URBAN GANGS IN INDONESIA

URBAN GANGS IN INDONESIA

In 2013, Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institute wrote: “Following a wave of violent confrontations and tit-for-tat killings, the leaders of five mass organizations-cum-urban gangs in Greater Jakarta – Pemuda Pancasila (PP), Pemuda Panca Marga (PPM), the Betawi Brotherhood Forum (FBR), the Betawi People’s Forum (Forkabi), and Badan Pembina Provinsi Keluarga Banten (BPPKB) – agreed to a ceasefire in June 2012. The violence to be shut down had erupted in the late winter and early spring of 2012, escalating and taking on ethnic overtones in March 2012 when the leader of another gang John Refra, a.k.a. John Kei, was arrested on murder charges. Fronting as a debt-collecting business, Kei’s Key Youth Force (Amkei) was centered on Moluccan migrants in Jakarta and had been clashing with rival gangs from Flores. The June gang truce, facilitated by police negotiations and mediation, for a moment seemed to turn the violence off. The truce did not hold; and several weeks later, turf contestations among its gangs were back on. [Source: Vanda Felbab-Brown, Brookings Institute, February 6, 2013 |*|]

“Despite occasional dramatic killings by the gangs that draw sensationalist media attention, Indonesia’s urban gangs come across as rather docile. Jakarta is a remarkably safe city. Even in the vast slums where the state is absent and the gangs rule, the atmosphere of violence is palpably lower than in many of Latin America’s cities. That does not mean that the Jakarta gangs do not exercise a great deal of power and authority over both slum areas and some business parts of the city. Just like in Rio de Janeiro, some gangs may at times have a virtual stranglehold on a neighborhood, complete with checkpoints and controlled entry into the slum. |*|

Criminal Activities of Urban Gangs in Indonesia

Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institute wrote: “Whether taking over unregulated spaces through force due to the absence of other regulators or being de facto granted concessions from the state, the Indonesian gangs have collected rents from various informal and illegal enterprises. They will organize, direct, and tax informal parking on Indonesia’s city streets; the fees are minimal and a refusal to pay may well result in slashed tires or a scratched car, but unlike in parts of Rio, it is unlikely to land one in a hospital. Gangs will also tax nightclubs and street vendors for protection. Often, this informal tax collection can be pure extortion; at other times, the gangs may actually provide protection against rivals, often from different ethnic groups, not merely against themselves. The nightclub protection racket tends to be highly lucrative: The Association of Indonesian Entertainment and Recreation Center Entrepreneurs claimed that over 400 nightclubs, bars, massage parlors, and discos in Jakarta generate revenues of around $200 million annually, with owners spending about 20 percent on formal and informal fees. [Source: Vanda Felbab-Brown, Brookings Institute, February 6, 2013 |*|]

“At times, the protection racket can become quite formalized, with gang members hired off the street by “formal” security or debt-collection services. In fact, Jakarta’s business operators have increasingly moved to these formal, legal firms, instead of hiring the informal gangs straight off the street to pay for protection and debt-collection services. The membership between these two types of protection outfits often highly overlaps, but the bosses of the former tend to sport ties rather than tattoos. Like their brethren around the world, gangs in Indonesia also have taxed, or run, gambling, prostitution networks, and local drug distribution operations. At times, the gangs provide informal microcredit, but that service tends to be rather abusive and frequently slips into loan-sharking. |*|

Types of Urban Gangs in Indonesia

Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institute wrote: “There are many types of gangs in Indonesia and they vary in their savviness of how to accumulate power, cultivate political connections, and acquire political capital. Rather surprisingly, many Indonesian gangs frequently do not appear to provide extensive socio-economic services to the communities where they operate or deliver otherwise absent public goods, beyond providing protection and security. Many of the street vendors I interviewed throughout Java and in Sumatra, for example, complained about the gang taxes and claimed that the gangs were of little use to them and appeared to welcome when the state acted to suppress the gangs. [Source: Vanda Felbab-Brown, Brookings Institute, February 6, 2013 |*|]

Some are informal organizations of soldiers and sailors out for fun after dark, and one would not expect them to have political ambitions or organize services parallel to or in the absence of the state. Neither would one expect such behavior from the motorcycle gangs, such as the Moonraker, Grab on Road (GBR), and Exalt to Coitus (XTC), that operate in Indonesia. But since Indonesia moves on mopeds and motorcycles, distinguishing a motorcycle gang of the Hells Angels-type from a gang that employs the typical Asian means of transportation may be tricky. |*|

“Indeed, the labeling of groups and individuals as preman (with the term encompassing everything from a criminal, street tough, to an outright organized crime group) has often been used and misused for political purposes. As much as the formal state institutions and political parties have used the gangs for their purposes, they have also often found it convenient to make the gangs and, more broadly, the urban poor their scapegoats. Many underprivileged urban young, or homeless people and beggars have been labeled preman merely because they are poor and live in a slum. Similarly, the Indonesian police have a tendency to call even peaceable groups of young kids just hanging around on the streets preman.” |*|

Ethnic Gangs in Indonesia

Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institute wrote: “Some gangs, such as the aforementioned of John Kei’s Key Youth Force, are ethnically based. The transmigrasi policy encouraged population movements throughout the archipelago – mostly Javanese and southern Sulawesi natives moving to other islands; and, inevitably, quite apart from the transmigrasi policy, Jakarta’s economic growth and opportunities attracted migrants from elsewhere. With poor skills and lacking access to established patronage networks, they would often languish in Jakarta’s slums, with particular ethnic groups settling down in particular areas. The young unemployed become easy recruiting targets for ethnically-based gangs. The wider ethnic-minority community would depend on the gang for access to formal and informal jobs and other patronage, with other ethnic enclaves and their gangs remaining closed to outsiders. Some of the prominent ethnically-based gangs have included groups from Ambon, the Moluccas, Timor, and southern Sulawesi, particularly Makassar. [Source: Vanda Felbab-Brown, Brookings Institute, February 6, 2013 |*|]

“Violence between the ethnically-based gangs has occasionally not only triggered violent confrontations in the criminal market, but also set off wider ethnic violence in Indonesia. The November 1998 Ketapang riot in West Jakarta between gangs from Ambon and Flores, provoked by clashes over the control of parking lots and a gambling den, was believed to be the last spark igniting the ethnic and sectarian violence in Ambon during the late 1990s and early 2000s. But that narrative may have merely provided a convenient excuse for the police and military forces to be supporting Betawi (Jakarta native) gangs since then.

Political Power of Gangs in Indonesia

Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institute wrote: “Gangs that do provide socio-economic services and hobnob with the politicians can accumulate a great deal of political power. Indeed, it is often very difficult to draw clear distinctions between some gangs and formal political youth organizations in Indonesia. The two entities may strongly overlap in leadership and membership, with each being unique and separate only at the margins. The gangs with the most explicit and thickest connections to formal political parties provide – rather naturally – the most extensive socio-economic and social services beyond protection, such as street cleaning, electricity, water distribution and sewage, flood assistance, and blood donations. They also resolve disputes, whether over land in slum areas without formal justice institutions and rule of law, or even among businessmen who choose to risk going through Indonesia’s corrupt and increasingly unpredictably bribable courts. Importantly, they also deliver votes for their political sponsors, put on mass rallies to demonstrate the particular political party’s street power, intimidate opponents, and break up the opponents’ rallies or labor strikes. Both the gangs and youth organizations help local party bosses to win public goods tenders and are themselves rewarded with such tenders by their political overlords. [Source: Vanda Felbab-Brown, Brookings Institute, February 6, 2013 |*|]

“In Indonesia, and throughout much of South and Southeast Asia, the state and major formal political parties have been better able to hold the rein on the criminal gangs. That is not to say that the urban gangs, and their facades and manifestations as youth wings of political parties, are totally under the thumb of the politicians or military and police forces. They are agents in of themselves, with their own political and coercive power, at times fiercely asserting their own identity and agency. They negotiate and push back against their political-military overlords even as they take orders from them. Still, in contrast to Latin America, the relationship between the gangs and official political power in South and Southeast Asia has overall remained far smoother and less confrontational. By and large, the gangs have remained tightly integrated into the formal political processes and often closely linked with particular political parties. |*|

“Indonesia’s politicians continue to be deeply complicit in the perpetuation of the state-crime/cooptation-repression pattern, for fundamentally breaking with the system would require their sacrificing the various advantages they get from employing the criminal gangs. It is far easier and more convenient to occasionally give in to periodic public outrcries for anti-crime campaigns and to round up the most vulnerable people. |*|

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Evolution of Urban Gangs in Indonesia

Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institute wrote: “One of the most powerful gangs and most visibly used as a tool of the political order and highest formal political power is Pemuda Pancasilla. A criminal gang with large membership on the one hand, it also managed to present itself as the ultimate defender of Indonesian nationalism and the New Order of President Suharto. Established in the early 1980s in Sumatra, it grew under the leadership of Yapto Soerjosoemarno to claim a pan-ethnic membership of 10 million throughout the archipelago in the late 1990s.[11] Often doing the bidding of Indonesia’s military and intelligence services or Suharto’s political party (Golkar) it coerced support for Suharto’s regime, beat up opponents and extorted the Chinese business community for private rents and political donations, as well as partook in charitable activities and the provision of socio-economic goods to local communities. It also provided privileged access to jobs. Unlike the gangs that the Indonesian state employed after the creation of Indonesia and those that had been used by Indonesian political actors even during the colonial, pre-independence days, PP succeeded in sufficiently covering its origins and connections to the criminal underworld so as to portray itself as the ultimate voice and carrier of the official ideology and values of the Suharto’s regime. [Source: Vanda Felbab-Brown, Brookings Institute, February 6, 2013 |*|]

“Given how tight with the Suharto regime PP was, it is not surprising that it did not weather well the end of the Suharto regime. After the end of Suharto’s reign, Pemuda Pancasilla tried to transform itself into an official political party, and twice, under different names, it did very poorly in national elections. It still exists as a youth group and a street gang, but it now needs to share power in the criminal market and in the political space far more than ever before with other gangs-cum-political-organizations. |*|

“The criminal gangs that emerged in the wake of the collapse of the Suharto regime have reflected the diversification of political cleavages in Indonesia. Many have remained ethnically-based. Not surprisingly, some of most successful urban gangs have been those that have received the most support from the post-Suharto state and law enforcement – namely, Jakarta’s Betawi gangs, such as the Betawi Brotherhood Forum (FBR) and the Betawi People’s Forum (Forkabi), based on ethnic groups “native” to Jakarta. By supporting them, the security services believe they have a better capacity to control outbreaks of ethnic violence beyond the criminal market.[14] By the late 2000s, the Betawi groups displaced other ethnically-based groups from large areas of Jakarta, such as Tanah Abang area. |*|

“Reflecting the new era of Indonesia’s Islamization during the 2000 decade, the Betawi gangs have also embraced Islamist narratives. Donning Islamic regalia, they have at times taken it upon themselves to enforce sharia and harass the Christian and Ahmadyyia minorities in West Java – both because of genuine ideological drive and because such actions would make them politically useful to politicians mobilizing on the basis of Islamization as well as generate various resources, including access to land, and other economic rents for the gangs. This coating with Islam too made them appealing to Indonesia’s military and law enforcement agencies, which since the early 1990s have also become increasingly Islamized.” |*|

Police and Indonesian Urban Gangs

Gang violence in Jakarta is relatively low in part because the influence the law enforcement, exercises over the gangs is great. Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institute wrote: “Indeed, Indonesian gangs have a decades-old history of thick and complex relations with the Indonesia government, primarily its military, intelligence, and police forces, and also with Indonesian political parties that goes back to Indonesia’s independence. That basic set-up of the gangs doing the bidding of the formal powers has weathered dramatic changes in the country’s fundamental political arrangements and forms of rule over the decades. The faces and names of the gangs have changed, but the essential arrangement of official power remaining the true master and overlord of the criminal underground and employing the gangs for the purposes of the state and political bosses – as shady and illicit as these purposes may often be – has persisted. [Source: Vanda Felbab-Brown, Brookings Institute, February 6, 2013 |*|]

“Nonetheless, the concept and language of “alternative livelihoods” for the preman have seeped into political discourse and policies in Indonesia. Formally organizing the gang members in official security or debt-collection companies has been described as one form of “alternative livelihoods.” This approach has several limitations: One is that the amount of jobs these companies generate is still vastly fewer than the amount of jobs provided by the gangs. Second, the “services” that the gang members obtain from belonging to a gang go beyond employment and regular services and are not matched by the formal security companies. And fundamentally, as long as the formal security or debt-collection companies behave no less thuggishly than the informal gangs, they are merely a cover for the same old nexus of political-power-formal-business-and-crime that has characterized the Indonesian scene. |*|

Suharto, Politics and Indonesian Urban Gangs

Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institute wrote: “The most brutal campaign of selective weeding out of the gangs who were most troubling for the regime and cooptation of those most useful to the regime took place in the early 1980s. Suharto’s so-called Petrus campaign (short for mysterious killings) viciously and rather indiscriminately targeted all manner of “inconvenients” – unemployed youth, disobedient criminal gangs, or those supporting Suharto’s rival General Ali Moertopo, and sometimes even just street children. At the end of the campaign, between 5,000 and 10,000 people were killed. [Source: Vanda Felbab-Brown, Brookings Institute, February 6, 2013 |*|]

“Although far less violent than during the Suharto era, the anti-preman repression waves during the 2000 decade have continued to target political criminal enemies as well as to cater to the growing middle-class fears of criminality and distract the broader body politic from other problems, such as the country’s socio-economic difficulties, and also away from having to fundamentally redesign the tight relationship between the state and political parties and criminals. The suppression campaigns would target vulnerable marginalized individuals merely because they sported a tattoo, and would flood the jails with low-level offenders or members of targeted criminals simply on the basis of their membership, rather than any evidence of actual criminal behavior. But this seemingly indiscriminate repression has consciously coincided with highly-selected nurturing of some cultivated “friendly” gangs. |*|

“In labeling the sponsorship of favorite proxies and ethnic-kin vigilantism as “community policing,” politicians and law enforcement agencies in Indonesia put a new face over the past decade on old practices. Often underwritten with a lot of money, such “community” initiatives and “community partners” would receive official blessing to cleanse areas, such as Tanah Abang in Jakarta, of ethnic and business rivals. At the same time, in a classic Mansur Olson fashion, the repression waves have made membership in a gang all the more valuable: those without membership and sponsorship would be more vulnerable to arrest and have more difficulties obtaining patronage. Within certain bounds, gang membership would materially, politically, and psychologically empower marginalized individuals, while, paradoxically, by reinforcing the pressures toward gang membership within the slums, gang leaders and politicians as well as police and military officials would profit from the repressive anti-gang campaings. |*|

Terrorism and Indonesian Urban Gangs

Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institute wrote: “What may perhaps be changing in that nexus is its increasing interaction with terrorism in Indonesia. While still much less violent and virulent than in South Asia or the Middle East, Indonesia’s salafi terrorist groups have been experiencing a certain revival over the past several years – reinvigorated by the influx of refugees from the Middle East, funded by Saudi Wahhabi money for two decades, and at least indirectly fostered by the apathy and meekness of Indonesia’s government and politicians over the past several years when it comes to speaking up against the kind of Islamization that oppresses ethnic minorities and undermines individual human rights. [Source: Vanda Felbab-Brown, Brookings Institute, February 6, 2013 |*|]

One of Indonesia’s counterterrorism policies of the early 2000s (which have been widely heralded as very effective) has been to throw arrested terrorist group members into the same poorly-controlled general population prison facilities that are used to incarcerate the preman and other criminals. The consequence has been that the criminals and terrorists have been fraternizing and establishing conspiratorial relations.[19] During several recent terrorist attacks in Indonesia, the various terrorist groups have used ex-criminals and criminal gangs both for logistical support and conduct of actual terrorist operations – though the recent terrorist attacks have been highly unsuccessful from the perspective of the terrorist groups and generated minimal casualties and damage. |*|

“Overall, these crime-terror connections in Indonesia remain very low level and not very frequent: the salafi terrorist groups, organized crime, urban gangs, and the preman continue to be distinct nonstate actors, very differently connected to and differently antagonistic toward the Indonesian state. The big question is whether eventually, perhaps as a result of their interactions with the terrorist groups, the Indonesian criminal gangs will throw off the reins of their political overlords and strike out far more on their own, and perhaps far more violently, as the gangs do in Latin America, or whether the formal political system in Indonesia will manage to maintain the delicate balancing act of using the urban gangs and criminal groups for its own purposes, while keeping their power in check. |*|

Indonesian Student Gang Fights

Tawuran, the culture of student brawling, has been going in Indonesia for more than two decades. Jack Hewson of Al Jazeera wrote: “ High school students have gathered before and after class to hack and beat each other, often fatally, since the early 1990s. Public buses containing students from rival schools are often attacked, with innocent bystanders regularly becoming entangled in the violence. Spiked bats and machetes are common weapons of choice, but the use of acidic solution — in three reported high school incidents since the start of October — is a disturbing development.[Source: Jack Hewson, Al Jazeera, October 28, 2013 +/]

A student named “Jambrong said the most popular weapon in student brawls is a motor gear tied to the end of a karate belt. "You get someone in the head with that and it'll rip it up pretty bad. There are no rules to tawuran, there's no code. You just have to have the guts. If you dare to kill, then kill, if not you will be scarred. I got hurt a couple of times."+/

“The startling ferocity of violence between students has taken a heavy human toll. In 2011 there were 339 student brawls nationwide resulting in 82 deaths, up from 37 deaths in 1999, according to media reports. Obtaining authoritative statistics for 2013 is difficult, but both police sources and students claim both the violence and death-rate is now declining in Jakarta. "I don't personally know anyone who has died so far this year. When you fight the most important thing is to not go down. If you get knocked down and there are a lot of other guys, that's when you can die," Jambrong said.

“Despite his claim to no longer be involved in the clashes, Jambrong, who graduated in 2012, still hangs out by Muhammidiyah SMA to "look out" for younger students after class finishes at midday. Jambrong's alpha presence attracted the palpable admiration of a retinue of younger teenagers, and the nervous glances of passing bus passengers as he sat on his motorbike next to his former school. Whether by direct order or indirectly — through bragging about former fighting glories — it is the alumni that dictate the passing down of the tradition to junior students. +/

Spikes in violence are anticipated at the beginning of the Indonesian school year, in June and July, to coincide with the initiation of new students."The sense of hatred between the schools is actually inherited from the alumni. Those values are transmitted to the juniors during their first two weeks of school," said national police commissioner Adrianus Meliala. "There is a conformity in Indonesia, and Indonesian high school students are arguably more susceptible to the demands of conformity than other countries. Because this is the East, it's part of eastern culture.”

Acid Attacks by Indonesian Student Gangs

Recently, tTawuran' has become increasingly violent with the use of acid. Reporting from Jakarta, Jack Hewson of Al Jazeera wrote: “As Ridwan Nur stepped through the side-door of the crowded state bus, Tyo al-Farabi knew there would be trouble. Tyo had never met Ridwan, known locally as Tompel. But stuck in east Jakarta's crawling morning traffic he had seen him by the roadside gathering with students from a rival high school — a sign, in his experience, that an attack was imminent. Tompel carried with him nothing more offensive than a clear liquid in an open drink bottle. As he boarded the bus he launched the solution at Tyo's face. Fortunately, Tyo's instinct was to turn away. "Suddenly I felt a burning on my neck and shoulders, extremely hot. And then there was just screaming," the 15-year-old said. [Source: Jack Hewson, Al Jazeera, October 28, 2013 +/]

“The solution that had been emptied onto him and 13 other passengers was a powerful hydrochloric acid. "Me and a woman standing next to me got it worst, we were just a metre away from the door. I'm lucky I turned around, but she got it in her face and in her eyes," Tyo said, now recovering at his home in Tebet, south Jakarta. "I've not seen her since the hospital, but I've heard she may have been blinded." Tompel is now awaiting trial and if found guilty, will face a jail sentence of up to five years. +/

“Four students from Muhammidiyah Technical College (SMK), central Jakarta, sustained neck burns after being attacked by 10 students on motorcycles with an acid solution on October 11. Four junior high school students waiting outside an elementary school were injured, two seriously, after reportedly having Molotov cocktails mixed with an acid solution thrown at them by assailants on motorbikes in Ciamis, West Java, on October 13. +/

"I never used acid when I was fighting. But people are using it because of the police sweeps," Jambrong, a 19-year-old alumnus of Muhammidiyah High School (SMA), central Jakarta, said. "With a samurai sword or a machete — you need a big bag and the police will find it. But you can get acid easily. You can buy it in building supply stores or technical stores. No one will ask you what it's for. You can even get it from the school lab. "It's hard to look for acid. You can just keep it in a plastic bottle — it's small and it looks anonymous." The student who committed the acid attacks, Tompel, had been involved in tawuran since he was 16-years-old, when he was asked by the seniors to fight. It's a kind of commitment test." +/

“Meliala said the timing of the sudden spate of acid attacks has been unusual as they have coincided with the preparation for mid-semester exams, when students are typically busy. Meliala, who is also a professor of criminology at the University of Indonesia, said the use of acid has less to do with a specific psychological motivation, and more to do with students having easy access to chemical substances. "Tompel said he didn't know why he used acid. I'm afraid of the copycat problem though," Adrianus said. "The more these stories are published the more there is a desire to replicate that kind of behavior." +/

“His words will provide little reassurance for Tyo whose back will be permanently scarred from his injuries. He has written off the incident as a misfortune which he must accept, but as the tradition of tawuran spirals on, his anxiety about a future attack remains. "Every time I get on that bus route now I feel tense. You never know if something like that could happen again," he said. +/

Police Efforts to Crack Down on Indonesian Student Gang Fights

Jack Hewson of Al Jazeera wrote: “Responding to the string of incidents, Jakarta Deputy Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama announced the introduction of a compulsory "home study" period between 7pm and 9pm — effectively a curfew. Critics say the measures — to be trialed in Jakarta this month — are unlikely to affect student brawls that usually occur in the daytime. [Source: Jack Hewson, Al Jazeera, October 28, 2013 +/]

“In recent years schools have been instructed to tighten their regulations and expel students who are found to be involved in tawuran. Adrianus claims improved policing and the introduction of school police representatives — students appointed to discourage and report those involved — has also helped to curb the violence. +/

“Despite these measures it seems unlikely that Indonesia's historically lax policing will disrupt the tawuran tradition. "In areas where there is a lot of student violence, the public actually retaliates by chasing students who are involved in the fighting and then grabbing them and taking them to the police. "It's good to create that kind of vigilante situation, because if we depend upon the police, then the police are usually quite late arriving on the crime scene," Adrianus said.

Indonesian Boy Beaten by Police and Convicted for Stealing Old Sandals

In 2012, a teenager in Palu in central Sulawesi was convicted of stealing old sandals but then was set free after the case drew international headlines. Abdy Mari of Associated Press reported: “An Indonesian court found a boy guilty of stealing a pair of worn-out sandals but allowed him to go free in a case that captured headlines and focused attention on the country’s uneven judicial system. [Source: Abdy Mari, Associated Press, January 4, 2012 ~~]

Hundreds of people who packed the court building in Central Sulawesi’s capital screamed with dissatisfaction as the judge read the verdict. Most of the onlookers had brought pairs of used sandals and piled them outside the courtroom to express their frustration over the legal system. Some rallied outside the building ahead of the hearing to demand the 15-year-old boy’s acquittal. The boy, who cannot be named because of his age, could have received five years in prison — the same sentence given to many terrorists, drug pushers and rapists. “Based on facts and testimony during the trial, the defendant was proven to have violated the law by committing theft,” Judge Rommel Tampubolon said. He ordered that the boy be returned to his parents for counseling. ~~

“The boy was accused of taking the sandals in November 2010 near a boarding house used by police. Six months later he was interrogated and badly beaten by three police officers who accused him of theft. One officer, Sgt. Ahmad Rusdi Harahap, claimed the sandals were his and took the teenager to criminal court. The boy was not detained. When shown the sandals at the trial, however, Harahap said they were the wrong brand and size. ~~

“Judge Tampubolon ruled the boy was guilty of theft, even though the sandals did not belong to the policeman. “We are really disappointed,” said Sofyan Farid Lembah of the local office of the National Commission for Child Protection. “We will ask the Judicial Commission to probe the judge.” Lembah earlier organized the first collection of sandals which were presented to police as a symbol of protest over the case. Thousands later joined in the sandal donation protest in Palu, Jakarta and many other cities. Two of the boy’s friends testified in the trial that he was beaten up by the officer with a piece of wood. They said he was also kicked, causing him to fall into a steep trench.

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Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Global Viewpoint (Christian Science Monitor), Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.

Last updated June 2015


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