May 1998: days which will live in infamy*

*Quoting from the famous FDR speech about December 1941

From the late 1997 to early 1998, the student demonstrations were growing in the very fast pace. I can give a lot of reasons, about that phenomena, but that would not be the case for this post. I will try to give you some of the things that I still remember, or in this case, some of the things that I still feel about May Tragedy 1998.

I participated in some of the demonstration from 1997-1999. At the beginning, we were afraid, mainly because campus at that time was sterilled from any political demonstration or rally. The regulation is cleared, if students participate in the political rally, they will be expelled. Of course, this also give excotic reason why the student eagered to join the political movement. The army at that time is also harshed to the political movement against the president. Until now, I still remember the 27th of July 1996 riots in Indonesia Democratic Party headquarters, because it happened near my house and my university (I took short semester in June and July 1996). I witnessed how the army treat the people like garbage.

After awhile, when the student rallies became more solid everyday, I started to feel relax. Well, I still felt tear gas and occasional beating from the army when we did the rallies, but we were young and dangerous at that time. The most scary thing at that time, if the student activists is spotted, they can be kidnapped by the army. But as long as we stay together, we felt stronger.

Then, around May 1998, when the demonstration was already widespread, we were very busy to join the demonstration. Suddenly, in 12th May 1998, one of our meeting place for student movement (the basement of Faculty of Economics University of Indonesia Library, Badan Otonom Economica) got a phone call from our friends that several students died in the rallied today. What! Students died! How can it be?! When, we were settling down with our position, that kind of thing just hit us. Then, the student activists prepared for another rallied, with cautiuos. We were afraid, but also mad, and of course that event quickly became a momentum for students to strike back. After a lot of consideration, 13th May 1998 would be our mourning day, considering we don't want to have our friends, and ourselves, shots to death. Basically, we stayed in the campus to mourn the death of our friends.

But in 13th May 1998, I and Ben decided to go Trisakti to attend the mourning day in the place where the army shot the students. I promised my friend to come, and I just can't stay without seeing the scene of the crime. We went with motorcycle, and we could arived fast. Nothing extraordinary, I paid my visit to mourn, to meet my friend and as Arya already mentioned to check out Trisakti cute students.

After awhile, we noticed groups of people, not students, gathered outside the Trisakti University to see what happens inside the university. Students shot by army was, is, a big thing in Indonesia. When the crowds was getting bigger, the army get restless and they start to disperse the crowds with tear gas and water bomb. The tanks were ready for them, if somethings happen. The students were mad, and started to yell at the army. Then, the army also shots tear gas in to the campus, and threat the students. Bacause the crowds can't get closed to the campus, they retreated, but when they retreated, they started to burn everything that they passed. They threw building around the campus. Hell, they almost suceeded burning the gas station near the campus. Then, the situation get out of hands, because the students couldn't contain the crowds. That was the starting point, before the hell broke loose.

In 14th May 1998, UI students planned to rally inside the Salemba campus, but we didn't dare to go outside, with army stand ready outside the campus. Again, at that time the crowds gathered outside Salemba campus. Then, the crowds started to get restless, and they went amok.

In a couple of hours, Jakarta started to lit, I can see the burned building everywhere. when I saw Jakarta from above the building, I could see smoke everywhere. Outside the campus, I can see people burned cars, especially army cars and Timor cars. Also, from my mobile (my notorious Erricson GF 317) I received news: the amok became racism riots, the crowds strucked the chinese race people and their properties. I, we tried to chew what happens outside, but it was simply beyond our ability. Then, we started to call our friends, to help them, to tell them to stay put in the safe place, etc.We set up an information centre to contact our friends who joined today's rally, whether they were safe or not. During that time, the news about amok kept feeding us with terror. I could see the horror from the body that kept cooming to the mortuary that located next to economics building.

I saw Menteng Prada cleaned by the people. Some of the students manage to calm the crowd in some places, but in general Jakarta was burning. I remembered I called Beby to know how she's doing. She had to walk from around Salemba to Sunter, because there was no transportation at that day. She told me the crowds plundered the small shops. She told me passionately, well actually furiously, how the crowds plundered Chinese property in Cempaka Putih, Cempaka Baru, Sumur Baru, Sunter Jaya and Petak Sembilan, because people in that places are poor, maybe even poorer than the people who plundered. At midnight, we were tired mentally and phisically, the only thing that we could do is smoking (just to remind Arya, we managed to get cigarettes from one of the warung(street vendor) free of charge, because the owner didn't want our money, the old lady event offered us soft drink, again free of charge, we run because we felt guilty to have something free from street vendors, hehehhehe). By the way, where is the fucking army and the police, they supposed to protect the people, they just fucking dissapeared.

15th May 1998, I stayed at my house, I was dead tired. My parents talked to me, discussed the situation (well, at those time, I wasn't stayed in my home often). I tried to relax, actually in my neighborhood the place was calmed, in order to enter our neighborhood in Menteng we have to showed our ID at those times. We watched news in television, actually I've enough all of that, but hey, we have to know about outside world. After that, My father and I were strolling around the city to see what happened. It was a mess, road blockade everywhere, people gathered with hand weapons. They are tired, but ready to attack. We have to open our windows, sometimes get out from the car to explain our purpose of trip, and this was in the centre of the city (Menteng and surrounding area). Many of the cars and the buildings are burnt. Again, we saw the horror that we had seen in television.

The days after that filled with another demonstration, another analysis about what had happen, the impact of the riots, political implications, racism in Indonesia, and bla bla. But again, like my friend said we might never forget the May Tragedy, the tragedy. Although the student movements became stronger from that day, but the tragedy is still haunted me and my friends, until now.

Nowadays we joked about the demonstration, the student movement, we tried to supress the horrors, among other things May Tragedy and Semanggi Tragedy. We always laugh, because if we look back we had done stupid things, funny things, and other things. But again, we can't surpress the tragedy easily from our conversation, although we tried to talk about then in a funny ways.

I think we should't forget those days, it will make our country grows by learning from the history, even the dark one.

May 1998, eight years ago: days which will live in infammy...

For the rememberance of the May 1998 victims