TransJakarta Busway – Dangerous After Dark? Jarang!

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Since I have criticised the TransJakarta Busway from time to time, with no notable result – they still too often move in convoys of three or four, and then have a long gap in services…

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 Fat piglet

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…and conductors still do not make fat piglet brats give up their seats to adults –  the report in the Jakarta Post this week obliges me, in fairness, to spring slowly to the busway’s defence.

It’s about what sounds like a ‘racially motivated’ incident, when ‘an ethnic Chinese man was racially taunted and assaulted on a Transjakarta bus.’

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/08/30/ethnic-chinese-man-called-ahok-attacked-bus.html

The alleged victim posted his story on Facebook, about what happened on a Transjakarta mid-evening bus between  Semanggi and Senayan bus stops.

A group of men in batik shirts boarded the bus and started to racially abuse him, calling him “Ahok”, the widely used nickname of the city’s first ethnic Chinese governor.

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 Ahok

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“I remember them saying to me: ‘choose between slanted eyes or closed eyes’ and ‘you are Ahok, right?,” The victim, Andrew, wisely did not take on the gang, three or four in number, but tried to brush them off. Then they  hit him and tried to drag him off the bus. Fortunately, some other passengers pulled him back into the bus.

The latter are good examples, representative of the decent majority of Indonesians, and the thugs are not typical of Jakartans at all.

There are sectarian louts in town…- 

Jakarta Jew-Haters Boo Chinese Christian Candidate 

 …and they all hate Ahok, who, despite the fact that he makes occasional misjudgements, is a pretty good governor.

But there aren’t that many sectarian hoodlums.

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Sectarian thugs in action – these were in Makassar, but they have comrades in the capital

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My best guess is that the hooligans were either drunk or part of that squalid jihadist minority. 

I often go home by bus if I have been to one of my frequent parties. I have never experienced nor seen such bad behaviour and so I hope this one-off incident will not deter others from using public transport. I reckon crimes like this occur jarang – rarely. 

At Rp.3500, compared to what a taxi home would cost ( between 50 and 100 thousand rupiah!) it’s a great deal, for all its small faults.

Strangely, neither the bus management nor the police admitted to having received a report from Andrew. He should do so, fast, if he hasn’t already.

If the assault was recorded, there’s a chance the villains can be apprehended, and so they should be!