Indonesia election: Mother can’t forgive or forget killings

Once a week for 17 years Maria Catarina Sumarsih has staged a protest over the 1998 murder of her son by state security forces.

Maria Catarina Sumarsih holds weekly protests near Indonesia's presidential palace.

Once a week for 17 years Maria Catarina Sumarsih has staged a silent protest outside central Jakarta’s state palace over the 1998 murder of her university student son by state security forces seeking to crush resistance to the late Suharto’s collapsing regime.

The former civil servant is part of a Kamisan (Thursday) protest movement of parents and student activists that has urged successive Indonesian governments to resolve outstanding human rights abuse cases arising from the student-led democratic uprising against the 32-year dictatorship.

Ms Sumarsih’s 20-year-old son Bernardus (Wawan) Realino Norma Irawan was among 17 students shot dead by security forces in the student massacre at Jakarta’s Atma Jaya University, one of several to occur at campuses around the country.

He was helping other injured students when he was shot through the heart and lungs with what an autopsy later determined was a military grade bullet.

On Wednesday, she joined millions of Indonesians at polling stations around the country in the world’s single biggest one day election exercise.

But instead of casting a vote for the country’s next president, Ms Sumarsih is among many Indonesians who will Golput this election, the Indonesian colloquialism for an informal vote.

“From one election to another, it only produces power-hungry officials and rulers,” she told The Australian at a local polling station in west Jakarta.

“Now many people are pessimistic. I meet people at Wawan’s grave, meat vendors at the market, Grab drivers – all of them say, ‘What’s the point of elections if they just end up corrupting once in power?’

“It has been acknowledged by the state that (frontrunner presidential candidate) Prabowo Subianto committed serious human rights violations. It was acknowledged by Jokowi himself, yet he’s being paired with his eldest son, Gibran,” she added.

The 72-year-old current defence minister is a former special forces commander whose unit was accused of kidnapping, torturing and disappearing democracy activists before the fall of Suharto, and of committing human rights abuses in East Timor. He denies any involvement with the disappearances.

Prabowo is also alleged to have incited deadly riots targeting ethnic Chinese Indonesian communities in Jakarta during the Asian Financial Crisis.

In west Jakarta’s Glodok neighbourhood on Wednesday – the scene of those 1998 riots, arson and mass gang rapes – some voters were unwilling to discuss a preferred candidate or even the issues of most importance to them this election.

Sri Yuniati was five months pregnant with her first child when riots broke out down the road from her house, trapping her inside for more than a week as hell broke loose across the neighbourhood.

“It was very dangerous and very hard to find food or milk,” she told The Australian.

“We couldn’t leave the house.”

The now-51-year-old admits she is concerned at the prospect of a Prabowo presidency.

Like the rest of her family, she was backing trailing presidential candidate Ganjar Pranowo, the former governor of central Java backed by the pluralist Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle.

With every poll suggesting Prabowo is destined for victory, however, Ms Sumarsih said she was resigned to the likelihood that there would be an accelerated effort to erase all record of past human rights abuses committed by the state.

Memories are already fading fast, judging by the defence minister’s popularity this campaign among younger generations who either don’t know or don’t care about past atrocities.

Prabowo’s campaign team has worked hard to soften the former strongman’s image and to rebrand him as a defender of Indonesian pluralism and democracy.

But like many Indonesians who bore the brunt of Suharto-era state violence, Ms Sumarsih is not buying it.

“Eventually, the people will bear the consequences of their choices,” she said.

“People should not regret it if he resorts to violence again.”