Jakarta – Thousands of students Wednesday peacefully marked the first anniversary of the shooting of their peers which triggered days of rioting and helped pressure former president Suharto to resign, as security was tightened in the capital in anticipation of street demonstrations.
Groups of soldiers and police were deployed along the main avenues expected to be used by student protesters, witnesses said.
At the main parking lot of the private Trisakti University, a series of events to mark the shooting anniversary was begun early Monday with the hoisting of the Indonesian flag at half mast. Flags were also flown at half mast in several campuses in Jakarta, the MS Tri private radio station said.
Security personnel shot into student protesters from Trisakti near their campus in west Jakarta on May 12, 1998, killing four students and injuring several others.
The shooting sparked widespread mass rioting in the capital that lasted for days, leaving more than 1,000 dead and massive destruction.
The unrest added to mounting public pressure on the government that finally led to the resignation of former president Suharto after 32 years in power.
Student groups from several universities have said they would take to the streets Wednesday to mark the Trisakti shootings despite a demand by Jakarta military commander, Major General Jaja Suparman, for the students to call off their plan.
"We are all heading to Trisakti first and from there we will hold a protest to the parliament," said Firman, an activist of the City Forum (Forkot) student group.
By noon, about 3,000 students, mostly Trisakti students in their blue jackets, had massed at the Trisakti compound. They witnessed a ceremony to cover the main building, on which steps two of the four victims had died, with a black cloth, and the laying of wreaths there.
The parents of the four victims also laid the corner stones for a planned monument to the incident to be erected at the parking lot of the university.
At noon, a group of some 150 students, carrying flower wreaths and the national flag, began to march on a tollway from the campus towards the parliament complex some four kilometres south.
But their advance was halted by a platoon of anti-riot police at the Tomang overpass at a main intersections some 1.5 kilometres from the campus.
A police officer told the demonstrators that the permit sought by the organisators of the ceremony at Trisakti from the police made no mention of a march.
Jakarta police chief Major General Nugroho Jayusman has warned that security authorities will ban mass rallies by students in the period leading to the June 7 elections, including on Wednesday, "to allow a peaceful atmosphere" in the Indonesian capital.
Students have said that street demonstrations were the most effective ways to press the military to conduct a thorough probe into the shooting. Students and rights activists have said that the authorities have not been serious in probing the incident.
An Indonesian military tribunal in August jailed two non-commissioned policemen for violating orders during the shooting 10 to four months jail.
But the trial, which began in June, shed no light on who the killers were as the two defendants were only guilty of disobeying orders and failing to prevent their subordinates from firing on the students.
The defence had also argued that only rubber bullets were issued to the defendants' subordinates not live ammunition.
Military officials have said that 18 soldiers, including nine officers will face courts martial over their involvement in the shooting but only the two non-commissioned police officers have been tried so far.