We Killed a Father That Night, We Did Not Save a Fighting Rooster

His name was KD. He was from Singaraja. He was killed before dawn in Baturiti, Tabanan. The allegation against him: that he had stolen a fighting rooster.

Allegedly.

I want to pause on that word, because it is the word we seemed to forget that night.

Alleged does not mean proven. Alleged does not mean someone deserves to be punished on the spot, by anyone, in any way. “Alleged” is a word that should make us wait—not act.

But that night in Baturiti, patience ran out before the legal process even had a chance to begin.

A Fighting Rooster and the Price of a Human Life

I fully understand why fighting roosters mean so much to many families in our villages. It is not simply a hobby. It is not merely about competing in a cockfighting arena. Months of care go into raising them. Family savings are invested in them. Even the pride of a banjar can be at stake whenever a prized rooster enters the arena.

I am not here to belittle that loss.

But I want to ask honestly, as someone born and raised on this land: When did we begin to measure the life of a father, a husband, a human being as equal to that of a bird?

When did an empty coop become more painful than a dining table that will remain empty forever, without the father who used to sit at the end of it?

A Father Who Went Out Looking, Not Stealing for Pleasure

Our senator, Arya Wedakarna, said something in the video that has spread everywhere that, in my view, goes straight to the heart of this tragedy.

A father, hungry, with children waiting at home, went out hoping to bring something back.

I imagine KD’s home that night.

Perhaps there was a child who had not yet eaten dinner.

Perhaps there was a child accustomed to waiting for her father to come home, carrying whatever he could find—anything that might be enough for the next morning.

That child did not know that this night would be different.

She did not know that her father would never come home again, carrying anything at all.

This Is Not the Bali Village I Have Known Since Childhood

I grew up listening to our elders speak about paruman desa—village deliberations. They spoke of resolving disputes through traditional village leaders, through banjar discussions, with cool heads and the willingness to yield for the sake of communal balance, the principles of Tri Hita Karana that we proudly share with the world.

The Bali village I know does not resolve disputes by beating someone to death before sunrise.

That is why, when Mr. Wedakarna said, “This is not Hinduism. This is not Dharma,” I nodded in complete agreement.

But there is a question that continues to weigh heavily on my heart, and perhaps on yours as well:

If this is truly not the real face of Bali, then what face were we actually seeing that night?

And when did that face begin to emerge among us, without us truly realizing it?

When Reporting Feels Pointless

I do not want to rush to judge the people who were at the scene that night. I also grew up in a village. I know how exhausting it can be to suffer repeated losses, file reports, wait, and eventually feel as though nothing ever truly changes.

In the comment sections of social media, there are countless voices that, if we are willing to listen honestly, are not simply defending violence. They are voices of exhaustion.

Exhaustion from waiting for a legal process that feels painfully slow.

Exhaustion from seeing minor theft cases happen repeatedly without a resolution that feels satisfying or just.

I am not saying that exhaustion justifies what happened.

I am only saying that the exhaustion is real. And if we continue to pretend that we do not see it, we are simply waiting for another village to experience the same kind of night.

Because when a community stops believing that justice will come through the proper channels, it does not stop seeking justice.

It simply begins to seek it on its own.

School Fees Cannot Replace a Father’s Embrace

Mr. Wedakarna has promised to support KD’s children through university. I sincerely and wholeheartedly appreciate that.

But let us be honest with ourselves for a moment.

No scholarship, no matter how generous, can replace a father who should have been there on his child’s first day of junior high school.

A father who should have been sitting among the audience when his child graduated.

A father who should have walked his child down the aisle one day.

The Head of Sidatapa Village, I Made Sutama, who personally went to collect KD’s body, said something simple yet deeply heartbreaking: seeing the child sobbing uncontrollably made him truly sad.

Imagine being in his position.

A village head, someone who should have become accustomed to dealing with all kinds of problems among his people, still could not hold back his own sorrow in the face of a child’s tears.

That is the most honest picture of this tragedy.

It is not about a chicken that disappeared from a coop.

It is about a child who, the next morning—and perhaps for thousands of mornings to come—will wake up and realize that one chair at the family dining table will never be occupied again.

What We Need to Reflect On, Not Just What We Need to Punish

We can, and we must, be angry at those who took someone’s life that night without due process. I wholeheartedly support firm legal action against anyone proven to have been involved.

But if our anger ends there, we will only resolve one case without ever truly answering the bigger questions.

Why does anger seem to produce results faster than waiting for the legal process?

Why could a Bali village, one that I have known as a place of compassion and mutual cooperation, reach a point where killing someone seemed more reasonable than reporting a crime?

Why has our trust in the system that is supposed to protect us been eroded to such an extent that a human life could be put at risk over nothing more than an allegation?

If we only punish the people involved in that night’s violence without having the courage to honestly answer these questions, we may close one case.

But we will not have closed the door to the possibility of it happening again—in another banjar, to another father, leaving another child crying in the middle of another crowd.

For the Child Still Waiting in Buleleng

Tonight, somewhere in Buleleng, there is a little child who may still not fully understand why her father did not come home.

She does not know about layers of criminal charges. She does not know about senators, the Regional Representative Council of the Republic of Indonesia (DPD RI), or the lengthy debates we are having tonight about public trust in the law.

All she knows is that her father left that night.

And he never came home.

If there is one lesson we should truly take away from this tragedy, perhaps it is not merely the conclusion that taking the law into one’s own hands is wrong. That is already far too obvious to need repeating.

The much harder—and far more urgent—task is to ensure that no village in Bali ever feels that such a path is the only option left to them.

Because whatever was lost from that chicken coop that night, its value, no matter how high, will never be comparable to the loss of a father from the lives of his children.

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