School teachers should acknowledge bullying in their school grounds and take action to prevent physical and psychological damage, a top child protection commission official says.
Deputy chairman of the Indonesian Commission for Child Protection, Magdalena Sitorus, on Tuesday said schools often denied that bullying happened in their school grounds in order to protect their image, therfore nurturing a bullying culture.
On the sidelines of a seminar on school bullying, Magdalena said there were no schools that were 100 percent free from bullying.
"The level varies from intimidation to violence," Magdalena told the participants of the seminar.
"Some high schools have seniors ordering new students to fight other schools in brawls," said the head of NGO Sejiwa, Diena Haryana.
There are also incidents of kidnapping by students - girls kidnapping a girl - and the victim being stripped naked."
Sejiwa is an organization specializing in efforts to eliminate bullying in schools.
Diena said all the incidents happened in Jakarta high schools.
"There have been three separate kidnapping cases," she said.
Diena refused to disclose the schools involved.
In South Jakarta, school brawls between SMA 70 and SMA 6 have become a 20-year-old tradition.
Diena said the schools that have a strong tradition of bullying of juniors by seniors are the most difficult to approach.
"It is time for the schools to open up and address the problems of bullying," she said.
In addition to seniors, school teachers often bully students either through public humiliation, pulling a their ears or slapping students across the face.
Diena said victims could feel depressed and refuse to go to school, while the people who bullied would use aggression to solve problems in the future.
The commission received 86 reports of violence in school in 2008. In 39 percent of the cases, the teachers were the perpetrators.
In 2008, reports on violence in schools dropped drastically from 555 reports in 2007, where 11.8 percent of the violence was done by teachers.
Magdalena said the drop in the number of reports did not necessarily reflect the decline of violence in schools.
"It just means the number of people actually reporting the violence has dropped significantly," she said.
Sejiwa has worked with 200 schools across Indonesia in anti-bullying programs.
Magdalena said teachers should be trained to handle bullying at schools. They should also learn what penalties to impose on students caught bullying other students.
Students should be included in campaigns against bullying.
Magdalena said teachers should routine patrol school premises suspected to be used as places where students are bullied, such as toilets and cafeteria.
In 2007, a SMA 34 high school student was suffered bone fractures after being beaten up by his seniors in the school's toilets.
