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Tue, 16 Jun 1998
AsiaWeek 19 Juni 1998
Recounting Tanjung Priok's toll
A SOLDIER ENTERED MUSHOLLA ASSA'ADAH, a tiny green-and-white Muslim prayer room, in a working-class neighborhood not far from Jakarta's port of Tanjung Priok on Sept. 7, 1984. He was supposed to tear down posters the government considered extremist. That order would poison relations between the government, military and Muslim community for years. The soldier did not take off his boots, an act of desecration in any Muslim holy place. He supposedly smeared gutter water on the walls. A scuffle broke out: the soldier's motorcycle was burned and four people were arrested.
That was only the beginning. Five days later, Amir Biki, a local Muslim activist, led about 1,500 supporters on a march to the police station to free the four detainees. Soldiers opened fire, killing more than 400 by some estimates. Biki was among the dead. In the weeks that followed the massacre, Chinese-linked banks were bombed, a major department store burnt and an ammunitions depot in Jakarta sabotaged (the explosions flattened nearby homes and sent unarmed rockets through living rooms). Activists even bombed the ancient Borobudur temple.
Much in the relationship between power and religion has changed since then. In a small house beside the mosque, 49-year-old Ahmad Sahi, one of those arrested in 1984, explains that the armed forces no longer treat Muslims with suspicion. In fact, he believes Muslims are more in charge than ever before, though he recognizes some limits: "We are the majority, but that doesn't mean we can do whatever we like with other groups." Religious tensions, he says, have sparked conflict in so many nations. Did Priok traumatize Indonesian Muslims? "The only trauma," Sahi says, "is that we could never talk about it."
A few kilometers south of the prayerhouse is the mosque that Amir Biki used to lead. It is still run by his family; they renamed it in his memory two days after Suharto's May 21 resignation. Boddi Biki, 56, keeps his brother's grave tidy and his portrait in a place of honor in the mosque's office. "There are people who want to ride on" the death of his brother, he says. But all he wants is justice, and to clear the names of the victims. The protest, he says, was never really between religion and government. It was between the powerless and the powerful.
- By Jose Manuel Tesoro and Yenni Kwok/Jakarta