Indonesia today is a dangerous place primarily for Indonesians, not foreigners
John Roosa
The October 12 bombing in Bali, like most incidents of violence, was very brief, a matter of only seconds, yet its effects will be with us for a long time. The effects extend beyond the tragic loss of loved ones and the painful scars of the survivors. The bombing has badly damaged the cross-cultural, cross-national communication that this magazine has been trying to promote for the last twenty years. Many Australians (and other foreigners) studying, working, or vacationing in Indonesia have returned home. Indonesians living in Australia have been harassed.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian and Australian governments are eroding civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism. Activists in both countries struggling non-violently for peace and justice are worried that they too will become targets of the anti-terrorism campaign. Added to these worries is the prospect of increased instability in Indonesia as the already faltering economy declines further.
As the repercussions of the bombing keep spreading, we should remember that it was the work of a small clique of conspirators. Although the perpetrators targeted foreigners, they were obviously indifferent to the lives of Indonesians and to the welfare of the nation. The bombing should not affect our appreciation of the need to maintain strong society-society relations between Indonesia and Australia.
Indonesia today is a dangerous place primarily for Indonesians, not foreigners. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by war. Some 600 Acehnese civilians have been killed in 2002. The task of making Indonesia a safer place is much larger than bringing to justice the clandestine group responsible for the Bali bombing. Foreigners need to continue to help Indonesian civil society find ways to end the violence and to ensure their own governments do not follow policies that encourage it.
The deadline for submission of articles to this issue was only three days after the Bali bombing. We decided to proceed with this present issue about the military and militarism. Our next issue (no. 74) will be devoted to reflections on the bombing and its consequences.
The bombing has actually confirmed the importance of the theme of this issue. Given the military's notorious corruption, it has been widely assumed that the bombers obtained their explosives from the military. This is a reasonable assumption: the first suspect arrested by the police (Amrozi) was found to have some 4,000 military-issue bullets. Given that elements in the military have been supporting extremist militias (such as Laskar Jihad), it has also been assumed that the bombers have had some backing from within the military.
The articles in this issue reveal that the Indonesian military, assigning as many troops to internal policing as external defence, has become a security threat for the society. Since about 70% of the military's funding comes from off-budget sources, the loyalty of the troops is divided between the state and the private businesses (sometimes illegal businesses) that pay their salaries. The military is in desperate need of reform. But the task of reforming it has become immeasurably more difficult as civil society itself has become militarized. This issue carries several excellent articles on the civilian militias that have emerged in recent years.
We at Inside Indonesia are proud of the high quality of articles we have been able to publish. Our magazine was a finalist in the United Nations Association of Australia media awards for an article titled 'Timor's Women' by Dawn Delaney in the East Timor edition (no.71). Congratulations to Dawn.
Because of a recent budgetary crisis, we have had to temporarily suspend publication of the supplement 'Learning about Indonesia.' We regret the demise and hope to hear from friends with ideas on how to restart it.
John Roosa jproosa@indo.net.id
Inside Indonesia 73: Jan - Mar 2003
The Bali Bombing
Understanding the tragedy beyond al-Qaeda and Bush's 'war on terror'
Thomas Reuter
Shortly before midnight on Saturday, 12 October 2002 a devastating attack was launched at the beachside town of Kuta on the island of Bali. Two bombs exploded in quick succession in Paddy's Irish Pub and outside the Sari Club. The blast and subsequent fires left more than 190 people dead and several hundred injured, most of them young holiday-makers from Australia and other Western countries.
Mainstream media reports quickly pointed the finger of blame at the international terrorist network al-Qaeda and its local operatives. Little attention was given to the national let alone local socio-political context in which this attack took place. Attacks of a similar kind, if not scope, have occurred with increasing regularity since the collapse of Suharto's military dictatorship in 1998. As a consequence, the tragedy of October 12 was co-opted prematurely and uncritically into the global political agenda and rhetorical paradigm of the United States government's 'War on Terror'.
National context
The task of addressing the issue of terrorism, or of assessing whether or not the Indonesian and Western governments are addressing it appropriately on our behalf, is made difficult by the secret nature of terrorist and counter-terrorist operations. At the time of writing (late October), no verifiable evidence of al-Qaeda involvement in the Bali attack has been made available to the public.
Even when it comes to the general question of al-Qaeda's presence in Southeast Asia, the evidence is scanty and often impossible to verify. On 15 September 2002, for example, Time Magazine claimed to have seen 'secret CIA documents' stating that the Kuwaiti militant and alleged al-Qaeda operative, Omar al-Faruq, recently arrested in Indonesia and delivered to the US military, had confessed to the CIA, perhaps under torture, how he had been ordered to coordinate a series of attacks on US and other foreign interests in Southeast Asia. Many Indonesians do not accept the claims based on such intelligence leaks, not surprisingly given that the US government by its own admission considers it legitimate to spread misinformation for strategic purposes.
Al-Qaeda should not be considered as a singular organisation with an international agenda and a central authority. It is able to maintain a power base in numerous parts of the world because it is a network of rather loosely affiliated national or local extremist groups. What needs to be explored are the reasons for its successful expansion into countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, where the vast majority of Muslims have been consistently classified as moderates by generations of Western scholars.
While a unitary organisation's expansion conceivably can be halted by pursuing a smallish group of key culprits through intelligence or military operations, a bottom-up process can be expected to self-perpetuate unless underlying political and socio-economic causes are removed. The implications for foreign policy are serious and far-reaching.
This is not to deny that an internationalisation of terrorism has been taking place. Radical Islamic groups in Indonesia have had international links for at least two decades. The now-infamous leader of Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (MMI, Council of Indonesian Mujahideen), Ba'asyir and many of his closest associates had established such links on their own initiative after having participated in the armed struggle against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan during the 1980s, a struggle for which the US was the major backer. The Iranian revolution of 1979 was also a watershed in that it provided the model case for establishing an Islamic state. Nevertheless, the main focus of political consciousness among such groups has been the Indonesian state itself.
It may be safe to assume that a network of radical Islamic groups with international links is present in Indonesia today, and that elements in some of these groups at least are willing to use terrorism as a political tool - with or without help from their affiliates and donors abroad. The political ambitions of these radicals most likely are still focused firmly on national objectives, even though their discourse may reflect an international rhetoric of fighting for the glory of Islam and against the great Satan America.
The problem in allocating blame for the Bali blast is that radical Islamic groups like Jemaah Islamiyah are not the only groups in Indonesia today who may be willing and capable of committing or supporting acts of terrorism. There are many causes and perpetrators of violence in contemporary Indonesia. Inter-religious conflicts, vigilante-style killings of petty criminals and other undesirables, institutionalised protection and extortion rackets, and the alarming spread of paramilitary groups are all part of this phenomenon. Different groups even within the government's own security forces have been fighting turf wars. This diffusion of violence makes it difficult to pinpoint a single person or group as the likely perpetrators in any particular case.
Balinese context
In Bali itself, there has been increasing tension between Hindu Balinese and Muslim labour migrants from neighbouring islands. Many fear this wave of spontaneous immigration could marginalise the Balinese as an ethnic and religious minority on their own island, as has been the fate of other peoples in the outer islands. More immediately, however, the problem is one of competition for jobs, and also social envy. Some of the migrants are not economic refugees at all, but wealthy Javanese investors who have established major businesses in Bali, ranging from hotels and restaurants to taxi companies.
As early as April 1999 there have been violent attacks on Javanese street sellers. Several Javanese informants residing in Bali told me only a few weeks before the attacks how they no longer dared to be seen outdoors after 10pm for fear of being abducted and murdered, following threats and a spate of mysterious disappearances in their circle of friends and acquaintances. In turn, my Balinese informants told me that the Java-based Laskar Jihad (LJ, 'Holy Warriors') had begun to build a presence especially in northern Bali, allegedly to 'protect our down-trodden Muslim brothers in Bali' (from an undated LJ propaganda pamphlet distributed in Central Java in late 2001). Days after the Bali blast, this militant group disbanded or went underground, depending on how one chooses to look at it. LJ, in any case, has rarely acted on its own. In Aceh, Ambon and West Papua, for example, the group appears to have enjoyed extremely cordial relations with the army, and there is wide speculation that LJ has been encouraged to cause trouble in order to maintain a sense of crisis throughout the country.
In recent years, the Balinese have also responded to a number of serious security issues in relation to organised crime. My informants claim that the illegal drug trade, prostitution as well as extortion rackets, particularly in Kuta and Sanur, are firmly in the hands of immigrants, who are in turn protected by elements within the official security forces. In Sanur, for example, traditional Balinese community organisations have been fighting a pitched battle against the prostitution industry and its patrons. Note in this context that the main reason why the destroyed Sari Club had a policy of barring entry to Indonesians was to keep out sex workers, who had already swamped and changed the character of most other major bars and nightclubs in the area.
A key indicator of the state of the tourism industry, Bali's hotel occupancy rate had dropped from over 70 % before the attack to just 5 % by 29 October. This shows that that the main losers in the attack on Bali, apart from the victims themselves and their families, are the island's residents, irrespective of whether or not they are ethnically Balinese. The Hindu Balinese majority seem to have realised this and, until now, have shown restraint by not lashing out at Muslim immigrants in their midst.
Already destabilised by the attack, President Megawati has been under enormous pressure from Washington to take stern measures against terrorists. How is she to do this without the military, or with it, given that it is widely suspected in Indonesia that the military could have been implicated in the attack? Are the Indonesian police and intelligence up to the task? Could wanton arrests trigger a Muslim backlash? We may have to be patient. Too much pressure now could help to derail Indonesia's emergent democracy. The US and Australia, considering their interests in Indonesia now, should be aware of this peril. We should move forward by supporting the reform of the Indonesian military and the engagement of the mass of Muslim Indonesians in the democratic process.
Thomas Reuter (thomasr@unimelb.edu.au) is a Queen Elizabeth II Research Fellow of the Australian Research Council, located at the School of Anthropology, Geography & Environmental Studies, The University of Melbourne.
Inside Indonesia 73: Jan - Mar 2003
The Endless Wait
Families of the Disappeared are Still Searching for Answers
R. Waluya Jati
In 1997 political activists began noticing that some of their colleagues were mysteriously disappearing. The general suspicion was that the military had kidnapped them to terrorize the burgeoning movement against the Suharto regime. That suspicion was confirmed when some of the disappeared activists resurfaced and told stories of their abduction, detention, and torture. It soon became clear that the army's Special Forces (Kopassus) were responsible for this covert operation. After Suharto fell in May 1998, nine Kopassus officers, including Maj. Gen. Prabowo, were tried by a military court and dismissed from the army for their role in the disappearances.
The story does not end there. Among those activists abducted, fourteen never returned. The military has refused to reveal what happened them. The military court only charged the Kopassus officers for the cases of the nine activists who had survived and been released. The military court did not accuse the officers of being responsible for the 14 still missing activists, despite the fact that the survivors reported seeing some of them still alive in the secret jail. The officers were only charged with misinterpreting an order and sentenced to between 12 to 22 months in jail.
The families of these victims have organised themselves to demand accountability of the government. They began their struggle with great hopes. They hoped to find out whether their loved ones were still alive or not. Their terrible fear of approaching high officials in the military and government was overcome by their boundless hopes.
It has now been four years since they began their quest for the truth. They have been knocking on door after door in the office buildings of the labyrinthine Indonesian bureaucracy. Still, they have not gotten one inch closer to the truth. The whereabouts of their loved ones are still unknown. The perpetrators, though already identified and publicly known, remain silent and untouchable. This case, like nearly all cases of past human rights violations by the military, is being ignored and forgotten by government officials.
All of the photographs here are of relatives of those 14 disappeared persons. At the moment I am writing this (in October 2002), families from all over Indonesia are gathering in Jakarta for a congress of the Union of Families of Disappeared Persons (Ikatan Keluarga Orang Hilang). This organization includes many more families than those of the 14 disappeared persons of 1997-98. Despite the state's indifference, they are persistent and have not lost hope.
Photos
Toeti Kotto, the mother of Yani Avri, a missing activist, was given clothes by another relative of a disappeared person. She is wearing the clothes on the day of the Muslim holiday Idul Fitri. From morning, she has been waiting at the front gate of her house for a miracle: for God to return her son to her.
Nabila, 11 years old, is the daughter of Noval Alkatiri. She has written the initial 'N' on the palms of both her hands - the initial standing for Nabila and Noval. Her father had not been an activist. He was an agent sending workers to the Mideast. He disappeared in 1997 while in the company of an activist, Dedy Hamdun, who is also still missing.
Wiji Thukul, a well-known poet and activist, has been missing since April 1998. In the years prior he had become a target of military intelligence. Dyah Sujirah and Nganthi Wani, his wife and daughter, are at the launching of a book of his poems in 2000.
On 12 February 1998, Suyatno was kidnapped by military officers who wanted him to reveal the whereabouts of his brother Suyat, an activist. He was released a few hours later after having been badly beaten and tortured. Suyat was then abducted by Kopassus and is still missing. Suyatno is haunted by regret and the desire to change places with his brother, though he, of course, can not be blamed for his brother's fate.
Although feeling unwell, Ibu Palan Siahaan forced herself to join a demonstration in front of the Presidential Palace during the International Week of Forced Disappearances in May 2002. Her son, Ucok Manandar Siahaan, disappeared in May 1998. The family had received anonymous telephone calls demanding that their son stop his campus activism.
R. Waluya Jati (jatijati@hotmail.com) is a photographer with Offstream Allied Media in Jakarta. He is one of the disappeared of 1997-98 who survived. His photographs of the families of the disappeared have been published in the book, Mereka Yang Dipisahkan (Jakarta, 2001).
Inside Indonesia 73: Jan - Mar 2003
Not Fade Away
A General of the Sukarno years criticises today's military
Muhammad Fauzi
Hario Kecik is an old soldier who refuses to fade away. At 81 years of age, he remains a fireball of creative energy. He has just published a novel and is just about to publish the third volume of his autobiography. For hobbies, he paints, sings (in six languages, including Chinese), and writes poetry. He is a natural public speaker who, with a vast repertoire of jokes and stories, can keep an audience entertained for hours. When telling stories, he frequently breaks into Javanese and raises the tone of his voice in such a way that one can not help but laugh at his expressiveness. He is like a one-man culture industry where rough East Javanese humour mixes with refined cosmopolitan learning. It is difficult to believe, given the cultural abilities of today's military officers (just listen to Gen. Wiranto's CD of his karaoke favorites!), that Hario Kecik was once a Brigadier General in the Army.
As we sit in his home on the outskirts of Jakarta, he describes the formative event of his youth: the Surabaya uprising of November 1945. It was a popular revolt against the British troops that had just arrived to secure the surrender of the Japanese. The British troops were seen, rightly as it turned out, to be the advance guard of a Dutch attempt to recolonise Indonesia. A guest in Hario's house is left in no doubt of the importance of the event for him: a massive canvas about it painted by Hario himself hangs in the front room.
One legacy of those early street fighting years is his name. His full Javanese name, Soehario Padmodiwirio, was hardly suitable as a nom de guerre. It betrayed his aristocratic ancestry. All these years, he has kept the diminutive name that his friends in the struggle gave him: Kecik, meaning small in the East Javanese dialect. Despite his short stature, even by Indonesian standards, he excelled in warfare because he was gutsy, clever, and agile.
Beginning and end of an era
For Hario, the formation of the Indonesian army emerged out of the spontaneous effort of the youth (pemuda) to seize the weapons of the Japanese in 1945 and resist the incoming European troops. He did not enter the army by signing up at a recruiting office: he and four friends created their own little unit. Many such units sprouted up at that time. Each group chose its own leader from among its own ranks. As these units merged and the leaders were accorded ranks, Hario was accorded the rank of Major. In Hario's experience, the national army, in its early years, was created by civilians. Its leaders emerged organically from below.
Following the departure of the Dutch troops, Hario stayed within the army and rose up through the ranks. He became the commander of the military region of East Kalimantan in 1959 and a Brigadier General in 1962. Despite the fact that he had attended two officer training courses in the United States at Fort Benning in 1958, he had a reputation for being left-wing. His experience with the 1945 revolution and with the United States attempts to sabotage Sukarno in the late 1950s had made him decidedly anti-imperialist.
At the time of Suharto's takeover of power in late 1965, Hario was in the Soviet Union. He had been sent to study at the War College there in early 1965 by the army commander Gen. Yani. Given both his left-wing reputation and his stay in the Soviet Union, he knew he would be arrested or worse if he returned to Indonesia. In exile in Moscow, he took advantage of the time by studying. He was appointed senior associate at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
Eventually, he decided to return to Indonesia in 1977 and face whatever awaited him there. Immediately after landing at the airport in Jakarta, he was hauled off to prison by army soldiers. He spent the next four years in a military detention jail in central Jakarta. No charges. No trial. No idea when he would be released. It was four years of waiting punctuated by the occasional interrogation in which he was respectfully referred to as 'Professor Hario'.
Punish the generals
After years of exile and imprisonment, Hario looks upon the army that developed under Suharto as a kind of freakish mutant. He hardly recognizes it as the army that emerged out of a social revolution. The army today still sticks to the rhetoric of that time "the people and the military are one" but has completely changed the meaning. Now the army employs the old populist rhetoric to justify its civilian militias that commit crimes for which the army wants plausible deniability.
Hario notes that the officer corps graduating from the military academy since the late 1960s have not been able to understand the army's history. What they learn is how to please their superiors, make a lot of money from corruption, and advance quickly up the ranks. 'It's too easy for them to gain promotions, especially when there isn't even a war going on.' Any military, Hario believes, faces problems in peace time. Without a war or the potential for war, 'an army loses its identity.' The Indonesian army has not faced any external threat since 1965 yet it has arrogated enormous powers to itself inside the country. It has focused on policing and waging war on other Indonesians.
The usual response of TNI officers to the crimes of soldiers is to say that the soldiers were acting on their own as individuals; they were oknum. According to Hario, 'If there is a brawl, the ones that are dismissed from the military are the lower ranking ones. Just recently, the Chief of Staff of the Army himself tore off their ensignia and discharged some privates because of a discipline problem. That kind of thing is really odd. If I was the Chief of Staff, I would first punish some generals. I would throw out the generals who are causing the problems.'
Corruption
Hario sees the problem of corruption as an institutional one for which the high officers are primarily responsible. He mentions a story that a private told him last year. 'After returning home at night, he goes out again and works as a security guard at a warehouse. He only gets 15,000 rupiah a night. He does the work but his commander, a colonel, demands money from the industrialist. The colonel doesn't do any work but he gets much more money than the private does.' This kind of situation is ruinous for the morale of an army.
As Hario remembers, the military's corruption was not so institutionalised and routine before 1965. When he was the commander of East Kalimantan, there were many opportunities to enrich himself had he so desired. He could have taken money from the timber barons and oil companies and used his troops to serve their interests - the pattern of the army commanders today.
Since East Kalimantan was largely undeveloped and the civil government was so meager, Hario thought his troops had to be involved in economic development. But his model of development was different than that of the big private companies. As a populist, Hario had his troops help build schools and run cooperative enterprises. While commander, he wrote a book about the army's economic role in the region titled People, Land, and the Military.
The general who replaced Hario as commander of East Kalimantan in February 1965, Sumitro, later became one of Suharto's closest allies. It is interesting that Sumitro's biography begins with a description of the ceremony for the transfer of the command. In the book, Sumitro presented Hario as a leftist who thought his transfer was a sign that the army high command did not understand 'the revolution' he was leading in East Kalimantan. Hario laughs while dismissing the description as entirely fanciful.
At the end of our discussion, Hario promises that the forthcoming installment of his memoir is focused on his reflections and analyses of the nation's military. He briefly outlines his analysis of the political differences in the 1945-65 period between officers deriving from the Dutch military, the Japanese military, and the people's militias (laskar). He laughs, 'but you'll have to read the book for the complete analysis.'
Muhammad Fauzi (mfauzi@hotmail.com) is a historian and librarian with Jaringan Kerja Budaya in Jakarta. Hario Kecik's memoirs have been published in two volumes: Autobiografi Seorang Mahasiswa Prajurit (Jakarta: Yayasan Obor Indonesia, 1995 and 2001). See www.obor.or.id.
Inside Indonesia 73: Jan - Mar 2003
Evading the Truth
Will a Truth and Reconciliation Commission ever be formed?
Agung Putri
Since the fall of President Suharto in May 1998, many Indonesians have been searching for ways to address the crimes of his 32-year dictatorship. One of Suharto's legacies to the country is a long trail of mysterious atrocities and unmarked mass graves. The questions that posed themselves after his fall from power were: How can we discover the truth behind the various atrocities? How can we determine who was responsible? If we are able to determine who was responsible, what should we do then?
The answers to these questions have not been obvious. Even though there has been a widespread desire to uncover the truth and hold the officials of the Suharto regime accountable, there has been no agreement on how that should be achieved. Even now, over four years after his fall, Suharto himself has not been touched, even for cases of corruption. All of the so-called 'reform' governments (under Presidents Habibie, Wahid, and Megawati) have failed to create any viable mechanism for dealing with past crimes.
Of course, one reason for this failure is the resistance from the Suharto family, its cronies, and the military. Additionally, the fact that many of the 'reform' politicians are holdovers from the Suharto era has meant that they often do not even perceive past atrocities as state crimes. Some politicians still uphold the line that the state can not commit crimes because it is the state. But those reasons by themselves are not sufficient to explain why so little has been accomplished since Suharto's demise. The factor that I would like to highlight here is the confusion concerning the appropriate mechanisms among the very people pushing for accountability.
Fact-finding committees
The first response of the post-Suharto governments to handle past crimes has been the fact-finding committee. So far there have been five such official committees that have investigated the following incidents: the violence in Aceh during the period when the province was called a Military Operation Area (1989-1998); the Jakarta riots of 13-15 May 1998; the massacre in Tanjung Priok in 1984, the violence in East Timor during the referendum process in 1999, and the killing of students during demonstrations in Jakarta at Trisakti University and the Semanggi cloverleaf in 1998-1999. The government established the first two commissions while the latter three were formed by the National Commission of Human Rights (Komnas HAM).
The committees performed well in bringing information about these cases to the public eye. Victims and witnesses were given the chance to provide recorded testimony. Military officers came before the committees and were asked to account for the military's actions. The reports of the committees have provided careful and sometimes exhaustive descriptions on what happened and how many people were killed or injured. But none of the committees have been able to conclude why the violence occurred. Every committee had to end its report with a recommendation for further investigation.
The preoccupation of the fact-finding committees was to identify particular military officers as the ones responsible for particular acts of violence. For instance, the report on the Jakarta riots suspected that Maj. Gen. Prabowo and Maj. Gen. Sjafrie Samsuddin had some sort of hand in provoking or organising the riots. It suggested that an investigation be held into a secret meeting they held on 14 May 1998 at an army headquarters. Similarly, the committee on the crimes in East Timor listed the names of 29 officers who were thought to be responsible for particular massacres.
This identification of individual officers, while helpful in framing court cases against them, does not lead to an understanding of the systemic nature of the crimes committed by the Suharto regime and the military. Indeed, it can reinforce the idea that there are a few bad apples within the military that need to be removed.
The problem with the military is not that there are a few bad officers within it. The main problem is that it is an unaccountable institution that has far too much power. It has routinely committed atrocities both during and after the Suharto regime. Arriving at the truth in the context of the military's power requires challenging the institutional power of the military.
The TRC
Members of Komnas HAM first proposed the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1998. They approached President Habibie and the military soon after Suharto resigned. Habibie welcomed the proposal but declined to follow up on it. The military rejected it outright. The upper chamber of parliament (MPR) was more supportive. The MPR passed a law called Unity and Reconciliation number V/2000 at its session in 1999 that called for the creation of a TRC. It was left up to the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights to draw up the guidelines and bring it into existence.
After the law was passed, there was a great deal of discussion about the TRC inside and outside of the government. There were seminars, conferences, and meetings. The non-governmental organisation that I work for, Elsam, was asked by the government to write a draft regulation that would determine the functioning of the TRC.
In my opinion, the advantage of a TRC is that it can address many cases of human rights that are already swamping Komnas HAM and have no hope of being handled by the country's ridiculously inadequate and corrupt legal system. Moreover, it can address cases that are far too complex and massive for legal remedies, such the killings of 1965-66. Perhaps the most important virtue of the TRC is that it can result in a comprehensive narrative about the systematic character of the Suharto's regime's crimes.
The TRC was a live issue for about a year. Despite the initial flurry of activity, there has been little progress in implementing the TRC. The law is on the books (and the MPR reaffirmed the law at its 2002 session) but the commission does not yet exist. By now it appears as if it will never be formed. Why has the TRC lacked a constituency that can forcefully push for its implementation? I think the reasons are manifold.
Some activists remain wary of the TRC because they think it lacks teeth, that it will not punish the military officers responsible for atrocities. Activists tend to prefer court trials. The Indonesian government's ad hoc court for the crimes against humanity in East Timor is closer to the method they would like to see used for all cases of state crimes. Moreover, they think 'reconciliation' is a pointless concept when dealing with crimes by state officials.
Many government officials and members of parliament support a vague notion of a TRC but do not fully understand it enough to push strongly for it. Some think it should just be a kind of quick 'feel good' exercise so that the past can be laid to rest. They are wary that it might actually not turn out to be that. Some think the TRC should include the Sukarno years under its purview. They do not view the Suharto regime as having a specifically criminal character of its own.
Victims organisations
Added to these problems is the lack of unity among the victims, especially in their support for a TRC. The victims have tended to organise according to the specific incident. Victims of the Tanjung Priok massacre, for instance, have an organisation of their own and have tried to find a resolution to their own particular case. Some of them have become quiet after reconciling personally with the officers suspected of ordering the massacre.
There have been numerous attempts to create a unified organisation for victims of the Suharto regime. A congress was held in Aceh in 2001 which led to the establishment of a a pan-Aceh Victims Solidarity Group. Another congress was held in Jakarta in early 2002 to consolidate all the groups of ex-political prisoners (Temu Raya Korban). A similar gathering was held in Papua in 2000. To some extent, these forums have raised the spirit of the victims and brought their plight to the attention of the public.
One problem such congresses have faced is their redirection for ulterior political ends. In Aceh and Papua, the victims' congresses were used to legitimate the demand for a referendum on independence. Meanwhile the victims' congress in Jakarta included in its resolutions the need to uphold Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution (the things the Suharto regime made sacred). The congresses have not actually been effective in insisting on a method by which the government should hold the former regime accountable for its crimes.
I think the idea of the TRC, so often misunderstood and under-appreciated, still holds great promise and should be pursued. The creation of the TRC will require building a consensus first about the need for a comprehensive approach to understanding the systemic nature of the Suharto regime's crimes.
Agung Putri (putri@elsam.or.id) is a staff member of Elsam, the Institute of Policy Research and Advocacy. She was a fellow at the Transitional Justice Program at the University of Capetown, South Africa, in 2002.
Inside Indonesia 73: Jan - Mar 2003
On the Waterfront
The Military Fleeces and Polices Port Workers
Razif
In the northern-most reaches of Jakarta, on the edge of the Java Sea, lies the port of Tanjung Priok. As one approaches it from the road, one sees little more than high fences with guard posts interspersed at intervals. Behind the fences, one can catch glimpses of seemingly limitless stacks of containers - an immense accumulation of wealth in transit. Tanjung Priok is Indonesia's busiest port with some 1600 container trucks coming in and out every day. To handle the billions of dollars worth of commodities circulating through the port, there is a 15,000-strong army of stevedores, drivers, and clerks.
With so much wealth, one can be sure the Indonesian military is here taking a share. And with so many workers handling this wealth, one can also be sure the military is here to control them - and take a share of the workers' wages too.
Illegal fees
A truck driver at the port bringing in a container complains to me: 'after working at this port for nearly 30 years I've earned nothing. I've had to spend all my earnings paying off the military. Just about every day, to load or unload a container at the port, I have to pay Rp. 30,000 (US$3.30). Meanwhile, just for food and cigarettes, I spend about Rp. 20,000 [US$2.20] a day. So it's a real burden and it doesn't make any sense.'
There is no regulation that says the army soldiers stationed at the gates of the port can collect money from the truck drivers. The soldiers simply follow the slogan of a company whose shoes are exported from the port; they 'just do it'. They do not allow a truck to pass through unless the driver pays what they demand. Usually, the freight companies that employ the drivers do not provide extra money to pay for this unofficial tax.
The four metre-high fences and the ubiquitous soldiers are developments of the Suharto era. The first container docks were opened in 1974. Since then, more docks and cranes have been added to handle the growing amount of container traffic.
The port's pasts
Before 1965, the port used to be known as a open area. Just about anyone could enter. I met one elderly shadow puppet master in Jakarta who recalled how he would regularly perform a bi-weekly Saturday night show for the workers. He was a member of the left-wing cultural organisation Lekra (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat). He is still fond of those days: 'If it so happened that I didn't show up for a month, the dock workers would start asking about me. They'd wonder what could have possibly kept me away. Likewise, I would miss my friends there if I was off somewhere else. We were very close.' All that ended with the rise of Suharto in late 1965. 'On the night when the September 30th Movement occurred, I was actually performing at the Tanjung Priok port. I didn't know at the time that it would be the last time I ever performed for my friends there.' For being involved with the so-called 'communist' organisation Lekra, he was imprisoned for 14 years by the Suharto regime.
Although Tanjung Priok is an economic site, it has always had a political significance. During the nationalist movement in the 1920s, it was a refuge for those being hunted by the police of the colonial state. The dock workers could smuggle nationalist leaders into ships as stowaways. After independence, in the 1950s, the dock workers occasionally staged strikes for political reasons. For instance, they refused to load oil onto ships, mainly American ships, that were involved in the war in Korea.
Workers and soldiers
Looking at the port area now, it is hard to imagine those days. All around the port are Export Processing Zones (EPZs) that, with their barbed wire-topped fences and guard houses at the gates, resemble prison labour camps. Supplies are imported through the port, assembled in the EPZ factories by cheap labour, and then exported back out through the port.
What helps keep labour cheap in this area is the heavy military presence. Nearly every branch of the military is active in and around the port: the army, police, army reserves (Kostrad), marines, and navy. The company that owns the docks, PT Pelindo, uses the military for its security guards. The gates for docks are manned by active duty army soldiers who wear the uniforms of PT Pelindo. This is yet another case where the difference between state security personnel and private mercenaries for hire is often difficult to discern in Indonesia. The security personnel not only receive a salary from their units but also from PT Pelindo. Still, they do not consider it enough money and insist on extorting money from the truck drivers and workers.
Every worker at the port, including the drivers of the container trucks, is required to show an identity card when entering. To keep careful track of the workers, this card is re-issued every two weeks. It is not the company that issues the identity cards. It is the army command post situated right inside the port. The army is directly integrated into management-labour relations.
The port authorities have established their own labour law. During the Suharto years, the army, the manpower department, and the customs department issued a regulation forbidding port workers from striking. Port workers were exempted from the already weak protection afforded by national law since the port was considered a strategic asset for the national economy.
Gangsters
The truck drivers also have to face gangsters (preman) who are allied with the military. There is one area of the port known, ironically enough, as Free Land (Tanah Merdeka). It is the area where containers are temporarily stored. The so-called security for this area is provided by gangsters who are not officially employed as security guards. A truck driver who needs to keep a container there for a night has to pay rent money to these gangsters.
According to a truck driver, 'The gangsters are organised by the marines and have their headquarters near the Free Land. If we don't give them money, there is no guarantee that they won't steal the contents of the container. But that area is meant to be a facility of the port for us drivers. It is quite often that the ship comes into the port late in the day or is late a day. So we need a place to store the containers for a night.' This driver added sarcastically, 'Perhaps the place is called Free Land because it is free of any laws'.
On an average night, some 500 containers are stored in Free Land. The unofficial payment to the gangsters these days is Rp. 50,000 per night [US$5.50]. So one can imagine how much money the marines and their hoodlums are making every year for doing nothing.
A new union
Given the military presence and the tight regulation, it is remarkable that the workers have actually formed an independent union called Solidarity of Maritime Workers and Fishermen of Indonesia (SBMNI). Even more remarkable is that this union has organised a strike. About two-thirds of all the port workers went out on a two-day strike in November 2000. Apart from demanding an increase in wages, they demanded that the military stop collecting illegal exactions from the truck drivers at the gates.
The strike was partly successful. Management agreed to raise average wages from Rp. 600,000 to Rp. 700,000 per month [from US$67 to $78]. Despite such a relatively large increase in percentage terms, the wages are still very low, especially considering the long hours and heavy labour. Many dock workers put in twelve-hour days.
The military's illegal exactions at the gates were also stopped - but only for one week. As another truck driver I spoke with explained, 'The illegal fees started being collected again because the military threatened that they could not guarantee the security of the port, especially the security of the trucks coming in and out. For the owners of the port, it was better that the port's security was assured than the illegal fees abolished. Explicitly, the owners of the port sided with those bandits'. The military knows how to use euphemisms. When the military told the port owners that it could not guarantee security without the extra money, it was actually threatening to become a threat to security.
Once the strike was over, the port owners went on the offensive. They issued a new regulation which stated that the workers are allowed to form unions and strike. But they made the pre-conditions of unionisation and striking as burdensome as possible. Thus, the truck drivers, the workers who load and unload the containers, and the janitorial staff can not join the same union. They have to form separate unions. If one of these fragmented unions wants to strike, it has to notify the police one week ahead of time. No union is allowed to picket at the port itself and impede its functioning.
The SBMNI union is still organising and still struggling to make Tanjung Priok port a better place to work. But with the military so deeply involved, it faces a difficult and dangerous battle ahead.
Razif (ocip2363@cbn.net.id) is a historian with the Institute of Indonesian Social History in Jakarta and the editorial coordinator of the magazine Media Kerja Budaya (www.kerjabudaya.org).
Inside Indonesia 73: Jan - Mar 2003
Putting the (Para)Military Back Into Politics
The taskforces of the political parties
Phil King
Megawati's Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) claims to have over thirty thousand of them. By the time of his death, West Papuan 'separatist' leader Theys Eluay had over 5,000 of them. During the 1999 election campaign one of the smaller parties in Yogyakarta only had a couple of dozen, but would borrow a few from the PDIP on occasion.
They are satgas members, the ubiquitous muscle machinery of the political parties that has bloomed in the post-Suharto era. What are the satgas? Why have they emerged with such vigour? And what is the consequence of their presence in Indonesian politics?
Satgas (satuan tugas) translates as 'taskforce'. While now a synonym for party security forces, the term satgas is more widely used. A taskforce may be established to lead an initiative in public health or food distribution. Recently a satgas was formed to help in the repatriation of Indonesian workers ejected in Malaysia's most recent crackdown on guest workers. But it is the type of satgas associated with militarism, violence, and characters like Eurico Guterres that has come to assert itself in the public sphere over the last five years. Led and legitimised by the big political parties and fed by various criminal syndicates and 'youth groups', satgas have expanded across the archipelago. Here, I will only focus on the para-military wings of the larger political parties.
Private armies
Satgas parpol, or political party militias, have existed since the early 1980s. Although there is a significant overlap between them and earlier mass organisations, satgas emerged as a specific response to the violence of the 1982 general election and the New Order's ensuing war on gangterism. Previously curtailed in size by local military commanders and Golkar-sponsored 'youth groups', these militias mushroomed after the fall of Suharto and the re-establishment of competitive party politics. Absent in the first national election in 1955, the satgas became a ubiquitous, fatigue-clad fusion of recycled pemuda (youth) rhetoric and New Order thuggery in the 1999 election.
The massive expansion of party militias thrived on the recruitment of the more mercenary members of the disenfranchised urban milieu, ever deepening in the wake of the economic crisis. Essentially, reformasi was a liberalisation of both party politics and underworld criminal activities. The satgas have been the most astute beneficiaries of both processes.
For the major parties, the satgas are little more than private armies. The internal structure of satgas units replicates military orders of hierarchy from the regional commander down to the platoon. Other parallels are found in the existence of logistics and intelligence wings, fatigues and jackboots, and training drills. Both Golkar and PKB have a floating pool of 'strategic reserves' in addition to 'territorial' troops. When a satgas member is accused of any violation of civil liberties, the response from commanders is always that 'he was acting as an individual at the time'. The imitation of the military is so flawless that when one regional commander interviewed during the 1999 election described the style of his troops as 'semi-military', I could only assume that this meant that they didn't carry automatic weapons. Indeed, becoming a satgas member is a little like joining the army without having to go through all the calisthenics and barkings of sergeants.
The satgas themselves are diverse in character. When it comes to joining up, membership criterion is relatively open (unless you are female). Commanders are often former military men or veterans from New Order mass organisations. In Java, a fair proportion of satgas adhere to beliefs and practices which might be termed invulnerability cults. Generally affable, satgas members certainly reject the trivialisation of their character as a new breed of urban cowboys.
In many ways, heavy responsibilities are placed on the shoulders of satgas. Foremost amongst them is the organisation of party campaign parades. Routes must be planned to avoid opposition neighbourhoods and bottlenecks. Troops are stationed along the trail, radio communications are utilised, blow-fly sunglasses are obligatory. Crowds are constantly scanned for signs of disturbance from agent provocateurs. Elite squads act as bodyguards for the party hierarchy while more humble footsoldiers help in the supply of cotton wool for participants and spectators. (Parades are noisy.) With their feet up and sipping cold tea in the shade, the police and marines assigned to my street for the 1999 election thought the satgas were to be congratulated for taking all the work out of their work.
For all their utility as traffic wardens and deputised keepers of the peace, there are also the satgas that kidnap opposition pamphleteers, beat up journalists, and chase rivals down the main street waving machetes. During the 1999 election campaign, the satgas of PPP-Yogyakarta (United Development Party) demonstrated that thuggery is not without a sense of irony when they attacked and burnt an anti-violence protest site on Jalan Malioboro. Golkar's satgas stoned the party's Menteng headquarters in Jakarta and trashed the car of party chief Akbar Tanjung over a pay dispute.
Battles
Rivalries between the satgas of PDIP, PPP and PKB (National Awakening Party) were particularly violent throughout central Java. The PKB acronym was rephrased as the National Destruction Party due to the violent reputation of its militias. Satgas were lamented as the worst hangover of the Soeharto era to persist into the reformasi period. In a survey by the daily newspaper Jawa Pos in 2000, 87% of respondents said that the satgas of the reformasi era were far worse than those of the New Order. Unfortunately, things did not come to a halt with the election.
Satgas have proven to have a life far beyond the campaign period. President Abdurrahman Wahid's veiled threats that Ansor and Banser (effectively components of the his party's security apparatus) would brook no interference with his presidency regularly put Jakartans on edge. Parliamentary sittings since 1999 have been accompanied by the regular occupation of Jakarta by para-military groups from the provinces. Satgas are now part of a party arms race.
While the argument exists that satgas organisations offer direction and discipline to disenfranchised youths, plenty of hot-heads appear to thrive in them. Competition to control economic rents and run rackets in particular localities is the usual trigger for violence, something that can occur between rival satgas units within a single party.
A further problem emerges at the point of contact between these security organisations and the civilian party structure. In some parties such as PAN, the satgas structure is subordinated to the authority of the district executive. Co-ordination is achieved via the civilian executive and satgas protocol exists in the form of a nation-wide manifesto. The opposite situation is found in PDIP, where satgas units exist independently of party structure. They are self-financed and are often split in their support of rival factions within the party.
Megawati's footsoldiers
In the wake of the 1999 election, various instances have emerged where the selection of candidates for regional legislatures was marred by inter-satgas conflict. The devolution of political authority to the city and district levels under local autonomy laws has exacerbated the situation. As the value of district legislature seats has sky-rocketed, the stakes have risen between rival candidates who enter into informal coalitions with satgas commanders to boost their chances of success. One of the more infamous cases was the March 2001 beating and fatal stabbing of a district PDIP satgas commander in Gunung Kidul, Yogayakarta which took place in full view of a delegation of provincial PDIP parliamentarians. The incident was linked to factional rivalries within the party branch that threatened the satgas unit's access to a key funding source.
It is the para-military wing of the PDIP that raises the most concern for the future. In May 2002 they turned a Medan courtroom upside down when the judge postponed a verdict against a defendent accused of murdering a comrade. They have been implicated in various instances of violence and intimidation against journalists and NGOs. Most recently, they harassed and forcefully disbanded a People's Democracy Front (FDR) parade in Solo, Central Java, on the grounds that the placard 'Megawati Soehartoputri' was insulting. Legally they have no such power, though the partisanship of the state security forces is generally reflected by their inaction. The irony of the incident was that the parade was in remembrance of the brutal July 1996 attack on PDI headquarters by Suharto thugs.
Having inherited the mantle of their former tormentors, the satgas PDIP looks set to repeat history. The satgas of the political parties are the new forces of violent conservatism in Indonesian politics. Demobilisation appears impossible. The 2004 election is guaranteed to see a further spiralling of violence between rival para-military organisations.
Phil King (pk01@uow.edu.au) is a PhD candidate at University of Wollongong and is working on a project on the Thai-Malay border. He is currently lecturing in Southeast Asian Politics at University of Sydney.
Inside Indonesia 73: Jan - Mar 2003
Self-reliant Militias
Homegrown security forces wield great power in Lombok
John M. MacDougall
It was mid-October, 1998, in Malang, East Java. I was sitting in a friend's house watching television coverage of Indonesian students demonstrating in the streets of Jakarta. They were protesting against the entire government: President Habibie, the military, and the parliament. After forcing Suharto from power in May 1998, they were angry that the new government seemed to be nothing but a continuation of the old. Confronting the students were thousands of civilians organised into what was called a pamswakarsa, or self-reliant security corps. General Wiranto, then head of the Indonesian military, had suggested that such a corps be formed to counter a 'revolutionary' movement planning to topple President Habibie. As press coverage later revealed, the pamswakarsa in Jakarta in October 1998 was, contrary to its name, not self-reliant - they had been paid by the government. They were largely unemployed men bussed in from small towns and villages in West Java with the lure of a good day's wage.
Back to Malang. Just outside my friend's house, his neighbors had recently formed vigilante groups to protect their families from 'ninja' attacks. There had been a spate of mysterious killings of 'black magicians' (dukun santet) in East Java. These vigilante groups were not called pamswakarsa but they were, in a sense, vigilant self-reliant security groups. Like many young men throughout Indonesia in the uncertain days of 1998, when Suharto's old political system was breaking down, they organised patrols to guard their neighborhoods from the intrusion of 'dark elements' and 'criminals', who were all assumed to be from outside the community.
These two cases of civilian security forces, one in Jakarta, the other in Malang, represent two different phenomena. While the former was a rent-a-mob organised by a bureaucracy for political purposes, the latter was organised by volunteers within a neighborhood for purposes of local patrolling. Interpretations of the rise of vigilante groups in Indonesia often alternate between the poles illustrated by these two groups. They have been construed as either sinister products of a military conspiracy to fracture civil society or popular efforts to uphold the community in the absence of a state.
These two poles of interpretation, however, do not exhaust all the possibilities. As I will try to show through a case study of Lombok, a pamswakarsa can emerge from the society itself but do so in a way that recreates the state's militarism on a more communal level. If the society was policed during the Suharto era by a centralised military, it is being policed today in a no less brutal fashion by homegrown civilian security groups. The sad fact is that in this post-Suharto period the largest 'civilian' organisation on the island is a pamswakarsa.
Vigilantes in Lombok
On the island of Lombok, where I spent the better part of two years from 1998 to 2000, pamswakarsa groups first emerged to counter crime. Under the banner of the nationally validated moniker, pamswakarsa, Lombok's men, young and old, joined groups with such names as Amphibi, Ababil, Elang Merah, and Bujak. These groups vowed to protect their communities from thieves. Within a year after the fall of Suharto in 1998, Lombok was teeming with civilian security groups.
The first of these groups was Bujak (Pemburu Jejak, Tracker). With a base in the district of Central Lombok, it began in 1997 when the economic crisis had just hit. There was a panic about crime. Bujak developed a bounty hunter service where they would guarantee the return of stolen goods provided they were given a payment in return. Behind the veil of Bujak's community service, it became known that many of Bujak's members were ex-criminals themselves and were suspected to be working with thieves to extort money.
One of Lombok's religious clerics, disturbed at the overlap between Bujak and the criminals, organised his own group from the Islamic center of Jeroaru, in East Lombok. Named Amphibi (for unclear reasons), this pamswakarsa became extraordinarily popular. By August 1999, their numbers in East Lombok alone exceeded 100,000. The groundswell of support came from villagers who wished to resist the powerful network of thieves preying upon their property, especially their livestock.
The members themselves funded the organisation. The cleric, Tuan Guru Sibaway, and his brother, a mystic named Guru Ukit, offered membership, complete with a supernaturally charged invulnerability jacket, for the relatively large sum of Rp 103,000 [US$12]. Ex-criminals, youths, and occasionally prominent political officials signed up. Amphibi's coffers swelled with their ranks, allowing them to purchase walkie-talkies and trucks.
While Bujak's primary focus was upon the retrieval of stolen goods, Amphibi focused on capturing the criminal. The alleged thieves caught by Amphibi were given the opportunity to tobat (repent) and join the organization to hunt their former partners in crime. 'Those who returned to the ways of criminality were given a three strike rule. After the third violation they would be classified as escapees and an escapee is as good as dead', commented one Amphibi member of Eastern Lombok.
The tension between Bujak and Amphibi turned into a bloody, full-scale battle in August 1999. Amphibi managed to defeat its rival from Central Lombok at a battle in the village of Penne, a village straddling the border between the two districts.
The expansion of Amphibi
With Bujak out of the way, Amphibi's scope expanded into Central and West Lombok, drawing an additional 100,000 members to its ranks. Amphibi moved into the northern regions of West Lombok after the anti-Christian riots of 17 January 2000. Its security posts could be found throughout both northern Lombok and Mataram, two areas with historical tensions with East Lombok. Lombok's northern communities had not only sided with Balinese colonial forces in the nineteenth century, they continued to practice 'animistic' traditions of the Sasak ethnic group. Such traditions had been eliminated in Muslim communities throughout East and Central Lombok.
Amphibi is a distinctly Muslim organisation but does not have missionary ambitions outside of Lombok. It does not imagine itself to be part of a nationwide or global Muslim movement. Similar to the reformist Islamic effort to remove Sasak society of the residual Hindu practices of their Balinese colonial past, Amphibi endeavors to purge Sasak communities of criminal networks.
If Amphibi had been widely seen as a protective ally in its home base of East Lombok, it was viewed as a fearful intruder in northern Lombok. In an interview with an Islamic leader in northern Lombok, it was evident that Amphibi's expansion was not commonly supported there: 'These Amphibi are scaring us. Our [Islamic] teachers are from the East [Lombok], true, but these Amphibi take the heads of their victims. 'They take our heads.'
The rise of Amphibi also threatened the Hindu Balinese communities in Mataram. On 21 December 1999, Amphibi beheaded a Balinese noble suspected of being a middleman for crime networks. Since no Amphibi members were arrested for the decapitation, the Balinese felt it necessary to establish their own pamswakarsa, named Dharma Wicesa. Balinese aristocrats and priests were commissioned to lead Dharma Wicesa and provide local Balinese men with the same mystical invulnerability as their Amphibi rivals.
The religious polarisation between Muslim Amphibi and Hindu Dharma Wicesa can be trumped by local loyalties. When Amphibi attacked the West Lombok village of Perampauan in October 2000, the villagers, Muslims included, refused to allow Amphibi to apprehend Balinese suspects living in the village. According to a legal aid lawyer present at the scene, the Amphibi members threatened, 'We will attack your village because you dare to protect infidels instead of siding with your fellow Muslims.'
The Muslim villagers stood by their Balinese neighbours and defeated Amphibi's thousand-man attack. The Balinese pamswakarsa rushed to the village to defend their fellow Balinese only to be forced away as well. Amphibi lost that day in Perampauan but continued to attack smaller villages in West Lombok before local officials pressured the leadership to stop the anti-Balinese campaign.
Militarisation from above and below
How should we interpret the rise of Amphibi in Lombok? In some respects, it resembles the East Javanese men in Malang defending their communities. As such a large mass-based organisation, it has to be responding to a widespread felt need. In other respects, it resembles the government-backed militia in Jakarta. The members of Amphibi do not just defend their own neighborhoods; they head out into battle and expand into other districts. In Lombok, local police, military, and government officials have joined, legitimated, and encouraged the organisation for lack of any other means of controlling or guiding it.
Indonesia's young men have begun to play a crucial role in politics as Suharto's authoritarianism has been transformed into multi-party parliamentary politics. Yet these young men are, for the first time in their lives, politically useful without a clear definition of what 'political' is. In the words of an East Lombok lawyer, 'Most of Amphibi's members consist of men who didn't exist in the eyes of the state during the New Order. Now, with their new orange jackets, the police, their communities, and religious leaders treat them with respect and caution. During Suharto's era, if the military slapped them they would break into tears. Now, it is their turn to do the slapping.'
John M. MacDougall (jomon@indo.net.id) is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Princeton University.
Inside Indonesia 73: Jan - Mar 2003
The Model Militia
A new security force in Bali is cloaked in tradition
Degung Santikarma
Two months ago, I received an e-mail from a Western friend living in Bali. He thought that I, as a Balinese and an anthropologist, might be able explain a disturbing incident in his neighborhood.
Dear Degung,
A few days ago I was a witness to an episode which I have enormous difficulties understanding and I wish you to help me in finding an anthropological frame to rationalise it. I was at home at 9 p.m. and watching TV with my kids when the kul-kul alarm bells started sounding all around my house and people started screaming: 'Maling!' Thieves had broken into a neighbour's house. The burglars ran away without taking anything from the house. In a very short time many youngsters from my village and the villages nearby began the hunt, screaming in the meantime: 'Matiang!' 'Bunuh!' etc. We were terrified. After a short time the thieves were found: three young boys, 12 to 13 years old, from Lombok. One of them managed to escape. The other two were killed on the spot. Since then I have had terrible feelings of guilt and find myself totally unable to accept what had happened. I would very much appreciate your reading of this barbaric episode as a Balinese and an anthropologist. How and why can things like this happen and how can the people involved survive with the feeling of guilt and how do the villages and banjars come to terms with it? I will value and appreciate very much your opinion.
Thanks, your very shocked friend.
On reading this letter, I was saddened, disgusted and angered - emotions that only grew stronger after my friend called to say that his own 12-year-old son, who had witnessed the killing of these boys his own age, had been so traumatised that he was nearly catatonic. I could not, any more than my friend, rationalise or explain this killing of children. It was hard to consider why I should want to, as my friend asked, 'rationalize' this event, to the extent that giving it an explanatory framework could make men who were, after all, killers of children seem 'rational'. I did not know how to respond. This was not the usual kind of question I receive from foreigners puzzled by, say, a Balinese tooth-filing ceremony or a trance dance in which people stab themselves.
As I thought about the incident, I realised was that I was not shocked by it in the same way my friend was. Anyone who has spent much time in Bali recently knows that such events are occurring with increasing frequency. I began to wonder what kind of social and cultural conditions are making violence in Bali not only possible but increasingly likely to the extent that few Balinese find it shocking or problematic.
Invisibility of Violence in Bali
This issue of violence in Bali is difficult to raise for several reasons. The first is that while Bali is no stranger to violence, discussions of it rarely take place in public. During the thirty-two years of Suharto dictatorship, the state was a clear force restraining such discourse. It was considered dangerous to discuss the violence in 1965-66, when up to 100,000 Balinese or 5-8% of the island's population were killed. There was an official narrative of the events but no public space available for alternative interpretations. Raising the perspective of the victims or questioning the narrative that portrayed the deaths as morally justified, was to risk becoming labeled 'communist' oneself. Even with the fall of Suharto, the trauma of the victims of the 1965-66 violence and their families continues to shade Balinese life and ways of speaking, making people reluctant to bring up incidents of continuing violence in their communities.
Tourism has also acted as a restraint on discussions of violence. The prerequisite for tourism is a sense of safety, order and stability. Tourists are reluctant to travel to places that they believe to be violent. For many Balinese, 'safety' has real economic consequences, as has become obvious in the wake of the October 2002 bombing. It is no wonder that the murders that occurred in front of my friend's house - like dozens of other such incidents that occur every year - did not make it into the pages of the Bali Post. And it was no wonder that I, living six villages away, did not hear about the event, and probably never would have heard about the event, had it not been for an e-mail from a Western friend.
The third reason why public discussions of violence are rare is that the Balinese cannot imagine themselves as 'violent'. The Indonesian words like kekerasan or kerusuhan seem alien to their self-image. Such words seem applicable only to areas like Ambon or Aceh. When incidents of violence are publicised, especially conflicts between members of different villages, the media does not usually use the term 'violence'. Instead, it uses the euphemism 'kasus adat',or customary law dispute, as if the incidents represented traditional tribal rivalries rather than modern conflicts. Violence in Balinese society is usually tucked away as an unexamined aspect of discourses of 'tradition' and 'culture'.
Inventing Tradition
To explain what I mean by this last statement, I need to turn to the issue of who actually carried out the killing of the children in front of my friend's house. That night, a man spotted three boys on his property and began calling out 'Thief! Thief!' Immediately, a neighbour ran and began pounding on the kul-kul, the wooden drum hanging in the neighborhood meeting hall. He beat out a rhythm signaling that the neighborhood, the banjar, was in a state of emergency. The banjar's drum was then answered by drums in the other banjars of the village.
By sounding the kul-kul, this case of transgression against one man's private property immediately became a communal matter requiring the attention of the entire village. It also positioned the incident as a matter of culture, tradition and adat, insofar as the kulkul is a primary symbol of these concepts. Nobody considered calling the police, not simply because the police are often seen as corrupt or incompetent, but because if this was a matter of culture, tradition and adat, it could not simultaneously be seen as a matter for the state. Since the New Order's fall in 1998, the state has been viewed as the force against which culture, tradition and adat need to be empowered.
Dozens of men answered the call of the kul-kul. Included among them were the village's pecalangan or security force. They came dressed in their trademark uniforms of sarongs, black and white checkered poleng cloth waistcloths, carrying keris daggers. Together these men hunted down the boys and murdered two of them. While the pecalangan were not the only ones to participate in the killings, their presence added a certain legitimacy to the actions. The pecalangan were also able to smooth things out with the authorities so that none of the villagers responsible for the murders were arrested.
Pecalangan groups such as this one have become common in Bali since the New Order ended in 1998. Today virtually every Balinese village has its own pecalangan. Indeed, one of the ironic results of Balinese resentment toward the repressive power exerted by Suharto's New Order state has been Balinese claiming the right to exert that same control over their own communities. In other words, reformasi has not brought a demilitarisation of Balinese life. What has occurred instead has been a remilitarisation. There has been, in the name of culture and tradition, an even deeper penetration of militarisation into the everyday fabric of community.
Few people that I spoke with in my own village to the east of Denpasar could explain where the term pecalangan came from or could relate with confidence the history of these groups. Some said that the pecalangan's predecessor was the 'taskforce' of security guards for the 1998 conference of Megawati's party (the PDIP) in Bali. Others said that the pecalangan got their start in the late 1970s when the Bali Arts Festival, the island's major annual cultural event, began using security guards dressed in traditional ceremonial outfits to direct traffic and guard the parking lots. Still others believed that the pecalangan were a modern incarnation of the old palace guards. And those who can still remember the violence of 1965 ventured that the pecalangan were a revival of the gangs responsible for carrying out executions of alleged communists.
Despite this lack of consensus about the origins of the pecalangan, most people agreed with the notion, regularly expressed in the mass media, that the pecalangan are 'traditional'. Even those who acknowledged that there had never been anything called a pecalangan in their village before seemed convinced that such groups were part of a Balinese heritage that was being recovered. By drawing upon a notion of 'Balinese tradition', the pecalangan seem to have succeeded in erasing their own modern origins.
Guarding Culture
The regional government of Bali passed a law in 2002 that formally legitimised the pecalangan: -1) Safety and order in the area of the desa pakraman (village) is carried out by pecalang. 2) Pecalang carry out duties of safeguarding the area of the desa pakraman relating to adat and religion. 3) Pecalang are selected and relieved of their duties by the desa pakraman based upon a village forum. Desa pakraman is a term that has recently become popular among bureaucrats as a replacement for the term desa adat (customary village). This is part of a project to 'Balinise' the language - the word adat comes from Arabic.
Pecalangan groups are, in keeping with this regulation, given ritual duties. These may include acting as traffic guards at ceremonies, making sure that sloppily-dressed or badly-behaved tourists are not allowed to enter temple ceremonies, and guarding the cockfights held as part of ceremonies. They also act as enforcers of silence on the day of Nyepi. They patrol the streets to make sure that everyone, Hindu or not, keeps their lights turned off and does not venture out into the streets. For many pecalang, Nyepi becomes an occasion to assert a sense of ethnic identity and even superiority. As one of them said to me, 'On Nyepi we don't just stop people from outside our village or outside Bali. Even the military has to stop if they're on the road and we see them.' Smiling broadly, he said, 'It's too bad Nyepi is just one day.'
Depending upon the particular village, however, pecalangan often carry out other duties that have little to do with ritual. In Denpasar, Kuta or Legian, where there are large numbers of non-Balinese inhabitants, the pecalangan have worked together with the police to carry out identity-card raids, traveling from house to house at night to ask the inhabitants to demonstrate that they have registered their current addresses with the government. Typically pecalangan members who assist with such raids are paid a fee for their night's services (according to those I questioned, approximately Rp25,000). In Kesiman, many pecalangan members act as guards for the places of prostitution to be found in the Padanggalak Beach area.
In South Bali, they may also provide 'protection' for bar and nightclub owners, receiving monetary subsidies in exchange for ensuring that local residents look kindly upon what goes on in those places. In Nusa Dua, pecalangan receive financing from hotels in exchange for similar protection against local protests concerning land or labour issues. In the Padanggalak Beach area, pecalangan act as guards for brothels. And wherever there is a cockfight, it is virtually certain that the pecalangan will participate, taking a cut of the profits as their fee.
Motivations for joining the pecalangan vary. In my village, each banjar is required to send at least two adult male members to join. Most of the men who sign up are those without steady employment. Anyone who works cannot stay up all night patrolling the streets. Becoming part of the pecalangan offers them a bit of money, a sense of pride, and an ability to exert power over those even more marginalised.
But what about other Balinese? Why do they feel that the pecalangan are necessary or, at the very least, unobjectionable and tolerable? Traditionally, Balinese ritual is thought to evoke the potential for danger from the unseen world. Those holding rituals would often call upon people with special supernatural abilities, those who could ward off attacks of black magic by those who might be jealous toward those sponsoring the ritual. But it is only recently that people have felt the need to have pecalangan participate in rituals as security guards.
Most people I asked about the pecalangan spoke not about their ritual duties but about how they kept things 'safer' in general. A typical comment was that of one man who said, 'We always used to have our motorbikes stolen, but now nobody dares.' Many people, especially in multicultural Denpasar and Kuta, said that because there were now many non-Balinese living in Bali, the pecalangan are necessary to deter theft and violence. Some people saw the police as being too corrupt to fulfill their proper role.
While the presence of pecalangan in Bali parallels in many ways the rise of militia groups in other areas of Indonesia, the Bali case presents some important differences. Rather than being demonised in the national and international press, as have so many other militant 'security' groups, especially those who draw upon religion to legitimise themselves, they have been lauded. They have become a kind of model militia. Most recently, pecalangan from villages across South Bali were assigned by the police department to assist with security for a United Nations conference. A police delegation from Japan visited Bali to learn about its 'traditional security system'.
Even when the pecalangan become involved in killing, 'culture' is drawn upon to explain their actions. Today 'Balinese culture' is often viewed as a kind of precious object that can be marked with a price tag and sold to tourists through 'cultural tourism'. With culture being reduced to an object, an anxiety has arisen among Balinese who fear that this valuable possession could be lost or stolen. Now that culture has become like an expensive antique preserved in a museum, the pecalangan have become the museum guards. Those who might try to damage or destroy or steal this culture are 'outsiders'.
This sense of being under siege translates into a resentment against ethnic others and a belief that all thieves must be non-Balinese. Killing a thief becomes sensible, even honorable, as a defence of culture. Thus nobody who participated in the killing that night in front of my friend's house thought to raise the question: were these boys really thieves even though they were empty-handed? It was enough, in the end, that they were outsiders, for there was far more than private property at stake. What was at stake that night was culture. The killers of those two boys in front of my friend's house that night have not been perceived in Bali as killers for they acted in defence of culture - the culture sounded by the kul-kul drum.
Degung Santikarma (cultural@dps.centrin.net.id) is the editor in chief of the monthly magazine Latitudes, published in Denpasar, Bali (http://www.latitudesmagazine.com).
Inside Indonesia 73: Jan - Mar 2003
Doing Daily Battle
Street children face police and security guards
Rikah and Dede
Rikah Suryanto
They wear neat uniforms, sport sunglasses, never forget to carry clubs and whistles, always stand erect, and guide traffic in a busy intersection. Perhaps that is the usual image of policemen. Each person probably has a different image. It depends on the context in which they come to know policemen.
Street children know policemen very well even though they aren't on good terms with them. In the eyes of street children, the police appear to be people whose only job is to scare them. With their menacing looks, big boots, and long clubs, they are always ready to chase and beat up street children. The typical policeman is like a wild cat that tirelessly chases after a rat.
You've probably seen from behind your car windows when stopped at a red light, the sight of a policeman, perhaps just to fill up his time, running after a child begging or selling newspapers. And you've seen barefoot children being shooed out of a shopping mall by security guards. We don't see much of the army but we see a lot of the police and security guards.
Being punched or kicked by the police and security guards has become as routine as waking up in the morning for street children. With the chasing and the fighting, the story might appear as if it is like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. But there is another side to that story that is terrible and tragic - a side that isn't some drama on TV or something happening in a foreign country. Sometimes the violence is so extreme that the child is seriously wounded or killed.
Just last month in the next neighborhood down the road, two street children died after being chased out of an area by security guards. They tried to save themselves from the guards by jumping into a canal. They couldn't swim and wound up drowning. I can imagine why they wanted so desperately to avoid getting caught. Street children not only get beaten, sometimes they are taken to what is called 'rehabilitation,' which is a like a prison for children.
I read in a book compiled by a non-governmental organisation in Jakarta about one street kid who survived being shot by the police. He said, 'The thing I wanted to steal was owned by the police. I didn't know that. This policeman immediately came out of his car and pulled out a gun. He shot me in the chest and the bullet went right through me. I was bleeding all over but he still came over and kicked me until I was unconscious.'
Children are still children, whoever and wherever they are, whether they are living on the street or in a big fancy house. All children have a right to go to school, play with their friends, and obtain enough food to live. In Indonesia, the government doesn't respect those rights. Indeed, the security forces themselves, in the name of security, make life more difficult for street children. But we have rights too.
Dede Puji
What I see in my neighborhood is that the ones who are supposed to uphold law and order and make the community feel safe are precisely the ones that make us feel unsafe. Let me give you a small example.
There is a low level officer of the navy who lives in my neighborhood. He uses his position in the military to shield himself from the law. One day, a factory nearby was closing down and moving to a different location. It opened up its gates for local people to come in and take things that the company was going to leave behind. We were all quite happy to get some materials for free. The first day that people were allowed inside everything went smoothly. But on the second day this military officer and his colleagues began taking away some of the large valuable equipment that the company was going to move and keep using. Seeing that, some of the local people started grabbing some of that equipment too.
After a few days, the owners discovered that their property was being looted. The military officer accused the local people of having stolen the goods even though he was the one who had been primarily responsible. The company believed him and put him in charge of guarding the factory yard. He used his new position to then steal more things. He arranged for some of his friends and some neighborhood kids to come in, take things away, and then give him part of the profit from selling the things. He eventually got into a fight with some of the kids because he thought they were not giving him enough money. One kid ran away from home and still hasn't returned for fear of that guy. I don't see how this guy is protecting the community.
I'll give you another example that involves the same guy. He sells liquor illegally from a house in the neighborhood. Everyone, including the police, knows where the house is and what goes on there. But it still operates without any problem. I've heard that his salary from the navy is actually pretty high but he still wants to earn more by running an illegal business.
Every so often, to earn some money, I help a friend who drives a small truck. I help load and unload things. The main job of the traffic police in Jakarta seems to be to stop trucks, especially at night, to demand money. The police plant themselves at a corner or along the side of the road and then stop every truck that comes by. Even if all the papers are in order and you haven't committed any traffic violation, you still have to pay something. It is like an unofficial toll. I guess they figure that because the truck is involved in commercial activity, it has money. Drivers have to set aside money to pay off these police. Our truck is quite small but still we get stopped too.
Such is the state of the security system in Indonesia. The ones that are supposed to protect the people use their position to make money off the people. We wind up being scared of the people that call themselves our protectors.
Rikah Suryanto (18 years old) and Dede Puji (19) are former street children who now work with a home for street children, Sanggar Akar, in Jakarta.
More than six decades after being inspired as an undergraduate in Sydney, Ron Witton retraces his Indonesian language teacher's journey back to Suriname