May 1998 riots of Indonesia
It was estimated that more than a thousand people died in the riots. At least 168 cases of rape were reported, and material damage was valued at more than Rp 3.1 trillion. As of 2010, legal proceedings regarding the riots have yet to be completed.
On 27 July 1996, soldiers, police, and civilians attacked the headquarters of the Indonesian Democratic Party in Central Jakarta, which was occupied by supporters of party leader Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of former President Sukarno. Megawati had been selected as party leader in general congress in December 1993. Her selection, however, was seen as a threat by the New Order government, which suppressed free speech during its 30 years in power. Popular support of Megawati and the PDI was growing leading up to the 1997 legislative election and threatened the dominance of the ruling party Golkar. The government declared Megawati's appointment invalid and organized a new congress in June 1996, during which a new party leader was selected. The attackers said they were acting on behalf of the rightful party leadership. The incident evolved into two days of rioting in Jakarta that the government blamed on the People's Democratic Party (Partai Rakyat Demokratik, PRD). Violence continued up to the election on 29 May 1997, which was won by Golkar with 74 percent of the votes. The divided PDI received only 3 percent of the votes, while the largely Muslim United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan, PPP) received 22 percent.
The election was marred by widespread cases of vote rigging, causing public outcry especially among supporters of the PPP, which had called on the government to follow a democratic process lest the results be rejected by the public. At this time, Indonesia was experiencing an economic boom with its Gross Domestic Product growing at a rate of 8 percent in 1996, led by the manufacturing sector. Five months after the election, however, it was caught in the Asian Financial Crisis which began when the Thai baht collapsed in July. The rupiah dropped from Rp2,450 to Rp4,000 to the US dollar between July and October, and economic growth slowed to 1.4 percent in the 4th quarter. Unable to stabilize the economy, the government sought assistance from the International Monetary Fund. The rupiah declined further to one-sixth of its original value by January 1998. With rising unemployment and inflated food prices, the public lost confidence in the government's ability to turn the economy around. Violence spread throughout the island of Java, but the government exercised its power in February and imposed a 25-day ban on street protests. Law enforcement officials were given the authority to imprison anyone found participating in political activities in violation of the ban.
Suharto was elected by the People's Consultative Assembly to a 7th consecutive five-year term as President in March. Despite calls for economic and political reforms, his controversial Seventh Development Cabinet included his family members and cronies, including protxgx Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie as Vice President. Student demonstrations in campuses grew in intensity following these events.
By the beginning of May, students had been demonstrating in campuses throughout Medan for nearly two months. The growing number of demonstrators was coupled with increasing calls from the public for overall reforms. On 27 April, the death of a student in a vehicle accident was blamed on security officials who had fired tear gas onto the campus. Over the next few days, the clashes between students and security forces grew. On 2 May, a showroom of the "national car" Timor, whose controversial development was spearheaded by the President's son Tommy Suharto, was attacked.
When the government announced on 4 May that it would increase the price of gasoline by 70 percent and triple the price of electricity, campus groups reacted. More than 500 students gathered at the State Institute of Teacher Training and Education. Security forces barricaded the campus to prevent students from leaving and allegedly threw Molotov bombs at demonstrators through the day. Although the students had dispersed by late afternoon, replacement forces were brought in to keep them on campus through the night. When they were allowed to return home hours later, police reportedly stopped a group of students and assaulted them. Word of this attack spread through several witnesses, and a large group later attacked and destroyed a traffic police post. As the outnumbered police fled, protesters began attacking shopping malls and another police post. Thousands poured into the streets and burned cars and shops through the late night.
On the morning of 5 May, a crowd gathered at a police station where it was reported that more than 50 people suspected of involvement in the previous night's attack were detained. When more officers arrived to confront the group, the station was attacked. The crowd moved toward the nearby market of Tembung as they burned cars and attacked houses. Shops owned by Chinese Indonesians were looted, while they reportedly left those marked with the words "milik pribumi" in graffiti alone. When the Mobile Brigade arrived in the afternoon, the crowd was dispersed with tear gas. As businesses in Medan closed on the following day, thousands of people attacked markets throughout the city and its surrounding districts. Police and anti-riot soldiers fired rubber bullets at the crowd to disperse them but were unsuccessful. When the violence ended two days later, six people had died (two by gunshot) and one hundred were injured (nine with gunshot wounds). Police detained 51 people for questioning, and damage was estimated in the hundreds of billions of rupiah.
On 9 May, one day after the violence in Medan ended, President Suharto left the country for a Group of 15 summit in Cairo, Egypt. Prior to his departure, he called on the public to end the protests. To the Suara Pembaruan daily newspaper, he said, "I judge that if we keep going like this there will be no progress." He later returned to Indonesia earlier than scheduled on 14 May, when violence in Jakarta reached its worst. The campus of Trisakti University in Grogol, West Jakarta, became the site of a gathering of 10,000 students on 12 May. They had planned on marching south toward the Parliament building, but security forces refused to allow them to leave the campus. When the students conducted a sit-in outside the campus gates, shots broke out after rocks were allegedly thrown at police. In the ensuing chaos, four students were killed.
Catalyzed by the student deaths, mass violence began almost simultaneously throughout Jakarta the following day. The Matahari department store in the eastern district of Jatinegara and Yogya Plaza in Klender were torched. It was estimated that at least 1,000 people died inside the buildings during the fires. Mobs also attacked Glodok in the northwestern part of the city, where the commercial area of Jakarta's Chinatown was badly damaged. Some store owners reportedly paid local thugs to protect them from the violence because security forces were largely absent. Riots also occurred near the port of Tanjung Priok in the north, the city of Tangerang to the west, and Kebayoran Baru in the south. Properties owned by Chinese Indonesians were the most common targets.
Student protests in Surakarta began as early as March at the Muhammadiyah University of Surakarta (Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta, UMS) and the Sebelas Maret (11 March) University (Universitas Negeri Sebelas Maret, UNS) and grew over the next two months, prompting the police to station officers outside both campuses in order to prevent them from entering the streets. On 8 May, later known as "Bloody Friday", a clash between UNS students and police forces resulted in hundreds of wounded students. There was also evidence of gunfire as police launched tear gas canisters and fired rubber bullets.
UMS students clashed with security forces on 14 May during a protest of the Trisakti shootings in Jakarta. A report of the incident claimed that the violence was provoked by students throwing objects at police from campus grounds. Security forces were unable to disperse the group, and the angered mob of 1,000 moved eastward into the city. A showroom of Timor cars was attacked, much like the violence in Medan earlier in the month. Kostrad forces arrived as the crowd attacked banks and public buildings in the city center and prevented them from reaching the city hall. From there, they broke up into smaller groups and attacked the surrounding districts of Surakarta. More people poured into the streets when tires were lit on fire at intersections. Because 11 companies of the Mobile Brigade, crowd control forces, and Kostrad soldiers had remained on the UMS campus, downtown Surakarta was left unprotected. Additionally, members of the Kopassus (special forces) had left the city earlier in the day. A group of 15 "provocateurs" was said to have directed crowds using walkie-talkies and incited some of the violence using crowbars to open buildings and throwing Molotov bombs into them.
Because electricity was cut throughout the city that evening, residents were not able to receive television and radio coverage of the events. Instead, they relied on the local newspaper Solo Pos for accounts of the previous day on 15 May. As the attacks continued to a 2nd day, 10,000 student protesters organized a separate peaceful protest and marched from the UNS campus to the city hall, explaining that they were not connected to the mob violence.
On 14 May 1998, in Sidtopo, Surabaya, rioters targeted Chinese-owned stores and homes, burning their contents. After the riots, ten thousand Madurese patrolled the streets, armed with celurit. The Joint Fact Finding Team found two cases of rape and four cases of sexual assault.
On 14 May 1998, at least ten offices, banks, and showrooms in Padang, West Sumatra, had rocks thrown at them by student rioters on the way to the Provincial People's Representative Council office of West Sumatra.
On the same day, in Palembang, South Sumatra, ten shops were burned, more than a dozen cars were burned by rioters, and dozens of people were injured by rocks thrown by students marching to the Provincial People's Representative Council office of South Sumatra. Thousands of police and soldiers were put on guard at various points in the city. The Volunteer Team for Humanity reported that cases of sexual assault also took place.
On 15 May 1998, at roughly 14:20 WIB, thousands of rioters from Surakarta arrived in Boyolali, burning factories, cars, and homes, as well as looting stores near the Boyolali market. Banks were closed due to threats to burn the Bank Central Asia branch in Salatiga, and rioters blocked the road from Semarang to Surakarta.
Violence in Medan drew the attention of national security officers. General Wiranto, Commander of the Armed Forces, toured the affected areas on 6 May and committed his forces to help restore calm to the city. Two days later, Lieutenant General Prabowo Subianto of the Kostrad (Army Strategic Reserve) deployed one of his units "to support local troops and assured the public that others were ready to go into troubled areas should the need arise". Neither effort, however, was able to contain the violence as the riots continued in Medan for another three days following Wiranto's visit, leading the public to believe that few orders were carried out by the deployed units. Order was finally restored when regional military commander Yuzaini requested the help of community leaders and youth organizations to arrange for local patrols (siskamling) with security forces. Security inaction continued as violence escalated in Jakarta, and the military leadership in charge of security in the capital cityâ€"Wiranto, Prabowo, and General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyonoâ€"were absent. Military and police response in the capital was inconsistent. Soldiers in the northern area of Mangga Besar allegedly stood by and allowed looters to walk away with stolen goods. In Slipi to the west, soldiers reportedly risked their lives to protect civilians.
In Surakarta, Armed Forces representative Colonel Sriyanto denied allegations of neglect by the military. He claimed that ground forces were limited because some units were en route to Jakarta while the few left behind were assisting police in controlling protesters at the Muhammadiyah University. For the most part, the military portrayed the violence "in terms of mobs gone mad, acting in an uncontrollable and spontaneous manner, outnumbering security forces". Susuhunan Pakubuwono XII, the traditional monarch of Surakarta, condemned the violence as behavior "not in line with the cultural values held by wong Solo ". He also made a rare appearance on 19 May to demonstrate solidarity by the elites with victims of the violence. In a meeting with 5,000 students at his palace complex, he pledged a symbolic amount of Rp1,111,111 to support the students' calls for reform.
As it was evident that Suharto had lost control of his senior military leaders, he resigned one week after the violence on 21 May. Two months later, on 23 July, his successor Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie appointed a Joint Fact Finding Team to conduct an official investigation of the May riots. During the investigation, the team had difficulty finding witnesses who were willing to testify about the violence, and the team was only given three months to investigate riots in six cities. Data collected by the team largely came from non-governmental organizations and the state-sponsored Communication Forum for National Unity (Badan Komunikasi Penghayatan Kesatuan Bangsa, Bakom PKB), which had compiled numerous police reports on the incidents. The full report totaling hundreds of pages was never distributed to the public and was only available to members of the team, relevant government ministers, and a few researchers. The media received a 20-page summary in both Indonesian and English, which was then distributed widely on the Internet.
Although the Special Rapporteur was repeatedly told that the Chinese were rich and wealthy, many of the victims she met who had been raped during the May riots appeared to be from lower-middle-class backgrounds. Some were single women living alone, striving to make ends meet. It appeared that the victims were in fact poor.
Stories of sexual violence with perpetrators shouting anti-Chinese slogans and other verbal abuses during the Jakarta riots shocked Indonesians. As the incidents were represented as state-sponsored violence, national and international groups became more vocal in calling for reform and the government to step down. Muhammadiyah leader Amien Rais denounced the violence in Surakarta, which he saw as more destructive than the riots on Jakarta. The Islamic organization manages the UMS campus, where student clashes with police on 14 May prompted the ensuing violence. His statement that the Surakarta incident was orchestrated by a dalang rather than unorganized masses became a national headline. Unlike in Jakarta, local citizens in Surakarta didn't view the violence in their city as anti-Chinese. This image was further cultivated by the insistence of influential Chinese Indonesians that the causes were "multifaceted". Most of the Chinese who fled during the violence returned after it had subsided, unlike those in Medan in Jakarta.
Previously, Chinese communities were more concerned with commercial and economic matters. The ethnic Chinese in Indonesia had been pummeled by rioting the past decadesâ€"but they had always absorbed the punishment meekly to preserve their commercial interests. This time around, a landmark shift occurred with modern communications technology becoming the unifying force.
As news of attacks on Chinese Indonesians during the violence reached the international ethnic Chinese community, the riots were labeled as "anti-Chinese" in nature. In a letter to President Habibie, leader of the Hong Kong Democratic Party Martin Lee wrote, "The severity of these two days of mayhem evoked comparisons to the Nazi regime's attacks against Jews." Ethnic Chinese organized protests through the website Global Huaren, founded by Malaysian Chinese emigrant Joe Tan in New Zealand. Tan founded the website in response to "seeming indifference" around the world and spread news of the violence to professionals and colleagues. Members then coordinated rallies at Indonesian embassies and consulates in major Pacific Rim cities. Solidarity from the international community brought about a renewed awareness of ethnic and national identityâ€"Indonesian and Chineseâ€"among Chinese Indonesians "because for so long the one had been sacrificed for the other".
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