Violent clashes between Indonesian youths turn deadly, sparking calls to tackle root of problem

Brawls are more common among high school students because it is during adolescence when one is forming one’s identity, which may manifest in the teenagers being “more easily frustrated and aggressive”, said Ichsan. 

The brawl in Depok involving primary school students could have happened because children nowadays are exposed to many things from an early age with the rise of social media, said Ichsan. 

Educational expert Doni Koesoema from Multimedia Nusantara University in Tangerang, Banten, said that brawls also took place when he was in junior high school in Surabaya in 1986. 

However, the brawls in those days were not so violent, he said.

In the past, brawls tended to happen between students from different schools in Indonesia but, these days, they also happen between groups of young adults from different neighbourhoods, said sociologist Bagong Suyanto from Surabaya’s Airlangga University.

He shared Ichsan’s view that brawls tend to happen more in marginalised or poor, homogeneous neighbourhoods with unemployment or poor employment prospects.

Parts of Manggarai sub-district in Jakarta, for instance, are notorious for brawls between residents from different neighbourhoods, which have taken place for decades.

According to informal parking attendant Muhammad Lutfi, 24, who is a resident there, the brawls have become more frequent since the area became busier with the revamp of Manggarai train station in recent years.

Fights these days are usually due to tussles over who gets to work informally at a particular commercial space or the quest for domination in a certain area, he said.

The rise of online shopping has also made weapons such as machetes and knives more accessible, said Lutfi.