Marianne Kearney, Jakarta – Three years after the shooting of four student protesters from the elite Trisakti University which sparked days of rioting and led to the downfall of ex-President Suharto, the course of Indonesian reform history remains unchanged.

General Wiranto's promise to find out who was responsible for the May 12, 1998 shooting of the students, and to bring at least one military officer to court, is still unfulfilled even after two parliamentary probes.

Fellow Trisakti students such as Mr Usman said the student leaders of the reform movement had been sacrificed in vain. "There have been no significant changes in Indonesia if we look at the student demands at that time," he said. Mr Usman is now campaigning for a legal inquiry into the shootings.

He cites a long list of reasons: the failure of the new government to remove the military's role from politics, last year's amendment to the Constitution which effectively grants immunity for past human rights abuses and the almost total failure to prosecute former President Suharto and his cronies for numerous cases of corruption.

However, relatives of the slain students say the deaths sparked the first steps towards reforms. "It gave a space for total reform, for the reform of the executive and legislative organisations," Mr Subaneng Rustriantono, the uncle of slain student Hendriawan Sie, said.

But, as many students admit, the achievements of the student movement have been modest since those heady days of 1998 – mainly because the students' definition of reformasi was too vague or too varied.

"We thought before that once Suharto stepped down everything would be better. Now there's a lot of small Suhartos and we know that we have to get rid of not just him but the system," Mr Pranowo Adi, a University of Indonesia student, said.

Both Mr Pranowo and Mr Usman said the student movement was losing its role as a moral force. "We have no common enemies now. Some student elements are very different, some want Gus Dur to resign but others are not pro or contra," says Mr Usman.

As Mr Ed Aspinall, an Australian academic who studies student movements, pointed out, such movements around the world are generally temporary and sporadic and do not last more than one or two years. After that, students just move on, he said.

But Mr Billy Indriaysiah, a former student activist who became involved in election education, argued that the student movement had simply diversified and moved on. It was looking at other ways of changing the political landscape, he said.

He added that students who had joined non-government election monitoring groups had organised a massive education campaign across Indonesia. But these kind of campaigns only bring about gradual changes and not spectacular ones.

Students like him who have joined other non-governmental groups are now focusing on educating people about the role of the Consultative Assembly and the Parliament, the Constitution amendment and land reform.

Mr Supardian from Sylva, a student group at West Kalimantan's main university, said issues such as the trial of Mr Suharto no longer interested him. Instead, he and his fellow student activists try to draw attention to local issues, especially corruption. Sylva has gained a reputation as one of the most effective and dynamic student groups in Kalimantan, through its fight against the timber industry.