Not currency speculators but Indonesian and especially foreign investors with a chronic craving for US dollars destroyed the national economy.
Sritua Arief
Indonesia has always experienced a current account deficit in its balance of payments. This means more money always leaves the country than enters it. Between 1979 and 1996 the shortfalls totalled US$ 43.4 billion. The two biggest reasons for the deficit are repatriating foreign investment profits, and paying interest on foreign debts. In other words, foreign interests are draining the surplus out of Indonesia.
The current account measures money moving in and out of the country. It incorporates all exports, imports, payments on foreign loans, foreign investors sending back their profits, and so on. Year in year out, it is in deficit. So it doesn't contribute at all to national savings or to our foreign currency reserves.
The following tables show the state of the current account in 1995/96 and 1996/97, just before the monetary crisis.
Sources and uses of foreign capital funds:
Sources of funds
1995/96 (US$billion)
1996/97 (US$billion)
Direct foreign investment
5.4
6.5
Other private capital
4.5
6.2
Government foreign debt (mid- to long term)
5.7
5.4
Total
15.6
18.1
Uses of funds
1995/96 (US$billion)
1996/97 (US$billion)
Financing current account deficit
7.0
8.1
Repaying foreign debt
5.9
6.1
Adding to foreign currency reserves
2.7
3.9
Total
15.6
18.1
When we look at the figures, several conclusions spring easily to mind.
First. Our foreign currency reserves are highly dependent on getting new foreign loans, because the deficit stops us from accumulating foreign reserves freely. This means our reserves are effectively borrowed, not free as we should expect in a healthy economy.
Second. Just as in a business, all payments (income versus expenditure) must be balanced. This means that adding to our foreign reserves by means of debt in this way in fact represents money leaving the country. We call this capital flight, which is a bad thing. In other words, the capital flight committed by private parties in Indonesia (better called economic criminals) is paid for by government foreign debt.
This is surely a case of extraordinary stupidity, not to mention complete inhumanity. Private wealth overseas grows at the expense of government debt, ultimately paid for by the ordinary people of Indonesia, who have no means of enjoying its benefits.
Now back to our question. What caused the collapse of the rupiah against the US dollar? It was caused by a gross imbalance between the value of total exports including oil and gas, and the value of total imports. Not only are imports larger, they have also been growing at a faster rate than exports. This is what causes the current account deficit.
Exporting supplies us with foreign currency, while importing demands it back again. Since both are normally done in US dollars, the excess of demand over supply makes the value of the US dollar grow against the value of the Indonesian rupiah.
Moreover, export and import practices in Indonesia are full of manipulative practices, in which exports are underinvoiced and imports are overinvoiced. The government has always overlooked such practices, because of the constant conspiracies between politics and business (remember the way Coordinating Minister Sudomo backed corrupt businessman Eddy Tansil?).
So who caused this excessive demand for foreign currency? They fall into three categories: * Importers (both foreign and national), foreign investors and foreign creditors. They want foreign currency to pay for their imports, to send their profits back overseas, and to pay the interest on (private and government) foreign debt. * Those who repay principal on their foreign debt. * Those committing capital flight - both businesses and individuals.
Ironically, all these people causing excessive demand for foreign currencies share the same perception of uncertainty, namely that the Republic of Indonesia may become financially insolvent due to its chronic current account deficit. Indeed the perception is strengthened by the reality that the government has always paid back old debts with new loans, whose value is less than that of the old. As a result, the Republic constantly transfers more money out of the country than enters it. Indonesia suffers from what is known as Fisher's Paradox, which says that the more foreign debt you repay, the bigger the debt you accumulate.
Add to that the political uncertainty. All these sources of uncertainty come from within the country, not from overseas. I can't see that there has been a conspiracy by foreign currency speculators such as George Soros, who simply have a good nose for opportunity. We should rather blame ourselves for mismanagement and immorality.
But there is a conspiracy, and a much more dangerous one than George Soros. That is the one concocted by foreign interests through the IMF and the World Bank who are, by the latest count, prepared to give us loans of up to US$49 billion. Most of this debt will be used to pay for the current account deficit. That is, most of it will be used to allow foreigners to import goods and services, repatriate their profits, and repay their foreign loans.
In other words, the debt will be enjoyed by people overseas, but the burden of it will be born by the people of Indonesia. The debt will be used once again to pay for our dependency on imports from overseas. It's truly absurd for us to say 'thank you very much' to the IMF, the World Bank, and other members of this plot.
The political conspiracy means that, first, overseas interests will now determine our economic and social policy and even our power structure. Second, control over our foreign currency reserves by foreigners will be even greater than before. Third, control over Indonesian economic resources by foreigners will become even more intensive.
This truly is national policy-making at its least heroic. We will be under the heel of foreigners as if we were a colony.
Allow me herewith to declare: heroism has died among the Indonesian power elite and the intellectuals who support them. We will now witness the collapse of the Indonesian nation state. The people will not forgive the power elite for this. Do not be surprised if in the near future a history book is published with the title: Indonesia, the fall of a nation.
Dr Sritua Arief is an Indonesian economist. He obtained his doctorate at Hull University in 1979, and presently teaches in the Management School of the University of Northern Malaysia.
Inside Indonesia 56: Oct-Dec 1998
The biggest demonstration in May took place not in Jakarta, but hundreds of kilometres away in Yogyakarta. It was almost a rebirth.
Dwi Marianto
On Tuesday afternoon, 19 May 1998, the atmosphere in Yogyakarta was already tense. Impatience to meet together with Sultan Hamengkubuwono X at his palace, the kraton, mixed with rumours that a large number of rioters had been brought in from outside, could be felt on campuses and in the shopping centres. Only a few days earlier we had seen shooting, burning, looting and chaos in Jakarta, Solo, and other cities. The rapes of Chinese women had not yet been widely publicised.
Every campus had an aid post to look after the possible victims of violence. Intimidation was in the air. People remembered how Mozes Gatotkaca was killed, and how Pito was shot in the leg by police. Students made posters urging people not to go to demonstrations on their own, and to tell their friends where they were going.
There were rumours of unknown persons looking to eliminate campus activists. People knew the military had used thugs in the past to shut up activists who threatened Suharto's regime. Every one believed them, because the reports of the disappeared, and of others shot and killed, were not mere fantasy.
Students
Nevertheless, there was courage enough to make banners and posters criticising a New Order that had looted and brought suffering to the people for over 30 years. On all the campuses of Yogyakarta's universities, especially at Gajah Mada, at the Islamic university IAIN and at the Indonesian Art Institute ISI, students were planning how to conduct the action of 20 May 1998, and how to keep it peaceful.
The atmosphere on the morning of the next day, Wednesday (Kliwon on the Javanese calendar), was gripping. Groups of high school students were hanging around the streets. Others, wearing demonstrators' garb, rode their motorbikes along the main streets.
Amien Rais supporters from the Muhammadiyah high school came out wearing green. People were very impressed with Amien Rais' announced plan to bring a million people onto the streets in Jakarta, 500 kilometres to the northwest. Abri had opposed that plan, ostensibly to avoid bloodshed. Which could easily have happened, because some people were very angry and determined. The soldiers, too, had become edgy.
At 8:30am, university students, high school students, as well as ordinary Yogyakarta citizens started streaming towards the kraton from various directions. They were so solid and compact together. Loathing for Suharto united them, or perhaps it was a reaction against the way the authorities had manipulated the law throughout the New Order.
By 9:00am the streets were full of students, all wearing something to show what institution they were from. Some cars had loudspeakers fitted. Many people wore witty anti-Suharto shirts and attracted attention to themselves in order to ignite the spirit of Reformation.
Banners called for Suharto to be tried and hung were everywhere. Others said 'Pro-Reformation', and 'Yogyakarta is against rioting'. Lots wore T-shirts with Megawati's picture or carried a poster of her father Bung Karno. Members of 'Faithful Supporters of Mrs Megawati' (Psim) carried blue and white flags. People from the Islamic party PPP wore green head bands or T- shirts with the green star.
Carnival
Security guards from the PPP, from Nahdatul Ulama, and from Megawati's PDI worked together to keep things peaceful, all in their impressive uniforms. Yet none of them behaved as if they were engaged in a confrontation. It was a carnival atmosphere.
Calls not to engage in violence rang out constantly. From time to time activists would burst into a yell demanding Suharto's resignation. Insults at Suharto's expense became popular entertainment.
Songs were heard whose tunes everyone knew but whose words had been changed. So the song 'Planting corn' was changed to: 'Hang him, hang him, hang that Suharto, hang that Suharto at the Flower Market' (that's Yogya's brothel district). Not a pretty sentiment perhaps, but there was lots of creativity. Some were humorous, others satirical, threatening or serious.
The river of humanity edged closer to the kraton. A strong feeling of solidarity made the heat of the sun easy to bear. Beside the road, crowds cheered on the masses on the street. Many gave them drinks, peppermints, or snacks for free. Among the crowd occasionally a poster would pop up showing Suharto with a Hitler moustache.
Shops, stalls, banks, traders, all stopped their business. They all wanted to show their sympathy for what the students had been fighting for for so long.
At the corner just before entering the large field (alun- alun) in front of the kraton a huge banner was draped from the central post office reading: 'Yogya is ready to become the capital'. Whoever had the courage to climb up to hang that there? Certainly not a postman.
Post Office employees just watched passively from the second floor of their building. In their hearts they certainly felt sympathetic towards the reformist ranks flooding the streets below, but at that time they were still too afraid even to wave at them. They were bound to Golkar and the civil service union Korpri. And they had enjoyed the New Order.
Some activists stood on their car roof and shouted at them: 'Come on down, the Titanic is sinking'. The film Titanic had been showing at the cinemas for weeks, and everyone knew the story. In the alun-alun there were lots of stalls and kiosks, because it was the Sekaten ceremony. But none of them were damaged. Everyone restrained themselves.
Before the kraton stage people waited patiently for the sultan. In the meantime all kinds of groups brought entertainment: The Malioboro Street Singers, the Kampung Group, the Untung Basuki Music Group. Students organised the whole show. Didik Nini Thowok performed a dance.
Butet Kertaredjasa presented a parody of Suharto's voice, just as Suharto would always appear in public telling people what to do. Volunteers from various hospitals were on hand in case of need. The joy of a big party and the determination of struggle were all mixed into one.
Sultan
Ceremonial guards from the kraton were there in their finery. They had muskets without bullets. Quite a contrast with the PPP and PDI security guards in their military-style uniforms, but their ancient cut of clothes helped create a special atmosphere in which everyone put aside the interests of their own group to listen to the voice of the people that was about to be heard.
Hamengkubuwono X and his queen Hemas appeared together with Yogyakarta's second sultan, Paku Alam VIII. Then the declaration (maklumat) each had prepared was read out.
In his address, Sultan Hamengkubuwono criticised the misuse of language by the power holder merely to perpetuate their power and to keep the people down. He said those in power far too readily called others with a different viewpoint a rebel (mbalelo), merely in order to strike them down.
The sultan criticised the constant calls on the people to be patient, to be obedient, polite and so on, while the regime itself deliberately smashed any feelings of shame it might have had and gave itself over to greed.
Then the sultan said those who were in the wrong should own up and resign. Hearing this veiled denouncement everyone knew who was intended: no one other than the Dasamuka of the New Order. (Dasamuka is a power-hungry king in the shadow puppet theatre who is repaid with a horrible death). A tremendous applause rose up.
This was only the second maklumat the sultan of Yogyakarta had ever made. The first was by his father, Hamengkubuwono IX, on 5 September 1945, which declared that the Yogyakarta sultanate was entering the Republic of Indonesia. With this declaration of 20 May 1998, Hamengkubuwono declared he had sided with the people. He no longer wanted the people to be an object of arbitrary power. The people had to be defended. The misuse of power had to be stopped.
The crowd of hundreds of thousands was so orderly as they listened. When the sultan had finished, they broke up and quietly went home or back to their campus or office. Most had to walk, because it was impossible to move a vehicle.
During the New Order, most of the Indonesian people felt as if they had become orphans. Sharp weapons and the stigma of subversion kept them quiet. Their ears were only permitted to hear the voice of the power holder. Their dreams could only be dreams of aeroplanes. All their goods, their land, and even their bodies were looted.
The declaration by Sultan Hamengkubuwono X on 20 May 1998 was not very long. It only had four points, urging all the people to support reformation, and calling on everyone to be sensitive to and to defend the people.
Short as it was, it was enough to make the people feel they were no longer orphans. The sultan and the kraton were their father and their mother, who were able to hear their sobs, to struggle with them, and always to urge them never to lose hope.
M Dwi Marianto (fax +62-274-371 233) is a PhD graduate from the University of Wollongong, now teaching at the Indonesian Art Institute of Yogyakarta, ISI.
Inside Indonesia 56: Oct-Dec 1998
A new movement resists the terror and expresses solidarity with the Chinese Indonesian women who were raped in Jakarta in May.
Sandyawan Sumardi
About 11:30am I saw some people in the crowd stopping a car. They forced the passengers to get out, and then dragged two girls out of the car. They took off the girls' clothes and pack-raped them. The two girls tried to fight back, but in vain (Eyewitness, Muara Angke, 14 May, 1998).
This is only one of hundreds of rapes that happened during the Jakarta riots in May 1998. After the riots came the statements denying the rapes had occurred. Well, the answer is clear: they did.
After the two girls managed to get away from the savage rapists, I came to them and embraced them. They begged me to help them find a safe way home. Since I live in that district, I knew a shortcut to the main road. At the Cengkareng corner, I saw several dead women, naked, their faces covered with newspapers. They must have been raped, for I could see dried blood around their vaginas, swarming with flies. After helping the two girls home, I returned the same way. The corpses at the corner were gone. Where were they? Who took them? (Same eyewitness).
Members of the Volunteer Team for Humanity ('Tim Relawan'), who were being contacted by numerous victims and eyewitnesses, repeatedly received warnings and threats to stop 'listening to' and 'helping' the victims.
Dangerous
In this country, even in the midst of the spirit of 'reformation', to tell about and listen with complete sympathy to the victims of mass rapes was regarded as dangerous.
A single act of rape is barbaric. Hundreds of rapes, all with similar brutal modus operandi, is organised barbarism on a massive scale. The modus operandi were similar to those used to instigate the riots at the same time.
Rape is rape. It destroys the woman's life as a part of society. Rape is not acceptable for anyone, neither Chinese nor Javanese nor Dayak nor Irianese. Any government in this country with a conscience cannot avoid the urgent agenda to repair this total destruction.
For the victims, the rapes destroyed their lives. But even for the eyewitnesses, they have become unbearable memories.
Ever since I saw it, I have been deeply distressed. Whenever I close my eyes, I see the corpses of those women before my eyes. I feel very depressed. Since I cannot bear my own feelings of anxiety and fear, I decided to go home to my village (Same eyewitness)
For many eyewitnesses, the border between 'seeing' and 'experiencing' is obscured, and so is the difference between 'self' and 'victim'.
After accidentally seeing a Chinese girl raped by many people, my little sister has been frightened and stressed. She talks incoherently and her body trembles whenever anyone comes near her. For two weeks she was in hospital. I almost wonder whether she only saw someone being raped or if she herself was also raped. (Story from a girl's sibling, June 1998).
The extent of the rapes is no fantasy. A pattern of similarities emerges that indicates strongly that the mass rapes involved a network, planners and executors in a systematic and organised way.
After hard work and under huge pressure of threats and terror, we present our data. It is based only on the reports of victims and eyewitnesses, not on rumour or the newspapers. In order to respect and safeguard them, their exact identities have been kept confidential.
Whereas the riot, the massive destruction and burning in May 1998 happened in all areas of Jakarta, the rapes only happened in West Jakarta, North Jakarta, and other areas where many Chinese live and work. The rapes and the riots happened at the same time. The patterns of the rapes were very similar to those used in the riot. The similarity suggests there must be a relationship between the two.
A number of unknown persons entered the shop-house and began looting it. Others among them stripped R naked and then forced her to watch her two younger sisters being raped. After raping them, they threw the two girls down to the ground floor, which was already on fire. They died, but R survived because some people came to help her. (Incident on 14 May 14, 1998, as told by the family of R, L, and M).
Not locals
The actors in these incidents were of unknown origin, different from the locals in that part of the city. On several occasions victims survived because other locals came to help.
On 13 May the crowds came from three directions. Four youths on motorcycles gave the order: 'Burn, charge!' and a group of shabbily dressed youths began to break things. The victim came down from an upper floor as their shop-house was being wrecked and looted. Among the youths someone yelled 'bloody Chinese, they're the ruin of this nation', and he grabbed the woman and her little girl and tried to rip off her clothes. Among the four youths on motorcycles one yelled out: 'Separate the girls and take them to the school'. The victims escaped from the attempted rape because locals came and rescued them. (Volunteer Team documentation based on victim and eyewitness accounts).
In all, twenty of the victims died. Most of the others are in a serious physical and psychological condition. We have confidential reports and stories up until 3 July 1998 of 168 victims of pack rape or other sexual abuse. Of these, 152 are from Jakarta and environs, while 16 are from Solo, Medan, Palembang, and Surabaya. This is by no means the full total of victims, but only those who have reported to us.
These statistics are just a numerical abstraction. They do not reveal the vicious shouting, the threats and terror, the torture of rape, the horrible way of dying, the running blood, the wrecked bodies and ruined dignity, the destruction of a future and of hope, nor the hot tears and the unbearable silence of memory.
And just when many volunteers began to extend their sympathy, their help and a listening ear to lighten the burden of the victims, those volunteers were pursued by terror and threats. How then will we find justice and truth in this country? The terror came to the victims and their families, to many other citizens of Chinese descent, to nurses and doctors who cared for them, and to the volunteers themselves.
That the very search for truth has become the target of terror and threats shows clearer than anything just how real the destruction of our common life has become. It shows how the change in political leadership on 21 May 1998 was just a 'forced drama', performed on the surface of our political life. Deep below the political turbulence we still find the old pattern of terror and threats: brutal, systematic, violent, using racketeers and gangsters, the military and hired thugs, paid with money and weapons.
This movement to look for victims - it must stop. If you carry it on, you will know the result. Remember friend, you have a family. If you love yourself or your family, you have to do as I say. Watch out, I'm not kidding! (Extract from an anonymous letter to the volunteers, June 1998).
Or:
Is a grenade not enough? I know where your children go to school, I know what uniform they wear, what time they go to school and what time they come home. (Anonymous telephone caller to a volunteer, June 1998, after a live grenade was found in the Volunteer Team's front yard).
But in the face of all these threats, a counter movement is emerging. Since the riots and the rapes, more and more people feel it is now urgent to expose the network of architects and actors behind it all. These people come from many backgrounds: from different religions, ages, ethnicity and social status. They have one goal, to disclose who planned and executed the riots and the rapes.
Common life
The exposure of this network becomes the key to restoring our common life. Whether those who are supposed to guard the peace will help us or not, we the people will work harder to protect each other while helping the victims.
The network of the think tanks and actors of the rapes cannot be separated from those of the riots in May 1998. The demolition, the burning down, and the rape are different elements of the same systematic and organised acts.
I am not an intelligence agent, but I am a commander who instigated the riot. I recruited my 60 men from various armed forces units. I could easily rape these women (pointing his finger toward three Chinese girls). Killing you is easy... (Remark made by an unidentified person who attended a meeting of the Volunteer Team in Central Jakarta, June 1998),
Certain groups had already hatched this systematic plan much earlier:
Long before the riot, a well-built man called by. He also visited the poor housing areas around Pantai Indah Kapuk estate. At first he just became acquainted with the youths and chatted with them. Then the unidentified man treated them to food, drinks and smokes, so they became good friends. He then told them: 'If you guys like it, pretty soon you will have expensive things, and you can fuck those Chinese women you never dared to touch!' (Some eyewitnesses, June 1998)
To all of you in government, you have a special interest in this tragedy, precisely because you think of yourselves as managers of our common life in this nation-state. More and more people are waiting for your significant help in uncovering the network behind the rapes and the massive destruction.
If not, please do not blame us if more and more people believe that many 'government' and 'security' elements are of no use at all. Or even that they do function but that they gave their blessing or even collaborated in the tragedies.
Sandyawan Sumardi, SJ, is the secretary of the Volunteer Team for Humanity ('Tim Relawan untuk Kemanusiaan'). Extracted from a report on Jakarta available from the team at: Jalan Arus Dalam 1, Rt001/Rw012, Cawang, Dewi Sartika, Jakarta 13630, Indonesia, tel/fax +62-21-809 4531, email galih@indo.net.id.
Inside Indonesia 56: Oct-Dec 1998
Students toppled Suharto. Why could they not agree to topple Habibie as well? A foreign observer reveals his field notes for the day after Suharto resigned.
Loren Ryter
Events are taking a turn toward the dirty, especially at parliament house (DPR). Forces under the orbit of Lt-Gen Prabowo, commander of the Army Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad), were brought in to confront the students, and were allowed to do so by Kostrad. In the midnight hours, the troops moved in and cleared out the students.
Around 11 am today, 22 May, I got a call from 'M' saying an Islamic crowd from the Tanjung Priok harbour area would 'be deployed' after Friday prayers. Note that people talk of these sort of 'youth' actions in terms of turunkan, to deploy. 'Y' confirmed this was going to happen. So the word had already spread widely. I headed for the DPR.
Sure enough, right after Friday prayers the crowd started filing in from the mosque. They were carrying banners that read 'Support Habibie, Raise High the Constitution', and their head bands read 'Constitutional Reform'. Both had been professionally printed and it is unlikely they could have been prepared within the 24 hours since Habibie was inaugurated. This would have been planned in advance. 'Reform', by the way, seems to have already taken the place of the catch-all blah of 'Pancasila'.
They were also carrying large white on black banners with Islamic writing, green banners, and hand written banners that said things like 'Constitutional Reform Yes, Anarchy No...'. There were a few flags bearing a yellow crescent and star in a black field on a green banner.
They succeeded in raising three of these 'Support Habibie' banners up the flag pole. They were fully confrontational, and well organised. There were women, mostly wearing jilbab, the Islamic head dress, as well as men. Several older Islamic teachers (kiai) were giving commands through bullhorn loudspeakers. There were also a fair number of obvious thugs (preman) in the crowd, stocky guys in ragged T-shirts that didn't exactly look like devout Muslims.
Conquest
The students were outnumbered in the morning and had been forming rows behind the raffia string they had put up around the front of the stairs, cutting off access to the podium. Since the journalists were all on the stairs, and the line was thin, the stairs became a target of conquest - aiming to get the attention of the cameras and the higher ground. Many of the newcomers were provoking and yelling at the students.
Meanwhile, they were using all kinds of Islamic symbols. Some were holding up one finger (PPP), and they were singing the inspirational Islamic Sholawat Badriah. This gave new significance to the Sholawat Badriah sung the previous Wednesday, likely by some of the same group.
One guy in plainclothes (preman) was already on the steps - that is, behind student lines - before they came, and he began leading them in singing Sholawat Badriah. At one point a guy in a khaki civil service uniform standing behind the student lines on the stairs tried to calm them down with a loudspeaker, shouting Allahu Akbar, but that didn't seem to work.
Later in the afternoon some Islamic youth and student groups mostly affiliated with Nahdatul Ulama (PMII, IPNU, IPPNU and some others) came out in support of the students, and there was a Nahdatul Ulama flag among the students. They also tried to lead a round of Sholawat Badriah, but it wasn't very popular among the students - perhaps conscious that it was being used by the other group. The students prefer to sing nationalist songs like Indonesia Raya.
It is fortunate that these Islamic youth groups joined in support of 'Reject Habibie', or this could have shaped into an Islam-vs-non-Islam conflict. However, many Islamic students were very upset - and several brought to tears - by the whole affair.
Eventually the 'pro-Habibie' group broke through the student barricades and swarmed up the steps, forcing me to the side. Someone climbed up a pole and took down the banner that said 'Suharto and Habibie are a single packet, both must step down', and put up a 'Support Habibie' banner.
Islam!
Meanwhile, trapped behind the lines, I experienced a fair deal of hostility. One guy started yelling 'Islam! Islam!' at me. When I answered in Indonesian that 'as it happens I am not Islamic but I've never had a problem with Islamic people', he started to say 'don't colonise our country!', 'Go home!', and 'Go to hell Bill Clinton!'. He was poking me hard on the chest. I said calmly that I was only trying to document what was happening here. At which point an older guy intervened and said 'Don't insult the journalist'. That calmed him down.
Then I went up to a few guys wearing 'Spiritual Reform' T- shirts, and was going to ask them why they supported Habibie, but one of them was very hostile and adrenaline-pumped. I kind of calmed him down, and said if you don't want to talk it is up to you, again helped by an older guy.
I asked him why he supported Habibie, and he said 'Islam! Islam! That's all'. This country is 90% Islamic, he told me. There are non-Islam who want to be president, but they have to be Islam. So, but there are many, many people who are also Islam, I replied. Why does it have to be Habibie? At first, no comment. Then he said if Habibie wanted to be corrupt, he could be corrupt because he ran the aircraft company, but he is clean. (Not 'cause his businesses always fail, i guessed). The older guy seemed to be a little bit more savvy, and said they supported Habibie because he supports the 'little people'.
According to a student from the Islamic missionary college Sekolah Tinggi Dakwa Islam Jakarta, which was part of the group and wearing green jackets, some of the other groups present included Ummat Islam Banten, Majelis Taklim from Banten and from Bogor, and people from Tanjung Priok, including LP3E.
Later on an entire column of black-clad figures who looked like the brawlers we call jago, with black uniforms including name tags and logos and wearing turbans, marched in and joined the group. They were from Tanjung Priok, Sekolah Pendidikan At Islam. Later 'A' and 'Y' both denied there were people from Majelis Taklim there. 'Y' claims that the preman were from Jalan Pramuka, and that he knew some of them.
(Kompas daily the next day printed that in the crowd were Sumargono, chairman of the Islamic group Kisdi and member of the People's Assembly MPR, as well as Fadly Zon, a younger Islamic intellectual, and Andreanto of the Islamic NGO Humanika. Also present as a leader was Toto Tasmara, who is according to 'J' a director of Tommy Suharto's group Humpuss).
'M' suspected that Eggy Sudjana, from the Islamic think tank Cides, was also involved. And that Sekolah Tinggi Dakwa Islam is underneath Kisdi. She knows members of Kisdi and thus avoided that group at the DPR and joined the National Front, which marched in behind its own banner after the 'Support Habibie' group had retreated.
'R' believes that several of these groups are affiliated with Dewan Dakwa Islam Indonesia (DDII), which supports an Islamic state.
Military
Late tonight word spread that Prabowo and his gang (Jakarta Area Commander Syafrie and the elite forces Kopassus Commander Maj-Gen Muchdi, and one other) had been sacked. Armed Forces Commander Wiranto moved Prabowo to become commander of the armed forces staff college in Bandung.
Word was already out by early afternoon, and a friend was desperately trying to figure out what was going on with the 'Habibie supporters' affair, thinking Prabowo had already been decommissioned. Perhaps this was his goodbye action? A way to embarrass Wiranto and Habibie? Did Wiranto sack them unilaterally or did Habibie agree to it? One can only speculate.
At midnight we received word that the military had moved in on the students, beating them with sticks. They were apparently evacuated on several buses and brought to Atmajaya University campus, 'guarded' by marines tanks, at the students 'own request'. The reason given was that the DPR building was to be renovated. (This after one minister said that there was no money to hold a special session of the People's Assembly).
Wiranto has called on the students to return to their studies and stop demonstrating. Students today were confused and demoralised by their relatively small numbers (perhaps 3000). They were trying to get students to chant: 'One command, one struggle' (this was also a slogan of SMID, affiliated with the outlawed party PRD), but the fact is they are poorly coordinated and not by and large disciplined activists.
They have no true militants and many of them are particularly young and not savvy. The media broadcast some of their comments about Habibie's cabinet appointments. They were favourable about some of them, showing that they weren't clear in their opposition to the entire systematic charade and could still praise cosmetic positive changes.
It also became clearer that the largest force of anti-Suharto activists had been mobilised by Islamic groups mainly to get Suharto out of the way, but not particularly interested in democratic institutions.
Amien Rais, before a large group of students belonging to the Islamic activist alliance Kammi today, said he was going to be Habibie's 'sparring partner', that he was going to give Habibie six months, and that he was willing to be Indonesia's fourth president. This is looking like somewhat of a setup: either we get Habibie till 2002 or we get Amien, through reformed election laws which will benefit him - most likely also without significant institutional change.
Unless the students can regroup and get other elements of society behind them, there will be a crackdown on activists that don't fall in line behind Habibie.
Loren Ryter is a PhD candidate doing research in Jakarta. This report was compiled on 22 May 1998.
Inside Indonesia 56: Oct-Dec 1998
How did Jakarta in May compare with people movements against dictatorships elsewhere in world history?
Aboeprijadi Santoso
Analysts watching Indonesia in May were reminded of two models of change: the 1989 Chinese Tienanmen model and the 1986 Philippine People Power model. Some also thought of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The events in Jakarta turned out to be different to each of them. They were perhaps more bloody than in China. And unlike the total change in the Philippines, transition in Jakarta was quick, but less than total, and filled with tragedy.
In Tienanmen on June 4, 1989, the state's repressive apparatus used a heavy hand to resolve the crisis. The Chinese authorities managed to preserve the bases of the state, which had been challenged by the students. After making some changes within the elite, they restored stability while limiting further social and economic damage from the three month revolt. Despite five to seven years of diplomatic pain, at the end of the day, a monolithic regime was able to restore the status quo by bloodily crushing opposition forces.
Philippines
The People Power on the Edsa highway in Manila in February 1986, on the other hand, was the reverse of the Chinese solution. Popular anger against Marcos' dictatorship burst out at every social level. Mrs Corazon Aquino, widow of the popular assassinated senator Benigno Aquino, and Cardinal Jaime Sin provided political and spiritual leadership. The left wing National Democratic Front (NDF) and other movements provided popular opposition platforms. Marcos' decades of dictatorship had radicalised Philippine society. All that was needed to oust him were some generals to change sides. And this happened at a crucial moment when General Fidel Ramos did just that.
The People Power movement also opened up, and was soon threatened by, internal military rivalries and rebellions. The Rambo game of Colonel Gringo Honasan is the most well known example.
Both revolts were supported at least passively by most sections of society. But the mainly urban student revolt in China was too small and weak to face the state apparatus. In the Philippines, by contrast, the revolt was truly mass based, while the state apparatus was too weak and divided to act against it.
Mixed
Jakarta's 'May Revolution', as the student protests and the fall of Suharto are now called, contained mixed elements. As in China, the imbalance between the student movement and state apparatus in Indonesia was obvious. As in China too, the student rebellion was widely supported by society. However, the Indonesian state leadership - both before and after the fall of Suharto - suffered from a much more serious crisis than their counterparts in China.
The symbolism emanating from student power in Jakarta and Beijing provoked a quicker act of the state than it did in Manila. Like the Chinese, the Indonesian students chose the very locus of the power they challenged as their place of protest. Demonstrations at parliament house in Senayan, Jakarta, signified their opposition to what they saw as the illegitimacy of existing representative bodies. A similar protest at the National Monument had to be cancelled. The symbolism of the Indonesian student protests echoed among movements around the world - from Burma to Zimbabwe, Nigeria and elsewhere.
Much the same way, Chinese students seriously challenged the legitimacy of the 'Heavenly Peace Mandate' supposedly resting upon the government and parliament when they occupied Tienanmen, 'The Great Square of Heavenly Peace'. No state government could tolerate such a pointed humiliation before the eyes of the world one minute longer than was needed. In Beijing, as in Jakarta, the government was desperate to act quickly to end the international embarrassment: five days in the case of Jakarta, a few months in Beijing.
In China, however, moral anger was not so specific and deep as to awaken popular and middle class movements, as happened in Manila and Jakarta. Certainly, the Chinese students and urban masses' struggle for freedom was motivated by a general protest against a monopolistic communist regime. But Tienanmen lacked the great and specifically directed moral force manifested in the Philippines after the cold-blooded killing of the popular senator Benigno Aquino, and in Indonesia after the tragic death of students at Trisakti University in Jakarta.
Army
But if China's model lacks certain crucial ingredients, the role its armed forces played could have happened in Indonesia too. Indonesian opposition leader Amien Rais claimed that the reason he called off a mass gathering at the National Monument on the early morning of May 20th was that one Indonesian general had seriously warned him: 'We too can do a Tienanmen'. In the post-Suharto transition, uneasy and uncertain as it is, the 'Chinese way' remains a real threat.
Indonesia's Armed Forces (Abri) played a decisive, yet very cautious role. Lt-Gen Syarwan Hamid, as vice chairman of parliament, gave permission to the students to stage a big protest at the Senayan complex. He would not have done this without consent from the top.
However, top level Abri leaders only moved reactively during the crucial weeks in mid-May. Abri commander General Wiranto seemed to play a waiting game. He agreed to ask President Suharto to step down only after the people's protest had gathered momentum, and after some politicians - notably Coordinating Minister for Economy and Finance Ginanjar Kartasasmita, who had IMF leverage at his disposal - boycotted Suharto's last attempt to save his regime by reshuffling the cabinet.
With Suharto gone, Abri got its first chance in years to act independently. But General Wiranto, once Suharto's second longest serving aide, could only do so by trial and error. He did it with a lot of hesitation and, possibly, still under Suharto's shadowy influence. A worsening economic crisis did not help Abri to act decisively.
Rivalry
As a big ally and key powerholder during the three decades of Suharto rule, it was only natural that Abri should face an internal crisis in step with the national leadership crisis. As in the Philippines, People Power in Jakarta tended to intensify already existing military rivalries.
The racial riots and the burning of Jakarta on 13 and 14 May, following weeks of student protests, clearly suggested the intensity of those rivalries. Massive looting and burning left some 1200 dead. Hundreds of Indonesian-Chinese women were barbarically raped.
The tragedy was engineered, at least partly, by elements within the state, who hired hooligans known as preman from outside Jakarta. Some within the military elite clearly wanted to counter the reform movement by manipulating public frustration. They evidently hoped that, as in 1965 and early 1966, a strong man would arise out of the chaos to restore order, not necessarily to challenge the president immediately, but to open the way for a new leader with fresh legitimacy.
It became clear that Suharto's son-in-law Lt-Gen Prabowo Subianto, commander of the Army Strategic Reserve (Kostrad), had tried to gain power only a day after Suharto resigned. He had civilian allies among Muslim radicals associated with the group Kisdi.
However, General Wiranto called his bluff by hastily moving him from his command post to the staff college. Following this sudden demotion, Prabowo tried that same evening to move 'his' Kostrad men to the palace, apparently to pressure President Habibie into taking sides against Wiranto. But this attempt too failed.
It has also been confirmed that elements of Kopassus, a special corps then led by the same Prabowo, was responsible for the kidnapping of activists in March. The purpose was to ensure that Suharto was reappointed as president. The state terror in May -the Trisakti killings and the racial riots - should perhaps be interpreted as acts of the same military faction and its civilian allies to defend Suharto, or at least to manipulate his succession for their own purpose. So Prabowo was Jakarta's version of Gringo Honasan. Fortunately both failed. Although the Honasan-like game in Jakarta could not be played out openly, the essential ingredients, as in Manila, were there.
Both Honasan-like acts of state terrorism and the threat of massive Tienanmen-like reprisals will remain alive as long as the Habibie government or its successor fails to restore its domestic and international credibility and its ability to guarantee the people's basic needs.
Moreover, as soon as Suharto resigned, Abri made it clear it wanted to avoid a power vacuum, and that it continued to claim a stake in the national leadership. 'The most important prerequisite to reform is efficient and capable national leadership,' said Abri chief of Socio-political Affairs Lt-Gen Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono recently. The message was delivered before a thousand top military officers only a week after Prabowo's indisciplinary acts, the first such meeting since Wiranto took command.
More than anywhere else, pro-democratic civil society in Indonesia has to compete with the state apparatus to take the lead and decide on the agenda of reformasi.
East Germany
Lastly, Jakarta's May Revolution exposed weaknesses within Indonesia's own democratic movement. At the end of Annus Mirabilis, the European 'Year of Miracles' of 1989, a great number of students, joined by human rights- and church-affiliated organisations, marched in the East German cities of Leipzig and Dresden chanting Wir sind Das Volk (We Are The (sic!) People). This famous march led to the fall of Erich Honnecker's communist regime in East Germany. The call effectively targeted a regime that had claimed to be the only true representative of the people.
The call for 'Reformasi Total' from Senayan against a regime which refused to do real reform, could have had deeper effects - not only the fall of Suharto, but also real action to fulfil the needs of the people and to start a democratisation process as in East Germany. If only Jakarta's 'May Revolution' had not suffered so much from a Chinese-like imbalance between state and society, and from a Philippine Honasan-like internal military game.
Moreover as in Beijing, but unlike Manila and Leipzig, the pro-democracy movement in Jakarta lacked a solid political platform to lead the momentum of change. The student protest was too much insulated as 'a moral force'. The politicians were too divided, the masses too little organised, and the state leadership crisis in May resolved too quickly to allow People Power to present an alternative force.
No single power was able to carry the new legitimacy from Senayan to its full consequences. Jakarta's 'May Revolution' - including its weaknesses - was a direct consequence of Suharto's three decades of repressive policies.
Aboeprijadi Santoso is an Indonesian journalist based in Amsterdam. He watched closely the recent events in Jakarta, in Manila in 1986-87 and in Eastern Europe in 1989-90.
Inside Indonesia 56: Oct-Dec 1998
In the weeks leading up to 21 May, Indonesia experienced a cultural explosion of new life.
Marshall Clark
On the humid evening before the riots of Jakarta's Black Thursday, May 13, Pramudya Ananta Toer, Indonesia's leading novelist who has spent much of the last twenty years under house arrest, was participating in what in hindsight can be regarded as the 'Last Supper' of the Suharto era.
The occasion drew a large crowd of students, activists, writers and literary critics. It marked the launch of Saman, a best-selling novel by Ayu Utami, an attractive 27-year old journalist. (See the review of it elsewhere in this issue of Inside Indonesia). The novel had already gone through its first edition in two weeks, and there were even rumours that its blatant political message was strong enough to bring down Suharto's New Order regime.
Although hard of hearing and now both unable and unwilling to read works of literature, Pramudya's presence at the launch, at considerable personal risk, said a lot. He was there as much out of respect for Ayu Utami as out of defiance to the New Order powers-that-be.
In the chaos of the last months of the regime, Indonesia's extensive intelligence network could evidently no longer cope with the rising tide of anger. Undercover spies had often been wheedled out of crowds and dealt with violently. In an act of self-preservation, even policemen had taken to wearing civilian clothes on their way home from work. Thus once again Pramudya could roam the streets of Jakarta, unwitnessed and unknown.
To open proceedings at the book launch, Sitok Srengenge, a well-known Jakarta-based poet, read out a proclamation signed by a number of leading writers, poets and playwrights. It denounced the military's shooting of six students at Trisakti University the day before.
After a communal prayer and a sombre rendition of Hymne darah juang, one of the student 'anthems' for what was later to be labelled the 'velvet revolution', the next few hours were spent in communion with Ayu and Saman. Almost as a weary backlash against the highly charged political atmosphere of the previous few months, politics were avoided. Instead, animated discussion of literature, language, feminism, style and form proceeded well into the night.
Yet in the previous month or so, the Indonesian literary scene was - as it has tended to be in a nation where the mass media suffer from strict self-censorship - highly political. What's more, in the midst of the country's greatest turmoil since the 1960s, the arts scene was literally on fire.
Exorcism Apart from the appearance of Ayu's award-winning novel that evening, hundreds of artists and performers united under the banner of Ruwatan Bumi '98 (Earth Exorcism '98), a cultural movement designed to heal the nation's woes. Not unlike the Chinese 'cultural fever' accompanying the democracy movement in Beijing in the late 1980s, the Earth Exorcism was designed to use art as the medium of liberation, to reinvigorate the badly bruised political consciousness of the Indonesian people.
Historically, cultural exorcisms are a relatively common phenomenon in Indonesia. In ancient Javanese kingdoms, whenever the royal court was faced with a calamity of one form or another, all the court's writers, poets and puppeteers were sent out into the neighbouring villages to rid the kingdom of its defilement.
Over the space of one month - between the start of April and the start of May - at least 170 performances occurred in almost every major city. The performances included drama, music, video, pantomime, prayer, wayang shadow puppet theatre, poetry, dance and installation art. The cultural explosion was organised by a number of regional committees linked through the internet.
With the steady increase in Indonesia's economic fortunes over the last few decades, a highly educated, urbanised and western- oriented middle class has emerged. Consequently their children, the driving force behind the student movement, have long been accustomed not only to computers but also to the internet and email.
Just as the mass media played such a crucial role in bringing down the Berlin Wall, the internet in Indonesia proved a godsend not only for communicating the latest political rumours and analyses, but also for mobilising cultural and political activism. Unable to even keep a check on the whereabouts of celebrated dissidents such as Pramudya Ananta Toer, the authorities couldn't possibly monitor the millions of messages criss-crossing the borderless horizons of cyberspace.
Earth Exorcism performances were advertised primarily via the internet, email and the mass media, radically 'postmodernising' what is essentially an ancient ritual. According to its internet web-page 'manifesto': 'The Earth Exorcism is a number of small steps on the way to the path of a beautiful dream, the very beginning of a brave move to break free from the dead-end which has pinned down [Indonesians]. The Earth Exorcism rejects all the calamity that we have been burdened with. It is an effort to reinvigorate social cohesion, which can release the creative energies of the individual and society.'
Another characteristic of the exorcism was its highly democratic nature. For once Indonesia's artists managed to forget their artistic and ideological differences and participate as a unified, yet diverse, cultural movement.
Whilst Indonesia's more established cultural icons such as Emha Ainun Najib and Y B Mangunwijaya lent their considerable intellectual influence to writing essays in the mass media and addressing student rallies, the exorcism was also a chance for Indonesia's younger artists to come to the fore.
Fringe artists such as Jalu G Pratidina, Afrizal Malna, Erick Yusuf and Slamet Abdul Syukur were suddenly prominent. Music- drama was a common performance medium used by each of these artists, with dialogue at a minimum. Jalu's performance used almost 60 types of percussion instruments. Slamet Abdul Syukur's 'Wanderer' used a simple bamboo reed and a recording of a woman making love.
Afrizal Malna collaborated with choreographer Boi G Sakti in 'A Panorama of dad's death', a minimalistic performance involving dance, violins and poetry. As in many of the Ruwatan Bumi performances, in this drama sounds and movements often jarred, defying cohesion. Yet one unifying element was an almost overpowering sadness, with each dancer and darkly robed foot soldier expressing an existential angst that words couldn't possibly express.
Another performance without any coherent dialogue, Erick Yusuf's 'Bread and circuses', also used image and music to reflect the fragile state of Indonesia's collective psyche.In this unsettling drama, a soldier, a public servant and a sarong-clad villager sat at a table greedily eating bread and Pepsi. Naturally, as soon as the bread ran out, chaos took over. The public servant crouched into a foetal position, the soldier waved his gun around threateningly, and the villager circled the table, gesticulating angrily for more. Eventually, accompanied by a terrifying cacophany of synthesisers, each character was dragged off the stage to an unknown fate.
According to Erick Yusuf: 'Indonesia's present problem is a problem of bread and circues. As the people's access to their "daily bread" is hampered by the government's inability to provide economic equality, and as the circus comes to an end, it's only a matter of time before the people's anger will explode.'
Prostitutes and princesses
In the largest student city of Indonesia, Yogyakarta in Central Java, the performances were strongly oriented towards 'the common people', both in terms of the artists and their audiences. Popular pantomime artist Jemek Supardi brought his silent protest to the streets, and beside the Code River the Girli street people performed drama. Elsewhere some prostitutes performed their own play, humorously bemoaning the lack of business since the onset of the monetary crisis.
On buses it was not unusual to hear buskers singing self- penned songs venting their frustration and anger. In Jakarta unemployed actors walked bus aisles with outstretched hats, reciting poetry not only to criticise the government but also to pay for their next plate of rice.
Throughout Java the traditional wayang shadow puppet theatre thrived, using Java's much-loved puppets to present sharp satire. Many performances depicted stories from the Indian epic the Ramayana, which tells of the kidnapping of beautiful Sinta, Prince Rama's wife-to-be, by the evil king Rahwana. The political allegory was clear. Somehow the Indonesian people had to try and rescue the kidnapped nation from the clutches of their very own evil king, commonly perceived as President Suharto.
As with much of Indonesia's day-to-day politics, the student struggle was often seen in wayang terms. Two of the first students killed by the military happened to be named after wayang characters who had similarly unfortunate fates despite fighting for the 'good side': Moses Gatotkaca and Elang Lesmana. This fact added a certain element to the despondency that gripped the nation in their deaths.
Yet just as significantly, one of the student leaders, Rama Pratama, was, like his mythical namesake, eventually successful in rescuing his kidnapped beauty from the evil ruler.
Ascension
It is well known that May 20th 1998 was a highly significant date for the 'velvet revolution'. It was a national holiday charged with political significance. National Awakening Day marks the day in 1908 when student nationalist movements were born, dedicated to independence from Dutch colonial rule. Eventually, at 11pm on the 20th, Suharto decided to resign from his position as president.
What is not as well known is that the following day was also a national holiday, to mark the ascension of Jesus Christ. Whether Suharto deliberately chose May 21st to resign formally as opposed to another, less auspicious date is yet to be seen. Yet if the world is a stage and the last few months of the New Order were following a script to be played out, one could not ask for a more symbolic - nor more ironic - denouement.
Marshall Clark is writing a PhD on Indonesian literature at the Australian National University.
Inside Indonesia 56: Oct-Dec 1998
Amid the arson and looting last May, one Australian makes a strange discovery. Jakarta is still worth calling home.
Vanessa Johanson.
It was a day for the flaunting of all laws. There was considerable glee in it, the giddiness of leaping through shattered shop windows hugging electricals. Electricals you could never have afforded even the electricity for, and couldn't even resell these days.
Then the ripping reckless arson of the very same shops afterwards. The torchers and petrol-pourers - who only a few hours before had been mere bajaj drivers and unemployed builders with no claim to fame or power - said afterwards that they'd found hoarded goods in these shops, which belonged to Chinese traders notorious for heinous practices such as hoarding, especially in times of economic strain.
My household helper's husband said the same thing about the shop which he had helped torch, but when I asked him what the difference was between hoarding and keeping stock out the back of the shop, he didn't know.
Wasn't it the president who first used the word 'hoarding' when prices of everything started their upward spiral and people rushed the shops to buy like there was no tomorrow? Wasn't it he who linked it subtly with Chinese traders and suggested that it was a subversive act?
Iwan and I drove past the colourful bonfire of a Golden Truly supermarket on the way home from my office. It was Truly Golden as it threw flames and debris. Teenagers threw stones back at it, their waifish waists extending as they leapt like thin fleshless puppets into the air.
I shivered in fear inside the only motor car on the road. 'You catch bajajs from now on!' said Iwan, referring to the noisy little orange three-wheeler taxis of the poor. 'It's what the people use so it's the only safe way to travel.' Two long- haired boys jiggled madly at my car window. 'Hallo mister!', they yelled hysterically and ran away laughing. Just like any other day.
Glee
Around the front of the cigarette and lolly shop on the bend in our street on that Thursday 14 May, the day of no laws, there was the usual collection of neighbourhood folk coming, going, and those with nowhere really to go at all. Telling each other that they had been at home all day, anxious under an acrid brown sky, a sky plagued by pyromania along with the usual excess of flatulent vehicles. Anxiously waiting for their children on their way home from school.
The glint of glee in their eyes and a few white shiny-new bits of gadgets by their feet told it was only partly true.
For Iwan and me it was not the laws of property that shed us that day like clothing shed in a public place. It was the laws governing affection in a Muslim land. To be more precise we Came Out, publicly flaunting the laws which we had flaunted privately for ages by living together as best friends and friends only, a single man (Muslim) and a single woman (Western).
We walked out the door for the first time a duo, hand tightly gripped in hand. Morally immune as we walked up the bend past a couple of friends from the kampung, also hand-in-hand in a threesome with a heavy basket full of the spoils of the looting orgy, their faces starting to betray guilt and bemusement at the enormity of their actions.
Later we found out that in lots of neighbourhoods stolen goods had been carried back to their place of origin, after the protest was over, after the hate had been extinguished. And later again that some of the goods had been taken by police and soldiers with rank.
Friends on the phone told us that the law had gone out like electricity over the entire metropolis, resulting in thousands of shops and banks gutted and burnt in the sudden, momentary freedom to protest. Like a major shutdown the law stopped, blew out. We didn't think to ask the question till later: did someone flick the central switch to off? Who paid who to slice the wires of the superstructure, to cut the security grid that had buzzed through the city day and night for weeks before the Trisakti shootings?
Home
Iwan was taking me up the narrow street to find a bajaj, to find a People's Vehicle for the first leg of my trip which would end in a special government-chartered 747. The Embassy had finally used the words 'mandatory evacuation.' I decided that they must really mean 'get the hell out' because they knew something that we didn't know.
Which was odd because we felt safer at home than anywhere else. Iwan and I had both been home the night before. We'd cooked corn and tempeh and made pecel and talked passionately about where the reformasi should be headed. We could sense that the president's days were numbered - three months maximum, we gave him. Iwan supported the replacement of Suharto with Habibie because Habibie was brilliant, a civilian, and because he mixed with the Muslim intellectuals, some of whom were good community leaders and 'clean'.
I demanded that Iwan have more imagination than that. I argued that we shouldn't be so individualist in our discussions of the succession, expecting that Indonesian democracy and prosperity was all going to be embodied in the right leader, and that that noble saviour would make everything all right. The problem with that argument is that any real leadership talent has been repressed for three decades or more, I said. Not to mention the political structure which needed to be completely dismantled and a constitution which was long atrophied.
Iwan lay on the couch as we talked. Great machines thundered out on the main road - tanks, helicopters, trucks, planes - but we felt safe as fire-warmed cave men well-hidden from the predatory dinosaurs.
So when the embassy rang and said the words 'mandatory evacuation' we were sure that the West's superior intelligence agents had gotten wind of a coup attempt, an assassination, or something worse. I had an hour to pack two small bags of what turned out to be useless clothes and objects, and ring five or six friends.
Evacuees were told to gather at the American Club at midnight. I left Iwan outside the gate in the bajaj and it was like I'd climbed a gigantic wall into the West, never to return as far as he was concerned, never in the form of a true and loyal friend of him and his country, who stuck around through thick and thin.
Breaking another unwritten law, we hugged. He said: 'This isn't necessary'.
'It's for my family, they're dying of worry,' I replied, knowing that family unity was a good reason for doing all kinds of odd things in Indonesia, having been asked a million times why on earth I lived so far from my own - just for experience and work.
Wondering whether it was just for my family or whether an apocalypse really was nigh.
Then I crossed the Wall and saw what I never thought I'd see: American refugees.
Club
Big heavy expensive cases, heaped messily and black like the debris of a big blaze. The Club bar, bubbling with beer and the latest coup theories. Fashionable teenagers excited and speaking their International School gang's slang, flirting, and smoking at the dark end of the humming chlorine swimming pool. Someone on a megaphone in the Kijang-and-Mercedes-packed car park, telling the hundreds of us to move inside, outside, over here, over there.
Little plump blonde kids rubbing their eyes, running, and crashing out on aerobics mats in the aerobics hall.
I mooched. Chatted to a Kiwi who worked in the US Embassy. The only other non-American I could find. Would they let us on without a US passport, I asked? 'Yeah', he replied, breathing beer, 'Ye know, we do work for 'em'. 'So do a few thousand Indonesians,' I replied. 'Stick with me', he said. And I didn't.
At three a.m. the megaphone moved to the aerobics hall and announced, above the sprawled bodies, that tonight's flights were full and that we'd have to come back in 24 hours. There was a massive groan as a hundred anxious coup theories - the only thing now keeping the adults awake - sank a few metres. Maybe this was all just an outrageously tedious and expensive precautionary evacuation after all.
I stayed the night at a colleague's, knowing Iwan had gone off to a political meeting which would probably go all night, and not wanting to go home to an empty house and a tense neighbourhood.
Friday 15 May 1998
The city was silent the next day. My colleague and I had no cash or petrol and went out to search. The skies were blue, protected from pollution by a tank on every street corner which deterred most everyone from taking out their cars.
A few plumes of smoke danced like cobras against the sky.
Empty
Blok M had been, if anything, busier than ever since the collapse of the economy. Even the expensive department stores and supermarkets had been increasingly crowded every week. Did people go there to take in the magic show that was inflation, the unbelievable daily disappearance of prices and their replacement by new and preposterous ones? Or did they really come to buy things, to consume while they still had a little cash and a skerrick of security?
Blok M that Friday was eerily empty, the department stores chained up and guarded. Only a few orange People's Vehicles puttered through gaping empty intersections belching smoke at the tanks. As we sailed through the intersection in our bajaj we wondered about the latest chilling rumour - which already, at 9 am, had been corroborated by six phone calls with friends -that some of the tanks were controlled by Wiranto's men and some of them Prabowo's. That the two generals sought to battle it out in the dusk of Suharto's control. I looked past the tanks at the vast empty tracts of black bitumen and imagined the footpaths heaped with the terror of 1965.
Over the course of an hour we found out that ATMs all over South Jakarta were kicked in, torched, and empty. One burnt one had a polite sign on the door apologising that this ATM was out- of-service today and indicating where the nearest ones were located. Now that's service, we laughed.
We tried looking in Jalan Fatmawati. Why were Fatmawati's small side streets barricaded with bamboo and old chairs like the fences of village goat pens?
Then we saw Mitra supermarket. Or what had been Mitra and was now an enormous black fossil, burnt back to its cement bones. Dead black, no flames. No smoke. People wandering around, tiny below the black horror. They carried small white plastic-covered boards holding crumpled piles of carbon. Too small. Too small for the tiniest corpse other than one already cremated. Too small for the nightmare of the day before.
We gave up on the idea of cash.
In the light of that day, head aching from the late night at the Club, I decided on a different escape route. Plan #2 was on the Australian government. At least, logistically speaking.
'No more money for Tutut!' cried the triumphant taxi driver as we sailed through the three airport toll gates without paying. But I was glad the toll gates had been abandoned not just because the president's daughter would lose our Rp 7,000, but because I didn't have a spare Rp 7,000.
'Welcome Home!'
The Qantas chartered flight turned out to be the same as any other - except that it was 'fly now, pay later'. They made us sign a letter to promise we'd pay them a hefty sum of money, and that we wouldn't attempt to leave Australia again before doing so. Sounded like a dodgy deal but rumours were buzzing again in the neon-lit terminal and there was no bar to help make them seem funny.
The flight attendants grinned at us extra hard and treated us like we were all rather frail. Rather than saying 'thankyou' as we got off the plane in Sydney, they cried 'Welcome Home!'
Home was left behind me in Jakarta. And ahead in Melbourne. But I was too confused by the orderliness and space at Sydney airport to correct them.
Two hours later there were three people, three generations of my family, sooner than expected in the Melbourne airport. Looking a million times more relieved than I felt.
And a week later the president resigned. Three weeks later the Mandatory Evacuation order was lifted and I went home. To Jakarta.
Iwan came to get me. Jakarta seemed calm and the traffic was light. Leaving the airport we made way for school boys riding on the roofs of four speeding buses, brandishing banners. Iwan didn't even turn his head at the demonstration. These days you go past more demos than bakso vendors, he said.
At Radio Dalam he played porter, carrying on his small wiry shoulders my bag full of kilos of powdered milk for friends, and the bottle of port to celebrate my homecoming. Of which he'd only drink a little because it wasn't allowed (for a Muslim); while I'd smoke only one of his clove cigarettes because that too (for an Australian) was also in breach...
Vanessa Johanson is a writer living in Jakarta. Other names have been changed to protect their privacy.
Inside Indonesia 56: Oct-Dec 1998
An eyewitness watches the Irian Jaya independence movement grow.
Andrew Kilvert
Raising the West Papua flag is one of the key forms of resistance to Indonesia's 30 year rule over the province of Irian Jaya. Usually done in remote areas out of sight of the authorities and with all the trappings of nineteenth century colonialism, flag raisings are considered to be spiritual as well as political events by many Irianese. Reminiscent of the Papua New Guinea cargo cults which treat the symbols of colonial wealth and power as the actual key to that power, many Irianese people vest the West Papua flag with the power to influence the Indonesian occupation of their country.
Flag raisings are also taken very seriously by the Indonesian authorities. In 1996 Thomas Wanggai died in a Jakarta prison after receiving a life sentence for raising the West Papua flag in Jayapura. His wife received eight years for making the flag.
Jayapura
This year with Suharto gone and the military in flux, flag raisings took place for the first time in many of the urban centres in the province: Jayapura, Nabire, Sorong, Wamena, and Biak.
On July the 1st about 3,000 people assemble in central Jayapura in front of the provincial government building, whilst riot police and the military (Abri) take up positions around the town. The demonstrators begin making speeches and singing the independence anthem Papua Merdeka, 'Free Papua'.
The atmosphere is extremely tense as the flag is paraded up and down the street in front of the government building. Everybody is expecting the shooting to start at any minute. There are false alarms as either a warning shot is fired into the air or a policeman hits his riot shield with his baton. When this occurs the crowd panics and begins to flee. These people are then called back and the demonstration resumes. This happens three times during the afternoon.
As I move among the circle of supporters and spectators surrounding the demonstration, many of those standing close to cover ready to duck the shooting ask me to take pictures of the riot police and Abri. They are asking me to tell the outside world about their desire for independence. Some come up to me and whisper about how good life was under the Dutch and how difficult life is under Indonesian rule.
This rally is comprised of a big mixture of Irianese people, old, young, men and women. Some are educated white collar workers from Jayapura, but many are villagers who have come in for the event. There are even a few people born in Irian Jaya but of Javanese descent, here supporting the demonstrators.
One of the key problems in Irian Jaya is associated with land use and ownership. The Indonesian authorities have refused to recognise indigenous land use. Just as Australia was colonised on the basis of terra nullius, so too the Indonesian authorities consider land not being actively cultivated to be unused, even though it may be being used as part of a cycle of shifting agriculture, or for hunting or medicinal purposes.
The Indonesian response to questions of indigenous land rights is always: 'We are all indigenous Indonesians'.
This was highlighted in last year's Jakarta Festival, where cultural groups from all over Indonesia appeared in their traditional dress and performed dances. The group representing Irian Jaya were not Melanesian at all but Javanese migrants to Irian Jaya, dressed in a crude parody of traditional Papuan costume.
Papua
This confusion over culture and identity leads to the ambiguity of the term 'Irianese'. Indigenous Melanesians use it to describe themselves, as opposed to the Javanese. Other terms such as 'Papuan' and 'West Papuan' are considered treasonous and certainly cannot be used in public, although they are used in private.
The term 'Irianese' is supposed to include all people who live in Irian Jaya, including recent Javanese migrants. But in common usage it now means Melanesian. West Papuans who live outside Irian Jaya are much more likely to call themselves West Papuan than people inside. This is not because of differing sympathies but purely for reasons of personal safety.
After the first demonstration in Jayapura, Abri and the officially controlled local media blame the trouble on 'wild terrorist gangs' (GPK) from Black Water, a refugee camp on the Papua New Guinea side of the border.
As the protests continue Abri turn this blame onto the churches of this predominantly Christian territory, whom they accuse of inciting dissent within their congregations.
On July the 2nd there is to be a similar rally in Jayapura exclusively for white collar workers. However the town had been sealed off with barricades and lines of riot police. Jayapura, usually a bustling city, is silent and deserted except for police and Abri.
The following day another rally takes place at the Cenderawasih (Bird of Paradise) University. During the rally an undercover military intelligence agent who has infiltrated the crowd is identified by the students and beaten. After this the military open fire on the crowd, killing third year law student Steven Suripatti and wounding high school student Ruth Omin.
In the days prior to the demonstration many people had been talking about East Timor and its campaign for independence. Some believe that East Timor has already achieved independence. The general sentiment is that if East Timor can secede then Irian Jaya deserves independence as well.
Military
Support for secession from Indonesia is extremely widespread amongst the Melanesian population. A number of factors drives this desire. The history of large scale military action against Irianese villagers in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s has left long standing resentment. This is despite the fact that in the past decade these operations have decreased in scale, although they do still occur, most notably in the remote area where the foreign hostages were taken by independence rebels (Organisasi Papua Merdeka) in early 1996. Even the Red Cross has recently publicly criticised the Indonesian authorities because it has been excluded from providing drought aid to this area.
This military oppression is coupled with a growing resentment against the transmigration projects, which the Irianese see as land theft. So far over a million hectares of lowland sago swamp and rain forest have been cleared to make way for the transmigrants. There are plans to clear another million hectares in the next ten years.
At the current rate of expansion of the Javanese population in Irian Jaya it is believed that the Irianese will be a minority by the year 2010. Jayapura is already an Indonesian city in Melanesia.
A further factor which drives resentment in urban areas is that Melanesians are treated as second class citizens within the social hierarchy, with different rates of pay for the same work often set on the basis of race. At the heart of the resistance though is the simple and extremely widespread belief that Irian Jaya belongs to the Irianese.
Even many Irianese within the police and military support the independence movement. This was certainly evident on the island of Biak, where demonstrators kept the West Papua flag aloft for six days.
Biak
During that time the police unsuccessfully negotiated with the protesters to remove the flag. They brought in some of the elders of the community to try to persuade the protesters to remove the flag but they refused, despite the fact that Abri had brought in another battalion from Ambon Island.
At 5:30am on the 7th of July, Abri opened fire on the demonstrators with a combination of rubber bullets and live ammunition. Probably 24 people were killed in the initial shooting. An accurate figure as to the total number of casualties is impossible to get, because on the day following the shooting, Abri went from door to door arresting people and in some cases killing them in their homes.
Some of those arrested by Abri have since been found floating in the ocean, others were seen being put on Garuda flights to Jakarta.
The other contributing factor to the uncertain death toll is that Abri occupied the hospital, and the wounded were unable to seek proper medical treatment. There were also reports that the wounded detained in the hospitals were being denied treatment.
There is a popular belief throughout Irian Jaya that white people are going to come and rescue the Irianese from the Indonesians. This belief can be traced back to Biak mythology which holds that when a person dies they become white. Dutch colonialists unwittingly perpetuated this myth by coming along with remarkable technology (in the eyes of the locals) and an often superior attitude.
Because of their sea-faring history, the people from Biak Island have had the most outside contact of any of the peoples in Irian Jaya. They tend to be fairly sophisticated, often taking the white collar or teaching jobs in the towns. They also tend to travel more, which could account for the spread of the white myth throughout Irian Jaya.
Regardless of the unlikely event that white people will intervene in Irian Jaya, the Irianese themselves have seen a window of opportunity with the departure of Suharto and the resulting confusion within Abri. They are pressing it hard.
November contains another significant date for the West Papua independence campaign, and will likely produce more demonstrations. The issue will continue to ferment until either independence is achieved or until a compromise is reached which recognises indigenous land ownership and goes some way towards redressing the human rights abuses which continue to occur in the province.
Andrew Kilvert is a media student at Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia.
Inside Indonesia 56: Oct-Dec 1998
In May 1999 Indonesians take part in the first democratic elections in over forty years. How will they be run?
Kevin Evans
One of the first tasks President Habibie set for his administration was to revise Indonesia's political machinery. This includes revising three of the five political laws of 1985 (the pinnacle of Suharto's integralist vision for the state), as well as laws on the presidency, local authorities, government ethics and national security.
Government drafts of the laws governing political parties, elections and the legislature were being prepared for submission to parliament by early August. The public response to these draft laws will give an early indication of how far the Habibie administration is believed willing to push for substantive reform of the political system.
Among the proposed changes three are core.
District
First, a 'district' system of single member constituencies will replace the current 'proportional' system. Instead of being chosen by votes based on each province as a multimember regional block, as now, each member will be chosen only on the basis of votes in a single district, as in Australia's Lower House. The system will deliver 420 elected members to the national parliament (DPR), and others to the provincial and local DPRs.
There will be some exceptions. Abri wants to be given 10% of all seats at each level. Also, district members in the national DPR will be joined by some 75 other members elected on the basis of a single national 'district'. These extra parliamentarians will be chosen by consolidating losing party votes from each district into a national tally and dealing them out.
The purpose of incorporating a modified version of a proportional system is to overcome the 'winner take all' outcome of the district system. Parties which may have significant support nationally but insufficient in each district will be able to secure representation in the house.
There remains some opposition to adopting a district system, including the usual old lines about 'Indonesia is not ready for this sort of change' to 'this will encourage money politics in Indonesia'! The Indonesian Academy of Sciences (Lipi), one of the think tanks producing reform plans, and particularly the armed forces (Abri), remain somewhat unsure of moving to a district system.
A mixed system blending districts with proportionality is the most popular form of electoral reform around the world this past decade. Countries from New Zealand to Tunisia, and most in East Asia which have reformed their electoral system, have moved to a mixed pattern, with each adopting various modes of voting and percentages to be elected under each system.
Electoral commission
Second, the new General Elections Commission (Komisi Pemilihan Umum - KPU) will be independent. It will contain representatives from government, but also from the political parties eligible to join in the elections. Members of the community agreed to jointly by the first two groups will also be there. The commission chair need not be a government representative.
Provincial and local KPUs will also be established. Provincial KPUs will be permanent and independent of government.
The national KPU will propose the boundaries of district seats for the national DPR. In general, these will correspond with local authority boundaries. However, heavily populated local authority areas will have more than one district. Those with over 900,000 will gain two seats, 1,500,000 will gain three seats, 2,100,000 will gain four seats and so on. For example the regency of Bogor with about four million persons will be divided into seven separate districts.
Parties
Third, political parties may be freely established, providing they abide by the national ideology Pancasila. Should they wish to incorporate other ideological/ philosophical elements, these may not be opposed to Pancasila.
Political parties will be established by notarial act lodged at the courts, not at the Department of Home Affairs. This means that any legal issues will be settled by the law, and not by the government unilaterally.
Political parties seeking to participate in general elections need to demonstrate public support. They must have a presence in over half the 27 provinces, and have a certain minimum number of local branches.
Any party seeking to enter elections for the first time will also need to demonstrate popular support with a petition of one million signatures. This proposal is somewhat controversial.
Other issues
Members of the People's Assembly (MPR), which appoints the president, will not be elected directly but will be drawn from or appointed by lower parliaments.
Every province will send three representatives, each elected by the provincial DPR from among their own number. There will be no more provincial governors representing provinces in the MPR. A newly elected national DPR will determine how many members of what social and other groups (utusan golongan) should be appointed to the MPR. Groups considered to represent these groups will be asked to select an agreed number of representatives for the MPR. The executive will no longer be responsible for appointing regional representatives and utusan golongan.
Unlike today, the leaders of the DPR and MPR will be different people.
Moreover, the elections will be held on a holiday. Consequently people will be able to vote from home. This is generally considered to lead to less coercion to support particular parties than is the case when people have to vote at work.
Members of the armed forces may not vote, seek election or join a political party. Public servants may vote but may not join political parties or seek election. To do so will mean dismissal. The intent behind this provision is to encourage the emergence of a more professional, less politicised, bureaucracy.
There will also be strong measures to contain the commercialisation of political parties. Personal and corporate campaign donations will be subject to rigorous restrictions, and regular public audits of political parties will be reported to the KPU. This will encourage transparency and allow the public to know the financial support base of the political parties. Political parties must be not-for-profit organisations and may not own more than 10% equity in any commercial activity.
Most of these developments are clear steps in the direction of an open, competitive and responsive political format. However, there has already been debate from the community on certain government proposals:
The armed forces will still have representation (albeit reduced) in all the parliamentary assemblies as well as in the crucial MPR;
Some (although much fewer) restrictions will still apply on former followers of the communist party (PKI) and other outlawed organisations - specifically the right to be elected.
The result?
Over 40 new political parties have made themselves known in recent weeks. This has become a source of great fear to many people in Indonesia. They are beginning to fret that the 1950s pattern will reappear, when 130+ parties contested elections, and some 26 actually gained representation in either the DPR or the Constituent Assembly of the time.
Frankly, such concerns are silly, for three reasons. Firstly, a district-based system ensures that only dominant parties are capable of winning seats. In 1955, the last time a genuinely free election was held, only four parties secured over 80% of the vote. These were the nationalist PNI (23%), the Islamic Masyumi (22%), the Islamic Nahdatul Ulama (19%) and the communist PKI (17%). The PSSI, another Islamic party, was at 3% a long way back in fifth position.
Secondly, most of the new parties are really interest groups. They will be better placed if they were to act as lobbies rather than parties. An ideal example is the Indonesian Women's Party, which could secure vastly more influence as an Indonesian Women's Electoral Movement. It could pressure the political system through lobbying, encouraging, cajoling and threatening the major parties into taking account of their interests. No doubt some of these parties will discover this in time.
Thirdly, the number of parties will diminish through a process of absorption and merger. The political system will not come to resemble the banking system - there will never be 239 political parties!
Four parties
I expect the emerging party structure to consist of four large parties, broken into two pairs of coalitions, plus a plethora of small parties most of which will ultimately be absorbed into the larger parties. I do not expect to see the emergence of a single dominant party.
The first pair of coalition partners would consist of a Megawati party and a Nahdatul Ulama (NU) type party. This would mean the combination of a pluralist nationalist party with a rural Muslim oriented party.
The second coalition partners will consist of Golkar and urbanised and educated/ activist Islam. This would combine a corporatist nationalist party with an urban based Muslim oriented party.
The existing Islamically coloured party PPP is likely to split between supporters of either of the two Muslim oriented parties, although it may organisationally move closer to the Golkar coalition partner.
The existing secular party PDI, led by Megawati until Suharto ousted her in 1996, is likely to be retaken by Megawati this year. If not, it will die and some new political vehicle will be established from elements of the PDI which desert it to join with Megawati.
Golkar will obviously have an impossible task trying to sustain a result within cooee of what it has secured in the past six elections.
Where will the votes come from for these four major parties?
District
Megawati party: Urban areas of Java, Sumatra, Balikpapan, Menado, plus urban and rural areas of South Sumatra, Bali, West Kalimantan, West Nusa Tenggara (eastern half), East Nusa Tenggara, East Timor, Irian Jaya, plus one seat in Maluku.
NU related party: Rural areas in Java, also Madura and Southern Sumatra, Banjarmasin, Samarinda, rural South Sulawesi, West Nusa Tenggara (western half).
Golkar: Parts of rural Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi, and perhaps in parts of the two Nusa Tenggara provinces.
Icmi, Amien Rais, Muhammadiyah linked party: Urban and rural Aceh, West Sumatra, South Sulawesi, Gorontalo. It may pick up seats in urban and north coast Java (particularly western half), including South Jakarta through to Bogor.
In its most oversimplified form, the Megawati party and the modernist Muslim party will do battle for the urban and sub-urban regions while Golkar and the NU type party will battle for the rural areas. The Megawati party might also do battle with Golkar in the non-Muslim regions of eastern Indonesia and North Sumatra.
Among the possible additions to the party camps could be a Protestant and Catholic party, which could secure results in the largely Christian eastern regions especially in West Nusa Tenggara (eastern half), East Nusa Tenggara, Maluku, perhaps Irian Jaya and East Timor plus in the eastern parts of North Sulawesi. Such a group is more likely to feel comfortable with the Megawati/ NU camp, but going with the Golkar/ modernist coalition can not be totally dismissed.
1 August, 1998.
Kevin Evans is a Jakarta-based political economist.
Inside Indonesia 56: Oct-Dec 1998
Unlike Suharto, Habibie is too weak to ignore the people.
Gerry van Klinken
B J 'Rudy' Habibie, thrust into the presidency when Indonesia's elite deserted Suharto after the May riots, cuts a slightly ludicrous figure. While newspapers endlessly repeated demands to end nepotism, Habibie, to mark Independence Day, proudly pinned the nation's highest medal on his wife. As far as most people knew, she had been distinguished only by service to her husband.
Yet the world of the post-Suharto elite is transformed. The mansion in which they live has had a bomb through the roof. The peasants are banging at what's left of the door. And the elite can no longer agree among themselves what to do next. Once they could dismiss the clamour from below as so much noise. Today they are learning to talk.
Overwhelming
The nation's crisis is overwhelming. In July the economic slide that triggered it all went into its second year. Inflation was set to soar to 80% or higher. Growth, a robust 6-7% for years, may plummet to -15%. The rupiah's value against the US dollar wallows at a fifth what it had been in better times. 'No country in recent history, let alone the size of Indonesia', said the World Bank in a report, 'has ever suffered such a dramatic reversal of fortune'.
The number of Indonesians unable to buy basic necessities will quadruple to 80 million by year's end. Everywhere they are taking justice into their own hands. They scooped prawns out of commercial ponds and joyously looted coffee plantations. They staked out vegetable plots on the 'unused' lands of the rich, including Suharto's famous Tapos farm. In August some of the nation's best economists lambasted Habibie for lacking a crisis plan.
Meanwhile pressures multiplied on other fronts. Suharto left mass graves scattered from end to end of this vast archipelago. Regions long plagued by military operations now took advantage of the lifting of press controls to speak out.
Horrific stories of human rights abuse surfaced for the first time in the mainstream press as National Human Rights Commissioners in August opened the first of the graves in Aceh, one of Indonesia's most ignored trouble spots.
Persistent demonstrations in East Timor in June, obviously backed by the entire community, and then in Irian Jaya in July, threatened to make those regions ungovernable. Jakarta responded by offering 'autonomy' to East Timor, by withdrawing combat troops from there and from Aceh, and by mumbling less coherently about improving things in Irian.
On yet another front, ethnic Chinese Indonesians who had fled abroad after becoming the target of riots in May were reluctant to bring their money back. Habibie made soothing sounds but could offer them no guarantees of security.
Kissing babies
For years Habibie told people how Mr Suharto had promised he would one day be president. But when he was made vice- president in March he could not have guessed his slight frame would have to fill the top job within two months.
Once sworn in, he was a president with no political base. He initiated generous gestures in all directions. Many high profile political prisoners were released, including Ratna Sarumpaet, Sri Bintang Pamungkas, and Muchtar Pakpahan. (East Timor's Xanana Gusmao and the PRD's Dita Sari were among those to remain in gaol).
He recognised several independent unions - SBSI for workers, AJI for journalists. He lifted restrictions on new print media licences. He invited new political parties to register with the Interior Ministry. Hoping to forestall further riots, he persuaded the IMF to allow him to restore subsidies on several key items of food.
He abandoned Suharto's remote image and began kissing babies. If at times he was accorded less than the respect he desired, he was in no position to wield Suharto's favourite onomatopoeic threat to gebuk, or 'thump' opponents.
Yes, Habibie remained unconvinced that Suharto was corrupt. He also wore New Order methods of controlling opposition like an old cardigan. But persistent 'guerrilla' tactics by Megawati supporters made him back down from plans to attend the congress of the Suharto puppet version of the PDI. The backdown proved he would never be another Suharto.
Best of all, he promised elections by May 1999 and set in motion legislation to reform the draconian New Order electoral laws.
Army
Contrary to many predictions, also in this magazine, Abri showed no interest in taking over power. Armed forces commander Wiranto needed all his energies to combat a popular backlash against New Order militarism.
Wiranto also faced deep divisions within the forces, created by an anxious Suharto in recent years. Main troublemaker in this regard was Lt-Gen Prabowo Subianto. Suharto had pushed his ambitious son-in-law up through the ranks till he was far ahead of his class-mates.
Prabowo is a Shakespearian Richard III figure, his cruel rage perhaps derived from his well-known impotence, the result (many say) of a war injury. But his fascination with covert methods, first demonstrated as a captain in East Timor in the late 1980s, proved his undoing. In late August an internal military investigation resulted in his dismissal for kidnapping anti- government activists earlier in the year. But was it enough?
Even if Wiranto's own house had been in order, he might have argued the way soldiers did in Brazil and Argentina during the 1980s - let civilians take the rap for failing to halt the economic nosedive.
Indeed, the world is now less friendly to military regimes than it was when General Suharto took over in 1965. The Cold War is over. The price of oil, which fuelled Suharto's regime, collapsed years ago. Globalised information makes it more difficult to impose oppressive ideologies.
Golkar
To win his elections, Suharto had relied on a big bureaucratic machine. Now Golkar is a shadow of its former self.
Habibie's man in Golkar, executive chairman Akbar Tanjung, only just fought off an internal challenge by retired soldiers allied with Suharto himself in early July. Incredibly, Suharto still controls the vast slush funds Golkar always used to win elections, and he seems keen to use them against his successor. A Golkar without Abri support appears likely.
Golkar, in other words, has become a nice little mud wrestling pit, like an Eastern European communist party after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Nothing, but nothing, is off the agenda. None of the sacred symbols of the New Order are any longer taboo - not the Pancasila ideology, not the 1945 Constitution, not even a united Indonesia. Where once to speak of human rights was un-Indonesian, now everyone from Suharto's children up talks human rights as if the nation's future depends on them, which indeed it does.
Learning curve
Suharto's very strength invited oppositionists to focus on him as the source of the nation's troubles. But Habibie's weakness means those who want change have had to look away from the presidency towards Indonesian civil society itself. The learning curve, not just for the elite but also for a society kept dumb by sheer terror for half a lifetime, seems impossibly steep.
One reason for the only dim euphoria among many activists is that they don't always like what they see. Many of the new political parties appeal to religious sentiment rather than to more universal as well as more pragmatic considerations of social justice and welfare. Shadowy elite figures still get away with dirty tricks like fomenting riots. Too much public discourse focusses on individuals rather than on the why and how of revitalising institutions that will outlive them.
However, the reality is that Habibie's weakness is creating a negotiating culture not seen in the New Order before. Suharto had a murderous army in his personal grip. Habibie does not. He came to power amidst riots so severe they brought down his venerated master. He has a salutary fear of the chaos the masses can cause if he displeases them. What else can he do but placate?
It is possible that calls for law-and-order by those hankering after the fleshpots of the New Order may yet cut short this window of opportunity. More likely is that, even if Habibie does not last much longer, the next president will be little different to Habibie. For now, this may be the new Indonesia.
The onus is now on civil society to stop craving for a strong president and start negotiating the constitutional shape of a more democratic Indonesia, in which, despite their secret admiration for Suharto-style dictators, the elite will have learned to talk.
Gerry van Klinken edits 'Inside Indonesia'.
Inside Indonesia 56: Oct-Dec 1998
Globalisation roadkill
After months of blaming Indonesia's economic crisis on Indonesians, the world's big players are finally coming round to the view that it was their own push for free markets that caused it. Indonesia, as one journalist put it, is globalisation roadkill. This puts more onus on the world to give help that helps. But how do you do that? In this issue of Inside Indonesia we go to the grassroots of the economic crisis.
The statistic 'half the population below the poverty line' is shocking. Yet it hides as much as it reveals. Not until we step with Lea Jellinek into the homes of the once upwardly mobile on Jakarta's outskirts and hear hungry kids crying in empty lounge rooms - the furniture sold for food - do we feel that this is a human crisis.
Statistics without a human face is one form of Western ignorance. The idea that Indonesians merely need a handout is another. Not until Jane Eaton shares with us the dreams of street kids in Semarang, not until Vanessa Johanson introduces us to some village parents in Java, unemployed yet determined to keep their kids at school, do we see that Indonesians are not beggars. They are innovative battlers.
A big part of that battle is to regain control over their own country. For too long it has been run as the playground of a tiny elite. Infid, the coalition of Indonesian and foreign non- government organisations, has no illusions that a transition to democracy under crisis conditions will be easy. They are simply convinced the present troubles prove the need for more change, not less.
The political aspects of that struggle, somewhat muted this time because we want to highlight the social impact of the economic downturn, will get the spotlight in the next edition.
Gerry van Klinken, Editor.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
After four years covering the big stories in Jakarta, an Australian journalist revisits the Sumatran village where his journey began.
Jim Della-Giacoma
From Sungai Penuh all the way up the Kerinci valley floor the concrete power poles lead the way to the village of Pungut Hilir. When I first called Pungut Hilir home in December 1991 there were no such punctuations in the luminous green rice paddies. Once there was not even a sealed road or trustworthy bridge to cross. This time I found development, including roads and bridges, had come to this remote and beautiful spot.
In the training in Canberra in the weeks before our trip in 1991, which did not to prepare us at all for village life, we had earnestly debated the meaning of cultural exchange. It was a two-way street, we said. Giving and taking experiences. But I think the four weeks in Kerinci taught me most about the vast gulf between myself and the average Indonesian farmer.
Somehow I still got hooked and kept coming back to Indonesia, but never quite made it 'home' to Jambi. However, Pungut Hilir was never to leave my thoughts. It was always a precious yard stick, held by few foreign correspondents, as I traversed the many faces of Indonesia.
That last month in 1991 when 16 young Australians and 16 Indonesians crawled out of our chartered bus after a 14-hour bus trip from the sweltering plains of the provincial capital Jambi, we found a quaint tin roofed village amid the wet season mud. Our Country Road shirts and dress moccasins called Donalds were soon collecting dirt.
Coca Cola We found a new world in the cool mountains of the Sumatran range, home to about 300 people. Simple and, for the most part, honest village dwelling folk. We soon discovered life in Pungut Hilir would be no holiday. It had no electricity, taps, toilets, telephones, television or alcohol. We even had to order up Coca Cola from the district town. It did, however, have the Pungut river running through it. A bathroom, toilet, laundry and swimming pool all in one.
My homecoming took place after a four year stint in the seething metropolis we called the Big Durian, where I had a front row seat in the events of May 1998 as Indonesians exposed their violent alter ego. I had returned, in part, on a quest for the idyllic Indonesia of my past.
This time I took a half-hour motorbike ride. It looked like little had changed. Being the first from our group to return I was slightly nervous about what I might find. But I need not have worried. The events in Jakarta seemed to have passed Pungut Hilir by. I found everybody as laid back as ever watching television.
Electricity had arrived in 1994 and in its wake dozens of television satellite dishes had sprouted from the roof tops. Even the primary school had one.
My unannounced arrival caught the village head Ramli sitting on a mat in front of his own colour screen with family and friends. There are still no telephones and the timing of my trip had been uncertain until the last minute. I was momentarily embarrassed when I reported my presence as I didn't know Ramli, but he seemed to remember me. 'You've changed Jim. You didn't have a beard when you were here.'
I came on a sunny Friday afternoon. The village had stayed in from the now deserted fields after weekly prayers at the mosque. They were all doing well, Ramli said, still dressed in his 'Friday best' sarung. 'The price of rice has doubled, but that's okay. We're the ones selling it,' he said with a casual air oblivious to those in Java suffering from the nation's economic collapse. Crisis? What crisis?
Do-gooders
Back in 1991, with the sincerity of all do-gooders, we had set about building a system to pipe water from a nearby hillside to a concrete and brick tank near the primary school. Elsewhere we dug three wells and leveled a volleyball court with villagers pitching in to help in a classic case, or so we thought, of gotong royong.
In between we entertained them with songs from Australia, including the famous rendition of Waltzing Matilda in Indonesian - Ayo Berjalan. We tried to teach the children Australian Rules Football. Nobody seemed to know what happened to the balls we left behind, donated to the vain cause by the Victorian Football League. They played the real football in Kerinci and the kids would kick the oval shaped balls along the ground when they thought we weren't watching.
By the time I returned the three wells had been built over by a department of public works project the year before. They clearly had not been in use. Of the four government provided water tanks I saw only one still worked. I guess the government didn't have much success either.
'Why should people bother,' the village chief's son remarked as we stood beside the white washed toilet block with its two bathrooms complete with porcelain squat toilets. 'The river's right there.' He pointed to the women washing in it nearby to make his point. They were doing things as they'd always been done in the Pungut River. Washing, bathing and defecating in the river in full view of anybody who cared to watch. Any many did watch the strangers back in 1991.
A troupe of children stopped watching television to follow me like the Pied Piper across the bubbling river to the house of Pak Mat Idris, my host for four weeks back in 1991.
He too had his eyes glued to the box in silence with a group of old men and young boys. Time had made me forget many things, including the stiff formality with which Mat Idris ran his household and how uncomfortable I felt with it. Each meal ran like clockwork as the men and boys ate sitting on a mat on the floor in the main room of the wooden Malay-style house. The women and girls stayed bare foot and in the kitchen. When called, they crept carefully out along the floor to the edges of the room with fresh food or to clear plates.
This time I had to ask politely three times to my host to call the women, including his daughter and new grandson, to include them in a photograph. The camera caught us sitting stiffly on an old couch. A well off rice farmer with more than one hectare of paddy and hillside gardens, Mat Idris was never one for idle chatter. There were long pauses between our questions and answers during which we both were grateful that the television hadn't been turned off.
No reply
'When you left we never thought we'd see you again,' he said. 'I got all your letters,' he added. But he never replied, I recalled. I'd stopped writing after I received no reply. The link with the village was broken a year after we left. Illiteracy was perhaps as much a barrier as anything.
'It's much the same around here, not much has changed since you left. But we do have electricity now' he said, pausing, 'and television'. He pointed to the new 14-inch set that dominated the room with the gathered crowd arching around it.
As we sat I recalled pacing his balcony every night while the children watched from below as I manipulated the aerial on my tiny short wave. It was there I heard that Paul Keating had toppled Bob Hawke.
Mat Idris and I had never really connected during my time there. But my days in the village were the first time I found myself comfortable with Indonesia and Indonesians. I'd never got a good night's sleep on his floor with only one blanket between up to four people a night.
This time I kept my ojek driver with his motorbike on stand-by to return to Sungai Penuh and a real bed. He never asked me to stay, I never suggested it.
Our worlds were too far apart. Mat Idris had only once in his 40-odd years been to the provincial capital, let alone Jakarta or overseas. I was a child of migrants who had crossed the world to a new life in a multi-cultural land. Mat Idris was happy going nowhere but his fields or the 10km to Sungai Penuh to sell his rice. I returned on the verge of migrating again across the globe.
But things had progressed in seven years and television was the medium responsible. 'We sometimes watch Australian television,' Mat Idris volunteered at one point. 'But nobody in the village speaks English so we don't understand much. We just watch the news. I see you had a flood, too.' It was the first time I felt we had made a connection. Mat Idris and I finally had something in common.
Jim Della-Giacoma was a correspondent with AFP and Reuters in Jakarta. He now lives in the Washington DC area. His first visit to Pungut Hilir was as member of the Australia-Indonesia Youth Exchange Program.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Ayu Utami, Saman, Jakarta, KPG (Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia), 1998, ISBN 979-9023-17-3, 208pp.
Reviewed by MARSHALL CLARK
Saman is said to be merely the first part of Ayu Utami's forthcoming novel, tentatively titled Laila tak mampir di New York ('Laila didn't call in New York'). Nevertheless, it is thoroughly worth considering in its own right.
Saman stands out amongst recent Indonesian fiction. Ayu's confident storytelling technique adequately carries the weight of a broad thematic scope, highlighting the full complexity of previously shunned issues such as female sexuality and the struggle between personal faith and political action.
Although Saman attempts to present an intimate psychological portrait of a group of young Indonesian women, plot-wise it is dominated by the mental and physical challenges faced by a politically-engaged Catholic priest, Wisanggeni, or Wis, who is assigned to a parish in South Sumatra. After becoming involved in an armed struggle between villagers and government-backed developers, Wis is smuggled out of Indonesia and changes his name to Saman.
At times, Saman is simply impossible to put down, an unusual experience when reading an Indonesian novel. Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why between April and August this year Saman went through six editions. By Indonesian standards, this is a spectacular turnover.
Elsewhere, for this reviewer at least, Saman is somewhat confusing, with numerous flashbacks and changes in narrative voice occurring seemingly at random. Certainly Ayu seems hesitant at times, most noticably with the deeper psychological motivations of several of her main characters, particularly male characters such as Wis and Sihar.
Yet minor quibbles such as these may be easily resolved when Saman appears in its entire form. That is, if it appears in its entire form. Despite the huge praise for Saman, there has also been some public doubt about the novel's authorship. Many believe that Saman is simply too good a novel to be written by a female journalist not yet thirty years of age with virtually no previous literary output.
Part of the reason for such criticism, which appears to be largely unfounded conjecture, is that if Ayu really did write Saman then she must be greeted as one of the most promising young writers to emerge in Indonesia over the last decade. Furthermore, with the literary careers of New Order cultural icons such as Pramudya Ananta Toer, Rendra, Umar Kayam, YB Mangunwijaya and even Emha Ainun Nadjib appearing to be winding down, Ayu Utami's emergence is a strong reminder that reformasi should stretch much deeper than politics.
Marshall Clark is a PhD student at the Australian National University, Canberra.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
David T Hill (ed), Beyond the horizon: Short stories from contemporary Indonesia, Melbourne, Monash Asia Institute, 1998, ISBN 0-7326-1164-4, 201pp.
Reviewed by RON WITTON
Soon after the New Order was established in 1966, an innovative monthly cultural and literary journal named Horison ('Horizon' in English) appeared. The writers who established it were brought together by their opposition to the socialist-realist demands of the left-wing Institute for People's Culture (Lekra), so influential in Sukarno's Indonesia.
These 22 short stories were selected from the thousands published in Horison over the last thirty years. They provide a veritable rijstafel of personal experiences of what the New Order meant to ordinary people. In the introduction David Hill explains the origins of Horison, and the context of the stories selected. He ensured a selection of women writers, even though they are relatively poorly represented throughout Horison's history.
The translations are excellent. They meet the ultimate test of a good translation, that is, that one is rarely, if ever, aware one is reading a translation. For those teaching Indonesian language, providing students with copies of the stories in the original Indonesian would constitute a wonderful teaching tool to complement this book.
With the end of the New Order and the dawning of reformasi, many observers will begin to consider the human cost of the so-called Era of Development. Readers are here invited to savour the great diversity of ways the human condition was affected by this era.
They range from the feelings of a person from the jungles of Irian Jaya transported to Jakarta, to the manner in which an honest civil servant dealt with pressure to become corrupt.
We taste a little of what life was like in a political concentration camp. We learn of the difficulties of those many millions forced to relocate from rural areas to work in low-paid urban jobs, in the construction industry, in factories or in prostitution. We see how urban and foreign money impinged on rural areas.
We have here a series of snapshots of the rakyat, the ordinary people of Indonesia, as they tried to live with forces far too great for them. Yet threads of humour and satire are woven throughout many of the stories.
Ron Witton <rwitton@uow.edu.au> teaches Indonesian at the University of Western Sydney and the University of Wollongong.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
'Kecoa', by Yudi, Yaddie, Eri, & Arief (Balai Pustaka, 1998).
Like Ayam Majapahit (featured in Inside Indonesia, July-September 1998), Kecoa was also a first place winner in the 1997 Comic Competition held by the Director General of the Ministry for Education and Culture. Like the other winners, these comics are very difficult to find.
Kecoa is a story of heroism in the face of extreme personal fear, which takes place toward the end of the Japanese occupation (1942-45). Kecoa is the nickname given to a young farmer because of his intense fear of cockroaches (kecoa) in a place overrun by them. Kecoa, however, rises to the occasion and bravely faces Japanese cruelty and internal treachery from within the ranks of the local militia. This frame shows the excitement among the militia when they hear on 17 August 1945 that independence has been proclaimed. The cry is 'Merdeka!', 'Freedom!'.
Laine Berman.
Dr Laine Berman teaches at Deakin University, Melbourne. A photocopy is available from her for AU$12 (including postage): Aust & Internat Studs, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood Vic 3125, Australia, fax +61-3-9244 6755.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Amid the beauty, and the sensuality, that is Javanese music, this famous female singer wants to recreate her role.
Jody Diamond interviews Nyi Supadmi
Surakarta (Solo), Central Java
I began studying female voice, or pesindhen, when I was 12 years old. Since elementary school I have sung with feeling. If a song was sad, I would cry too, and if the meaning of the text was happy, I would be as happy as someone who is laughing. In 1971 I made new cengkok [musical phrases] that I included in recordings on many Indonesian labels: Lokananta, IRA, Irama, Fajar, Cakra. Then, alhamdulillah, many of my friends in the arts criticised me.
Why?
Because I was too bold. 'Why did you include those cengkok?' they said. Well I just kept on, even though many of my enemies did not back off. In 1972 I taught in America, and I developed more new cengkok. The next year I was not too active as a singer. My husband didn't want me to be, because many people think pesindhen are flirtatious. When I didn't sing, I studied how to write sindhenan notation with Sutarman and Martopangrawit. I was invited to teach singing at Aski (now STSI), the arts academy in Solo. But my husband didn't know about it. Then he died and I had to make a living.
Were you hesitant to ask your husband's permission to work at Aski?
I was brave enough, but I had to guard the family peace as well.
Did you ask your husband's permission at that time?
I did. Only...
What did he say?
Well, he answered: 'Up to you.' Usually if a Javanese person says 'up to you' it's more serious than yes or no.
Does 'up to you' mean 'it is better if not'? Did your husband prefer you to be at home?
Yes. Going to recordings was okay. It was performing that was the problem. When I was still young, like age 22, sometimes the dhalang [shadow puppet master] would flirt and make rude noises at the pesindhen. This is what my husband disagreed with. This is a problem in Indonesia. If there is one or two pesindhen but 15 male musicians, it is like a flower in the field of grass - many look at it and talk about it. This is not really that strange, I think, because there are many leaves and branches, but only a few flowers, so of course people look at what is beautiful.
When your husband died, that was unfortunate, but that is what gave you the opportunity to teach?
Yes, that's true. It's really sad, of course, but maybe it was God's wish that I work in the arts again. I started work at Aski in 1981, teaching singing. I made a dictionary of vocal phrases, Kamus Sindhenan. But, guess what, some people didn't like my book. At that time most pesindhen learned orally, so this was like a kind of eavesdropping! They studied from radio or tape, just listening to other singers, and they didn't want to study from notation. Most people who studied pesindhen did it by ear, and they were not used to reading notation.
What is the role of the pesindhen in Javanese society?
In former times they were considered not so polite because the origin of pesindhen was women who would dance with men, and who would embrace them and get money. Sometimes women were jealous of the pesindhen. But our role is really just to entertain those who might be sad or confused in their hearts. The pesindhen can even entertain without being aware of what is in the soul of the listener.
If you could imagine a more ideal situation in the future for pesindhen, what would it be?
I think we need to clear the way for a process by which people would see that pesindhen are part of society too. I think an organisation would help, one that would give guidelines and education, and show that the pesindhen doesn't have to only sing, but she can also play instruments and make notation. Also we should remember that we do not need to be enemies with each other, it is not a competition to be better than someone else, or to make more money, or have finer clothes and fancy jewelry.
You must focus on matters of art, not adornment?
Yes. What is important is the development of the art of sindhenan, not the development of our jewelry or blouses. We must be able to speak well, be able to sing well, be able to converse well whether it is with a Minister or a General. We must not be quiet and fearful - this is part of the mental education. I want very much to promote these ideas.
What is it like to teach foreigners?
I am happy and proud that there are foreigners who want to study sindhenan and traditional singing. But I must explain many difficult musical concepts or translate the texts. Some students have trouble with their vocal ornaments or their sound is too western.
What is your experience with Indonesian composers?
I think that in earlier times if one got new inspiration [it was from] what was experienced by people. This was the impetus for arts, yes, inspiration from sadness or happiness or anger. These feelings are what humanity has been given, and these can be expressed through the arts. I worked with Ki Nartosabdho, who arranged many works for chorus with words about the wayang [shadow puppet theatre]. He was very creative.
Did his inventiveness influence you?
It opened my heart, so that I felt that not only could the musicians and the dhalang have new ideas, but the pesindhen herself. I saw that all humans could be creative, and make something from that inspiration.
Nyi Supadmi
Supadmi was born in Klaten, near Solo in 1950. She is currently on the staff of STSI Surakarta, the national arts academy in Solo. In 1989 she founded the organisation Pawarti, or Paguyuban Swarawati, dedicated to the education of female gamelan singers and the improvement of their status as artists. She has several books of vocal notation published in Indonesia, and her books and scores for her compositions are published and distributed by the American Gamelan Institute (http://www.gamelan.org or email agi@gamelan.org).
Nyi Supadmi's life and compositions are discussed in great detail in a dissertation by Susan Pratt Walton, 'Heavenly nymphs and earthly delights: Javanese female singers, their music and their lives,' University of Michigan, 1996, UMI # 9712166.
Writings
Cengkok-cengkok Srambahan & Abon-abon. A 'dictionary' of vocal cengkok arranged by text, pathet (tonal hierarchies), seleh (goal tone) and syllable length.
Ladrang: Sindhenan Ladrang Slendro & Pelog. Balungan (melodic outline) and pesindhen part for 32 classic ladrang (a musical form).
Palaran: Gaya Surakarta & Gaya Yogyakarta. 59 Palaran (poems set with free rythm gamelan accompaniment) in Surakarta style, 21 in Yogyakarta style, and 49 in 'Surakarta style pelog nyamat.'
These three books have been published in Indonesia and
internationally by the American Gamelan Institute.
Kumpulan Jineman, 1988, Surakarta: Taman Budaya Surakarta.
Compositions
Ketawang Panalangsa
Langgam Ngudhup Turi
Langgam Panjang Mas Langgam Ora Ngira
Lelagon Geculan: Ngaco
Ketawang Pangkur Sawiji
Ketawang Sendhang Melathi
Langgam Anteping Sih
Jody Diamond is a composer, performer and publisher. She lives in the USA in Lebanon, New Hampshire, where she is director of the American Gamelan Institute. In 1996 she was a Fellow of the Asia Institute and Music Department at Monash University in Melbourne, where she founded a composers' gamelan group. In 1988- 89 she was in Indonesia as a Senior Fulbright Research Fellow, and worked on a survey of Indonesian composers. This interview was excerpted from one of nearly 60 completed during that year. She may be contacted at Jody.Diamond@dartmouth.edu.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Marwan Yatim's story of torture
Marwan Yatim
I was a political prisoner sentenced to six years gaol in the Free Aceh case. Indonesian soldiers arrested me roughly at my office on 3 October 1990. At the Lampineung intelligence headquarters my entire body was beaten with fists, kicks, sticks and whips while they cursed me. They then stripped me to my underpants and put me in a 1x2m cell. Inside were two other prisoners. Their faces were full of puss, and their shoulders and legs full of wounds. We slept directly on the concrete, always fearing more torture while hearing other humans scream in pain.
Under an oppressive sun another man and I were joined at the shoulders and told to carry a large rock, already hot from the sun, for two hours. Every time the rock fell we were beaten.
From the tigers den of Lampineung we were moved to the Lhok Nga gaol not far away. But soldiers from Company B would come especially to torture us, without asking any questions. During the first week it happened every evening. My nose was broken by a soldier named Zulkarnein. In the morning Company B commander Joko Warsito, in front of his men, arrogantly stomped on my chest and face with his boots. In the evening his subordinate Syukri tortured me for three hours in a bath full of water.
About 300 people were arrested for Free Aceh in Banda Aceh. All were tortured. Even the courtroom was taken over by the military. All the proceedings were dictated by the military command, Korem 012/TU. No denial was accepted. Justice never came into it.
Even after we were handed over to civilian warders, nothing could be done without the recommendation of Korem 012/TU. There was no medicine for the sick. Several of my friends died in gaol.
Marwan Yatim now lives in Sydney, Australia.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Aceh is a neglected human rights horror story.
IRIP News Service
Marwan Yatim (see article 'In the Tigers Den' this issue) was lucky. He escaped with his life. A local government enquiry recently concluded 430 had died in 1989- 92, while 320 remain missing. Hundreds of houses were burned, cattle, cars and jewelry stolen. And that was only in the North Aceh regency of Aceh province. Data on the possibly hundreds of women raped remains sparse.
Just over a month after Suharto's resignation, local newspapers in Aceh, north Sumatra, began a determined campaign to expose abuses during a military anti-secessionist operation between 1989 and 1992. The metropolitan press soon picked it up.
Early in August the National Human Rights Commission said the situation in Aceh had been worse than that in East Timor and Irian Jaya. A few days later the Commission was digging up mass graves under the media spotlight. Many more graves remain unopened.
In response, armed forces commander General Wiranto on 7 August went to Aceh to apologise for human rights abuses, and to announce that the province's dubious 'special operations' status had been revoked. Much aid has flowed into Aceh since then.
Acehnese proudly remember Sultan Iskandar Muda (ruled 1607-36), who made Aceh the most powerful state in the region. Europeans began seriously to press in during the imperialistic nineteenth century. In 1873 the Dutch launched a costly and bloody war against Aceh. Despite superior arms, it took them four decades to win effective control against Acehnese guerrilla tactics.
When Indonesia proclaimed its independence in 1945, Acehnese leaders lent crucial support. But they were disappointed that Jakarta gave Islam, and themselves, far less importance than they had hoped. Aceh joined a major regional rebellion in 1953. Fighting wound down after the Acehnese won an agreement with Jakarta in 1959 that extended autonomy to Aceh.
In 1971 Mobil Oil discovered massive natural gas reserves in North Aceh. The Lhokseumawe liquid natural gas plant became the biggest in the world, supplying 30% of Indonesia's oil and gas exports. Industries mushroomed around it, and with it pollution and social disruption.
However, the Acehnese were well aware there was little in it for them. This was perhaps the main reason for the resurgence in 1989 of an Acehnese secessionist movement that had been led for years by Hasan di Tiro from his exile in Stockholm. The military crackdown that followed left deep wounds in Acehnese society that are only now being exposed.
Wiranto's apology is not enough. The Acehnese want justice for the terrible abuses of 1989-92, and they want a better deal on the natural wealth of the region. They also want independence, or at least they want the 1959 autonomy agreement revived.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Suharto always said it was the communists. Yet from the start, says Colonel Latief, Suharto himself was involved.
Greg Poulgrain
Indonesian President BJ Habibie has refused to release Colonel Latief, whose arrest in 1965 for involvement in a military coup was followed by Major-General Suharto's rise to the presidency.
Habibie has granted amnesty to 73 other political prisoners, even to members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) accused of involvement in the 1965 coup attempt. Refusing amnesty to Latief now shows how Suharto overshadows Habibie.
Interviewed in Cipinang Prison, Jakarta, three days after Suharto resigned, Latief told me that he expected never to be released. Despite various kidney operations and the stroke he suffered last year, Latief is still very alert. His explanation for his involvement in 1965 directly implicates Suharto.
By late 1965, President Sukarno was ailing and without a successor. Tension between the PKI and the armed forces was growing. Conspiracies rumours were rife. Who would make the first move?
On the night of 30 September 1965, six hours before the military coup, Latief confirmed with Suharto that the plan to kidnap seven army generals would soon start. Latief was an officer attached to the Jakarta military command. As head of the Army Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad), Suharto held the optimum position to crush the operation, so his name should have been at the top of the list. When troops who conducted the kidnappings asked why Suharto was not on the list, they were told: 'Because he is one of us'.
There was a rumour the seven generals were intending to seize power from Sukarno. Latief and two other army officers in the operation, Lieutenant-Colonel Untung (in charge of some of the troops guarding Sukarno's palace) and General Supardjo (a commander from Kalimantan), planned to kidnap the generals and bring them before President Sukarno to explain themselves.
The 30th September Movement was thus a limited pre-emptive strike by pro-Sukarno officers against anti-Sukarno officers. They kidnapped the generals and occupied strategic centres in Jakarta's main square, without touching Suharto's headquarters. The plan involved no killing, but it went terribly wrong and six of the seven died.
Although Untung was assigned responsibility for collecting the generals, this crucial task was then taken over by a certain Kamaruzzaman alias Sjam, evidently a 'double agent' with contacts in the Jakarta military command as well as the PKI. At his trial, Sjam admitted responsibility for killing the generals but blamed the PKI under Aidit. In 1965 when Suharto accused the PKI of responsibility for killing the generals, the Sjam-Aidit link gave Suharto enough leverage to convince his contemporaries.
Between Sjam and Suharto there was a twenty-year friendship going back to the fight against the Dutch in Central Java in 1948-49. This strengthened in the late 1950s when both attended the Bandung Staff College.
Suharto was also on close terms with Untung, who served under him during the campaign to reclaim Netherlands New Guinea in 1962 and who became a family friend.
During his trial in 1978, not only did Latief explain that he met Suharto on the night of the coup, but also that several days before he met both Suharto and his wife in the privacy of Suharto's home to discuss the overall plan. The court declared that this information was 'not relevant'.
Suharto, more than anybody, described the events that night as 'communist inspired'. Suharto's claim that he saw the slain generals' bodies had been sexually mutilated was shown to be deliberately false by post-mortem documents, not revealed till decades later. This false claim provoked months of killings against communists, particularly in Bali and Central and East Java.
The PKI, numbering 20 million, were mostly rice farmers. Accused en masse they became victims in one of the worst massacres this century. In the opinion of the author, many writers underestimated the death toll, which may be around one million persons. Another 700,000 were imprisoned without trial. The most notorious general involved, Sarwo Edhie, claimed not one but two million were killed. 'And we did a good job', he added. Traumatised by violence, the nation became politically malleable.
Using Suharto's own categorisation of crimes related to 1965, his prior knowledge of the alleged coup places him in 'Category A' involvement - the same as those who faced execution or life imprisonment.
The release of Colonel Latief is a litmus test of Habibie's willingness to promote genuine reform. Fewer than ten long term prisoners remain. Latief has pleaded: 'Most of them are already 70 years old and fragile. For the sake of humanity, please take notice of us.'
Dr Greg Poulgrain <g.poulgrain@qut.edu.au> is a research fellow at the School of Humanities, QUT Carseldine.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Islam is more important today than ever before. Four leading individuals state their case.
Hisanori Kato
'Milik pribumi', owned by natives. I saw this sign on the shutters of shops from the window of a city minibus. Its owners first put up the sign to avoid the wrath of rioters targeting Chinese businesses last May. At the end of September 1998, everything in Jakarta seemed normal, except this sign and some ruined buildings.
I knew something significant was going on in this society. Democratisation? Reformation? Or political manoeuvre for survival? I really wanted to find out what it was. So I decided to visit the people who would be key players in this 'something'.
Gus Dur
His doctor advised Abdurrahman Wahid, affectionately known as Gus Dur and the chairperson of Nahdatul Ulama, to work less. But his life seemed as hectic as before his operation in January 1998. I was lucky enough to have a long conversation with him. His warm, friendly and humorous nature made me feel at home, and brought lots of laughs to our discussion.
Yet he became serious when I asked him about racial and religious tension in Indonesia. 'Muslims blame non-Muslims (mainly ethnic Chinese), and also non-Muslims complain about their condition. This needs to be reconciled.' He went on: 'I am very much willing to head a National Reconciliation Committee if it is formed.'
'What do you think Suharto should do now?' I asked him. 'He should return all the money he collected during his presidency to the treasury of Indonesia, and apologise to the people.' 'That is a good idea. Would you tell Suharto to do it?' 'It might be hard for Suharto to come to me directly. But if he sends his daughter Tutut to me, I would pass on the message. If Suharto does it, I will do everything to clear his name.' And he laughed.
Gus Dur talked about the wrongdoings of Suharto's government - human rights abuses and corruption. But he is realistic about the prospects of immediate change. 'Change is a process. It takes a long time to change something. I think it might take two more elections to have civilians for both president and vice- president. Also, Abri's dual function can not be abolished right away.'
Knowing that some Nahdatul Ulama (NU) intellectuals are frustrated with Gus Dur's 'realist' political stance and autocratic attitude, I asked him about conflict within NU. 'I listen to other people's opinions, but I have to make a decision in the end. I know some people, especially young intellectuals, are not happy with my "slow" approach to reformation. But we talk about it. We also laugh about it. It is OK to have different attitudes and ideas because I belong to "Today's Generation" while they belong to "Tomorrow's Generation".'
I just nodded because I knew that although some NU people are critical of Gus Dur, they love him as they do their own fathers. He mentioned several NU young people as Tomorrow's Generation, and he also added Amien Rais. This was rather surprising to me.
Amien Rais
TV crews from Korea and America, journalists from Italy and three Indonesian magazines were waiting for Amien Rais when I had an appointment with him. He was a major player in the movement that brought down Suharto, and is now a presidential candidate as chairperson of the National Mandate Party. The party is based in the religious organisation Muhammadiyah, which Amien Rais chaired until recently.
I had little confidence I would be able to interview him on that day. However, I managed to catch him when he stepped out of his office. 'Pak Amien, do you remember when you were writing your PhD dissertation in Chicago? I am now in the same position. Would you spare some time for me?' He looked at me, and smiled. 'OK, I can give you some time.'
My first question to him was very simple. 'Did you change?' I had in mind the reports in times past that he was anti-Christian. He immediately said: 'Yes, it is a natural process. A stone never changes, I am not a stone.' 'In what way did you change?', I asked. 'I now have more appreciation of the plurality of the nation, and feel the necessity of building a strong nation.'
He told me of the time about three months earlier when Jakob Oetama, chief editor of the largely Catholic daily Kompas, came to visit him. He said: 'Amien, you are moving from a leader of Muhammadiyah to a leader of the nation. You need to make a step to be a leader of this nation'. 'It was exactly what I was feeling', Amien Rais went on, 'so I agreed with him, and here I am now.'
His willingness to lead the country was expressed throughout our conversation. As his ideas sounded very much like Gus Dur's, I asked him what he thought about the difference between the two. 'Probably, Gus Dur would be happy if more positions go to NU. But I want more than that, I want the leadership of the nation.'
At the same time, he was aware of criticism of his political style. 'I know that I am too straight and "un-Indonesian",' he said. 'But it doesn't really matter to me. It is better to express my opinions explicitly rather than hiding them.'
My last question to him was also simple. 'Who are your political heroes?' After a short pause, he said: 'J F Kennedy, Churchill, Gorbachev, Neru... of course, Sukarno, too.' Fadli Zon
Fadli Zon probably has a reputation as a hard-line Muslim. This young intellectual is one of the chairpersons of the recently established Moon and Star Party (Partai Bulan Bintang), which brings together some of the ideals and personalities of the intensely Islamic Masyumi party of the 1950s. He is always willing to explain his political stance. The main goal of his party, he said diplomatically, is to establish a 'better system'.
'I think Indonesian farmers should be protected. For example, wheat imports from America hinder the prosperity of Indonesian farmers. This has to be changed. To establish a fair system is important,' he said.
According to him, the pribumi (native Indonesians) are lagging behind in the economy. 'Affirmative action is necessary until the pribumi can stand on the same line as the non-pribumi,' he explained.
However, he said he did not approve of the anti-Chinese violence symbolised by the 'Milik pribumi' signs. 'Islamic principle is to protect minority peoples', he said clearly. 'This should be done by law.'
His party is regarded as more Islamic-oriented than the others, so I wanted to know about his idea of an Islamic state. 'We are not proposing an Islamic state, but are promoting a better system.'
'How about Pancasila?' I asked, referring to the ideology that has since 1945 been seen as a bulwark against both a communist and an Islamic state. 'We agree with it as a basic idea of the nation, but disagree that everyone has to accept it as a principle. Let political parties choose their own ideologies except communism.'
The last conversation I had with him was about his stay in America as an exchange student when he was in high school. 'I was in Texas for a year. My host family was Christian and they are nice people. I still keep in touch with them. They are my friends.'
Bismar Siregar
'I love Suharto.' It was not in the early 1990s, but September 1998. I was stunned when a seventy-year old former Supreme Court judge said this to me. For Bismar Siregar, Islamic moral principle is crucial in Indonesia today. 'In Islam, forgiveness is very important. Love others as you do yourself.' Looking at his gentle eyes, I remembered a Japanese Buddhist word: jihi, compassion.
As a legal expert, Bismar is of course well aware of Suharto's misdeeds. However, he dares to say that reconciliation can not be realised without forgiveness. He believes that forgiving Suharto would make him repent. It seems that almost everyone in Indonesia today hates Suharto. But Bismar thinks it is hypocrisy when people who enjoyed the New Order now criticise Suharto. 'Suharto's fault is one part of our fault, too', he added, as if he were telling himself.
When I left his office, he said 'Goodbye' in Japanese. He learned it during the Japanese occupation. I believe that he has already forgiven Japanese militarism. I thanked him for his compassion. And I wondered how Suharto would respond to Bismar.
Political development in Indonesia is rapid. Gus Dur, Amien Rais, and Fadli Zon are associated with major political parties such as the NU-based National Awakening Party PKB, the National Mandate Party PAN, and the Moon and Star Party PBB. We know that their path is not smooth. Just how PKB implements Gus Dur's modern and tolerant ideas will make a crucial difference. PAN is also struggling to maintain its inclusive orientation. The sensitive issue of the protection of minorities is always around PBB.
Only time will tell what will happen. Yet, one thing for sure is that the seeds of change and the will to create a better society exist in Indonesia. And the idea of democracy is ubiquitous. The conversations with four Muslims prove this.
Hisanori Kato is a PhD student in the School of Studies in Religion, University of Sydney. He comes from Japan.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Page 44 of 68
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