Indonesian Justice Run Amok

One man received the death penalty after he admitted stealing a motorcycle. Another was put to death for allegedly pinching a pair of Nike sandals. A third was executed after he was seen carrying a stolen duck.

Their punishment was immediate and was carried out by the same people who sentenced them to death: vengeful street mobs.

In all three cases--and hundreds more like them--it took no more than cries of “Thief!” in a busy street to galvanize bystanders into action. Crowds quickly gathered, seized the suspects and beat them, stoned them or set them on fire.

Brutal pengadilan jalanan, or “street justice,” is on the rise in Indonesia as economic hardship and the end of authoritarian rule combine to create a climate of lawlessness. The nation’s poverty-stricken inhabitants, frustrated by a corrupt and ineffective legal system, are increasingly taking the law into their own hands--with gruesome results.

Over the last few months, thieves have been beaten to death or set afire for stealing a chicken--or a goat, a cow, chili peppers, green beans, dinner plates, a gas can, a Sony Walkman.

Government officials do not keep track of the number of cases of vigilante justice. But nearly every day, Indonesian newspapers carry reports of suspected criminals slain by the public. Munir, a human rights activist who works to combat violence, estimates that lynch mobs have killed more than 1,000 people in Indonesia this year. Few are arrested for such crimes; even fewer are convicted.

“Every day, there are new bodies,” said Munir, who, like many Indonesians, uses only one name. “People are murdered, and no one is responsible for it.”

Indonesia, a far-flung nation of 17,000 islands, has an ancient tradition of violence. Many of the country’s more than 300 ethnic groups have long practiced their own rough justice. The phrase “to run amok” comes from the old Indonesian word amuk, to attack furiously.

Until President Suharto stepped down in May 1998, the government routinely used violence as a political tool to control the populace. During his 32-year rule, hundreds of thousands of suspected opponents were killed without trial, and many thousands more disappeared. State-sanctioned violence was seldom punished, contributing to the attitude that anything goes.

President Abdurrahman Wahid, a democratically minded Muslim cleric who was elected last year, has had difficulty asserting control over the politically powerful military, leaving the country in a state of turmoil.

Under Suharto’s military rule, most people were afraid to mete out mob justice. But as the government has lifted repressive measures over the last two years, vigilante violence has taken their place.

“What we have now is freedom without order,” said University of Indonesia sociology professor Sardjono Jatiman. Or as a police detective in Tangerang put it: “People think there is democracy and so they can do anything.”

Suhamdani, a soft-spoken 18-year-old high school student, knows what it is like to be caught up in the violence of a mob.

On Oct. 27, he and a friend were walking down a street in this city of 1.6 million people near the capital, Jakarta, when a motorcycle hit his friend. Suhamdani said he and other bystanders grabbed the driver, beat him and took him into a nearby house so he could not escape.

Not far away, the owner of the motorcycle heard of the accident. He hurried to the house and accused the driver, a man named Njat, of stealing the bike.

“You’re a thief! You’re a thief!” the owner shouted as a crowd of more than 100 gathered, Suhamdani recounted.

Inside the house, Njat admitted that he had “borrowed” the motorcycle without permission and apologized to the owner. But that was not enough. The crowd dragged Njat outside and beat him senseless with stones and wood. He was pronounced dead on the way to the hospital.

Suhamdani, who hopes one day to become a Muslim teacher, was arrested a week later. He remains the only one in custody. He says he took part in the initial beating but not the killing. He is cooperating with police but has difficulty explaining why the crowd of people--many strangers to one another--acted so violently.

“The mob was led by the motorcycle owner,” Suhamdani said in an interview at the jail here. “They didn’t like the thief’s attitude. The owner was very emotional.”

Since the Asian economic collapse of 1997-98, Indonesia has been mired in poverty. Workers are lucky to make the equivalent of $60 a month, and desperation is high among the large number of unemployed.

In a land where many people have few possessions, a motorcycle is one of the most valuable. Indeed, taking a motorcycle in Indonesia is akin to stealing a horse in the Old West--and people accused of the crime are often hanged from the nearest tree.

Legal experts say street justice has become widespread because the legal system has failed to adapt from the days of dictatorship and create an impartial process that ensures basic fairness.

The judiciary remains corrupt and inefficient, and the police brutal and arbitrary. In some cases, police stand by and watch as petty criminals are beaten by mobs. Yet rich, well-connected criminals and corrupt government officials are rarely arrested or punished.

“A thief should not be punished by death,” said Harkristuti Harkrisnowo, a criminologist and law professor at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta. “This poor person becomes a substitute for the high-level criminals that the community never has the opportunity to get hold of.”

In particular, the inability of the government to try Suharto on charges that he stole at least $571 million from charities he controlled has contributed to the popular view that the legal system does not work, acknowledged Atty. Gen. Marzuki Darusman, whose efforts to prosecute the former dictator have been stymied by the courts.

While vigilante justice is a nationwide phenomenon, most incidents occur in the densely populated region of greater Jakarta, where about 15 million people live.

One of the most grisly incidents of mob rule occurred on a Saturday afternoon in June in East Jakarta.

Five pickpockets were working together on a crowded bus when they were caught in the act. They jumped off and ran to a car but were trapped inside by a gathering crowd. The mob pulled them from the car one by one, beat them, threw them in a pile and set them on fire. One of the men jumped up with his clothes ablaze and tried to run away. He made it only a few yards before people in the crowd hit him with stones and brought him down.

Nelson Chaniago, a 32-year-old taxi driver who witnessed the scene, said the killings were justified. People must carry out their own justice, he said, because the police and courts do not.

“Criminals are caught by the police, but several days later they have already gotten out,” Chaniago said. “It’s a pity, but because the law is not strong at the moment, what can we do?”

Such outbursts of spontaneous violence are all the more striking because Indonesians are generally very friendly and polite in public. Criminologist Harkrisnowo, who was trained in the U.S., said even kindhearted, law-abiding citizens get caught up in mob frenzy and lose control over their actions.

“You lose your identity,” she said. “Your identity is merged with the identity of other people in the group. When you are committing a crime, you don’t feel as though you are doing it. You feel as if the group is doing it, so there is a diffusion of responsibility.”

The rise in vigilante justice since the fall of Suharto stems in part from the growing influence of fundamentalist Islam and its strict code of morality.

Supriyanto, a 39-year-old married man, often slept at the home of his girlfriend, Partinah, a widow in the central Javanese town of Semarang. Neighbors had warned him against this practice, but he paid little attention. In September, a mob gathered outside the house at 1 a.m., dragged him outside and beat him to death.

The fear of black magic among superstitious Indonesians also inspires its share of killings.

In the small western Javanese town of Cianjur, 67-year-old Iyot received a gift of salted fish from her son in September and gave some to her neighbors. One neighbor developed itchiness after eating the fish and accused her of practicing black magic. Hearing the charge, a crowd of 30 people attacked Iyot with their long machete-like knives, called golok.

Police said two people have been arrested in connection with her death, including a man named Barma who was often paid a small sum by uneducated villagers to judge whether a neighbor was practicing black magic. Usually, Barma found suspects guilty.

Since 1997, residents of Cianjur have killed 20 people in the belief they were practicing black magic, said Police Capt. Agus Nugraha, the town’s chief of detectives.

“The level of legal awareness is low,” he said. “They always bring their golok everywhere, and their hard life has formed a hard attitude. Every problem is solved by using a golok.”

Advocates of mob rule dismiss the possibility that innocent victims could be killed in the rush to justice or that people motivated by greed or revenge could make false accusations.

Mansyur, an unemployed graduate of an Islamic university, said leaders in his East Jakarta community judge the guilt of a suspect before punishment is carried out. “Here the local society isn’t doing mass justice any way we feel like it,” said Mansyur, 26. “We make sure first.”

In Mansyur’s neighborhood last month, residents beat 30-year-old Ibrahim after he was allegedly caught stealing Nike sandals and a pair of pants from a house. He was dead within an hour. Mansyur denied involvement in the killing but explained how the community operates.

“We look at the case,” he said. “If we find proof that he is a thief, we take him to the chief of the neighborhood. Then we punish him, usually by beating him up, but not until he is dead. What happened last time, he was dead in the hospital, not here.”

This system of justice was nearly the death of Sarman, 27, a mentally disabled northern Jakarta man.

He was wandering in an unfamiliar neighborhood in June when residents saw him peeking into windows. A thief had stolen a motorcycle from the same street the previous day, and the locals became suspicious.

When Sarman sat down in someone’s yard, police said, area residents began beating him and shouting “Thief!’

Fortunately for Sarman, police arrived in time to prevent his death. He was hospitalized with cuts and bruises.

In Indonesia’s volatile political climate, some worry that there is great potential for anti-democratic forces to exploit the mob mentality.

In September, a crowd incited by pro-military militia leaders killed three United Nations aid workers in West Timor province. The mob entered the U.N. office in the town of Atambua, hacked the three workers to death, dragged their bodies into the street and set them on fire.

“People are not thinking critically and are provoked by the smallest thing,” Harkrisnowo said. “The fact that people act immediately without any contemplation is very primitive. People could easily manipulate this vulnerable condition of the people, and there’s no telling what could happen.”