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Letter from Yogyakarta
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TRIJNIE PLATTJE, in Indonesia's cultural capital, senses courage and hope amidst the fearful crisis.
TRIJNIE PLATTJE
Demonstrations are being conducted in the cities every day now by small groups of a great variety of people: students, workers, intellectuals, artists. They always go onto the streets in small groups so that they can disperse quickly and perhaps reappear in a different combination elsewhere. Sometimes with banners and slogans, sometimes silently, with black banners, in order to indicate how everyone has been made dumb.
Tense. The army is on the streets every day. Especially our son Gideon (11) is sensitive to the resulting atmosphere. But there is also a feeling of relief. A feeling of 'at last, something is happening'. Worry too: 'Can they keep it free of violence?'. Apprehension and fear. Everyone thinks of the years 65-66. But also hope and courage.
Milk powder
Among others, people are protesting against price rises. The price of milk powder for babies and infants has become two or three times what it was. Many mothers do not breastfeed because their workplace does not offer the facilities to allow it. Contraceptives also seriously hinder breastfeeding. You do not choose your own contraceptives here, they are assigned to you (although you do pay for them).
The women are stuck. Contraceptives, like other medicines, are becoming scarce and/ or expensive. Some say the number of (attempts at) abortions has increased since the crisis began because women especially in the city no longer know how they will feed their children. Especially women from the poorer families bear all the responsibility for their children. In the middle and upper classes the man is expected to earn enough to maintain the whole family.
'Communist'
In villages outside the city Catholic priests are trying to set up a kind of barter system in order to prevent malnutrition or worse. It is fairly successful. People use their plot of land to grow food crops they can eat themselves or exchange for others. They no longer rent it out to large companies to grow sugar cane or some other cash crop. For this the priests are likely to be labelled communist.
Small farmers clearly lose more than they gain when they make their land available to a sugar factory. They get far too little compensation. And afterwards the ground is exhausted. So they only agree to rent out their land for sugar cane more or less under pressure. If they refuse, the age-old recipe of 'suspected communism' is brought out once more. It is hard to believe that people who are simply trying to avoid a disaster can find themselves being denounced in this libelous way, instead of being supported for their initiatives.
This is just a small picture of the worries among the people.
Prayer
In Solo a number of social organisations held a market with low prices for the most important foodstuffs. The 1600 parcels made available were by no means sufficient. Among the people who came were some who had clearly not eaten for days.
In the midst of this situation more and more people are standing up and opening their mouths. Demanding justice, food for their children, openness, honesty. They want to hear the truth, do not like to see others made scapegoats on the basis of their race or religion.
Last Monday there was an inter-religious prayer meeting. Leaders from all the religions (the five recognised ones as well as those not recognised such as Confucianism and Javanese religion) offered their prayers in words that left little to the imagination.
They exposed the injustices in crystal clear terms, expressed their fury, and their anxieties. But they also painted visions of peace and justice, dreams of a society where people will have room to move in the midst of their differences. Everyone in their own way, in mutual respect.
This all took place in the royal palace, the kraton, that is, under the protection of the sultan of Yogyakarta. It was good to be together as Javanese and Chinese, as Muslims and Christians, people from the kraton and from outside. Everything was played out in an atmosphere of Javanese mysticism, amidst the smoke of incense, candles, the fragrance of flowers, the sounds of the gamelan.
With many others we look to the coming months with apprehension. We shall certainly be needing the unity we experienced at that meeting in the kraton as we support one another in a search for justice and peace, and as we look after those who are suffering the greatest hardships.
We are all well. Until now most of the demonstrations in Yogyakarta have taken place on the university campuses (not on ours), so that the city has been little troubled by them and often does not even know about them. For the moment at least, we have no concerns about our own safety.
Yogyakarta, 28 February 1998.
Trijnie Plattje and her husband Jan Post Hospers teach theology at Duta Wacana Christian University. They are from the Netherlands.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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Travels in West Timor
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SIMON ANDREWARTHA discovers a quiet invasion by outsiders, even in the remotest villages.
ARTHUR KING
'This area used to be inhabited by Bunak people. When the Belunese moved here, the Bunak seemed to just fade away. People said they didn't like the smell of the fish the Belunese used in their cooking'. This was how one respected elder of the local community explained what happened to the Bunak tribe. Today, the Bunak are found on the mountainous East Timorese side of the border with Belu regency in West Timor.
Before the first Portuguese arrived in the sixteenth century, Belu lay at the heart of one of the most influential kingdoms on Timor, Waihale. But as the Bunak had to make way for the Belunese, so the Belunese were in turn to yield to a new intruder. The kingdom of Waihale became the first victim of the Portuguese explorers. After landing on the north coast of the island with a force of about 80 men armed with muskets, the Portuguese marched to Waihale on the south coast, and destroyed it.
There is no written record of armed conflict between the Belunese of Waihale and the Bunak. The local community leader's explanation for the mysterious decline of the Bunak could be as good as any other.
Whereas the Belunese were defeated by conquest, the Bunak simply faded away when a new people moved in. A similar contrast can be seen between the fates of modern East and West Timor. East Timor was invaded by Indonesia in 1975. But a more subtle erosion of sovereignty has been taking place over the last couple of decades in West Timor. The West Timorese appear to be following the path of the Bunak, either removing themselves or being pushed out from the space they once occupied by a process of economic marginalisation.
Poverty
The age-old problem of a subsistence economy meeting a cash economy is played out again. Self-sufficiency, albeit imperfect, is replaced by real poverty. However, beneath this seemingly inevitable, but unplanned, collision of two opposing worlds, is a strong current of deliberate manipulation.
The hand of the government is evident in its support of migrants to West Timor, in particular of their religious identity, over that of the Timorese. This intervention stacks the odds even more firmly against preservation of a distinctly Timorese identity and way of life.
Anyone who visits rural markets in West Timor can see the Timorese being marginalised almost before their eyes. Some markets are still located where they have always been - on a windswept hillside or by a dry river bed, rather than in a government building. You can still buy there such quaint traditional produce as honeycomb, hand-made rope, clay pots, and betel nut.
But all the markets are dominated by something else: tarpaulin- covered stalls selling the same plastic wares you can find in markets anywhere throughout Indonesia. These stalls are invariably owned by Bugis, an ethnic group originating from Southern Sulawesi, and never by Timorese.
Timorese with something to sell are there, but they are squatting at the back of the market. A short distance away you can probably buy sopi, distilled palm juice. It is banned by the government and hence sold on the sly, by the cupful. All the customers are Timorese.
The overall impression is of a noisy school yard, where the less aggressive children have made an enclave for themselves at the back of the shelter shed, hoping to be left alone.
When I asked about this between 1993 and 1995 I was told it was at least 15 years since the Bugis arrived. I saw them myself on numerous occasions, even in remote villages. Walking along a dirt road in one such village, I heard the sound of children shouting noisily at me. Normally, children will only do this to Western tourists in the provincial capital, Kupang. When I remarked on it to the Timorese youth walking with me, he said: Itu orang Bugis, mereknya lain, 'That's the Bugis... different brand'. Timorese children in rural areas are uniformly reserved and polite to strangers.
Land
The Bugis have also made inroads into the control of local resources. Land is the primary resource of the Timorese subsistence farmer. In a village in the fertile region of Mollo Utara, ramshackle Bugis trade stalls stand incongruously against the picturesque vista of tilled fields and grass 'bee-hive' huts that lie directly beneath the peaks of Mount Mutis. Their presence is evidence of a capitalist success story, but one that owes its success to the deceit of the original inhabitants.
According to the local Catholic priest, the very first Bugis migrants came and said that they were poor. So the village elders gave them land. At other times the Bugis invoked the symbolic significance of betel nut in Timorese culture by making an offering of it in return for land. On this small plot of land the Bugis erected their first trade stall, warung. Here they sold the usual assortment of household goods, usually on credit.
Eventually, when the debts of some customers were well and truly beyond their means, the Bugis demanded more land, or they would report the debtors to the authorities. The Bugis would also offer sheets of corrugated iron, the preferred roofing material, in exchange for land.
Once they owned sufficient acreage to grow things, the Bugis planted the local cash crop, garlic, which commands a good price in Kupang. With the proceeds they bought their own truck, to transport the garlic that they now bought directly from the Timorese.
The inexperienced Timorese, easily impressed by a lump sum figure, are persuaded to sell their crop even before it has been harvested. The price per kilogram is dictated by the Bugis buyers. This brings the price down even further than if the crop was sold on weight.
Oranges, which also grow in abundance in this area, are also sold before they have ripened on the tree. From this position the Bugis can acquire even more farming land.
Muslim
The Bugis are Muslim, while the Timorese are Christian. To the Timorese, this adds another, threatening dimension to the economic clash. Nusa Tenggara Timur province (NTT) encompasses West Timor. Its total population only numbers around three million. Yet it is commonly thought of as the 'Christian stronghold' of Indonesia, which is the world's most populous Muslim nation. Although in a minority, migrant Bugis Muslims in NTT receive government support in ways that add an aura of official sanction to their activities.
The most obvious form of government support is funding for new mosques. Muslims qualify for assistance once a sufficient number of Muslim households are present in a community. Such funding is not available to build churches. While there is still no mosque in the village I described above, others have sprung up in equally unlikely places on Timor.
As if in response, this seems to have triggered what could almost be described as a competition between Christian parishes to construct bigger and better churches. An impartial observer might feel that the manpower and funding for this frenzy of construction - almost entirely drawn from the local congregations - could be better spent on community development. But the importance of the church as a focus of community strength cannot be underestimated.
As with the Three Little Pigs who sought safety in vain from the Big Bad Wolf by making houses of straw and wood, the new churches are equally unlikely to be effective protection against the prevailing wind of Islam. But they are a highly visible indication of the threat the Timorese perceive.
Adding to the picture of tacit government support for migrants is a story related to me by missionaries teaching theology in Kupang. Many of their graduates hope to find jobs giving religious instruction in village primary and junior high schools. But they often experience difficulty, because the Department of Education and Culture has allotted the vacancies to Muslim migrants. This is in spite of the fact that the Muslim teachers have little knowledge of the Christian religion practised by the local community.
Conversion to Islam is virtually unheard of amongst West Timorese. Yet there are persistent rumours of aggressive Muslim proselytising amongst the villagers in the southern sub-districts of Amanatun and Amanuban. Travelling by bus, I myself sighted a dilapidated mosque in this area. Timorese passengers casually told me that locals were offered money to register as Muslims. If true, this kind of missioning suggests naked political empire building, rather than religious evangelism.
Juggernaut
The political implications of an increasing number of Muslim immigrants to West Timor are perhaps clearest in the changing ethnic make-up of regional administrators. In the strongly Protestant sub-district of Amfoang Utara, on the north coast, for example, a Javanese Muslim has been reappointed for two consecutive terms as sub-district head (camat).
The administrative centre for Amfoang Utara is the remote village of Naikliu, often completely cut off from access to Kupang by both sea and land approaches in the wet season. Yet it is home to a community of Bugis traders, and boasts a mosque.
It was in Naikliu that I first encountered what turned out to be one of several documents purporting to be the Muslim blueprint for the destruction of the Catholic church in NTT. Whether genuine or not, as with the panic construction of churches, they seemed symptomatic of the alarm the juggernaut of Islam has caused amongst both Protestant and Catholic Timorese.
Within a few short years the image of NTT as the 'Christian stronghold' of Indonesia seems to have become less convincing. Instead I think of the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels, who nervously await the next move of their giant alien intruder.
Simon Andrewartha lived in West Timor and teaches Indonesian in Australia.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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Behind the student demands
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STANLEY is impressed with the latest generation of students demonstrators.
STANLEY
After three months of continuous demonstrations, many observers are asking where the student actions might lead as they become more angry and violent. Will they really persist in their demand that the 'Old Man' Suharto step down? Or will the history of 1966 repeat itself and the students peacefully return to their classes while the army brings the situation under control with gradual reform?
A growing wave of demonstrations has spread to campuses in almost every province of Indonesia. In disturbances at the North Sumatra University in Medan, and at Mataram University on the island of Lombok, both on 25 April, troops opened fire and killed several demonstrators. The shootings created an important new phase for student activists. Would they press on with their demands, or go along with reforms proposed by the government in a dialogue led by armed forces commander General Wiranto?
Passion
Serious incidents since then have convinced many observers that attempts to hose down the fire of the students' passion is a waste of time.
Student and IMF demands for reform have been answered by the government with a series of inconsistent responses. For example, the national logistic board Bulog, which has a monopoly on distributing essential food items, was abolished, only to be replaced by a new marketing organisation called Goro, headed by the President's son, Hutomo 'Tommy' Mandala Putra.
The credibility gap makes the students reject any invitation for dialogue. 'We only wish to deal directly with the president,' said one of the student groups in Jakarta.
The head of the student senate at the prestigious University of Indonesia, Rama Pratama, was among those who declined the invitation to dialogue with General Wiranto. 'It is better to engage in direct dialogue without the presence of a mediator. Anyway, dialogue is not the point of the students' struggle,' said Pratama, in the 1993 economics class.
Meanwhile his comrade-in-arms, Teguh Agung Budi Utomo, a student at Airlangga University in Surabaya, declared: 'The 1945 constitution proclaims the sovereignty of the people. To be absolutely constitutional, a dialogue must take place through the People's Consultative Assembly, the MPR.' He was referring to growing demands for a special session of the MPR to call the president to account.
'This refusal of the students is really humiliating for us as assistants to the president,' complained Information Minister R Hartono.
Old regime
The students' logic in rejecting the invitation for dialogue is really the same as that of the students in 1966. Both refused to dialogue with an old regime on the brink of destruction. 'We will only conduct a dialogue with anyone who can change the so-called New Order of Suharto,' said a group of students from 11 March University.
Senior officials who up until now have been famous for being 'allergic' to entering university campuses have suddenly fallen in love with the idea of having a dialogue with the students. Everybody knows that the 'New Order' regime has up until now been anti-dialogue.
The military have not appreciated the fact that university students since the 1980s have themselves become allergic to anything to do with the men in green. They have always been critical of the Generation of 1966, who they hold responsible for the military domination of the country since then. We all know that the military as a group, as well as a section of the 1966 student generation, have paid excessive homage to the preservation of Suharto's power.
Manipulation
Indeed, the dialogue planned for 6 April ended in failure. All the invited student representatives boycotted it. By means of sheer hard work and plenty of manipulation, it took Abri headquarters till 18 April to put on another dialogue. It was held in the Jakarta suburb of Kemayoran.
Most of the students who turned up belonged to official government organisations like Ampi and Knpi. A few student senates did send representatives, but far more considered the dialogue just a farce. All the students knew that the point of the dialogue was to stop the students from doing anything.
In order to create a spectacular impression, the 18 April dialogue brought together hundreds of people from various backgrounds. Besides 60 student representatives, dozens of representatives from other social organisations, from intellectual groups, and heads of universities were brought along to join the merry throng. No fewer than 16 cabinet ministers were in attendance. Armed forces commander General Wiranto turned up with his entire staff.
What was the result? Students thought it was a nice break from their studies. Cabinet ministers and military officers said seriously that they would attempt to implement the student demands for reform, of course 'in a constitutional manner, through the right channels, and gradually'.
Even more ironically, the president's daughter Siti Hardiyanti 'Tutut' Rukmana declared: 'Your demands for reform are ours as well. These are not just the demands of our younger brothers and sisters, the university students.'
There seemed to be a desire to bury the demands of the students by changing the word 'oppose' to 'all of us together'. Of course this really infuriated the students. One from Surabaya said: 'Don't you know that all the while, behind the demands for reform, the students are demanding Suharto step down from the presidency?' This declaration naturally shocked a considerable number of the dialogue participants.
Counter dialogue
While the army held its dialogue in Jakarta, students put together a 'counter dialogue' at the Agricultural University (IPB) in Bogor at the same time. The dialogue rather resembled a rally to be on the alert. Over 4000 students attended from tertiary institutions in Java and Bali. Several IPB professors supported the event.
The meeting was the debut for a number of new student leaders within Indonesian campus politics. Among them were Cahyo Pamungkas from Gajah Mada, and Rama Pratama from the University of Indonesia. According to Cahyo, it was no longer necessary for students to sit around and discuss their vision. 'Our vision is the same: we all want change. Silence means betrayal and silence also means being oppressed,' he said. He declared that change could be constitutional or it could be unconstitutional.
Cahyo called on students to reject dialogue with the government, and also to reject calls by senior officials for them to come up with a political and economic blueprint. 'That is not the job of students, professors, doctors or other graduates', said Cahyo.
The meeting was also an opportunity to plan simultaneous actions throughout Indonesia, which took place over the following week. Some students agreed to overcome the impasse up till that moment by going out into the streets. They believed that by going onto the streets, the threat of being beaten up by the security apparatus would merely increase student militancy.
Others were going to try to enter parliament (DPR) and present a motion of no confidence in the representatives of the people. Another group wanted to visit the State Secretariat and convey a statement to President Suharto.
Euphemism
Students at the moment are virtually unanimous in demanding 'reform'. This is interesting because around the time of the March session of the MPR they were demanding that Suharto be rejected as a presidential candidate. 'Of course the word "reform" is a euphemism for "bring Suharto to justice"', commented Sukendro, a student activist from Dr Moestopo University. 'At the moment it is not possible to yell openly what we were saying during the March MPR session'.
Although the word 'reform' dominates the demonstrations, in free speech rostrums we hear that there are in fact Ten People's Demands. They are reform of the political, legal, economic and educational system; repeal of five notorious laws on politics; abolition of the army's 'dual function'; reduction of the price of basic foodstuff; reduction in the cost of education; rejection of the plan to raise fuel prices; elimination of corruption, collusion and nepotism; an end to kidnapping of activists; an end to unfair and unofficial charges in universities; and speedy attention to unemployment.
Some students are adding another demand to these ten, namely the swift convening of a special session of the super-parliament (MPR) to bring Suharto to justice.
Some of these demands were already put forward by Megawati's People's Democratic Party before they were crushed and declared an illegal organisation at the end of 1996.
Fretilin?
As usual, the security apparatus are laying the accusation that mysterious others have infiltrated the students and are fomenting violent confrontation with the security forces. 'From the type of actions employed it can clearly be seen that there were extremist elements at work in the student actions at the Gajah Mada University campus. We see the influence of the PRD and Fretilin', stated the military area commander for Central Java.
Some see the accusation of revolutionary infiltration as just another tactic to intimidate the students and their parents. 'Oh, that's old hat. Everybody knows the only thing that has infiltrated us is our conscience', commented Rama Pratama. 'If we were to let this issue of infiltration bother us then students would never dare do anything. We will continue to move ahead', he added.
The issue of infiltration was dealt another blow when senior lecturers, professors and even the wives of government officials within Dharma Wanita joined the demonstrations and called out the same demands as the students.
By contrast with those who reject dialogue with the military, some other students declared they did not want to close their minds to the idea of an alliance between students and the military. 'As long as it ends in reform,' said Abdullah, a student from 17 August University in Jakarta. He added that information had come into student hands about whole units deserting from the armed forces. Apart from feeling the consequences of the economic troubles, he said, these soldiers were refusing to repress the students.
'It is these soldiers who have the potential to become our allies in the struggle. This time we are not afraid of being coopted by the military, as the students were in 1965/1966. This time the military will not be able to get on top of the economic crisis', Abdullah said.
30 April 1998. On 12 May, six student demonstrators were shot dead, apparently by military snipers, at Trisakti University in Jakarta.
Stanley is a journalist and author in Jakarta. David Williams, at the University of Southern Queensland, was the translator.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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Murky military memoirs
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Heru Cahyono, Pangkopkamtib Jenderal Soemitro dan Peristiwa 15 January '74, Pustaka Sinar Harapan, Jakarta 1998 (see Bookshop page for availability).
Reviewed by DAVID BOURCHIER
This is one of a string of fascinating memoirs published in recent years in which military figures prominent in the early years of the Suharto regime have sought to lift the lid on the murky past.
Sumitro headed the almost omnipotent internal security agency Kopkamtib from March 1973 till January 1974, placing him almost at the centre of power.
He is probably best remembered for his dramatic fall from grace following the 'Malari' riots that rocked Jakarta in January 1974 and shook the government to its foundations. Suspecting that Sumitro was rallying students to support a bid to take over power, Suharto promptly sacked him, closed down several newspapers and threw a number of students and intellectuals in prison.
In this book Sumitro attempts to untangle the events leading to Malari, which seem to have taken him completely by surprise. He focuses on the role played by Suharto's wily intelligence aide Ali Murtopo, who he blames for engineering the riots and causing his downfall.
In fact almost the entire book is devoted to examining the intrigues of the late Ali Murtopo, with whom Sumitro clearly has a morbid fascination. He argues that Murtopo, with the help of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, worked methodically to pick off his enemies one by one and build a South Korean style intelligence empire which would eventually seize power from Suharto.
At the same time, however, he praises Murtopo for successfully building the political structures of the New Order in the 1970s, for his genius as a political operator, for his aversion to personal corruption and for his clear vision. The sting in the tail for Suharto is Sumitro's conclusion that Ali Murtopo would have been exactly the sort of president Indonesia needed.
Ghost written by the journalist Heru Cahyono, himself an expert on the period, this book is easy to read and often entertaining. It is a valuable source for anyone interested in one of the most colourful - and little researched - architects of the New Order. Sumitro died on 10 May 1998.
David Bourchier is a researcher at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Perth.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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A fresh wind is blowing
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Why is it so hard to remember the evils of the past? ROB GOODFELLOW explores the pain, and the exhilaration, of memory.
ROB GOODFELLOW
Over three days from the 1st of August 1997 a remarkable national campaign against violence towards women in Indonesia was launched at the Benteng Vredeburg Museum in Yogyakarta. There was music and drama. It featured an impressive exhibition of fine art, installation, sculpture and print-making. And the campaign was launched by powerful and passionate speeches. One speech in particular marked a significant departure from contemporary Indonesia's dominant culture of suppressing hitherto 'un-resolved historical issues'.
Nyi Mardiyem was a slave forced into prostitution by the Japanese Army, a jugun ianfu. Now ageing, she spoke of her experiences during World War Two. She explained to the spell-bound audience in reserved but confident tones how, together with other young girls from her village outside Yogyakarta, she was forcibly recruited into a life of shame and degradation. Campaign organiser Dewi Ratnawulan comforted Nyi Mardiyem as the latter ended her speech with an emotional prayer to Allah for long life, so that she could 'continue to bear testimony to the violence and humiliation committed against her and tens of thousands of other Indonesian and foreign women'.
Watershed
The event received wide media coverage, at least in Yogyakarta. Half page advertisements in leading local dailies and popular magazines promoted the event, stating the movement wished to expose the intimidation, discrimination and abuse of women and children by men.
Western researchers such as Norma Sullivan have studied domestic violence in depth. The Indonesian press, however, has tended to embrace the issue only when it becomes sensational - such as the July 1995 home invasion and rape of a mother and her two young daughters in Jakarta, or the murder of 42 women by the North Sumatra mystic 'Datuk' (in Amandamai village, the name means 'safe and sound').
The interest of journalists in Nyi Mardiyem's story marked something of a watershed in reporting on both historical and contemporary violence. Indeed the very existence of a movement dedicated to raising, and then dealing with what are generally considered to be Indonesia's 'historical problems' marks a watershed. According to Dewi Ratnawulan, a public and painful discussion of the plight of ex-jugun ianfu would not have been possible even two years ago. Clearly a fresh wind has blown over the issue.
In a local newspaper article two days later, the exhibition's curator Dr M Dwi Marianto made the important point that the primary function of the exhibition was to raise public consciousness and thereby 'plant ideas into the feelings, thoughts and desires' of everyone involved.
Ex-jugun ianfu Nyi Mardiyem was permitted to play a significant role in raising public consciousness. She elaborated to reporters that rape was only one level of violence in society. There were other, deeper examples of violence, 'below the surface', which had not been exposed, both physical and non-physical, she said. These comments had an invigorating effect on the press in Yogyakarta.
Marsinah
Media expert Ashadi Siregar, writing for the local Kedaulatan Rakyat, took the opportunity to raise a raft of issues constructed around the life of R A Kartini, turn-of-the-century nationalist heroine and champion for women's rights. After providing the censors with a painless first paragraph, Siregar went on to examine discrimination and violence in a broader context, from AIDS to worker's rights and conditions, from labour market segregation to the 'structural problems and interpretation of the state ideology Pancasila in the context of capitalism'.
Finally Siregar raised the cause celebre of the murdered factory activist Marsinah who, according to Siregar, was singled out 'first because she was a common worker, second because she was an activist, and third because she was a woman'. Towards the back of the newspaper, in that remote place where the minions of the Ministry for Information seldom venture, he went on to construct a bold analytical comparison between Marsinah and the 'structure and ideology' of violence and discrimination in Indonesia. He drew strong comparisons with the case of Megawati Sukarnoputri, the deposed leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party PDI. This, the author argued, was another, but different case of 'ideological violence', in fact a 'portrait' of 'naked discrimination and intimidation in the public rather than private domain'.
Critique brutality
Naked intimidation was also the subject of a dramatic production staged in Vredeburg on the second night of the exhibition. Carousel, atau komidi putar ('Carousel') was produced by a group of political science students from Gajah Mada University calling themselves the Sanggar Garasi Group.
Nyi Mardiyem's evocative comments about deeper examples of violence in society, 'below the surface', appears to have given Sanggar Garasi a powerful opportunity to critique brutality - through the prism of communal violence. Producer Baskoro Darmawan was obviously being very careful when he described the play in the press as 'designed to resolve', or rather 'open up', unresolved contemporary issues.
In stark contrast to these modest comments, the performance was a dramatic and disturbing graphic representation, indeed a gruesome feast of violent images. The play represented a critique of both the genesis and finale of communal violence. This encompassed a number of issues including the rape and murder of women by men, but it actually focused on the 'hypothetical' subject of an urban street riot.
A spectacle of flaming props contributed to the dramatic effect. An enormous back-drop slide screen flashed images of savagery from Jalan Thamrin in Jakarta to the West Bank of the Jordan River, from the Vietnam War to caged political prisoners in Chile, and to Nazi execution squads shooting old Jewish men into a ditch. The play's final act was unforgettable, a crescendo of pathos and destruction. The association with the July 27th riots in Jakarta was unmistakable, as were echoes of a previous and more brutal 'historical problem', 1965-66.
Sitor Situmorang
On the evening of the 11th of August, one week after the launch of the anti-violence campaign against women at Vredeburg, Basis magazine sponsored a night of poetry reading in honour of the poet Sitor Situmorang. It was hosted within the royal palace, the kraton, in Yogyakarta, at one of the residences of the younger brother of Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono X, Gusti Joyokusumo.
A prominent literary figure during the 'Old Order' era, Sitor was chairman of the National Cultural Institute (LKN) from 1959-1965. Both Sitor's chairmanship of LKN and his literary career were abruptly terminated in the violent, military-led anti-communist backlash of October 1965.
A question fielded from the audience through the moderator asked why Sitor had not published anything between his Sastra revolusioner ('Revolutionary literature') of 1965 and his Dinding waktu ('Time wall') of 1976. As if people did not know! The question gave Sitor the opportunity to put aside issues of literary merit and syntax. In a humorous yet profound way he explained what, according to him, did or did not constitute a 'dark period' in a writer's life and whether the non-publication of work could be considered as 'unproductive'.
Any direct mention of Sitor's imprisonment following the night of the 30th of September 1965 was avoided by the use of intimation, double-entendre and punning. This cleverly embellished the poet's veiled views about the years after 1965 without once having to explicitly raise them. In turn it had a profound effect on the audience, who were clearly unaccustomed to discussing the massive human tragedy of the early New Order in a public forum.
Mysterious gunmen
Perhaps by coincidence, early August 1997 also marked the local publication of the novel Ojo dumeh, by Agnes Yani Sardjono. Ojo dumeh is a story set in Yogyakarta around the 1983-5 killings of thousands of organised criminals and others by specially trained army 'hit-men'. The so-called petrus affair, from penembak misterius or 'mysterious gunmen', provides the social canvas for Sardjono's central character, the freelance journalist Samhudi. The book is about a dilemma. It is about friendship, trust and betrayal. But it is also about the rich, dark world of the organised criminal gangs that 'ruled the streets' of Yogyakarta and other Indonesian cities, the gali or preman, before their violent extra-judicial annihilation.
Ojo dumeh is, once more, about unresolved 'historical issues', about un-excavated memories. Samhudi's novel puts literary flesh and bones on characters who otherwise remain anonymous victims of the 'mysterious gunmen'. Nyi Mardiyem's story, told so powerfully at Vredeburg, transforms the myth and speculation surrounding ex- jugun ianfu into historical discourse. Sitor's description of the effect of his literary 'dark period' of 1965-1976 personalises, or rather humanises, the experience of thousands of Indonesian writers, poets and artists who were sucked into the historical vortex after September 1965. Each of these examples has raised the prospect that Indonesians may soon be able to confidently 'clear the historical air'.
Is it possible that the time is approaching when stories may be publicly told about the killings and mass arrests of 1965-66? Those of us who are patient, and who listen, are waiting for the 'fresh wind to blow'.
(Contact the campaign against violence towards women: Gerakan Anti- Kekerasan Terhadap Perempuan Indonesia (GAKTPI), Jl C Simanjuntak 8, Yogyakarta 55223, Indonesia, tel/fax 0274-588605).
Rob Goodfellow lives in Wollongong, Australia. He spends a lot of time in Yogyakarta and is writing a PhD dissertation on Indonesian memories of violence. He expresses his thanks to Herb Feith for support and encouragement.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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Ratna accused, and defiant
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BARBARA HATLEY traces the life of Ratna Sarumpaet, among the most prominent of Indonesia's new political prisoners.
BARBARA HATLEY
On the evening of Wednesday 11th March, viewers of Australian ABC television's '7.30 Report' witnessed a startling event - the arrest of playwright and theatre director Ratna Sarumpaet.
Ratna and others had planned a gathering to coincide with the joint sitting of the Indonesian parliament, about to formally re-elect President Suharto. The international press and foreign embassies were invited. But the program of discussions was cancelled when security officials intervened.
As we watched from our living rooms, Ratna informed a small crowd that the event could not go ahead, and led them in the singing of two patriotic songs, Indonesia Raya and To you our country. Then, as they prayed silently before dispersing, the order went out to take Ratna Sarumpaet.
We heard Ratna's sharp cries of protest 'Where is your warrant? Where is the warrant?', and saw her companions attempt vainly to prevent security police from forcing her into a car. Eight were arrested and taken with Ratna to the police headquarters in Jakarta.
Crime
Eventually six people were charged with holding an illegal political meeting. At the time of writing they remain in detention awaiting trial. Ratna herself faces two charges. One under a Sukarno-era ban on 'anti-revolutionary' political gatherings (with a maximum sentence of one year in prison), the other under an infamous colonial law against the spreading of hatred (maximum seven years). Both charges are filled with irony. A pre-trial appeal, protesting irregularities in their arrests, was summarily dismissed. The judgement stated in part that 'singing Indonesia Raya and To you my country is proof of their political crime'.
Ratna's supporters around the world have rallied in her defence, with letters of protest to the Indonesian authorities, a web page focussed on her case, and a world-wide program of readings from her works. But, confronting a regime which indicts the singing of patriotic songs as a political offence, they face a tough struggle.
At one level Ratna's arrest was hardly a surprise. Over the past few years the outspoken, determined playwright has been involved increasingly combative confrontations with the authorities. She joined protests against the banning of Tempo magazine. She participated in the 1997 election campaign with a street theatre involving a coffin labelled 'democracy'.
The last straw was her outright defiance of a ban imposed in Lampung last December on the performance of her monologue 'Marsinah accuses'. She proceeded with the show in a darkened, locked theatre complex before an audience who had evaded security guards by climbing a back fence.
Funeral
Her political activities have been accompanied by an increasingly critical stance in her creative works. Her 1994 production Marsinah: Nyanyian dari bawah tanah ('Marsinah: A song from the underworld') reflected on issues of political violence and repression inspired by the Marsinah case. Terpasung ('Shackled') explored themes of male dominance and violence towards women. Pesta terakhir ('The final celebration') depicts the grand funeral of a deceased authoritarian leader at which not one guest appears.
And in the monologue Marsinah menggugat ('Marsinah accuses') Ratna returns to the Marsinah theme, speaking directly in the voice of the murdered worker, who details the horrific brutality of her torture and death.
Indeed, Ratna's words just before her arrest show her moving to a savage indictment of a parliament which betrays the hopes of 200 million people. 'Who and what are we before our children, before the coming generations, before hundreds of millions of people far less empowered than ourselves', she called out passionately to those present, 'if, as our nation faces such a desperate situation, we can do nothing?'.
Ratna's activities do not, of course, remotely justify her detention. But they may suggest how a paternalistic, authoritarian regime, outraged at such provocation by a mere woman, feels the need to silence her. And they raise an intriguing question. How is it that a woman playwright who until a few years ago had been quite uninvolved in politics has taken up such a critical, outspoken position, at a time when better-known literary and theatre radicals are silent?
Rendra Both Ratna's parents had been politicians. But as representatives of Christian parties, marginalised and disfavoured in the Sukarno period, they did not bring up their children to be political. The emphasis, Ratna reports, was on working hard to do something useful.
She was studying architecture at the University of Indonesia in 1969 when she saw a production of one of Rendra's plays and decided immediately that this was the path she wanted to follow. She went to Yogya and joined Rendra's group. After a time she left, with the aim of becoming a director and proving that in this way she could do something for society.
But instead she fell in love, married and had children. At first her husband, a businessman, refused to allow her to perform. Later he financed her in staging several productions. These were adaptations of foreign works - Rubaiyat of Omar Kayam, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet, in the last case with Ratna playing Hamlet.
Then from 1976 to 1989 Ratna stopped performing theatre, though still working in television and film, as she struggled with the traumas of an unhappy, violent marriage. When she returned to theatre after her divorce, her productions were informed by a sustained focus on the situation of women.
Ratna explains that her adaptation of Antigone to a Batak setting, for example, reflects the privileging of sons and brothers in Batak society and the lack of rights held by women.
Marsinah
But it was the murder of the female worker Marsinah in 1993 which set Ratna on a new direction in her work. Marsinah was a factory labour leader who was almost certainly murdered by military men acting on behalf of management. 'I am obsessed by Marsinah', Ratna said before the performance of her Marsinah play. She recounts how the murdered worker's face had appeared before her as she wrote the script, and how, after the production, she cried out to Marsinah's spirit to release her from her overwhelming influence.
Ratna identified intensely with Marsinah in her brutal silencing, not just as a worker but as a woman. The way Marsinah was treated, her raped and mutilated body simply discarded in a forest, to Ratna symbolised the deep, trivialising contempt which men, especially powerful men, feel towards women who dare to speak out. She herself had suffered enforced silencing and physical abuse in her marriage.
Stimulated by Marsinah's story Ratna went on, both in 'Marsinah: A song from the underworld' and in 'Shackled', to explore links between male dominance of women in the family and the exploitation of weaker forces by the power-holders in the paternalistic Indonesian state. Over the months and years the abuses of this authoritarian political system came to serve as an ever stronger focus of personal anger for Ratna. Artistic exploration flowed into direct political action.
If personal suffering has fuelled Ratna's attacks on the political system, so too, she suggests, such experience has given her courage to sustain the consequences. Surviving the trauma of her marriage, and the long struggle to obtain a divorce through Islamic courts which preached reconciliation until convinced by hospital reports of her broken ribs, gave her new confidence. Speaking prophetically in 1995, Ratna stated that she was now not afraid to speak out, not even of going to prison. The only things she feared were harming others and God.
Though there are powerful feminist resonances in Ratna's story and in her creative work, her relationship to feminism as a movement is an ambivalent one. She reports that feminist groups in Indonesia always want her to make a Statement about women in her plays, and to do something about the situation of women through her work. But this is too hard a thing to ask, she says. Social change does not happen in this way. In any case her concern is for all weak, oppressed people, women as well as men. She feels she can best assist Indonesian women by providing an example of achievement which others can follow.
Feisty defiance That achievement, as the only recognised Indonesian woman playwright and director in an otherwise all male field, has been hard-won. Ratna's personal style - assertive, forthright, self- confident, sharply critical at times - has both been central to her success and has also aroused criticism and controversy.
Similar complexities are evident in her present situation. The same feisty defiance which has seemingly provoked the authorities into hard-line repression is also sustaining her strongly through its effects. When her pre-trial appeal was rejected she issued a statement questioning President Suharto's re-election promise of openness to criticism - was this gold or dross, real commitment or lip-service?
She told journalists: 'Although I am physically in prison, my ideas about truth and justice will not be imprisoned'. She was recently hospitalised briefly with severe back pain due to a pre-existing condition, but remains positive.
While awaiting trial, she says she is learning from her 'new friends' - her ten cell-mates, whose backgrounds and experience are totally different from her own. And each day she is gratified to read in the newspapers of the ongoing struggle by the students to achieve political reform.
To these young people Ratna in turn is a source of inspiration as an artist who has dared to speak out for the same cause as theirs. Ratna's international supporters, while pressing for concrete political action, are also sustaining the spirit of this determined, idealistic, idiosyncratic fighter for justice, and thereby contributing to a spirit of solidarity and resistance.
Ratna was sentenced to 70 days jail on 20 May (the day before Suharto's resignation). The sentence equalled the time of her detention, and she was immediately released. For general information about Ratna and her writings, how to send letters of protest about her case, and to donate to a support fund, see http://www.en.com/users/herone/Ratna.html. For information about play readings, including some being held in Australia, see http://members.aol.com/leharper/index.html.
Barbara Hatley has written widely on Indonesian theatre. She teaches at Monash University in Melbourne.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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Letter from Medan
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A failing economy takes its toll in fear and anger, says JOHN McCARTHY.
JOHN McCARTHY
After landing in Medan, North Sumatra, it took no time at all to realise that things had gone seriously amiss.
On the way to my research site, near Gunung Leuser National Park, the tire on the minibus I was travelling on burst and the car jackknifed all over the road. We had just come down a steep mountain, so I was extremely relieved that the tire burst on a flat piece of road.
As the price of tires has more than doubled, buses are running on bald tires over rugged terrain. 'We can't afford new tires', the conductor of the minibus exclaimed. 'How can average people like us to survive'. His voice was almost breaking with frustration mixed with anger. 'And I heard on the news they want to put up the price of petrol next month - we'll be finished when this happens'. (Reducing subsidies on fuel and food is among the required IMF reforms).
The newspapers said that thirty percent of public transport vehicles are now off the road because their owners can't afford the spare parts to keep them running.
Planting
I arrived in the village a day after Hari Raya, the feast marking the end of the fasting month. A year previously, I'd met lots of people by a simple act - sitting in a coffee shop on the main street. But now the festive mood had quickly dissipated. All able bodied men had taken to the hills. With the economic crash, there was no time to sip coffee in the local warung. It was planting time.
Rolim, a craftsman with a large furniture shop in the main street, had abandoned his furniture shop to plant cash crops in an empty plot of land behind his house. The reason was simple: with the prices of foodstuffs rocketing, no-one could afford his furniture. The economy was forcing everyone in the village to become a peasant. As official salaries were no longer sufficient to buy food stuffs, even public servants were out opening plots to grow cash crops.
On a local mini bus one day, a man held up a bag of cooking oil - 'Rp 1500 a litre', he said. 'You used to be able to go to the market with Rp 10,000 and buy everything you need. Now that only buys some oil and rice and maybe one or two other things'. A few days later cooking oil threatened to disappear completely from the local market. Within a week it was selling for Rp 4500 a litre.
I too began to wonder. Some people had no land, or no capital to buy seedlings. Other families had no able bodied men to open plots of land. Would people end up starving?
Angry
I'd spend nights listening to reports of food rioting on short wave. In remote places, the abstractions of white collared economists wearing pointy ties made no sense. People were angry and wanted to take things in their own hands. But who to blame? And from whom could they demand justice? In warungs each day people apportioned blame. Some said it was Chinese food hoarders, others the Americans.
But I had personal concerns: What would happen when the rioting reached here? Would I be able to leave? Would the buses continue to run?
Eventually, despite assurances from my friends and even the village head that I was safe here, I decided to leave. Clearly I faced no immediate danger, but only one issue was critical here: how would they feed their families - today, next week, in one month? If I would stay, how could I help? Anyway, I felt uncomfortable with the role of a researcher in these conditions. When people were struggling so hard, how could I interview them about wildlife and forest use?
Back in Medan, I rang a friend, an Australian woman. She told me this story. 'Yesterday my pembantu (home help) came to the house and asked me if I wanted a baby. I said "What do you mean". "Well", said the woman, "one of my friends in the kampung can't afford powdered milk for her baby anymore. And so she is trying to find someone who can afford to keep it"'.
Later, a taxi driver asked me if I was a reporter. 'No, why?', I replied. 'Because if you stay a few more weeks it will be very interesting', he said. 'You will see something big. It will be like a war'. 'But what I don't understand is who is the enemy', I asked. 'The enemy will be the rich, the corrupters, those who have got rich unfairly, the Chinese, and Christians. They will burn lots of churches. It is going to be very bad...'.
27 February 1998. Days of rioting broke out all over North Sumatra in early May.
John McCarthy is a researcher at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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Marsinah accuses
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The spirit of Marsinah speaks out in this chilling extract from RATNA SARUMPAET's monologue in her memory.
RATNA SARUMPAET
The voices of the past die away, but Marsinah looks even more distressed and angry. She drops to the floor wearily. She speaks, as if to herself.
I see so many blood-stained hands ...
I see how greed can be perpetuated,
How capitalists can keep raking in profits,
Managers and those in power continue to laugh
and chat over every drop of my sweat.
But if a lowly worker like me dares
open her mouth to demand a pay rise?
She'll be killed.
And now, see how they're using my death for humanity's sake;
For upholding justice;
For improving the lot of workers. [....]
Improving the lot of workers ...
How can the death of a lowly worker
like me possibly cause workers to be treated
humanely in a sick society?
The pounding voices of the past begin again,
startling Marsinah. But she is not afraid.
I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid. (to her companions)
I'm not afraid. (to the voices)
I can justify it ...
My life, where I was thrown around,
forever haunted by fear, can justify it.
My painful death; my shattered bones;
My blood spilt on the ground, wetting your heel ...
Can justify all of it.
What sort of society did you expect I'd call it?
I scratched out a living for a mouthful of rice there,
always stumbling, hounded by your bullying and threats.
I was tortured there ...
I was raped there, brutally murdered ...
You killed me.
You tore from me the right to live ...
What sort of society did you think I'd call it?
What sort of society? [....]
I remember clearly how fear took hold of me
when rough arms suddenly grabbed me from behind
bound my eyes, tightly,
then pushed me into a car, which sped off
to who knows where ...
There was no sound ...
I don't know how far I was taken ...
But I remember clearly that when the car stopped,
I was pushed out roughly
I was dragged, carelessly ...
I don't remember how far I was dragged along like that.
I only remember how my body shook,
in the grip of a terrible fear.
Then I heard a door being opened right in front of me.
I don't know whether my head hit the wall
or whether I was hit on the brow with a club
I only know I fell headlong on the floor ...
When I tried to move, feet in heavy boots
quickly restrained me, standing on
my shins, my belly, my chest, my arms ...
I was abused with streams of filthy words
during every torture that followed.
I don't know how many times my body was lifted up,
then smashed down, hard.
Lifted up again, then smashed down again ...
Onto the floor ...
Onto the corner of a table ...
Onto a chair ...
Until at last I was truly helpless ...
Such brutality knows no satisfaction ...
I could no longer even move my fingertips
when they began to wildly grope
my whole body.
Marsinah is again choked up with emotion,
and stumbles over her words.
God! Stop this ...
I cried to myself ...
I fought to break free. I kept struggling ...
I screamed with all my strength,
even though I knew my voice would not be heard.
My voice fought against the gag stuffed in my mouth.
My mouth and jaw felt torn.
I kept struggling ...
Struggling ...
Until at last I'd used up everything ...
My voice ... My energy ... Everything
I let them devour me until they were sated.
I let my bones be shattered.
And ...
And something, big, sharp, hard ...
I can't even imagine what it was ...
be thrust into me, breaking my pubic bone.
Marsinah throws herself down.
She moves, half crawling.
God, why? Why me?
I really wanted to cry, but I couldn't.
I was too broken to shed even one tear.
Blood ...
I saw blood everywhere.
The blood was black and dirty ...
Really dirty ...
It covered my belly ...
Covered my inner thighs.
It was spattered on the floor,
all over the door, on the table legs ...
Everywhere ...
Those were the last moments
I was able to feel something.
Something too painful.
Something so terrifying ...
So brutal ...
God, no-one deserves to suffer like that.
Marsinah was a 24-year old factory worker and labour activist. Her mutilated body was discovered in a forest on 8 May 1993. Her killers, widely thought to be soldiers, were never brought to justice. 'Marsinah accuses', translated by Robyn Fallick from Ratna Sarumpaet's 'Marsinah menggugat', may soon to be published by Aberrant Genotype Press, Canberra.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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The employment crisis
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CHRIS MANNING explains why the workers suffer but cannot protest.
CHRIS MANNING
Well before the political situation worsened in May, the economic crisis had begun to have a major impact on the lives of many Indonesian workers.
Unemployment rates have risen to an all time high, probably doubling to around 15-20% in the major cities and towns, although there are no official statistics on the exact magnitude of the shifts. Layoffs have hit the construction industry most severely, with as many as a quarter to a third of its 5-6 million workers loosing their jobs. The effect on unemployment would have been much worse had many not crowded into informal sector jobs, where the new entrants forced down earnings to much lower than before.
Real wages (money wages adjusted for inflation) of most workers still in their primary jobs have fallen by at least 20-30%. Less or no overtime, shorter working hours or temporary layoffs on half pay or less (dirumahkan) is a common story among industrial and service sector workers throughout the country.
Why no protest?
Why then is it the students and not Indonesian workers who are in the forefront of demonstrations for political and economic reform? Two factors seem to be most important. One, most workers, especially in construction, still have their main family links in villages and small towns. They simply cannot afford to remain, unemployed, in the major cities, where organised protest is more likely. Many held their jobs until the end of the fasting month in late January, then returned to their home villages with the simple message from employers to wait until conditions improve.
Most are still waiting. They have been forced to seek work wherever possible, in small family businesses or as itinerant, casual labourers. They are suffering, but finding the next meal is paramount. They are dispersed and unable to organise.
Second, effective labour opposition, which might have been expected to take a lead, has been decimated over the past four years. There was the attack on the leadership of the independent union SBSI in the wake of the 1994 Medan riots, and then action against the PRD after the July 1996 demonstrations. Despite outwardly pro-worker and large minimum wage increases, the government has maintained tight control over worker organisations.
SPSI, the official pro-government labour union, has little following among the mass of wage workers. It did make uncharacteristically strong representations for employer restraint in layoffs during a tripartite summit meeting last November. But SPSI is more likely to act as an agent of control rather than reform if the political struggle intensifies.
Prospects
What are the prospects for worker welfare and action in the next 6- 12 months? There is little likelihood of significant improvement in employment in the medium-term. Continuing political uncertainty, and the exchange rate and financial crisis, have brought new investment to a virtual halt. The May anti-Chinese riots in Medan, and widespread action on campuses across the country, will almost certainly prolong the stay on any prospect of a semblance of recovery for another 3-6 months.
Job prospects for the one million school leavers last year and a further million this June-July remain bleak. Even with a return to some degree of economic stability over the next 3-6 months, few new wage jobs are likely to appear before 1999. Unlike retrenched workers, these school and university graduates, concentrated in the cities and towns, are a potential force for political change.
New government public works initiatives, already underway throughout Java and in the worst drought affected areas, can be expected to provide some cash injections into local economies. The special programs envisaged through the 1998/ 99 budget (amounting to around Rp 1.5 trillion, about AU$250 million) will probably provide part-time jobs for around half a million people.
Substantial World Bank and Asia Development Bank emergency aid may well assist in job creation for another one million workers by 1999. But, while critical for immediate basic needs, these will be holding operations only and have little net impact on the total employment front.
A change in the political leadership now appears the only alternative to setting the stage for some recovery on the jobs front. The longer the political turmoil, the less likely that any improvement in investment and employment will occur even in the first half of 1999. Real incomes are eroding as inflation continues to run at 5-10% on a monthly basis fueled by the weak rupiah. Economic growth did bring more jobs and higher wages for many Indonesians over 30 years. This was one of the major factors underlying political stability. Defenders of the Suharto government's economic record and of the liberalisation in the 1980s þ including this writer - pointed to welfare and employment gains as a major achievement of the regime, despite the poor record on human rights and political freedoms. These grounds for defence of the regime no longer apply.
Ironically, it seems more likely that many will remember the president for the jobs his government destroyed, rather than the tens of millions it created through public works, improved education and labour-intensive exports.
Chris Manning is an economist with the Indonesia Project at the Australian National University.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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Mamberamo madness
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Millions of hectares of pristine tropical forest and thousands of indigenous people are at risk. FRANCES CARR outlines Habibie's 'techno dream' for Irian Jaya.
FRANCES CARR
If you wanted to create a vast agro-industrial complex for Indonesia would you chose an area of pristine tropical forest just about as far from Jakarta as you can get? B J Habibie did when he was Minister of Research and Technology. The Mamberamo basin covers a staggering 7,711,602 hectares in West Papua/ Irian Jaya - almost as much as the whole island of Java. This is being carved up for heavy industry, smelting, plantations, rice cultivation and forestry in a mega-project expected to take twenty years to complete. While Indonesia's economic problems may well stand in the way for now, Habibie's influence has soared since he unexpectedly became president on 21 May.
Heritage
The Mamberamo basin is a huge river system encompassing part of the central mountains of New Guinea, lowlands and marshes. Almost the whole area is still covered with tropical rainforest, although two- thirds has been allocated to timber or plantation concessions. Its unique wildlife includes crocodiles, tree kangaroos, cassowary birds, parrots and birds of paradise. A large part of the upper reaches - the Mamberamo Fojo þ form a proposed conservation area which some experts would like to see become a world heritage site.
According to Indonesian government figures, some 7,000 inhabitants live in the area. The Central Mamberamo sub-district at the heart of the mega-project include the Namunaweja, Bauzi, Dani, Manau, Kawera and Anggreso peoples. These indigenous communities live a semi-nomadic life - hunting, fishing, horticulture and harvesting sago palms. Until recently their main contact with outsiders has been the Indonesian military searching for Free Papua Movement guerrillas (OPM), crocodile skin traders (often the same as the former), and Indonesian Protestant church missionaries (GKI).
The mega-project plans are already well underway. Terms of reference for the project published in 1996 show the scheme promises to be a logistic nightmare with ten government departments and bodies named as executing agencies, and with twelve sub- projects. The government has held two workshops for potential Indonesian and foreign investors. There were contributions from anthropologists, scientists, foreign consultants, government ministers and businessmen. Preliminary studies are now in progress. As so often before, some construction has begun even before environmental impact assessments are complete.
The financial crisis in Indonesia appears to have left the huge project unscathed. Cancellation of the Mamberamo development was not among IMF conditions for its massive loan to prop up Suharto's regime. Hydro
The mega-project centres on harnessing the power of one of Irian Jaya's major rivers - the 650 km Mamberamo River, which runs into the Pacific Ocean to the west of Jayapura. Studies estimate that a series of dams could generate a whopping 10 to 20,000 megawatts (MW). Just where these will be is not yet certain.
Two of 34 potential sites on the Mamberamo and its tributaries are the subject of further studies with a view to building hydroelectric power stations having a minimum capacity of 6,000 MW. Apart from providing electricity for the new industries of Mamberamo, the hydroelectric scheme could supply power to other areas, particularly Biak which has been selected as the centre for development in the region.
The general pattern is that the upstream area will be used for the dams, agriculture, agro-industry and forestry, while downstream will be the industrial estates, new settlements, transport and other infrastructure.
First to be developed will be the pioneer industries at the mouth of the river in Waropen Bay. Plans include a steelworks, metal smelters, pulp and paper factory and petrochemicals plant, forming the biggest industrial complex in eastern Indonesia.
The mountainous region to the south of the Mamberamo basin is rich in minerals, including gold, copper, bauxite and nickel. A copper smelter in the project area would process copper concentrate from the controversial US/ British-owned Freeport mine. Power for smelting could also make the mining of other nickel deposits feasible, such as Gag, Waigeo and the Cyclops area.
Dreams
The notion of building large dams and industrial complexes in such a geologically unstable zone is highly questionable. In February 1996 the island of Biak was hit by an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale. Another, registering 4.6, struck Mamberamo and Jayapura in September 1997.
But Habibie's 'techno-dreams' went further. In late 1996 he announced that waste carbon dioxide from the gas fields of the Natuna Islands (several thousand kilometres to the west) could be used in Mamberamo's industries to produce feedstocks for petrochemicals and fertilisers. Experts have dismissed this idea as infeasible.
Mamberamo is also being promoted as a future food supply centre of national importance þ with possibly a million hectares set aside for rice cultivation to be irrigated from the dam scheme. Like the disastrous Central Kalimantan mega-project, this is packaged as part of the strategy to salvage the country's self-sufficiency in rice.
There are plans to resettle about 300,000 families from the western parts of Indonesia to the area to provide the workforce for the agricultural projects. The village of Kasonaweja, sub-district capital of Central Mamberamo and 135 km from the mouth of the river, will be the site of a shipping terminal, warehouses, offices and a trade centre.
The Mamberamo development is part of the government's push to develop Eastern Indonesia, regarded as economically backward compared with western parts of the archipelago. But far from bringing benefits to indigenous communities, the government's attempts to impose a 'modern' economy throughout the Outer Islands has brought social conflict and ecological damage. Nowhere more so than in Irian Jaya, where massive transmigration schemes plus logging, plantation and mining concessions have deprived local populations of their traditional land rights and destroyed their livelihoods.
Under construction
Reports from the region state that the process of land appropriation has already begun, with the authorities using bribery, threats and trickery to take land from local people.
In 1997 the governor of Irian Jaya, then Jacob Pattipi, said his office would mobilise local people's support for the project. But the majority have not been informed, let alone consulted about the mega-project plans. According to one report 6,000 people living near the river will be moved to a new town. Accommodation for around 3,000 people is already under construction near the mouth of the Mamberamo river. The construction of quays in the lower and middle reaches of the catchment area is one of the first priorities.
Given the conflict between indigenous peoples and mining giant Freeport, the kidnapping of foreigners by the OPM in 1996, as well as the self-acclaimed greening of multinational companies, one might expect foreign investors would not touch the Mamberamo plans with a barge pole. But no. In April 1997 an official seminar and workshop on the mega-project was attended by private companies from Germany, the Netherlands, France and Japan as well as Indonesia. In February this year Barnabas Suebu, a former governor of Irian Jaya, announced that Germany, Japan and Australia had agreed to invest in the project.
To our knowledge, no official announcements on foreign participation have ever been made. Watch Indonesia, the German NGO that is tracking German involvement, believes that bilateral discussions on the project are being kept deliberately low key. A December 1997 meeting of the German-Indonesian Forum (GIF), a group representing business interests from both countries, included an unpublicised workshop on Mamberamo. The participants included representatives from the companies Ferrostahl and Siemens.
The terms of reference show that German and, to a lesser extent, Australian funding will be used in conjunction with state funds for many of the feasibility studies. The basic preliminary studies are estimated to cost around 13 million DM (A$11 million). Three German companies have already invested about 100 000 DM each in these. Their activities are likely to be in the fields of hydroelectricity (Siemens/ Hochtief), heavy industry (Ferrostaal) and infrastructure (Hochtief).
Lobby
When a German parliamentarian asked the **German government about Mamberamo in June 1997, the official reply was that there were no intentions to use development co-operation funds, and that there were as yet no other public funds involved. In response to a second question raising concern about local people's rights, the **German government said it would take into consideration environmental impacts, the problems of transmigration and resettlement of the local people.
The mega-project workshops reveal how different lobby groups are promoting their own interests through a range of options which could devastate this vast diverse region and its people. One scenario, for example, shows 75% of the total area as protected forests, which would mean no less than 2 million hectares for cultivation.
An alternative scenario, presented by a member of the agribusiness lobby, suggests clearing almost all the forest and establishing merely one million hectares for plantations, leaving the rest for **. Japanese consultants Nippon Koei suggested the project area be expanded to include all of the northern coast east of the river to Jayapura. This would bring it to 13,887,700 hectares - almost one third of Irian Jaya's land area.
Indonesian and local NGOs, the GKI church and local academic Benny Giay question the whole development approach and are concerned for the fate of the local people. They argue that at the very least the indigenous population of the Mamberamo must be involved in planning the project; their land rights be recognised; they be informed about the possible environmental and social impacts of the project; and their own organisations be recognised and empowered so community local leaders can represent the interests of their people in negotiations with the government.
Perhaps the planners think that the sparse population of this immense area will be too small to matter in the face of such a prestigious national enterprise. Development Habibie-style - top- down, centrally-planned and on an industrial scale - may well be stuck in the bad old days. But national and international opposition to environmental and social abuse has moved on. Habibie can expect widespread and vociferous resistance to his project.
Frances Carr is a campaigner for the UK-based NGO Down to Earth: the International Campaign for Ecological Justice in Indonesia. Her article is compiled from several which have appeared in DtE's quarterly newsletter (contact: 59 Athenlay Rd, London SE15 3EN, England, tel/fax: 44 (0)171 7327984, dtecampaign@gn.apc.org).
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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Ayam Majapahit
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LAINE BERMAN sheds a tear for the late great Indonesian comic.
LAINE BERMAN
You probably didn't know that the Ministry of Culture and Education celebrated National Comic and Animation Week in Jakarta last February. Now that you do, you may ask, why comics? And, in the shadow of the great krismon (krisis moniter, monetary crisis), why now?
Comics need printing technology and people who can afford to buy them. They did not take off until after World War II. Once the imported, translated cartoon strip became established in the local press, it spurred on the indigenous cartoon. Bind a string of strips together and you have the comic book, referred to as cergam (cerita bergambar, story with pictures).
The first Indonesian comic books in the 1950s were American look- alikes. But while Flash Gordon flooded the local markets, an Indonesian artist named R A Kosasih began to print Sri Asih in 1954, the precursor to his famous comic versions of the Mahabarata and Ramayana.
Golden Age
The 1960s and 1970s saw a proliferation of locally produced copies of foreign comics, adaptations of Chinese kung fu legends complete with Chinese settings, alongside Indonesian martial arts (silat) adventures and traditional hero legends.
This was the Golden Age of Indonesian comics. Everybody was reading them thanks to a brilliant local innovation, the comic rental kiosk. Many Indonesians have described for me their happy memories of sitting under a tree beside a huge pile of comics they just borrowed from the rental kiosk!
Back to the seminar in Jakarta. The comic artists who attended said afterwards they felt thoroughly uninspired. Even the lucky Yogya artists who won the prize for best original comics in 1996 and 1997 confess that their comics remain unavailable to the wider market, even though they are now published by the government publisher Balai Pustaka.
Among them are Ahmad Faisal Ismail (Muka Kacang), Yudi, Yaddie, Eri and Arief (Kecoa), and my favourite, Tim Kirikomik-Djogdja (Ayam Majapahit). These excellent original and very indigenous efforts are not sold in shops nor are they even listed in the publisher's catalogue!
Most speakers at the seminar ignored current realities in favour of historical views on the genre. Some claimed the Indonesian comic originated in the relief sculptures that decorate ancient temples, in the scrolled picture stories known as wayang beber, or in the lontar palm leaf manuscripts.
But no one mentioned that President Sukarno in the 1960s used to accuse comic artists of subversion and denounce their work as Western poison. In the Suharto era, too, comics have been attacked for fostering laziness. This is what killed the Golden Age of comics.
Today, something of a comic revival has taken place. But it is not one that benefits Indonesian artists. The president of Indonesia's largest book chain, Gramedia, says that imported comics are now their strongest sales. Ninety percent are from Japan.
It costs more to produce a local comic than buy the rights to established foreign comics. This has added to the squeeze on local comic artists. The modern Indonesian comic suffers from little support from local buyers, little opportunity for publication, a local tradition murdered by foreign marauders and presidents alike, and the scrutiny of the Minister of Information, who requires an application for permission to publish that must include no less than 20 official letters on top of a stamp from the local police attesting to a lack of political motivation. Where was any of this in the National Comic Seminar?
Even the independent comics, which definitely do exist, suffer from neglect. Bold, exciting efforts have appeared among Yogya art students, only to disappear again because of political harassment, lack of public interest, lack of economic support, personal frustration, or just because of the recent rise in paper and photocopy costs.
So why did the Ministry hold a National Comic Week and promise to revive the ailing Indonesian comic industry? Who knows?
Dr Laine Berman teaches at Deakin University, Melbourne. She wrote the Indonesian chapter in J Lent (ed), 'Illustrating Asia: Comics, humour magazines and picture books' (Curzon Press, out soon).
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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Magic on fire
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The fires are merely adding to the pressure on East Kalimantan's only national park. But ALEX RYAN also finds that nature lovers have won some battles to protect its beauty.
ALEX RYAN
The fires in East Kalimantan from January this year have ravaged nearly half a million hectares of forest and farm land in the region. Compare this with last year's fires, which affected only 37,000 hectares in East Kalimantan province. Almost a fifth of the total area affected is located in Kutai National Park.
Kutai is one of Indonesia's living gems. Encompassing some 198,000 hectares, it houses extensive areas of lowland tropical forest, which is a threatened ecosystem on the island. As more and more of these forest systems are lost to logging, mining and agricultural development, the significance of protecting Kutai increases.
The park is home to a number of endangered primates, including the proboscis monkey and orangutan. Kutai's magic has already experienced a long history of damage. Its borders have shrunk several times to accommodate the demands of industry, and there is even development inside those borders. It is a crying shame to see this treasure once again come under attack, this time from 'nature'.
The recent fires in East Kalimantan have damaged up to 77,700 hectares of Kutai. More than a third of the park has been scorched. Since its inception, Kutai's pristine land area has gradually been chipped away under pressure from industry to develop the area. The actual area of undisturbed national park is a lot less than is reported on paper, perhaps only half the officially stated figure.
Out of the eight conservation areas in East Kalimantan (all, incidentally, hit by fire), Kutai is the only national park. In theory this status should provide a higher degree of protection than, say, a nature reserve. If only the theory was true!
Border revisions
The area known today as Kutai was first proposed as a two million hectare reserve in 1932. But it has experienced no less than five border revisions. Compromises have been made repeatedly to accommodate the demands from forestry, oil and natural gas industries to exploit sections of the park.
Border revisions have had a severe impact on the park. Up to half of the park has already been damaged by logging, industrial and settlement expansion, and now by the fires. In some cases areas have been excised, and after being logged, drilled or mined, reinstated into the park in a damaged state.
The park is bordered by sea on the eastern side. Elsewhere it is completely enclosed by no less than three logging concessions, plus illegal timber operations, two mining operations and two natural gas industries. Besides this, the state-owned oil company Pertamina has a concession area which covers the whole of the park. Its employee complex is located in the eastern section of the park. Over a hundred oil drills are currently operating in the park.
A public road cuts through the eastern section from Bontang in the east to Sangatta in the north. This section is the most degraded by earlier logging and mining operations, and has also been extensively cleared through human settlement.
I visited the park in January this year. I was not surprised to notice that most of the fires occurred close to this road. Every day twenty or so buses pass through the park, full of passengers going to or from Sangatta. It is easy to see these fires were most likely caused by human negligence.
Several fires broke out in the nucleus zone of the park. From the point of view of biodiversity and research, this is the most important area. Up till now it had remained largely undisturbed by humans.
Pressure
Kutai's managers have a lot to contend with. The fires are just another chapter in a long history of problems. Just one among them is an illegal timber operation controlled by Indonesian armed forces members at Menamang, on the southwest side of the park.
And then there are the ever-expanding fish and prawn ponds on the east coast. These tambak operations as they are called in Indonesian are destroying large tracts of mangrove forest, the feeding grounds of the endemic and rare proboscis monkey.
Continual pressure from the oil, coal, forestry, plantation, fertiliser and other companies on the outskirts is also a problem. Their mere presence has drawn large numbers of people into the area and into the park. The absence of buffer zones between the industrial timber plantations and the park means there is no adequate protection, and park boundaries have become unclear.
Since the fires broke out there has been a noticeable increase in illegal logging. Eighty nine cubic metres of tropical hardwoods have been logged since January 1998, according to Kutai's management. Illegal trade in wildlife such as orangutan is also on the increase, as villagers short on food seek other means to help prop up their income.
Homeless orangutans are often taken to the Wanariset rehabilitation centre, on the Balikpapan Road in East Kalimantan. Meanwhile their habitat continues to be destroyed, making their chances of survival increasingly slim. Kutai is the only extensive area of protected forest in East Kalimantan. It is virtually the only place where the endangered Eastern race of this great ape can be effectively protected and continue to multiply.
Oil and coal
Another controversial issue is oil. In 1977 Pertamina was granted permission to exploit oil reserves within the area, even though it had long been set aside for conservation. At the time it was a wildlife reserve, where mining is permitted. Indonesian law strictly bans all commercial mining activities in national parks. Arguing that the Pertamina agreement was made before the area was converted to a national park in 1982, the government allowed the company to retain its contract. In perpetuity!
In 1997 Kutai came under threat from a proposed coal mining operation by a company called Dwipangga Sakti Prima. The Department of Mines and Energy granted a licence to the company to exploit 100,000 hectares within the park. Perhaps the fact that it was owned by President Suharto's youngest daughter Mamiek had something to do with this contravention of the law.
A local nature lovers group in Samarinda found out about the plan, and they publicised it in regional newspapers. The story was then taken up by a number of high profile non-government organisations in Jakarta. With success - the project was canned.
In 1996-97 I conducted research on ways to apply an integrated conservation and development approach to Kutai's management. This involved including all stakeholders in the planning process. Everyone from local villagers to big business need to work together towards a long-term plan.
The park management team are struggling with a legacy of threats. The fires in Kutai are yet one more test among many. Can they rise to the challenge of a new approach? Even more seriously, will there be an area left worth protecting?
Alex Ryan is an honours student in Indonesian at University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. She travels frequently to East Kalimantan.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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Soldiers murder in Irian Jaya
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Indonesian soldiers shot at least 11 civilians in the remote interior of Irian Jaya, a new report has established. GERRY VAN KLINKEN reports.
The soldiers were anxious to reestablish government control after they forced OPM rebels to release foreign hostages in May 1996. To permit negotiations during the five months hostage crisis, the Indonesian army had withdrawn from the area.
The Indonesian armed forces (Abri) may have regarded the entire population as hostile for looking after the OPM bands during that time. The villages of Bela, Alama, Jila and Mapenduma are located about 150 km east of the huge Freeport copper and gold mine. The frightened population responded to aggressive Abri patrols by seeking refuge in mountain-side caves.
Among the harrowing stories in the report, some describe hungry villagers coming out of hiding only to be gunned down by soldiers camped in their gardens for that very purpose. In all, eleven were shot dead, two remain missing, while three were injured between December 1996 and October 1997. More (about 137 by April 1998) died of lack of food and disease while in hiding.
The area is extremely inaccessible. It has a long history of suffering at the hands of powerful outsiders. Natural disasters and disease are also taking a dreadful toll. Bushfires swept the area in August and September 1997. Cholera is often fatal in the dry season. Serious strains of malaria are spreading rapidly.
Cliff
In March 1998, the 'Rajawali' unit had just arrived in the Amongkonop village as part of a military operation. Some soldiers invited Elias Aim and his 22-year old nephew to come bird shooting. After walking for some distance, the two men were separated from one another. The nephew was never seen again.
Elias Aim said afterwards: 'I was told to squat facing a soldier. He put a round in his rifle to shoot me while his friend was looking over the edge of a cliff. But his friend said: "Don't shoot him there, later we'll have a hell of a job dragging him to the cliff. Make him go to the cliff's edge and then shoot him." '
'The soldier guarding me put down his rifle and they told me to go to the cliff's edge. They pointed their rifles at me from my left and from behind. I was shaking with fear. The cliff was more than 150 metres high. So high that the river below was not clearly visible. When I reached the edge I decided it was better to kill myself than be shot. I threw myself over the edge before they could shoot.'
'When I woke up I realised I was still alive. I checked my whole body and found only scratches. I said a prayer of thanks to God for saving me from the hands of Abri, and another for saving me after I jumped off a cliff so high none of my ancestors had ever been there. After that I managed to climb down'.
Soldiers also destroyed at least twelve churches and a large number of houses, as well as much livestock, the main form of capital in Irian Jaya.
Servant of Christ
After leading a church service in the village of Gilpid on Sunday 12 October 1997, the evangelist Wenesobuk Nggwijangga, 48, went out to check his cus-cus traps.
When villagers went to look for him that evening, soldiers from Battalion 751 camped nearby denied that they had seen him. But after two days searching, the persistent villagers found the body buried by a river.
When they confronted the local Kopassus commander with the badly damaged body, he first said soldiers had found it and wanted to give it a decent burial. He then pleaded with them not to spread the news that Abri had killed him.
The commander offered them food and drink but they refused, saying: 'We have given you chickens, pigs, rabbits, and vegetables. We almost always fulfilled your requests. But you wanted human life. You wanted the life of a servant of Christ. And we did not want to give him to you.'
'Now we have been visited by disaster. We have lost a church leader who worked among us and guided us. We can do nothing. We are just little people.'
Instead of helping relieve the difficult conditions villagers face, the government, represented mainly by the army, appears to be on a permanently hostile footing with the population. Yet Australian soldiers are working with them giving drought relief.
Volunteers compiled the detailed report during visits to the area between August 1997 and April 1998. They took great personal risk, because the area remains under strict military control and outsiders are banned. They interviewed numerous eyewitnesses and victims.
It is signed by parish leaders of three Christian churches in Mimika, the nearest town. The report calls for a detailed investigation, and for punishment of those guilty.
The report is available from ACFOA Human Rights, 124 Napier St, Fitzroy 3065, fax 03-9416 2746, acfoahr@acfoa.asn.au.Gerry van Klinken edits 'Inside Indonesia'.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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The power of the disappeared
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JAMES GOODMAN tastes the raw courage that brought down Suharto.
JAMES GOODMAN
A spate of kidnappings took place in Indonesia in February. Activists were taken to interrogation centres and tortured. Anger aroused over these disappearances, and over the testimonies of those released, precipitated the student protests which by 21 May had toppled President Suharto.
February and March were relatively quiet. The People's Assembly (MPR) met without incident to give Suharto another term of office. Though discredited, the regime was able to intimidate people into inaction.
But when some torture victims revealed their stories in April and May, the government was caught red-handed. It became more urgent to end the regime. All pro-democracy students were now at risk, and were willing to take action.
Alert
Some two months earlier, thirty young people are meeting in the backyard of a Jakarta household on a Monday night. They are members of Siaga, formed to support Megawati Sukarnoputri and Amien Rais for the presidency. They have been meeting for several weeks, and their numbers are swelling.
Siaga means Alert, and stands for Indonesian Solidarity for Amien and Mega. As the meeting opens, small strips of white cotton are handed out, a symbol of support for the democracy movement. White for solidarity.
The group draws support from the People's Democratic Alliance (Aldera), from the independent 'prosperity' trade union (SBSI), and from Megawati supporters formerly in the Indonesia Democratic Party (PDI).
A few days before, they had attempted to distribute leaflets in public. Four were arrested and later released. At the same time Pius Lustrilanang, Siaga's secretary-general, was abducted while visiting a relative in hospital. Siaga attempted to lodge a complaint with the Indonesian Human Rights Commission, but this was refused as there was no proof the military or police were involved.
Strategy
They are uncertain how to proceed. Should they ignore the abduction, and concentrate on the campaign against Suharto? Or should they focus on the disappeared and use it to illustrate the arbitrary repression that democrats face under the New Order?
They decide on the latter. How can they ignore the plight of a fellow activist? They suspect he is being tortured and could be made to 'disappear' altogether if there is no public outcry. Another activist, who last year was abducted and tortured for two weeks, is present at the meeting. He offers to join in a press conference with Lustrilanang's family.
Meanwhile, they discuss how to demonstrate their opposition to Suharto despite the police crackdown during the MPR session. Could they create an outdoor, alternative People's Assembly? Safety concerns are uppermost - 25,000 riot troops are staging a show of strength in the city. Someone mentions Tiananmen Square. They opt for a less vulnerable indoors venue.
On 10 March the MPR rubber-stamps the Suharto presidency. At the same moment Siaga mounts its alternative 'Peoples Summit' at a Jakarta hotel. The speaker is playwright Ratna Sarumpaet. She is arrested with eight others. They join over 300 people officially detained as political prisoners.
These are the lucky ones. The Committee against Disappearance and Torture have details of a further fifty people who 'disappeared' in the first three months of 1998. Several surface in police custody. Others are released with warnings not to speak of their experiences on pain of death.
Andi Arief, head of Student Solidarity for Democracy (SMID), abducted on 28 March, is confirmed to be in police custody on 28 April. Haryanto Taslam, adviser to Magawati, disappeared on 2 March, reappears on 17 April, keeping silent about his experiences.
Several others remain untraceable. Early in March Pius Lustrilanang's mother, Fransiska Djamilus, visits the International Committee of the Red Cross in Jakarta. She has travelled from Sumatra to lodge a missing person's report for her son. His legal case notes, and those of others, hint at the widespread fears: 'His family and lawyer are still searching'; 'the victim is still missing, with his friend'; 'his family has yet to say where he is'; 'there has been no information from the authorities'.
Abducted
Official attempts at discrediting the disappeared students fall on deaf ears. Denials of military involvement fail to re- establish credibility.
Lustrilanang is released early in April. On the 27th April, at the National Human Rights Commission, he reveals full details of his kidnapping. He tells how he was abducted by four armed men, taken to a secret location near Jakarta, and interrogated for two months. He was tortured with electricity and water, and severely beaten. His captors carefully concealed their identities, but he had no doubt they were soldiers. Every afternoon at 3pm he heard the trumpet reveille.
He had been questioned about his involvement in Siaga, about its members, its strategy and planned actions. After giving evidence to the Commission, Lustrilanang immediately goes into exile overseas.
Pius' story is widely reported. More press reports appear that directly challenge official denials. Desmond Mahesa, a legal aid lawyer, who disappeared and was released at the same time as Pius, gives similar evidence on 12 May. He says he was held in the same lock-up. Despite the personal risk, he decides to remain in Indonesia.
Student outrage at the kidnappings combines with worsening economic conditions as the government lifts controls on petrol and electricity prices. Demonstrations move off the campuses, and culminate in the fatal shooting of six Trisakti University students on 12 May. Several have already died elsewhere, in Medan for instance, but none so publicly and in such cold blood. The Legal Aid Institute reports that four were shot in the back, while two died from head wounds.
Student radicalism and violent repression precipitate mass uprisings. More students disappear - 27 from Trisakti alone - and fears grow.
But the issue of the disappeared unclothes the regime. Its brutality is on display. When challenged, its confidence is shattered. In a panic reversal, price controls are reintroduced, but Suharto's loss of support is already irreversible.
James Goodman, a researcher at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), recently visited Jakarta.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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Suharto, war criminal
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What are 'crimes against humanity'? Can Suharto be brought to trial for them? RICHARD TANTER reports.
Two unexpected events in recent months give hope that former President Suharto may some day be brought to trial for genocide and crimes against humanity, for his part in the anticommunist holocaust in 1965, and for the hundreds of thousands who died after the Indonesian invasion of East Timor.
On May 1, Jean Kambanda, former Prime Minister of Rwanda, pleaded guilty to charges of genocide and crimes against humanity before the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Kambanda will probably be sentenced to a maximum of life imprisonment.
On April 30, the United States announced its intention to request that the Security Council establish an International Criminal Tribunal to try Cambodian former Khmer Rouge leaders on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity
United Nations
I believe that the UN Security Council should appoint a Special Rapporteur or a Committee of Experts to assess prima facie evidence against Suharto and other senior or retired Abri leaders.
The Security Council should then establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Indonesia with a view to trying Suharto and others for the following crimes under existing international legal conventions and customary law:
Crimes against humanity
Genocide
Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions
Violations of the laws of war
Crimes against peace
Three questions need to be answered:
Did Suharto and other senior Indonesian military commanders commit acts that amount to 'crimes against humanity' and 'genocide'?
If so, can Suharto be brought before an international tribunal on such charges?
Is it desirable to call for such an international criminal tribunal?
The crimes
In the thirty years of President Suharto's control, at least two sets of events amount to crimes against humanity and/ or genocide in an ordinary meaning of the terms.
First, President Suharto's rule was founded when he led the holocaust that destroyed the Indonesian Communist Party. Between mid-October 1965 and the end of the following year, the Indonesian armed forces planned, orchestrated and in part carried out the murder of between 200,000 and one million Indonesian citizens. Virtually all were unarmed.
Most victims were alleged members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) or its allied community organisations. Some were targets of anti-Chinese hatred fostered by army propaganda. Hundreds of thousands were shot by the military. Comparable numbers were clubbed and hacked to death by their neighbours, directed, equipped and incited by the armed forces.
Much about the anti-communist killings remains unknown even today, since the subject has been unspeakable in Indonesia. Yet no serious historian doubts that hundreds of thousands of Indonesians were killed. One of the first tasks a UN Special Rapporteur or Committee of Experts faces is to examine the existing evidence as to the scale of the crimes.
The next task is to plumb the details - to date virtually unknown - of the armed forces' planning of the holocaust.
East Timor
Second, on the periphery of Indonesia, the state's repression of self-determination gave rise to another set of massive crimes. The war against the East Timorese is only the best known of these. Indonesian intelligence agents began by coercing the leaders of several groups of conservative and anti-independence East Timorese into signing a 'request' (which the Indonesians had dictated) for assistance. Indonesian armed forces then invaded the former Portuguese colony on December 5th, 1975.
In the following four years, the population of East Timor decreased by 200,000 people. They died as a result of direct Indonesian army killings and bombings, but also through forced re-locations and the starvation and disease that followed the invasion. Since then, torture has been a standard operating procedure for Indonesian forces.
The law
How then does international law relate to Indonesia? On what grounds could an international criminal tribunal bring charges against Suharto? Though there are some important legal matters for debate and interpretation, a case against Suharto for crimes against humanity is quite possible under existing international convention and international customary law. A prosecution against Suharto for the crime of genocide, though more difficult, would also be quite possible.
Until the Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia [ICTY] in 1993, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda [ICTR] in 1994, no-one had been charged with crimes against humanity or genocide in the years since the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals at the close of World War 2.
Both those earlier trials were tainted with the flavour of 'victor's justice'. But the international law dealing with such grave crimes has developed considerably since that time. In fact the UN has been moving in recent years with surprising speed to establish a permanent International Criminal Tribunal. In June 1998 an International Treaty Conference will have been held to approve a draft convention, and then a process of signing and ratifying will begin. In the meantime, a special tribunal on the Yugoslav and Rwandan model remains the way forward.
The Security Council empowered the ICTY to 'prosecute persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law', including genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva conventions of 1949, and violations of the laws of war.
War crimes
In 1946, the UN General Assembly affirmed the principles of international law as recognised at Nuremberg.
Subsequently the International Law Commission (ILC) reported to the UN General Assembly that it had codified Principles of Law Recognised in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgement of the Tribunal.
Principle 6 includes among the crimes punishable under international law:
'(c) Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crimes against peace or any war crimes.'
The affirmation of the Nuremberg Tribunal's Charter and Judgement by the General Assembly, and their codification by the ILC, provide a solid foundation for the law on crimes against humanity as an accepted part of international customary law. This was the basis for Security Council Resolution 827 (1993) that established the ICTY.
A case could clearly be made that under international law Suharto has committed crimes against humanity. He directed the Indonesian armed forces that murdered tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of overwhelmingly unarmed civilians in 1965-1966.
It is not known whether Suharto personally killed PKI members, or simply left that to colleagues, subordinates and civilian allies. But, mainly in his role as commander of the Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order (Kopkamtib), Suharto exercised direct and command responsibility for the planning and execution of what amounted to a massive crime against humanity in those years.
Genocide
Prosecuting Suharto for the crime of genocide will be more difficult, though not impossible. The difficulties are two-fold. First, under international law the crime of genocide has a limited legal definition. Second, Indonesia, almost alone among important countries of the world, has not signed and ratified the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Neither of these difficulties is, however, conclusive.
Under the Convention, genocide means:
'Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such: killing members of the group; causing serious mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing methods intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.'
In the case of Indonesia, the category of genocide is relevant in at least two cases: the mass anti-communist killings of 1965- 1966, and the killings following the invasion of East Timor.
However in 1965-66, as in Cambodia, Indonesian victims were for the most part killed not because of their ethnicity, nationality or racial identity. They were killed because of their alleged political beliefs. This would, in a strict sense, mean that their murders do not amount to genocide under the terms of the Convention.
But this does make the Convention irrelevant. In fact the presumed religious beliefs of PKI members, or rather, the lack of such beliefs, were very relevant to many of their persecutors. The fact that the PKI positively affirmed atheism was often held as a reason why they could never be trusted, and why they lost full status as human beings. In this limited sense, most of the 1965-66 killings had a religious aspect under the terms of the Genocide Convention.
Chinese
Another, smaller, target of the 1965-1966 killings in some parts of Indonesia were Chinese Indonesians. To the extent that they were killed because of their Chinese identity, their murders would plausibly amount to genocide under the Genocide Convention.
Certain aspects of the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor, especially during the years 1975-1979, could also be construed as genocidal under the terms of the Genocide Convention.
The most important difficulty with the genocide case against Suharto is that Indonesia has not signed and ratified the Convention. Unlike Indonesia, Yugoslavia, Cambodia and Rwanda are parties to the Genocide Convention. Consequently, there was no difficulty in law in trying former Rwandan government officials before a UN criminal tribunal. Nor is any difficulty anticipated on that ground in the Cambodian case.
Are the provisions of the Genocide Convention therefore not applicable in any way to acts of genocide committed within the territory of Indonesia? Most likely not, at least not in a direct sense.
Yet, some international legal experts maintain that the law of genocide has developed an overriding and peremptory applicability. This means individual states may not be permitted to defy it. Not only is the Convention a development of the established 1946 Nuremberg principles, they argue, but it gains added force simply by having been signed and ratified by the great majority of states.
In other words, the general law of genocide is likely to be applicable to some degree within the territory of Indonesia. The assumption must surely be made that in law, the categories of crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide are not closed.
If the US proposal to establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Cambodia is accepted by the Security Council, then the global applicability of the law of genocide will be very closely examined.
The politics
Why is it desirable at this point in history to mount charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against Suharto? Isn't it all now a matter of history, of revenge against old men rather than justice? Won't raking up the past do more harm than good, at a time when Indonesia needs stability?
There is something to be said for this objection, but it is wrong. An international criminal tribunal has three purposes. The first is to bring those individuals responsible for horrific crimes to justice, and to punish the guilty. By ordinary human standards, Suharto and his colleagues committed - and then benefitted greatly from - crimes on a horrific scale.
In Indonesia, the dead are many, but so are the scarred survivors. How long must they wait in fear and silence?
The second purpose is to deter such acts in the future. By establishing the possibility that those leaders of states may have to take responsibility for their actions.
A Rwandan prime minister is in gaol for genocide, Serbian war- lords slink in hiding, and two Korean presidents ended their careers with gaol sentences and national disgrace. Small comfort in a world of pain and hypocrisy, but possibly the beginnings of assigning global responsibility.
The third purpose of an international tribunal is to establish a reasonable basis for national reconciliation and for overcoming deep collective trauma.
Despite thirty years of repressing open discussion of the Indonesian holocaust, the wounds among the living are deep. Half a million victims left behind millions of bereaved. Fantasies and fears of revenge are to be expected, but the understandable desire for revenge is best met by facing the events of the past openly, and by establishing individual responsibility in open courts, properly conducted.
Crimes against humanity and genocide are recognised as the concern of all humanity, not only the peoples who suffer directly. Security Council Resolution 827 (1993) requires all states to cooperate fully with the ICTY. Under Principles of International Co-operation in the Detection, Arrest, Extradition, and Punishment of Persons Guilty of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, adopted by the UN in 1973, member states 'shall not grant asylum to any person with respect to whom there are serious reasons for considering that he has committed a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity'.
Now that Suharto has fallen, this will be an important obligation to recall. In the world of realpolitik, especially during the Cold War, international law and ordinary principles of justice counted for little against the interests of the major states. But there is plenty of reason to hope that the cry for justice will be heard this time.
In the face of widespread calls from abroad and inside Indonesia for the former president to be tried for crimes against humanity, some Indonesian successor regime, as in Rwanda, may well be prepared to acknowledge the jurisdiction of an International Criminal Tribunal.
By establishing that Suharto is, prima facie, guilty of crimes against humanity, a great deal is achieved. By focussing the minds of the international legal community on solving the practical and technical problems, we normalise the idea that this respected international figure came to power through genocide.
Leaders like President Clinton should be asked to explain just why he is prepared to act on Cambodia, but not on Indonesia. This way the double standard is rendered visible. In the face of the deceits of power, cynicism is understandable. But the cynical response is not always quite as realistic as it may seem at first sight.
The leader of the Rwandan genocide has been tried before a United Nations court. In the broken remains of Yugoslavia, UN warrants for the arrest of war-lords keeps them in hiding, lest they be arrested. Even, finally, in Cambodia, the dirty hands of world politics have moved enough to allow for the establishment of a tribunal.
Once the face of capitalist fortune turned away from Suharto, the outside world started to see him as a dictator. With a little more effort, he may be seen for what he truly is - a criminal on a massive scale.
Richard Tanter is Professor of International Relations at Kyoto Seika University. He is an Australian.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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Villagers keep the seas alive
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Coastal villagers will protect reefs if they know it is in their interest. IAN DUTTON and BRIAN CRAWFORD report on an international project that goes to the cutting edge. IAN DUTTON and BRIAN CRAWFORD
Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Show them how to fish, and you feed them for life. The coastal communities of North Sulawesi hardly need to be taught how to fish. But they desperately need help in avoiding the temptation to make a quick buck from non-sustainable resource exploitation.
The recent economic turmoil and ongoing global climate change make it essential that coastal communities develop the skills to become resource managers rather than merely resource users.
A new coastal resources management program called Proyek Pesisir is helping communities in North Sulawesi, East Kalimantan and Lampung to develop these skills. They are learning that there are better economic options than to destroy the diverse ecosystems their communities rely on for survival.
Proyek Pesisir was formed in 1997. It brought the US Agency for International Development, the Coastal Resources Center of the University of Rhode Island near New York, and the Government of Indonesia together into a cooperative program. The project began its work in three coastal villages in the Minahasa regency of North Sulawesi.
Bottom-up
Three villages, Talise, Bentenan and Tumbak, and Blongko, were selected as representative of the problems facing all coastal communities in Indonesia (box 1). Major issues include overfishing, mangrove conversion, coastal erosion, capture of rare and endangered marine species, poor infrastructure, and tourism development pressures. Recent droughts brought on by El Nino, and the region-wide financial crisis, have exacerbated the situation (box 2).
The first step was extensive consultations with coastal resources management agencies, industry, universities, non-government organisations and other stakeholders. Proyek Pesisir then combined a top-down with a bottom-up approach. The aim was to encourage sustainable use of coastal resources.
The bottom-up strategy was to appoint full-time field extension workers. These people went to live in each of the villages, to help communities choose more appropriate approaches to resource management. After only six months work, field workers in the adjoining villages of Bentenan and Tumbak have made impressive progress.
The most striking Proyek Pesisir initiative was 'Operation Crown- of-Thorns', launched in January 1998 in response to an outbreak of the voracious starfish. Monitoring programs determined that the Crown-of-Thorns outbreak could destroy most of the living reef in one year if left unchecked. Villagers, government employees, university students and local dive operators banded together to physically return the starfish populations to normal levels.
Sanctuaries
Less dramatic but equally important are community-based initiatives to protect coral reefs, mangroves and other coastal ecosystems. In Bentenan, a coral reef conservation group planted hundreds of mangrove seedlings on the reef flat in an erosion- prone area, an initiative copied by the villagers in Tumbak. Both villages have also switched from mining coral for house foundations and septic systems to using volcanic rock instead.
Community representatives from Apo Island in the Philippines came over for visits, and Indonesians went there on exchange. These Philippine villagers have successfully established community- based marine sanctuaries. Since then, both the villages of Bentenan and Tumbak are planning their own local marine sanctuaries. In Bentenan, the sanctuary will be complemented by a meeting and information centre that will facilitate public participation and education on coastal resources management issues.
Even the best community program will flounder, however, if government policies contradict the effort. Proyek Pesisir therefore also works on top-down programs in its two-track approach to integrated coastal management.
Integrating both tracks is done by working with national institutions so that lessons learned in the local track are promoted and replicated in national coastal programs. Key institutions involved in this process include the Directorate- General for Regional Development of the Ministry for Home Affairs, and the Centre for Coastal and Marine Resources Studies of the Bogor Agricultural University (IPB).
Beyond 2000
The integrated coastal management extension programs of Proyek Pesisir are the first to be implemented outside protected areas in Indonesia. They serve as valuable learning models. The knowledge and experience gained from these and related field programs to be developed in East Kalimantan and Lampung between 1998 and 2003 will provide a firm foundation for stronger, decentralised programs throughout Indonesia in the next millennium.
Ian Dutton and Brian Crawford work for the University of Rhode Island, and are based in Jakarta and Menado respectively. Proyek Pesisir can be contacted at crmp@cbn.net.id or by faxing 62-21- 392 6423.
[Box 1]
How important are coastal resources?
Over 41 million Indonesians (22 percent of the population) live in coastal communities and depend directly on marine and coastal resources. A further 38 percent live on coastal plains. Coastal populations are growing at more than twice the national average and are increasingly concentrated in Indonesia's largest cities.
Marine and coastal resources account for around 22 percent of Indonesia's gross domestic product (GDP). Coastal and offshore waters also support the oil and gas, fisheries and tourism industries, which together account for 17 percent of total foreign exchange earnings.
Most of these uses have been concentrated in more densely settled coastal areas of central and western Indonesia. But in recent years exploitation of resources in eastern Indonesia has accelerated. This trend will continue. For example, the Ministry of Fisheries announced a plan to create another 500,000 hectares of aquaculture ponds in eastern Indonesia in 1998.
Seventy five percent of Indonesia's total area is sea. Indonesia's historical pattern of exploiting the vast coastal waters has degraded coastal resources. Most people know about the plight of Indonesia's coral reefs. Less than 5 percent are in excellent condition. A number of new initiatives are now underway to rehabilitate and manage them.
The live fish trade in Asia has grown rapidly. Indonesia is the major source of fish for this lucrative business. The fish are often caught with dynamite and cyanide. There has been considerable publicity about the impacts of this type of fishing.
Fisheries production in Indonesia increased from 1.2 million tons in 1968 to 3.5 million tons in 1992. Fisheries products are now the fifth-largest non-oil export item. This massive increase has been accompanied by rapid loss of coastal mangroves and seagrasses. In South Sulawesi alone, 80 percent of mangroves have been cleared in the past 15 years.
Less well documented, but equally serious, are the localised extinctions of species such as clams, sea cucumbers, turtles, dugong and sharks. The causes are ignorance about marine and coastal resources, and a lack of reliable data on resource exploitation levels. The recently published Ecology of Indonesia's seas (Periplus, 1997) reveals how much needs to be learned about Indonesia's mega-diverse seas, and how little time remains to reverse present unsustainable resource exploitation practices.
[Box 2]
El Nino, the financial crisis, and North Sulawesi
El Nino and the financial crisis have placed Indonesia in the forefront of international news. Most headlines concern forest fires in Kalimantan, famine in Irian Jaya, and food riots in Java. The impacts in North Sulawesi do not appear as dramatic, but the coastal communities in Proyek Pesisir field sites have also suffered.
Talise: Contaminated drinking water.
At the height of the drought in 1997, a severe outbreak of diarrhea accompanied by vomiting (possibly cholera) hit Kinabohutan Island. One child and one elderly villager died. The low-lying island is only one kilometer square but supports over 100 people. The scarce potable water is drawn from shallow wells. During the drought, the wells were contaminated from nearby latrines. The Ministry of Health sent a crisis team to treat the affected people and chlorinate the wells. The cause of the gastro-intestinal disease still exists. A repeat outbreak will be more difficult to handle, because drugs have become more expensive and are in short supply due to the economic crisis.
Bentenan & Tumbak: Crop failures.
Virtually no rain has fallen on these two rural communities for the past year. Large swaths of coconut trees, clove trees and vanilla plants have died. Several springs have dried up, so villages must now pay for water. This additional financial burden comes at a time when cash income and subsistence foodstuffs have declined from failing crops.
Blongko: Migration.
At the end of the previous El Nino events (1988, 1993), population figures dropped 20 percent in this village. The population drop may have been due to crop failures forcing villagers to migrate to cities in search of work and food. This hypothesis is being investigated by the Blongko field extension officer, who wants to predict the potential for repeat migration. Employment opportunities outside the village, however, will be limited this year because of massive layoffs caused by the financial crisis.
The villages are planning their own local marine sanctuaries.
The villages have switched from mining coral for house foundations and septic systems to using volcanic rock.
A reef conservation group planted hundreds of mangrove seedlings on the reef flat in an erosion-prone area.
Villagers, government employees, university students and local dive operators banded together to exterminate Crown-of-Thorn starfish.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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How the New Order collapsed
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Rule by the iron fist comes unstuck in the end. DAVID BOURCHIER reviews the New Order.
For three decades, Suharto stifled every attempt to organise opposition. In May his discredited regime, and Indonesia as a whole, reaped the terrible results.
Angry crowds spilled out into the streets burning and looting because there was simply no viable political organisation for people to turn to in order to vent their intense frustrations about the collapsing economy. On 21 May he handed over power to his vice-president, Habibie.
In Thailand and South Korea, the economic crisis saw old governments voted out and new reformist governments elected. This was impossible in Indonesia because Suharto, the last of the Cold War era dictators in Southeast Asia, built a political system which concentrated power almost completely in his own hands.
Monopolising political power enabled Suharto to stay in office longer than any president in the world, save Castro. It also created a prolonged period of political stability, which helped to facilitate steady economic growth for many years.
But the price of this stability was terror and the piecemeal destruction of democratic political life.
Liquidate the left
One of Suharto's first acts after his troops took power in 1965 was to order the liquidation of up to half a million of his enemies on the political left. Soon afterwards, tens of thousands of supporters of the former president, Sukarno, were purged from the ranks of government and the military.
Students and Muslims who had rallied behind the army against Sukarno were the next to be shown the door. The pluralism and optimism of the early days gradually gave way to a suffocating insistence on conformity. Those who were critical of the New Order and its program of 'accelerated development' found themselves accused of being disloyal, anti-Pancasila, even subversive. Suharto's ideologues insisted that the very concept of opposition was unacceptable.
In the early 1970s all non-government political parties were forcibly amalgamated into two tame and closely monitored parties, the Muslim PPP and the nationalist PDI. The role of the PPP and the PDI was to take part in Indonesia's highly ritualised five- yearly elections, referred to as 'festivals of democracy'. Neither was allowed to criticise the government party Golkar or to maintain mass memberships. Consequently few took them seriously.
The same was true of the 1,000-member People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), more than half of which consisted of government appointees, including many relatives of the president and his cabinet ministers. Only in March this year, amid widespread dissatisfaction, the MPR rubber-stamped Suharto's election for a seventh five year term of office.
Trade unions
With formal politics a dead-end road, many activists channelled their energies into non-government organisations promoting such issues as human rights and legal aid. Others attempted to set up independent trade unions or political parties, such as the People's Democracy Party (PRD), only to be thrown into prison and see their organisations outlawed.
Most Indonesians, however, had little choice but to put up with the lack of democratic freedoms. They had to accept the government's paternalistic assurances that this was the price the country had to pay in order to develop economically.
Development, though, created its own problems. The recession of the early 1980s saw oil export revenues plummet. It forced the government to switch to a program of rapid industrialisation and fiscal deregulation. This drew hundreds of thousands of young rural workers into industrial estates on the fringes of big cities, where their squalid living conditions contrasted sharply with the air-conditioned lifestyles of the elite.
The disparity generated enormous resentment against the rich, the powerful and the Chinese. Ethnic Chinese Indonesians dominate business and are widely seen - with the overt encouragement of some indigenous businesspeople - as having benefitted unfairly from the government's economic policies. The burgeoning middle classes were not happy either. They didn't like the untrammelled corruption. They didn't like the uncertainty of living under a government often arbitrary in its decision making. And they hated the way Suharto - and his children - brazenly snatched virtually every lucrative business opportunity to emerge in the past decade.
Currency crisis
Into this volatile mix of class, ethnic and political tensions came a bolt from the blue, the currency crisis.
For reasons that few could grasp, prices of everyday goods doubled. Some items rose 500%. Many people hovered on the edge of panic, desperately fearful for their future. Unlike political repression, the crash of the rupiah hit everyone, men and women, rich and poor, urban and rural.
Suharto recognised the gravity of the situation as early as last October. He called in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help. But the IMF, fuelled by neo-liberal zeal, was not in a forgiving mood. It demanded a series of radical reforms before it parted with the US$43 billion it had promised.
These included the abolition of a number of extremely lucrative monopolies run by Suharto's children and cronies. The IMF also demanded that the government cut many subsidies on basic consumer items such as fuel, electricity and food, claiming that Indonesia could no longer afford them.
Suharto was forced to agree to all the IMF's terms, even though he realised that implementing them would be political suicide. So he stalled, first floating the unrealistic idea of a currency board, then claiming that the IMF agreement contravened the 'communalistic' spirit of the Indonesian constitution.
Suharto had his chance to restore confidence in the rupiah by appointing a reformist cabinet in March this year. Instead, he appointed an almost unbelievably mediocre ministry. It included his eldest daughter 'Tutut', and his golfing buddy and business partner Bob Hasan. As vice president he chose Jusuf Habibie, an old friend who stands for everything the IMF condemns.
World currency traders freaked, sending the rupiah into a tailspin. Both inside the country and abroad it became obvious that Suharto had no idea how to set things right. Confidence in the government evaporated. The game was lost.
New alliances
But in the absence of an organised opposition or alternative political institutions of any kind, the transition was never going to be easy.
When the unthinkable finally happened and the centre began to give, a mad scramble got under way to forge new alliances, new institutions, new political structures. People lived under Suharto's shadow for so long they had all but forgotten what politics was.
It soon became clear that at least three rare qualities were required for success. First, one had to be untainted by collaboration with Suharto. Second, one had to have a reputation as incorrupt. Third, one had to know how to talk to the people. Not the people in cafe society but out in the real - but to many alien and frightening - world of the kampungs and villages.
The most prominent three figures to fulfill these criteria were Sukarno's daughter Megawati Sukarnoputri, Abdurrahman Wahid, head of the traditionalist Muslim body Nahdatul Ulama, and Amien Rais, head of the 28 million strong Muslim organisation Muhammadiyah.
Each are enormously popular, but it is Amien Rais who has shone as a politician. He was the first major figure to call openly on the president to stand down. He declared himself a presidential candidate several months ago, a move which won him considerable admiration. Since then he has worked tirelessly to stitch together a coalition and to rid himself of his image in some quarters as an intolerant fundamentalist.
Amien has been helped in his campaign by a fourth crucial quality: cross factional support from within the all-important army.
At the time of writing in mid-May it was still unclear how the split in the army between the commander of the armed forces, General Wiranto, and Suharto's ambitious son-in-law Lt-Gen Prabowo Subianto would play itself out. Nor was it possible to say what deals Amien Rais might cut with either group.
Whatever happens over the next few months will no doubt appear inevitable in hindsight, but from the mid-May perspective the picture was very unclear.
President Habibie is a civilian with some Islamic backing. But he appears to be dependent on General Wiranto for support. He lacks the generous leadership charisma that the whole nation so desperately wants at this time. Amien Rais immediately criticised him and the cabinet he announced as far less than the movement for reform had in mind. Many predict Habibie cannot last.
If Wiranto wins out, we are more likely to see reforms of party and election laws, and possibly retain a civilian president, albeit with the military holding veto power. If Amien Rais does come around to giving his support, it may create difficulties in the future, because Wiranto is known to be keen to maintain a strict separation of politics and religion.
Either way, Habibie, or his successor if he does not survive long, will not be nearly as strong as Suharto. He or she will have to make alliances and do deals with various groups in society in order to govern, especially in the alarming economic circumstances the country is in. The next decade will not be as stable as the last three, and nor should it be. If there is one lesson from the New Order, it is that too much order is ultimately a recipe for disaster.
On 22 May, the day after Suharto's resignation, Prabowo was removed from his post and exiled to a command at the staff college, where he had no control over troops.
Dr David Bourchier is a researcher at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Western Australia. A version of this article appeared in the Sun-Herald (Sydney).
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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Capital offence
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Indonesia's crisis was caused by global 'market forces',transforming nation-states into commodities. MARK BEESON explains.
The major lesson to be drawn from the region's economic trauma lies not in the evils of crony capitalism, business-government collusion, or the need for greater 'transparency' in economic activities. It does not lie in the domestic Indonesian scene at all, but in the changing international economy. I am not attempting to defend the Indonesian government. Rather I want to unravel some of the factors that caused the crisis and that are likely to have profound and long-lasting implications for governments of all types.
Although the concept of 'globalisation' has become something of a cliche, it is a useful shorthand for an array of changes that seem to characterise the contemporary era. As far as nation-states are concerned, the most significant aspects of the process are political and economic.
Non-state actors like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) enjoy increased influence, and therefore necessarily reduce the autonomy of national governments. Meanwhile the organisation of economic activity has undergone great changes which constrain national policy options.
The activities of what are essentially political organisations like the IMF have enjoyed a high profile in the current crisis, especially in Indonesia. But it is the changing nature of economic activity which has been at the heart of the current crisis. In trying to make sense of these changes, it is helpful to distinguish between what might be called the 'real economy' and the 'financial sector'.
Real or financial?
The real economy is where goods and services are produced. It's the world of firms and direct investment in productive activities. In the contemporary era much of this directly productive activity and the investment that accompanies it occurs internationally: it is spread across national borders. This in itself has major implications for individual countries as they struggle to attract footloose investment capital by making themselves attractive to multinational corporations.
However, it is changes in the financial sector which are the most far-reaching, the most constraining of national autonomy and the most difficult to comprehend.
For all its problems, capitalism is a remarkably effective way of encouraging economic activity. True, this is not necessarily good news for the environment, the labour force or social equity, but it does mean that there has been an increasing amount of wealth creation.
As real economies have become more productive and larger, the financial sector has expanded as well, indeed much more so. It is this major structural change that is at the centre of the crisis.
Simply put, there has been a fantastic increase in the amount of capital circulating the globe which has no direct connection to 'real' economic activity. Daily turnover on the world's financial markets has reached US$1.5 trillion per day. To put this in perspective, Indonesia's annual GNP is only US$136 billion per year.
Mutual funds
Further fuelling this disparity between the size of national economies and the continuing growth of the global financial sector has been the emergence of massive mutual funds, particularly in the US. These are continuously on the lookout for profitable 'investment' opportunities, however transitory they may be.
The entire financial sector is becoming increasingly divorced from underlying real economic activity, be it domestic or international. From the point of view of fund managers, especially hedge funds of the sort made famous by George Soros, what matters is flexibility and liquidity.
Indeed, a good deal of what is described as 'investment' has nothing to do with long term plans to actually produce commodities for sale in markets. All that matters to financial players are opportunities created within markets themselves. Of critical importance in this regard are the activities of other market players. In other words, what matters is knowing which way markets are moving - no matter what is driving them.
This is important for two reasons. First, it explains why the situation in East Asia spun out of control so rapidly. The key here was a change in market sentiment, not in national economies. This in turn explains the second point: until very recently the East Asian model was almost universally praised as a possibly superior form of capitalism. In other words, when market sentiment was 'bullish', and the conventional wisdom had it that East Asia was seemingly a risk-free and lucrative investment, then cronyism, corruption and an absence of 'transparency' were apparently of little concern.
Contagion effect
So why has Indonesia been particularly hard hit? By the usual standards of economic orthodoxy, the so-called 'fundamentals', Indonesia looked healthy before the crash. Indeed, when measured by its foreign reserves, current account deficits, trade balance, and GDP growth, Indonesia was actually in better shape than Australia, which has remained comparatively unscathed.
Again it is important to remember that Indonesia was not the original epicentre of the crisis. Thailand was the initial trigger for the crisis and its high levels of short-term borrowing and an accompanying speculative property bubble meant that some sort of major shake-out was always possible.
What is most striking about the crisis in retrospect has been the so-called 'contagion effect' - the way one country after another has been sucked into the expanding economic, and latterly political vortex.
What has been driving the crisis to ever greater levels has not been the sudden discovery that some governments in East Asia are either corrupt, closely linked to or directly involved in economic activity, or that they are often indifferent to the rights of their citizenry. These circumstances have long been understood by those who wished to know. Such facts have merely provided a retrospective rationale for the shifting market sentiment that has been the major cause of the region's rapidly changing economic position.
Indonesia's changed status in the eyes of international investors is important for a number of reasons. Most obviously, the lack of support for the rupiah in international money markets has completely transformed the position of the Indonesian economy - to say nothing of the population at large! Apart from the immediate social distress, this changed status has far-reaching implications for Indonesia's - and East Asia's - relations with the rest of the world.
A key to understanding the way management of the crisis has unfolded is the link between political and economic interests in the wider international system. The general economic distress in East Asia represents a possibly unique opportunity for countries like the USA and influential trans-national institutions like the IMF to force the governments of East Asia to abandon policies of which they disapprove. In short, the crisis represents a chance to promote the sort of market-centred, neo-liberal policies that are the hallmark of countries like the USA, Britain and Australia.
More instability?
While oil prices were high, the Suharto government had no interest in market-oriented reforms, preferring to use windfall oil revenues to underpin its distinctive brand of patrimonialism. Yet while some observers might be inclined to celebrate the crisis' potential threat to authoritarian control, it is important to recognise that this will not necessarily solve any of Indonesia's economic problems.
If the IMF and the USA are successful in imposing neo-liberal reforms throughout the region this may well create the conditions for further economic instability. While it may suit the interests of those who hold mobile financial assets, liberalising markets and removing impediments to flows of capital in and out of small economies like Indonesia's is a recipe for further volatility.
True, access to external funds offers the possibility of accelerating economic development. But such dependence on external capital - especially short-term and footloose - also leaves countries highly vulnerable to rapid changes in market sentiment. Whatever the technical merits of pegging the rupiah at some fixed level to the US dollar, the Indonesian government will not be able to implement it in the long-term. Markets are simply too powerful for relatively small economies like Indonesia's to oppose. Such market power has implications for the sovereignty of all nations, not just Indonesia.
The major lessons to be drawn from the crisis are about the changing structure of the international economy. The principal source of the crisis has been the markets themselves, which continue to be driven by the most enduring 'fundamentals' of them all: fear and greed.
In Indonesia and East Asia more generally, panic replaced the reckless pursuit of profit as the essential dynamic determining sentiment toward the region, and it is quite possible that the contagion will spread. Even if this crisis were contained, it clearly demonstrates that any government, and more importantly, any 'real' economic activity, is now vulnerable to the predatory attentions of transnational market forces.
Market forces have effectively transformed nation-states into commodities, the attractiveness of which determines 'investment' levels. It is a new world order with implications for many more nations than just Indonesia.
Dr Mark Beeson is based at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Western Australia.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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In this issue
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The end of the New Order?
What extraordinary times Indonesians are experiencing! And the world with them. Our hearts go out to the people of this great nation. Of course a quarterly magazine cannot report the latest events. There were times when minutes mattered, and even the radio was too slow for us. Most articles in this issue were already at lay-out when an ashen-faced Suharto read out his resignation speech on that historic 21 May.
That is why our authors often take a longer view. David Bourchier, for example, probes history to understand why the end came so quickly. Is this really the end of the so poorly named New Order? And the beginning of something truly new? It may be too early to tell.
Other authors record certain vivid moments in the turbulent struggle. Strenuous efforts in Yogyakarta to keep protest peaceful. Raw courage of activists facing abduction. Electric tension in Medan just before it was swept by devastating riots. Exhilaration and defiance among the students. Ratna Sarumpaet, too, defiant as she was arrested while singing a patriotic song. These moments will be long remembered. They are moments on the way to a new Indonesia.
We will know that that new Indonesia is here when it begins to deal with the trauma of the New Order. Among the youths dancing in the fountains of parliament house on 21 May were the children of those massacred with army backing in 1965 and 1966.
It has been difficult enough even to remember these traumatic events. Rob Goodfellow's moving account of heart searching in Yogyakarta could be the mood of many more at this time.
The time will come, sooner rather than later, for action to erase the trauma and restore justice. Richard Tanter shows that the international instruments are there to do it. An International Criminal Tribunal for Indonesia should now be a priority for the UN Security Council.
Don't forget the remainder of this packed edition. We delve deeper into the troubled economy. We take you far into the forests of Kalimantan, the rivers of Irian Jaya, the seas off Minahasa, and the mountains of West Timor. For students and teachers, we now have an insert in the Indonesian language. We invite you to use it freely in the classroom. Why not check out the ever-growing Web site, now with the easily remembered name: http://www.insideindonesia.org
All of this was done, believe it or not, by volunteers who simply love Indonesia. Our thanks go out to them.
Inside Indonesia 55: Jul-Sep 1998
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