The mass demonstration that gripped Jakarta earlier this month stirred up memories of the May 1998 riots, Danau Tanu writes.
On Friday 4 November, a 100,000-strong demonstration organised by the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) took hold of Jakarta demanding for Ahok, the Chinese Christian governor, to be investigated for allegedly insulting Islam. It left many of us who grew up under the New Order regime nervous, and brought back memories of 1998 when riots ravaged major cities across the archipelago.
To the relief of Jakartans, no riot materialised this time around. But Jokowi cancelled his trip to Australia, scheduled for that weekend, on account of the domestic situation. Duncan Graham suspects it was a ‘snub supreme’. I don’t think so.
In May 1998, Suharto nonchalantly left the country to attend a Group of 15 meeting overseas while student demonstrators occupied the parliament building. He smiled on camera with foreign dignitaries like nothing was the matter back home. That put the final nail in his political coffin. Suharto had to cut his trip short to return to a nation in chaos. The rest is history.
But Jokowi is no Suharto. He may have spent all of that Friday ignoring the protests, appearing on television, going about his work visiting construction sites, as though oblivious. But flying overseas after a tense night would have pushed things a step too far. Like the rest of us, he remembers 1998.
In the lead up to the day of the demonstration, we were confident that the current government, under Jokowi’s leadership, could maintain order. Even so, some of us, particularly the ethnic Chinese, stayed home or took refuge in the houses of relatives located away from the city centre – just in case.
Days before, I had tried to organise a small weekend gathering for some Chinese-Indonesian friends. By then messages spreading fear were circulating on social media. One friend messaged back to our Whatsapp group in a state of veiled panic, “Let’s see how the demo goes. They say it’s going to be serious. Praying for peace.”
Another, more gung-ho, friend laughed it off. “It won’t turn into a riot. The FPI are the only ones demonstrating. The organisations that aren’t getting paid to demonstrate have all been lobbied by Jokowi via the MUI (Indonesian Ulema Council).” It is known in Indonesia that demonstrators are often taken advantage of by political interests and paid to protest. But confident that Indonesia was in secure hands, this friend planned to attend a meeting that Friday in the business district near the site of the planned demonstrations.
When Friday rolled around, I went to my parents’ house anyway, just to be on the safe side. Their house is deep in the south of Jakarta, a neighbourhood that had been spared in the rioting 18 years earlier.
As the evening prayer echoed later that day, news outlets announced that the demonstrations were coming to an end. There had been a brief clash, but crowds were dispersing. Indonesia had come a long way – riots were nowhere to be seen. So I returned to my apartment only to switch on the television to find that the crowd was moving towards the parliament building located near my neighbourhood. They were going to camp there overnight. They were from out of town. They were not satisfied. They wanted a presidential assurance that Ahok would be investigated.
The parliament building was where the students had camped in 1998. The euphoric image of student protestors sprawled across the green butterfly-shaped roof is still fresh in our minds. But the demonstrators of this Friday night were not the same as the students from two decades before. This time there was no dictator to depose. It seemed that political motivations were being couched in religious sentiment and ethnic animosity. Only the imagery was the same.
As the night wore on, the news live-streamed images of citizens and the police clashing with rocks and tear gas in North Jakarta, near Ahok’s residence. A store was looted. All the news channels braced for potential mayhem. But I was too tired to return to my parents’ house. Instead, I packed my wallet, car keys, clothes and passport in one bag and left it next to the door. Just in case.
The year after Suharto stepped down, I wrote my honours thesis on the 1998 student movement. In the process, I got distracted by the pages and pages of reports published in the Indonesian broadsheets about women who were raped in the open during the riots. It was a sickening read.
One report told of a young Chinese woman who was dragged out of her apartment, gang raped, and thrown against the back of the elevator wall. Her family watched, helpless. As I packed my ‘escape bag’, I reminded myself that the tight security in the building would be meaningless if 1998 happened again. Besides, I am female with small ‘Chinese eyes’. I shoved a pair of sunglasses into the bag.
The morning after, the regular programs were back on television. The only mention of the night before was that the demonstrators had cleaned up after themselves – big news in a country riddled with garbage problems. Images of litter-less streets were shown – evidence that the demonstrators were, in the words of one newscaster, “more mature” now. Nevertheless, one of my Chinese friends refused to return to her home in the city centre that day. “I was here in 1998. I don’t trust the media,” she messaged.
Many other Jakartans remained unaware that things had gotten tense the night before. While the city had gone to sleep, parliament representatives met with the demonstrators in the small hours of the morning. The crowd was coaxed into leaving at around 4am. The president finally held a press conference an hour later.
Over a week later Ahok was named as a suspect in the blasphemy case. Amnesty International, like clockwork, issued a statement condemning it. Is Jokowi succumbing to pressure? Or is he “buying time”, as the singer-turned-politician Ahmad Dhani (that dude who wore a Nazi outfit) accuses him of?
The political safari of late shows that Jokowi indeed has domestic issues to attend to, as 1998 looms in the background for those who remember.
Danau Tanu completed her PhD in Anthropology and Asian studies at the University of Western Australia on mobility and international education in Indonesia.
Good first-hand witness reporting. I miss this ground-level material in modern coverage. I was there for the demo day, but heading off to Surabaya so had to take the Jalan2 tikus to get around the mob. Further back in pre-Suharto history, please note this FPI style of demos follow the rhythm and methods of the PKI in 1964-65, though the FPI uses modern buses to bring their people to town while the PKI trucked them in, their vitriol and spurious accusations and insults are just as concocted.
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@Frank – ‘FPI style of demos follow the rhythm and methods of the PKI in 1964-65’ – Ah, I see. I had no idea. Thanks for this insight. That would explain why the atmosphere has been tense in Jakarta, at least among the politicians and on TV, over the past few weeks as they try to ‘cool down’ the ‘political temperature’. Having not been around in 1965, I had found it strange that the news kept reminding me of that movie ‘Gie’.
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What are you talking about Frank? Demonstration technique is often similar. I suppose the protests against Trump are similar to those of the PKI too, if we are making those sorts of analogies. Maybe you want to see 1964-65 again?
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Soeharto left for a G-15 meeting in Cairo on 9 May 1998. If his departure was ‘nonchalant’, as this author asserts, he at least left behind him a warning that the security forces would deal severely with his opponents. Four Trisakti students were killed on 12 May. Rioting occurred on 13 and 14 May in which Chinese-Indonesians in particular were targeted.
Because of the riots, Soeharto left Cairo precipitately and arrived back in Jakarta on 15 May. Students didn’t occupy the parliamentary building until 18 May. Soeharto resigned three days later.
What Jokowi remembers of these events is anybody’s guess. Presumably he was nowhere near Jakarta at the time. He might have asked Wiranto, of course, his politics, law and security coordinating minister, who has interesting stories to tell about those events.
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Thank you Danau for giving an interesting insight into your state of mind.
A couple of things.
1) I don’t understand how the imagery was the same when the incensed 4/11 protesters were puritans shrouded in white, and in 1998 there was a motley bunch of grubby students. You identified this yourself, didn’t you? Why the need for the highfalutin editorializing?
2) Are there any Muslims in your whatsapp group? If not, why not?
3) Why was your gathering only for Chinese-Indonesian friends? Doesn’t this say lots about the state of integration even without the 4/11 protests?
4) Which Chinese get targeted here? Chinese that are wealthy enough to pay, or ones unable to afford middle-class opulence?
No need to answer these questions. Just things that crossed my mind as you pitched us your thoughts.
Salam hangat
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It is poor form to make such personal comments, yet conceal your identity.
Is this to be a trend with Mandala postings?
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Frank, I don’t see how asking personal questions of a personal story is a problem. I made no aspersion. What’s wrong with concealing one’s identity? I suspect the main problem is that there is no one to make aspersions towards for retaliation. But, again, I don’t see what is wrong with asking personal questions of a personal story… do you?
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Cockatoo: Not all commentators are as honestly intentioned as you.
You did not use destructive language. However, using ‘hangat’ indicated a level of familiarity with the writer, yet you were not sufficiently comfortable to reveal your identity. I asked if it will be a trend with Mandala because malicious, anonymous entries have harmed so many individuals and made suspect so much of social media content and Mandala will surely suffer if is continued.
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Thank you all for the time to comment.
@Frank – That’s quite a compliment coming from a long-time journalist of Indonesia!
@Ken – Thanks for providing the details. You are right, I should have worded that sentence slightly more accurately in terms of the timing of the occupation of the parliament building (e.g. change it to ‘as the students continued to demonstrate’).
As for him leaving ‘nonchalantly’, I stand by that description in that this piece is about how we remember 1998 and how that memory affects our response to 4/11. The student demonstrations had been going on for months by then and I remember, as a teenager, being dumbfounded that he could even conceive of leaving, it felt like he was ignoring the protests (in fact we wondered for months how long he’d ignore them for). I also remember wondering whether he was going to return on May 12 he didn’t. And we waited for him to return on the evening of May 13. He didn’t. Then we waited to see if he would return by the morning of May 14. He didn’t. These two to three days may seem short on paper, but for those of us watching the familiar streets of our childhood burn and hearing our friends and relatives finding themselves 60 seconds away from death and having to hide in attics or flee the country/city, those 48+ hours felt like eternity.
As for Jokowi – he is from Solo, which was also ravaged by riots. And I think there were clashes, casualty and gun shots fired in Solo as early as May 8. Clashes had also already occurred in Medan by the time Suharto left. So him leaving ‘nonchalantly’ is an accurate description, I think, especially from the perspective of those left behind.
@Sqwuaky Cockatoo – As Frank says, some of these questions are quite personal. 1) I’m talking about the symbolic imagery of the parliament building. 2) Yes, of course. Months later, people close to me held a prayer gathering for Muslims, Christians and Buddhists alike – the trauma of May was still palpable as people from all three faiths broke down in tears together in one room. 3) This particular circle of ‘friends’ were actually one family, but I didn’t want to mention such details in the main text because it’s too personal. Changing details that don’t matter too much is an editorial technique for protecting privacy. 4) Do you mean the 1998 rioters or the 4/11 protestors? Either way, you would have to ask them, for an accurate answer. But in 1998, anyone who looked Chinese was scared. e.g. There were stories going around about how the mobs were stopping motorcycles to check under the helmet to see if people had Chinese-looking eyes (and other similar stories, some of which have been verified). Whether this particular story was true or not is beside the point in situations like this since, social science would know, perceptions greatly affect actual behaviour.
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Among other events in Solo, the house of one of Soeharto’s cronies, Harmoko, was burned down. If Jokowi was in Solo at that time, he must have been aware of what was happening there. I just have no idea how evolved his political consciousness was in 1998.
Nor do I see many parallels between May 1998 and November 2016. Soeharto was about to turn 77 and had been in power for more than three decades. He had brought his daughter, Tutut, into the cabinet formed two months earlier. I have always been convinced that Soeharto was planning for Tutut to succeed him, not Habibie. Whatever his earlier achievements might have been, Indonesia’s economy was in deep crisis and the IMF had just crippled him by recommending a fuel subsidy reduction which he stupidly implemented.
None of this compares with Jokowi’s situation, except that Jokowi too was due to make an overseas visit.
Instead of ‘nonchalantly’, I think you would have captured your meaning better by writing ‘irresponsibly’.
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Errrr, I think you’ve misunderstood my article Ken. I am not comparing Jokowi’s situation with Suharto’s situation…that wasn’t the point of the article…
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Your paragraph beginning ‘but Jokowi is no Suharto’ is what prompted me to believe you were making a comparison between Soeharto’s situation in May 1998 and Jokowi’s in November 2016.
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Thanks Danau.
1) The symbolic imagery of the parliament building with protestors was quite different though, wasn’t it?
3) But you had made it already rather personal with this post being your subjective view. So what sort of removed, objective and positivist questions would you prefer? Why not say it was one family? Does a reader really care which family that your friends with? No.
4) You say I would have to ask them for an accurate answer. And then you say in 1998 anyone who looked Chinese was scared.
Reading this is as though I am riding a roller coaster ride called hyperbole.
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It felt hyperbolic to you, but for me, that’s a reasonable piece of writing. The tension is palpable for the week of the event. I live in a mainly Chinese and Ambon neighbourhood. And even though people don’t evacuate like ’98, they decide to stay home. I go to work but most of my Chinese friend took a day off.
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