Emmy Fitri – The word "preman" is believed to come from the English words "free man," to describe someone who has no master.
In our city, of course, preman, or street thugs, have long been associated with gangs, petty crime, extortion and debt collecting.
At the Senen bus station in Jakarta, for instance, a cigarette vendor says he spares one or two packs of smokes each day as a "jatah preman," or allotment for local thugs.
"It depends on what you sell, if it's bottled water, you set aside five or ten bottles as a loss. It's for the thugs," said Umar Besar, who has been selling smokes in the station since 2007.
On the streets, jatah preman is a mutually understood path to harmony – a payoff for a sort of peace. "We don't see it as it extortion. We know them well and it's already like family," Umar said of the shakedowns. He admitted, however, that for small guys like him the preman tax is painful.
Umar counts himself lucky to have missed the darker days of preman dominance in the 1990s, when the bus station was home to thugs who drank, carried on with prostitutes and even killed people in the area. Now, one barely notices the thugs, at least during daylight hours.
In the evening, streetlights and better security have made the vicinity less of a gang haven. But if low-scale strong-arming has decreased in some places, that does not mean the preman have gone away. Indeed, some say gangs are stronger than ever on Jakarta's streets.
In recent weeks, gangs have again grabbed headlines with the shooting and subsequent arrest of well-known gang leader John Kei late last month inside a Central Jakarta hotel, where police said he was taking drugs with former movie star Alba Fuad.
The gang leader was accused by police of being involved in the January murder of Tan Hari Tantono, the boss of a small steel company. Kei, who was shot in the leg by police during the shootout, denied the charges and his family said it planned to report the officers involved in the shooting.
In a seemingly unrelated incident, two days after Kei's arrest, two rival gangs battled in the early morning at the Gatot Subroto Army Hospital's funeral home, killing two people, injuring several and outraging lawmakers and other commentators.
Ruthless and organized
To most of us, this dark side of Jakarta's underworld – whether petty scams or shootouts – is a mystery we don't want to know about.
"Gangs are controlling Jakarta. They are ruthless and operate in the open, undermining police and other security forces," preman-turned-preacher Anton Medan told the Jakarta Globe in an interview. "It's scary if you know what really goes on," Anton said, recalling his gang days in the 1980s, before he was imprisoned and then repented.
Middle- and upper-class people only brush up against roughneck preman if they are being chased by debt collectors working for banks and loan sharks – or perhaps if they get caught up in one of the periodic brawls that erupt inside Jakarta's nightspots over protection money and turf.
In 2010, members of John Kei's gang, chiefly migrants from Maluku, traded blows inside the trendy Blowfish nightclub in Jakarta with some rival toughs from Flores, killing two people.
The two gangs, who vie for turf throughout the city, later fought a pitched battle outside the South Jakarta District Court, where suspects in the Blowfish case were on trial.
The Blowfish mess highlighted the role gangs allegedly play in providing security services both for legal nightspots and shadier underground businesses like gambling dens.
And while the affluent may turn a blind eye to the dark side, it cannot be separated from daily life in the city any more than traffic or pollution.
"They are very organized," said Anton, who keeps up his knowledge of the world he left behind. "They use legitimate youth organizations as a cover to recruit, train and deploy young people to be enforcers, debt collectors and assassins." "They are more dangerous because they have money, power and backing," he added.
Anton said organized thugs could be dealt with if the police had the will to do so. But the underlying problem, he added, is that the police and the military also have a history of using preman gangs for their own ends.
Bloody city
Battles over lucrative territory are a big part of the picture. When Basri Sangaji, one of John Kei's rivals in the gang world, was founded murdered in a Jakarta hotel in 2004, the crime was said to be part of a broader turf battle, and police linked Kei to the crime, saying debt collection was at stake. Kei escaped arrest at the time.
Other fights have erupted over control of illegal parking lots linked to criminal activity. The worst was the November 1998 Ketapang riot in West Jakarta, which claimed 14 lives and was said to be sparked by control of a gambling den and parking lots and involved rival gangs from Ambon and Flores, a division that continues to this day on Jakarta's streets.
Forensic expert Zulhasmar Syamsu called the Ketapang attacks "vicious and sadistic" at the time. Tragically, the violence also exploited religious differences in Maluku that continue to spark periodic upheaval in the region.
Past mistake
Under former President Suharto, security forces frequently used brutal measures to curb thuggery, resorting to what was called petrus (short for "penembakan misterius" or "mysterious shooting") to simply eliminate criminals.
Historian Bonnie Triyana called the tactic "too effective" since it not only had a deterrent effect on aspiring thugs but also left a legacy of excess that people still relate to. Modelled on similar military operations, the petrus sweeps were also liable to be used to settle local rivalries that had little to do with crime.
"Suppose you hate your neighbor who happened to have a tattoo, you could go and tell a nearby military post that there was a preman hovering around your neighborhood," said Bonnie, who is chief editor of Historia magazine and has written extensively on preman.
As an offshoot of the Suharto-era tactics, young people were recruited into various military-inspired organizations that later grew into new crime syndicates that used paramilitary uniforms and cooperated with security forces, said Bonnie.
Lately, there have been growing calls on social media for a tough, even extra-legal, crackdown on gangs due to the current wave of publicity. Bonnie warned against the lure of returning to past tactics to combat the seeming resurgence of preman in the aftermath of the Kei shooting and the shocking brawl inside the army hospital. He warned against using thugs to battle thugs, as Suharto did, because the end result will be to strengthen the criminals.
"Unless there is clean government and law enforcement, those thugs will still walk free whatever you do," Bonnie said.
[BeritaSatu.com's Ardi Mandiri contributed to the story.]