They Are All Victims
It was 2 p.m. when Beni, 16, drove his motorbike home from school on Jl. Kabupaten in Sleman, Yogyakarta. Some 800 meters from his home, on the crowded street, two bikers on an automatic scooter approached him.
They were wearing white-and-grey uniforms. The one on the back seat shouted, “Stop! Pull over!”
Beni, who had a heavy build, had no choice but to pull over. “You’re a student of [certain name] high school, aren’t you? Give us your motorbike key and student card! If not, you’re dead,” said the one who drove the motorbike.
As they threatened him with violence, Beni, a high school student in Yogyakarta, then surrendered his keys and student card.
“The two boys were actually smaller than I am. I wanted to fight, but they were carrying a weapon. In the end, I just did what they told me,” Beni said in an interview at his home in Nogotirto, Gamping, Sleman, on Tuesday.
He still remembered vividly the incident, which occurred in September 2015. For several months afterward, Beni’s parents took him to school in the morning and picked him up in the afternoon as the incident left them all traumatized. Just a few days after the incident, two other university students in Sleman became victims of klithih.
The latest case of klithih happened to private junior high school student, Ilham Bayu Fajar, 16, in Yogyakarta on March 12. Ilham died tragically. Just three days prior to Ilham’s death, a meeting between school representatives, students’ parents and the Yogyakarta Police was held to put an end to klithih.
On December 12, 2016, a klithih incident took the life of Yogyakarta high school student Adnan Wirawan Ardianto, 15. People in Yogyakarta became restless. The special region was tainted with klithih.
Where does the word klithih come from? It was derived from the expression klithah-klithih, which, according to SA Mangunsuwito’s Dictionary of the Javanese Language, means, “walking to and fro, a little bit aimlessly”. With a little bit of modification to the meaning, klithih means the action of a group of teenagers who go around the city on their motorbikes and commit crimes. They are not aimless on their motorbike rides. They have clear intentions of committing crimes.
“Gang members who can snatch the belongings of members of other gangs will be seen as tough guys. Some members who can rob uniforms are seen as tougher than those who can only take stickers,” Yogyakarta Police chief Brig. Gen. Ahmad Dofiri.
Former gang member
Kompas interviewed a former gang member, who is now a student at a university in Yogyakarta. On March 17, at the corner of a university campus in Yogyakarta, the young man who wished to be identified as Adam, 21, said that his introduction to the world of student gangs had been coincidental.
When he was enrolled at a vocational high school in Yogyakarta, he was attacked by a group of students from another school. “It was only the second day of the high school orientation period, and I had been attacked. Someone tried to slash me with a sword, but it only hit my motorbike,” he said.
After the incident, Adam contacted a high school senior friend. Not long after, a group of his seniors came by to help him. “Afterwards, I felt I had a debt of gratitude. I was pulled into the group,” he said.
“Some two weeks later, I was asked to join a forum, and I later found out that the group was a gang,” he said.
In launching klithih attacks, Adam said, each member of the gang had specific tasks. One becomes the “rider” that leads the group in front. One serves as a “keeper” who watches over the group from a safe distance and will look for help if there is any trouble.
As a gang member, Adam had to bear the consequences of committing klithih attacks. In 2012, for instance, when his gang was fighting with a gang from another school, he was hit with a motorbike cogwheel. His motorbike was also heavily damaged and seized by the police as evidence.
Adam said that klithih attacks are done to make one gang’s name more famous. When participating in a klithih attack, Adam said he did not think about the long-term consequences of his actions.
Another former member of a private high school gang, Sandi, 20, said that he had participated in klithih attacks a number of times. Sandi said students in his high school who refuse to participate in gangs were seen as weak and gutless. “We became uncomfortable in school [if we did not join gangs],” he said.
Biggest factor
Lawyer Sapto Nugroho Wusono from Yogyakarta Child Protection Foundation, who often defends students accused of conducting klithih in legal proceedings, said that the biggest factor that pushed students to participate in klithih was because of friends. “When I ask them why they commit the violent acts, most of them cited group solidarity,” Sapto said.
Many students involved in klithih attacks are problematic students at school, including those with bad grades, who are held back or have moved between schools a few times. “Some live with their grandmothers or other relatives as their parents have divorced. Some are victims of physical abuse,” Dofiri said.
The history of student gangs in Yogyakarta is a history of violence. In the 1980s, many local thugs called ‘wild kids’ became targets of mysterious shootings (petrus). Not all of them died. Some survived and later on become society leaders. They then inspired the younger generations, Yogyakarta Police forensic psychologist Sr. Comr. Arif Nurcahyo said.
Arif said that the cause of these klithih attacks is not singular. It is not a simple case of cause-and-effect, but rather is the result of a complex web of many causes and effects that in turn become causes for other events.
“There are many factors. They were neglected by their families; many of their parents were divorced. Some of them look for answers in peer groups or for the meaning of life on social media. They then gather and start to plan activities together. This is coupled with the fact that public spaces are disappearing across Yogyakarta, population density is increasing and traffic jams are more severe,” Arif said.
Both the perpetrators and victims of klithih are essentially victims. In line with the profiling data at the police, klithih perpetrators predominantly have divorced parents. They never had a figure to look up to in their search for identity.
They are also victims of a city that is becoming more cramped and claustrophobic with a lack of public space for people to communicate with one another. This is high time for everyone in Yogyakarta to put an end to klithih.