School brawls take lives

Fight club: In this file photo, students of a junior high school arm themselves with stones they took from a damaged sidewalk. They brawled with students from another school in Jelambar, West Jakarta. The exchange of stones and missiles between the two groups disrupted traffic in the area. JP/P.J. LeoWhether it is either a trend or a tradition, Jakarta may never be free from school brawls as the city lacks proper ways for students to express themselves.

National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas PA) chairman Arist Merdeka Sirait said that sooner or later school brawls in the city come to a period of hiatus, but inevitably occur again.

“No fights had been recorded for some time, but we will definitely see another brawl again. It always happens because the root of the problem is never solved,” he said.

Another school brawl between SMAN 6 and SMAN 70 in South Jakarta broke out again last week, marking the first brawl of this year.

Equipped with sharpened bamboo and spare motorcycle parts, students fought for no clear reason. The melee took place for about half an hour before police officers and several residents finally managed to stop the fighting from escalating further. The fighting injured a number of students.

Arist said the brawls were actually a way of students expressing themselves.

“But they express themselves in a negative way. They don’t have a place or a way to express themselves in a positive way. The schools don’t provide it either. So they seek another way through fighting,” he said.

The condition was aggravated by doctrines that have been instilled for decades among students and the incapability of schools to instill tolerance and good behavior among students, he said.

“The so-called obligation to uphold the pride of the school and the existence of seniority are the examples of unwritten law at schools. So when pride is disturbed, they feel the need to protect it in a brutal way,” Arist said.

University of Indonesia education sociologist Paulus Wirotomo also said that most school brawls occurring in the city were a way for students to seek self-esteem, although in an unfortunately primitive way.

“Unlike the fight demanding reformation that we’ve recently seen in other parts of the world, the typical brawl here occurs for unclear reasons,” he said.

In addition, development in the city that had not focused on youth had made it difficult for the young to seek confidence outside their schools.

“They don’t gain confidence through academic achievements, but they can’t seek any achievement outside schools as there are no places to accommodate their passions — no proper youth centers,” he said.

“If the government and schools do not solve this, brawls will always be around.”

SMAN 6 and SMAN 70 have a long history of brawling between each other. Frequent brawling between the two high schools led to alleged attacks on journalists in September last year.

SMAN 6 students allegedly seized a video tape from a television journalist when the latter recorded a brawl involving students between SMAN 6 and SMAN 70. They also allegedly assaulted journalists from various media organizations who were staging a protest against the earlier attack.

Another deadly incident occurred last year when a 12th grader from SMK Satya Bhakti vocational school in Matraman, East Jakarta, died after he was stabbed in the right lung during a brawl involving students from his school and SMA 66 state high school on Jl. Dr. Saharjo in South Jakarta.

According to Komnas PA, 339 school brawls were recorded last year, almost triple the 128 cases in 2010. The fights took 82 lives, more than double from 40 in 2010.