New Order generals needed new history books. Nugroho Notosusanto was their man.
Kate McGregor
The New Order regime relied for much of its legitimacy on official representations of history. Its version of the coup attempt of 1965, for example, described the event as a communist plot. This was of crucial importance for justifying the military take-over between 1965-67, as well as for the mass killing of communists in this period. Histories stressing military leadership in the 1945-49 independence struggle were also important for justifying the military's combined social, political and defence roles (dwifungsi). To produce these histories, the regime turned repeatedly to one man, Nugroho Notosusanto.
As a trained historian, Nugroho offered these projects academic credibility. Every country has official historians, and historians often work for the military or research military history. But Nugroho was different. He devoted himself to producing history for a regime dominated by the military. This earned him the enduring scorn of other Indonesian historians.
Why was Nugroho so devoted to the military? To understand, we need to reflect on his life story.
Authoritarian
Nugroho Notosusanto was born on 15 June 1931, in Rembang, central Java. At age fourteen he joined the 1945 independence struggle against the colonial Dutch. He served as a member of the Student Army, Tentara Pelajar, made up entirely of secondary and university students. Many of its members came from youth militias trained under the Japanese. Nugroho was probably too young to have joined these Japanese youth groups, but he shared with them an acceptance of martial mentalities. The Japanese occupation helped radicalise Indonesian youth and planted an authoritarian outlook in many young minds.
Members of the Student Army felt they belonged to a unique generation set apart from their elders by their vigorous 'spirit' (semangat), which of course included an unwillingness to make concessions to the Dutch. Like other members of the Student Army and the Indonesian National Army, Nugroho held little regard for civilian leaders, particularly those involved in diplomatic negotiations.
What is interesting is that Nugroho's criticism of the older generation was very personal. His own father clearly belonged to it too - he was a member of the negotiating team for the Republic of Indonesia at the Round Table Conference of 1949. This encapsulates the divide between Nugroho's generation of radical nationalists and that of their parents.
He once declared that his idol was General Sudirman, the first commander of the revolutionary Indonesian military. Sudirman had long believed that the military had a special role to play. What little faith Sudirman had in the civilian leadership disappeared after December 1948 when, after the Dutch launched an aggressive military campaign, the civilian leadership, based on a calculated assessment of international opinion, allowed themselves to be captured rather than join the guerilla struggle.
After the transfer of sovereignty in December 1949, the government of the Republic of Indonesia offered all members of the former Student Army a military education at Breda in the Netherlands. Nugroho now had to choose. Should he continue a career in the military, or follow his father's example and pursue a higher education? His father was a professor in Islamic law at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta.
Much later, Nugroho revealed that he would have chosen the military and gone to Breda. But his father prevented him. Nugroho's father, S H Notosusanto, was born into an elite Javanese (priyayi) family. He was one of the few Indonesians to attend a Dutch university in the Netherlands Indies. During his studies in the late 1920s and early 1930s he was exposed to important nationalist leaders such as Supomo, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta. Perhaps he shared Hatta and Sukarno's hesitation about the need for a national army. Yet here was his son - excited about joining precisely such an organisation.
Nugroho obeyed his father and enrolled in the Faculty of Letters at the University of Indonesia. But this did not stop him from identifying with the military throughout his life. A romantic view of the independence struggle endured in the short stories he wrote in the 1950s. Humanistic in style, most of these stories demonstrate a compassion for ordinary people affected by the revolution. They indicate a side to Nugroho he was later to suppress.
The short stories made Nugroho well known. He also became an active student leader. His obvious creativity and intellect attracted the attention of his peers and mentors. Among them were the historian Onghokham, and Priyono the left-leaning Minister of Education in the Guided Democracy period just before 1965. They all held great hopes for him.
By 1964 Nugroho was teaching history at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta. One day General A H Nasution, chief of staff of the armed forces and minister for defence, approached him to join a team of researchers. Their task was to write an army version of the history of the independence struggle. The aim: to challenge a similar history said to be planned by the leftist National Front. The army feared that the latter would leave out an account of the so-called Madiun Affair of 1948, a bloody event the army preferred to represent as a communist revolt against the government.
Nugroho seized the opportunity. History and politics now met decisively for the first time in his life. When completed, this history project led to the establishment of the Armed Forces History Centre, with Nugroho at its head. His most important project, as noted above, was to produce the first official version of the coup attempt of 1 October 1965. After this he set about consolidating the military's historical image by emphasising the military's role in the independence struggle. Nugroho wrote many history books, curated several museums, and assisted with some important film projects.
In 1984 he was appointed Minister of Education. He rewrote school history curriculums to place greater emphasis on the military's historical role. Nugroho had become the official historian of the New Order regime.
Criticism
Throughout his career, Nugroho's projects attracted widespread criticism from other historians. The more civil ideas of his father's generation had not died with their passing. Like his father, many of these historians did not share Nugroho's faith in the military leadership of the nation, and instead saw many dangers there.
Nugroho continued teaching history at the University of Indonesia even after taking up his position at the Armed Forces History Centre. The tensions of his dual careers were considerable. In 1978 he told a friend that he inhabited two worlds: those of the army and the university. In the army, he said, people have a sense of honour and are not always competing with each other. At university everyone was out for themselves. This reaction probably grew from a sense of rejection arising from his more controversial projects.
Yet whilst Nugroho felt the military world was more honorable, he was not completely accepted there either. A military man at the Army History Centre in Bandung once posed this question about Nugroho and himself to historian Sartono Kartodirdjo: 'Tell me Sartono, what is worse, a military man who pretends to be a historian, or a historian who pretends to be a military man?'
He was proud of his military promotions. Perhaps they made him feel nostalgic for the military career he might have had. Nugroho was awarded titular rankings because of his position as head of a military institution. In 1968 he was appointed titular ('in name only') colonel, and then in 1971 titular brigadier general. Nugroho considered these ranks a sign of respect from the leaders of Abri. One acquaintance of Nugroho's recalls him saying he liked to travel overseas, as it enabled him to wear his uniform and insignia.
Nugroho died in 1985, having served Suharto's military-dominated regime for two decades. Such a length of loyal service demonstrates his ambition to share in a world of power and privilege far greater than that which any academic career could have offered him.
Now that Suharto is gone, how will Nugroho's work be remembered? The histories he wrote have been at the centre of much criticism against the militarised official New Order historiography. In response to this backlash, his foreword was even erased from recent reprints of a history book. Memories of the independence struggle are fast fading. Nugroho's personal motivation for believing in military rule will become increasingly difficult for younger people to comprehend. If he is remembered at all, it will be as a defender of dwifungsi. In the light of day that exposed the widespread human rights abuses committed by the military during the New Order, this is an extremely negative label.
Kate McGregor (mcgregorke@hotmail.com) is writing a PhD dissertation in Indonesian history at the University of Melbourne.
The history of football is a history of Indonesia itself
Freek Colombijn
Association football, or soccer, was introduced to Indonesia in 1895, when the schoolboy John Edgar founded a club in Surabaya. The game rapidly spread from the elite to the workers and has become probably the most popular sport in Indonesia, both to play and to watch. But the history of football in Indonesia can tell us as much about Indonesia as it does about the game.
At first, matches were organised ad hoc. Then at the beginning of the twentieth century many local associations sprang up to organise leagues. Each league was confined to an irregular number of teams in one town. Usually all matches were played in a brief time span of, say, two months, on one field. The first matches between teams from different towns took place at the Colonial Exhibition in Semarang in 1914. The associations of Jakarta (then Batavia), Bandung, Semarang, and Surabaya sent teams composed of the best players of their respective leagues. These so-called 'city matches' between association teams were such a great success that they were repeated the following years. An umbrella Netherlands Indies Football Association (Nederlandsch-Indische Voetbal Bond, NIVB) was founded in 1919 to place the annual city matches on a permanent footing.
The name NIVB, later changed to NIVU, suggests it was an archipelago-wide association. But at first only the four associations present at the Colonial Exhibition were members. Gradually other associations from Java joined up, followed in the 1930s by associations from other islands. The expansion of the NIVU paralleled the way government administration and modern economic organisation was being standardised at the same time - first in Java and then spreading to the other islands.
Indonesia's enormous size has been a serious handicap for a national competition. Putting city matches at the pinnacle of the year's sporting calendar proved to be a brilliant and popular solution. By 1979 inter-island transportation had improved to such an extent that a national league was started. In order to reduce travel costs, the league is divided into a western and eastern division. In the end the national championship is decided in semi-finals and a final, reminiscent of the former city matches. As a result of the post-independence rise to predominance of the national capital, the finals no longer go from one place to another, but always take place in Jakarta. Only once, in 1999, was one held outside - in Menado. Fights between supporters had reached an unprecedented level. Perhaps reformasi had reduced respect for uniforms.
Nationalism
Political struggles have been fought out on the football field since colonial times. The NIVU reflected the social composition of colonial Indonesia. It had a majority of indigenous players, but Europeans dominated the board. Associations with an indigenous leadership were found at the local level, but they too were subject to the European hegemony in the umbrella organisation. In 1930, however, seven indigenous associations on Java founded the All-Indonesia Football Federation or PSSI (Persatuan Sepakbola Seluruh Indonesia). The word Indonesia in the name betrayed its nationalist ideology. The PSSI was no match for the NIVU in the number of teams and in financial muscle. But it was a useful vehicle to keep aspirations for an independent Indonesia alive in a decade in which the colonial state cracked down on all overt nationalist expressions.
During the Indonesian revolution of 1945-49, Dutch political leaders persuaded the NIVU to change its name to VUVSI/ ISNIS, an Indonesian-Dutch acronym for Football Union for the United States of Indonesia. The change of name brought the football federation into line with the short-lived and ill-fated colonial policy to encapsulate the Indonesian Republic within a federal republic sympathetic to the Dutch. The bilingual name, and the policy to co-opt more Chinese and Indonesian members onto the board, were attempts to win Indonesians to the Dutch side.
The Dutch federal policy quietly ran aground, because the various constituent states voluntarily merged with the Republic one by one. Within a year after the transfer of sovereignty from the Netherlands to Indonesia, federalism had collapsed and the unitary Republic of Indonesia was proclaimed. Likewise, member associations within VUVSI/ ISNIS in each town merged with the local branch of the PSSI. The VUVSI/ ISNIS became a hollow shell and was quietly disbanded in 1951. A few independent local associations continued to reject PSSI 'centralism', but in the course of the 1950s they were all swallowed up by the PSSI anyway.
Sukarno was aware of the role a successful football team could play in nation building. Organising the Asian Games in 1962 formed an element in Sukarno's policy to carve out a self-conscious international role for Indonesia. Hotel Indonesia and the Senayan stadium, which can hold 100,000 spectators, were constructed for this event. Success depended ultimately on an Indonesian football triumph. In line with the general atmosphere at the end of Sukarno's reign, however, a corruption scandal erupted shortly before the games. Several players were purged from the national team. Yet the Indonesian eleven still made it to the final. There they lost 2-3 to Malaya, of all countries.
After the alleged communist coup of 1965, Senayan and stadiums in provincial capitals became mass prisons for the detention of adversaries of the military regime.
Already in colonial times the local associations earned well from the gate takings. By the 1920s, teams and associations were paying their best players. When a national league with club teams was started in 1979, the local associations were reluctant to give up the revenues from the local leagues. This led to the unique blending of a competition between club teams and a championship between city teams. Club teams and teams representing local associations play together in the national league.
Club teams depend on sponsors for both funds and management. When a sponsor withdraws, the club usually collapses. Even teams that have been national champion and have played in Asian cups have disappeared this way. In other cases, teams moved to another city with a new sponsor. At the end of the 1990-1991 season no less than six league teams were dissolved for financial reasons. Under these circumstances, a regular league with promotion and relegation is impossible. Solvency, rather than last year's results, determines which teams play in the national league. Reformasi has left its mark - former sponsors such as the Bakrie brothers and Prajogo Pangestu are now in trouble.
Pancasila
During Suharto's rule, the PSSI wrote 'development plans' using the same discourse as the state. The proclaimed aim of the PSSI was to develop football evenly throughout the country (thereby integrating all regions), based on Pancasila. This general aim was elaborated into five principles, a sacrosanct number that implicitly showed allegiance to the New Order state. Not surprisingly, the New Order football technocrats sought western knowledge to improve the level of play. Western trainers were contracted. In Sukarno's time, when Indonesia was still a leader among the non-aligned countries, the PSSI had similarly employed a Yugoslav trainer.
Promising players were sent to Europe's top clubs as apprentices. A flood of well-paid foreign players (expatriate development aid workers?) of second-rank quality came to Indonesia, where they pushed young and gifted Indonesian players aside.
The wish to increase the level of play was one of the motives for establishing a national league. However, despite the improved transportation and the league being split into a western and eastern (or sometimes three) divisions, distance remains a problem. No schedule of regular home and away matches exists. The teams make brief tours to play their matches on one particular island. This practice seriously distorts the competition results. A Jakarta team, for example, will play all its away matches on Sumatra in a short time span. Tired from the gruelling travel, and alone facing hostile crowds (for its own supporters cannot afford to follow their favourite team), the team loses many of its matches, and descends to the bottom of the league table. By contrast a team that can play at home against exhausted teams rises on the league table, but will descend when it has its turn to play a series of away matches.
Most Indonesians only watch. When it comes to playing themselves, they have few facilities. They play on a beach or a plot of vacant land, with a goal made of sagging bamboo poles and a ball of plaited bamboo. In Papuan villages one can observe how a communal ball hangs in the goal net. Everyone can play a game with it, provided the ball is hung in the net again afterwards. Local rules and not the PSSI rules, derived from the global FIFA standard, apply.
Getting a kick out of football helps Indonesians to have fun, despite all the misery that is dumped on them from Jakarta.
Freek Colombijn (F.Colombijn@let.leidenuniv.nl) is an anthropologist at Leiden University. He began to play in 1970 and stopped as left-winger in 1997. In his last match he scored his first hat trick.
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
Tribute to a multi-talented, national figure
Catherine Mills
Romo Mangun
Yusuf Bilyarta Mangunwijaya was born on 6 May 1929 in Ambarawa, Central Java, from Catholic parents. At the age of sixteen, during the revolution for independence from the Dutch, he joined the Student Army. The troops' callousness towards the villagers shocked him. In 1950, after hearing a speech by Major Isman about the harmful effects of the revolution on civilians, he decided to repay his debt by serving the people as a priest.
After studying theology and architecture, Romo (Father) Mangun started his public life in Yogyakarta in the late 1960s. He became a parish priest, lecturer in architecture, practising architect, essayist, columnist, novelist, human rights activist and social worker. For six years he lived among the poor along the Code River in Yogyakarta, and built a Community Centre for them.
He died on 10 February 1999. Romo Mangun was a staunch advocate of democracy to the last.
Elections
'Although it claims to be public, the forthcoming (1976) election is clearly going to proceed in its exclusive la Indonesia style.'
On the face of it, this orderly queue of Javanese voters is a good example of communal response to the New Order's implementation of 'democratic' values. However, the shape of the queue recalls that of the headdress of two characters from the shadow puppet theatre: Bima and his son Gatutkaca. Both were associated in Romo Mangun's mind with Sukarno. Sukarno saw in Gatutkaca a heroic role model for modern Indonesian nationalists. The cartoon thus makes an implicit comparison between the early years of independence and 1976. The voters' closed eyes suggest that, this time, they are blindly obeying orders from above, instead of realising their potential for shaping democracy. Through this picture, Romo Mangun encouraged ordinary people to become once again politically aware and active.
School for individuals
'Because this New Order of ours is a military order, an authoritarian order, commando style, there is no education. There is only instruction, a mere taming experience.'
Romo Mangun believed education was a crucial pre-condition for Indonesian progress. Its aim should be to promote discernment and creativity in individuals. He strongly objected to teaching methods which crushed spirits instead. Most of all, he insisted it was for everyone, not just the elite. In 1993 he founded an experimental school for disadvantaged children in Yogyakarta under the research group Laboratorium Dinamika Edukasi Dasar. He often said: 'When I die, let me die as a primary school teacher.'
Two heroes
'However different they may be, Sukarno and Sutan Syahrir represent two poles of the same world of fighters. They were the soul of bravery and faced exile for the sake of their comrades' freedom.'
Romo Mangun looked back to the 1945 revolution as the golden age of Indonesian nationalism. Among his favourite heroes were former President Sukarno and former Prime Minister Syahrir. They are represented in this picture as the Javanese shadow puppets Bima and Yudhistira. According to Romo Mangun, Sukarno resembled Bima because of his tenacity of purpose, his flamboyance and his raw style of expression in the low Javanese language or ngoko.
Syahrir resembled the more refined Yudisthira because he used knowledge and diplomacy rather than brute force to solve national problems. Romo Mangun himself hated violence. He admired both heroes for their selfless commitment to the national cause.
Catherine Mills (millsca5@iinet.net.au) recently wrote an honour's thesis on Mangunwijaya at Curtin University, Perth, Australia. Photo from Y B Priyanahadi (ed),'Romo Mangun di mata para sahabat' (Yogyakarta: Kanisius, 1999). Line drawings by Romo Mangun, in Y B Mangunwijaya, 'Puntung-puntung Roro Mendut' (Jakarta: Gramedia, 1978).
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
Strange things began to happen when Indonesian refugees came to Australia during World War II
Jan Lingard
Before 1942 much Australian opinion about Asia focussed on preserving a 'White Australia'. Its vast spaces, it was assumed, could be nothing but an irresistible attraction for the 'teeming millions' to Australia's north. To most Australians, Asia was China and Japan. Most seemed unaware that the British, French, Portuguese and Dutch colonies in the region were also part of Asia. These they considered, like Australia, to be outposts of European civilisation, whose 'native' populations attracted little interest.
When war broke out in the Pacific, and Malaya and Singapore fell to the Japanese, Australians suddenly realised the Asian countries to the north had strategic importance. Newspapers were filled with previously little known place names, as one by one the islands, cities and towns of the Netherlands East Indies fell. Finally, in March 1942, the Dutch in Java capitulated. Senior members of the Indies administration fled to Australia. They brought with them several thousand evacuees - Dutch, Eurasian and particularly Indonesian subjects of the Royal Netherlands colonial empire. Between then and 1948, when the last remaining handful were repatriated, some five and a half thousand 'coloured' Indonesians had, through the exigencies of war, been brought to a country which had enshrined its 'White Australia' policy since 1901 through the Immigration Restriction Act.
The Indonesians came from all parts of the archipelago. They comprised merchant seamen, members of the army, navy and air force, clerical workers, civilian refugees, domestic servants, and political prisoners evacuated from the prison settlement at Boven Digul in Dutch New Guinea. A handful just happened to be working at ports or airfields in Java, and in the confusion were gathered up and brought against their will. Upon arrival, the Indonesians were dispersed to many different cities and country towns, particularly in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. They went to military camps, internment camps, seamen's hostels, ships or ordinary houses. Here Australians and Indonesians met one another in ways that neither had dreamed of. Indonesian children were born and went to school here, adults married here - occasionally to Australian girls - and others died here.
'Brown' people
Among the first were a group of Indonesians who came on their own - the first 'boat people'. In March 1942 a group of 67 Javanese men, women and children who had been living in Sumatra attempted to sail back to Java. Trained fitters and turners, the men were required to report for work at the Dutch arsenal in the town of Bandung. However, the speed of the Japanese invasion made this impossible, and the group turned south. After a hazardous journey they reached Fremantle, in Western Australia. There they were told to continue to Port Melbourne, arriving in April. As their ship docked, local Melburnians were treated to a sight they had never seen before. The Javanese were gathered on deck, wearing traditional dress: colourful sarongs, sashes and long lace blouses for the women, some of them suckling babies; sarongs, black jackets and caps and ceremonial kris for the men. John Guthrie, a young boy living at Port Melbourne at the time, recalls the excitement as word spread and he and his friends raced to the dock. Of particular interest was the fact that these were 'brown' people, whom the boys had never seen before.
Dutch officials met the ship, but were at a loss to know what to do with these unexpected arrivals. Finally they asked the advice of Rev John Freeman, minister of the Port Melbourne Methodist Church, who agreed to help. With permission from the church authorities the church hall was turned into home for the refugees for the next three years. Small rooms off the main hall were allotted to family groups. Single men used the hall itself. Dutch authorities and the Red Cross provided furniture, bedding, clothing and equipment. A communal kitchen was set up.
Aided by some of the local community, the Freeman family helped the refugees settle in to daily life in their temporary home. A kindergarten was established, attended by both Indonesian and Australian children. The older children attended the Nott Street primary school, where they soon learned English and excelled at their studies. Mrs Freeman took particular care of the women, taking them shopping, arranging hospitalisation when babies were born and generally looking after their welfare. A journalist from the newspaper The Argus, who visited the hall commented: 'In this little corner of Port Melbourne, East has met West'. The men, meanwhile, had much-needed technical skills. Rev Freeman had no trouble finding work for them in the government aircraft factory at Fishermen's Bend.
The Indonesians made many friendships in the Port Melbourne community. John Guthrie and other young men took the opportunity to explore a new culture. They even learned to speak 'Malay' (Indonesian). In return, they took their new friends to Australian Rules football matches, ice-skating and the theatre. These friendships later led Guthrie to take part in demonstrations and marches in support of Indonesian independence. They were held in Melbourne after the world learned of Sukarno's 'proklamasi' of 17 August 1945.
When war was over and the refugees were eventually repatriated, there were tearful scenes at Spencer Street railway station when they left.
The Freeman family, along with other Australian families, also opened their home to Indonesian merchant seamen and military personnel in this country at the time. There was a constant stream of visitors to the 'open house' they held every Sunday. In turn they often visited 'Indonesia House' which the Dutch had established at the Hotel Metropole. Together with other interested citizens of Melbourne, they enjoyed Indonesian food and cultural performances. Miriam Nichols and Bonita Ellen, two of the Freeman daughters, have maintained friendships with some of their Indonesian visitors to the present day.
Friendship
James Gibson is another Australian who enjoyed a special friendship with one Indonesian. Gibson was in the Royal Australian Air Force. With some other Australians he was co-opted into the 18 Netherlands East Indies Squadron, to make up for the shortfall in Dutch ground crew. The squadron trained initially in Canberra, but in November 1942 it was moved first to MacDonald and then to Bachelor airfield in the Northern Territory. There it commenced bombing operations against the Japanese. The Australians were instructed not to fraternise with the 'native' members of the squadron, but Gibson ignored this order and struck up a friendship with a Javanese man named Djadi. From Djadi he learned about Javanese culture and learned some Malay language, which he still remembers. The two men were inseparable at this time, but lost contact when the war ended and Djadi was repatriated. In 1997 Gibson was able to trace Djadi's whereabouts. He made a trip to Java to see his old friend again. This became a treasured experience, as Djadi died about a year later.
The Australian government played a role in eventually supporting the recognition of the new Republic of Indonesia by the United Nations. Much has been written about this. But the first support came at grass roots level from within the Australian community. In particular it came from the Communist Party and the labour union movement. It also came from individuals who shunned the racist attitudes of White Australia and seized the opportunity to learn about and enjoy friendships with Asian people.
The bans Australian waterside workers placed on loading Dutch ships they suspected were carrying arms to be used against the Indonesian revolutionaries are well documented. The former Dutch political prisoners from Boven Digul, who had initially been interned in the prisoner of war camp at Cowra in New South Wales, also played an important role. After their release many actively politicised other Indonesians and encouraged them to disobey the Dutch. They also educated Australians about their struggle, using Independence Committees established in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Australian sympathisers assisted their work - beginning from the time independence was proclaimed in 1945 until it was finally attained in 1949. The Indonesian Revolution, it could be said, was in some part fought on Australian soil.
Since those days, the political relationship between Indonesia and Australia has been like a roller coaster ride. But the friendships forged during the war years were the forerunner of ongoing 'deeply human people-to-people rapport between Australians and Indonesians', as the former Indonesian ambassador Mr S Wiryono once put it. He was speaking at a ceremony in memory of the thirteen Indonesians who died during their internment in Cowra. Their graves in the Cowra cemetery remain today as a tangible reminder of that rapport.
Jan Lingard (jan.lingard@asia.usyd.edu.au) teaches Indonesian at the University of Sydney. She is writing a book about this historical episode.
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
After the New Order, the lid on Indonesia's past is beginning to lift
Hilmar Farid
History is all about today. It helps us understand where we are and where we are heading. Indonesians are confused about the future because so much of their past has been covered up.
Globalisation, for example, is not an Indonesian idea, and as a collectivity, we don't know how to deal with it. But from history we learn that those who built this republic never intended it to become a place where the elite sell their own people. That is more or less what globalisation is - how to make use of Indonesian energies and channel them into the market. Those who drew up the constitution never thought like that, and no one can deny it is wrong, yet today it happens.
The school history textbooks don't help students to understand any of this. They are all about national heroes without any context, just like in the comics. If I were writing a history of the 1945 revolution, I would write about it as a liberating energy that came from the people. The 17 August proclamation was all about turning the entire colonial order upside down.
But then the story takes a turn. Those energies are shackled once more, this time from within the republic itself. It becomes a story of crushed creativity. Take the popular action to take over the Dutch colonial plantation landholdings, which started soon after the Japanese pushed the Dutch out in 1942. The newly independent central government quickly began to use Dutch concepts and Dutch laws to suppress it. It was ironic - they forgot they were reasserting an entire colonial order.
That is why people came out with the slogan 'The Revolution is Unfinished'. They were right. Rather than institutionalising this creativity and giving it space to develop, it was replaced with colonial era rules. Land ownership is the most fundamental thing. But the people who suppressed it put more value on order. They saw the revolution as disorder, a typically elite view. For the people who took over the land and worked it, there was no disorder. They were happy, they could grow things. The disorder was in the heads of the bureaucrats. They made an agreement with the Dutch to give the land back to its original owners, as it had been before 1942.
Things would have been different if the idea of order had been derived from the experiences of those at the grassroots. But all those efforts were undone, and on top of it was built another order, lacking popular consensus.
New Order
Indonesians have experienced this repeatedly. This is the story of the New Order. The New Order explained 1965-66 in a very simplistic way. There was the danger of communism, several generals were killed, and the communist party PKI did it. Extraordinary disorder followed, after which the military came along, cleaned up the mess, and erected the New Order. Millions of school children have learned this for over thirty years.
But when we go into the data, which is abundant, we get a very different picture. The generals were in fact killed by soldiers in uniform. There was no communist hysteria. A press already controlled by General Suharto spread much of this disinformation. The objective was to generate a lot of anger and direct it at the PKI. This then led to massive killings. People who know how the killings were done tell us they happened not in a disorderly fashion but systematically. Groups with known names would be checked out of jail to be executed. There was paperwork, a bureaucracy of murder. You certainly can't say this was communal conflict among naturally violent people.
What happened in 1965-66 was a complete overturning of the existing political system, economic structure, and cultural life. The prisons of the New Order were filled with the best and brightest of that generation. Once more, the energy of the people was crushed in a brutal fashion. Not only the exceptionally brilliant ended in jail. Farmers used to do their own research. They tried to educate themselves. Today there is nothing like that.
I'm told that Indonesia last year published only 22 scholarly papers in mathematics. In Vietnam, which only emerged from war in 1975, there were about 1,300. Of course the killings of 1965 alone can't explain this, but the New Order military had such an obsession to control everything that it managed to snuff out all initiative. A massive purge such as 1965-66 had never happened before. The New Order crushed not only the PKI but an entire nationalist generation, all those who came up in the 1940s and '50s. Many of them were not even involved in the PKI.
Many activists began to research the history of the New Order as soon as it ended in 1998. When Suharto resigned everyone agreed things had to change. But most thought only of combatting corruption and getting rid of the bad eggs. Why didn't they deal with land ownership, for example? Or labour reform, or the rehabilitation of political prisoners? The reformasi agenda was not radical enough. That is what drove us to try to understand what we were really up against.
We in Jaringan Kerja Budaya (JKB) had long been thinking about this. To us, the New Order was a cultural black hole. It was covered with a lid, and on that they erected what they called Indonesian culture. We wanted to know just how deep that black hole was, and what had been lost. We discovered that so many of today's issues had already been the subject of lively debate in the '40s and '50s. So many experiments, right here in our own country, were sucked into the black hole. Post-coloniality, for example - the question of how the colonial heritage influenced our culture. An economics of the people - this was not just a debate but actually put into practice. Organic farming - this too was a practice that was sucked into the black hole.
There's a famous hotel in Bali that was built in 1967. Apparently its foundations are in a mass grave of people killed in 1965-66. This literally demonstrates the black hole of the New Order, but it is also a metaphor. Those buried there belonged to a popular movement to build their own society on their own strength, without having to rely on foreign capital. On their graves was built this massive foreign-funded hotel, thus making Bali what it since became, a centre for the tourist industry.
Hilmar Farid ('Fay') was born in 1968 and spent his early childhood in Germany. He graduated in history from the University of Indonesia, and now leads the Network for Cultural Work (Jaringan Kerja Budaya, jkb@indo.net.id), which publishes the magazine Media Kerja Budaya (MKB, www.geocities.com/mkb_id/). He is a productive writer and translator. JKB is conducting research on the history of the New Order. This article was composed from an interview conducted by Gerry van Klinken on 4 August 2001.
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
Indonesian military intelligence kept Australia fully informed (and complicit) in its 1975 East Timor invasion plans
Paul Monk
On 3 July 1974, the Australian ambassador to Jakarta, Bob Furlonger cabled Canberra:
'Harry Tjan told Jan Arriens on 2 July that he intends to submit a paper to the president this week recommending that Indonesia mount a clandestine operation in Portuguese Timor to ensure that the territory would opt for incorporation into Indonesia[Indonesian intelligence chief Lt-Gen] Ali Murtopo would appear to have directed Tjan to draft a paper setting out the operation. Tjan's extreme frankness indicates that the Indonesians are confident that we would favour an independent Portuguese Timor as little as they do.'
Jan Arriens was then first secretary in the Australian embassy in Jakarta. Harry Tjan was a principal member of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jakarta. Furlonger remarked that the Indonesians appeared to want to 'take us along on a realpolitik approach to the problem.'Australia was being consulted, he observed, and needed to respond in clear terms. 'A failure to do so soon will be taken by them, I fear, as tacit agreement.' Canberra's response to Furlonger was that the information from Tjan was most valuable, but that 'we should not encourage the Indonesians in any way to talk to us along those lines.' Australia could not afford to be associated with a covert operation given 'the risk of exposure.' Any hint of our complicity 'or even acquiescence'in such things with Indonesia would 'be damaging to the government's reputation overseas, to its domestic credibility, and to the confidence in us of small countries, especially PNG.'
Yet the Indonesians were in no way discouraged from talking to us 'along those lines.' Tjan's revelation of 2 July 1974 was the first of some forty-five secret briefings to the Australian embassy up to June 1976. Australia gave tacit agreement to the clandestine operation being mounted. It was kept closely informed about its design and its progress. It was told in detail of the obstacles encountered. Very early on, it was informed that, if covert manipulation did not work, Indonesia would foment disorder in the territory as a pretext for military intervention. Australia went along with this realpolitikapproach to the problem - at the risk of exposure. No greater risk of exposure arose than the presence of five Australian network journalists at Balibo, in mid-October 1975. That's why the Indonesian forces killed them, and why the Australian government covered up their murders.
Australia and the Indonesian Incorporation of Portuguese Timor 1974-1976, published in September 2000 by Melbourne University Press, shows the significance of these secret briefings. They were an intelligence officer's dream. To see how they were used is to understand precisely what was flawed and unworkable in the Whitlam policy on East Timor in 1974-75.
Self-interest
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs told Furlonger that the danger in Indonesian planning was that 'self-interest may distort rational thinking and the assessment of risks.' This was true, however, not only in Jakarta but also in Canberra. Australia's self-interest, as its officials perceived it, lay in the inconvenient little Portuguese colony being quietly absorbed into Indonesia. It also lay in cordial relations with Indonesia, which was consolidating a 'New Order' of a broadly pro-Western and 'stable' nature. Quite as much as in Jakarta, the question was worth asking in Canberra whether self-interest might distort 'rational thinking' and 'assessment of risks.' The record suggests that it did.
The briefing notes for Whitlam's talks with President Suharto, in early September 1974, informed the Australian prime minister about Harry Tjan's plan. He was advised to tell President Suharto that self-determination for Portuguese Timor was a firm Australian policy and that such self-determination 'should not exclude any of the three future options for Portuguese Timor', ie sustained links with Portugal, incorporation into Indonesia, or independence. A more 'forward' policy than this on Indonesia's part would present problems for Australia's other interests.
Whitlam chose not to accept the guidance offered to him. He told Suharto that he personally believed Portuguese Timor should be part of Indonesia. This was not yet Australian policy, he said, but his views tended to become Australian policy and they soon would in this case. He added that incorporation should take place as the result of a genuine act of self-determination on the part of the Timorese. He knew that this was not what the Indonesians had in mind, but said nothing to the Indonesian leader about the advisability of a clandestine operation. Suharto took this to mean that Whitlam would align Australia's policy with his own.
Australian policy was now caught between two incompatible considerations that were only ever likely to be reconciled by the means Tjan had proposed, at the risk of exposure and failure foreseen by thoughtful Australian officials from the outset. Just to the extent that the Timorese exhibited an unwillingness to be absorbed into Indonesia, Australia would be faced with an invidious choice between the two incompatible halves of Whitlam's policy. This soon became crystal clear. On 30 September 1974, Tjan told Arriens that 'he had now developed a "grand design" on the future of Portuguese Timor, which had been submitted to the president.' This 'grand design' called for resolution of the matter in the course of 1975-76.
If Whitlam wished to see a genuine act of self-determination he now knew that this was not what Jakarta intended. To deflect the Indonesians from their realpolitik course at this point would have required pro-active diplomacy. This was not forthcoming from Whitlam or from his Department of Foreign Affairs. Not to initiate such efforts at that point was clearly to acquiesce in the 'grand design'.
On 16 October 1974, Furlonger sent a Secret Austeo (Australian Eyes Only) cable to Canberra summarising a conversation he had had with Lim Bian Kie, private secretary to Ali Murtopo. Lim had stated, he said, that if Indonesia could not influence matters decisively within eighteen months it would be 'unable to do so at all.' If it was clear by 1976, Lim said, that the Timorese would not vote for incorporation into Indonesia then 'the use of force could not be ruled out.' Harry Tjan confirmed this. Lim 'spoke of the possibility of fomenting disorder in Portuguese Timor and of the Indonesian forces stepping in to salvage the situation at the request of certain sections of the population.'
Military intervention
Seldom do governments get such clear intelligence on the thoughts and intentions of other governments in sensitive matters. Canberra had been told explicitly that Jakarta felt a sense of urgency, that it was not actually optimistic about its covert action having the desired effect in the brief time available, and that it would resort to military intervention, if need be, in order to have its way. In other words, the Whitlam policy was clearly non-viable.
This ominous outlook was reinforced on 26 October, when Tjan again met with Arriens. He told him that Murtopo had been replaced by Lt-Gen Benny Murdani as real operational chief of the 'grand design', that the latter had hardened into agreed policy, and that Indonesian 'determination to take over Portuguese Timor had now developed an almost irresistible momentum.' If Canberra had been at all serious about self-determination for Portuguese Timor then this was the time to make a stand. Late October 1974, not October 1975, was the end of the line for the policy Whitlam had espoused.
Whitlam failed to see this, however. He was too convinced of his own grand vision to heed the views of the people of East Timor - or Australia - in this matter. He had prime responsibility for the dilemma Australian policy now faced. He was fully briefed, but did not see a need to modify his policy. He wanted to see incorporation take place - by an act of 'genuine self-determination'. He persisted in believing that this was compatible with the 'grand design'. The policy, therefore, remained set on autopilot, as Australia flew with Indonesia towards the bloody invasion on 7 December 1975.
By early December 1974, Australia's most senior policy makers and intelligence officers were aware that the Timorese were unlikely to prove 'malleable', as Michael Cook put it at a top level meeting, and that voluntary incorporation was 'not a winnable goal.' Gordon Jockel, director of the Joint Intelligence Organisation, told the same meeting that intelligence estimates suggested Fretilin could and would stoutly resist an Indonesian military intervention and that an effort to crush it could become 'a running sore' for Indonesia. Richard Woolcott, soon to become ambassador to Indonesia, thought Jockel and Cook were being too pessimistic. Besides, he told the meeting, 'the prime minister wants to see incorporation take place. If things get messy he has escape clauses.'
Whitlam did not have escape clauses. His personal conceit had left the Labor Party, and government, with a policy heading inescapably for disaster. Over the twelve months that followed, Tjan kept the Australian embassy closely informed as that disaster unfolded. In its wake, Canberra chose to try to make the best of a bad job by suppressing evidence of the extent of the catastrophe. But truth will out. The recently declassified documents make clear how a devastating policy error was made. What has not yet been declassified is the defence and intelligence archive on the details of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. That remains suppressed, because the truth is so damning.
Dr Paul Monk (p.monk@latrobe.edu.au) is senior fellow with the Australian Thinking Skills Institute (www.austhink.org). He is a former senior defence intelligence analyst. A longer version of this article appears in Critical Asian Studies vol.33 no.2, April 2001 (csf.colorado.edu/bcas/).
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
Overseas friends stand by persecuted Acehnese human rights workers
Signe Poulsen
On 29 March 2001 Tengku Al-Kamal, a member of the team monitoring the 'Peace through Dialogue' agreement between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement GAM, was shot dead in South Aceh. Also killed were Suprin Sulaiman, a lawyer with the Aceh NGO Coalition for Human Rights (Koalisi NGO HAM Aceh), and their driver Amiruddin. They were returning from a police station where Tengku Al-Kamal had given testimony about his alleged involvement in a defamation case launched by the police against several human rights workers. Members of the Mobile Police (Brimob) said they had been falsely accused of raping five women in South Aceh. Eyewitnesses have stated that after leaving the police station, the car in which the three were travelling was followed by a vehicle carrying members of the security forces.
Inspired by the more open political climate in 1998, Acehnese activists began to organise. However, in exposing some of the truth about the conflict in Aceh and identifying some of the perpetrators of torture, killings and 'disappearances' that had haunted Acehnese society for the past decade, they soon found themselves facing intimidation.
The South Aceh killings were not the first tragedy to hit those working to improve the humanitarian and human rights situation in Aceh. The emerging community of non-government organisations (NGOs) had been reporting growing levels of threats for more than a year. Other tragedies reported internationally included: the killing of three volunteers with Rata (Rehabilitation Action against Torture in Aceh) as well as the torture victim they were accompanying in December 2000; the torture of three Acehnese staff members of the British-based humanitarian agency Oxfam in August 2000; and the disappearance that same month of Jafar Siddiq Hamzah, the founder of the International Federation for Aceh (IFA). But these were only the tip of the iceberg. From at least February 2001 onwards, activists say, everyday threat levels have escalated so seriously that they are prevented from carrying out much of their routine work outside the provincial capital Banda Aceh. Some activists have even been forced to leave the province, fearing for their lives.
The threats affect not only these individual human rights defenders but also the communities they are trying to help. These activists bring much more than rice and plastic sheeting to the civilian population hit hardest by the violence. They bring alternatives to the violence that has become part of everyday life for too many men, women and children in the province. Their presence is a source of hope in a conflict too often portrayed only in grim statistics and military terms.
Banda Aceh is considered a calm oasis compared to the areas outside of town. Still, even here the situation has deteriorated significantly since President Wahid issued a decree in April 2001 that cleared the way for a 'limited' military operation. Between April and June the security forces carried out almost daily road checks around town. Ostensibly to check driving licenses and vehicle registration, the checks raised popular fears of a return to the bad days between 1989 and 1998 when Aceh was classified a military operations area (Daerah Operasi Militer, DOM).
During the DOM, few civil society organisations were able to operate in Aceh, and most human rights violations went unnoticed by the outside world. All this changed with 'reformasi' in 1998, when Acehnese began to speak out against human rights violations in their province. With students at the forefront, activist began working on many issues ranging from environmental rights to humanitarian relief. They criticised both sides of the armed conflict for excesses and worked towards the promotion of human rights, an end to violent conflict and the rule of law.
The political opening in Aceh proved short-lived. Since early 1999 the armed conflict has intensified and civilians have once again become its victims. Today activists say that `shock therapyhas returned. The brutal phrase was first used by the military to justify its bloody operations in 1989-92 against the separatist Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM). The counter-insurgency campaign resulted in widespread human rights violations during the early years of DOM.
The pro-referendum organisation SIRA (Sentral Informasi Referendum Aceh) had its office raided in May 2001. YAB (Yayasan Anak Bangsa) followed in June. Afterwards, several heads of organisations received explicit warnings that their offices might also be targeted. On 20 July activists were taking part in a non-violent protest against militarism in Aceh at the offices of the Legal Aid Institute (Lembaga Bantuan Hukum, LBH). Security forces turned up, took a number of LBH staff to the police station for questioning, and confiscated the office computer, other office appliances, photos and legal documentation. On the same day some of those representing GAM in the peace talks with the Indonesian government that had been ongoing since May 2000 were arrested at the hotel in which the talks were taking place. This last outrageous violation of all international norms cast the possibility of future talks in doubt.
Working outside Banda Aceh is even more difficult. Humanitarian and human rights workers in villages are almost invariably viewed with suspicion. On 17 July two activists who had been carrying out investigations into human rights violations in Central Aceh were detained for two days and their research results confiscated as they were returning to Banda Aceh. Others delivering humanitarian aid to displaced people have been accused of cooperating with GAM, because of their 'free access' to villages where GAM operates. Meanwhile, GAM has consolidated its structures at the village level. There have been reports of members of GAM extorting and intimidating some NGOs, in particular those who choose not to come out in support of a referendum for Aceh.
'If a lawyer in South Aceh can be killed, anyone can be next.' This sentiment has been expressed by a number of activists in Banda Aceh. Some of them are now being questioned in connection with the same defamation case as Tengku Al-Kamal. This appears to be an attempt by the police to gather more information about the activities of NGOs in Banda Aceh.
In spite of the difficult environment in which they operate, Acehnese activists say they are determined to continue their work. At the same time, they are developing strategies to enable them to carry out this work without being harassed, detained, tortured or killed.
Protective accompaniment
There are some positive signs in this respect. One is the establishment of formal and informal networks throughout the province. Women's organisations were perhaps the pioneers in this respect, establishing networks at the village level already during the DOM. Students have also been pro-active. Meanwhile, following a conference of torture victims in Aceh in November 2000, survivors formed a network headed by SPKP (Solidaritas Persaudaraan Korban Pelanggaran HAM Aceh, Association of Victims of Human Rights Abuse).
At the national level, the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) has established a branch office in Banda Aceh, as have national human rights organisations Kontras and LBH. These organisations are playing an important role in impressing the human rights situation in Aceh on the national conscience.
The number of international organisations in Aceh is relatively small compared to other Indonesian trouble spots. One initiative is the 'protective accompaniment' carried out by Peace Brigades International. By providing a physical presence, PBI aims to deter threats against Acehnese human rights defenders, thereby creating a space for them to continue to carry out their work. For example, when one activist was informed that his life was in danger because his name was on a list of high profile Acehnese sympathetic to GAM, members of PBI's team in Aceh stayed with him for forty-eight hours, until he was able to leave the province. PBI volunteers have maintained a presence outside NGO offices, and accompanied activists to meetings, the airport, the police station or their homes. This not only helps to deter threats but is also a very visible show of solidarity and support of the work done by Acehnese human rights defenders.
In spite of these initiatives, as of July 2001 the prevailing feeling is that the space in which activists in Aceh are operating is becoming smaller and smaller. Yet no sustainable solution to the armed conflict in Aceh can be reached only by the power brokers. It has to involve all levels of society. Acehnese NGOs represent many voices of civil society at the grassroots level. They are still the key to ending the violent conflict. Their security must be protected and their work should be seen not as a threat, but as a vital part of any functioning democratic society.
Signe Poulsen is a volunteer with Peace Brigades International (www.peacebrigades.org).
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
How Islamic will the new movements make Indonesia?
Bernhard Platzdasch
Unlike the Suharto era, Indonesia now has quite radical Islamic groups operating in the open. Among them, the Islamic Defenders Front (Front Pembela Islam, FPI) is infamous for unleashing paramilitary gangs on 'iniquitous' nightspots. The Sunni Communication Forum (Forum Komunikasi Ahlusunnah Wal Jamaah, FKAWJ) fights for Muslims in Maluku. The Liberation Party (Hizbut Tahrir) is a branch of the Middle Eastern movement of the same name. It calls for the Indonesian nation-state to be abolished and replaced by the classic model of an Islamic state, the caliphate. Both FKAWJ and Hizbut Tahrir bluntly reject democratic models as a Western invention, incompatible with Islam. The campus-based Hizbut Tahrir shows restraint in its actions, but the other two frequently operate in a grey area of the law (see accompanying article).
The Islamic Defenders Front and the FKAWJ draw their mass support from poorly educated lower income classes. Somewhat unconvincingly, unlike the blunt anti-pluralism of FKAWJ and Hizbut Tahrir, the Defenders proclaim a nebulous democratic agenda. Still, all these groups are similar in their fierce anti-Western and anti-Zionist propaganda.
Recent news coverage outside Indonesia has frequently expressed concern that a strident and anti-democratic Islam is on the rise in Indonesia. This view is not to be dismissed completely, but it is over-drawn. As we shall see, there is a widened range of Islamic parties and movements in Indonesia, but it overwhelmingly supports the country's stumble toward democracy. Groups such as those described above stand outside the party spectrum. They make up a small radical fringe inclined to violence and intimidation to achieve its goals.
Less removed from the mainstream are some important Muslim student organisations. The most notable among them is the Indonesian Muslim Student Action Union (Kesatuan Aksi Mahasiswa Muslim Indonesia, Kammi). This group was a significant force during the 1998 protests that initiated the change of regime. Rooted in the Islamic neo-revivalist movement on campus, and ideologically tied to the teachings of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Kammi is a major source of party workers for the Justice Party (Partai Keadilan, PK).
Both Kammi and PK are the expressions of a new generation of Muslims who promote an 'uncompromising' purification of Islamic belief and strict adherence to religious morals, while simultaneously pushing for political modernisation.
Despite its Islamist tone, they advocate a reformist agenda that is largely devoid of exclusivist propaganda. Indeed, all the electoral parties adhering to what we may call 'formalist' Islam support democracy and the rule of law as the preferable political system. The most important are the United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan, PPP) and the Crescent Moon and Star Party (Partai Bintang Bulan, PBB), besides the just mentioned PK. The new vice-president, Hamzah Haz, comes from this side of politics (PPP). While a relatively small number of groups operate at the margins or outside of what is legally tolerable, in most cases religious militancy has made common cause with politically moderate positions. The formalist parties are in many ways part of the more reform-willing forces in parliament. They support the need for democratising amendments to the constitution, and want to reduce the role of the military.
Formalist Islamic groups (as opposed to more cultural ones) adhere to a literal understanding of Islamic doctrine and its adoption into private and public life. They seek a formal acknowledgement of their religion, ie. by the state in the constitution. A striking aspect of formalist Islam is its religious conservatism or militancy. At a glance, the rise of new Islamic organisations and the return of ideological stridency point to a substantial change within Indonesian politics. In fact, the appearance tends to belie the reality.
The recent developments are above all logical symptoms of a newly liberalised political system. The New Order disfavoured Islamic parties, and made all parties adopt Pancasila as their sole ideology. But the breakdown of state control following reformasi allowed Muslims to adopt Islam formally as the ideology of political organisations. When the Pancasila requirement was dropped in 1998, new Islamic parties sprang up and thus created a perception of political Islam on the march. Today these parties have a more distinct 'voice' than at any time since Sukarno introduced his authoritarian 'Guided Democracy' in 1959.
However, the emergence of these new parties should only come as a surprise to us if we were to assume that the New Order's ideological monopoly had succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of ideologically aware Muslims.
In any event, formalist parties proved to lack mass support. Nearly ninety percent of the Indonesian population is at least nominally Muslim. But in the 1999 general elections formalist Islamic parties won a mere sixteen percent of the total votes. And this was a dramatic drop compared to the 43.9% in the last free elections, back in 1955. It is certainly a major obstacle for the realisation of any more militant goals in the near future.
Symbolic
So what are the formalist movements offering Indonesia? At bottom lies the idea that Islam should be an all-encompassing 'way of life'. Virtually unheard under Suharto, demands for the full implementation of Islamic law (shariah) are very much in vogue these days. The message is spread through numerous overtly Islamic journals that gained new momentum from the collapse of ideological censorship.
Yet Islam's shift toward stridency is more symbolic than aimed at a policy impact. The clearest proof of this is the reemergence of the Jakarta Charter issue. This is the 'classic' formalist theme.
During the constitutional debates in 1945, 'seven words' were briefly incorporated into the constitution, but soon thereafter deleted. These seven words later became known as the Jakarta Charter, and their 'illegal' deletion a cause celebre for formalist Muslims. They were a supplement to the first principle of the national ideology Pancasila, the one that declares belief in 'the One Supreme God'. The Jakarta Charter remains widely understood as obliging the state to implement Islamic law among Muslims.
After being hotly but fruitlessly debated for many years under Sukarno, the Jakarta Charter question was outlawed under Suharto as destabilising. But the Charter experienced a sudden comeback in the wake of last year's annual session of Indonesia's highest decision-making body, the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR). It was raised there by the PBB and PPP parliamentary factions.
PK, part of an alliance with Amien Rais' secular-based National Mandate Party (PAN) in the Reform Faction, chose to stay neutral. Interestingly, although PK did not support the issue in its role as the smaller member of its faction, internally it favoured a more sweeping concept. While PBB and PPP both followed the traditional wording of the Charter, PK was suggesting an alternative version which would give the state legal force to implement not only Islam, but also religious teachings among all five officially registered religions. This is an unworkable proposal, considering that Christian religions do not give the state authority to enforce religious doctrine.
In any case, the MPR discussion went nowhere. Calls for the Jakarta Charter remain vague as to their scope and practical implementation. The issue has never been explained to most Indonesians. There is little substantial debate on ideological concepts and principles. There is also remarkably little open ideological dispute between Islamic political parties. This hardly makes the Charter a convincing ideological alternative. Outside parliament, the volume of the 'shariah' calls is not matched by an accordingly influential position of its promoters.
The Charter issue is as much driven by immediate political needs as by religion. While in essence promoting it remains an expression of religious obligation, there were strategic reasons to promote it as well. For example, to consolidate support from militant Islamic groups. The struggle for the Charter in 2000 occurred at a moment of mounting tension between the Abdurrahman Wahid government and parliament. It served to counter the president's announcement earlier in 2000 that he wanted the ban on communism lifted - a step formalist Muslims perceived as an undisguised provocation.
For almost four decades, ideology in Indonesia was manipulated by the state. The Jakarta Charter and other ideological formulations are an Islamic comeback from within society. They draw widespread public attention for that reason. But their substantial meaning is often overrated. First and foremost, they touch an emotional nerve. Many Muslims see a formal statement of party ideology as an essential testimonial to their religious identity. As such, it does not function in the same way as the platform of a Western political party. Nor does it have much immediate impact on that party's policy outlook. During various recent party congresses, the Islamic identity statement was often discussed quite separately. Ironically, it appeared to have no effect on the organisation's statutes or policy positions.
Bernhard Platzdasch (bernhard@coombs.anu.edu.au) is researching Indonesian Islam for a PhD at the Australian National University in Canberra.
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
For now, reformasi is dead. But Mega didn't kill it
Edward Aspinall
How should we interpret the fall of Abdurrahman Wahid and his replacement by Megawati Sukarnoputri? Was this, as the MPR argued, a legitimate exercise by Indonesia's supreme constitutional body to remove an incompetent leader? Or was it, as argued by President Abdurrahman and his supporters, a victory for resurgent Suhartoist forces? This second view has, especially overseas, become the orthodox interpretation. It has some validity, but the former has more.
Certainly, there were those in the military, in Golkar and the bureaucracy who were hostile to some of President Abdurrahman's policy initiatives, such as his proposal in 2000 to rehabilitate the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) or his early willingness to negotiate with independence supporters in Aceh and West Papua. It is also true that the momentum of Indonesia's reformasihas long been visibly failing. However, to view Abdurrahman's removal as a decisive return to the past is a misreading of events. By focusing too much on the battle over the presidency, such a view misses the larger picture.
In retrospect, Indonesia was always going to have a narrow window for dramatic democratic change. In the months before and immediately after the fall of President Suharto, long pent-up desires for reform were unleashed. Beginning on campuses in February-March 1998, a large and variegated movement for democracy sprang up and rapidly spread throughout the archipelago. When Suharto resigned on 21 May, there was an explosion of civil society. Demonstrations forced corrupt local officials from office around the country. Peasants occupied land taken from them in the past. Scores of new political parties, labour unions, anti-corruption bodies and other organisations were formed.
In response, the remaining New Order elite facilitated a rapid restructuring of the political system. President Habibie oversaw a remarkable liberalisation of the political parties, electoral laws, labour unions, the press and much else. His presidency now looks like the high water mark of reformasi. This does not mean he was at heart a liberal, although his supporters do argue this, but rather that politics is determined more by the broader alignment of political forces within society than by who is president.
Under Habibie, when it was still possible to identify the government with the old regime, it proved relatively easy to maintain the reformasi movement outside parliament. However, as in every transition from authoritarian rule, the key challenge was to institutionalise the democratic impulses of the mass movements and make them a permanent feature of the political landscape. Numerous obstacles stood in the way. Chief among them was the fracturing of the political map. Divisions between 'opposition' and 'status quo' forces were cross-cut by other divisions, such as those between secular and Islamic groupings, within the Islamic community itself, and between parties led more by personalities than policies. Add to this the weakness of democratic institutions after 32 years of Suharto's rule, pervasive corruption, a deep economic crisis and a host of other problems.
Wahid
When Abdurrahman Wahid was elected president in October 1999, much of the foreign press represented it as a victory of 'reformist forces'. He was in fact placed there by a coalition which drew heavily on Suharto's New Order. Many Golkar and military leaders feared a Megawati-led clean sweep of senior officialdom. Many in the major Islamic-based parties were equally fearful that a secular-oriented Megawati presidency would reverse the advances they had made in the late Suharto and Habibie periods. These two blocs provided Abdurrahman with the votes he needed, and he now needed to appease them. A cumbersome 'national unity' government resulted. As Indonesia's first democratically elected president assembled his government, therefore, it proved impossible to draw a clear line between the New Order past and the democratic future. This basic fact dogged all subsequent attempts to carry out substantial reform.
President Abdurrahman did have a deep philosophical commitment to pluralist democracy and a conspicuous commitment to social and religious diversity. He appointed some prominent reformers to cabinet and other posts. Early on he took some important steps to reduce the military's political role. He also encouraged legal reform, promoted dialogue with secessionist leaders in Aceh and West Papua and reconciliation with the East Timorese, and attempted to end discrimination against the ethnic Chinese minority. Even so, many of the major reform programs (such as decentralisation) merely implemented changes made under Habibie.
However, strong currents were flowing against reform. The June 1999 election was the culmination of Indonesia's democratic transition. But it also largely succeeded in domesticating reformasienergies. The shift of focus from the streets to parliament, from mobilisation to legislation, called for a new kind of politics based on negotiation, compromise and incremental change. In the regions new coalitions sprang up between the new parties and old military, bureaucratic and business groupings. In many places Golkar reasserted its dominance. Even where 'reformist' parties like PDI-P and President Abdurrahman's own PKB were dominant, local politics were frequently marked by a resurgence of 'money politics' and political gangsterism. At the same time, with the line between 'reformists' and 'status quo' inside the government now very blurred, the reformasimovement on the outside lost momentum, symbolised by growing fractiousness and apathy in the student movement.
Determined leadership from the president could still have resulted in serious reform. However, Abdurrahman frittered away any such chance by his increasingly destructive leadership style. Armed with infinite self-confidence and imperious indifference to criticism, he alienated his ministers, rode roughshod over the parliament, made and broke promises with a cavalier style and frequently made blatantly false public claims. Reports of graft within the palace became rife. Most importantly, he failed to construct a strong reformist bloc within the government, parliament or society. Personal loyalty became the key criteria for the rise and fall of cabinet ministers, conservatives and reformists alike. This alienation of the entire political elite, not a supposed alliance of the 'status quo', accounts for the end of his presidency.
In order to shore up support, Abdurrahman countenanced a return to New Order-style policies, most obviously by tolerating renewed military operations in Aceh from March-April 2001. His government even began to wind back some reforms made during the Habibie era (such as generous severance payments for workers - it took an outburst of unrest for this reversal to be reviewed). He personally turned to authoritarian methods: threatening the media, repoliticising the military and eventually taking the dictatorial path of attempting to dissolve parliament. The strongest argument against the 'conservative conspiracy' interpretation of Abdurrahman's dismissal is that he had in fact simply ceased to be a block to conservative policies. Despite his claims to the contrary, there was no clear dividing line between 'status quo' forces lined up against him and 'democrats' standing behind him.
Megawati
The conspiracy view also misreads Megawati's own position. In much of the international press, she is portrayed as a 'captive', even an 'agent,' of military interests. However, nothing in her record suggests that Megawati is beholden to the military. On the contrary, she was steadfast in the face of strong military pressure in the final years of the Suharto regime. It should be remembered that Abdurrahman Wahid had at that time succumbed to similar pressures by entering into a de facto alliance with Suharto's daughter Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana (Tutut). It may indeed be true that Megawati supported intensified military operations in Aceh and Papua. But Abdurrahman was also willing to support these policies.
Megawati Sukarnoputri is a difficult character to read, largely due to her well-known reticence, even aloofness. She lacks Abdurrahman Wahid's connections with Indonesia's liberal intelligentsia and foreign intellectuals, and his ready wit. Her public statements often convey a frustratingly general commitment to constitutionalism and democracy in a language easily understood by the mass of the population. At the same time, they evince a strong commitment to political order and, especially, defence of the unitary state. In many respects she is a classical populist politician, presenting herself as a mystical embodiment of the popular will. As 'mother of the nation', she projects an image of security and comfort at a time of disturbing political change and economic dislocation. It is true that populism can readily be combined with an authoritarian style and ruthless economic austerity.
Many Indonesians fear reformasihas run out of steam. They may well be right. But its weakening has less to do with the new president than with wider forces at work in Indonesia. This is largely a by-product of the shift from street politics to parliamentarism. It reflects the messiness of Indonesia's political landscape, and the appearance of new, usually local, coalitions of bureaucratic, business and political power. It is highly unlikely that Megawati's ascension marks a dramatic return to full-blown Suharto-style authoritarianism. Her government is based essentially on the same combination of forces which brought Abdurrahman to power, with the addition of her own PDI-P. Probably it will present a similar policy mix, minus the chaos generated by his personal style.
Under Abdurrahman, two vital years were lost on the road to political reform. It may now prove impossible to recreate a clear division between 'reformasi' and 'status quo' forces, or to recapture the promise of the first post-Suharto years.
Edward Aspinall (E.Aspinall@anu.edu.au) is a post-doctoral fellow at the Australian National University.
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
A spiritual home for the lost, this militant sect is used by dangerous elites for their own ends
IRIP News Service
Laskar Jihad ('Holy war fighters') is Indonesia's most notoriously militant sect. Its parent body, Forum Komunikasi Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama'ah (FKAWJ), officially surfaced on 14 February 1998 in Solo. It was a moment of extreme political instability. Just months later, Suharto was ousted and his New Order regime dismantled. All kinds of political, religious, youth and student groups scuttled out from underground exile to agitate for their respective interests against a weakened government. As the full weight of the monetary crisis bore down and propelled millions below the poverty line, extremists from all ends of the spectrum found audience among the desperate. It was the perfect climate for a group such as FKAWJ to venture into the public eye.
However, the community of Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama'ah (from which FKAWJ arose) had been growing quietly for over ten years. Its leader Ustadz Jafar Umar Thalib purchased land for it near Yogyakarta in 1993 with donations from the wider Islamic community. Pondok Pesantren Ihyaus Sunnah, founded the following year in Degolan, became Jafar's private residence, and the hub of Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama'ah operations. From here Jafar, along with some others who later made up the Central Board of FKAWJ, began to consolidate the community across Java and the archipelago.
Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama'ah members are deeply religious. Enchanted by the charisma of Ustadz Jafar Umar Thalib and the religious fervour of the group, they discover a willingness to give their lives for the Jihad mission in Maluku, and for their dream of implementing Islamic law (Syari'at Islam) in Indonesia. As in many sects, an unnatural amount of the community's cohesion is based on fear, lies and propaganda, on social isolation, rigorous peer pressure and outright force. The structured, prescribed way of life and philosophy makes the group experience all the more intense. Its members strive to follow a very literal understanding of the way of the Prophet Muhammad in their everyday lives, leading more liberal Muslims to accuse them of 'fundamentalism' and 'fanaticism'.
Saved
Regular members of Laskar Jihad and FKAWJ come across as ordinary young people, generally aged between 17-40. Ustadz Jafar Umar Thalib attracts a wide variety of people, bound together by their youth, their religious devotion and their nationalistic fervour. There are students, unemployed graduates and businesspeople. Many are educated with young families. Others are the lost and lonely, the homeless and poverty-stricken. Some members had led the life of a street thug ('preman'), heavily into drugs, violence and crime, before they were saved by the movement's disciples.
These people crave for the totalising, all-encompassing identity that Laskar Jihad offers. They are the by-products of the economic and political crisis, the angry rejects of society, isolated and disadvantaged by reformasi. Many speak fluently of globalisation, marginalisation, of Western cultural hegemony and of the way the West demonises Islam and Islamic peoples. They see themselves as losers in the global political order. Their overwhelming violence and anger, the fabric of Laskar Jihad, begins there.
Laskar Jihad wants Syari'at Islam implemented as Indonesia's supreme governing force. In order to achieve this goal, they are maneuvering themselves to become a potent force within the Islamic community and the national arena. Since it emerged in Yogyakarta on 30 January 2000 as FKAWJ's military wing, Laskar Jihad's activities have been high profile for this reason.
The proclamation of the Jihad fi Sabilillah ('Strive for God') campaign in Jakarta on 6 April 2000 is Laskar Jihad's largest and most costly undertaking so far. At least 3,500 young men were dispatched to Ambon and surrounding islands to support Muslims in the religious conflict that has now besieged the area for over two and a half years.
In Java and Sumatra, certain branches of Laskar Jihad have joined other militant groups to conduct 'sweeping' operations against entertainment venues. Ardent nationalists, they speak of themselves as the 'defenders', 'the pioneers' and 'the owners' of the nation. They speak of their right and responsibility as good Indonesian Muslims to assume a military role, a role which certain shadowy elite figures are all too happy to encourage for their own gain.
For there can be no doubt that Laskar Jihad's leadership mixes in some elite circles. On 30 May 2000 a Laskar Jihad jeep exploded in the East Java town of Nganjuk. It was laden with TNI-registered weaponry and en route to Surabaya, the departure point for Ambon. The security apparatus in Surabaya at the same time refused to implement a presidential instruction to stop Laskar Jihad from embarking for Ambon. Laskar Jihad members themselves claim to be 'intimate' with the TNI in Ambon. On 30 October 2000, the military arrested twelve of its members in Ambon city bearing sophisticated TNI weaponry and uniforms.
Their repeated ability to slip prosecution points to a high level of collusion with elements of Indonesia's military and political elite. Even Ustadz Jafar Umar Thalib's arrest in May 2001 (on grounds of inciting religious hatred and stoning a member to death), which momentarily augured well for the future, ended in his release and even a one million rupiah 'compensation' payout. Clearly some extremely powerful figures have taken this organisation under their wing. For now, Laskar Jihad is untouchable.
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
Old elites in Central Kalimantan discover new and dangerous strategies
Gerry van Klinken
When police raided the Hotel Rama in Sampit, Central Kalimantan, on 26 February this year, they found human heads littering the grounds. This was the headquarters for Dayak 'special forces' (pasukan khusus) who killed hundreds of transmigrants from the island of Madura, and expelled the remaining nearly 100,000 from the province. Police arrested 84 warriors.
The flurry of television images, with voice-overs about a revival of 'barbaric' headhunting, soon faded to the next war zone. Jakarta, too preoccupied to worry about provincial squabbles, soon pretended the problem had gone away.
Perhaps most disturbing was the silence of Indonesian opinion makers. Many sympathised with Dayaks as an indigenous people dispossessed of their forests by rapacious New Order development. Others, shocked by the savagery, felt Madurese citizenship rights deserved a defence as well. The two rights - the non-ethnic rights of all citizens versus the First People rights of Dayaks - seemed so irreconcilable as to make any statement inadequate.
There is a dilemma here, but it is not insoluble. Our sense of revulsion at what has happened must be our guide: hundreds (some say thousands) of men, women and children murdered for their ethnicity alone, and an entire community 'cleansed' from the province. This has more of fascism than of the gentle forest-dweller.
Where does this ethnic fascism come from? The key lies in rejecting the simplistic view that an entire ethnic group can have just one set of interests. The indigenous forest dwellers of our television documentaries live, of course, in the forest. Hotel Rama (with the heads) is in Central Kalimantan's busiest town, the port city of Sampit. The interests of rural and urban Dayaks are so dissimilar that it is fair to say the urban elite have in 2001 dealt a grave blow to the forest dwellers they claim to represent.
Organised
The American scholar Paul Brass is an expert on Hindu-Muslim riots in India. He says these events 'are best seen as dramatic productions with large casts of extras. They are... partly organised... [E]xtensive ad-libbing occurs in order to convey the impression of spontaneity.' The organisers, of whom there are many kinds, are 'riot specialists', part of an informal network that influential actors can call on in times of political crisis. We will in a moment discern something similar in Central Kalimantan.
If you had asked a forest-dweller in central Borneo 150 years ago what tribe they belonged to, they might have answered Ngaju, Ot Danum, or Ma'anyan. None would have said Dayak. That was a convenient category only in the minds of colonial anthropologists. But in the early twentieth century the category became a political reality. Dayak students in the city of Banjarmasin, anxious that their better-organised Banjar fellows were getting the pick of the civil service jobs, set up the first Dayak association in 1919. They worked hard - with pamphlets, books and speeches - to convince their brethren in the forest that they were all 'Dayaks' together. Ever since, Dayak-hood has been an invention of the urban middle class. Ignoring the concerns of the forest dwellers, the books they wrote had only one agenda: achieving a Dayak province of their own, run by educated Dayaks.
The Dutch briefly gave them what they wanted in late 1946, part of an effort to wean outer islanders away from the largely Javanese Republic of Indonesia. The arrangement was undone when Indonesia became independent. But the former Dayak students, now professional soldiers and teachers, persisted. Taking advantage of the unrest around Indonesia in 1956-57, they added punch with a guerrilla movement bearing the awkward acronym GMTPs. It worked - Central Kalimantan was created a Dayak province in 1957.
At first, its governors were Dayak. Tjilik Riwut (1957-67) was a popular TNI soldier who had supported the movement. Later the New Order gradually reduced Dayak autonomy. But as it began to wane, the urban Dayak elite, including some old fighters from the '50s, demanded an indigenous governor once more.
True to tradition, the Dayak scholar KMA Usop wrote a thick book in 1996 explaining why Dayak ethnicity was all about Dayaks running the province. Usop, retired rector of the university in Palangkaraya, talks with passion about being Dayak. We used to believe that the more 'modern' people become the less myths of blood interest them. Usop shows us the reverse. His book also provides marvelous ammunition to those who argue that the origins of Dayak ethnicity lie not in the mists of time but with the birth of the modern state in Indonesia - about a century ago.
Dayaks make up about two-thirds of Central Kalimantan's population. Madurese used to be around 6-7 percent. There is no evidence for the claim often heard that the Madurese lord it over the Dayaks. Economically, there is little difference between them. That gives the fight between Dayaks and Madurese an artificial, indeed a darkly conservative, racist character.
Golkar
The urban Dayak elite who invented this fight have little record of fraternity with their rural cousins. They belonged to a New Order that impoverished the great mass of Dayak society. Usop, for example, was the Golkar spokesperson in Central Kalimantan under the New Order. He was used to the backroom business and political deals that characterised New Order cronyism. Like many others, he only jumped ship to the PDI-P when reformasi made Golkar a liability.
But PDI-P never became important. Instead, Usop and those who thought like him wanted a new ball game. The future lay in ethnic politics. Its vehicle was the ethnic association. LMMDD-KT - long acronyms are still the norm - was the most prominent among them. Usop was its leading figure. Another was an organisation with a name reminiscent of the 1956 guerrillas - APP-GMTPs.
These associations are first of all businesses. LMMDD-KT was in on the environmentally damaging 'million hectare peat swamp' project (PLG). Illegal forestry and small-scale gold mining were also important. Life in these frontier areas is tough. The underemployed Dayak loggers and miners who joined them found protection there. In exchange, they became their 'special forces' in 2001.
Police and military got their cut too. The chairman of APP-GMTPs, Yansen Binti, also leads the thuggish Pemuda Panca Marga, an organisation made up of the sons of soldiers. Together, they used their muscle to keep competitors at bay.
The money was plentiful. Central Kalimantan is heaven for illegal loggers. The young tycoon Abdul Rasyid became notorious in 1999 after courageous environmentalists proved he was stripping Tanjung Puting National Park. He was a major donor during Central Kalimantan's corrupt gubernurial election last year, according to an independent report. Yet he remains a member of the supreme national legislative body the MPR.
In 1999 the ethnic associations became de facto political parties and moved resolutely onto the political stage. They gave press conferences and organised demos during the gubernurial race. LMMDD-KT demonstrated again when Usop lost the race against another Dayak.
The next milestone was the implementation of regional autonomy on 1 January 2001. The stakes were high. They chose this moment to whip up an anti-Madurese crisis. Civil society in Central Kalimantan was too weak to prevent this blatant manipulation of public opinion.
On 15 December 2000 one of their thugs, the 36-year old Sendong, was killed in a brawl at the gold mining shantytown of Kereng Pangi. A riot broke out and hundreds of Madurese fled town. It was merely the beginning. The associations began a campaign to unify feeling around this Dayak 'hero'. They threatened more violence unless Jakarta took action against his killers. On 20 February 2001, led by LMMDD-KT, they issued a statement that the Madurese had taken over Sampit. It was largely a fabrication, but served to justify the massacre that began that day.
Was it worth it? This elite seem to think so. The ethnic cleansing campaign effectively united the chronically fractured Dayak politicians behind a single banner. Even governor Asmawi Agani, not at first an Usop ally, found himself demanding that the 84 Dayak warriors arrested at the Hotel Rama be released. The police were forced to comply. As they were to similar pressure to release Usop himself - he was arrested as the main 'provokator' on 3 May.
For fear of losing their own heads, meanwhile, other ethnic groups quickly fell in behind the Dayak hegemony.
Most importantly, the resurgent Dayak elite sent a powerful message to Jakarta that they had rewritten the rules. So far Jakarta has not challenged them. In June 2001 Usop was the main organiser of a 'People's Congress' in Palangkaraya. It castigated the Madurese as the real troublemakers and told them to apologise if they wanted to return. The governor helped pay for the congress.
Jack Snyder warns in his book (From voting to violence, 2000) that nations emerging from authoritarianism can fall prey to demagogues who take advantage of the chaotic new democratic space. That is a good explanation for the rise of ethnic fascism in Central Kalimantan. It is a fundamental challenge to Indonesian civil society and its friends overseas.
Now is the time to put out an alternative message. Not ethnic pride, but social justice is the real issue. Some Dayak farmers displaced by the million-hectare peat swamp project had it right. When they came to Palangkaraya to plead their cause last March, in the midst of the furore, they had this to say: 'We're not interested in the Madurese issue. We just want our land back.'
Gerry van Klinken (editor@insideindonesia.org) edits Inside Indonesia magazine. Thanks to Sentot, who generously shared his findings.
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
The poor must come first
Gerry van Klinken
As the annual supreme legislative body (MPR) got underway in Jakarta early November, costing US$1.5 million, 8,000 informal workers, garbage collectors and transport drivers were evicted from their tiny shacks in a dozen locations across Jakarta. In the dark and the rain, their dwellings were burnt the ground. The following week the inter-governmental Consultative Group on Indonesia approved US$3.1 billion in new loans for Indonesia, bringing the public debt burden to a total US$74.2 billion. (Of this US$8.7 billion had to be repaid between September and December alone).
If within Indonesia the poor seemed hardly to matter, outside it the terrorist attack of 11 September gave narrow minds the excuse to narrow them more (as reflected in some of our readers' letters...). In Australia, 11 September strengthened an anti-refugee mood that eventually came to dominate the federal election. In America, it boosted conservative agendas that prioritised military strength over justice for the poor.
Yet the most basic fact about Indonesia is not whether it is harbouring terrorists, or Afghan refugees. It is - still! - that it is a very poor country. We dedicate this edition of Inside Indonesia to the poor, and to those enquiring minds (also found among our readers' letters) who want to learn about them.
Four years after the economic crisis hit, its harmful impact is still felt in millions of homes around Indonesia. Though poverty levels are notoriously difficult to determine, several estimates predict Indonesia will not recover to pre-crisis levels till 2005. The government, meanwhile, is burdened with a debt to rich creditors so mountainous it can simply never be repaid.
Until the world has solved these basic problems, that is where we should begin.
Gerry van Klinken is the editor of Inside Indonesia.
Inside Indonesia 69: Jan - Mar 2002
After the tragedy of 11 September, the world needs dialogue
Ulil Abshar-Abdalla
Among the many deplorable things that happened after the World Trade Center tragedy in New York on 11 September was the reawakening of a sub-conscious, 'instinctual' Western prejudice against Islam. The media have a strong tendency to generalise about Islam and about Muslims, without looking at the numerous little things that make up everyday life. Like a dormant virus that never dies, such prejudice arises again every time another tragedy happens that involves the Islamic world.
Peter Rodman, of the National Security Council, wrote back in 1992: 'Yet now the West finds itself challenged from the outside by a militant, atavistic force driven by hatred of all Western political thought, harking back to age-old grievances against Christendom.' Almost the same sentence recurred in the New York Times on 16 September 2001: ' The airborne assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is the culmination of a decade-long holy war against the United States that is escalating methodically in ambition, planning and execution.' The words 'Christendom' and 'holy war' suggest eternal sacred warfare between the West and the world outside - especially the Islamic world. (Of course we should recognise that the term 'crusade' is often used in the West without religious connotations as well, as in the crusade against abortion.)
The same happens on the Islamic side. As soon as President Bush announced plans to launch attacks on Afghanistan, (some) Muslims proclaimed a 'jihad' against the US. Worse, certain groups wanted to conduct razzias against Americans in Indonesia. Some Islamic groups gave the impression of a total confrontation between the Islamic and the Western or Christian worlds. Suddenly everyone was quoting Samuel Huntington's 'Clash of Civilisations'.
Dialogue
But that impression is so clearly false. There are probably more people building bridges of dialogue between civilisations than there are those fighting between civilisations. Countless students from the Muslim world go every year to study in the West - Europe, America, Australia. Conversely, countless Western scholars make 'intellectual' journeys to Islamic countries, to understand the many faces of Islam. Karen Armstrong's book The History of God is an excellent example. As is TheOxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, by John L Esposito and others at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, Washington DC.
All of this does not mean American foreign policy is without its problems. One of the biggest paradoxes is the constant American campaign for democracy and human rights while at the same time supporting the Saudi Arabian Kingdom without reserve, a regime that violates the rights of its own citizens. The one-sided American policy on Palestine is the source of much frustration and hatred in the Arab world. But it would be foolish to equate the American government with all American citizens. Not all Americans agree with their government's foreign policy. Those who want to conduct razzias against Americans forget that.
After the tragedy at the WTC and Pentagon buildings, dialogue between civilisations has become more difficult. The situation strongly favours those who believe the world is divided into only two hostile blocs, a Western and an Islamic bloc, a 'good' bloc and an 'evil' one.
Yet who really knows what is Western and what is Islamic? If the West is Europe and America, then those are two very different cultures. If the West is America, we might recall that America is a federation precisely because Americans have such a strong 'anti-state' tradition. Most Americans have very little interest in the overseas 'imperialism' of their government.
Similarly, it is far from clear what 'Islam' really means. In the end, Islam is a social concept - it is expressed in the lives of human beings with a complex history. Islamic reactions to the WTC and Pentagon tragedy have been highly varied.
One frequent misunderstanding is to talk about the Afghan people, the Taliban government, the state of Afghanistan, and Islam, all in one breath. Just because most Afghans are Muslim does not mean that the American attack on Afghanistan is an attack on Islam.
Of course we should oppose the American attacks. The Afghan people have suffered long enough from war ever since the Soviet invasion in 1979. But it is an unfortunate mistake to assume the Taliban regime is representative of the Islamic world just because they wear beards and robes. Anyone who doubts their evil practices towards women should look at this web site: www.rawa.org. Such behaviour is in strong contrast with the prophetic values of Islam itself.
Dialogue is the only way. The path of confrontation only favours those who view the world in simplistic terms of good versus evil. That is the path of conservatives and extremists in whatever religion, whether Islamic or otherwise. It is also the path of religious elites everywhere who want to manipulate the ignorance of their congregation for their own narrow interests.
Ulil Abshar-Abdalla (ulil@isai.or.id) chairs the research institute Lakpesdam, within Nahdlatul Ulama. This article is condensed with permission from a piece on the Islam Liberal web site: www.islamlib.com.
Inside Indonesia 69: Jan - Mar 2002
A rare visit with the Free Aceh Movement shows them confident and well organised
Damien Kingsbury
The dawn awoke on the side of the mountain with the calls of birds and monkeys in the upper canopy. The 'boys' rose slowly, slung their weapons and wandered down to the stream to wash. We later organised and trekked down along the overgrown track, across gullies, over fences and across a river, coming up to a dirt road along which walked a dozen or so school girls in neat uniforms. The girls seemed familiar with this gang of longhaired guerrillas carrying automatic weapons.
This was in the hills beyond Lhokseumawe, a strongly pro-independence area. I was there as a guest of the independence movement, to get their side of the story. The night had passed safely; the paramilitary police Mobile Brigade patrol had not found us.
In Aceh, on the northwestern tip of Indonesia, some 10,000 Indonesian soldiers and around 20,000 paramilitary police had instilled in the people fear, anger and an overwhelming desire for a referendum on self-determination.
I was struck by the similarities to East Timor ahead of its own referendum in 1999. Here too, the TNI and Brimob looked like an invading army, killing civilians and feebly trying to blame the separatists, burning homes and schools and using rape as a weapon.
Also similar to East Timor, desire for independence was very strong across a range of groups and organisations. According to pro-independence leaders there was an historical claim to separation(partially recognised in Aceh's 'special region' status) and a long history of rebellion against outsiders, starting in 1873 and only pausing in 1949 and then between 1963 and 1976. The movement started in 1976 is popularly known as the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka - GAM), but prefers to be called the Aceh Sumatra National Liberation Front (ASNLF).
The TNI and Brimob were obvious in Banda Aceh and the major industrial city of Lhokseumawe, but it was the highway from Banda Aceh to near the North Sumatra border that showed their real presence. Brimob, the Siliwangi Division, Marines, and territorial troops ran numerous posts and roadblocks. South of Lhokseumawe these occurred every several hundred metres for dozens of kilometres. Burned homes were littered in between. Yet just a short distance from the highway one was immediately in ASNLF held territory.
Observers close to the TNI estimate the ASNLF's military force at 3-5,000 full-time members plus a large and active support base. What I saw was consistent with those figures - the support base is itself armed and could number around 10,000. Like any guerrilla force, the ASNLF relies on popular support. Moving from point to point near the important industrial city of Lhokseumawe, I met no one who was not as one with ASNLF. A local ASNLF leader in the region said that the ASNLF was not separate from the people. It could not otherwise function, he said.
In a violent environment few would challenge those with guns, and the becak driver who drove me out of town was visibly scared when he unexpectedly found himself among a number of ASNLF. The ASNLF has a deserved reputation for killing people it identifies as its enemies. But cooperation otherwise seemed happy and voluntary, unlike the obliged voluntarism I have seen accompanying the TNI.
The Indonesian government has portrayed ASNLF as a fanatical Islamic organisation. Two senior TNI generals made this claim to me again just days before I met with ASNLF representatives. While ASNLF and its supporters could be identified by their devout Islam, another cultural marker that sets them apart from others in the archipelago is the Acehnese language.
Language, religion, territory and a common history, especially in adversity, are the classical markers of 'nation'. There is no doubt that Aceh has these, separate from the rest of Indonesia. Similar markers could also be applied to other 'national' groups in Indonesia. One ASNLF official laughingly referred to not just Bangsa Aceh (Aceh Nation), but Bangsa Minang, Bangsa Sunda and Bangsa Bali. He acknowledged, however, that not all potential 'bangsa' might wish to have that status.
Aceh has a devout and usually tolerant form of Islam. The ethnic Chinese and Christian Bataks have lived in peace with their Islamic neighbours since the 1980s. Having said that, there is little tolerance for Javanese transmigrants, who have been attacked by the ASNLF. The ASNLF claims that it has only attacked Javanese militias, although the question of who is a combatant has become blurred in Aceh.
One ASNLF official I spoke to in Banda Aceh was keen to state that his organisation did not want to impose itself on the people of Aceh. What it wanted, he said, was a popular referendum to determine whether or not Aceh should remain as a part of Indonesia. 'Referendum' was graffitied around Banda Aceh and Lhokseumawe. The Acehnese organisations I contacted were unanimous in wanting a referendum. This popular move for a referendum reflects the squeezing of the middle ground during the escalation since 1999. Indeed, the ASNLF itself has only accepted the legitimacy of a referendum since 1999. The East Timor ballot was a critical lead.
The ASNLF official stressed that Aceh had historical and religious links with other Islamic communities, but was not funded by them. He was at pains to point out that ASNLF was horrified by the terrorist attack in the US on 11 September 2001, allegedly conducted by Islamic extremists. The ASNLF, he said, looked to the rest of the international community for support, including the United Kingdom and the United States, with which Aceh once had diplomatic relations.
The ASNLF official did acknowledge that their guerrillas had received training in Lybia until 1999, much later than usually thought. But the link was no longer necessary as the ASNLF had its own training bases, and Lybia's standing could adversely affect how the ASNLF was internationally perceived. The ASNLF receives some support from sympathisers and Acehnese refugees abroad, especially in Malaysia, but its financial component is negligible compared to its internal capacity to raise income.
Well funded
The ASNLF raises 'taxes'. The Indonesian government and some NGOs call this extortion, in some cases extracted with threats of violence. The ASNLF justifies it on the grounds that as a legitimate government it needs to levy taxes. The TNI and Brimob also demand payments for 'protection', although as institutions of a government that already levies taxes this extra-financial activity cannot claim the legitimacy of 'tax'.
All local businesses pay a tax to ASNLF, as a percentage of profits, according to the ASNLF up to and including the giant Exxon-owned and operated Arun liquid natural gas plant at Lhokseumawe. The ASNLF is well funded and consequently well equipped.
The ASNLF's high level of organisation also presented itself in other ways. In meeting a regional ASNLF commander, the network of drop-offs, pick-ups and exchanges was extraordinary, complicated and perfectly timed. Everyone along the route knew what was going on, and many had cellular two-way radios.
I was finally deposited in a small and remote village and told to wait on a pavilion under a palm-thatched roof. I had only just begun to get my small pack off when, through a bamboo gate, came a young man wearing a baseball cap and a clean white T-shirt over which was black military webbing containing clips of ammunition. In his belt was a pistol and in his left hand an AK-47 assault rifle. He held out his right hand to me and said: 'Hello, I am Jamaica,' indicating his code-name. Out of the undergrowth came around twenty young men similarly dressed, carrying AK-47s and M-16s.
Jamaica wanted Hasan di Tiro to return as Aceh's sultan, but in a political system that included elected parties. We discussed the UK's constitutional monarchy, and that of Thailand, which he thought were suitable models. Others I spoke to said they wanted an elected US-style executive president and separate legislature, although with Islamic ethics, and within a local federalist system.
The idea of a referendum on self-determination logically led to a vote for representative government, and what policies should be followed. Jamaica, the local guerrilla leader, did not want to see one repressive system replaced by another. Again, there were similarities to East Timor.
I was introduced to 'Grandfather', who was in his 70s. Grandfather had been fighting since the early 1950s as, he said, had his father before him. Grandfather was still enthusiastic. He later led Jamaica, myself and a group of the 'boys' into the jungle to hide overnight from a Brimob patrol.
I later met other old men, drinking sweet tea in the half-light of the open shop front by the intersection of a small town. The town was mostly deserted. Some of the boys sat drinking black coffee and tea with ice, their radios crackling with intermittent traffic, exchanging banter with the old men. With guards posted at intervals and bombs set on three of the four roads in and out it was as safe as anywhere in Aceh. The army and Brimob had come here, but had each time been beaten back, which was why none of the buildings here were burnt.
A ten-year-old boy stood around, self-consciously part of this group of hardened men. His father had been shot dead by Brimob a few days previously. This boy was already the next generation of the struggle, waiting his turn. One might hope the people of Aceh have the opportunity to vote on their future in an internationally supervised referendum before this boy also has to pick up a gun.
Dr Damien Kingsbury (dlk@deakin.edu.au) is Senior Lecturer in International Development at Deakin University, Geelong, Australia. His most recent book is the second edition of 'The politics of Indonesia' (Oxford).
Inside Indonesia 69: Jan - Mar 2002
Fighting has stopped in North Maluku, but mistrust lingers
Christopher R Duncan
The newly formed province of North Maluku in eastern Indonesia is starting to recover from a period of communal violence that began in August 1999 and continued through July of 2000. Now reconciliation and reconstruction are the tasks ahead for the people of North Maluku. More than 100,000 refugees need to return home, dozens of villages must be completely rebuilt, and regional infrastructure has to be repaired.
Formed in October of 1999, the province of North Maluku includes the island of Halmahera and surrounding islands, such as Ternate and Tidore, as well as the Sula Archipelago to the southwest. As the fighting raged in Ambon further south in early 1999, North Maluku remained peaceful. However, in mid-August 1999 violence erupted in Halmahera, in the sub-district of Kao, between Makian migrants and indigenous populations. These clashes focused on plans by the regional government to create a new sub-district (kecamatan) of Makian Daratan from the southern half of the Kao sub-district. This new sub-district would consist of all of the Makian villages that were established in 1975 when the Indonesian government moved the Makian from their homes on Makian Island and resettled them in Kao to protect them from a predicted volcanic eruption.
The argument revolved around the inclusion of several villages in the new sub-district that were inhabited by indigenous Pagu and Jailolo people. Government regulations insist on a minimum number of villages per sub-district. The Pagu villagers had no desire to be separated from their indigenous brethren, nor to be ruled over by the Makian. The resulting tension led to violence on the day the new sub-district was to be formally inaugurated. Another factor that has been cited as a cause of the violence was the economic benefits associated with an Australian-owned gold mine in the region.
This violence was short-lived, but the problem remained unresolved. Disturbances broke out again in October, this time resulting in the total defeat of the Makian by the indigenous population (both Muslim and Christian). Approximately 15,000 refugees fled to Ternate and Tidore. Although the fighting started as an ethnic conflict, it soon took on the character of a religious war when the violence spread to Ternate and Tidore in November, since the Makian are Muslim, and many of the people of Kao are Christian.
The violence in Tidore began with the appearance of a false letter calling for Christians to cleanse the region of Muslims. This letter infuriated Muslims, particularly the Makian refugees who were still resentful for having been chased from their homes on Halmahera the previous month. Once all the Christians had fled from Tidore, the violence then spread to Ternate. As a result approximately 13,000 largely Christian refugees fled to North Sulawesi and Halmahera. This was followed by Muslim attacks on the western and southern regions of Halmahera, sending thousands of Christian refugees to North Sulawesi and northern Halmahera.
At the end of 1999, after months of tension, fighting broke out in Tobelo in north Halmahera. It resulted in the deaths of several hundred Muslims and the complete destruction of their homes and mosques. Accounts of this violence, made worse by exaggeration, created a national uproar. This led to the creation of the Laskar Jihad, a group of self-proclaimed Muslim holy warriors who flooded into Maluku and North Maluku several months later to help their religious brethren. These Jihad troops, supported by some army units and some among the local Muslim population, destroyed virtually every Christian village in the sub-district of Galela, as well as on the islands of Morotai and Obi and elsewhere.
By the time it slowly came to a halt in July of 2001, few areas were unaffected by the violence. The extent of the damage remains unclear, and the total number of deaths will likely never be known. Many perished in the forest as they fled, and Laskar Jihad troops from outside Halmahera who were killed in fighting were buried without record keeping.
Reconciliation
Although many on both sides would like to move on with the process of reconciliation, mistrust and animosity remain. Many say they will never again be able to trust the other side. Government efforts at facilitating reconciliation have been half-hearted at best. Officials seem to believe that once the refugees have gone home reconciliation has been completed. They have thus far failed to realise that the process will take a long time and extended effort.
Numerous non-government organisations (NGOs) have sprung up in the region to deal with this challenge, but with mixed success. Efforts by international aid groups have largely been unsuccessful. They bring a few open-minded 'leaders' from North Maluku to Manado for meetings and then send them home with little if any follow-up. The lack of success of these meetings has led many refugees to stop attending them, as they see them as a waste of time. Their argument, and that of many on Halmahera, is that any attempts at reconciliation have to be made from the bottom up, and be made in Halmahera.
Where refugees have returned it has been a case of repatriation rather than true reconciliation. Where reconciliation has begun, it is the exception rather than the rule. For example, Muslims have begun returning to Tobelo, but the Christian population has greeted their return with mixed feelings. Many are eager to put the past behind them, while others are still mistrustful and would rather the Muslims did not return. Dealing with the latter group will be the challenge for the local government. News reports say that 'Team 30', an organisation established to promote reconciliation in the sub-district of Jailolo, has had some success, and many refugees from Jailolo have returned home.
In addition to reconciliation, the people of North Maluku must rebuild. During the fighting an estimated 20,000 homes were destroyed, along with innumerable churches, mosques, schools, and government buildings. Dozens of villages were destroyed completely. Many people had their gardens partially destroyed, and other means of livelihood, such as fishing boats were burnt or stolen, hampering economic recovery. The flight of civil servants and schoolteachers from the region has slowed recovery efforts as well. Several efforts are addressing the destruction, including donations of material from USAID and World Vision Indonesia. Unfortunately these programs are only for refugees who return to their place of origin. They do not help people who have no desire to, or cannot, return home. Furthermore, the aid programs have been hampered by corruption at the local level.
Refugees
The biggest remaining obstacle is the return of the more than 100,000 refugees displaced by the violence. Many have begun returning home on their own accord. In the Malifut area the first returnees from both sides are starting to rebuild. The same can be said for other parts of northern Halmahera. The first groups of Muslims returned to Tobelo in July 2001, accompanied by the army to guarantee their safety. A few Christians have returned to Galela. However they were not provided with military protection, and most are unwilling to return at this point. There are also significant numbers of Christian refugees in northern Halmahera from Morotai Island and from southern and central Halmahera who are still scared of going home.
The largest remaining group of displaced people is in North Sulawesi, many living in large refugee camps in Bitung and Manado. These approximately 30,000 refugees, the majority of whom are Christians from Ternate, Tidore, and southern Halmahera, remain uncertain about their future. Many of the refugees from Ternate have decided they will never return. They have sold their homes and taken up opportunities for relocation in North Sulawesi, or are moving to Ambon or Halmahera. The picture looks the same for Tidore where, according to one Muslim journalist, the Sultan of Tidore has said that it is unsafe for Christians to return. Other groups from the islands of Obi and Bacan want to go home, but the lack of information about the current state of affairs hampers any decision. Others see no point in returning to their destroyed villages where their lives will be more difficult than in the refugee camps.
One forgotten victim group has been the thousands of Javanese transmigrants. They were deported by the army against their will from the largely Christian regions of Halmahera. These largely Muslim transmigrants had refused to take part in the violence, and had received assurances from Christian communities, as well as from Muslim communities in Kao, that they would not be attacked, as this was a purely local matter. However, the military decided to forcibly remove the Javanese with only a few hours notice, forcing them to leave behind their belongings. After they left, their homes were taken over by refugees, and the irrigation works and rice fields built for them by the government have been destroyed. Some Javanese families have returned, but most are still waiting in Java.
Christopher R Duncan (modole@hotmail.com) is a research fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Halmahera, and visited the area in August 2001. For more on this conflict, see 'Inside Indonesia' no.63 (Jul-Sep 2000). One organisation doing good work with refugees on both sides of the conflict is Consortium for Assisting the Refugee and Displaced in Indonesia (Cardi, email cardi@cbn.net.id).
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
What do Indonesian students think about Osama bin Laden?
Katie Brayne
If you walk south along Jalan Malioboro past McDonalds, turn left into the Mall, take a right at Marks and Spencer, and then just before the ATM's take a left down the escalators, then, just opposite the Ericsson mobile phone store you'll find a small store with glass cabinets filled with stickers and T-shirts. In this store, on the bottom floor of Yogyakarta's favourite monument to western consumerism, you will find, next to stickers and T-shirts of the various Yogyakarta University logos, European soccer team logos and Yogya paraphernalia, a hand-written sign advertising the latest addition to the sticker collection - a proud portrait of Osama bin Laden, available in a variety of colours. T-shirts are also available, the sign reads on.
Further south, in an offshoot of the Beringharjo Market, you find the wooden boarded stalls of the book market. This labyrinth is affectionately known among Yogyakarta's large student population as 'shopping'. Amongst the old and new text books, newspaper clippings and pre-loved assignments and theses, a new book has flooded the market: Osama bin Laden versus America ('Osama bin Laden melawan Amerika') - a collection of essays from western and non-western academics and clerics translated into Indonesian.
In the aftermath of the Black Tuesday attacks in the US, Indonesian students are clearly interested in this man, whom America accuses of masterminding the most devastating attack on American soil since the Civil War.
So what do Yogya's students think about this infamous figure? This is what I wanted to find out amongst my friends and classmates at Gadjah Mada University and Muhammadiyah University Yogyakarta.
'I don't really know, and I don't really believe the recent news about Osama bin Laden because all the news comes from the West who want to put forward their particular point of view.'
'Scapegoat.'
'America is very scared of Osama. America says that because Osama is able to conduct such a terrorist attack, therefore he must have done it. This propaganda is proof of how scared America is of him.'
'Pretty cool in some ways.'
'He is the symbol of a revolutionary movement that is fed up with America's defence of Israel and its discrediting of Islam. Because of this sentiment, Osama bin Laden and his group hold violently strong beliefs against the West.'
'Osama is a true Islamic fighter, who is trying to free Islam itself from its status as a slave to American interests.'
'A militant who is prepared to sacrifice everything he owns for his religion and community.'
'An anti-American revolutionary who hates America for what he sees as their unjust role as world policeman.'
'He is great, but unfortunately he has no heart.'
'He is only presuming innocence.'
'It is not yet clear whether he did it, but it is clear that he agrees with it.'
'An anti-American, anti-imperialist militant.'
'He is one of the few men brave enough to oppose America. He is currently in hiding not because he is afraid, but because it is his strategy in facing America, who are currently playing judge without any strong proof. I think Osama didn't do it, but that doesn't mean he is not brave enough to do it'
'Osama bin Laden is a true Islamic militant whose goal is to free Islam from its fate as enemy number one to the West.'
Katie Brayne (kbrayne@hotmail.com) was a student at Gadjah Mada University through the Acicis program (wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/acicis).
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
What the guide books don't tell you about Surabaya
Duncan Graham
The East Java Provincial Government, like most administrations world wide, is not above a little dissembling. You get it on the road into Surabaya where the official welcome signs note that Indonesia's second biggest city is 'Bersih dan Hijau' - Clean and Green.
The signs are best seen at first light. By 9 am smog blurs the image and attention is distracted by beggars and newspaper sellers who swarm around any slow-moving car. Which is just about any vehicle, for the traffic density is close to gridlock. Try not to breathe.
That's in the dry season: In the wet roads are flooded from door to door, so pavement, verge, drain and bitumen merge into a seamless black scum where floating objects best remain unscrutinised. Then Surabaya stalls as saturated engines short circuit.
And the green? Most obvious on bright coloured giant billboards offering sexual, sporting and social success for the tiny price of a pack of smokes. Real trees are as rare as a shark (sura) fighting a crocodile (buaya), the city's mythological origin.
The authorities claim Surabaya has a Centre. If there is a focal point it has to be Tunjungan Plaza, a garish multi-storey department store full of over-priced goods and costly American fast-food shops. Here the poor peer, the middle class preen, and salesgirls professionally ignore customers with cash.
For Surabaya has not been planned, or if that claim is denied, the planners were corrupt, inept, or asleep. Probably all three.
Like some sci-fi squid from outer space which feeds on city sewers, Surabaya is devouring Gresik up the coast, climbing into the hill town of Tretes, swallowing nearby Sidoarjo, to be stopped only by the Straits of Madura. But even then its plastic excreta can be found far offshore.
Who can tell where it all begins and ends, because it doesn't. Surabaya defies definitions and census-takers, but four to five million for the area around the port could be a reasonable guess, with 30 million more in the hinterland. Or maybe that's the other way around.
At least 20,000 are prostitutes, for among its many credentials this sweaty, grimy industrial megapolis seven degrees south of the equator is reputedly Southeast Asia's biggest brothel, with the accessories of disease and despair to match.
And yet...
Without doubt Surabaya is Scunge City.
And yet and yet.
Unlike Bali, Surabaya doesn't care whether you come, and unlike Jakarta it's indifferent to whether you go. The few tourists who find themselves in Surabaya wander bemused, clutching handbags and hands, restless eyes playing spot-the-mugger.
Relax: Even the thieves are indifferent.
Expat businessmen and government officials are not to be spotted in public, except at product launches. They're more at ease gliding between hotel and office behind the black windows of their chauffeur-driven Super Kijangs.
Ignore them: They only mix with their own kind, then sell themselves as experts on the culture and economy.
In a narrow trench alongside Tunjungan Plaza, crushed by a motorbike park, are the warungs where shopgirls on $60 a month and their boyfriends retreat from their air-conditioned glitzy workplace to eat well for less than one Australian dollar.
And so can you. Rip-offs are rare and gawking at Western intruders is subtle.
For although Surabaya is chaotic, grotesque, dirty, impossible to negotiate, crass in its Soviet-realism monuments, noteworthy for its lack of notable buildings, events and attractions, try finding any place more Javanese.
The language of the kampungs and the street is Javanese, not Bahasa Indonesia. Advertisements for cigarettes, mobile phones and dandruff-cures may be English in a pretence of refinement, but the world language is rare outside the campuses.
What you see is what you get. The indifference towards Westerners extends to the locals. This is not special treatment, it is the treatment. Surabaya is raw and honest. No 'morning price', no concessions and, best of all, no contempt.
The obsequiousness, sneers and arrogance, so much the part of the local response in other Asian cities towards white skinned creatures outside their environment, is seldom encountered in Surabaya. You are obviously a walking cash box, but the temptation to make a quick withdrawal is usually found only among a few taxi drivers late on a wet night.
Yet what you see is not what you get. The splendid Majapahit Hotel, reputedly the most expensive in Indonesia and a marvel of indulgence and beauty with a fine historic past, is hidden behind a drab fawhich blends anonymously into a coarse streetscape of commercial sameness.
Likewise with Kampung Sasak. Even the locals have difficulty finding the entrance of this Arab quarter, which leads through a cramped street of traders to the ancient Ampel Mosque, founded by Sunan Ampel, one of the nine holy men who brought Islam to Java.
The mosque, in this densely packed centre of Middle Eastern commerce, always seems to be busy with the business of worship, unlike the landmark Agung Mosque near the toll road to Malang. This grand blue-domed and government-built celebration of Islam, with a Catholic church in its shadow as forced propaganda for tolerance, is as sterile and obvious as Ampel is potent and hidden.
There are hundreds of other nooks in Surabaya which reveal some of the complex and subtle nuances of this fourteenth century remnant of the Majapahit Kingdom. That they're absent from the guide books is no indicator of a desire for privacy; it's just that the government has a stereotyped view of foreigners and thinks visitors only want poolside drinks and American breakfasts.
When Surabaya was created, the deity which governs tourism blinked, and praise be for a marvellous escape from Mammon.
The best food is often found in the gloomiest, oil-lit warungs, original handicrafts in the drabbest shops, the finest dancers and singers in schools where the concrete is cancerous and the architecture indistinguishable from a public toilet.
East Java proclaims it is a Muslim State, but even the most pious will visit a paranormal in times of strife. Ghosts lurk in banyan trees, wayward spirits send lax students into trances, mystics are consulted by brokers who trade on the Net. At midnight, street people drift to a Chinese temple seeking a peep into the future. Islam is just the outer skin of an onion covering animism, Hinduism and other ancient mysteries.
Slim girls in gladwrap-tight jeans revealing navels, shoulders and their readership of Cosmopolitan, hold hands with friends covered from head to toe in the tradition of their grandmothers. Men smoke, drink and gamble, then pray.
To find the secret places and learn of the magics you need a special guide. Not a professional from a hotel - they'll only take you to KFC. The person you require will find you and will be insulted if you offer money, though a feed and help with English conversation will be appreciated.
How to meet such a marvel?
It's not that difficult. Wander the streets and markets alone, with an open mind, friendly face and polite gestures. Take your time. You'll be seen and watched. If you're sending the right signals someone is bound to find the courage to practise their English. Don't rush. Build an acquaintance - or walk away if the mood or person isn't right.
In a few days you'll have met a few of his or her friends, had a meal or two, maybe visited the family home, exchanged views and discovered differences. With luck you'll find more in common despite the Timor Sea of misunderstanding, language, religion, income, experience and lifestyle which separates us as neighbours. Then the smog starts to lift.
Since the British bombed the city in November 1945, Surabaya has been deceived and betrayed by successive governments in Jakarta, but its residents remain resilient, independent, stoic, Javanese.
For although Surabaya is rough and ugly, its people are genuine, keen to share, humble but proud. They apologise for the manifold faults of government, but retain hope for change. They hunger for knowledge. They thirst for understanding. Yet they are not ignorant or unsophisticated.
You may find wrinkled men sucking clove cigarettes who can debate philosophy having read the greats in Greek; young women studying John Donne and other metaphysical poets in the original yet destined to become secretaries; students who know more of Australian politics than the average Okker undergraduate. They hate KKN (corruption, collusion and nepotism) but know that without it they will surely miss the best jobs.
It's a humbling experience to continuously meet fluent self-taught English speakers when you're struggling with a language which is supposed to be easy, to discover the astonishing achievements of young people handicapped by lack of money, few books and a 1950-style education system.
Despite the universe-sized problems which beset this cumbersome and fumbling democracy, the next generation is largely incandescent with energy and determination to right the wrongs, all tempered with reality and an undercurrent of fear. Expect to be dazzled and confused. But never dismayed.
All this and more, as the tourist brochures like to say. Seek and ye will find. In Surabaya.
Duncan Graham (wordstars@hotmail.com) is a Perth based journalist who can't get enough of East Java.
Inside Indonesia 69: Jan - Mar 2002
Popular with sailors and miners, but not necessarily with their women
Terence H Hull
Men in some areas of Indonesia have a long history of inserting or implanting various objects in their penises. The origin of the practices is unclear, but some writers say that they were copied from Chinese traders who visited the islands, while others argue it is an indigenous innovation related to the use of other forms of amulets and inserts for medicinal and spiritual purposes. The objects used range from the very simple (the implant of ball bearings under the skin), to the magical (the use of specially selected semi-precious stones), or the elaborate (gold bars - called palang - or rings inserted through the glans). Historians have documented these practices in some detail, most notably in the annotated bibliography prepared by Brown, Edwards and Moore in Penis implants in Southeast Asia (1988), and Tony Reid's Land beneath the winds (1988).
Reid cites Pigafetta's 1524 traveller's tale to describe the Indonesian palang as having 'spurs' requiring intercourse to be commenced with the penis in a flacid state, and finished only after the penis has again become soft, to allow the woman to manoeuvre the palang in and out safely. Early reports of inserted bells or implanted balls begin with the 1433 report of Ma Huan, a Chinese Muslim who found the practice in Thailand. Bells were found around Malaya to as far as Makassar.
While these might seem odd and esoteric practices long relegated to museums or Ripley's Believe It or Not, recent research is finding that the use of inserts is spreading rapidly among working class men in the Southeast Asia and Melanesia. The modern manifestations of inserts and implants are important because they may cause vaginal wounds, inflammation and infection among the partners of men attracted to these practices. They can also cause permanent damage to the males, particularly when the cutting involved is carried out under unhygienic conditions.
For some years I had been hearing of penis inserts in Indonesia, but like most middle class Indonesians I dismissed the stories as being little more than sensationalist rumours or fillers for slow news days in tabloids. Eventually though the growing number of reliable sources suggested that there might be something worthy of further research.
In February 2000 with colleagues from the University of Indonesia I examined the records of a random sample of over 700 men undergoing pre-employment checks for work in the shipping, hotel and banking industries. This was an exploratory attempt to determine the likelihood of obtaining information on male reproductive health issues from conventional clinic records. It was found that one percent of the applicants for shipping industry jobs had some form of penis implant. Since most of these men were young and inexperienced this might be taken as a minimum prevalence among sailors. In the course of our enquiries we found that the practices were more widespread and varied than we had imagined.
Variations
The difficulty of determining the exact spread of various penis augmentation practices lies in the fact that they are inspired and implemented in a highly informal way. It appears that groups of working class males living in isolated circumstances are quite likely to discuss and attempt these practices. Interviews reveal a variety of practices designed to 'augment' the penis and enhance masculinity.
Basic inserts - ball bearings.
Workers in forestry, fishing and mining industries apparently take ball-bearings from machinery, boil them and soak them in antiseptic, and then insert them under the skin of the penis, about a centimetre back from the glans. Interviews in Jakarta, Yogyakarta, and the Philippines have also indicated that overseas contract workers in Saudi Arabia use the extended residence in highly controlled environments to experiment with implants.
Plastics - Tops of toothpaste tubes
Throughout Southeast Asia and Melanesia reports are emerging of prisoners inserting objects under the skin of their penises. The picture to emerge is one of boredom and isolation focussing attention on discussions of masculinity (kejantanan) and dreams of future possibilities to 'conquer' women. Prisoners while away the hours scraping tooth brushes into sharp instruments to pierce the penile skin, and melt down the caps to form small balls for insertion.
Silicon
Among transvestites throughout Indonesia the use of silicon implants to accentuate lips, cheeks, breasts, and other parts of the body is popular, and easily available through salons as well as some medical practitioners. There are some reports of Indonesian men, both straight and gay, using silicon implants in their penises, though this is probably less common than the use of ball bearings. In the Philippines silicon is used to create 'humps' around the shaft of the penis.
Semi-precious stones and gold - Investing objects with power
Throughout Southeast Asia inserts using precious stones, metals or pearls are regarded as providing special powers to men. In Indonesia the traditions of susuk implants support such thinking.
From ad hoc interviews I have found that men use the devices before marriage, but remove them when they settle down with one woman. Why, if the purpose is to please a woman? One explained: 'You can't really be sure about these things - what if something went wrong? You wouldn't want to take a risk with your wife.' Indeed, doctors and sex workers do report the occasional accident when a ring or stud or other sharp object is left in a vagina, or where women have suffered cuts or severe pain from men's experiments.
Interviews with social workers and commercial sex workers suggested that upwards of ten to twenty percent of regular clients of brothels have either penis implants or holes in the glans or skin of their penises. The holes may be normally for rings or studs, but during intercourse the ring is replaced by a piece of horsehair or the strand of a stiff-leaved plant which is tied and clipped off to a length of three or four centimetres as a 'tickler'. The putative reason for the practice is to 'please the woman', and men with inserts argue quite strongly that 'women love it'. However in the absence of systematic interviews with the lovers of such men, the testimony of commercial sex workers may be regarded as a useful commentary on the practice. Many of the women who earn their living from sex regard the use of inserts and ticklers as both strange and discomforting. One respondent recalled how one man using horsehair had caused her to bleed, while another reported great discomfort. She laughed at the idea that the devices were to 'please the woman'. 'That is what they say, but actually they only want the woman to reach orgasm before they ejaculate. It is a sign of their manliness (kejantanan)to have such control.' At the same time some women report the practices as being pleasurable.
Demystification
Informal but persistent attempts to understand the practices of genital cutting and the use of inserts and implants among Indonesian men indicate that what we are seeing today is not the resurgence of tradition. Rather these are largely attempts to come to terms with sexualities based on gender relations emerging from rapid modernisation.
Workers in isolated camps who rely on their peers for information on 'what women want' are easily convinced that implants may make them attractive to lovers. Young men who see peers attempting the operations to insert stones or plastic balls, and hear the bragging afterward are easily swayed to try the practice themselves. They do not hear clinical evidence of damage done to sex organs, and they definitely do not hear women's stories of pain, discomfort or infection. From the viewpoint of men and reproductive health the response to penis implants must be based on education and the demystification of large areas of sexuality.
The Indonesian Health Department regards any talk of penis adornments as esoteric, sensitive and obscure. Reproductive health service providers do not recognise the problems associated with genital cutting and the use of sexual accessories because such things are quickly dismissed as immoral. Whatever the moral arguments though, the practice of penis inserts appears to be spreading because men's sexual education is incomplete and isolated. Lower class men in particular are likely to experiment with implants, not because their sexual needs are any different from other men, but because they are the groups most likely to experience isolation from women in their occupations.
Terence H Hull (terry.hull@anu.edu.au) is Senior Fellow at the Demography and Sociology Program, Australian National University, Canberra. This note is based on a longer article written with Dr Meiwita Budiharsana to be published in the journal Reproductive Health Matters. Much of the information collected here was generously provided by colleagues in the ANU and internationally. Particular thanks go to the doctors and staff of the Klinik Baruna in Jakarta, and to Dr Sarsanto W Sarwono and Dra Ninuk Widyantoro whose work in Timika and other sites in Indonesia has revealed a range of behaviours normally hidden from routine medical practice.
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
A flood of 'democratisation' dollars has corrupted the NGO movement
Anu Lounela
Wherever one goes in Indonesia, one will come upon non-government organisations (NGOs). They are of all kinds and sizes: one-person offices, young activists working from home, giant offices, and training centres on the beach. NGOs are among a wide range of organisations that stand between the household and the state - they are part of 'civil society'. They do community development, support the rights of minorities like indigenous peoples and women, resist economic globalisation, and much more. To make the concerns of citizens heard by state power, NGOs are in front.
NGOs are born and die again as fast as activists are able to act, and funding agencies able to give. According to Kastorius Sinaga (Bisnis Info, September 2001), there are 13,400 officially registered NGOs alone, not to mention those unregistered. In the 1980s there were only around 3,000.
However, some international donors as well as voices within the NGO community say all is not well. Media accounts have claimed that, after the mushrooming of NGOs since 1998, funding has been misused, while some NGOs formed mainly for the money lack orientation in their activities. NGOs are accused of lacking transparency towards the Indonesian people, and of deliberately keeping vague their ideological commitment to 'strengthen civil society' in order to get more funds.
The reason for the poor management and poor ethics, especially among newer NGOs, is that they have become places where ex-business people, ex-state officials, and others lacking a clear vision earn a salary. Some NGO activists also believe that fooling donors with false receipts is not wrong, since the donors have their own agendas that do not always coincide with those of the NGOs.
Swedish anthropologist Hans Antlhas been doing research on Indonesia for a long time and has written several books. He is also project manager for the Ford Foundation, a major American funding agency. 'Problems have been evident already for a couple of years. We now have to save the good reputation of NGOs in Indonesia, or affairs will turn for the worst. Of great importance is the trust between different stakeholders, especially donors and NGOs. If this does not exist, development cooperation will not work', he says.
Roots
The first Indonesian NGOs were born in the 1970s. Suharto was ruling Indonesia with an iron hand. There was no freedom of speech, and NGOs generally chose to concentrate on (safe) 'development' work.
Mansour Fakih is another researcher who has long been studying Indonesian civil society. He once divided NGOs into three groups: those that adapt, those that reform, and those that strive for transformation. The first adapted to the development policy of the state and tried to participate without a vision of their own. Reformers aimed to strengthen civil society, but did not question the hegemonic development ideology based on the idea of economic growth. The minority of NGOs aiming at transformative change wanted to challenge the hegemonic development ideology, for example by using 'participatory research' methods.
When the economic crisis of 1997 turned into the political crisis of 1998, foreign funding agencies - especially American - rushed to Indonesia. They wanted to help build good governance, strengthen civil society, develop democracy, and save the environment and indigenous people. A real money circus started after Suharto stepped down in May 1998. NGOs mushroomed everywhere, all promoting 'democratisation'. In 1999 many more international donors entered Indonesia to support free elections with gigantic sums of money. Civil society had been suppressed for so long - donors felt it was the right time to support a strengthening process.
Paskah Irianto from the Indonesian legal Aid and Human Rights Association (PBHI) thinks the corruption sometimes goes beyond an unclear ideology. Some amounts of money are 'stolen' in administration, and receipts do not always correspond with reality. NGOs often obtain funding for the same proposal from several sources at once. Some obtain money from unsavoury Indonesian sources. For example, a report in Media Indonesia (5 October 2001) alleged that Indonesian Corruption Watch, a major watchdog, was itself partly backed by well-known corrupt business people and politicians. The basic problem, according to a series of articles in Media Indonesia early October 2001, is that most activists depend on NGOs to make a living. This creates an incentive to manipulate reports to donor organisations.
Many other NGOs feel uncomfortable about the situation. Money has distorted the NGO movement, so that institutions formed purely to get money are mixed with 'good' NGOs.
If overseas donors worry about corruption within Indonesian NGOs, bitter stories are also told within the NGO community about the foreign agencies. Foreign development workers grow rich from the development business. They move from one country to another while spreading their own views on how things should be done.
The UN Development Program (UNDP), the World Bank, and some individual governments are financing a 'good governance' program in Indonesia. It operates like a gatekeeper for NGO financial support. The UNDP program has an Indonesian board of supervision which evaluates incoming applications. However, the system is bureaucratic and top down. Jari (Jaringan Independen untuk Transparensi dan Akuntabilitas Pembangunan Indonesia) is a network of about eighty civil society organisations from around Indonesia. Yando Zakaria, who works at Jari, says Jari recently refused funding offered by UNDP. UNDP had rewritten the Jari funding application to include UN Volunteers, with a much higher salary than that of local staff. 'It is difficult to preserve your own mission and vision when the donor is recruiting staff, as well as changing the proposal and the amount of funding asked', says Yando.
Some NGOs are also upset with the US Agency for International Development. USAID currently administers about 68 grants and 22 cooperative agreements in Indonesia, with both international and Indonesian participating organisations. This US government agency's annual budget in Indonesia is US$ 130 million. Some Indonesian partners feel USAID controls their agendas. Walhi is Indonesia's major environmental umbrella organisation. Nieke Dewayani, its staff member responsible for donor relations, says that every time Walhi renews its contract with USAID there is a 'gentleman's agreement' to avoid using USAID funding for activities that concern mining. Joko Waluyo, the head of Walhi's information and communication department, adds that recently USAID was not willing to fund the Walhi environmental magazine Tanah Air. In his opinion, USAID disliked Walhi's mining advocacy.
In an interview with me, a USAID official said: 'We do not have these kinds of conditions tied to our agreements. We do not forbid criticism of badly behaving US corporations by the organisations we support.' However, this is not the first time that allegations have arisen of USAID cutting its aid for activities that threaten US companies. Inside Indonesia republished an IPS news item in its October-December 2000 edition in which the anti-mining group Jatam (Indonesian Mining Advocacy Network) had its USAID funding cut after it criticised US mining giant Newmont.
'Spoilt'
According to Hans Antlcivil society organisations have to a certain extent been 'spoilt' by the easy access to foreign funding. This was for instance the case during the 1999 election, with crash programs of voter education and election monitoring. 'Is it anywhere else in the world a habit to give to seminar participants a cash payment in an envelope? There are also allegations that some foundations were set up to launder money or as fronts for commercial enterprises. However, most civil society organisations are committed and are doing important work,' he says.
Many overseas donors are now changing their strategies towards Indonesian NGOs. Donors have to be accountable to their sources for the funding they hand out. The new strategies probably will include more support for multilateral agencies such as UNDP, more information sharing between donors, direct funding for local governments (rather than NGOs), and standardised reporting mechanisms to ensure the money goes to the 'right address'.
LP3ES, the Institute for Social and Economic Research, Education and Information, is one of Indonesia's oldest NGOs. It was founded in 1971 by some Indonesian academics, and funded by the German agency FNS (Friedrich Naumann Stiftung). Imam Ahmad is LP3ES' managing director. He says: 'It is only a question of time when the funding agencies will change their strategy or go away and stop giving direct support to civil society. We have to change. From the very start we have been too dependent on them. Now we have a warning: become self-sufficient or die.'
'I feel as if I am a public servant of the United States!' Imam Ahmed continues. 'LP3ES gets its funding from many US agencies, such as USAID or the Ford Foundation. I get my salary from them. In my office there are seventy employees. If the funding stops, what will happen to their families? We receive no money from the Indonesian government. We do not get money from poor Indonesians. Maybe we will transform into a consultancy firm.'
Others say Indonesian NGOs are already more like consultancy firms than civil society organisations, since their 'managers' work so hard to adapt to donor ideas and requests. 'I think many of the grassroot NGOs will soon die,' says NGO veteran S Indro Tjahjono, director of the environmental organisation Skephi and an advisor of the labour minister. 'The middle class is no longer attracted to the idea of making NGOs a part of the social transformation movement.'
'As the funding agencies change their strategies, the NGOs dependent on them will live or die. NGOs have to create their own ideology, and not merely be followers of the neo-liberal agencies. We have to search for self-sufficiency, work with the people and the communities, and together create a people's movements', says Indro Tjahjono.
Anu Lounela (alounela@indosat.net.id) is an NGO volunteer with Insist in Yogyakarta (insist@yogya.wasantara.net.id).
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
The democracy movement must now challenge international capital
Revrisond Baswir
The transition to democracy in Indonesia isn't just a struggle between political factions within Indonesia. We must also consider the relationship with international capital. The New Order of Suharto was the child of capitalism. From CIA documents, we now know of the US involvement in bringing about Sukarno's downfall. The New Order under Suharto went on to establish strong links with international capital. The first laws the New Order enacted in 1967 were about Foreign Direct Investment (PMA). For 32 years the New Order's economic strategy was pro-mainstream, pro-growth or neo-liberal. We should not be surprised that the New Order survived so long. Despite its authoritarianism and corruption, it continued to enjoy the support of international capital - as long as Aceh still had gas to be exploited, as long Riau's oil fields were making a profit, and likewise in Papua.
The presence of the military is also important to international capital. Can you imagine what would happen if Exxon in Aceh had to close, or Caltex was overrun by the people of Riau? And today, who is busier than the representatives of international capital in lobbying the US government to reestablish links with our military?
So whether they were aware of it or not, the pro-democracy movement in Indonesia for thirty years not only had to oppose Suharto, the military and Golkar, but also the challenge of international capital. The question that arises is: with such strong backing, how could Suharto be deposed? Strangely enough, in the last few years before Suharto's downfall a co-existence developed between the pro-democracy movement and international capital. Since the early 'nineties the actions of Suharto and his cronies were proving increasingly problematic for international capital. Foreign investors had to include members of Suharto's family, pay commissions and involve the military. Suharto was becoming 'too expensive'. So they began to support the democracy movement. USAID, for example, began to pay for voter education.
In my opinion, the transition to democracy in Indonesia raises some very serious questions, which we must face honestly. We have to ask ourselves whether the movement that deposed Suharto on 21 May 1998 only got support from, or was it in fact manipulated by international capital? Personally I fear that it was manipulated.
No protest
I have spent a lot of time thinking about the fact that following the fall of Suharto there has been no protest against international capital. Our friends in the pro-democracy movement demand the disbandment of the New Order political party Golkar, which is excellent. Many non-government organisations (NGOs) have been formed to support 'good governance', and they protest the actions of local parliament, local government, and the district heads. But none of them demand the disbandment of the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI, a group of governments that make loans to Indonesia), nor the International Monetary Fund (IMF), nor the World Bank and the transnational corporations. This is a very interesting phenomenon. The pro-democracy movement is exploited by, or rather working to the agenda of international capital. The direction of democratic reform in Indonesia is in the hands of global capital. And that is a great tragedy. We have always known this happens within the state and the market, but it clearly happens also within the grassroots movement of national and local NGOs.
This is very clear at the national level, in parliament. For thirty years throughout Suharto's reign the national parliament never dared to make any changes to the government's National Policy Guidelines (GBHN). Yet now when the IMF demands change they simply comply. They can't stand up to the IMF. The same goes for the government, which is very dependent on international investment capital. But the same can also be said of the grassroots movements. For example among the pro-democracy groups in Jakarta, and in oil-rich Aceh and Riau, no one questions the demands of international capital.
A few days before President Abdurrahman Wahid was ousted (on 23 July 2001) I was invited by the British Ambassador to attend the launching of an agreement between the British and the Indonesian Defence Departments. So this was already being prepared while Gus Dur (Wahid) was still president. The Americans and Australians have also restored their support to the military - after it was cut following the destruction of East Timor in 1999. The actions of the IMF, furthermore, played a big role in the removal of Gus Dur. For nine months the IMF refused to release the next US$ 400 million instalment in its huge rescue package, citing Jakarta's refusal to implement reforms. This eventually caused a crisis as the rupiah continued to fall against the dollar. In my opinion parliament only put the 'finishing touches' to the removal of Gus Dur. The ball had been placed in front of the goal by global capital interests. When Megawati took over as president, the money started flowing again. This resulted in a dramatic improvement in the value of the rupiah, which went from 11,300 to about 9,000 to the US dollar in a short time.
It's very clear how international capital behaves. The question for us is, in which direction should we steer the transition to democracy? Is it enough simply to confront the New Order elements still in power, in the military and the government? This is the most important question for the democracy movement. What is our attitude to international capital? In my opinion this question must be answered, and answered very explicitly. If it is not, I fear the democracy movement will continue to be exploited by international capital.
Twin Towers
The problem with being dependent on the international economy has become clearer after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. The attack has caused a worsening of the international economy in recent days, and this also affects our economy. Furthermore, if America continues to retaliate against Afghanistan there will no doubt be a negative reaction in Indonesia, whether or not it is true that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the Twin Towers attack. If America goes on to strike also against Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, or Egypt, then there will really be problems in Indonesia.
So what am I afraid of? I am afraid that the challenge to international capital in Indonesia will not come from the pro-democracy groups but from other groups. Even before the attack on the Twin Towers, groups were already mobilising in Indonesia to oppose America over its policy towards Palestine and Israel. If America attacks Kabul, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan or Egypt, I am sure there will be opposition to it in Indonesia. Stability will be disrupted, and don't hope that foreign investors will then come back. Before the Twin Towers tragedy there was already a travel warning for American tourists not to come to Indonesia. The threats that are sure to follow further retaliatory strikes will be directed not only at America, but also the British, the IMF, World Bank etc. Our economy will continue to be squeezed by what I call the 'Twin Towers Effect'. Our international markets will be weak, the internal situation will be unstable, and investors will not want to come to Indonesia.
Let's return to my question for the pro-democracy groups. What position will they adopt in this situation? It is a big question. Are we going to take part in large anti-America, anti-capitalist demonstrations? We have to be clear what we want. For me the transition to democracy is impossible without taking a position towards international capital. We must have an answer, or we will continue to be confused and oscillating.
Briefly, I want to suggest a solution. It's a very simple one. As long as our economy remains dependent on international capital it will remain weak. We have to turn around our dependence on global capital as the basis of our economy. Instead of 'waiting for Godot' we need to pay serious attention to our domestic market. The buying power of the people is the springboard of our economy. The revival of Indonesia can't be handed over to the global market, to international investors who may or may not come to our shores. This solution is clearly a dilemma for the current government and cabinet, who are the foot slaves of the IMF and World Bank. So the question remains: is the democracy movement ready or not to challenge not only the forces within Indonesia - the New Order, Golkar, the military, and the present government - but also the might of international capital?
Revrisond Baswir (revrisond@ygy.centrin.net.id) teaches accountancy at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta. Condensed from a presentation at UGM on 18 September 2001.
Inside Indonesia 69: Jan - Mar 2002
Page 54 of 68
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