Notes from a Coffee Shop on Justice Said to Be Still on Its Way
That morning my coffee arrived with two pieces of news from Sukoharjo, Central Java, Indonesia, tangled together like knotted thread. The first dated from September: a pork noodle shop in Parangjoro village, which openly sold non-halal food, was burned down by a mob on 12 September 2026. Nearly a month later, police arrested a suspect who, by their account, had once been convicted in a terrorism case, while another man was still being hunted. So far the story ran as straight as a motorway: there was a fire, there were culprits, there were pursuers. I took a calm sip of coffee, before the second piece of news arrived and scrambled everything.
The second report came in the small hours of Tuesday, 27 October. At about three o'clock, a heavily armed force arrived at a girls' Islamic boarding school in Mojolaban and another in Karanganyar, looking for a fugitive. According to the school, the door was broken down while its residents slept, and the pupils, aged roughly ten to sixteen, hid in their teachers' room. Twelve girls and four female teachers were taken to the police station, questioned as witnesses, and then sent home, since no evidence of their involvement was found. The police maintain that everything followed procedure, and say sharp weapons were seized from the places searched. The school speaks of intimidation. The two accounts are now being examined by the Ministry of Human Rights and the national human rights commission, and according to reports the row has even led to a police chief being removed from his post.
I should remind myself that not everything that happened in those small hours was cruelty, nor is everything the authorities do an abuse of power. The police have a duty to pursue those suspected of burning down a business, and hunting a fugitive is hardly work to be done by knocking politely at noon. The trouble lies not in the destination but in the route. The address being sought may well be correct, yet between the point of departure and the point of arrival there were children asleep, rooms occupied only by young women, and a proper way of doing things that ought to make a search feel like the enforcement of law, not like a storm dropping in.
At the corner table, a retired gentleman whose coffee is always strong offered his own parable. Fire in this country, he said, seems to know its addresses rather well: it knows exactly which shop it means to lick. The truncheon, by contrast, runs on a different navigation system and sometimes strays into somebody else's yard. I smiled, for the parable felt apt though he named no one. Procedure is certainly the map every driver needs. But a map was never meant as a licence to drive through the fence. A good driver knows that knowing the destination is not enough; he must also recognise which roads he may take.
There is other news, too, that makes this matter less simple than black and white. The residents of Parangjoro village, who are predominantly Muslim, have objected to the shop since April through banners, petitions and mediation with the district government, yet those meetings have not produced agreement. The shop holds a business licence from the online licensing system, whereas the residents complain that it lacks the blessing of the neighbourhood, so two kinds of permit sit facing each other across the table: one pinned to the wall, the other never asked of the neighbours. When the dispute reached the desk of Sukoharjo's acting regent, he said that permanent closure would need strong grounds and a careful assessment, given that the business licence was issued officially. Some took that stance as legal prudence, others read it as taking the shop owner's side. The demand for permanent closure itself, at a hearing in the regional legislature on 2 November, was voiced by the Surakarta Sharia Council, speaking for the boarding school, though its legal basis has not been spelled out. On the other hand, whoever now stands as a suspect in the arson is still entitled to be presumed innocent until a court decides, and the anger that flared after months of objection without a way out can be understood in its origins. But to understand is not to justify. Even the sincerest dislike has an orderly door through which to be voiced, and the law provides that road, not a match.
Put the whole story together, and the public's bewilderment seems only natural. People no longer ask who the culprit is, since the main suspect appears to have been caught and another is still sought. What they ask is where the truncheon was pointed at three in the morning, and why the first door knocked down is so often not the one nearest the fire. That question hangs in the air of the shop like coffee steam that does not know where to settle, while public trust joins the queue, waiting to be served.
To my mind, good justice resembles a cup of coffee properly brewed: the measure is clear, the water clean, and nothing spills onto another person's table. If something does spill, it should be wiped up quickly and honestly acknowledged, not explained at such length that the coffee goes cold. And if a ministry and a human rights body must step in to examine what really happened behind the school's doors, that is not a sign that someone is under attack, but a sign that this country still has a way of asking questions of itself.
In the evening I closed my newspaper like a diary not yet finished. Outside, the rain fell softly, as if wishing to douse the embers still glowing in many people's heads. I hope that somewhere, justice is reading its map carefully and will finally find the right road: takes the children home to their beds in peace and carries public trust back to the place it has so long been absent from. For what most often turns to ash in this country is not buildings but trust, and ash of that kind cannot be swept up with a broom alone.
