MAY 12

STUDENTS BEGAN GATHERING AT Trisakti at about 10:30 a.m., in the parking lot outside the 12-story M Building. This was to be the campus's first big demonstration. The participants were among the elite, the sons and daughters of businessmen, bureaucrats, diplomats and military men. On this hot, steamy day, the parking lot, usually filled with Kijangs, Toyotas and Peugeots, was empty. Just before 11 a.m., the national flag was lowered to half-mast, while students and faculty sang the national anthem. They observed a moment of silence, then called on Suharto to step down.

At 12:30 about 6,000 students moved onto the four-lane highway running alongside Trisakti. They planned to hold a "long march" to Parliament. Three Trisakti representatives - Adi Andoyo Sutjipto, dean of the law faculty, Arri Gunarsa, head of campus security, and Julianto Hendro Cahyono, the 24-year-old leader of the student senate - began negotiating with police around 1 p.m. to allow the students to walk the 5 km into central Jakarta. Hendro says he called a university lecturer and member of parliament to see if it was possible for the students to meet with a government representative.

The students, meanwhile, sat on the street in protest, made speeches, sang the national anthem, refused to retreat. With rain falling, some put flowers in the rifles of police officers. Finally Hendro heard from the ruling party, Golkar: No one was prepared to meet them. Standing on a table between students and police, he told the disappointed students not to provoke violence.

At about 3 p.m. the situation seemed calm and Adi Andoyo returned to his office. Half an hour later his assistant called: The police had threatened to use force if the 200 or so students still on the street did not return to campus. By 4:15, an agreement had been reached; students and police were to retreat line by line, five meters at a time. Most students headed back on to campus. Others relaxed on the street or snacked at food stalls alongside the highway. Hendro went to get some bottled water.

Some police officers took a break. All seemed quiet. Adi Andoyo headed home.

Around 4:30 p.m., a man standing among the students began yelling at them to abandon the protest. The students labeled him an undercover intelligence agent, and began beating the man as he ran the 50 meters to the first police line. (He was later identified as Masud, a Trisakti drop-out. Neither the police nor military claim him as one of their own.) Arri and Hendro told the students to remain calm and return to campus. Then at about 4:45 a police lieutenant colonel halted the negotiations: The students had 15 minutes to get off the streets.

About 100 students refused to retreat and stood at the police barricades. Three or four police officers began taunting them to cross, says Hendro, and the students moved forward, but no further than their own security line. Police claim crowds on the street turned violent then, but witnesses say the protest seemed to be winding down. At about 5:20 someone fired a gun in the air. The police charged, lobbed tear gas, swung batons and opened fire. The students ran for cover in nearby buildings and under street stall umbrellas. The police chased them to the Trisakti gates and stopped there. Bullets were flying. A rubber one struck Hendro in the back outside the student senate office.

The students fought back from inside campus, hurling bottles and rocks at the police. The students were convinced the bullets aimed at them were all rubber. Soldiers and police, both part of the armed forces, are trained to follow strict procedures at demonstrations. A standard operation includes four lines of forces: the police in front with shields, body protectors and batons; a second line of police with stun guns and tear gas; a third line of soldiers armed with rubber bullets and tear gas; and finally a line of soldiers and police on motorbikes with water cannons.

On that day, two police commanders later testified, officers were not issued live ammunition but carried Steyr AUG and SS-1 rifles loaded with three blanks and 12 rubber bullets, plus SS-1s loaded with five tear gas canisters apiece. But someone did use real bullets. Witnesses say men on police motorcycles drove onto an overpass that runs parallel to the toll road and the university. They were wearing uniforms of the Police Mobile Brigade. (Later, two military officers told the Human Rights Commission that a week before the demonstration, four members of the motorcycle unit went missing, along with their uniforms.)

Whoever the men on the flyover were, they used real bullets and shot to kill; the four were hit in the head, neck, chest and back between 5:30 and 6 p.m.

Most of the victims were facing police, throwing rocks. Arri drove Hendriawan Sie, 20, the first victim, to the nearby Sumber Waras hospital. Hendriawan was shot in the neck just inside the campus gates. He bled to death during the ride.

Elang Mulya Lesmana, 19, was shot in the chest and died on campus; Hafidhin Royan, 21, was shot in the head and died at the hospital; Hery Hartanto, 21, was shot in the back as he stopped to wash tear gas from his eyes and died on campus. The bullet that killed him, according to police and a source close to the military, was a 5.56mm MU5 from a Steyr AUG rifle - police use MU4s. Extracted from Hartanto's exhumed body June 7, the bullet is the only evidence suggesting police were not responsible.

Students heard sporadic shooting from 6 to 7 p.m. Some time after, the last gunshot victim, Sofyan Rachman, fell. (He remains in intensive care recovering from chest and kidney wounds.) At about 8 p.m., Intan, a law student, walked out of the campus waving a white cloth. She yelled to police that people needed medical assistance.

Soon after, the shooting ended. Only then were the other 35 wounded taken to hospital; the police had earlier refused to guarantee the ambulances' safety. Moreover, says Arri, the police commander had told him that the wounds would not be life-threatening because the bullets were rubber.

Shortly after the Trisakti shootings, the north Jakarta district of Sunter went on alert. Sunter is a Chinese neighborhood. That evening, Imam Suyitno, a civilian trained to assist the army in emergencies, had been ordered to help organize a security watch. He was standing guard at the local shopping district when he and his colleagues saw an army truck pull up behind the supermarket. Up to 20 "tough-looking" men got off. Suyitno says they received something from a man on the truck before disappearing into the night.