From the moment hundreds of students began gathering yesterday morning at Trisakti University in Jakarta where six protesters were shot dead by soldiers on Tuesday, it was evident that this was a campus in revolt.
All classes and examinations were suspended. Professors mingled with students in black armbands. Volunteers blocked stairways in university buildings with metal rods, tables and blackboards. Student motorcyclists arrived in noisy convoys, carrying huge wreaths with messages of defiance from other universities.
Onlookers crowded round a list of victims pinned up in a room beside a yellowing poster of Princess Diana. An angry economics student showed me a newspaper photograph of a young woman lying on the road, arm outstretched in death. "They kicked her after she was shot and threw her body in a lorry," he said furiously.
A long white cloth was stretched out on a wall for written comments. A student interpreter who was helping me said, "Excuse me," and took out a felt pen to write "We'll continue our fight, my friends." Then she cried. One of the students killed had been her friend in first-year economics, she explained. "He rang me to say he wanted to demonstrate."
Others wrote: "People power", "Peace Man", "I hate Suharto", "Suharto must go", "Keep on fighting, don't give up". On a wall nearby someone had painted in large red letters, in English, "Suharto and ABRI - murderers". ABRI is the initials of the Indonesian army.
At first the army was nowhere to be seen. A campus rally began in searing heat at 10 a.m. when the leaders of Indonesia's opposition arrived to condemn the shootings and urge the students to keep demonstrating. The students shouted "Freedom" and thrust their fists in the air. It had the atmosphere of Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the same simplicity - and some of the same features, as many students at Trisakti are ethnic Chinese.
"What do you mean by freedom?" I asked a 19-year-old economics student. "Suharto must go down," she said, as several of her friends yelled agreement. A 22-year-old engineering undergraduate said: "Freedom? We want freedom just from this horrible situation, and democracy, of course."
The matronly Megawati Sukarnoputrai, daughter of the former Indonesian president, was given a tumultuous welcome at her first student demonstration. The pro-democracy activist is respected as a rallying figure, though not as a future leader. "Whoever killed our friends committed crimes against humanity," Megawati cried to loud cheers. "Soldiers, do not use force against our own children."
The diminutive Islamic leader, Amien Rais, leader of a Muslim organisation claiming 28 million members, said ABRI had two choices, to support President Suharto or the people. "We are going to demonstrate, we are not going to stop until reform is complete," he cried. "Our friends' deaths must inspire us to extra courage. We must unify to be victorious." The approval of senior university staff mingling with the students signified that public support for their cause is widening, particularly among the middle classes.
The students turned angry when Suryadi, the leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), who had ousted Megawati in a coup two years ago, dared to try to join the student bandwagon. Stones were thrown and one hit him.
University officials hustled him inside the main building just as several bangs came from the nearby street and tear-gas drifted on to the campus and penetrated every room, and even the elevator which I was taking to get a rooftop view. It was packed with gasping people, including elderly women in elegant robes. In the corridors of the 11-storey edifice, staff handed out masks and water bottles. Meanwhile students from other colleges and local people, furious about the shootings, had massed in the streets outside, and the riot police appeared and took up position. Trisakti University had suspended its demonstrations for a day to honour the dead, and dozens of activists in blue blazers held back their own students as excitement mounted.
A leader called Adam said: "I'm afraid things will get out of control." They soon did. At 12.30 the crowd outside moved down the road, and immediately a volley of shots rang out from soldiers at a petrol station and they ran back, stumbling over road dividers. Some protesters hijacked a rubbish truck and set in alight. They pulled down a lamp-post with two large light globes, and bent metal railings level with the ground.
For the next four hours shots rang out every few minutes as near-anarchy developed around the campus, which remained a haven as security forces are banned by law from entering. By mid-afternoon plumes of dark smoke were billowing up around the university from burning petrol stations and makeshift barricades.
Crowds gathered across the motorway in front of a glass-walled shopping plaza advertising The Body Shop and Dunkin' Donuts. They cheered when protesters, many from a poor area nearby, taunted the police and threw bottles, and ran helter-skelter when troops fired rubber bullets in their direction, then repeated the whole thing over again.
Further down the road a crowd casually broke the windows of a bank and took computers and swivel chairs to make a bonfire. It was in this mob that a young man was killed, the back of his head torn away, nobody knew how.
In the clinic inside the university the victims began arriving. I saw a man lying on a bloodstained table as a doctor in white coat operated on his back with half-a-dozen spectators eyeing his exposed bones. "It must have been live ammunition. The bullet went right through his upper body," the doctor said.
Staff treated 25 people for injuries from tear-gas and rubber bullets. But the toll of casualties could be higher. At one or two points on the eight-mile journey back to the city centre, roads were blocked by milling crowds, and the occasional crack of gunfire was ringing out. Even in the plush business centre riot police faced angry crowds. Two shots rang out as we passed. "That's a pistol," said the driver, like everyone else in Jakarta now an expert on the sounds different weapons make.