Every year on May 12 students gather to remember their fallen friends who were shot in 1998. The four Trisakti University students, the renown "Reform Heroes" were among others shot in separate incidents.

But what are the students marching for, apart from commemorating the memory of these heroes?

Low ranking soldiers were convicted for the crimes, so there was some closure for the losses.

But as time passes, it is likely that fewer of those students marching know that in the few days following May 12, 1998, some 1,000 died in the rioting in Jakarta and other cities - and to this day there has not been a single trial implicating anyone who may have been responsible for those terrible deaths.

Far from being upheld as the deaths of martyrs, most of these people barely rate a mention. The government's fact finding team concluded that many of the deceased had been trapped inside burning malls. Then there were the scores of women who died after being gang raped - right in the heart of our capital - citizens raping and killing citizens, with no soldiers or policeman lifting a finger. The fact finding team pointed to highly organized political crime amidst a power struggle, and urged further investigation.

To date we have chosen to move on, build our democracy and enjoy today's freedom - what else is there to do? Rape victims do not commonly speak up anyway; medics and parents who were willing to testify in public were intimidated into keeping their silence.

Survivors and relatives of the victims now and then remind us that they still demand a clear explanation of what happened to their loved ones, many of whom were stigmatized as looters and buried in unmarked graves. The mother of Mustafa is one such survivor, on Wednesday she displayed her son's picture in front of the East Jakarta mall where he was killed.

While we have not summoned up the courage or the means to confront the May tragedy and hold those responsible accountable (before anyone else follows Soeharto to a quiet exit), we still hope that the young preserve some clue as to what *reformasi' was all about.

Like our reaction to the preaching of the 1945 pre-independence generation, the next bunch of youth will select for themselves what is relevant to them from the *reformasi' movement.

The desires, built up over 30 years of an authoritarian government, were to end corruption and human rights abuses. The May riots, right in the heart of the capital, were blatant acts of sheer terror that supposedly demonstrated what the invisible power was capable of - or at least it ability to close its eyes to what looked on the surface like an uncontrollable mob.

Some of our recent laws and efforts for justice are witness to the aspirations of the reformasi generation - and our failures point to resistance against such demands for change. The law on the military and the earlier law on the police were intended to have professional security forces replace the latent terrorists we had running things. The law on education demands a much greater budgetary commitment to the molding of the young. Clean, good governance have become the key words of national and local administrations.

But every May, we reflect on how much we have moved away from the politics of evil bullies.

When we hear annual news reports of students bullied by their seniors, or of outdated, barbaric hazing practices from our own children, we know that one basic character of the New Order - the wanton use of power against the weak - is still alive and well.

This means the new batch of freshmen emerging later this year will still take for granted the right of uncontested power, their seniors right to impunity; a right to become theirs in a few years time.

Hopefully, by the time they graduate, the values around them will have changed to such an extent that we will no longer allow Indonesia, ever again, to be run uncontested by an evil few.

The victims and survivors of May 1998 are still around us. They can still share their stories so that old and young do not forget their history.

Maybe, to borrow from the report on the riots by the voluntary team for humanity, "let us ensure we can learn civility; that future generations will never again witness utter helplessness in the face of barbaric politics."

The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post

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