May, but also to ourselves and to our children.