Tawuran: My School and the Honored Tradition of Street Fighting

“Oh look, Upacara (flag ceremony) on the Thursday.”

That was my first sleep-deprived thought as I groggily stepped off my motorbike to head to my first period class. But I knew something was off. And then it hit me: Upacara is only on Mondays. Passing by hordes of students lining up for the ceremony, I walked towards a flock of teachers who were talking excitedly among themselves. “Bu,” I asked one of teachers, “What’s happening? Why are we having Upacara on Thursday?” This is what she told me:

Yesterday after school, several hundred students from SKN5 (my school), had gone over to SMA2, a rival school, in order to fight students there. Before anything could happen, the police arrived and started to disperse the students, catching some of them and roughing up more than a few. “But why would our students do that?” I asked her, surprised by the aggression of the usually-cheerful students at my school. She chuckled,

“Oh, this go on for a long time. SMK5 and SMA2 fight for many years.”

“But why this time they fight?”

“I think social media, they fight because of that. You understand?”

“No, not really. Who said what on social media?”

“I think SMA2 students write that SMK5 students are poor, come from village, and cause trouble. You know, fighting, lazy, like that.”

I found this whole scenario strange. From what I could make out, SMA2 students had posted messages on anonymous social media site Secret attacking SMK5 students. They had responded by rallying the troops and heading over to SMA2 for a large-scale street fight until the cops showed up. Stranger still was an almost victorious spirit in the air: several teachers even admitted to me that they were secretly proud of our students for standing up for themselves.

Eventually, the headmaster of our school stood up to the podium and addressed the students on the previous day’s occurrence. From what I could tell, it was a message of non-violence, using your head and not your fists to solve problems, etc. Several times during his speech, the students cheered him enthusiastically. They love cheering. Afterwards, a company of police officers were introduced by the headmaster and, after shaking all of us teachers’ hands, gave their own talk about what had transpired. At the end, they asked several students to come up and offer solutions as how the police can better help in these situations (opposed to, you know, roughing them up). To the cheers of their classmates, several older boys instantly sprang up and walked over to the police officer. The advice of one beefy-looking upper-classmen was particularly good: “Tell SMA2 not to post things anonymously on social media about us. BE A MAN and put it on Twitter!”

The whole situation just felt bizarre. When I asked students and teachers what had first started the feud between the schools, mostly I got shrugged shoulders. It was so long ago, no one really knew or even really cared. One teacher proposed that back in the day, SMK5 didn’t have female students as it is a vocational school and probably they would go to other school to date girls, causing problems. That seemed reasonable. But why school-wide street fighting? Was it unique to these schools or was it fairly common?

After a very brief investigation, I found the answer. Not only were school-to-school fights common throughout Indonesia, it was something of a coming-of-age ritual for junior and senior high students. There was even a term for it: Tawuran. Even though it was more common (and far more violent) in urban areas such as Jakarta, tawuran has occurred all throughout Indonesia, causing 82 deaths in 2011. Why was it so widespread? The best answer I could find was this: it’s very, very complicated. There are environmental, cultural, sociological, socioeconomic factors at play. But probably the most significant factor is sense of loyalty and collective responsibility Indonesian students strongly feel towards their school community.

This made sense to me. Concerning my school, it is a vocational institution, which means students learn a trade while studying and usually go straight into the workforce after graduation. It also means that generally, they come from a lower socioeconomic status and are perceived as less intelligent, less successful as non-vocational school students. Which, I must say, is totally false- some of my students are brilliant. But I may be a little biased.. SMA2, on the other hand, is a regular public school which, although not considered the top school in Banjarmasin, is fairly successful academically, and students tend to come from middle/upper-middleclass families. Add a past feud to the cocktail (regardless of whether anyone remembers what it’s about) and there you have it: a violent student cause worth fighting for.

Later in the day, I ran into one of my students who had missed English Club, which had taken place during the time of the Event. “Hey there ___, where were you on Wednesday? You were at SMA2, weren’t you?” I asked him.

“No Mr. Chris, sorry I could not make it. I sick.”

“_____, you can tell me the truth. You were there, weren’t you?”

(Smiling broadly) “Yes Mr. Chris, I there. Sorry I not come to English Club.”

“It’s okay. You know fighting isn’t the way to solve problems, right?”

(Still smiling) “Yes, I know. Thank you.”

“Um….Ok. See you next week.”

I would’ve made an awful school counselor.

A Most Unfortunate Murder

*A caution: this post includes some graphic details.

“Hey you know Pak Ambia dead?!”

At first, my mind didn’t register the text I received last week from one of my co-teachers. As Banjarmasin is currently entrenched in wet season, I was lounging on my bed during a heavy rain storm in something of a hazy semi-consciousness. “Wait…. who… Pak Ambia…. What?!” The words worked me over like a cold bucket bath, snapping me out of my dazed ennui. Pak Ambia taught Indonesian at the school I work at and had been one of the first people to acquaint me with Banjarmasin when I first arrived, showing up (usually late) at my house to accompany me to school and take me to futsol matches with students. I gradually spent less time with him as my grant progressed, but I had always known him to be a friendly, amiable fellow who seemed especially popular with students at our school.

Before I could text back, my phone vibrated with an incoming call from another teacher. Foregoing the usual greetings, she went straight to business: “Hi Chris, you know about Pak Ambia?!” “Yes Bu, I already..” “He dead! They find him his house!” She proceeded to give me the rest of facts that were known up to that point. He hadn’t shown up to school that day and no one had seen him for the past few days. A neighbor had smelled something, thinking it was a dead rat, had gone inside his house to find his body sprawled out on his bed; he clearly had been dead for some days. Then she asked me if I wanted to go visit his house, as he lived on the outskirts of my neighborhood and it seemed they were still in the process of removing the body. Without hesitation, I firmly said no. Unsurprisingly, she didn’t want to either.

The next day, students were sent home early in deference to Pak Ambia’s unfortunate passing, but in his place remained a question that itched inside everyone’s mind: what happened? The next few days were a swirl of hushed conversations among teachers at the school. Many were clearly aware that we had been on friendly terms when I had first arrived at SMKN5 and wanted to know whether we had still spent time together, and what I thought had happened, as if I had some insight into his strange, brutal death. Shortly afterward, one local newspaper stated that suicide had been ruled out. Judging from the rope still around his neck when his body was located, he had been strangled. Also, several of his valuables were missing, including his wallet, cellphone, and CBR motorcycle- one which I had ridden on occasionally.

As to the reason to why he was murdered, the conjectures were all over the place. Allegedly, Pak Ambi was bisexual, something very much stigmatized in this community, and over coffee a friend of mine explained to me that it was probably a jealous boyfriend. “Um.. why is that?” I asked. “Oh, it’s happened before, she explained. “The gay community here is more jealous because it’s smaller.”I wasn’t so sure of her reasoning, but it’s not like it could be ruled out. “Money lenders,” claimed a fellow teacher. “He owed much money and couldn’t pay.”

Regardless of the reason, one thing was very clear: people here are far less flighty when it comes to graphic details than the general American public (or so we would like to believe). By the next day, my host-sister had heard all about the murder from university friends and a photo of the victim’s blackened face was already making its rounds on social media. “Do you want to see?” She asked me. “No, and neither should you!” I retorted. The truth is that yes, I did want to see it. Why? Because as much as we’d like to deny it, it’s in our nature to be drawn to the grotesque. Later in the week, a co-teacher showed it to me and yes, it was absolutely horrifying. Furthermore, even though the local newspaper mercifully spared its readers the image, it did go into detail concerning the amount of days he had been dead due to the maggots around his body. Somehow, I doubt such details would have appeared in the NY Times concerning a similar situation. I made a similar observation when living in Thailand. It was a rare day that I didn’t pick up a local newspaper and see a full-color photo of a corpse on the front page. Sometime it was a few pages in.

After about a week, I received another text. Two students from another school had been arrested for Pak Ambia’s murder and were now in jail. When I went to school the next morning, although my colleagues were more than willing to talk about it, my questions as to why they murdered Pak Ambia were met with the same ambiguity I received when asking about specific measurements of time. “Why did they murder him?” I asked. “Because of revenge,” they declared. “But why revenge?” I persisted. “Why you always ask why?” was the response.

It wasn’t until I went home later and Google translated the newspaper article that what had occurred became clear. The high student claim to have been sodomized by Pak Ambia. By his account On Saturday night, the male student had returned to Pak Ambia’s house to get his jacket, Pak Ambia ran a salon from the bottom, and leading the boy into his room, proceeded to rape him. Afterwards, the student found a rope in the bathroom and used it to strangle him. Fleeing the house, he returned later with his brother (the translated article confused gender articles) to clean up and make it appear as a robbery.

After reading this, I just felt sadness. Deep sadness for the male student and what he experienced. No one should ever have to go through that. But also sadness for Pak Ambia.  I mourn for someone who, despite not knowing him very well, was always generous, pleasant and welcoming towards me. Clearly, he was wrestling with some pretty serious demons in his life, but who isn’t? Who can honestly say they are not capable of evil, selfish things?

I know I can’t.