Behind Mayor Joko Widodo’s success stories in managing his town, with the peaceful relocation of street-side vendors and the revitalization of traditional markets, what is happening with the kampongs in Solo, where the majority of the citizens reside? Do the residents of Solo truly feel that their city is a safe and comfortable place to live today? What are their imaginations as residents in a city that has seen a number of incidents of violence and riots?

It is not a coincidence that in one of the many kampongs in Solo there is a citizens’ association named ‘Pagari’ (Paguyuban Warga Peduli, or the Association of Concerned Citizens), an association established by the locals after the May Riot in 1998, consisting of Javanese and Chinese residents who live in that kampong. The socially-oriented association has the objective to facilitate and strengthen social relationship between the two groups—the Javanese and the Chinese ethnic groups—which is often considered as containing latent problems. The association holds social gatherings, gives financial assistance to fellow kampong-residents who need it, and provides cheap staples. These activities, which are expected to help strengthen the relationship between the Javanese and the Chinese communities in the kampong, still continue to this day.

‘Pagari’ [which is also an Indonesian word with a literal meaning of “fence it”—translator’s note] contains the word of ‘pagar’ (fence), which means that this association should serve as a fence protecting the kampong area from rioters, explained one of the founding residents. This statement surely has to do with memories of the past when the 1998 riot took place. A fence signifies a protection, a kind of shield that defends the kampong from the unsafe world outside.

What about the fences that are no longer imaginary in nature but have instead taken the physical forms of real fences, installed by Solo residents of today? How is the presence of these fences related with hidden collective memories about various events of violence that have occurred in the past?


An Effort of Remembering
1998. The year was full of students’ demonstrations, which had been taking place for a few months before the end of Suharto’s regime. The riots were, of course, different from these demonstrations. They seemed to be occurring all of a sudden. People moved en masse at several places. Many big store buildings by the major roads such as Jalan Slamet Riyadi were aflame. The crowd moved on toward the east, going in the direction of Pasar Gede, Kentingan, and so forth. I saw a man in his mid-thirties, long-haired and well built, wearing a black headband with the word ‘pro-reformasi’ (pro-reform) printed on it. He stood in front of a garage-cum-convenience-store on Jalan Ir. Sutami, in the direction of Kentingan. The store belonged to a Chinese resident. He loudly provoked several people who in my observation had merely been watching the scene as “audience” by the road. He challenged them to damage the store, throw stones at it, and loot various items inside. He began by yelling out, in Javanese, “Iki yo nggone Cino iki!” (This also belongs to the Chinese!) He shouted as he threw stones at the glass windows on the second floor. The garage on the first floor had been closed a few hours before as the owner heard about the burning and ransacking of stores owned by Chinese-Indonesians, which began from the area of Pabelan (western Solo, in the area of Kartosuro Subdistrict, District of Sukoharjo).

By the flick of his fingers, the people who had previously been standing by the road as mere “audience”—most of them were members of the local community who had ventured out of their kampong out of curiosity—suddenly threw stones, broke the door, and looted everything that they could take from the garage and the store, from food staples to a range of vehicle spare parts. They feverishly ransacked the place and took home whatever they could lay their hands on. An old man passed me by in a hurry, carrying a whole sack of rice on his back, and he fell down. I was watching the scene from across the road when he asked me to help him. I was hesitant and rather confused, but I finally assisted him in putting the sack on his back. A major question emerged in my mind: Am I right in helping the old man? Does this mean that I was participating in the looting, helping the looters?

The vandalism and ransacking happened in many places all over Solo. As many people (and the mass media) called this event as an incident of “mass disturbance”, a question immediately arose in my mind. Who was it actually that we called “the mass”? I saw with my own eyes that some of the individuals that made up “the mass” were actually local residents from the nearby kampong. Initially, they were only passively watching, and due to the provocations from one or a few unknown people, they changed their position and took the role of actors of the vandalism, burning, and looting.

Stories after stories from the incident on May 14, 1998, in Solo streamed in. There were stories about the exodus of the Chinese-Indonesian residents, of the raped women, and the strong emergence of paid night guards consisting of kampong residents to watch over the business premises belonging to members of the Chinese communities. There were also ghost stories from the incidents. These were some of the stories that emerged after the riots. The stories grew and spread in the community until several months after the riot.

As Solo dealt with the ravaged buildings, stores, and offices—privately or publicly owned—activities in the town virtually stopped for three days, on May 14 – 16, 1998. The riots also spread to several towns around Solo, such as Boyolali, Klaten, and Karanganyar.


The Kampong in Solo: From The "Hanging-out" Culture to The Rampage
Usually, the question that often emerges from a range of mass media and forums as they react on the rioting in Solo is this: How come that the residents of Solo, who generally seem so calm, could so blindingly destroy, burn, and rampage various buildings in their own city? Naturally, we cannot simply come up with one or two factors that we thought might have caused the riot. From many investigative notes and reports prepared by the Center for Data and Information of the Solo Humanitarian Volunteers’ Team, we can deduce that the riots did not take place just like that; rather, they had been systematically planned, like the riots in Jakarta and other Indonesian big cities that took place almost simultaneously. During the May 14, 1998 riot in Solo, the “mass”, which consisted partly of the locals, moved after being provoked by a man, an agent-provocateur, whom many had identified as someone who was well-built, looking like a student, and used a black headband.[1]

It is worth mentioning the racialist issues and anti-Chinese sentiment around this incident. In 1980, there was also an anti-Chinese riot in Solo, and memories about this incident resurfaced during the event in 1998. The mass was easily provoked by anti-Chinese sentiments.[2] A range of terms that developed (and were developed) among the people—such as ‘Pribumi’ (or ‘indigenous’), ‘real Javanese’, or ‘true Moslems’—were written on the walls, as if functioning as an effective shield that could protect the residents from the mass rage. Interestingly, as Jema Purdey described in 2005, as a discourse, anti-Chinese sentiment had been considered as something that would normally live and grow within the Indonesian society, so much so that those who committed violence against the Chinese ethnic group felt certain that they would not be punished. Violence against the Chinese ethnic group even seemed allowable.

There is, on the other hand, the image of Solo as a recreational town and a city that never sleeps. The culture of “hanging out” or staying up well into the morning is present in many corners of the town, supported by a range of HIK stalls (short for “Hidangan Istimewa Kampung” or “Special Kampong Meals”, which in Yogyakarta is known as angkringan, or, simply, food stalls), providing sweet hot tea, coffee, ginger tea, and many other hot drinks, alongside a variety of traditional Javanese snacks, such as fried stuffs, small-portioned rice meals, and cow-hide crackers.

With such a cultural atmosphere, many people know Solo as a city that never sleeps. The lively night world, with the addition of a variety of sites where sexual transactions would take place (such as the areas around the National Radio in Solo, Gilingan, or around the terminal), help to keep alive Solo’s strong image as an entertainment city.

Today, the night world has been made livelier with the presence of the Night Market in the area of Ngarsapura and the Gladhag Langen Bogan (Galabo, or a concentration of street side food stalls). The Ngarsapura night market forms a part of the mayor’s urban management initiative to manage micro-enterprises and street side vendors. The place also hosts art performances at night. Meanwhile, the Galabo, next to the Gladhag crossroad, is a culinary center that opens at night. One can find here a range of typical Solo fares, from thengkleng (goat bone soup) to meatballs.

The current mayor, Joko Widodo, thinks that the Ngarsapura night market and Galabo form a part of the effort to help the micro and medium entrepreneurs in Solo. It is part of the policy package to manage street-side vendors and revitalize the traditional markets in Solo: a policy that has been considered successful and copied in many other Indonesian cities, especially in managing the street-side sellers and the traditional markets.

Meanwhile, historical records show us how Solo was a center of social movement in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Takashi Shiraishi describes the social movement through stories about a range of radical movements existing in Solo as the residents responded to the colonial power which at the time existed in a “marriage of convenience” with the feudal power of the palace (the kraton). Takashi Shiraishi also depicts a range of protests expressed through various media (posters, magazines, and through linguistic means) at the time, as well as the many organizations such as Sarikat Islam and Muhammadiyah, which served as vehicles for the social and political movements of the indigenous community in Solo at the time. A range of ideological groups that opposed the colonial and feudal powers were represented by such figures as Misbach, Cipto Mangunkusumo, and Marco Kartodikromo.[3]

In 1965 – 1966, Solo also had its share of mass riots, when houses of (alleged) members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in the village of Srambatan, were burnt down and destroyed. During the New Order regime, an anti-Chinese disturbance took place again in 1980. In 2007, Soedharmono recorded how from the fifteen social clashes that had occurred in Surakarta (or Solo), most had to do with the relationship between the Chinese and the Javanese communities. Such incidents show how Solo has had quite a number of records of mass violence.


The Confining Kampong Gates
Let us return to the issue of the fences. How do kampong residents in Solo situate their collective memories regarding the violence, as they go on living their lives? One of the more interesting phenomena is the advent of the kampong gates at kampong entrances around Solo. The gates may take a variety of forms, but most are made of iron, and, as with the iron-bar gates in prison cells, enable us to see the people behind the gates. Some of them take the form of gate bars—smaller versions of railway bars—and some look like the usual house gates, with latches and bolts. These kampong gates can be seen in areas that had suffered from much damage and looting during the riot. We will be able to see these gates at the entrances of such kampongs.

A resident of Kauman village, an urban kampong right at the heart of Solo, near the town square and the Klewer Market, explains: “Usually, the gate is closed at eleven at night and re-opened at around four in the morning…”

The village of Kauman itself is known as a kampong with quite a lot of gates. These gates had been present before the urban village was officially christened as a batik center-cum-tourist destination—along with Laweyan, which had been recognized earlier as a batik village. There are around eight gates, one at each entrance to the village. From the eight gates, only one will be open after 11 pm each night. This gate opens to Jalan Slamet Riyadi, Solo’s main road, and is sandwiched between Bank Central Asia building and a store. At this “main gate”, there is a small guard post, manned by two people in Hansip [civil defense] uniforms. The two men receive wages from the local residents.

To the community, the gates are there so that “we can control and observe people coming in and out. Cars won’t be able to enter after 11 pm. People coming on motorbikes, however, can be easily recognized…”

“Controlled” and “observable”—these are the key elements of such kampong gates. Whom do the people need to “control” and “observe”? Who controls whom, who observes whom? We need to pose such questions, because upon further observations, this issue is tightly related with something that the locals see as “threats”, coming from outside the kampong. With the presence of the gates, the local community feels “safer” and “better protected”. The question remains, however: What is actually the threat?

A Kauman resident remembers that they began installing the kampong gates after the May 1998 riots. Geographically, the Kauman village in Solo is situated right at the center of the city, near the northern town square and the Klewer market that is the largest textile center in Solo, side by side with a range of business and office buildings (banks as well as the governorate office), by the main road of Jalan Slamet Riyadi. During the May 1998 incident, several buildings near the kampong had been ransacked, for example the buildings of Bank Central Asia, Bank Danamon, and Wisma Lippo near Jalan Slamet Riyadi (at Gladhag area). Beteng Plaza (now Solo Wholesale Center), a big shopping center to the northeast of the Kasunanan Palace and the east of Kauman village, was one of the buildings that had been burnt to the ground. Other buildings that suffered a similar fate were the stores in Ketandan, to the west of Kauman village.[4]

The latest public disturbance in Solo occurred in 1999—sometime after Megawati Soekarnoputri failed in her bid as the Indonesian President—and several public buildings were burnt down then, for example the Town Hall, around half a kilometer to the north of Kauman village, and the Governorate Office to the east of the village, which has now been refurbished and is present in its new looks. One can understand how the location of the village, right at the heart of Solo and surrounded by a variety of buildings that had been ravaged and burnt during the riots in 1998 and 1999, created memories of chaos and anxiety among the locals. No matter who had been involved in the burning and ransacking (it is likely that the local residents were also involved), the gates are here now to serve as shields, protecting the Kauman residents from certain harms. They are present clearly in front of our eyes today.

Apart from the Kauman village, other urban villages in Solo, such as Badran, Turisari, Mangkubumen, Punggawan, and Manahan, also have such gates. It seems that the kampong as a residential area in a certain location in the city must be guarded, protected, excluded from “the threatening outsiders”. Such exclusiveness is signified by the kampong fences or gates, complete with a variety of devices, including the guards.

In the day-to-day practices of urban living, such “spatial exclusion” can have many meanings. One of them can be understood from the following description by a resident of Mangkubumen village:

“… We did install the kampong gates in this area in order to protect the kampong. They also prevent cars or motorbikes from entering the kampong alleys as they like, because sometimes the road in front of Agas Hotel there is closed off if there are important guests or events, and they then direct the motorbikes to use the kampong alleys. Gosh, such things disturb us terribly, because the alleys become so chaotic and noisy. That’s why we then close the gates to our kampong, to prevent motorbikes and cars that are not from this area from entering the area, or going through the kampong…”

Not only are they there to secure the kampong at night, but the gates also symbolize the protests from the locals against “the world outside”—in this case, it has to do with ceremonial events held at Hotel Agas, a big hotel next to Mangkubumen village. During such events, the road is often closed off and the traffic is then directed toward the kampong area. In the day-to-day reality, the kampong gate has acquired rich meanings for the locals. The context and the objective, however, remain the same: to provide “security” for the locals, against everything that is considered as a threat to the village, which comes from the world outside.

The kampong gates seem to serve as a monument of sorts for the May Riot in 1998. This phenomenon also reveals how a community remembers its past, which in this case was the riot.

May 1998 incident left us with memories of a range of expressive “protective” jargons such as “Pro-Reform”, “Indigenous”, “Real Javanese”, written on people’s doors or shop doors in Solo and surrounding areas. Today, the forms that appear strongly in relation with the events of the past are the kampong gates, as a longer-lasting manifestation of such memories. Memories of past violence have given rise to images of fences, which can be present in an abstracted form in the name of an association of Chinese and Javanese residents in a community—i.e. “Pagari”—as well as in physical form, with the presence of the kampong gates.

As efforts to remember take place, forgetting occurs. People remember the past events as incidents that have threatened them, but at the same time they forget which “creature” it was that had threatened them. Was the May 14 incident in 1998 truly a “mass disturbance”? Who was this “mass”? Did it consist of residents of other villages? Unknown people? Or the locals themselves, perhaps?

The image of the long-haired, well-built man wearing a black headband on his head with the “pro-reform” text, loudly provoking the residents of the area where I was living in Kentingan, Solo, during the riots, suddenly returns to mind. I remember how the locals, who had initially been watching passively, were suddenly transformed into “actors” in the rioting.


Closing The Gates, Opening Possibilities
The phenomenon of the kampong gates—which in many cases is also followed by the installment of high fences around houses, doors and windows with iron bars, and tightly-closed houses—does not only happen in Solo. Such tendency is also obvious in many other Indonesian cities.

In Jakarta, for example, many fencing systems have been installed around several housing complexes. Such systems of gates and fences affect the traffic on the main roads around these complexes. In 2009, the regional government responded by establishing a program to remove these gates. Residents of the upper-class housing complex of Pondok Indah vehemently rejected this policy, but the government proceeded to remove the gates by force.

In terms of the contexts of the 1998 Riots, Jakarta was similar with Solo. The experience of past violence, however, was not the only factor that served as the background for the ubiquity of these kampong gates; and there are other overlapping reasons. In Solo, this phenomenon is particularly interesting as it occurs in the lower-class urban villages, not only in high class housing complexes.

A range of analyses about urban gated communities have shown how the fences are usually installed at elite or high-class housing complexes. Today, the kampongs, which are naturally not a part of such swanky housing complexes, seem to experience a similar psychological situation, i.e. sensing threats from the outside and therefore feeling the need to set up kampong fences or gates.

Solo needs to reflect why in the midst of the celebration about the success of city management that is considered as being friendly toward the poor and the commoners, there is the existence of kampong gates that symbolize the fear and the feeling of insecurity of living in the city. Why is it that the kampong, which should actually serve as the last bastion for plurality and egalitarian characters of the urbanites, precisely produces values about the need for a collective physical boundary that guards the residents living within it?

The kampong gates seem to confirm further the separation between “us” and “them”, although the answer to the question of who “they” are is as elusive as ghosts. On the one hand, the kampong gates are there as physical constructions that serve to remind us of the existence of violence; on the other hand, it makes us forget about the true past incidents of violence. People forget about the incidents, the true actors behind these incidents, and the social contexts behind them. What we have, then, are new “ghosts” that exist outside the kampong boundaries or fences; those whom the locals must be wary of, suspicious about, or keep vigilant about. These “ghosts” might take the forms of beggars, street kids, foreigners, or residents of other kampongs—just as the designation of “the mass” that the media often use when they talk about the 1998 riots is actually not a clear designation, but people seem to take this designation for granted. The existence of the kampong gates eventually signifies a certain process of forgetting that might enable another incident of violence to take place again—something which the local residents certainly do not want.




Yogyakarta, April 2010
Translated by Rani Elsanti




YOSAFAT HERMAWAN TRINUGRAHA was born in Yogyakarta, 1977. He is involved with and interested in urban issues and analyses since he joined Yayasan Pondok Rakyat in Yogyakarta (2000 – 2008). He tries his best to keep on analyzing such matters. He studied Sociology at the Elevent of March University and now continues his study in Sociology at the Gajah Mada University. He also teaches at the Center for Sociological Studies, Department of Anthropology of the Pedagogical Faculty, Elevent of March University, while trying to realize his hidden desire to write fiction.

This essay is developed from the one published in Buletin Pusdep Vol. 2/2006, Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta, titled “Lawang Kampung: Siapa Mengancam Siapa?” (Kampong Gates: Who is Threatening Whom?).