Anatomy of Social Violence in the Context of Transition: The Case of Indonesia 1990-2001
M. Zulfan Tadjoeddin
Abstract
This paper is the first of a series of studies on social conflicts in Indonesia. The purpose of this paper is to provide an anatomy of social violence in terms of their patterns, trends, regional distribution, severity and intensity. The study includes all incidents of social violence that took place in Indonesia between 1990 and 2001. They are grouped into four main categories, i.e. communal violence, separatist violence, state-community violence, and industrial relations violence.
It is found that communal and separatist violence caused maximum fatalities, accounting for 77% and 22%, respectively. While social violence was not uncommon during the Suharto regime, social violence and fatalities increased dramatically during the period of transition to democracy, reaching its peak in 1999-2000. The incidents of social violence mainly occurred in districts and small towns. Among communal violence, ethnic-religion-migrations related violence alone contributed to around 52% of total deaths in social violence.
The
purpose of this paper is to identify the nature of these concerns and
to find mechanisms that the donor community could employ to respond
creatively to the challenges that are likely to emerge in this domain.
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