Day of Destruction

Laksmi D. Haryanto lived through the May riots. Here are her personal reflections on the harrowing event and its enduring aftermath.

Flashback. Jakarta, Indonesia. May 13, 1998.

I gazed at the living room one more time, trying to hold back my tears. The Balinese painting on the wall, depicting the Bharata Yudha, the war between “good” and “evil” in the Mahabharata epic, seemed to laugh at me.

I treasured this painting, given to me by my late father. When I was little, I would read the story of the Mahabharata over and over again. It tells of the bloody feud between the two clans of the ruling royal family in India. The conflict culminates in terrible bloodshed that annihilates nearly all those engaged in the war.   

Beneath that colorful painting stretched a red floral sofa where I would spend my leisure time either reading or napping. Now it looked so sad and detached. The TV in the corner of the room was still on and noisy, but I was too scared to glance at the screen. The sound, still within earshot, was like a sharp dagger stabbing my heart. The city was burning as mobs engaged in an orgy of looting.  

I tightened the straps of my backpack one more time, ran through the hallway and entered the study. 

This country is collapsing. Where the hell is the military? 

I lunged toward one of the nicely framed diplomas on the wall. Sighing helplessly, I grabbed its wooden frame and tore it off the wall. I did the same to the one hanging next to it. In a flash, I caught a glimpse of some printed letters: New York. 

Our diplomas, my husband Har’s and mine. Just a couple of years back, we had spent every penny of our savings to earn these precious documents, struggling and juggling through a very difficult time. At any rate, they had to be saved. We might have to abandon our home, our careers and our dreams. If we had to forsake everything, the wonderful memories printed on these pieces of paper must be preserved no matter what. 

I rolled them up and tried to push them into the pocket on my backpack. Suddenly I felt a firm grip on my left wrist. 

“Where are you going?” 

Har was standing beside me. He was panting from running up and down the stairs. He had been on the roof, from where he could see thick black smoke enveloping the Jakarta skyline. 

Where are we going? That’s a good question. 

“Don’t you see?” I stammered. “They’re coming! They’ve been burning the nearby buildings! We must leave the house!” 

“Where to? They have blocked all the roads. We can’t go anywhere. We have to stay.” 

I could hardly breathe. We were trapped. 

I tried to yank my hand from his grip. Har stared at me hopelessly, not knowing what to say. I opened the front door and walked quietly toward the entrance gate. He followed me.

Our vast property was sguarded by this 7-ft tall, 8-ft wide iron gate at the front. My shiny black BMW stood proudly beside the gate, in the shade of a tall rambutan tree.

Oh, no. Our home and garden look enormous. The rioters will think we are rich. 

Indeed, we had been very fortunate. Har and I had successful careers at leading multinational companies, and we enjoyed all the comforts of an upper middle-class lifestyle.

I looked up and paused. There, beyond the gate, I saw a crowd gathered. I recognized some of the faces - they were from the nearby village, mingled with some of our neighbors. 

“You can’t leave,” a voice said from the crowd. An elderly man with fading gray hair smiled at me. I recognized him as Pak Ahmad, the nice old man who was responsible for guarding the neighborhood. 

“We have barricaded the street with trucks and local people,” he explained. “We will protect you.” 

“But they’re getting very close. They’ve been burning the nearby stores!”  

“Yes, they’re burning the buildings on the main roads, but they are not coming in here. We are in the safest neighborhood. Almost all of us are dark-skinned native people, there are very few Chinese here.” 

Very few Chinese. So? 

Pak Ahmad turned to me and said quietly, “The rioters are ransacking the Chinese neighborhoods. I’ve heard they are gang-raping the Chinese women.” 
I almost screamed with anger. The Chinese?! They just happened to be born with fair complexions and narrow eyes. They were all born in this country, live here and speak Indonesian! They are Indonesians!

A chill feeling forced me to keep my mouth shut. 

“Don’t go,” he insisted. “It’s very dangerous out there. You just stay with your family here, and we will defend this neighborhood together. We’ll talk to those crazy people.” 

I had seen some of the rioters on TV. They acted like savage barbarians, burning buildings and killing people.

We rallied all the men in our neighborhood to take turns in around-the-clock shifts to protect the area. But I was not sure our neighborhood’s “little barricade” would be enough. 

Where the hell was the military?

***

We will never forget that day when we were duped by the security forces who were supposed to protect us, the day when hundreds, maybe thousands, were killed -- either trapped by fire, killed in falls from high-rise buildings or trampled to death on the streets. 

That day, military personnel and police officers seemed to have vanished into thin air. No protection, no law enforcement, no regulations, no country. Nothing whatsoever!  

What really happened on that day? 

Up to now, nine years later, the May tragedy remains a mystery to most of us. The year before, the Asian monetary crisis devastated the country and caused millions to lose their jobs. Thousands of students took to the streets to demand political and economic reforms. 

A day before the rioting erupted, four student protesters were shot dead near Tri Sakti University in West Jakarta. The public was outraged.

Instigators of the violence came out of nowhere, along with truckloads of seemingly crazed strangers bent on fomenting unrest. They provoked people to march in the streets and create havoc. They targeted the rich and attacked the ethnic Chinese enclaves.

Har and I stayed put, watching the news on TV and listening to the radio around-the-clock. Terrified by the distant sound of screams, we kept praying and helped shelter some frightened friends in our barricaded neighborhood.

Luckily, our neighborhood was so remote and inconspicuous that it didn’t catch the attention of the rioters, although most of the big stores on the main streets were gutted.
Later, there were rumors of a conspiracy among some military generals to overthrow Soeharto. Indeed, in a matter of days the military took control of the country, but only after hundreds, maybe thousands lost their lives. The three-decade-long dictatorship was toppled almost overnight.

But the wounds were deep and painful. The costs were staggering. 
Many people fled this sunny, beautiful archipelago after the May Tragedy. Investment quickly dwindled. There was a huge brain-drain of intellectuals who gave up on the country. 
Suddenly I lost quite a few of my beloved friends. 

 *** 

One morning, not too long after the riots a raspy voice made me freeze at my office desk. 

“I’m leaving, Laksmi.” 

Without even glancing up I knew it was Fer, our company’s IT department head and one of my closest friends. 

I took a deep breath. “Don’t tell me you are resigning?”

News like this had become a daily occurrence at our company. One executive had resigned to move to Canada, another went to New Zealand and yet another fled to Australia. 

Sighing, Fer tried to give a warm smile. He gazed out of the window at Jakarta’s business district. 

“I don’t really want to go. But I am leaving for the States.” 

I stood up, speechless. He hesitated for a moment, trying to come up with an explanation. 

“My whole life …I always thought I would live and die in this country as a loyal Indonesian. My family and I all love Indonesia deeply. We are Indonesians. But we have fair complexions and narrow eyes, Oriental looks. For the first time in my life, my little girls asked me the questions I cannot answer – ‘Daddy, why do they call us Chinese? Why do they hate us?’” 

“No,” I gasped. 

I tried to hold his hand, but I knew I was losing him too.

He had looked at the whole devastated picture and decided it was time to go. The ethnic Chinese business section in Glodok had been burned to the ground. West Jakarta residential areas, mostly home to Chinese-Indonesians, were ransacked.

My friend Karlina told me about working together with various Indonesian religious leaders to build a temporary shelter for deeply traumatized gang-rape victims. The team did its best to help them cope mentally and quietly transported them to asylum in various Western countries. 
It was all real. The wounds are still deep.

Yet, some people in this beloved country have denied the worst abuses during the May Tragedy actually took place. They are distorting the truth for their aims, even as the victims struggle to recover from their pain. It is doubtful we ever will.

Today the people of this beautiful archipelago are still fighting a battle in their hearts and minds. With hundreds of ethnic groups, different languages and varying beliefs, they truly represent the diverse races on this planet Earth – unwilling participants in the war between “good” and “evil,” which like the Bharata Yudha, is getting harder to tell one from the other.

We are all struggling with our differences. It’s a struggle to grow up and to learn to understand that transcending all those different religions, races and everything else is the power of our shared humanity.  

Mrs. Haryanto was a senior executive at a foreign bank in Jakarta. She currently divides her time between Indonesia and U.S.

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