Michael Vatikiotis, Jakarta – Every city has a heart; Jakarta's is a concrete overpass called Semanggi – the Indonesian word for cloverleaf. Its place in the nation's history far outweighs its mundane function of funneling traffic north and south, east and west. Indonesia's most recent popular revolution was born beneath this massive, mildewed concrete overpass, when the people confronted the army and stopped autocracy in its tracks.

I recall walking toward Semanggi late one afternoon in mid-November 1998, on another chaotic day in Indonesia's messy democratic transition. Up ahead, students were protesting new emergency powers for the army, their anger directed at a political elite that had failed in the months since the end of the Suharto dictatorship to realize that democracy was at hand. Calls for reform, which had helped oust President Suharto in May, had turned into furious demands for revolution.

Not quite in the shadow of the overpass stood a phalanx of troops, with shields and plated body armor that made them shine like beetles in the sunlight. Just in front of them, untidy rows of students waving fists and banners stood their ground. I could barely make out their chants – something like "revolution or death."

Alongside me were office workers, shop assistants and residents from nearby neighborhoods, curious to see the outcome of this confrontation.

Suddenly shots rang out. They sounded like innocent firecrackers. Ahead of me I saw the students first heave then scatter. There was more firing. People around me hit the ground to take cover. I crouched behind a granite pillar that was part of a modern office tower that suddenly seemed incongruous – for surely Indonesia had just taken a step back in time.

Today there is no memorial or sign to mark the spot where as many as 16 students died, only the memories of people who live near Semanggi. Ahmad sells laksa, a pungent curry noodle soup, along a small lane in the city's Bendungan Hilir market, only a short distance from Semanggi. He and his friends at an open-air coffee stall recall the day the soldiers charged the students.

"They were supposed to be using plastic bullets, but I saw the holes they made in people," Ahmad said. He described how the students came pouring into the market area after the troops opened fire, and found ready shelter among the people as soldiers roamed the era hunting down and beating the demonstrators.

Those were chaotic, mysterious times in this gritty city of 12 million. Students roamed the streets in rowdy bands, or atop great cavalcades of city buses; there was always a march or convoy streaming across Semanggi in one direction or other. Parliament sits near by. Just a stone's throw away is the dusty Atma Jaya University campus, where troops lobbed tear gas and shot at students later that night on Nov. 13, 1998.

There was more to come the following year when students again massed around the intersection's sharp-angled arches to oppose the nomination of B.J. Habibie as president, and troops again fired on them. Ten more students died.

These incidents have gone down in history as "Semanggi One" and "Semanggi Two." There have been attempts to bring the army to justice; Indonesia's human rights commission set up an inquiry in 2001. More than a dozen army and police officers were cited for abuses, but the military refused to acknowledge any violation of human rights, arguing that its soldiers acted to prevent mass unrest.

Parliament agreed back then and the case was dropped. But in July this year the newly elected Parliament's committee on legal affairs determined that the case should be reopened with a view to identifying who in the senior army leadership was responsible. Some say this is all about politics, not justice.

Semanggi itself is now as busy as ever. When the traffic jams up the police try frantically to keep it moving with maniacal arm waving and whistle-blowing. Nowadays I pass in an air-conditioned vehicle – but the memories are vivid. There is the spot where a soldier leveled his gun at me as I hurried to join the students at the Atma Jaya campus; there is the place I saw the lifeless body of a student lying in a dark pool of blood. I feel a surge of pride because it was here that autocracy died and democracy, however imperfect, was born.

Ahmad, the laksa seller, sips a glass of coffee and adjusts his black felt cap. "Things are better now," he said. "The soldiers are gone." Then he smiles: "Only the police bother us now."

[Michael Vatikiotis is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.]