Indonesia’s long-serving dictator Soeharto had stepped down from his three-decade rule only six years earlier in 1998.

In the early years of the Reform period, political instability gave way to sectarian conflicts, with thousands of people killed in places such as Maluku and West Kalimantan and hundreds of others losing their lives in military operations launched in outlying provinces including Aceh and Papua.

There was also a growing problem of radicalism, which culminated with the Bali bombings, which killed 202 holidaymakers in 2002. One year later, another bomb attack at the JW Marriott hotel in South Jakarta, which killed a dozen victims and injured 150, shook the nation to its core. 

The rise of firebrand groups like the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), which was set up to quell radical elements within the student movement in 1998, further complicated problems as Indonesia struggled to deal with sectarian conflicts in Central Sulawesi and Maluku.

The biggest blow to the pro-democracy movement was of course the murder of human rights activist Munir Said Thalib, who was poisoned aboard a Garuda Indonesia flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam on Sept. 7, 2004. 

But twenty years ago, there were still many reasons to be optimistic. 

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