Jakarta – A group of students arrested for staging a "happening art performance" against ex-president Soeharto in South Jakarta last week, yesterday made a mockery out of their trial, by wearing Soeharto masks and cracking jokes throughout proceedings.
But the judge at South Jakarta District Court, Sutan Mangun, was not amused. If anything, he was extremely angered by the students' humorous antics.
The 32 students from the University of Indonesia were arrested on Friday morning for staging their "happening art" in Semanggi without permission from police. Of the students at the trial, 28 wore masks of Soeharto's beguiling smiling face.
Judge Mangun became angry at the beginning of the court session, because when he called out the name of each suspect, to ensure they were all present, each student replied: "Hey judge, you still haven't called Soeharto yet. He's the real suspect." And the jesting students fell about with laughter.
Smiling reporters had to suppress their laughter, fearing they would be thrown out for contempt of court and miss the hilarious proceedings.
Mangun said the court session would not continue until the students took off their masks, but the students said they would only do so if the real Soeharto is dragged to court first.
They want the corpulent Soeharto tried for the rampant corruption, collusion, nepotism and mysterious killings that flourished during his 32-year autocratic rule. "He's the main suspect, not us," said Sunarto, one of the students.
Mangun became more aggravated and warned the students that the penalty for staging a demonstration without permission is one month in jail and a fine of Rp2,000 (27 US cents) each.
The students said they couldn't understand why police arrested them, because they had not been staging a protest, but had merely performed some street theater.
The performance lasted one hour, during which the students used 100 puppets depicting the loathed Soeharto in various positions. They also drew attention to the many decrees issued by Soeharto that enabled his corrupt children and cronies to get rich.
The students said their performance did not disturb traffic, and the police who arrested them were stupid imbeciles, because they had no appreciation of art.
One of the witnesses who testified against the students, First Lieutenant Mujiono, told the judge the "demonstration" lasted for two hours. He was immediately booed and ridiculed by the students.
"He's a liar. It is was only a happening art performance and it lasted for only one hour," said one student.
As proceedings continued, the students completely ignored the judge and other court officials, and chatted noisily among themselves.
The frazzled judge finally said the trial will resume next week, but none of the students were listening to him. After the session, friends of the arrested students went to the office of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation to protest against the arrests and trial.