The exasperating scenes of elderly women gasping for air and space have been beamed into our collective memories and consciousness through the power of the media (e.g. TV and newspapers).
This tragedy has touched a strand of humanity in and among us. The death of 21 poor women in a stampede to get Rp 30,000 worth of alms from a rich family in Pasuruan, East Java, is very saddening.
Who would not be moved by images of elderly women succumbing to these external forces that pushed them to that excruciating end?
They were helplessly struggling, grasping and longing for something that was not theirs. And then, some of them gave up struggling. They stopped grasping and longing for something that was not theirs.
In the end, 21 women lost their lives. For all we know, these women might have been struggling, grasping and longing their whole lives.
What is the value of Rp 20,000 or Rp 30,000?
The elderly women have their own calculations, beyond our standards and economic understanding. They know its worth more than the giver, economist or anyone who has millions or billions of rupiah.
There is no doubt in my mind that what happened last Sept. 15 was violence. It was both direct and structural violence. Direct violence occurs when physical harm is done. Structural violence, on the other hand, happens when harmful conditions are created for some sectors of population which are marginalized and disadvantaged.
Notably, victims of these kinds of violence are normally the elderly, women, children and minorities. Our society today is characterized by unjust and unequal structures that engender and cause violence. When politicians steal money from the coffers of the government, they deprive the elderly, women, children and minorities from adequate and responsive social services.
When employers do not give their workers living wages, they deny the rights of workers to a decent living. When governments favor one ethnicity, religion, class or gender, they deny people of those groupings a fighting chance to be productive and contribute to national development or to work with and for their own governments.
These narratives present systemic violence of societal unjust and unequal structures. Their justification and rationalization may be difficult to ponder, but the existence of these structures could not be denied. One does not have to be a genius to point out the obvious results of these unjust and unequal structures. This is why, evidently, the world is mired and engulfed with exploitation, human rights violations, violence, landlessness and a lack of access to social services.
Even our relationships with others are shaped by these structures. Some examples of these relationships are the unfair labor practices of an employer toward his or her workers; substandard services to our clients or customers; manipulative and abusive treatment of our partners, friends or family members; and a superior view of ourselves compared to others.
What makes a violent structure are these hierarchical relationships and vertical inequalities that tip the balance of power and impede the satisfaction of basic human needs of others.
The gap between the rich and poor is widening. It is not that the poor are not trying real hard to eke out a decent living and extricate themselves from abject poverty. It is that certain societal structures limit their options and opportunities for social mobilization and gainful activities.
While the hierarchical relationships between and among social groups are enduring and strongly embedded in a social system, structural change needs to create social strain, conflict and disequilibrium between and among groups to make the relationships more horizontal.
The Sept. 15 tragedy may be the necessary strain and trigger point to inspire and motivate people to struggle against structural violence. A structural change will entail an action and task that necessitates purposive and cognitive behavior.
The first task is networking -- which links to outside the oppressive structure. Civil society groups can potentially be links for the poor.
Second is political education which can adopt Freire's conscientization (critical consciousness). Education of this kind will bring empowerment in their midst. Third is mobilization which is characterized by a collective action to challenge the unjust and unequal relationships and social arrangement.
We are moved by the death of the 21 poor women, to reconfigure and rethink our own relationships with others -- especially those in need; and to challenge the structures that make our elderly women queue for long hours and sacrifice their lives.
We can not and should not be part of these structures that bring violence to our women and children. We should be building structures that are just and fair, and that make it unnecessary to queue and beg for something that we are already entitled to.
The writer is an intern at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta and a graduate student of International Peace Studies at University for Peace in Costa Rica and Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. He can be reached via his blog (http://mensab.wordpress.com).
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