Page 75 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

60 Chapter 3

with select groups while curbing the movement’s autonomy by kidnapping and tor-
turing key leaders.
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This terror also involved intimidation through telecommunications, when the
military began using cell-phone companies to monitor and occasionally interrupt pri-
vate calls. One human rights lawyer reported a voice breaking into one of his conver-
sations, saying, “I will kill you tonight.” Such threats became serious as evidence
42
mounted that the military was operating death squads. A Jakarta hospital reported
receiving 165 unidentified corpses over the next two months, most discovered along
railroad tracks and marked with signs of torture.
43
Whatever the intent of these operations, anger replaced fear as word of the
kidnappings circulated. By contrast, Indonesia’s thousand-member parliament con-
tinued full-throated support, reelecting Suharto on March 10 to his seventh term by
a unanimous voice vote followed by thunderous applause and a standing ovation.
44
With news of this vote, protests grew bolder, and a new rhetoric of martyrdom
gained force. One student who had been beaten unconscious in a demonstration
stated, “We will continue the struggle, whatever the Government does, even if that
means we die!”
45
The Suharto regime responded with increased repression. In mid-March, military
leaders went beyond requiring permits for gatherings by announcing a total ban on
demonstrations. This edict had little impact. By the end of the month, there were
46
daily protests at universities nationwide. Students at one of the more radical cam-
puses began burning Suharto in effigy, shouting, “Reform or death!” The crackdown
47
only led students to escalate demands. The military responded by banning all elec-
48
tronic media from broadcasting the rallies.
49
Even in this climate of growing protest, above-ground media remained cautious,
still avoiding overt criticism. An exception was the provocative newsweekly D&R ,
which in March 1998, after two years of increasingly critical reporting, featured on
its cover a caricature of Suharto as the King of Hearts with a caption reading, “The
President in Crisis.” According to one editor, D&R staff ran the issue fully aware that
50
the cartoon would lead to a ban. But, he added, there was already reason to believe the
regime would fall before it could issue the order.
51
Despite the media’s general self-censorship, Suharto lashed out personally at
journalists in April 1998, blaming negative coverage for the crisis. At the president’s
bidding, the information minister, Alwi Dahlan, warned the media about publishing
news items that were unproportional, lacked proper perspective, and left the public
“disinformed.”
52
By this time, however, free speech had become a wider cause taken up by stu-
dents, who began wearing handkerchiefs as gags and covering their mouths with duct
tape. At one rally, a demonstrator reinforced the symbolism of the tape over his mouth
with a banner that read: “The price of honesty is [even] more expensive than the price
of sembako [the nine basic necessities].”
53
Anger intensified when kidnap survivors ignored threats from their abductors to
keep quiet and appeared in public with chilling accounts of electric shock and water
torture. Their reappearance called attention to the many victims who still had not
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returned, adding a disturbing undertone to these rallies. The mainstream media shed
some of its caution by devoting significant attention to the disappearances. The
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movement then picked up more steam as students started coordinating between cam-
puses, using computer networks as their primary communication to bypass bottle-
necks and surveillance on more public channels.
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