Students awoke dangerous genie from its long slumber

Throughout the last few weeks the call for reformasi, or reform, has gathered momentum among students, academics, workers, business people and the poor in Indonesia. What did reform mean, I asked Mr Goenawan Mohamad, editor of the banned magazine Tempo and a leading intellectual in the Indonesian opposition. We were discussing the crisis in a little cafe where the government's critics meet in the suburbs of Jakarta. It was Tuesday afternoon, just two hours before the torch of mayhem was lit by the army's killing of students in Jakarta. "It means dump Suharto," Mr Mohamad said.

Not long ago it was not possible to say such things openly. Criticism of Suharto is a violation of the criminal justice code. But now the majority of Indonesian people seem to be saying little else.

Student demonstrations throughout this disparate nation of nearly 200 million people began 10 weeks ago. They were in protest at the lack of significant political or economic reform in a country where power and wealth has resided with the Suharto family for 30 years. The unrest intensified when the government raised prices on May 1st to meet the conditions set by the International Monetary Fund for a $40 million (£28.4 million) bail-out of the Indonesian economy.

The student demands for lower prices, the end of corruption and the resignation of President Suharto drew widening support. The lot of the Indonesian people had worsened through unemployment and rising prices: they blamed corruption at the top. The military adopted a policy of confining the students to their campuses to contain the protest movement. Clashes began as the students escalated their campaign and tried to move out of the university grounds into city streets. Security forces attacked students with tear gas and rubber bullets in Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Ujung Pandang and Medan. Rioting convulsed Medan for three days last week following the removal of subsidies on fuel and cooking oil in line with IMF requirements. Petrol went up in price by 71 per cent.

It wasn't long before there were deaths in the student/army stand-off. A military intelligence officer was killed during a student demonstration in Bogor on May 10th. It was a student attack on another plain clothes "spy" during a demonstration at Trisakti university in Jakarta on Tuesday which precipitated the first student fatalities, and in turn the civil insurrection which was to destroy much of Jakarta. One of the students leaders at Trisakti campus, today a centre of open revolt, described to me what happened. "The spy was a short man with black hair, just like me," he said. "We realised he was an agent when we saw that he had a walkie-talkie in his belt. Students don't have radios. So we began to beat him." The intelligence officer escaped but riot police aimed rifles and fired live ammunition at fleeing demonstrators. Four Trisakti students were killed (not six as originally reported by the university) and more than 20 injured.

Next day rioting broke out in the adjacent streets as furious crowds vented their fury at the killings on everything they could destroy. The police and army tried to contain the violence with constant volleys of tear gas, rubber bullets and occasionally live ammunition. (The military denied that regular bullets were used, but I saw one man in the university clinic who had been shot right through the shoulder.)

The next day a big student demonstration was held at the University of Indonesia, also in Jakarta. Again big angry crowds gathered outside on the streets to listen, and fired up by the speeches against Suharto, began a rampage of destruction. Mobs were already out in other areas of the city of ten million and the army and police were overwhelmed. They withdrew from most districts leaving jubilant crowds a free hand to attack Chinese shops and businesses connected with the Suharto family.

The destruction became more general as the day progressed. Whole streets of shops were torched. Shopping malls, restaurants, food stores, electronic goods outlets, all went up in flames and black smoke. Televisions, watches, cameras and computers were looted from city centre stores and crowds raced gleefully through office blocks taking anything they fancied, sometimes shouting "Long live economic reforms."

In several instances the mob invited looters to help them destroy equipment taken from offices blocks where they ran down corridors, ransacking at will. Crowds broke into a Dunkin' Donuts and handed out the doughnuts to the mob. Three hotels were attacked, including the Raddison. Again the Chinese were the main victims and I saw many shops with the word "pribumi" meaning native Indonesian, painted hastily on the door to keep the mob away, sometimes to no avail. Motorcycle taxis who provide crash helmets warned passengers not to pull the visor down or the mob might think the rider was a Chinese trying to escape detection.

If the military had a plan for Jakarta for such a situation they either were caught unawares or there was a deliberate policy to allow an explosion of violence, either as a pretext for a clampdown or to lance the boil of discontent. Another theory is that many military officers sympathised with the students' demands and that they were reluctant to shed blood on the streets. They may have calculated that the turmoil would force Mr Suharto out of office. Whatever the reason it was a disaster for Jakarta, capital of the world's fourth most populous country.

The violence paralysed the city. Many international companies are fleeing and will not return for a long time. In the short term social instability is guaranteed as food runs out in areas which are now without shops and warehouses. Petrol is in short supply as many filling stations have been burned, and little traffic was moving yesterday. As the crisis deepened everyone tried to second-guess the intentions of the army, the force which keeps Mr Suharto in power. It gave mixed signals. While cracking down on students, senior officers took steps to show some sympathy for their aims. Jakarta military commander Major General Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin attended the funeral of two of the shot students, where bereaved mothers Mrs Hera Tety, asked him "My son was not a criminal, why shoot him dead?"

On Thursday General Wiranto formerly apologised for the shooting of the students as a press conference. The briefing was attended by the heads of the army, navy, air force and police - a show of unity at the top - and he added: "We would like to express our sympathy for the student reform movement." He noted however that the student demands were actually in line with government wishes, which sceptical Indonesian journalists saw as an attempt to take the wind from the sails of the reform campaign.

The role of the army has up to now been to maintain Suharto in power. To this end it has used limited repression. This week's convulsion was preceded by a series of political kidnappings, where activists disappeared in the manner of los desaparecidos in South America.

Just hours before the soldiers opened fire on students on Tuesday, a human rights lawyer Desmond Mahesa made public his experience as a disappeared person who had been released. Despite threats that his life would be in danger if he did not stay silent, the slight, prematurely-balding man in rimless glasses told a crush of journalists at the Jakarta legal aid foundation of his kidnap and his two month detention in what appeared to be a military base.

On February 3rd two men with FN pistols grabbed him off the street and drove him to a building with six detention rooms, he said. On the first day he was beaten, his head was repeatedly pushed under water, and electric shocks were administered to his head and feet. Also there was another prominent activist, Pius Lustrilang, who has since fled the country fearing for his life. A fellow prisoner was tortured by being forced to lie on an ice block.

As evidence that the military were behind his disappearance Mr Mahesa said he heard reveille sounded on a bugle every afternoon at 3 o'clock. When he was released he was told to say he had been in hiding but decided to speak out because his family was being intimidated. Seven people are still listed as desaparecidos and the army has promised an investigation. In the last four months over 370 political activists or government critics have been arrested, according to Amnesty International, most before the presidential elections. At least 20 are still in detention, including five people arrested in at a pro-democracy gathering in North Jakarta in March, one of them the actress and playwright, Ratna Sarumpaet, who was charged with violating Article 154 of the Criminal Code which punishes the public expression of "hostility, hatred or contempt" against the government.

The kidnappings and arrests were mainly a preemptive strike by the military against the possibility of mass demonstrations during Suharto's unpopular re-election by a hand-picked assembly in February, in the opinion of Mr Mohamad. Sitting among the potted plants of the cafe for intellectuals, he said the big difference between today and the turmoil of 1964-65 which brought President Suharto to power was that the country depended now on foreign capital. The army could not take over, he said. "They can kill but they cannot rule. Killing people would make Indonesia another Burma."

Mr Mohamad's faith in the army's restraint was to be shattered shortly afterwards when soldiers fired on the Trisakti students. The subsequent escalation of the crisis lent urgency to the plans by Mr Mohamad and his companions in opposition to set up a presidium of government critics to get Mr Suharto to stand down. The committee will include former cabinet ministers, judges, Muslim clerics and a Catholic priest and possibly military figures and will offer a political agenda for a transition. Its most prominent figure is Amien Rais, the leader of a 28million strong Islamic movement who has emerged as the preferred choice of the students, despite earlier misgivings among the country's intelligentsia.

"Before this I myself was sceptical about him, as he was known as a bigot," explained Mr Mohamad. "But he has changed so much. Now some Catholic and Protestant groups support him." Dr Rais is an intelligent sophisticated leader whose Islamic movement is moderate by Middle East standards, diplomats say. He only recently called for Mr Suharto to stand down, arguing in a speech in a mosque that movement was necessary just as water stagnates in a sewer if it was not allowed to flow.

This call had more impact than similar demands from pro-democracy leader Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of the former president, who is regarded as a rallying point and a good speaker but not a future leader. The committee issued a statement on Thursday evening saying that it was time for Suharto to go. Significantly the youth wing of Golkar, the political party whose main plank is to maintain the president in power, has called for a special session of the 1,000member People's Consultative Assembly, which includes 207 Suharto appointees and 276 armed forces officers to review the mandate given to President Suharto and Vice-President Habibie in March.

In the aftermath of the convulsion which seized this nation of 200 million people this week, much political manoeuvring is going on. Diplomats feel Mr Suharto will stay in power for some time longer. Meanwhile everyone waits to see which way the Indonesian army will move.