Indonesian maids in Singapore want to be heard
Noorashikin Abdul Rahman
Women constitute seventy per cent of the estimated four million migrant workers who come from Indonesia. Their voices must be heard. Only by listening to their voices can we see that these women are after all individuals, with their own aspirations and potential.
Most of them work as live-in foreign domestic workers (FDWs) in households in the Middle East, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. The Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, has traditionally been a favourite destination for women migrant workers from Indonesia. But horrid tales of torture and abuse the women experienced there, exposed in the media in the early '90s and retold by ex-migrants, encouraged many aspiring migrants to reconsider their choice of destination. Proximity to Indonesia, a reasonably attractive exchange rate, and the relative freedom it offers, have made Singapore an increasingly popular destination for Indonesian FDWs.
'I chose Singapore because the exchange rate is much better than Malaysia. My friends who have worked in the Middle East advised me that it is less work here, as the houses are smaller. You also get more freedom because you can at least go to the market and send the children to school, unlike in Saudi where you are confined to the house all the time,' explained Sukinah, a 20 year-old who is on her first overseas assignment. Indonesian FDWs now comprise slightly more than half of the 150,000 foreign women who work as live-in domestic maids in Singapore. Hailing mostly from Java, they enter Singapore via Jakarta and Batam with the help of a network of labour recruiters and maid agents with links across international boundaries.
However, the factors underlying the discrimination they face are complex. They cannot be resolved with laws and protective policies alone. Many migrants have retired successfully to more comfortable homes, own bigger pieces of land, and support their children through university. Yet their lives are filled with hardship, and insults on their dignity are the norm. As foreigners and as women, they are viewed with suspicion and often patronised. As workers engaged in a low status job, they are treated with little respect and are hardly granted any of the rights workers are entitled to.
The exploitation begins even before the women leave Indonesian soil. Local entrepreneurs and bureaucrats conveniently overlook ministerial decrees meant to protect migrant workers in the recruitment process. Instead of ensuring that their rights as workers are defended, these people treat FDWs as a commodity that can be sold for a quick profit. Upon their return from overseas, the lack of protective laws leave them defenceless as more bureaucrats and middlemen appropriate their hard-earned money without any qualms. Stories of extortion at Jakarta's Sukarno-Hatta airport are common. For example, returning Indonesian FDWs are often charged exorbitant fees for the trip back to their village by members of a transport mafia allegedly linked to corrupt officials in the Labour Department.
Nevertheless, institutional support is available and protective laws are in place in Singapore to catch maid abusers. Unlike in Hong Kong, where foreigners have the freedom to form unions and associations for collective bargaining, Singapore's advantage lies in its strict laws against abusive employers. In 1998, the penal code was amended to include a special clause for FDWs. Offences such as assault, grievous harm and 'outraging of modesty' inflicted against FDWs by employers now carry heavier penalties. The Ministry of Manpower in Singapore operates a help line that FDWs and other migrant workers can ring when encountering problems. The Ministry also has officers to help resolve conflicts over non-payment of salaries.
In addition to the Singapore government, the Indonesian embassy in Singapore has a special department for Indonesian domestic workers that oversees their welfare and helps negotiate settlements in times of crisis. Technically, all Indonesian FDWs should be brought to the embassy upon their arrival. There they are supposed to be protected under a legally binding work contract endorsed by the embassy that ensures rest days, standard salaries and adequate provisions for their well-being. In practice, though, it rarely happens.
Attitudes
Working in Singapore is, after all, not that bad. What then are the problems for FDWs in Singapore that cannot be addressed by such institutional formulae? The problem lies with social attitudes that are not easily dealt with by regulations. Life as a foreign domestic worker in Singapore is hard, despite its advantages.
In this modern and orderly city-state, FDWs are employed under a two-year renewable work permit in which strict conditions such as a six-monthly medical examination to screen for pregnancy and venereal diseases and a bar on marriage to locals apply. The penalty for breaching any of these conditions is repatriation and a permanent ban from working in the country.
The Employment Act does not apply to FDWs, because domestic work is not recognised as formal work. Most FDWs negotiate personal contracts with employers, mediated by maid agents. According to one maid agent I interviewed, employers hire Indonesians because they are perceived to be more loyal, more docile, more hard working and less fussy than their Filipina counterpart. This reputation can mostly be attributed to good marketing techniques by maid agents. For although it may seem commendable, in reality this reputation translates into more difficult working conditions. Most Indonesians are expected to work without rest days.
Indeed, negative stereotypes, which subvert the identity of FDWs as individuals, monopolise the mindset of Singaporeans. This has led to the dehumanisation of FDWs in their everyday interactions with Singaporeans. 'I feel that Singaporeans do not like us working here. They look down on us and don't treat us as humans,' lamented Sumi, a 25 year-old who has been working in Singapore for four years.
This prejudiced mindset also justifies excessive control over Indonesian FDWs. Madam S, an employer of an Indonesian maid in Singapore, said: 'These Indonesians cannot be trusted. They may take advantage if you give them too much freedom. My policy is to prevent them from making friends. If they have friends they will know more and when they know more there will be more problems for me.' She was only half joking.
Indonesian FDWs are also patronised by representatives of their own country. 'Those people at the embassy, they only look upon us like we are mice, like we have no value,' exclaimed Ibu Siti, a 55 year-old migrant who has been working in Singapore for ten years. Tuti, a 44 year-old migrant, complained that the Indonesian embassy does not seem to be bothered to organise productive activities for Indonesian FDWs on their rest days, despite a demand for such facilities. Some Indonesian FDWs, through the help of their Filipina counterparts, have instead taken the initiative to join skill workshops organised by the Philippines embassy.
Nevertheless, the voices of Indonesian FDWs have not all fallen on deaf ears. Recently, a mosque in Singapore responded to an appeal by a few Indonesian FDWs to provide them with facilities to get together for religious classes. Beginning from a mere gathering of eight maids, the group now boasts 150 members and calls itself An-Nisa. Its activities have expanded to include skills workshop like English and handicraft lessons. A maid who wanted a place where Indonesian women could break the monotony of domestic work and assert their individual identities initiated the formation of the group. Sumi, the leader of the group, hopes that through the worthwhile activities of An-Nisa, Singaporeans can see that Indonesian FDWs are also 'good people' and not look down on them as just maids. 'I am not asking Singaporeans to respect us, but just to treat us as equals. We are all humans, and it's just unfortunate that we have ended up as domestic workers,' said Sumi.
Perhaps the Indonesian embassy too can start to heed the voices of their women to improve their reputation and self-esteem in Singapore. Embassy staff members have been invited to celebrate the Islamic New Year with An-Nisa, and have pledged support in organising future activities. Nevertheless, the pledge so far remains lip service. Volunteers at the mosque claim they have not heard from the embassy since. An-Nisa's participation in a fun fair, organised by the embassy in conjunction with Indonesia's independence day recently, was again an initiative by the women themselves, who asked the mosque to write to apply for a stall.
This reminds me of an unpleasant memory on a visit to the embassy a couple of years ago. A young migrant who appeared distressed had just been brought in from the guard post. Instead of being asked gently what her problem was, the staff on duty barked at her and said, 'What's your problem? You ran away right? Don't hope that you can get a free ticket back. Sit here and someone will deal with you later.' I was stunned. Noticing the look of disapproval on my face, the staff turned to me and said coldly, 'These kids expect us to fly them home when things are not right with their employers, they think life is that easy.' The young woman was by then trying very hard to fight back her tears so as not to create a scene and embarrass herself further. Maybe it's going to take a while for the embassy to really listen to the voices of their women.
Noorashikin Abdul Rahman (nabdul@yahoo.com) is writing her PhD dissertation on these women at Curtin University, Perth, Australia.
Whatever it takes
Workers, often women, take risks to earn an honest living
Michele Ford
In June last year, in Tanjung Pinang, I interviewed a Betawi woman a long way from her native Jakarta. Tanjung Pinang is a large town on the Indonesian island of Bintan, near Singapore. Once the administrative capital of the region, it is now just another frontier port economy largely dependent on smuggling and sex tourism. This woman, whom I will call Ibu Betawi, looked considerably older than her thirty-five years. She was part of a special sort of smuggling operation - the illegal export of labour to Malaysia. Unlike some of her compatriots, who are dumped off the Malaysian shore in the dead of night, she had a valid work permit - albeit issued on the basis of false papers, which her 'agent' had obtained by bribing local officials. Once in Malaysia as a domestic worker, there would be no guarantees for her well-being from the Malay businessman who organised her placement in return for her first three months' wages.
Ibu Betawiwas between a rock and a hard place. Unlike another of the potential migrant workers I spoke to in Tanjung Pinang, she was no starry-eyed, teenaged villager hoping to see the world. After her husband's death five years ago, she worked in a Korean-run export garment factory in Greater Jakarta, until her eyesight had deteriorated to the point where she could no longer meet factory production targets. When the small business she then started failed, she left her daughter with relatives and looked for work further afield. She had heard the stories about the misfortunes of women working abroad, but she was prepared to do whatever it takes (nekad), determined to earn an honest (halal) income for herself and her daughter.
Ibu Betawi's experience straddles two very visible modes of Indonesian working-class work: the factory production of export goods, and the export of labour itself. Both modes contribute much to the Indonesian economy. In 1999, light manufacturing (food, beverages and tobacco, textiles, leather products and footwear) earned over US$17 billion, or 15.6% of Indonesia's GDP. The sector produces mainly for export and employs over two million workers. In the same year, 302,791 women and 124,828 men were officially placed as overseas migrant workers. Many more go unofficially. Remittances from official overseas female migrant workers alone totalled some US$ 300 million in 1999. The two modes are also symbolically significant, because they lie at the forefront of Indonesia's engagement with the global economy. Ibu Betawi's story illustrates some of the human costs of a Third World economy's attempts to export its way out of trouble.
When I asked about her factory experiences, Ibu Betawi told me stories of unreasonable targets, hard work, forced overtime, low wages, and of having no time to spend with her daughter or her friends. These are common complaints, well documented by academics and non-government organisation (NGO) activists over the last two decades. They have become even more significant since the Asian economic crisis added to the woes of Indonesia's factory workers.
Indonesian manufacturing was badly affected by the crisis. But while many domestically oriented enterprises were forced to close, not all manufacturers suffered. In fact, demand for export products from large factories actually grew. Research done by two labour-oriented NGOs, Akatiga and LIPS, shows that the public acceptance of 'hard times' brought with it the opportunity to restructure. This opportunity was used both by struggling companies and those that were doing quite well. Companies downsized, diversified, and increased their exposure to export markets. They sacked trainees and daily workers first, in order to reduce their severance pay liabilities. The threat of dismissal was also increasingly used as a disciplinary measure for those still employed. A significant proportion of the workforce was casualised. Factory management compensated for the decline in the military's overt role in controlling the industrial workforce by replacing them with local thugs (preman), who operated in workers' communities and at the factory gates.
According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), up to 1,333,345 Indonesian industrial workers were dismissed in 1998 alone, with workers in the textile and footwear industries among the hardest hit. According to industry association estimates, 50% of the footwear and non-garment textile workforce was retrenched at the height of the crisis. Unemployed factory workers were forced to return to their villages (the agricultural sector grew for the first time in many years after Indonesia's economy collapsed) or into the urban informal sector.
Factory workers who did not lose their jobs also faced severe economic difficulties. Although nominal wages increased 15-20% in 1997-98, the consumer price index almost doubled in that time. The purchasing power of the minimum wage has been a major concern. In 1999, calculations of worker activists put a living wage at Rp 600,000 (about AU$ 120) in Jakarta and Bandung and Rp 469,000 in Surabaya. At the time, the regional minimum monthly wages were only Rp 230,000, Rp 228,000 and Rp 182,000 respectively. Shortfalls are met by compromising health and nutrition. As indicated by Ibu Betawi, workers work long hours to earn the overtime necessary for food, shelter and clothing. While some workers scrimp to send money to their families, others are actually subsidised by food sent from the villages.
Malaysia
As job opportunities shrank, the number of Indonesians looking for work overseas increased. According to a Kompas report in late 1998, demand for legal female migrant worker placements had jumped 35 per cent since the onset of the crisis. The crisis had a direct effect on the employment opportunities in many of the Asian countries where Indonesians work. In Malaysia - the Asian country receiving most Indonesian migrant workers - hundreds of thousands of Indonesians were rounded up and repatriated in order to protect Malaysian nationals from the effects of the crisis.
Despite repatriation drives in Malaysia and some other Asian countries, almost half a million Indonesians were placed by government-registered companies in the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America in 2000. 71.39% of 'legal' migrant workers sent overseas between January 1999 and June 2001 were women. Malaysia, where in 1998 legal entrants made up only about one-third of all labour migration, continues to be the destination for the largest number of Indonesia's unofficial migrant workers. In mid-2001, 600,000 illegal migrants were detained in Malaysia. About the same time, it was estimated that 60,000 illegal migrants were working in Middle Eastern countries excluding Saudi Arabia - the major destination for Indonesian migrant workers in the region. These figures show how far the labouring poor will go to find work.
While Ibu Betawi did not turn to domestic work in Malaysia as a direct result of the crisis, her experiences were certainly influenced by increasing pressures in the factory and contracting opportunities outside it. Her decision to work overseas, her determination and optimism, are an important part of the story of working class lives that is not often told. Indonesians working in the factories and overseas face many difficulties, but they are not powerless. Ibu Betawi's self-confessed recklessness in approaching an illegal labour migration agent was a way to take control of her life, to escape the grind of factory work and to make her dead husband's family take some responsibility for her daughter's wellbeing. For others, it might be the decision to leave the house without permission, to arrive late at a factory, to take extra time for prayers or to steal a Nike shoe, an Adidas cap or an electronic component.
Despite the disincentives for activism that job insecurity brings, some workers make the decision to attend an education session or a strike meeting. On a collective level, many factory workers have continued to protest and organise in the post-Suharto era. Dramatic changes in Indonesia's legal framework after President Habibie ratified ILO Convention No 87 on the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise in June 1998 made trade union registration much easier. Ongoing opposition to trade unionism from business and significant sections of the bureaucracy has not prevented new unions from becoming part of Indonesia's official industrial relations system. SBSI, for example, is the major trade union alternative to the official SPSI in the 1990s. Others include informal workers' groups, some pre-New Order unions, and a host of new factory- and regionally-based unions. Although it is doubtful how effective many of these new unions are, their very presence is a significant achievement, considering Indonesia's long history of repression and the subsequent economic crisis.
For migrant workers, an organised collective response is more difficult. They don't work in factories employing thousands of people, but alone in their employers' homes. Nevertheless, with the support of a range of NGOs - many of which are associated with the Consortium for the Defence of Indonesian Migrant Workers (Kopbumi) - migrant workers have organised protests and campaigns in Indonesia and abroad.
Ibu Betawi may or may not be lucky in Malaysia. She might find herself with an understanding boss in conditions far better than those of domestic workers in Jakarta, or she might be deported, or raped or even killed. She has no desire to worry about what might or might not happen to her. Her sights are firmly set. She'll do whatever it takes.
Michele Ford (mford_mul@hotmail.com) is writing a PhD on Indonesian labour at Wollongong University, Australia.
Inside Indonesia 69: Jan - Mar 2002
Whose city?
The street traders who feed and transport Jakarta are also its most unwelcome citizens
Vanessa Johanson
'During the economic crisis public transport drivers had a raw deal. The price of spare parts and fuel skyrocketed. Naturally they went on strike. But you know who organised them - the becak drivers!'
Romo Sudri and Palupi, and their colleagues at the Institut Sosial Jakarta (ISJ), spend their days organising those working in the so-called informal sector. Across Jakarta, they encourage them to challenge policies that prevent them from earning a reasonable income and living in reasonable dwellings.
No one knows for sure how many people make up the informal sector in Indonesia. Yet it is a central part of life. 'Imagine Jakarta without street vendors, building labourers and itinerant workers, garbage collectors (pemulung), street kids, home industries,' says Palupi. It could almost be said that this unacknowledged slice of the city community is actually its heart.
Romo Sudri and Palupi sit in ISJ's simple, dimly lit offices in Rawajaya, East Jakarta. Both are quiet-spoken. 'The informal sector have no legal protection whatsoever. All those bakso soup sellers are actually illegal. The urban poor workers - as we prefer to call them - are referred to by law as Social Welfare Problems (Penyandang Masalah Kesejahteraan Sosial). They have not been formally given any space, the law does not accept them as a real part of the community or economy. They don't pay tax. But I'd like to ask: how many conglomerates don't pay tax? Did Suharto ever pay tax?'
'The role of street vendors in the economy is ignored too. How would the newspaper companies, bottled drink companies and so on survive without them? Where do most of the office workers in Jakarta eat lunch? From street vendors of course. Yet these people are constantly evicted from their work locations and homes in so-called "city cleanup operations."'
Tension between the city administration and the urban poor - particularly becak (trishaw) drivers - is high. In some areas the streets are strewn with government-sponsored banners stating things like: 'This area has been cleansed of becaks'.
Development boom
Institut Sosial Jakarta was born in 1974 from the Sekolah Tinggi Filsafah. Its original goal was to move beyond philosophy to research and discuss the problems of the urban poor. One of its founders, John Muller, a German sociologist, was deported from Indonesia for his writing at the end of the 1980s. It was in the 1980s when ISJ decided to become more active in organising the urban poor and carrying out advocacy, as opposed to purely research.
'The 80's saw the development boom in Indonesia, accompanied by so much marginalisation of the poor. At the same time many NGOs became more involved in advocacy. In 1985 we established the Workers Consultation Bureau (Biro Konsultasi Perburuhan), which focused on education and case handling with factory workers. In 1989 Romo Sandyawan came to ISJ, and really consolidated the advocacy praxis.'
'We survived the repression of this era by studying the survival systems of the poor themselves. They have their own mechanisms, we used also what worked for them.'
Institut Sosial Jakarta enters poor communities hoping to catalyse but not lead activities. 'We can bring people together to talk about issues, we can suggest strategies, but we don't want to lead them. And we certainly don't want to use them for demonstrations for a particular issue. We want to organise them to work out their own strategies. This work is not very popular!'
ISJ has never been involved in welfare or income-generating activities. 'Actually, these people aren't poor,' says Romo Sudri. 'A becak driver can earn around Rp 30,000 (AU$6) a day, which is more than some taxi drivers earn, for example. They don't need charity, they need space. They need to know that they will be allowed to stay in one place and not be asked to pay illegal levies all the time.'
'The term slums (rumah kumuh) implies that the people who live there aren't interested in living clean lives. But they don't want to fix up their houses because they never know when they'll be moved on.'
The structural problems are great and long term. 'And it's not just in Jakarta,' says Palupi. 'Most cities have laws like the Public Order Regulation (Perda Ketertiban Umum) which regard the urban poor workers as filth.' This has been the attitude of the Jakarta administration since the days of governor Ali Sadikin, who said that trading in public places was illegal and those doing it should be swept out and go back to their villages.
'The people we work with are happy to pay tax, as long as they know that the system is clean. We surveyed the communities we worked with about what kind of government subsidies were needed and what for. They said they wanted subsidies for health and education, but hardly any wanted subsidies for their businesses. They just want to be allowed to go about their business, and for there to be no more harassment and no more monopolies.'
'We take a human rights rather than a charity approach. People have a right to earn their living unharrassed, it's not something they should have to beg for or be afraid about.'
Vanessa Johanson (vjohanson@indocg.org) works for the conflict resolution organisation Common Ground in Jakarta. Contact ISJ: email isj@indo.net.id, tel (62 21) 4786 3150 or tel/ fax (62 21) 489 7761.
Stop press: Up to 15,000 slum dwellers were made homeless in several cases of government-sponsored arson early in November. ISJ was there to accompany them.
Inside Indonesia 69: Jan - Mar 2002
Jakarta's poorest
Lea Jellinek
Jakarta's poorest tend to be hidden at the dead ends of pathways or on the river edge. Often their houses are in corners, along dark narrow alleyways where sun, air and light do not enter, even during the day. Otherwise their homes are perched on foul smelling drains or rest up against concrete walls.
The poorest often have difficulty communicating. They are used to being ignored. Some hardly look into your eyes but down and away so it is hard to have a conversation. They are ashamed. If you ask them about their background and history, they look blank - as if they have no memory. They speak in a mixture of dialects, slur their sentences and cannot explain their problems.
The poorest lack time. They cannot talk for long as they are looking all day for the money they need to buy food. Those who come to their homes find their doors bolted. 'They are out', a neighbour says. 'Gone looking for work.'
At 7 am one morning, we go to meet Ibu Ani, and find her walking through the local market place. She is a masseuse. She does not sit at home waiting for clients but seeks them out. We go back to her house to talk, but within half an hour she looks agitated. She says she must go out to look for work. Often she works till 10 pm, and then returns home to darn holes in clothing for her extended family.
The poorest have only their unskilled labour to sell. They tend to be masseurs, washerwomen, day labourers, guards, parking attendants, or 'Pa Ogah' - as they are oddly called - people who help cars do a U turn in the middle of the road. They seek work on a daily basis. They do not have the capital, confidence or skills for petty trade.
Up to four families, four generations, often live together in one tiny house. Ibu Ani, a grandmother, lives with three related families in her shack - a total of fifteen people - so she needs at least Rp 30,000 to feed them. That is four to six hours of massage per day and many hours of looking for clients.
The members of the family sleep side by side on the floor - no mattress, just pillows. During the day these pillows are stacked in a pile and the room is converted into a place for sitting and eating. An alcove in the roof with little light or air may be built above the room to create more sleeping space. People climb up a steep, rickety ladder to get there.
Flimsy
The homes of the poorest are built of flimsy materials: bamboo, cardboard, chicken wire, newspaper, tin cans, boards and other scavenged materials. The gaps in the walls let in some air but also the rain. They feel embarrassed by these flimsy structures. If the ground is wet, they have a bench to sleep on, for they are often close to rivers which flood knee-deep. Apart from the bench there is only a rack for clothing and dishes.
Electric lighting is rare. They use a kerosene lamp and, if their children are lucky enough to go to school, they gather like flies around the lamp to do their homework. Everything is done on the floor. Many of the poorest cannot read, write, or sign their names. They are embarrassed to write. With difficulty, they hold pen to paper and try to write their name.
Toilet and washing facilities are shared. For most water and toilet needs, the poorest usually have to walk some distance - sometimes along the narrow banks of sewage canals - to communal bathing facilities. Sometimes these cost Rp100-200 for urination and Rp300 for defecation or a bath. The poorest have to find ways of not paying these fees for they lack the money. To avoid paying for rubbish collection and sanitation, they throw everything into dirty canals or empty spaces around their homes.
It is a hard life with the mosquitoes, fleas, heat and filth. Their houses are often within metres of where everybody dumps rubbish. Sometimes the rubbish goes right into their homes, or it is burned nearby. There is a constant smell of burning plastic and smoke.
In the homes of the poorest, there is often an ill person lying in the background. Ibu Ani is very small, thin, and she limps. As we sit together on the floor, she keeps massaging her leg which looks thin, stiff and weak. Years ago she had a knee injury which was not treated. Now one part of the knee sticks out. Her face is hollow and sunken from suffering, and other parts of her body seem oddly disconnected.
Ibu Ani has lived in Jakarta since childhood and was orphaned at an early age. She explains that she has often been homeless and sought shelter in graveyards. She recalls the dark nights, the loneliness, the mud and the rain. Years ago she had one trip out of the city, to Bandung. The local government women's group organised it. She remembers it as the greatest journey of her life - acres of paddy, mountains, trees, blue sky, talk, laughter, friends in the bus and new experiences. Her face glows as she recalls the journey. 'When can I do it again?'
Lea Jellinek (leajell@ozemail.com.au) has written extensively - also in 'Inside Indonesia' - about how the poor cope.
The story of Mimin
Surviving thirty years in Central Jakarta
Lea Jellinek and Ed Kiefer
Central Jakarta is a smoking concrete jungle created over the past thirty-five years by Western-driven development. Work opportunities are difficult and extremely competitive. Uncontaminated water, air, and food are scarce. The poorest live crowded along stinking open sewers that were once rivers and canals. Ground water is polluted by industrial effluent and human waste. The sky is grey-black - as if a storm is coming - the result of unregulated vehicle emissions, open smoldering rubbish fires, and massive smoke-belching generators that power the air-conditioned luxury malls and apartment blocks of the rich.
Mimin is a native of Jakarta - a Betawi Asli. In her youth, she had been a tall, beautiful woman with lanky legs, a handsome face and long black hair which she tied back in a tight bun. She had been a singer (sinden) and widely known throughout the kampungs of Jakarta. With a middle school education, she was a confident, forceful woman.
In 1962 she married Mas Nilum, an East Javanese with a government job managing a military hostel near Mimin's home. At first they lived fairly comfortably with a house and a car. They started to have children. But Mimin's life went downhill dramatically when her husband lost his job during the upheavals of 1965.
In 1975 Mimin lived with her husband and many children in a dank concrete shack on the edge of the Cideng Canal in Kebun Kacang, then a densely settled urban kampung in the heart of Jakarta. She was nearly always on the central city streets. She traded all manner of things, as did her husband. She collected cakes from a Chinese manufacturer and sold them in the narrow pathways of local inner-city markets. Her husband distributed beer and live chickens to other kampungs. They were brokers (mencari objek) and dealt in anything going for sale. If a person needed a sideboard, chair, television, mattress or kampung house, they asked Mimin or Mas Nilum. They would find out who was selling these items, and where to buy them cheaply - receiving a payment from both the buyer and the seller. Mas Nilum also sold lottery tickets.
During the first ten years of their marriage, they made and lost money and were forced to move from one house to another in the same neighborhood. Eventually, Mimin obtained a cart and became a regular trader selling cigarettes, sweets and drinks opposite the Sarinah department store. Mas Nilum sold newspapers and magazines and his business expanded to incorporate ten to twenty paperboys, including some of his children. While Mimin was out on the streets, her eldest daughter looked after the younger children, shopped, cooked, cleaned, washed and ironed clothes.
Raids
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Mimin suffered from anti-trader raids. The government clearing team would come along and try to confiscate her stall. She stood up to the military and police. Unlike most vulnerable traders on the streets of Jakarta, Mimin insisted she was a native of the area and how dare they try to move her away! She demanded to know whether they had children who needed food and education. What right did they have to destroy the livelihood of her family? Often they backed off, but once when her goods were cartedtaken away, she went with them, wrapping her arms around her cart and refusing to let go. The clearing team took her and her goods to Bekasi on the edge of Jakarta, where they were dumped in a compound among the rotting carts of many other traders. Many times she returned trying to retrieve them but without success. The guards wanted more for them than they were worth. Mimin mourned the loss of that cart for many months.
Mimin loved being surrounded by children. She had twelve, of whom nine survived, and she struggled to provide for them. Three of Mimin's children died of cholera. She had taken each to the hospital, but without money, they were not treated. From an early age, each child was taught to be responsible. Some sold newspapers, or shined shoes to add to the family's income. Each child, even if they worked, had to go to school. Her view - many children, much fortune ('banyak anak, banyak rejeki') - was typical of Indonesians at that time.
For many years Mimin had chosen to spend as little as possible on food. The children were thin and had poor complexions. They ate mainly fried or sweet snacks, rice, fried noodles, chili and salt. Mimin said that she lived on four herbal drinks (jamu) a day, which she bought from a passing traditional vendor. She believed they gave her the strength to go on.
Mimin befriended people sleeping on the streets who had just come into Jakarta and knew nothing about the city - advising them what to do, how to survive, where to make a livelihood. She often helped them with loans which were sometimes not repaid. She tried to help one young woman who had gone mad and walked the streets at night, black with dirt.
Mimin brought Aam to Jakarta from a poor family in Bogor, and tutored her in all the things that she had learned from a lifetime of trade on the streets of the city. Aam was related to Mimin through the marriage of a daughter. Aam had the innocence, strength and sharpness of a village girl, and became Mimin's loyal helper both in the home and at the stall. Aam eventually set up her own stall, taking over from Mas Nilum who had become too old and tired to sit by the bus shelter on the streets all day. As Mimin said: 'He cannot defend himself against the police. If they come to raid his stall he just sits there dumbfounded and lets them take everything away. He is afraid to speak out and assert his rights.'
Mimin preferred to ask outsiders such as Aam to help her with her stall rather than her own children. She felt that her children would feel entitled to dip into her trade and she would not be able to say no to them. Mimin believed that it was better if each of the children had their own separate income-earning activities. Mimin's eldest son had taken over his father's newspaper business. One of his younger brothers worked as a driver. The eldest daughter became a hairdresser. She combined this work with waitressing in a Chinese restaurant at night until she married and had a baby. Another daughter had married a man from Bogor and produced two children - thus the links with Aam. Sheni, the youngest, brightest and most ambitious daughter (much like her mother) had battled to study through university and became a cashier in one of the city's most exclusive restaurants.
The family was forced to move in 1981 when the kampung was demolished to make way for apartments. Most kampung dwellers were afraid to take up their option to move into these new flats. Without secure incomes, most feared regular monthly payments for mortgage, electricity, water, gas and rubbish collection. Mimin's family, however, jumped at the opportunity and took a ground floor flat. At that time it seemed beyond their capacity to pay, but looking back it was a bargain. The government had been trying to promote flats among the urban poor, and they received a subsidised rate. Years later these flats sold for many times the original price. Mimin and her family had obtained a very valuable asset: legal title to a home near the centre of Jakarta - within walking distance of their jobs on the city streets.
Mimin's children liked to gather regularly in the flat it was often full with as many as fifteen people, counting children and in-laws. At night, they lay like sardines - one beside the other watching television on the floor of the living room. Mimin and her husband had a room to themselves.
Crisis
When the economic crisis of 1997 hit the city centre, Mimin felt the impact keenly. Many banks which towered up around her home closed down. Across the road, the Golden Truly supermarket - partly owned by one of Suharto's children - went bankrupt. The number of people who came past Mimin's stall dropped by more than half. Instead of whole packets of cigarettes, customers wanted to buy only one cigarette at a time. The prices of Mimin's goods leaped up. She found it difficult to know what to charge. Sometimes she could not replace her stock for the price she had sold it.
Time and environment have taken a toll on Mimin. She sits every day in her tiny red and white striped stall on the hot, noisy and filthy street. No longer the elegant girl, she has become a wrinkled old lady, often frustrated, tired and in pain.
In her thirty years in central Jakarta, the temperatures have risen as large trees have been replaced by multi-storey buildings whose air-conditioners pump out heat. She worries about her children being influenced by the young drug addicts injecting and sniffing drugs beside her stall. A brothel has been started behind her stall. Police have been paid off and do little about these problems.
Although Mimin and her husband long to return to the village where some of their relatives still remain, there are major obstacles. Their children do not want to leave. They think rural life represents poverty, hard work and boring backwardness. They prefer to seek their livelihood in Jakarta and cannot envisage living anywhere else. All of them depend on their central city apartment. To move, Mimin would have to sell that flat to pay for land and a house in the village - but that would leave her children homeless in Jakarta.
Ed Kiefer (ekiefer@hotmail.com) and Lea Jellinek live near Lismore, Australia. Lea wrote about Mimim in Josef Gugler (ed), 'Cities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America' (1997).
Inside Indonesia 69: Jan - Mar 2002
Crisis and poverty
Four years later, how has the economic crisis affected the poor?
Anne Booth
The debate about the impact of the crisis on poverty and income distribution continues. Let me start by summarising what the available statistics appear to tell us. First, the contraction in Gross Domestic Product which occurred in 1998 was most severe in the non-agricultural sectors of the economy, especially in construction, the financial sector, wholesale and retail trade, non-oil manufacturing and transport. All these sectors registered contractions of more than five per cent. It has also been in these sectors, especially construction and financial services, that employment has fallen most rapidly. Indeed the labour force surveys conducted since 1997 indicate that there has been no net growth in non-agricultural employment between 1997 and 2000.
It is also clear from the national income data that the contraction in investment expenditure was far greater than the contraction in personal consumption expenditure. This indeed was the main reason why the initial impact of the crisis on poverty and living standards was less than predicted in mid-1998. But there can be little doubt that the contraction in non-agricultural output and employment, together with the surge in inflation in the middle months of 1998, had an especially serious effect on the poor, because food prices rose more rapidly than non-food prices. This indeed was what had happened in previous inflationary episodes in Indonesia. Thus while the crisis-induced contraction in GDP might not have affected the incomes of the poor more seriously than those of the better off, the ensuing inflation certainly did.
Similarly, the lessons of previous devaluations in Indonesia are useful in predicting the likely effect of the very substantial rupiah devaluation of 1997-98 on incomes of various categories of producer. There can be no doubt that the devaluation led to a rapid increase in the rupiah prices of a range of agricultural products in the last part of 1997 and early 1998, and that the supply response was positive. The GDP data indicate that output of tree crops grew by more than two per cent between 1997 and 1999, in spite of the lingering effects of the drought. But the rapid inflation of 1998 led to a surge in the cost of living for farmers, and thus an erosion of the effects of the devaluation on relative prices. Because of the magnitude of the inflation, the erosion almost certainly took place more quickly than in past devaluations. In addition, the rupiah began to appreciate in late 1998 and early 1999 (although it fell again in 2000/1). Thus by mid-1999 much of the positive effect of the devaluation on the real incomes of rural producers had been dissipated.
As far as most wage and salary workers were concerned, the effects of the rupiah devaluation and the ensuing inflation were almost wholly negative. Real wages in all sectors of the economy fell steeply in late 1997 and 1998, and appear to have made only a partial recovery since then. Thus it may well be correct to argue that, relative to rural producers of export products, urban dwellers did suffer a greater decline in income especially in the initial phase of the crisis. But given the large increase in the agricultural labour force that has occurred between 1997 and 2000, it is unlikely that there will be a strong upward pressure on agricultural wages for some time to come.
Social security
It is hardly surprising, given the suddenness and severity of the downturn in Indonesia, that the question of enhanced social security should be getting far more attention from independent analysts and policy-makers than at any time over the past three decades. As in many other parts of the Asian region, Indonesian policymakers have in the past voiced their hostility to 'western-style' social security provision which is supposed to destroy entrepreneurial initiative and lead to a culture of welfare dependency. But in reality, given the combination of rapid economic growth, rapid growth of employment opportunities, and a favourable dependency ratio due to the speed of the fertility decline in most parts of the country, policy-makers have not been under pressure from any powerful constituency to concern themselves with comprehensive social security provision. Now with the possibility of slower economic growth, together with the demographic inevitability of a higher proportion of the population moving into the older age groups, issues such as social security, and the provision of 'social safety nets' are suddenly at the forefront of the policy debates in Indonesia.
They are likely to stay there in coming decades. The implementation of the social safety net programmes since 1998, however inadequate the targeting has been, has built up a set of expectations that the government should provide basic goods and services such as food, health and education at prices which all sections of the population can afford. Future Indonesian governments will have to deal with these, and other, expectations. Experience from other countries indicates that it is politically very difficult to remove welfare entitlements once they have been conceded, even if the initial granting of the entitlements was made under conditions of severe economic distress. However reluctantly, future Indonesian governments will have to transform emergency social safety net programmes into more comprehensive social programmes aimed at giving all citizens access to basic needs and services. Thus it is likely that debates over implementation and targeting, far from ending once the economy begins to recover, will intensify.
Does the Indonesian experience of 1997/9 offer any lessons to other countries coping with the aftermath of a severe financial crisis, leading to a substantial decline in real output? Perhaps the most obvious lesson is that such crises can burst out of what might appear to be a clear blue sky with little warning. While preventing a crisis from happening in the first place is obviously the best method of preventing crisis-related social ills, the experience of countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea in 1997-9 does confirm the view of the economic historian, Raymond Goldsmith, that financial crises are the inevitable 'childhood disease' of capitalism. Governments in other parts of the developing world would do well to realise that being hailed as a 'miracle economy' by leading international development experts does not immunise a country from such diseases. In fact, to the extent that the over-hyping of the economic performance of Indonesia, together with Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea, in a number of publications in the early 1990s bred an attitude among policy-makers in these countries that they were somehow exempt from the risks and dangers that beset other developing economies, the international development establishment, led by the World Bank, has to take some of the blame for the Asian crisis. Policy-makers in other parts of the developing world would do well to ponder these lessons, and make prudent allowance for the fact that such crises will almost certainly affect them at some stage in their evolution into mature capitalist economies.
A second important lesson is that the effects of a severe economic downturn in an economy as large and heterogeneous as Indonesia are very difficult to measure. Most of the initial judgements which were made by a number of agencies and individuals in 1998 have had to be modified as more data have come to hand from different parts of the country. Even four years after the crisis hit, the effects are still working through to millions of households across the country. In addition, different analysts have drawn quite different conclusions from the same body of data about trends in poverty, depending on how the poverty line is estimated.
Indeed, it can reasonably be argued that none of the data sets pressed into service between 1998 and 2001 to estimate the impact of the crisis on poverty, income distribution, and unemployment was entirely suitable for the purpose. Household surveys such as the Susenas by their very nature ignore that part of the population who do not live in registered households. To the extent that numbers of unregistered street dwellers have increased in urban and peri-urban areas since 1997, and to the extent that many of them have expenditures below the official poverty line, they are excluded from the poverty estimates. Other data sets such as the 100-village survey, while useful as far as they go, were deliberately skewed to poorer rural areas and ignore trends not just in urban areas but also in the more developed rural hinterland.
Thus debates about the impact of the crisis on poverty and living standards are likely to continue in Indonesia for some time to come. It will probably be at least a decade before we can draw final conclusions about the effects of the crisis on poverty and welfare, let alone evaluate the efficacy of the various policy measures which have been implemented to alleviate these effects. One can only hope that by then, living standards will have improved for the poorest and most vulnerable groups in Indonesia and the grim years at the end of the twentieth century will be a distant memory.
Professor Anne Booth teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She has written numerous books and articles on the Indonesian economy.
Inside Indonesia 69: Jan - Mar 2002
Dirty debt
Rich countries share responsibility for Indonesia's impossible debt burden
Ann Pettifor
On a wet London afternoon in October 2001, a small delegation of campaigners from Indonesia, Britain and Germany made their way to the British Treasury to meet the British Chancellor's deputy, Mr Paul Boateng. The purpose of the meeting was to pressure the British government to cancel military debts owed by Indonesia to Britain.
The delegation's eyes were on April 2002, when Indonesian representatives will meet the cartel of international creditors known as the Paris Club, which gathers in the French Treasury. Britain will be at the table with other powerful creditors, including Japan, the US and Germany. million of Indonesia's debt to Britain - a total of more than billion - consists of loans made by the British government and companies to a government the British had publicly criticised, but privately financed and armed - the Suharto government. The military debt is perhaps the most offensive part of this bigger problem.
Inside the formal setting of the British Treasury, Binny Buchori of the Indonesian NGO Forum on Indonesia Development (Infid) made a passionate appeal for the cancellation of Indonesia's debt, particularly the military component. 'This debt is being paid by millions of ordinary Indonesians', she said. 'Many of them are very poor, and most of them ignorant that Suharto's government has left each person - whether they be mothers, fathers, grandparents, their children and grandchildren - with a very heavy burden of public debt. These people are each sacrificing their basic human rights to a decent standard of living, so that Indonesia's public debt of US$ 152 billion can be repaid.'
Sugeng Bahagijo, also of Infid, added: 'Already the Indonesian government spends much, much more on paying foreign creditors than it spends on clean water, health, housing and education for its own people. The government is forced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to prioritise repayment to rich countries and banks over payments for schools, health and a better environment for the people of Indonesia.'
The British delegates at the meeting argued that ordinary people in Britain had not agreed that their taxes should be used to guarantee loans for military exports to Suharto's regime. 'It was British Scorpion tanks that attacked students and protesters who stood up to Suharto in 1998. It was British Hawk jets that were used in East Timor,' said the British delegate.
'British people were not consulted about those loans, that were made in their name, and with their taxes. Instead the loans were made to Suharto in secret. We are now, as part of the Jubilee movement, calling on the British government to cancel those odious debts.'
This meeting, which did not make the media headlines, is but one example of the way in which campaigners from north and south are working together, under the banner of Jubilee Movement International, to challenge an international financial system designed to profit those with money - creditors, speculators and bankers. A system which extracts and transfers resources from south to north. A system which goes by the name of 'globalisation' and which prioritises money rights over human rights.
The poor of Indonesia, like the poor of many countries, are the victims of this system. Some 160 million Indonesians, 70% of them in rural areas, live below the international poverty line of US$2 a day. The World Bank estimates that between 1997 and 1998 the real wages of agricultural workers fell by as much as 40%, and those in urban areas fell by 34%. Since 1997, it is said, 39 million Indonesians have lost their jobs.
Government funds that should be used to help re-build economic stability in Indonesia, and support the poor, are instead being used to repay foreign creditors. Before 1997, 40% of the government's budget was spent on human development. Since 1997 that spending has been cut by a third. Today, domestic and external debt service expenditure uses up 41% of the budget, and 61% of tax revenues.
The IMF has played a key role in increasing Indonesia's foreign and domestic indebtedness. The institution is dominated by rich country OECD governments, like the US, the UK and Japan, who are its biggest shareholders. Most IMF policies are designed to promote their interests, and the interests of investors, creditors and speculators based in those countries. The IMF also acts as the gatekeeper for access to international finance and capital. So for Indonesia to be able to borrow on the international capital markets, or indeed for Indonesia to be able to obtain aid from OECD countries, it must first gain the approval of the IMF.
Compensate
The IMF itself has acknowledged it made a mistake when a small IMF staff team, after just two weeks in Jakarta, forced the Bank of Indonesia to close sixteen banks on 1 November 1997. The cost of that blunder is the larger part of Indonesia's huge domestic debt burden of $80 billion. Before this debacle in 1997, Indonesia did not have a significant domestic debt burden.
We in Jubilee 2000 have a healthy respect for the market and agree that in some areas of the economy the market responds more democratically to consumer demands than say, state-backed companies.
The IMF should take full responsibility for its error, and compensate the people of Indonesia for the full amount of the liabilities incurred through the banking debacle, by paying off the domestic debt that resulted from their blunder. The purpose of such compensation must be twofold: first to compensate and support the poor of Indonesia, and second to prevent future perverse errors by the IMF.
IMF policies to increase taxes on fuel are a classic example of 'one-size-fits-all' policy errors which do not respond to, nor are accountable to market or indeed democratic forces. But the rise in fuel prices is also a device by the IMF to quickly raise funds for the Indonesian budget. These funds in turn are used to prioritise debt repayments to domestic and foreign creditors.
There is no doubt that this policy could destabilise the government of Indonesia, and result in the defeat of democracy. Former President Wahid's government understood this well, and proposed an alternative to the sudden removal of fuel subsidies. The elected cabinet wanted to introduce taxes on the rich, conscious that very few Indonesians pay taxes. IMF staff resisted, arguing that Indonesia needs a 'quick fix' to raise funds for the budget, and that these funds are better raised through removing subsidies on fuel.
The Minister of Finance, Mr Ramli, defied the IMF by asserting, informally and in public, that he intended to round up non-taxpayers. The effect of his announcement was that 600,000 Indonesians immediately signed up to pay their taxes. The government was confident that with more stringent sanctions far more tax avoiders could be persuaded to pay, and much more money could be raised. However, when a country is indebted, the diktats of unelected IMF officials (representing foreign creditors) take precedence over the democratic decisions of Indonesian politicians
Because of the secrecy that surrounds IMF/ World Bank and Indonesian government negotiations, ordinary Indonesians are ignorant of what is being done in their name, and of the high costs associated with the economic policies imposed by foreign creditors. Indonesia's foreign and domestic debts remain, effectively, a state secret. Only when debate is opened up around the debt, and only when both the borrower (the Indonesian government) and the lenders are open and accountable for the public debts they incur, can we hope to introduce some discipline into the system, and control the spiralling rate of indebtedness.
Only when money rights are once again subordinated to human rights, can we hope for peace, justice and an end to poverty in Indonesia.
Ann Pettifor (apettifor.jubilee@neweconomics.org) is Programme Coordinator with Jubilee Plus (www.jubileeplus.org) at the New Economics Foundation.
Inside Indonesia 69: Jan - Mar 2002
Peace on the net
A guide to resources for peace-makers
Jane McGrory
Peace movements find a natural ally in the internet. The global reach of the world wide web provides a clear advantage in rallying public opinion. The Nobel Prize-winning coalition for the ban on anti-personnel landmines, for example, relied heavily on the internet to create a global 'virtual' network of organisations. The East Timorese solidarity movement also made extensive use of the internet.
But when it comes to using the internet as a tool for peace in Indonesia, a 'digital divide' is soon evident. International organisations take the lead. Local Indonesian initiatives to exploit the potential of the internet are only slowing taking shape.
The prize internet site in the field of conflict prevention in Indonesia is a portal operated by the Harvard Peace Initiative (www.preventconflict.org/portal/main/portalhome.php). It includes daily news highlights, as well as links to in-depth articles and the Initiative's own background analysis. Its broad perspective of conflict-related issues - or 'human security precursors'- makes a valuable contribution in promoting understanding of the causes and potential for conflict and peace in Indonesia.
A number of useful sites track developments in conflict situations. Among them are the UN's ReliefWeb news service (http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf), and the country reports produced by USAID's Office of Transitional Initiatives (www.usaid.gov/hum_response/oti/country/indones/index.html).
Excellent monthly newsletters compiling international reporting on conflict issues and threats to ethnic/ religious minorities can be found on the Prevent Genocide International site (www.preventgenocide.org). While largely pulling material from mainstream international media sources, the broad perspective of the screening process guarantees interesting reading. Another initiative highlighting the plight of threatened minority groups is the Minorities at Risk Project (www.bsos.umd.edu/cidcm/mar www.bsos.umd.edu/cidcm/mar). Its Indonesian section looks at the situation facing ethnic Chinese, East Timorese, Papuans and Acehnese.
If you are looking for information on the work of international organisations to build peace in Indonesia, try the Indonesian sections of sites for Search for Common Ground (www.searchforcommonground.org/locations.cfm?locus=Indonesia), Mercy Corp (www.mercycorps.org), www.mercycorps.org/) Catholic Relief Services www.catholicrelief.org/what/overseas/peace/index.cfm), Pact Worldwide (pactworld.org/Global/Indonesia_Discuss.html) and the British Council (http://www.britishcouncil.or.id/governance/index.htm). Or, visit the UNDP's unit for conflict prevention and recovery (//www.undp.or.id/cdu/index.html).
The Asia Pacific Center for Justice and Peace (www.apcjp.org/) introduces research on conflict-related issues in Indonesia and the region. A good set of links can be found in the country guide on Ulster University's Incore site (//www.incore.ulst.ac.uk/cds/countries/indonesia.html) - as well as a wealth of information on peace practice worldwide. Another good links page is the Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee (//www.cpcc.ottawa.on.ca/links-e.htm). The Conflict Resolution Information Service (www.crinfo.org/) also offers broad range of resources on conflict and conflict transition. A search for Indonesian material produces a number of interesting links - and the other theme-based sections provide countless opportunities for good browsing.
The Forum on Early Warning and Early Response (www.fewer.org) site provides links to current conflict research and a risk assessment for Indonesia. The Indonesia project site of the International Crisis Group (www.crisisweb.org/projects/project.cfm?subtypeid=7) highlights relevant news items and offers high-quality research reports of key security issues. A keyword search on the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict (www.ccpdc.org/) will also turn up some interesting material.
Indonesian groups
To find Indonesian groups working for conflict prevention, try the listing at the Asia-Pacific Directory site of the Japan Centre for Preventative Diplomacy (www.conflict-prevention.org). Or visit http://www.lsm.or.id //www.lsm.or.id, an excellent Indonesian non-government organisations (NGOs) networking site. The latter does not have a specific category for groups working on conflict issues, but the advocacy section should provide some leads to organisations working on issues of peace, justice, anti-discrimination, among others.
In addition to those listed on the LSM site, try Aksara (www.aksara.org) and Yappika (www.yappika.org). Also, Gadjah Mada University's Centre for Security and Peace Studies (//www.csps-ugm.or.id/) maintains a good site introducing its research and programming work. Or visit the site of Pusat Studi dan Pengembangan Perdamaian at Duta Wacana University (//www.ukdw.ac.id/lpip/pspp/index.html) and its sister-site on peacebuilding (www.empoweringforreconciliation.org). All of these Indonesian sites are bi-lingual.
Looking for something more interactive? The Dialogue Webpage for Conflicts Worldwide (www.dwcw.org) hosts an on-line forum on conflict in various global hot-spots - including Indonesia. The Conflict Prevention Initiative runs an under-utilised on-line forum on Papua (www.preventconflict.org/portal/main/portalhome.php). And to stay up-to-date, you can join the Indonesian peacebuilding listserve by sending an email (with 'subscribe' in the subject line) to peacebuilding-subscribe@topica.com.
Jane McGrory (janemcgr@telkom.net) is a consultant with Catholic Relief Service in Yogya
Inside Indonesia 70: Apr - Jun 2002
In this issue
Give peace a chance
Gerry van Klinken
When Herb Feith died suddenly on 15 November last year, the small group of people most closely involved with Inside Indonesia magazine immediately decided they wanted to honour him in the next edition. The theme was to be 'peace and international collaboration', the two leading ideas of Herb's later years. And here it is! For those readers who did not know Herb personally, we hope this edition will be a fitting if belated introduction to a remarkable pioneer of friendship with Indonesians. If it produced a flood of new enquiries to Australian Volunteers International from adventurous souls we would be especially pleased!
Many people are talking about the need for peace in Indonesia. Including the Indonesian military, who display banners everywhere proclaiming: 'Peace is beautiful'. It is of course. However, if I am not mistaken there is a hidden message in these banners. It is that too many people are not peaceful, and we still need the military to keep the peace between them. That is certainly the message behind the upgrading of the TNI military command in war-torn Aceh last February.
A security-oriented message ignores a persistent record of human rights abuse by the military themselves. Peace enforced by abusing human rights is no peace at all. Indeed, not just the military are an obstacle to peace. The state as a whole remains undemocratic in too many ways. It has a troubled history, going back to colonial times, of deeply deforming local communities. The conflicts we have seen in Indonesia since the end of the New Order have a lot to do with this disturbing history.
Giving peace a chance does not mean returning to New Order militarism. It means democracy and human rights, from the centre to the remotest region. And it means trusting local communities to rediscover their own identity.
Our thanks to all those who keep making Inside Indonesia possible, not least those who volunteer behind the scenes even during the long vacation.
Gerry van Klinken is the Editor of Inside Indonesia
Inside Indonesia 70: Apr - Jun 2002
A syncretistic Jew
Learning from Indonesian religious experience
Herb Feith
My experience as a syncretistic Jew, or 'Yahudi abangan', has been an attempt to make my Judaic religion the starting point of learning to live religion in the plural. The term 'abangan' is borrowed from the Javanese, who use it to describe a 'syncretistic' understanding of Islam.
I was born in 1930 in the city of Vienna, in Austria. At that time about twenty percent of Vienna's population was Jewish. Political life in Vienna, and in Austria, was a contest between the Catholic Party and the Socialist Party, and almost all Jews supported the Socialists. In 1934 a big conflict erupted between the government of Austria, led by right-wing Catholics, and the Vienna city council led by Socialists. The Vienna city council was eventually crushed by military force.
You could say my parents were middle class. My father ran a small store selling bags; my mother was a nurse, helping a doctor who specialised in X-rays. Both were Jews but of a highly assimilated kind. My father said he was an agnostic in religious matters. My mother thought of herself as a believer in Judaism, but of a passive kind and she rarely went to the synagogue. But her mother, my maternal grandmother, was very pious and strict about religion. As long as she was alive, all the food in our home was always kosher, as the traditional Jewish dietary rules required.
My father and my grandmother had a very good personal relationship, but they always differed greatly in the area of religion. My grandmother forbade anyone to mention the name of God in my presence before I was six years old.
I became more aware of my Jewishness after Austria was occupied by the Germans in March 1938. We lived for a year under a Nazi government. I remember my parents were always talking together and with their friends about how to escape from Hitler's empire. They asked one another which country would give them a visa so that they could go there. My father spoke fluent English because he had lived in England for a year during World War I. Our family friends often asked him to write their letters for them applying to various countries for refugee status.
In March 1939 the three of us succeeded in leaving Austria behind. We went by train to Belgium, via Germany. I remember very clearly how relieved we all felt once we crossed the German-Belgian border. My parents gave thanks in a thousand languages! They often reminded me of the Jewish story, celebrated every year at Passover, about how God liberated the Jews and brought them out of slavery in Egypt led by the Prophet Moses.
We arrived in Australia in May 1939, in Melbourne. Not longer after that my mother began to attend a liberal synagogue, and I joined her. Besides synagogue on Saturdays I also attended Sunday school on Sunday mornings. My mother became more pious than she had been in Vienna. She said Hitler had turned her back into a Jew. One thing I remember clearly is how she sang the cantor in the synagogue service. She was a well-known cantor, indeed very well known in Germany before we emigrated to Australia. I recall so well the call she sang out every Saturday, the prayer called Shema, which we might call the Jewish syahadat. 'Hear O Israel, for the Lord our God is one God (Shema Yisrael Adonoi Elouhenu Adonoi Ekhod). I will sing it for you [Herb then sang it very expressively].
Socialist
When I was 13 I took my Bar Mitzvah rite and had to read the Torah in Hebrew before the synagogue congregation. This meant I had been accepted as an adult Jew. After that I became a teacher in the Sunday school. But that only lasted two years. When I was 15 I began to leave the religious community.
At the time I was reading various books that turned me into a humanist. I began to think of Judaism as an obstacle. Maybe I was bored, and there was some rebellion, but I called myself a socialist and an internationalist. And I was annoyed with the Jewish insistence that we should only have Jewish girlfriends or boyfriends. They were very afraid of what they called 'marrying out'!
In 1947 I fell in love with Betty Evans, and six years later she became my wife. She was a socialist too, as well as an enthusiastic Christian, in fact a Methodist. We were students together at Melbourne University, and she brought me along to join the Student Christian Movement. For three years I was very much under the influence of that movement, which maintained a high intellectual standard. Besides the intellectual quality I was impressed by the moral seriousness of its members, who were often interested in issues of social and international justice. I was most impressed with theologians like Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr. One thing that attracted me was the admiration SCM leaders had for Gandhi.
In 1951 I began work in Jakarta, as an assistant for English at the Ministry of Information. There I had a lot of contact with the Indonesian Student Christian Movement GMKI, and with some Dutch and Swiss clergy who were teaching at the theological college.
Why did I distance myself from the Jewish religion? In practical terms it was because I wanted to marry Betty. But the decision also had to do with certain beliefs:
- the problem of 'marrying out', and the need for 'group survival'
- the Jews as the chosen people, and exclusivism - Zionism
- an aggressive Israeli state nationalism, and the pressure on Jews in the diaspora to actively support it
My admiration for Gandhi, especially for his universalism, was important to me. And poverty in Asian countries was a moral challenge. For me the sufferings in the Third World (and especially in Indonesia) became far more important than things said in the synagogue sermons when I went there. My friends who remained devoted to the Judaic religion seemed to have no interest in those Third World problems. Or if they did they were rather against the so-called Third World countries - because most of those countries sided with Palestine against Israel.
In Australia, as in America, the Jewish community grew increasingly affluent. Far more affluent than they had been forty years earlier, and with a tendency towards conservatism.
I was often cross with the arguments put forward by the defenders of the Israeli state in Australia, especially the use of the Holocaust for propaganda purposes. It seemed as if they needed to claim that this particular genocide was unique, more terrible than any other genocide.
Syncretism
So what is left of my identity as a Jew? I worship more often in a church than in a synagogue. Not many of the books on religion I read are written by Judaists. But I was never baptised. So I am still a Jew. But I like to call myself 'Yahudi abangan', a syncretistic Jew, in the manner of 'Islam abangan', the 'syncretistic' Javanese Islam. I am attracted by the possibility of attaching myself to more than one religious tradition. That is something we could say is especially Asian (South Asian, East Asian, Southeast Asian - not West Asian).
Gandhi said, I am a Hindu, and a Muslim, and a Christian, and a Sikh, and a Parsi, and a Jew. Sukarno spoke of himself as an adherent of nationalism, Islam and Marxism. I have been much influenced by the thought of Soedjatmoko.
Arnold Toynbee, a famous English historian, once predicted that historians of the future quite possibly will say the special feature that is most important about this twentieth century is not the atomic bomb or the concentration camp, but the first intensive encounter between the Christian and Buddhist religions.
In Indonesia today many people are unhappy with the word abangan, or syncretism. But I am attracted by its basic proposition, which is that we can learn from various religious traditions.
I appreciate the attitude of many Christians, Jews, and Muslims that we should first study our own religions more deeply before engaging in dialogue with other believers. But I do not like it when they condemn syncretism as something inconsistent with true religion. That tends towards exclusivism.
For me the purpose of dialogue between believers from religion A and religion B should be to learn. Not just to work together to face a third party. Not just to avoid the danger of conflict. Nor just to add to our knowledge of another group. The more important thing is to deepen our faith and enrich each of our spiritualities.
I am very grateful that the last thirty or forty years many Westerners have allowed themselves to learn from Eastern religious traditions. Some of them are Christians, some Jews, and some belong to the Jewish nation but no longer practice the religion.
I was inspired by the writings of an American Jew whose name used to be Richard Alpert and is now Baba Ram Dass. I was also attracted by a book entitled The Jew in the lotus, which told of the visit of a group of Western Jews to the Dalai Lama in India. The American Jewish novelist Chaim Potok discusses a similar theme. And I love Charles Durack on 'cultivating oneness', in the American Jewish magazine Tikkun.
I have to confess I have never attempted to study the mystical traditions of the Jewish religion. If I did, quite likely I would find there things that could equally enrich my spiritual life. But for me that is not the only possibility.
Herb Feith gave this talk at the Interfidei institute for inter-religious dialogue in Yogyakarta, 29 November 1998. Thanks to Samsuri.
Inside Indonesia 70: Apr - Jun 2002
More than six decades after being inspired as an undergraduate in Sydney, Ron Witton retraces his Indonesian language teacher's journey back to Suriname