Articles - Inside Indonesia: The peoples and cultures of Indonesia

Suharto's fires

Suharto cronies control an ASEAN-wide oil palm industry with an appalling environmental record George J Aditjondro Widespread forest fires, covering significant proportions of Sumatra and Kalimantan, with its smoke and haze drifting to Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia, have become an almost annual occurrence in archipelagic Southeast Asia. Yet, the Indonesian government has not taken drastic steps to prevent their recurrence. Why? The palm oil industry in Indonesia has been blamed as the main culprits. Its political strength relies on two factors. Firstly, it is still controlled by relatives and business associates of the former Indonesian president, Suharto, who still enjoy tacit support in the top echelons of the Indonesian political and economic system. Secondly, the influence of the Suharto oligarchy extends way beyond the boundaries of Indonesia into the two neighbouring countries, Singapore and Malaysia, which have been the most affected by the haze caused by the forest fires. During the 1990s, the scale of the burning grew each year as the forestland converted into tree plantations in Sumatra and Kalimantan expanded. Plantation firms and the land-clearance contractors they hired almost exclusively use fire to clear land. Scientists assessing the forest fire damage say that approximately five million hectares of land were burned in 1997. Of this, 20 per cent was estimated to be forest, 50 per cent agricultural land, and 30 per cent non-forest vegetation and grasslands. Putting this in financial terms, scientists working for Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia have calculated that the direct and indirect short-term impacts of 1997/1998 have exceeded US$ 4 billion, equivalent to total annual health spending by both the public and private sectors. In 2000, the situation did not radically improve. The emergency of hotspots as early as March moved Singaporean officials to sound their alarm bell. Nevertheless, this did not discourage corporate and individual farmers in central Sumatra to continue burning the undergrowth way into the middle of July, when officials in Peninsular Malaysia began to worry. These early hotspots and the smog that engulfed half of the Malay Peninsula revived traumatic memories of the 1997 haze, which blanketed Singapore and Malaysia for weeks and scared off tourists. Corporate arsonists Regardless of the national and international criticism, three consecutive regimes in Jakarta (Suharto, Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid) have not been able to cope with these recurrent forest fires. In fact, from the 144 companies which had their licences revoked in October 1997 by then Minister of Forestry Djamaludin Suryohadikusumo, two months later 45 permits were reinstated. And even after a new forestry law was enacted in 1999, which carries a sentence of a maximum of five years in prison or a fine of Rp 5 billion (around US$ 0.5 million), no company owner or executive has been charged and found guilty of lighting the fires. From the Forestry Ministry's initial list of 176 suspects, 133 were oil palm and pulpwood plantations. Of these two, oil palm plantations had the biggest share, since 46%-80% of all big fires took place on these concessions. Currently, Indonesia out-competes Malaysia in terms of labour costs by five times and in terms of land by four times, thereby making it the cheapest producer of palm oil in the world. Companies owned by the members of the Suharto clan and their cronies were the most outstanding among the 176 companies blacklisted by the Forestry Minister in 1997. They are still the main driving force in the palm oil business. Cross-referencing the 1997 blacklist with general and specific business directories in Indonesia shows twelve business conglomerates linked to the Suharto family, namely the Salim, Sinar Mas, Barito Pacific, Astra, Raja Garuda Mas, Surya Damai, Kalimanis, Danitama, Mercu Buana, Citra Lamtorogung Persada, Teknik Umum, and Maharani Groups, prominent among the corporate arsonists. More important than the predominance of Suharto-linked companies on the 1997 Forestry Department's list of suspects is the systemic control the Suharto clan have over the entire palm oil industry, from plantations to marketing to the use of revenues generated from the palm oil trade. Three generations of the clan are represented in the plantations, from Suharto's brother and cousin to Suharto's grandson. The marketing hegemony works in the following way. During the Suharto era, state palm oil plantations produced crude palm oil (CPO), which was sold to the state logistics agency (Bulog) in either its raw or refined form at rock bottom prices. Bulog made a significant mark-up and profit on its subsequent sales of cooking oil, which is still dominated by two Suharto-linked conglomerates, Salim and Sinar Mas. Key state officials pocketed the difference, foremost among whom is Bustanil Arifin who headed Bulog for two decades. This is also the man who Suharto has trusted - together with Bob Hasan - to manage his four wealthiest charities, claimed by Arifin to far surpass the wealth of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. Given the fact that three generations of the Suharto family controlled the palm oil industry one can label it Suharto's 'palm oil nepotism'. But since it does not only involve one but several extended families of Sino-Indonesian business people and a handful of retired generals and bureaucrats, loyal to Suharto, one can further label this political economic system, Suharto's 'palm oil oligarchy.' Despite the fact that Suharto has officially stepped down, this oligarchy is still deeply entrenched in the political and economic system in Indonesia. Janji Akbar Zahiruddin Tanjung, the speaker of parliament, for instance, is a member of the Tanjung family whose family company, PT Marison Nusantara, has overlapping shares with several member companies of the Salim and Raja Garuda Mas Groups. Their businesses range from condensed dairy milk to trade in chemical products. ASEAN-isation The influence of Suharto's palm oil oligarchy, however, has not been limited to Indonesia's borders. Preceding the smog that drifted across the Malacca and Natuna Straits to Indonesia's northern neighbours, the tentacles of this business octopus had already become deeply entrenched in the nearest ASEAN countries. This explains the lukewarm response which the haze has received in the upper echelons in Kuala Lumpur, and to a lesser degree, in Singapore. While in late July 2000 the smog from Indonesia's forest fires had drifted along the Malay Peninsula into southern Thailand, ASEAN government leaders did not offer any concrete steps to ameliorate the catastrophic Indonesian forest fires. On the contrary, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad strongly refused to take any steps. The ten-nation ASEAN foreign ministers' summit in Bangkok also failed to address the transnational haze strongly in its final communiquMahathir Mohamad in particular, even criticised the international press for 'exaggerating' the haze problem, driven by what he labeled as a 'political agenda' to discourage tourists from coming to Malaysia. The attack on the foreign media had been preceded by a ban on the domestic media to publish air pollution readings, after Kuala Lumpur and other areas on the peninsula were blanketed with dense haze from forest fires across the Malacca Strait. The Malaysian public, however, refused to play that ostrich policy, forcing the New Straits Times, which usually supports government initiatives unreservedly, to call for the government to publish the Air Pollution Index readings. On the macro level, Malaysia's silence is partly influenced by the fact that it needs Indonesia to expand its own palm oil industry. By March 1997, Malaysia already had commitments to invest in 1.6 million hectares of oil palm plantations in Indonesia through joint ventures with various Indonesian companies. This was more than a third of all the oil palm plantations planned until the turn of the century. More than 1.3 million hectares had already materialised by 1999, with some of them linking up with companies controlled by four Suharto siblings, namely Bambang Trihatmodjo, Tommy Suharto, Titiek Prabowo, and Siti Hutami Adiningsih. Their plantations cover hundreds of thousands of hectares in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Thus the largest Indonesian business groups had already formed numerous joint ventures with the most well connected companies in Singapore and Malaysia. Moving deeper into the current and former ruling elites of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia, several joint ventures have emerged, where relatives of former president Suharto, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, and incumbent Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad hold powerful positions as shareholders or directors. Or else they are shareholders in companies which in turn acquired shares of other companies in which members of these three families are involved. Mahathir's middle son, Mokhzani, for instance, through his Tongkah Holdings, acquired a majority stake in Hospital Pantai, which in turn became a substantial shareholder in Singapore-listed AsiaMatrix Ltd. This company has Suharto's daughter-in-law, Ratnawati Harjojudanto, listed as its chairperson. The list is growing of companies which involve the three powerful clans of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore and which have expanded further in the Asia-Pacific region. They were the driving force behind the economic opening of China. That is the reason why the country-by-country approach of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), without unraveling the capital flow from the Southeast Asian countries to China and elsewhere, is doomed to fail. Any serious attempt to reduce the frequency and extent of the forest fires and the related haze problem has to deal with this 'intra-ASEAN oligarchy.' The long-term aim should be to enforce regional and global transparency and accountability of the members of this oligarchy to its stakeholders, and especially to the ordinary citizens in the ASEAN region who have been - and may still be - regularly choked by the smoke from forest fires. George Aditjondro (aditjond@psychology.newcastle.edu.au) teaches at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Extracted with permission from an article in the inaugural edition of 'Ecopolitics: Thought and action' (contact Martin Mulligan m.mulligan@uws.edu.au). Inside Indonesia 65: Jan - Mar 2001

Mine thy neighbour

The Australian government needs to control Australian miners in Indonesia Jeff Atkinson A large proportion of foreign mining companies in Indonesia are Australian. They may be generating badly needed funds for the country, but the cost to those living near these mines has been very high. Indonesia is rich in mineral resources. It desperately needs the income that exploiting these resources can bring. In 1998 the mining industry contributed some US$ 9,573 million to the Indonesian economy, and US$ 570 million to government revenue. Minerals and related products accounted for 19 percent of total Indonesian export revenue, and generated over US$ 3,000 million in export revenue. But who benefits most from this, and who has to bear the cost? Under the Suharto government, and still today, local communities living around the mine have borne the heaviest burden. Communities already on the poverty line lose the land, the source of their livelihood, to the mine, usually without sufficient compensation to allow them to maintain an adequate income. Others have lost valuable income from small-scale and artisanal mining when the authorities declare it illegal in the company's concession area. Rivers on which they depend have become unusable because of pollution; the fish disappear and the river water causes rashes and itchiness when people try to bathe in it. Those who object to any of this feel the heavy hand of the police Mobile Brigade. At the Indo Muro mine in Central Kalimantan, operated by Perth-based Aurora Gold Ltd, the problem was the loss of land by indigenous Dayak people, and the loss of income from small-scale and artisanal mining. At the Barisan mine in South Sumatra, owned by another Perth-based company, the complaint is pollution of the rivers by run-off from the mine. At Rio Tinto's Kelian gold mine in the upper reaches of the Mahakam River in East Kalimantan there have been human rights abuses. In July 2000 the Indonesian Human Rights Commission released a report that, among other things, highlighted sexual abuses against local women and female employees at the mine. Some of the victims were under-age and the majority of these, according to the report, are alleged to be the victims of an Australian who was the mine manager at the time. It is of course not just Australian companies that are causing problems. The operations of PT Freeport Indonesia in West Papua, majority-owned by US-based Freeport MacMoRan, have become notorious for their massive environmental damage from riverine waste dumping and gross human rights violations against local groups who resist. All of these operations were established under the Suharto regime, when negotiating access to land with local landowners was not necessary and companies left community relations to the government and the Mobile Brigade. Now with Suharto and his political apparatus largely gone, many of these companies are paying the price of appalling community relations and unjust treatment from which they benefited. Local communities have become much more demanding and aggressive, and many operators have seen their mines over-run by large numbers of illegal miners. Voluntary code What has been the response of the mining industry in Australia to all this? It is well aware that the problems are not confined to Indonesia, and that Australian mining companies have been engaged in sub-standard practices in many countries. In Papua New Guinea for example, it was revealed in 1999 that the environmental impact of the Ok Tedi mine, 52 percent owned by BHP, was far worse than had been expected, and that none of the possible solutions that had been investigated were feasible. Most notorious of all was the massive cyanide spill early in 2000 at the Australian-owned Esmerelda mine in Romania, which had a cataclysmic effect on fisheries in nearby Hungarian rivers. There is certainly a realisation within the industry that they need to 'lift their act', that community expectations in the home country and the demands of communities in the host country are such that this kind of performance is no longer acceptable. But their approach is to allow improvement to occur at a rate that the industry is happy with, rather than one that the protection of people's fundamental rights demands. The preferred approach of the industry body, the Minerals Council of Australia, is to encourage companies to work towards the standards set down in its Code for Environmental Management. This has been in place since 1996 and has now been signed on to by some 40 Australian mining companies, including all the major ones. Its strength, says the council's executive director 'lies in the fact that companies volunteer to commit within a framework of principles, and can choose to implement the code in a way that is appropriate to their operations and their environments. The code works because it gives the industry flexibility to choose how it goes about achieving excellence in environmental behaviour.' The problem is that the code is voluntary, its principles are vague and general, and only refer to the management of environmental effects, not social or economic impacts. There is no monitoring of companies' performance against the code - although there is an obligation for signatory companies to report annually on their own performance. And there are no sanctions for non-compliance. While most of the majors have signed on, large numbers of smaller mining companies have not. Those that want to continue with sub-standard practices will never sign on. It is not good enough for the industry to set its own rate of change, with no sanction for unacceptable behaviour. What would be the reaction if we applied this approach to other groups in society with the potential to damage the rights of others, eg drivers who drink? Australian government The code may have its place as a mechanism for self-improvement by companies, but it is not a substitute for legislation and enforced standards. The Australian government urgently needs to introduce legislation that sets standards for Australian-based mining companies operating overseas, monitors performance and, where possible, imposes sanctions for non-compliance. An independent complaints mechanism needs to be established able to investigate the complaints of mine-affected communities in Indonesia and elsewhere. In the absence of any such commitment by the industry or government, Community Aid Abroad earlier this year established its own Mining Ombudsman. But this is a responsibility that properly belongs to the Australian mining industry and government, not to a small under-resourced non-government organisation. Political support for stronger measures by government is growing. In April this year the Australian Labor Party's shadow ministers for foreign affairs, Laurie Brereton, and for environment and heritage, Nick Bolkus, issued a joint media statement in which they 'renewed Labor's call for a comprehensive review of environmental protection standards and practices implemented by Australian mining countries operating overseas'. Mr Brereton added: 'Labor has long supported an active role for government in encouraging Australian companies operating overseas to adhere to public codes which commit them to observe international human rights standards, including core labour standards, and ensure that their operations do not directly or indirectly violate human rights, or inflict unacceptable impacts on local communities and the environment." In September 2000, Australian Democrats senator Vicki Bourne introduced a private member's bill into the senate that sought to introduce legislated standards for Australian companies operating overseas. This has since been referred to a parliamentary committee, which has announced a public inquiry into the matter. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has introduced a similar bill into the US Congress. The European Parliament recently passed a resolution on EU Standards for European Enterprises Operating in Developing Countries, which would cover companies like Rio Tinto and BP that have gold and coal mines in East Kalimantan. It is now time for the Australian government to act. Australia's supposed concern for human rights in Indonesia must be extended to include economic and social rights. At the very least it must ensure that it is not Australian companies that are abusing those rights. Jeff Atkinson (jeffa@caa.org.au) is Advocacy Coordinator with the non-government organisation Community Aid Abroad (Oxfam Australia) and is that organisation's Mining Ombudsman. He is the author of the recent book 'Undermined: The impact of Australian mining companies in developing countries' (Melbourne: Community Aid Abroad, 1998). Inside Indonesia 65: Jan - Mar 2001

Reviews - Marrying up in Bali

Review: Tarian bumi is the story of four generations of Balinese women Pamela Allen With this novel (originally serialised in Republika in 1997) Oka Rusmini joins two minority groups in contemporary Indonesian literature - Balinese novelists, and female novelists. Born in Jakarta of Balinese parents in 1967, Oka is a journalist for the Bali Post. She has had poetry published in several anthologies, and short stories in a range of journals and magazines. She is married to the East Javanese poet Arif B Prasetyo, a union which so upset her family on account of his ethnicity and religion that they disowned her. Tarian bumi is the story of four generations of Balinese women. It is told in the third person, but from the narratorial point of view of Ida Ayu Telaga, a woman in her thirties whose aspirations for herself and her daughter Sari differ somewhat from those of her mother, her grandmother, and her female peers. These women are motivated primarily by two factors: a longing to be beautiful, and desire for a high-castebrahmana husband. Telaga's mother Luh Sekar, born into a commoner sudra family, declares when she is just a girl that the only thing she cares about is becoming the wife of a brahmana man, thus elevating herself from her lowly status. When she finally meets and marries her brahmanaman, her world changes irrevocably. She can no longer use the name Ni Luh Sekar. She can no longer pray in her family temple. When she gives birth to Telaga, her mother-in-law forbids her from taking the child to see its maternal grandmother. Yet, as a woman who has become a brahmanaby marriage rather than by birth, she is treated differently within the circle of her husband's family compound. She can never truly be a part of her new brahmanafamily, but at the same time she is expected to sever her ties with her sudrapast. Despite the displacement and distress her new status causes her, she continues to perpetuate the importance of high-caste standing by projecting her aspirations onto Telaga who, however, scandalises her family by marrying the sudraWayan Sasmitha, in defiance of the importance in the Balinese hierarchy of a woman not lowering the status of the whole family by marrying beneath her. Telaga's difficulty in adjusting to the lifestyle of a sudra family is proof to her mother-in-law that the marriage should never have taken place. Finally, because her presence in the household is regarded as unlucky, her mother-in-law asks her to go back to her family compound to perform the upacara Patiwangi, the ceremony which officially sets a person free from the brahmana caste. In the end, Telaga is transformed into a sudrawoman. It is a liberation for her. Beauty The women are also driven by the longing to be beautiful, which goes hand-in-hand with the desire to be a fine dancer. However, like the brahmana status, beauty has its price. In the novel, beauty is infused with the same sort of quality traditionally associated with power in Java: it seems to be finite, and the competition to acquire it is fierce. The envy surrounding beauty is compounded by pique that brahmanawomen are perceived as having more than their fair share of it. Closely linked with the quest for beauty are questions about what it means to be a woman in Bali. The female protagonists of Tarian Bumi are somewhat ambivalent about their womanhood and how it intersects with their quest for a brahmana husband and unrivalled beauty. Telaga, whose life is controlled by her mother's avarice, her mother-in-law's bitterness, and her sister-in-law's greed, has frequent cause to question what it means to be a woman. Tarian bumi is in part a novel about caste, beauty, and Balinese women. The caste system has to the outside world generally seemed to sit lightly on Balinese social structure. It is here depicted as in fact an insidious one that perpetuates a hierarchical way of understanding the world and creates jealousy and avarice in the women who are forced to compete with each other for brahmanahusbands and for beauty. Tarian bumi is also, however, a novel about the ways in which caste binds and divides per se. The male characters in the novel, too, are subjected to the inequities of this hierarchical system. Like much other contemporary writing about Bali, the novel is an antidote to the exoticism depicted by early anthropologists and travel writers and in mainstream contemporary tourist ventures. Much of its appeal lies in the fact that it is an attempt by a Balinese, rather than an outsider, to deconstruct some of the myths that lie at the heart of the Orientalist fantasy. Oka Rusmini, Tarian bumi, Magelang: IndonesiaTera, 2000, 141 pp, ISBN 979-95428-8-X Pamela Allen (Pam.Allen@utas.edu.au) teaches Asian studes at the University of Tasmania, Hobart. Inside Indonesia 66: Apr - Jun 2001

In this issue

Gender justice Gerry van Klinken As anti-Gus Dur demos began to hit the streets in January, I wondered if we were missing the real action by doing a gender edition. But working on it became an eye-opener for me, as I hope reading it will be for you. I realised I had often imagined an 'Indonesian' agenda for change that was in fact a middle class masculine one. Susan Blackburn's piece showed me that even nationalism, supposedly that most basic of all political drives, was historically of more interest to men than to women - who really wanted a marriage law to protect their everyday lives. Could it be that the 'get rid of Gus Dur' agenda is also a partial one, that actually hides other, bigger agendas? This edition highlights Indonesia's women and men - and its gays, lesbians, bissu and other genders. Their diversity should warn us against stereotypes, if nothing else. Our authors - mostly women - have many messages. The one I hear loudly is that women, and powerless genders generally, no longer want to be a passive part of somebody else's project, no matter how grand or blessed by tradition that seems to be. Gender justice is a crucial perspective because it has the potential to transform the political arena. Excluding powerless genders only produces a false consensus dark with hidden violence. Khofifah, the energetic young minister for women's empowerment, has it right: 'I want women to be the motor of democratisation.' Most readers do not realise how much work goes into producing one edition of a little magazine like this. The bulk of it was done voluntarily - for example by the anonymous referees who now read all articles before they are accepted. To them all we say: thanks! Gerry van Klinken is the editor of Inside Indonesia Inside Indonesia 66: Apr - Jun 2001

Left over from death

Timorese women raped by Indonesian militias need justice. So do all the other women who survived New Order abuse Galuh Wandita After the attack on the [Suai] church, we were taken to Manumutin, Betun, in West Timor. We slept on the verandah of the cooperative because there was no other place. On 11 September [1999], about two in the morning, six Laksaur militias came in a car.... They asked about my daughter. My son-in-law called me and I came. His name is OB, a Laksaur militiaman. He took out a sword and said: 'Look. This sword is covered in the blood of four people I just killed.' They told me to get in the car.... They asked where my husband was; I said I didn't know.... They said: 'Do you like me?'... I had no choice, because they had a weapon... OB pushed me. I was raped in front of my son-in-law. I cried and cried, and felt so powerless, as if I was dead. An East Timorese woman told this story to the women's organisation Fokupers after Indonesian militias ravaged the country for voting against Indonesia on 30 August, 1999. An authoritarian regime has fallen. An occupation has ended. In the new openness, we are hearing stories of human rights abuse that have long lain buried. They outrage our sense of justice. Old debts must be paid. Transitional justice is the first hurdle for an often-fragile new democracy, to separate the dark past from a democratic future. But how can it be done, effectively yet in compliance with international human rights standards? In a conflict situation, women suffer a special kind of violence. The men in East Timor were (often forcibly) recruited by the militias, leaving the women alone to look after the family. With the men gone, the women became vulnerable to 'proxy violence' by those who saw them as representing the defiant life of a whole society or of a group within it. Raping them was a way of crushing the enemy. Trials Fokupers spent the first half of 2000 documenting cases of violence against women that happened in the weeks around the East Timor ballot. We uncovered 255 cases of human rights violation, including 46 rapes, five attempted rapes, and sixteen other cases of sexual abuse. We know of at least four pregnancies caused by rape, and two where contraceptives were forced on the victim to prevent pregnancy. Eight of the rape cases involved sexual slavery - rape on a daily basis. Some of these involved children. In others, children were forced to watch their mothers raped. Nine of the rapes were done by TNI soldiers, nine by soldiers and militias together, and all the rest by militias themselves. Fokupers also has information on the murders of eight women. Many of these occurred in the Suai church massacre, but some were specially targeted. Ana Lemos, for example, chairperson of the resistance organisation OMT in Ermera, was raped and murdered because, as one of her killers said, 'she was the most courageous woman in Ermera'. The 1949 Geneva Convention does not list rape as a war crime. One reason why rapes were not included in the Nuremburg trials and those held in Japan after World War II is that both sides had committed them. The absence of women is a serious blind spot in the post-World War II trials. But the Yugoslavia trials of the 1990s introduced a new element. They linked rape to the crime of ethnic cleansing. New rules of evidence, now internationally accepted, also in the East Timor trials, make it more likely for rape survivors to obtain justice. However, many problems remain. How is the victim to be identified in the first place? Especially in a society that tends to blame the rape victim, few are willing to stand up in court and relive the trauma in front of their rapist and his defence team. In East Timor, UN investigators are also facing serious communication difficulties as they attempt to get an accurate account, especially as the event recedes into the past. Time is another problem - the Rwanda genocide had a million victims, and only a tiny fraction of cases have been resolved. Yet, as one of my friends told me, a survivor cannot begin to live again until justice is done. Moreover, East Timorese have hitherto had little reason to trust the courts. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission is another possibility. Less bound by legal procedure, such a commission can more quickly document a greater number of victims of authoritarian repression than the courts. Similar commissions in Guatemala and South Africa heard the testimonies of thousands of rape survivors. However, after much debate, the South African commission decided that rape was 'criminal' and not 'political' and therefore its amnesty offer did not apply to rape. This removed the incentive for rapists to confess, and for survivors to testify, and thus produced an ironic conspiracy of silence on rape. Another important issue is compensation. The Chilean transitional justice mechanism offered comprehensive material compensation, including lifetime pensions, for families of those who died in prison under Pinochet. An important non-material form of compensation could be a national day of commemoration. In East Timor, 25 November, UN Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, is an important day for rape survivors. Future In Indonesia, we have to expose New Order violence against women in the militarised areas of Aceh, West Papua, Maluku and East Timor. We have to look also at the 'anti-PKI' killings of 1965, at the 'petrus' killings of the early 1980s, at the May 1998 riot; also at women political prisoners, and at the impact on women of the militarised family planning program. In my opinion we should attempt to use all three transitional justice paths - criminal sanctions, truth confessions, and compensation. Considering the political situation, perhaps it should be a staged approach that begins with the last two while preparing for the first. This must be a survivor-centred approach, where they themselves are involved from the start. A Truth Commission must have strong powers - be able to subpoena documents, and offer protection and compensation for the survivors. Also, ordinary people must be able to hear the stories and thus feel moved. Civil society can play a role in investigations, too. Then there must be a serious effort to rehabilitate the victims, making sure to involve them at every stage. We need to create a safe space for women survivors. In East Timor, widows and survivors have set up several non-government organisations to document crimes and rehabilitate victims. In Indonesia, the new law on human rights needs to be tested to see if the courts will take cases from the past. Perhaps other courts - even commercial ones - can be utilised creatively? The road to restoration for the survivors, and for us as an Indonesia nation, is a long one. Sometimes people ask me why I am doing this. Isn't it better to forget the past and look to the future? Such questions leave me speechless. It is precisely to the future that I do look. Materestu, 'Left over from death', is the name of a group of women survivors of the massacre in the Suai church on 6 September 1999. Galuh Wandita (gwandita@hotmail.com) is an Indonesian volunteer with the East Timorese organisation Fokupers. Extracted from a longer paper in Indonesian. Inside Indonesia 66: Apr - Jun 2001

Sulawesi's fifth gender

What if there were not just two genders, but five? In Indonesia, there are Sharyn Graham I first went to Sulawesi in August 1998 on a reconnaissance trip to determine if this would be an interesting place to study gender relations. I had read a little about gender in Sulawesi, encouraged by my supervisors Dr Greg Acciaioli and Dr Lyn Parker, but I was not quite prepared for the richness of Bugis gender identities. In Australia we tend to assume that there are only two genders, woman and man, and two matching biological sexes, female and male. The Bugis acknowledge three sexes (female, male, hermaphrodite), four genders (women, men, calabai, and calalai), and a fifth meta-gender group, the bissu. 'Bissu' tends to be translated as 'transvestite priest', but this term is less than satisfactory. Transvestite implies cross-dressing, but bissu have their own distinctive clothing. Moreover, bissudo not go from one gender to another; they are a combination of all genders. To become a bissu, one must be born both female and male, or hermaphroditic. (To be precise, the Bugis believe that a bissu who appears externally male is internally female, and vice versa). This combination of sexes enables a 'meta-gender' identity to emerge. La Tenri Olli'Aseng tongeng-tongeng Mu ri langiMu nonno' ri linoMu riyaseng t Your name in the heavensIs La Tenri Olli',In the name of the buffalo,Descend to earth. Mariani begins her chant as the sun is setting behind the limestone cliff. The eerie chant is accompanied on the cylindrical drum called tumba, on cymbals (kancing), and metal rhythm sticks (ana' baccing). Over 35 of us had squeezed into two small mini-vans and traveled for over an hour to reach this place. We then walked a few kilometres to the mouth of a small cave, which, as I was to find out, went deep into the mountain. Blessing We had come here to perform a ceremony. A woman I knew named Ibu Qadri wanted to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. She needed the blessing of the spirits before she set off. Bissu have long conducted ceremonies like this. They are able to act as mediators between humans and spirits (dewata) because they are considered neither male nor female, and neither woman nor man, but a mix of all four of these. This was one of my first bissu ceremonies. I was somewhat baffled as to why a pious Muslim would want a blessing from other spiritual beings. However, over the 15 months (until November 2000) that I lived amongst bissu, I learned that at least to the Bugis there really was no contradiction. They told me that Allah is the one and only God, but Allah has helpers, called dewata. The most powerful of the dewata is the one Mariani is calling today. When Mariani is in contact, the dewata will arrange for the most appropriate lesser dewata to descend and take possession of Mariani. Only then can Mariani bestow blessings. For the blessing to be a success, Mariani and three other bissu had to enter a cave. I too was invited in. We took off our sandals, and two of the bissu carried burning torches to light our way. I was urged to lead in front. I later found out this was so that I could take their photograph as they entered the cavern. After we had slid on our backsides down the entry passage, walked quite a distance, successfully avoiding treading barefoot upon the many scorpions surrounding us, we came into a large cavern. Here we squatted in a circle. Mariani began chanting. At appropriate times the other bissu joined in. The ceremony here was short. When the chant was over we returned to the opening of the cave. While we were away, preparations had been made for the main ceremony. Mariani took her place (or 'hir' place, since she is both male and female) in front of the large assortment of ritual offerings that were to be offered to the dewata. These included cooked rice died into four different colours(songkolo), eggs, a hen and a rooster, cigarettes, bananas, and coconuts. Mariani again began to chant, but this time hir chanting became erratic and frightening. Hir body began to shake and s/he became very angry. 'Where are the siri leaves?' These are an important part of the ceremony, but there were not enough of them. The spirit that possessed Mariani was furious and refused to give the blessing. Through Mariani the spirit conveyed that we could, however, perform the ceremony at the woman's house. By the time we arrived at Ibu Qadri's house it was dark. The altar and the offerings were set up in her living room, and the bissuadorned themselves in their powerful, magical (sakti) clothing. The ceremony began again. Everything was complete. Mariani and the three other bissuperformed their chants. In order to honour the spirits who had possessed them, and hence bless Ibu Qadri's pilgrimage, the four bissuperformed the ma'giri. Each bissutook their little dagger(kris) and tried to force it into their throat. If a powerful spirit has possessed them, and if the blessing is successful, the kris will not penetrate and they will not bleed. On this occasion, when Mariani had completed the ma'giri, I noticed blood coming from hir neck (see cover photo). Not till many months later did I venture to question this. The reason was that the spirit who possessed Mariani had not been very powerful. However, with the combined efforts of the four bissu, Haji Qadri did make the pilgrimage to Mecca. On her return, she requested another bissu ceremony to give thanks to the dewata for protecting her on her journey. Calalai This brings us to calalaiand calabai. Strictly speaking, calalai means 'false man' and calabai'false woman'. However, people are not harrassed for identifying as either of these gender categories. On the contrary, calalaiand calabai are seen as essential to completing the gender system. A useful analogy suggested to me by Dr Greg Acciaioli is to imagine the Bugis gender system of South Sulawesi as a pyramid, with the bissu at the apex, and men, women, calalai, and calabai located at the four base corners. Calalai are anatomical females who take on many of the roles and functions expected of men. For instance, Rani works alongside men as a blacksmith, shaping kris, small blades and other knives. Rani wears men's clothing and ties hir sarong in the fashion of men. Rani also lives with hir wife and their adopted child, Erna. While Rani works with men, dresses as a man, smokes cigarettes, and walks alone at night, which are all things women are not encouraged to do, Rani is female and therefore not considered a man. Nor does Rani wish to become a man. Rani is calalai. Rani's female anatomy, combined with hir occupation, behaviour, and sexuality, allows Rani to identify, and be identified, as a calalai. Calabai, conversely, are anatomical males who, in many respects, adhere to the expectations of women. However, calabai do not consider themselves women, are not considered women. Nor do they wish to become women, either by accepting restrictions placed on women such as not going out alone at night, or by recreating their body through surgery. However, whereas calalai tend to conform more to the norms of men, calabai have created a specific role for themselves in Bugis society. If there is to be a wedding in Bugis society, more often than not calabai will be involved in the organisation. When a wedding date has been agreed upon, the family will approach a calabai and negotiate a wedding plan. The calabai will be responsible for many things: setting up and decorating the tent, arranging the bridal chairs, bridal gown, costumes for the groom and the entire wedding party (numbering up to twenty-five), makeup for all those involved, and all the food. Rarely did I attend a village wedding with less than a thousand guests. On the day, some calabai remain in the kitchen preparing food while others form part of the reception, showing guests to their seats. Bissu, calalai, and calabai challenge the notion that individuals must conform to one of two genders, woman or man, and that one's anatomy must support one's gender. Bugis gender reveals the diverse nature of human identity. It makes me question our own notions of gender. For example, why should Australia insist on a boring old two-gender system? Sharyn Graham (sharyngr@cyllene.uwa.edu.au) is researching her PhD at the University of Western Australia, Perth. All names are pseudonyms. Thanks to Nick Herriman. Inside Indonesia 66: Apr - Jun 2001

Sex in the city

Between girl power and the mother image, young urban women struggle for identity Yatun Sastramidjaja While reformasi battles to clean up the old bureaucracy, young urban middle class women are contending with yet another New Order legacy. Every day they confront a Janus-faced social discourse on female gender, which wedges them between two conflicting ideals of femininity. One is the notion of a woman's inherent nature, or kodrat wanita, long fostered by the New Order. The other is the more recent popular notion of 'girl power'. As young women oscillate between these two strong images of female identity, they experience serious but usually hidden inner conflicts, particularly in the area of sexuality. Whereas kodrat wanita propagates the virtues of chastity and submissiveness, girl power celebrates the joys of sexual liberation. So which way should a girl turn? The middle class, like the New Order generally, always held to a peculiar blend of conservatism and progressiveness. On the conservative side, the idea of kodrat wanita became visible in the New Order institution of Dharma Wanita (Women's Duty), an organisation every civil servant's wife was required to join. Practically all these wives were also middle class mothers. Their prime duty was to their families, the keystone upon which the nation's welfare was said to rest. Kodrat wanita is thus defined by the reproductive role of supportive wives and mothers, which partly consists of raising daughters to become good wives and mothers too. However, the daughters had to do more than simply become good mothers. New Order and middle class aspirations also converged in a concern with progress (called development - pembangunan) and with upward social mobility for the younger generation. In order to elevate the socio-economic standing of both their family and the nation, middle class sons and daughters were urged to pursue higher education and ambitious careers. For girls, this meant entering a modern way of life not always compatible with the standards of kodrat wanita. This is not to say that kodrat wanita became invisible. On the contrary, it is strongly represented in all modern media, be they televised soap operas or lifestyle magazines like Femina. But it does have to compete there with divergent and far more high profile images of strong femininity. The image of fashionably cosmopolitan, self-reliant, and positively liberated young women prevails in the modern mass media. On the face of it, young women do indeed live up to this progressive ideal. When moving in a modern public space such as the campus or big city shopping mall, their looks and attitude give them the air of independent city girls. They appear ready for take-off in exciting careers, and to have fully adopted the principle of 'girl power' so popular in the West. Ideally, middle class girls are supposed to merge the two roles of girl power and kodrat wanita without much difficulty. Yet in reality they are often confronted by stark contradictions. The duality of the social discourse on female gender produces moral confusion, in which the distinction between 'good' and 'bad' behaviour is no longer clearly defined. Such moral conflict, 'the clash between Western and Eastern values' as it is commonly called, is evident in the stories of two girls I befriended in Bandung. A striking feature of these conflicts is that they most often revolve around sexuality. Double standards Mia (22) comes from a respectable, well to do middle class family, part of my extended family in Indonesia. Over the years, on my regular family visits to that country, I saw her grow into an independent-minded young woman. I became like a big sister to her - she knew that I, an outsider living in the West, would not judge her. On my last visit to Bandung, Mia turned to me more than once in despair for advice, which I'm afraid I was not able to give to her full satisfaction, as her anguish has remained until today. She had fallen in love with a fellow student, of whom her parents disapproved. In order to restrict her contacts with him they frequently put her under house arrest. Her parents had her shadowed by a relative, and made a habit of eavesdropping on her phone conversations. Mia was infuriated by this treatment, which she considered unfair and altogether hampering of her freedom. But the experience also confused her - it was wholly inconsistent with her self-image of a modern liberated girl who determines her own fate. Mia could not see how it could be wrong to follow her own choices, or how it could be right to repress her sexuality. 'Sharing love is normal, isn't it', she said, 'everybody is doing it, and it's not like I'm a slut; but then how come I'm made to feel that way?' Yet despite her dismay, she felt uneasy about arguing with her parents. No Indonesian girl, not even modern Mia, will easily get it into her head to openly show defiance. Instead, Mia felt there was no way out but to lie. She started to spend a lot of time making up secret schemes and alibis, thus leading a double life for the sake of pursuing her own choices. In this precarious way she tried to combine her self-image of a liberated girl with compliance to kodrat wanita norms. Of course this proved to be no solution. The game of double standards increasingly depressed her. Mia began to occasionally run away from home. At the time of my stay in Bandung she sometimes came to me, too baffled to speak or cry. Much the same conflict emerges in the story of Dian (26), another member of my extended family who comes from a similar, somewhat more religious middle class family. We were very close as small children in Bandung in the 1970s, and after I moved to the Netherlands we corresponded for many years. At first sight, Dian appears a true paragon of female chastity. A devout Muslim wearing Islamic veil and dress, she always abides by her parents' wishes. When we were children, she used to make a great effort to teach me the virtues of kodrat wanita. She was afraid that I, a girl living in the West, would otherwise be unable to become the virtuous Indonesian woman I was born to be. To me this didn't make much sense, but to her, even as an eight-year old, kodrat wanita stood for everything her mother wanted her to be. An acquiescent woman, Dian is engaged to a man of her parents' liking, she studied a major of her family's choice, and after graduation she returned to live with her parents so they could keep a close eye on her until the wedding day. Freedom of choice, in the Western individual sense, seems practically non-existent in her life. But for Dian this is not an issue of debate. She used to tell me in her letters to the Netherlands that it was 'really for my own good' to be more restricted than I was, and that it was her woman's duty to respect the wishes of her 'superiors', be they her parents or future husband, no matter what. But contrary to her outward appearances, Dian is not the chaste and docile woman she wants everyone to believe she is. When we recently met again in Bandung and started to catch up on each other's lives the past few years, she told me all about her private fantasies and imaginary future scenario's of a more autonomous way of life. This perfectly matches the image of an independent career woman. Even more astonishingly, she confided that she had been sexually active for many years. Not only had she shared the bed with her fiance, but without his knowledge with other lovers as well. Despite the religious prohibition on premarital sexual intercourse, Dian says she has no regrets. In her private view, 'American style' sexuality, as she calls having intercourse with several partners, is a normal fact of contemporary life. 'These days young women are not as inhibited as they used to be', she said, 'we acknowledge having desires too, just like men do'. However, Dian is aware that her sexual behaviour is still considered a sin in Indonesian society at large. And she admits to feeling deep guilt every day, not for her sexual behaviour per se, but for being hypocritical about it towards her parents and even more so in regard to her religiosity. It is this hypocrisy that makes her feel an 'immoral' woman. Mia and Dian both feel burdened by their double lives, yet they feel impelled to maintain it. The same goes for many other Indonesian girls I know. Sexuality is part of the 'girl power' discourse and lifestyle, yet sexually active young women are still cast off into the corner of pornography. They are called a perek (perempuan eksperimen), the Indonesian word for slut, and are accused of indifferently throwing away the integrity of their bodies and thereby disgracing their personal and family's honour. Indeed, since women's bodies are often made to represent the moral integrity of all of society, they can be accused of disgracing the nation. Young women are hardly to blame for the moral ambiguities of contemporary social life. Neither are they to blame for the paternalistic structures still persisting in Indonesian society, that deny them an equal voice in moral debate and thus cause girls like Mia and Dian to feel they are better off maintaining a frustrating double life. Where social discourse on gender, sexuality and morality is concerned, reformasi still has a long way to go. Yatun L.M. Sastramidjaja (sastramidjaja@pscw.uva.nl) was born in the Netherlands but lived in Bandung as a small child and has made numerous family visits since then. She is researching a PhD at the University of Amsterdam, and is the author of the Dutch language book 'Dromenjagers in Bandung: Twintigers in het moderne Indonesie' (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 2000). Inside Indonesia 66: Apr - Jun 2001

Quo vadis, lesbians?

Lesbians want to be themselves Bunga Jeumpa and Ulil The progress of Indonesia's lesbian movement should not be measured by the yardstick of its gay movement. Nor by that of the Asian lesbian movement generally, even if they influence one another. It is honestly very difficult to build a movement for something that is so unpopular in the mainstream. Building socialist ideas is already difficult enough in Indonesia. During the New Order, just distributing Pramoedya's books was a battle. The first lesbian group was formed in Jakarta in the 1980s. It was called Perlesin, short for Persatuan Lesbian Indonesia (Indonesian Lesbian Union). One of the curious features of this association is that it had a chapter of Dharma Wanita, usually reserved for the wives of bureaucrats. Saskia Wieringa, who has written about Perlesin, says they were a 'femme' group partnered with the butch group in Perlesin. Perlesin failed to reach the wider community, seemed to have no clear strategy, and folded soon after. When the gay group Gaya Nusantara started in about 1986, lesbian groups began to orient themselves towards it through their activities as well as in their writing. The establishment of the Asian Lesbian Network (ALN) in 1989 inspired Indonesian lesbians to become more political. It led three people to set up the lesbian network Chandra Kirana in January 1993. Chandra Kirana published its own bulletin, which at the time was a big breakthrough to reduce alienation and widen public discourse. Unfortunately the cooperative relationship with Gaya Nusantara did not last long. The gay men's movement did not provide enough space for a female group that had its own way of thinking. After the Second Lesbian and Gay Congress at the end of 1995, one protest letter from the lesbian community in Bandung (where the congress was held) said: 'There was not one session or workshop on lesbian issues, and the committee were all men. Why was Chandra Kirana ignored like that? That means we were all ignored.' An understanding that Gayatri felt she had with Dede Oetomo was also ignored. From that moment, Chandra Kirana tried to organise independently of the gay men's network. Actually the organisation is not free from internal problems. The classic one is losing volunteers because of intervention from their own families. One was sent to Ambon just so she would be as far away from lesbian activities as possible. Others have been subjected to pressure or even violence from their families to make them 'return to normality'. Nevertheless, the group continues to do its work. It wants to encourage more discussion of its way of life. One result is a book of short stories entitled Lines, written by Ratri M (2000), which tells about lesbian life in Indonesia. Lines is another word for lesbian in Indonesian. None of this could have been achieved without Gayatri, the backbone of the group, one of its founders who remains true to her commitment. At the Indonesian Women's Coalition Congress held in Yogyakarta in December 1998, she was the only lesbian who dared to stand up and argue that lesbian concerns should become an advocacy issue for the Women's Coalition. One of the other founders, meanwhile, stayed still in her seat, Gayatri said afterwards. With this recognition at a national level the lesbian movement entered a new era, that is, of political struggle within a gender framework. Not that this has stopped its activists from facing rejection. The poem (see box) is an illustration of that. As activists within Chandra Kirana, we often wonder where our place really is. If we join the gay men's movement, we become the Second Sex and are coopted. If we join the Indonesian women's movement, we become like garlic among the onions - step sisters of the women's movement. Where do Indonesian lesbians want to go from here? Bunga Jeumpa (bunga.jeumpa@eudoramail.com) is the coordinator of Chandra Kirana (www.swara.cjb.net/). Satire I just want to offer peaceSo the path we know will not lose its meaningHow happy I would be to know you do not see a leper before youNervously groping with her rotten fingerMaking a space between usOr perhaps I am just a flower eater to youWith savage passion devouring every breast or thigh I seeSo you can do disgusting things next to me I am no homophobe, you say cheerfullyBut I don't see the sign of honesty in your eyesAll I see is your imagination screening pictures like a televisionAbout how good you would feel caught up at the end of my bootlacesAnd the fingers you spread out are invisible barriers To stop me from opening themOr about the 1000 men on your bedAnd the 1000 women under your bed Never mind!Let's make peace, leave behindThe skin of hypocrisy and change the musicSo full of our sexual preference distinctions,Help me answer their question,How to eliminate the discrimination within anti-discrimination (To a friend who often shares paper and pencil with me: BJD Gayatri) Inside Indonesia 66: Apr - Jun 2001

Gay men in the reformasi era

Homophobic violence could be a by-product of the new openness Dédé Oetomo On the evening of November 11, 2000, a group of young volunteers organised an Aids education fair and party in the hill resort of Kaliurang, near Yogyakarta. They belonged to Lentera (meaning Oil Lamp), the Aids service wing of the Indonesian Planned Parenthood Association (PKBI) in Yogya. Many national and international agencies have praised Lentera for reaching out and bringing in various stigmatised risk groups, such as gay men, male-to-female transgenders (waria), female sex workers, street children, as well as other people at risk but who have no particular societal identification, such as men who have sex with other men. Their approach is 'integrationist' - they do not directly challenge the conventional attitudes of the general public, yet are able to deliver effective services to those who are in need. People within Lentera often say their own philosophy is in line with the gentle Javanese belief in ngono ya ngono ning aja ngono, which you could translate as 'now you see it, now you don't'. Lentera was started amid a wave of Aids activism in the early 1990s by a few young psychologists and planned parenthood activists, who saw the epidemic appearing on the horizon. From the very beginning a few concerned gay individuals 'integrated' themselves discreetly, often playing up the identity of an Aids activist rather than that of a gay activist. The events Lentera organised, however, always included an element of fun-filled entertainment, and there gay men and waria tended to predominate, if not in numbers then in ambience. The Kaliurang event of November 2000 was called Kerlap-Kerlip Warna Kedaton 2000 (KKWK 2000, Flickers of Royal Court Colours). It was to be the second annual event where Aids activists could get together, take a break from the drudgery of activism, and share their knowledge with the general public in an entertaining way. There were stalls with Aids posters, condoms and lubricants, demonstration dildoes, gay magazines. A variety show combining entertainment and education was planned for the evening. Other people were there too, but the ambience was unmistakably campy. If not in number then in spirit, gay men and waria dominated the event. KKWK 2000 became fatefully different compared to the first KKWK in 1999, and to other more ad hoc events in previous years. The event was held in the Hastorenggo Building, owned by the family of the sultan of Yogyakarta. As a sign of reformasi openness, members of the press were invited to cover it. They got more than they or the organisers bargained for. Around 9 pm, right in the middle of a campy fashion show, 150 men in traditional Muslim garb came in and attacked from the back rows, shouting 'Allahu Akbar!' The attack came without any warning. Wielding clubs, swords and machetes, and hurling soft drink bottles, the thugs attacked indiscriminately, forcing people in the audience to run towards the front part of the hall and through side doors to jump down to safety. The attackers then went from room to room, breaking down doors, and stealing wallets, handphones, small purses and the like. The four policemen who were at hand could not cope with them, and called for help, which came soon afterwards. They apprehended 50-odd attackers, but these were soon released. Perhaps the police were afraid of a similar attack on their own premises, which would not be the first time. The thugs claimed to represent a loose coalition called the Anti-Vice Movement (Gerakan Anti Maksiat (GAM). Some were members of the Ka'bah Youth Movement (Gerakan Pemuda Ka'bah, GPK), an organisation affiliated with the Muslim United Development Party (PPP). Others belonged to the Yogyakarta Mosque Youth (Remaja Masjid Yogyakarta). They launched their attack in the heightened moral atmosphere just ahead of the fasting month, Ramadhan. Later, in the press, they justified their attack on the grounds that the Kaliurang event was a sex party of gays and waria. In the beginning of the subsequent media debate, KKWK 2000 organisers were given equal space. But it quickly became a one-sided affair, apparently because newspaper editors were threatened by GPK leaders and others claiming responsibility for the attack. A group of fifty-odd NGOs formed a coalition to protest the attack, but many soon left the ranks. Even the Yogya PKBI leadership was apparently under pressure to close down the program for gay men, waria and men who have sex with men. New phase I think we are entering a new phase in the development of Indonesian homosexualities, one where homophobic attacks, previously unknown, are becoming a bitter reality. The attack on KKWK 2000 is not without precedent. Over the previous few months groups of men in traditional Muslim garb had been harassing gay men in the northern square in front of the sultan's palace, until then a safe gathering space. In the East Java town of Pasuruan a similar group paid a visit to a sometimes cross-dressing gay hair stylist and forced him to close down his business on the grounds that it was a den of vice. He argued back. The local branch of the political party PDIP advocated on his behalf, and he was able to keep his business open. In September 1999, following a huge demonstration by students and other elements against then-president Habibie during his visit to Solo, members of the Surakarta Front for the Defence of Islam (Front Pembela Islam Surakarta, FPIS) threatened to kill gay activists. The activists were planning a national working meeting of the Indonesian Network of Lesbians and Gay Men (Jaringan Lesbian dan Gay Indonesia, JLGI). So while reformasi has brought a sense of widening democratic space, the flip side is these homophobic attacks. What are we to make of them? One important answer, in my opinion, is a greatly increased public awareness of the variety of human sexualities. Since the 1980s, the media have begun to sensationalise phenomena like homosexuality. In the 1990s this combined with the drive against HIV/Aids to make possible much more open discussion of sexualities. There is now a new understanding of gender and sexuality. True, many misunderstandings remain, but they are eroding. The old blurring of waria and gays persists, but one can now discern a separation among waria and gay men (which in some localities has even resulted in a mini-identity politics). More people are realising that there are gay men (pronounced 'gaai') who have sex with other men. Perhaps a more serious blurring happened when in the late 1990s people discovered 'sodomites', ie. adult men who rape young boys and kill them afterwards. This added to the frightening element of the unknown which is homosexuality. To a lesser extent the same blurring is happening to lesbian identities. The Indonesian Women's Coalition for Justice and Democracy (Koalisi Perempuan Indonesia untuk Keadilan dan Demokrasi) explicitly mentions lesbian issues as one of the fifteen issues facing women, but often they find it difficult to get representatives of lesbian communities to join. However, more than increased awareness of sexualities lies behind the public attacks. In the reformation era we have also seen a rise of attacks on brothels, discotheques, pubs, and the like. The attack on gay men and KKWK 2000 must be seen as part of this wave. The attackers could be people of true religious faith, but more often they were shady elements of society. Those who came within close proximity of the KKWK 2000 attackers, for instance, reported smelling alcohol on their breath. The breakdown of law and order that accompanied the resignation of Suharto seems to give them an excuse to run on the rampage, as it were. Perhaps we should understand both the opening up of democratic space for gay men and the attacks from the thugs and other elements as related sides of the same emerging phenomenon. While one can say it is a price to pay, one can also say that the attacks have made gay people and waria more militant and resistant to the dominant ideology of conservative morality. Even if it is not free from the risk of reactionary attacks, we may be witnessing the beginning of profound change in Indonesia's sexual morality. Dédé Oetomo (gayanusa@ilga.org) is the coordinator of GAYa NUSANTARA (http://welcome.to/gaya). He lives in Surabaya. Inside Indonesia 66: Apr - Jun 2001

Jakarta women's barefoot bank

Poor kampung women double their income through their own micro-credit scheme Lea Jellinek In May 1999, Bambang Rustanto and I set up Kesuma Multiguna, an NGO which aimed to work with poor kampung dwellers in Jakarta. We were both dissatisfied with our experiences of international consulting. Poverty projects gave consultants like us good work, good money, and good opportunities, but left the poor unchanged. With the economic crisis of 1997-99 and subsequent big government spending on the Social Safety Net, we saw how the poverty excuse was used yet again to enrich aid agencies, consultants, and government departments. We decided to try to develop programs which would really reach the urban poor. We chose Jakarta because it seemed the most neglected and difficult place. We had set ourselves a challenge, and were by no means sure we could succeed. We chose to focus on the area surrounding the Anggrek Mall in Slipi, West Jakarta. The mall is a towering structure with condominiums on top and the latest in shopping complexes underneath, complete with ice-skating rink. As you drive in from the airport, it looks like a surreal castle. It is surrounded by cloverleaf freeways, which have literally been imposed on top of a village. It is thus a mixture of very rich and very poor, new and old, modern and traditional. Kampung communities are imprisoned on all sides by high cement walls and multistorey developments. Suspicious My colleague Bambang comes from among the poor and communicates well with them. From working on the streets as a trader with his mother, he had learnt that capital for the purchase of trading stock was their most basic need. Many of the poor have small trades - cooked foods, vegetable selling, ginger medicine making, selling clothes on credit - but they lack enough capital to buy adequate stocks. This limits their sales and income. The first task was to find one neighbourhood where the program could be tested. We spent two months familiarising ourselves with the poorest communities. Most of those we initially approached were suspicious. They had become disillusioned with government programs in the past, and thought this might be similar. Others - especially when they saw a white person - thought distrustfully that it had something to do with Christian proselytising. And still others adopted a handout mentality, thinking we were bringing gifts. Eventually, however, one group of ten women in the poorest area beside the Grogol Canal was ready to take out loans. A dynamic and caring woman - the wife of the local headman - organised the group. She already ran the traditional rotating credit group, and our intentions were that our credit program would grow out of and build on this group. Neighbours started to talk about our program, and within one month another group had requested loans. Information spread surprisingly rapidly by word of mouth. After eighteen months, over 520 women were part of the savings and borrowing scheme, and there had not been one default. We chose to work with women because they are the core of the household. They know everybody in their neighbourhood. They know who can and cannot be trusted. They are the ones who run the household enterprises which feed the local population. These enterprises often keep the family going while their husbands are unemployed or seeking work. The women are most concerned about their children's future, and traditionally hold the family purse strings. Moreover, men are out on the city streets seeking an income and thus much more difficult to monitor compared to the women who are reliably present in the kampung. The first task when forming a group was to find a trusted local leader. Neighbourhood women were asked whom they most admired and who cared for them when they were in difficulties. When most of the fingers pointed at one woman, she was approached to be the leader. She then had the chore of deciding who would be the borrowers. We wanted to reach the poorest of the poor, but at the same time we could not afford default. In most cases, the borrower had to have a viable enterprise. Mostly petty traders were able to get a loan. The head of the group knew each borrower personally - their homes fronted onto one another's houses and they met along the pathways each day. They had lived next to each other for many years and knew each other's life stories. Over a year and a half, eighteen different neighbourhoods formed a savings and borrowers group. The numbers in each group varied from ten to sixty people. 'Interest' Borrowing was done in stages. The first loan amounted to Rp 100,000 (A$20). It was paid back over the next five months in monthly installments of Rp 20,000 (A$4). In addition, each borrower paid Rp 2000 (A$0.40) every month to cover operating costs and insurance against default. Once they had paid back this amount, they could take out a larger loan of Rp 200,000 (A$40). On each satisfactory repayment, the amount of a subsequent loan could be increased, up to a maximum of Rp 500,000 (A$80). As the program progressed, we felt we wanted to encourage savings as an integral part of borrowing. For every Rp 100,000 borrowed, Rp 5000 was put aside into a savings account for the borrower, and they had a bankbook to prove it. We constantly agonised over the amount of interest - called 'operating costs' because Muslims generally do not like the idea of interest. Bankers had warned us that if we wanted to remain viable, we had to charge market rates of 20-30 percent interest per annum. This sounds very high by Australian standards, but was in line with Indonesian banks. Furthermore, most of the people we were lending to had, at one time or another, been indebted to illegal moneylenders, who charge interest rates of 300 percent per annum. So kampung dwellers were pleased with the rates we were offering. The aim was to ultimately make the savings and credit system self-sustaining, so that it would not rely on outside funding to keep the office and staff running. For the first four months, most of the staff worked for free. We had no desks, tables, or computers, but had to work on the floor. The kampung dwellers themselves started to offer us tables and chairs. Eventually Daimler Benz Jakarta gave us some old computers that they were replacing. During the first six months, all the details had been written in children's notebooks. Eighteen months later, all borrower records were computerised, so we could clearly see how many loans they had taken out and how much they had borrowed, saved, and repaid. A staff member who eighteen months earlier had not known anything about computers had become computer-literate. From the initial groups of borrowers we recruited the most able, unemployed women to be part of our office staff. They had been secretaries and treasurers in supermarkets and shops before the economic crisis. After losing their jobs, they had become impoverished and despairing. It was these young women who lived in the kampung and had knowledge of kampung economics and trade who helped us design the micro-credit system. It was their ideas that formed the core of the program, and they designed the accounting system. After four months, the staff could no longer afford to volunteer their services. They came from poor families and their husbands were annoyed that their wives were working without bringing home any resources. Although the staff had special borrowing rights from the program, they needed proper salaries if the micro-credit program was to be viable. The 'interest' or 'operating costs' had to cover their salaries. Another aspect of the program was that it was conducted within peoples' homes like a 'barefoot doctor' scheme. Two of our staff would come to the home of the group leader each month, bringing cash from the bank. They would explain the details of the program, while the women sat in a circle and the money was piled up in front of them on the floor. After each woman signed the necessary documents, they received their loan. Six months after starting the program, it was a joy to walk through the kampungs. Women came out and embraced us. We were greeted everywhere - no longer the sullen, doubting stares. Instead, many told us that their incomes had doubled from A$1 to A$2 per day. Moreover, a network of women was being created through the communities that belonged to the program. Our staff spread information about the available goods and services from one neighbourhood to another, and this may have expanded inter-neighbourhood trade. We were painfully aware that the poorest of the poor, such as washerwomen and casual labourers, were still unable to borrow, because they lacked enterprises. We regarded the micro-credit program as a first step to gain entry and trust in the community. From this we are developing other programs for the really poor - nutrition, a lending program for health and schooling, monthly medical clinics and a neighbourhood library. Lea Jellinek (leajell@ozemail.com.au) lives in Taggerty, Victoria, Australia. She is the author of 'The wheel of fortune: The history of a poor community in Jakarta' (1991). Inside Indonesia 66: Apr - Jun 2001

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