As told to Syarifah Mariati
Once again I am transfixed, cold. Another victim has been found this morning. I see several villagers hurrying towards the rice fields, wanting to know whether it's one of their own. I have just heard the news that another corpse has been found by the dyke. A man. From the village nearby. From the people I hear that a bullet pierced his chest on the left, and that marks of torture cover his whole body.
Quickly I enter my house. I can no longer lift the pail of water I've drawn from the well, even though it's only two metres from the house. My heart races irregularly. Fear. God, whose turn is it this time? Will people always be killed? What has this man done to earn this tragic death? How big a sin has he committed?
I am still traumatised by what I witnessed almost three months before. That afternoon I had been sitting in front of the house when I heard a commotion in the street. Soldiers in uniform, brandishing weapons. More than twenty of them. I prepared to step inside my house. 'Get out all of you! Quick, get out, all of you inside. Don't pretend that you don't know we've come. See this. This is an example of what will happen to those who dare join the GPK rebels. You'll become pigs.'
I panicked. People emerged from their homes. Bang Nurdin, my mother in law, and all the other village folks. In shock I saw what one of them carried... a human head. Had my eyes tricked me? No. That was a human head. Cut off at the neck. By a machete? I couldn't bear to see. Blood spattered. Nausea rose.
'Ayo, look at this. Who else wants to end up like this? Who else? Pigs!'
Parading the head down the village road, they hurled insults. People were forced to look. All manner of emotions swirled within me. Fear, terror, nausea and pity.
Azwar. The handsome youth. Loved by the village because he was obedient, humble and quick to help. 'Poor Azwar,' said Bang Nurdin, overwhelmed by emotion.
I could remember clearly when the village folk wished to bury a corpse they'd found lying in the street. We didn't know from which village he came. Then, five armed soldiers appeared. One of them said arrogantly, 'Do you know who this is? A creator of chaos. GPK. Do you know? These GPK people are not human beings but pigs. You don't need to bury them because they're pigs.'
The people fell silent and hurried home.
News of villagers shot, kidnapped, tortured - almost everyday I heard it. Sometimes in this village, sometimes in other villages. News of corpses disposed by the wayside, in gutters, in ponds, in rivers - everywhere. It could be a man from my village or from other villages, thrown out like rubbish here. Left unburied because the villagers were too afraid to collect the corpses.
I didn't know why village folk were being killed. Some said they were killed because they were members of the Aceh Liberation Movement. Like the corpse of the man disposed on the dyke this morning. The old man had lived in the village next to mine; he was a gardener who had cared for the school principal's plot of land. He'd been accused of membership in the GAM, of hiding weapons.
I was born 43 years ago, in the village of Cot Geuleumpang, about three kilometres from the sub-district centre Peureulak in East Aceh. My name is Maimunah.
My father was the teungku imeum, a respected man in the village. My mother too was well known; villagers would come to her with their problems. To fulfill their everyday needs, my parents had a small rice field.
One day, I was informed that someone planned to ask for my hand in marriage. His name was Nurdin. Eventually, Bang Nurdin asked me to come and live in his village, Uteun Dama, about four kilometres from my own village. We worked as paid agricultural hands during the planting and harvesting seasons. We went to the glee together when we didn't go to the rice fields.
Friday, 2 March 1991
This day is the 15th day of the month Sya'ban. It is a tradition in our village to hold a feast in the meunasah (small mosque). We call this the khanduri nifsu sya'ban - the feast of sya'ban. Around noon, Bang Nurdin went to the meunasah, returning in the evening. Suddenly, we heard the sound of trucks passing in convoy.
'It is our village's turn tonight; the soldiers have just entered,' Bang Nurdin said. 'Bang, there's an operation tonight. You shouldn't sleep in the house; go and hide in the jungle. Many of the men in the village have gone into hiding in the jungle.' But Bang Nurdin refused. 'I have nothing to fear. Why should I hide in the jungle? They are looking for members of the Free Aceh Movement. We aren't GAM. We don't need to hide.'
Perhaps he was right. But I continued to worry. Friday, almost midnight. Half asleep, I soothed Sukri to sleep. He'd woken up crying. Perhaps he was thirsty. Hasnah and Muhadir were fast asleep. In the next room, Bang Nurdin slept with Yusda. Suddenly there was a knock at the front door. 'Bang Nurdin, come out,' I heard a voice saying from outside. I wondered who was coming at such a late hour. Anxiously, I woke Bang Nurdin to tell him someone was calling him out. 'Who's there?' asked Bang Nurdin. 'It's me, Sidik. I live in the Uteun Dama village. Please come out; someone's looking for you.' Bang Nurdin, wearing only pants and a sarong around his shoulders, opened the door to meet the person, who was escorted by a man standing straight, his hair short, wearing a white t-shirt.
'Let me see your ID and Family Card.' The man spoke bad Acehnese. We could see that he was not Acehnese. Bang Nurdin went to get his ID and family card. From inside the room I could hear the conversation. 'They only want to see my ID card and our family card,' explained Bang Nurdin. 'Be careful, Bang.' He nodded and took the ID and Family Card to show to the soldier outside.
The man returned the family card but retained his ID. I heard him telling Bang Nurdin to get dressed to go because there was some business to take care of. Hearing that, I emerged from the room. 'Where are you taking my husband at such a late hour? Why are you taking him?' I asked the man. 'We're taking him to the guard post for a little while. Go back to sleep.' Outside, there were many other men, all wearing camouflage gear, holding rifles. In the moonlight I could make out ten people. Some stood near the fence, others surrounded the house. I grew suspicious when I saw my husband forced to go with the man in the white t-shirt. Ten other men followed them out. Bang Nurdin wore a white shirt; his red-checkered sarung was slung over his shoulder. I did my ablutions and prayed, sending up a plea for the safety of my husband. I got the Al-Quran and softly recited the verses through the night.
In the early dawn some neighbours came. 'Has Bang Nurdin come home?' they asked. 'No,' I replied. They told me they had heard the sound of gunfire on the glee. I became weak. Was it Bang Nurdin they had shot? O God, don't let it be. My younger brother came and talked with the folks. They went to Desa Punti, the next village, where the command post was located, to ask permission to see the victim of last night's shooting in the glee. I heard that they had also taken Teungku Adam, the village elder. I wanted so much to go, but they said no. I obeyed and let Yusda join the group.
They found Bang Nurdin in the glee, lying on our plot of land. He'd become a corpse. The villagers continued searching for Teungku Adam but didn't find him.
Not long after, Bang Nurdin's corpse arrived at home. Weakness overcame me when I saw my husband's corpse. His throat had been cut through, leaving but a bit of skin attaching the head to his body. The checkered sarong had been stuffed in his mouth by his murderers-all the way down so that it emerged from his slit throat. I saw a hole in his chest. Bruises covered his face. The white shirt and pants he had worn were now red. Blood from the throat, blood from the chest. Then everything went dark and I no longer knew what happened after that.
In our simple house, Bang Nurdin's corpse was laid out. Only a few people came to pay their respects, and even they stayed only a short while before hurrying home. Normally, when someone dies, almost all the villagers come to mourn. They pray for the deceased and for the family. Now all this had changed. Bang Nurdin's corpse was bathed and buried by the few people who dared to come. After prayers, the people recited the Al-Quran and prayed for the soul, but they left long before midnight. My sorrow grew when I heard my daughter, Hasnah, praying, 'Allah, I beg of You, may the murderers of my father quickly die.'
Syarifah Mariati is a lecturer in Banda Aceh and on the board of the women's group Flower Aceh (flower@aceh.wasantara.net.id). Sylvia Tiwon was the translator. Excerpted from 'Catatan seorang janda' in 'Nyala panyot tak terpadamkan' (Banda Aceh: Flower Aceh, 1999).
Inside Indonesia 62: Apr - Jun 2000
Whither Aceh?
An update on events in 1999
Ed Aspinall
Partly inspired by the August poll in East Timor, massive parades around Aceh from mid-October called for a referendum. On November 8 perhaps a million people, almost a quarter of Aceh's population, filled the streets of the capital Banda Aceh.
These protests were generally peaceful. But regular gunfights between military units and combatants from GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, Free Aceh Movement) were accompanied by many more mysterious murders and burnings in the dead of night.
At the same time, the infrastructure of the Indonesian state was visibly crumbling. By the beginning of October, for example, 600 of the 948 village heads in the district of Pidie had resigned. From early October, GAM called for a strike by public servants. Many sub-district (kecamatan) and even a few district (kabupaten) offices in much of Aceh simply ceased to function. In some towns the courts ceased to hear cases because all the judges had fled.
In response to some scattered attacks by GAM in the late 1980s, the Indonesian armed forces had launched a vicious counter-insurgency campaign. Most intense in the first couple of years, this lasted for much of the subsequent decade. By most estimates two to five thousand were killed.
In the Indonesia-wide euphoria after President Suharto resigned in May 1998, Acehnese strove to uncover past crimes. Mass graves were exhumed, non-government organisations (NGOs) flew widows of victims to Jakarta to testify, and the press presented stories of terrible abuses.
The Habibie government had a brief window of opportunity to resolve the 'Aceh problem'. In those first months many Acehnese were genuinely optimistic that action would be taken. In August 1998, General Wiranto visited Aceh and ordered the withdrawal of 'non-organic' troops. Habibie, too, made a visit early in 1999, and promised to investigate human rights violations. But Habibie was too beholden to the military, and too pre-occupied with the power struggle at the centre, to devote serious attention to Aceh. There were no real prosecutions, and soon violence returned. 'Unknown men' burned buses, schools and other government installations. Bodies began to reappear on roadsides and attacks on military units began.
Some attacks were presumably carried out by GAM, especially those against individuals suspected of collaborating with the military. But most Acehnese were convinced that military provocateurs were responsible, aiming to create a climate of fear. There were certainly some blatant military abuses, including the 'Simpang KKA' massacre in Lhokseumawe in May 1999 and an attack on the remote Beutong Ateuh community in July, in each of which dozens were killed.
Yet Acehnese society did not return to the terrified paralysis of Suharto's final decade. In the months after Suharto's fall, a vigorous civil society movement came into being. The local press began investigating abuses, interviewing GAM leaders and sometimes accusing the military of random violence. New human rights NGOs were formed, which investigated abuses and took their campaigns to Jakarta and abroad.
s so often in Indonesia, students spearheaded the demands. In February 1999, a conference in Banda Aceh formulated the referendum demand. They formed a group called SIRA (Sentral Informasi Referendum Aceh) to spread the referendum campaign via NGO, student and religious networks throughout Aceh. Banners and graffiti appeared even in remote rural areas.
The campaign soon spread to other social sectors. Students of religious schools (who renamed themselves from the Indonesian santri to the Arabic thaliban), and even becak drivers came out in support of a referendum. The turning point occurred in September, when a highly charged conference of religious scholars (ulama), did the same. After this, the pro-referendum rallies became truly massive.
Glory days
Many Acehnese are proud of Aceh's contribution to the Indonesian independence struggle in the 1940s. But they look further back too, to the glory days of the early 17th century Sultan Iskandar Muda, when Aceh held sway over much of northern Sumatra and beyond. Though in decline, Aceh remained independently governed until the late 19th century. It ended with the bitter 35-year war of conquest by the Dutch, which remains vivid in folklore.
There is thus a widespread sense of lost greatness, but also the feeling that today's struggle continues an earlier history. GAM consciously portrays its struggle that way. Speakers at pro-referendum rallies in late 1999 recited the Hikayat perang sabil, the 'Epic of the holy war,' written during the war against the Dutch.
This sense of historical distinctiveness makes Aceh different from other restive parts of the archipelago. In Aceh there is a ready-made set of historical myths of national struggle and sacrifice. There is also high (though not absolute) ethnic homogeneity in the territory, as well as the glue of Islam. These factors contribute to a high degree of cohesion in Acehnese society. The Indonesian military has been unable to establish East Timorese style 'pro-integration' militias there.
All of this does not necessarily mean that Aceh will become independent. The central government is determined to prevent it at all costs, and there is no significant international support for self-determination.
Another problem relates to the heterogeneity of political forces in Aceh. In East Timor there was a high degree of unity of purpose within the independence movement for a decade prior to the UN-supervised ballot. But in Aceh there are at least three other important groups, in addition to the 'civil society' movement of students, NGOs and the press.
First is the local political and business elite. This has long been integrated fairly solidly into the Indonesian national elite. Through the Sukarno and Suharto periods, many Acehnese occupied leading government positions at the national level, in a way that few East Timorese or West Papuans ever did. There have been Acehnese cabinet ministers, party leaders, senior generals, and heads of major business groups.
To be sure, the local political elite has, to an extent, responded to the popular mood. The Aceh chapter of the Islamic United Development Party PPP, for example, early in 1999 endorsed the referendum demand. Some of its leaders, like legislator Ghazali Abbas Adan, have been fearless advocates for Acehnese rights.
Later in the year, even establishment figures were partly swept along by the popular enthusiasm. During the wave of mobilisation in October-November, leaders of the provincial and district parliaments, regents (bupati) and even the governor himself signed statements endorsing a referendum.
But overall, this layer still view themselves as part of a greater Indonesian national elite. None of the parties, which won significant votes in last June's election, has demonstrated that it seriously contemplates an independent Aceh. Nothing symbolises this continued elite Indonesianness so much as the appointment of Hasballah M Saad, an outspoken and respected Acehnese leader of the National Mandate Party PAN, as Minister for Human Rights in Wahid's cabinet.
Yes, this elite is presumably in a state of flux. A significant gulf certainly separates it from popular opinion. But the point remains that an influential group in Acehnese society will likely be amenable to a compromise which keeps Aceh within Indonesia.
Islam, whose leaders constitute the second important group, is obviously crucial to Acehnese identity and contributes greatly to the strength of the movement. Since the 1950s and until today, a feeling that Acehnese Islamic sensitivities were being ignored by a secular-oriented national government has partly fuelled discontent.
During the popular ferment over the last 18 months, there have been many expressions of renewed Islamic assertiveness. Ulama and thaliban have been prominent in the pro-referendum movement, and there have been widespread demands for Islamic syariah law to be applied.
There have also been new expressions of Islamic public morality. During 'jilbab raids' outside the city, bands of men have cut the hair of women not wearing the Islamic headscarf. Transsexuals, too, have suffered the same fate and been forced to wear men's clothing. Individuals caught in extra-marital sex have been publicly whipped, in accordance with syariah law. Sex-workers have been humiliated by being paraded about the streets of Banda Aceh.
Such phenomena have the potential to, if not split Acehnese society, at least highlight incipient differences in the pro-referendum ranks. They have certainly alarmed many in the more-or-less secular urban NGOs and student groups. Acehnese women's NGOs have condemned the 'jilbab raids'.
More importantly, they indicate a potential opening for the central government. In attempting to keep Aceh within the Indonesian fold, both Habibie and Abdurrahman Wahid have demonstrated great willingness to offer concessions to Islam. President Wahid has held out the possibility of a referendum, not on independence but on syariah law. He has also focused most of his attempts at negotiation on the ulama. Clearly, the aim is to split the Islamic leadership away from the students, GAM and other pro-independence forces.
GAM
GAM, the third group, represents both a strength and a weakness of the Acehnese struggle. Most observers estimate it has several hundred armed combatants in the field. It has demonstrated a capacity to damage the army and police, although mostly in ambushes involving a few gunmen.
The organisation has significant popular support, strongest in (but by no means confined to) the countryside of Pidie, and North and East Aceh, where the counter-insurgency operations of the late 1980s and early 1990s were most intense. Numerous flag-raising ceremonies culminated in large shows of strength for the GAM anniversary last December. The organisation also has the capacity to bring Aceh to a halt by ordering transport and public service strikes.
However, much mystery continues to surround GAM. It is led by Hasan di Tiro, an exile from Aceh for over four decades, who claims descent from Aceh's sultans and whose health is reportedly fragile. The organisation appears to be deeply factionalised, with incessant squabbling among the major groups in exile.
Its aims are also not always clear. Early in 1999 GAM leaders strongly rejected referendum proposals, suggesting that Aceh was 'already independent.' But after the ulama came out in favour of such a process, they moderated this position.
Uncertainty also surrounds GAM's blueprint for an independent Aceh. Some leaders have been quoted favouring the return of the sultanate (presumably with oil-rich Brunei as the model), while others have claimed to be aiming at a modern democratic state. Likewise, Hasan di Tiro has rejected negotiation with the Jakarta government. He has been repeatedly quoted suggesting that 'the Javanese' are stupid and not to be trusted. But other factions have some contact with the Wahid administration.
On the ground in Aceh the picture is even less clear. Most field commanders seem to be aligned with the Hasan di Tiro leadership. But some rural armed groups have only a loose affiliation with the organisation. Others are simply gangsters who claim GAM credentials in order to extort money from the unfortunate locals. Some seem to be military deserters, while, as noted above, most Acehnese believe that disguised military units are provoking much of the worst mayhem.
Out of this chaotic picture, it seems obvious that there can be no effective military solution to Aceh's problems, even though sections of Indonesia's armed forces still hunger for one. It was Indonesian military brutality which transformed GAM from an isolated handful in the 1970s into the serious force it has become today. Reluctance to prosecute past abuses has been similarly crucial to escalating popular discontent the last 18 months.
President Wahid faces a daunting challenge if he is to keep Aceh within the national fold. Pro-referendum sentiment has great momentum. Although the fissures in Acehnese society suggest possibilities for him, controlling the military and punishing human rights abusers must be central to any settlement.
Ed Aspinall (easpinal@tpgi.com.au) teaches at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.
Inside Indonesia 62: Apr - Jun 2000
From heroes to rebels
Jakarta's Aceh policy suddenly looks remarkably colonial
Sylvia Tiwon
'From Sabang to Merauke the islands stretch, linking up to make one; that is Indonesia' proclaims a well-known patriotic song all Indonesian school children are taught to sing. In Jakarta, the names of important streets enumerate heroes from all over the islands, reinforcing the same symbolic claim: Jalan Tengku Cik Ditiro, Jalan Pattimura, Jalan Sisingamangaraja, Jalan Diponegoro.
The city seems constructed according to a historical masterplan revolving around its heart at Merdeka (Independence) Square, as though to teach all those travelling its congested roadways an object lesson in the national motto 'unity in diversity'. Yet today, events conspire to reveal that unity as a fiction maintained through often violent indoctrination. 'Merdeka' has become a rallying cry for provinces who experience Indonesian nationhood as a new form of colonial oppression. These movements for independent statehood have reached a crescendo in the wake of Suharto's fall from power. None has been as threatening to the state as Aceh's.
Aceh is important to the Indonesian national imagination in many ways. Spatially, it marks the northwestern boundary of the great archipelago. Historically, Aceh's long war against the Dutch - 1873-1903, a war the Dutch never really won - makes it a critical reference point for Indonesia's anti-colonial struggle.
The province is known as Tanah Rencong, a reference to the dagger that took the lives of many Dutchmen in the 'Aceh murders' that continued to plague the Dutch even after the war had ended. Out of the Aceh War comes the name Cut Nyak Dien, the only fighting woman Indonesia claims in its pantheon of national heroes. She is often contrasted with Kartini, the Javanese princess who engaged in a different battle from within the confines of her father's mansion.
After the fall of the Japanese in 1945, the Dutch did not bother to return to Aceh, knowing they would never be welcomed. Aceh's contributions to the nationalist cause during the years of revolution following World War II, most notably by donating Indonesia's first aircraft, made it a significant example of non-Javanese support for the Republic.
Aceh is also known as Serambi Mekkah, the doorway to Islam's holy land, partly because in the days before air transportation pilgrims from all points in the archipelago going to Mekkah on the haj by steamer had to stop at the Acehnese port of Sabang before crossing the Indian Ocean. Even more important is Aceh's own strong Islamic identity, rooted in the history of the spice trade and intellectual activity in the Acehnese courts. Darker
Strangely however, these same qualities of heroism, Islamic identity and strategic importance have also been refashioned by the central government in Jakarta to construct a darker image of Aceh. From Jakarta's perspective, Aceh's rebellious tradition and its strong adherence to an Islamic identity also constitute a threat to progress and national unity. In order to understand this paradoxical construct of Aceh, it is necessary to look at another factor that has made Aceh so crucial to the republic.
For in addition to its cultural and political value, Aceh also represents great economic value. Its vast natural resources include oil, gas, timber, coffee and palm oil. It is to protect its stakes in this wealth that Jakarta has deployed the spectre of separatism and Islamic radicalism, mounting a policy of control through military force and manipulation that ironically harks back to the callous 'Aceh policy' of the Dutch colonial government.
The greatest share of the revenue from Aceh's resources has been siphoned off by Jakarta-based interests. In the midst of all this natural wealth, the region has the highest percentage of poor villages in the island of Sumatra. Poor infrastructure leaves large portions of the hinterland inaccessible, while most public education and health services are located in the industrial cities and the provincial capital, Banda Aceh. Only about 5% of total export revenue remains within Aceh, and most of that is in the hands of mid-sized enterprises owned mainly by non-indigenous Acehnese.
In the wake of economic expansion directed from Jakarta, indigenous peoples have been evicted from traditional land-holdings, while fisherfolk fight a losing battle against modern fishing concerns. The extractive nature of large enterprise coupled with a lack of public supervision has led to serious environmental degradation. Grassroots protests generally go unreported and do not register on the national consciousness.
A significant part of Aceh's current problems may be attributed to the fact that the New Order moved swiftly to co-opt traditional leadership, disrupt indigenous structures of community governance, and nurture a small group of the Acehnese elite. Through the laws on regional administration, the central government imposed a uniform structure on villages, using the Javanese model to replace Aceh's gampong, mukim and meunasah, and undermining the traditional authority of the keucik, the village head. The religious teachers (ulama) were similarly brought under centralised control through the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI).
Worse still, the armed forces' territorial command permeated all levels of Acehnese society, in effect creating a parallel structure of armed power in which the Acehnese had no say. The people thus saw their traditional community structures dismantled and replaced by an essentially alien bureaucracy controlled from a distant centre.
After the Aceh War, the Dutch colonial government sought to diminish the threat it perceived from the ulama who had led the war. They did this by co-opting the local chieftains (uleebalang), granting the latter rights to land and taxes in return for loyalty to the colonial masters.
In similar style, the New Order brought important members of the Acehnese elite under its influence by offering them a significant share in the wealth of the region. For example, George Aditjondro identifies Ibrahim Risyad, who is allied with Liem Sioe Liong and Suharto. Under a joint venture with Robby Sumampouw, a Benny Murdani financier, Risyad expanded his business to Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines. Another powerful Acehnese is Bustanil Arifin, former minister and head of the rice distribution agency Bulog, whose wife is related to the late Mrs Suharto. He has been a major player in the Bogasari flour mill Berdikari, a state enterprise that he managed to turn into a private company, and is involved in several Suharto foundations.
The central government has yet to learn the full lesson of the failure of Dutch colonial policy. In l946, Aceh witnessed a bloody social revolution against the uleebalang who were perceived to be deeply corrupt. Yet Jakarta continues to focus on Islamic radicalism as the root of the upheavals in Aceh. In a bid to neutralise calls for a referendum on independence or autonomy, the government has introduced legislation intended to enhance Aceh's autonomy by granting it the right to enact syari'ah law. This is clearly not enough.
A more equitable sharing of revenue is necessary. More crucial - and far more difficult - is to bring to justice the perpetrators of the most outrageous human rights violations. The people of Aceh have had to pay with their lives and the honour of women for the business interests of the few. It is time to right the moral balance.
Sylvia Tiwon (DuhChi@aol.com) is Associate Professor of Indonesian at the University of California at Berkeley. George Aditjondro, 'Tragedi Aceh' will shortly appear with Pijar, Jakarta.
Inside Indonesia 62: Apr - Jun 2000
The forgotten war in North Maluku
When local elites began to fight for the spoils of office, thousands lost their lives
Read more
What's new? What isn't?
Regional autonomy (Law 22/1999)
New
No change
Territorial units
Regencies (kabupaten) and municipalities will be autonomous regions that are not part of the central government regional administrative hierarchic structure. Districts (kecamatan), subdistricts and villages are included in the regency and municipality administrative structure. Regency/ municipality offices of central government organisations are abolished or transferred to the regency/ municipality.
Break-up of functions
Central government and provinces have certain functions reserved for them. Regencies and municipalities can assume responsibility for anything not explicitly allocated to the central or provincial governments. They must assume responsibility for functions in 11 listed sectors.
Resources
Transfer of appropriate resources (infrastructure and facilities, personnel and funding) is specified as part of these decentralised functions.
Guidance and supervision
Central government guidance has been liberalised.
Regional Autonomy Advisory Board
Will provide advice to the president concerning regional autonomy.
Territorial units
Provinces remain as both autonomous regions and part of the central government regional administrative structure.
Regional elected assemblies
Their roles, procedures, powers, functions and rights are substantially unchanged.
Role of most existing institutions
DPRD secretariat, regional head, regional apparatus, regional regulations, regional civil service, regional finance (see Law 25 below), regional cooperation and settlement of disputes, village government - these all retain their familiar form.
Money matters (Law 25/1999)
New
No change
Regional revenue
All central government subsidies to the regions are replaced by 'Balance Funds' that include a greater percentage share of building and land taxes, and that now give the regions a set percentage of natural resources, oil and gas revenue produced in the region.
Regional autonomy balance council
Will allocate general and special allocation funds.
Internal regional revenue
Other sources of internal revenue remain unchanged and consist of regional taxes and levies, regional enterprise profits, miscellaneous internal revenue, and regional loans (little use has been made of this latter source to date).
Problems
Both laws require considerable supplementary legislation before they can be implemented. The previous regional government law (Law 5/ 1974) was never implemented fully because the required regulations were either never passed or were inconsistent with the decentralisation law. As it is, Law 25, which is really a supplementary law to Law 22, is in fact inconsistent with it in some instances.
Inside Indonesia 63: Jul - Sep 2000
In this issue
A post-Indonesian generation?
Gerry van Kilinken - Editor
The late novelist YB Mangunwijaya coined the phrase 'post-Indonesian generation'. A young generation was freeing itself from the demands of greying New Order soldiers that they should 'uphold the ideals of the 1945 Revolution', he wrote. No longer in the grip of tradition, they looked to the world at large. I suspect quite a few of the young artists and activists who appear in this edition of Inside Indonesia belong to the post-Indonesian generation.
Like the democracy activists of Eastern Europe once the Berlin Wall had fallen, some of them are unsure where to go next. Theatre, according to Lauren Bain, faces a post-authoritarian identity crisis. The daring new nudity in painting, according to M Dwi Marianto, wants to reject all of today's cynicism as much as shed its restrictive New Order clothes.
Others fight with renewed energy, and there is surely much to fight for. Land reform and the war in Aceh are just two issues canvassed in this edition. These activists too sit loose of the past. If Indonesia is to remain viable, Chusnul Mar'iyah tells Peter King, it must be there for all Indonesians. Dialogue and peace must be over-riding commitments. Suraiya Kamaruzzaman turns a similar sentiment into almost an alternative feminist agenda.
All of this could be new to many Australians, who increasingly think of Indonesia as a place of exotic violence rather than as a neighbour.
This edition introduces a new feature that incorporates the Indonesian language insert. 'Learning about Indonesia' is a new supplement that intends to support a new and young audience interested in learning more about Indonesia. It consists of two parts. 'What do you know about...?' is in English. 'Bahasa' is in Indonesian. The focus of this supplement is also the arts.
A theme edition on the arts breaks some exciting new ground for us. As always, many people helped make it a reality. To all - especially to unnamed friends like the fabulous kids who do the mail-out - we owe sincere thanks.
Inside Indonesia 64: Oct - Dec 2000
'Run my child'
Mukti-Mukti sings protest songs about land
Anton Lucas
We are on our way to Cikalong Kulon, a subdistrict in the hilly southern part of Cianjur regency in West Java. I want to talk with farmers about their struggle in the 1980s with the State Forestry Corporation (Perum Perhutani) in a dispute over boundaries, and what has happened there since era reformasi. I also want to find out the fate of the national land reform program here. As the car ducks and swerves in the traffic, a sad song is playing about the fields of a place called Pareang. Straining to catch the lyrics, I reach for the cassette entitled A concert of love music by Mukti-Mukti 1999 and find the words to a song called Pareang ladang Parangan:
'In the forest kampung of Pareang in the field of Parangan I watch my child with her gloomy faceHolding the post of the hut, daydreaming in the dusk The wind is blowing the gathering clouds, wiping out the daydreams of - an unlucky child. Run my child, run my child,Find a goat for a friend, Run my child, run my child, Find a rabbit for a friend, Run my child and find a faithful friend.'
I notice that the song is dedicated to farmers in the Cikalong Kulon land dispute in South Cianjur, where we are heading that day. The music and lyrics of the entire cassette are by a singer called Mukti-Mukti. In the back seat of the car I am sitting next to a guy with a guitar on his knees. He turns out to be Mukti! His voice sounds completely different. He is coming with us because he knows Pak Budjil, the farmer who beat the State Forestry Corporation in a court case in1989, and we want to interview him.
I chat with Mukti for the rest of the journey. Eventually we arrive at a small village in an isolated valley with steeply sloping wet rice lands carved out of the forest. We leave the car and walk zigzagging up along rice terrace embankments, trying not to slip into the paddy fields, till we get to Pak Budjil's house. Perched on a slope with wide verandas recently added (so people could come and sit, talk and sleep there) it reminds me of a Queenslander.
Mukti has made many trips to the area and also to other land disputes. He was there when ten thousand students marched from Bandung to Garut in support of the Badega farmers in 1989. 'At first I didn't know what I should do for all these farmers who were being dispossessed of their land. So I just did what I knew best, I began to sing. I sang about former times when farmers had to ask their raja for land, about their ancestors who left their land to their children, and about farmers who were fighting the authorities'. Mukti says his songs try to help the people fight for their rights, but they also need more formal education.
Mukti says farmers have tried to ask for land using the proper procedures, but their formal requests for title to the lands that they cultivate never get anywhere because of the 'mafia' inside the local Land Office (BPN). Farmers have to put up with a lot of intimidation. Mukti tells me he was visiting one village in the early 1990s, where farmers had lived in fear of the authorities for a long time. Someone came up to him out of breath and said 'Mukti, we have to hide you in a kampung over that hill, because the Koramil (local military authorities) know about you being here'. 'It was like one of those Indonesian war movies you used to see on TV' Mukti says. 'Deep down I thought, why the hell do I have to leave. We are supposed to be a free country!' The next day Mukti was invited to give the address at the Friday prayers in a new village mosque. He told the farmers that no one had control over their lives, and they should not be afraid of village officials, the local military commander or anyone else. They should be in awe only of God, who created everything on earth.
According to Dianto Bachriadi, Mukti began his career as a singer during the student protests over land in West Java, which began in earnest in 1989. 'Almost all the farmers who were victims of compulsory land acquisitions in West Java between 1989-94 knew who Mukti was because of his songs'. But Mukti was never just a guitar playing student protestor. He is a fine musician who has organised his own solo concerts every year since the mid 1990s. 'I don't want to make a concert just for the sake of it. Music I play in concerts has to enlighten people, at least it has to make them more aware'.
Anton Lucas (anton.lucas@flinders.edu.au) teaches in the Asian Studies and Languages Department at Flinders University. The cassette 'Konser musik cinta Mukti-Mukti' is available through the Konsorsium Pembaruan Agraria at kpa@kpa.or.id.
Inside Indonesia 64: Oct - Dec 2000
Land for the landless
Why are the democrats in Jakarta not interested in land reform?
Dianto Bachriadi
In May President Gus Dur told farmers he would have 40% of state-owned plantation land redistributed to landless peasants. He said this because farmers had begun unilaterally to occupy plantation land they believed belonged to them. Some of these actions had resulted in arrests, injury and even death. The landless farmers reacted with great enthusiasm, but there has been no follow-up.
Their claim on the plantation land had a historical basis, but the New Order government acted inconsistently with Sukarno's Old Order, resulting in thousands of farmers being pushed off land they had worked for many years. The recent economic crisis increased the desire for land among people who used to look to the cities for work. A scarcity of land made them take the step of occupying other land. Under the influence of reformasi, and with the security apparatus showing more restraint, about 60,000 hectares of plantation land have been taken over and farmed in these massive farmers' actions, leaving about 120 plantation companies feeling aggrieved.
These figures came as no surprise to the Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA), a non-government organisation that has been following land conflicts for a long time. Their records show that throughout Indonesia land disputes, particularly on plantation lands, are more numerous than any other type of legal conflict.
Landless
How many farmers need land, and is there enough to go around? The last census in 1993 showed that 5,989,534 peasant households in Indonesia, or 28% of the total, owned between zero and 0.1 hectares of land. The economic crisis will have increased that figure as unemployed people return to the land from the city. Many of them had migrated to the city in the first place because there was no more land.
A similar number, 6,315,091 households or 29% of the total, had between 0.1 and 0.49 hectares. If we consider half a hectare as adequate for small agricultural production we can see that 57% of rural households in Indonesia do not have enough land. This is a minimal figure, because it does not count all those who have been permanently removed from the land but who still want to return there.
But how much land is available? Ironically, the government does not make available comprehensive data on the amount of land available for land reform. The figures it does release are clearly too low when compared with more credible sources. One such source, Maria Soemardjono, estimates that the cumulative total is 1,397,167 hectares, of which 787,931 hectares or 56.4% had already been redistributed by 1998. It's not quite clear what kind of land is being referred to here.
The 1960 Agrarian Law provides for four kinds of land to be redistributed: (1) land that exceeds a certain maximum area, (2) land held by absentee landlords, (3) land (formerly) owned by traditional ruling families or courts (swapraja), and (4) state-controlled land. All land subject to reform is in practice first declared to be state land before being redistributed.
The National Land Agency (BPN) said in 1998 that about 84% of all the land for which it had issued a location permit for commercial purpose (izin lokasi) was in fact not being used productively. One reason was land speculation. This amounts to 2,543,944 hectares. Unproductive plantation land, meanwhile, amounted to 2,431,75 hectares. New rules say that land left unused (lahan tidur) or not being used for the purpose of the lease returns to the state to be given to those who will use it. The point is that a certain amount of land is available under the existing law on land reform.
Another rarely mentioned matter is the absentee landlord. The state agency BPN never releases figures in this area. No one knows whether they don't have them or don't want to publish them. Maybe they are afraid of offending the officials (including BPN officers), big businessmen, generals and so on, who control this land without living on it. But whenever we visit the country everyone can point out the land owned by absentee landlords. The BPN office in Bekasi (east of Jakarta) once said 20% of land is absentee land. Research by William Collier and his colleagues says 13.8% of agricultural land in Java falls into this category. If on average each village in Java has 150-250 hectares, redistributing just this absentee land alone would give between eight and fourteen families in every village enough land to live on.
Of course absentee landlordship is a difficult problem to solve without very strong political pressure. Even during the most intensive phase of land reform in the 1960s, only 39% of absentee land could be successfully redistributed. If land reform had been slow under that government, it stopped altogether after the New Order regime took over. The massacres and horizontal conflict of 1965-66 were held up as a reason for viewing land reform, which is blessed by the constitution, as 'unrealistic'. Even though the New Order regime kept talking about land reform and even publishing statistics, this was merely political rhetoric without substance. The populist land reform program effectively died in 1969.
When the first Five Year Plan (Repelita I) was unveiled in 1969, land reform no longer appeared on the 'agricultural development' agenda. Instead the effort was directed at agricultural intensification based on the green revolution. The term land reform did reappear in subsequent plans, but it was connected with transmigration and the resettlement of nomadic tribes people. The special land reform court was abolished in 1970, showing that the program to create a more balanced system of agricultural land control had been systematically abandoned.
Business
Another aspect of Indonesian land reform is that the law is limited to land owned by individuals. It makes an exception to the maximum area rule in the case of land leased by a company. This has allowed companies to control huge tracts of land. Another exception is that land controlled by village chiefs (tanah bengkok or tanah jabatan) is not subject to land reform, with the result that some chiefs control up to 10% of the entire village land.
If the New Order neglected land reform, so did the transitional Habibie government and today's Gus Dur government. In particular they have often allocated land controlled by the state (such as ex-forestry or ex-plantation land), not to landless farmers as the land reform law requires, but back to the big companies who will invest in agribusiness. The two governments that followed Sukarno's Old Order government continued the manipulation of plantation land originally leased by the Dutch that was nationalised in 1957. Leases were given to state-owned plantation companies.
In reality, local farmers had worked a lot of this land since the Japanese occupation and since the revolutionary independence struggle of 1945. That reality was validated in Emergency Law no.1/1958. In some, but unfortunately not all, places this occupied land was formally handed over as part of the national land reform program in the 1960s. It all depended a lot on local political dynamics. As a result a great deal of this land, which had been worked by farmers continuously since that time, was only protected by a few formal acknowledgements. The New Order routinely regarded these acknowledgements as legally invalid. New research I did with Anton Lucas has shown how easy it has been to seize this redistributed land in manipulative ways from the farmers working it.
Things became even more complicated when those state-owned plantation companies (PN Perkebunan or PT Perkebunan) then passed control to large private concerns to be used for a plantation, tourism, or luxury housing. The New Order usually just issued a new lease (Hak Guna Usaha) without considering the fact that the land was in fact being worked productively albeit without formal certification.
The land reform law unfortunately only has jurisdiction over land owned by private individuals, and not that controlled by companies or cooperatives that might be active in plantations, forestry, shrimp farms, or other agro-industry. Only in 1999 did two new government regulations come out in response to reformist pressure to limit mainly the expansion of oil palm and forestry concessions (Hak Pengusaha Hutan) over land. We still need to see how effective these regulations will be.
The uncontrolled seizure of land by big business interests has given rise to serious conflicts with ordinary people all over Indonesia whose productive farming land has been taken over. Much of this land in fact lies fallow as it turns out the company is unable to put it to immediate use.
There are so many farmers who badly need land. Will the Gus Dur government - or anyone else interested in taking his place - listen to them by reviving the land reform program? The executive branch of government is increasingly being controlled by parliament. Yet until now parliament has never asked the government why it is not implementing its constitutional duty of land reform. All the parliamentarians seem to be concerned about is how to increase their party's share of power. KPA has put up a resolution on agrarian reform to the country's supreme parliament the MPR. Plantation interests opposed discussion of this resolution, and two years later it has evoked virtually no comment from those who call themselves the peoples' representatives. They invariably say that land reform is 'not realistic' for Indonesia.
Dianto Bachriadi can be contacted through the Konsorsium Pembaharuan Agraria, KPA (kpa@kpa.or.id) in Bandung, or through penk@bdg.centrin.net.id.
Inside Indonesia 64: Oct - Dec 2000
Blood on the map
A conference on recent violence in Indonesia
Jemma Purdey
Suharto is gone and the structures that maintained his power are weakened, yet the violence remains. Violent conflict in Indonesia has become more frequent and more varied. It is no longer sufficient to explain it in terms of state terrorism orchestrated by 'third party agents' alone.
From July 3-7, a panel on 'Violent conflict in Asia: Comparative perspectives' was part of the biennial Asian Studies Association of Australia Conference. It was followed by a two-day workshop on 'Violent conflict in Indonesia: Analysis, representation, resolution'. Both were held at the University of Melbourne. Australian and overseas researchers and academics joined a number of Indonesian activists, academics, a lawyer, journalist, and a publisher.
In post New Order Indonesia there is increasing recognition of the plurality of truths about violent conflict. State truths, 'media reality' and the 'factual' and 'moral' truths told by human rights organisations are all in tension. The challenge for researchers is to navigate around the various representations of violence to understand what happened. During the New Order, researchers most often found explanations within the authoritarian system. Today the links between the actors involved in the conflicts in Ambon, West Kalimantan and even Aceh with the state elite in Jakarta cannot be made so easily. Tim Lindsey urged us to turn our focus to new structures that have emerged in the absence of state controls. These have evoked what he terms the 'preman state', driven by corruption and violence. Elsewhere we see local communities bypassing the state system altogether and enacting their own forms of justice and order, also violently. Nick Herriman described lynchings in South Malang, East Java, where weakened local authorities have no power to halt these acts of 'community justice'.
The complexity of unraveling the 'truth' about violent conflict was made very clear by Suraiya from Flower Aceh. In a moving account, she spoke of the terror gripping the people of Aceh every day as they struggle to make sense of a conflict in which they have become pawns (see elsewhere in this issue). The truth about the violence has been monopolised by both the Indonesian military TNI and the armed Free Aceh Movement GAM, leaving no space for the victims to tell their story. Beth Drexler noted in her paper that by negotiating a ceasefire agreement with GAM in May this year, the government and military have accorded this group an international credibility and authentication, albeit false, as representatives of the people of Aceh.
Hilmar Farid of the Volunteer Team for Humanity (TRuK) demanded that the experiences of the victims be given a central place in the search for understanding and resolving violence, because the 'events of violence are not just in particular points of time, they have a great influence on the social structure of the community.' In his paper on the torture of ex 'communist' political prisoners, Budiawan Purwadi demonstrated how the trauma endures for many victims.
Discussion about resolution and justice issues after the violence reflected the difficulties this process will encounter in Indonesia. New Order ways of thinking persist. The South African 'Truth and Reconciliation' model being offered by the government and its elite advisers aims to seek out the 'truth about the past' - to finally be able to tell the whole story and thereby bestow justice. Retribution and revenge would be unachievable and futile. However, many outside those elite circles, the victims of the New Order, fear that once again their voices will not be heard. Mary Zurbuchen of the Ford Foundation contrasted this elite push for 'reconciliation' with work being done by human rights organisations and victim groups to research the violence. The latter emphasise the 'truth' aspect, and not necessarily 'reconciliation'.
The violence in Maluku constitutes perhaps the greatest challenge so far to the ideal and reality of Indonesian nationalism. As government officials continue to declare, this is an internal conflict in which there can be no clear division between those representing 'good' and those representing 'evil', as there was in East Timor and now in Aceh. Richard Chauvel depicted the conflict in Ambon as localised and specific to this place. He argued for local sources of resolution, a method which Gus Dur, for a time, also appeared to support. However, it is increasingly clear that such a process will not work. The conflict in Ambon and the surrounding islands baffles even analysts, politicians and historians with intimate knowledge of the place. It is clear that a new discourse on violence is necessary to understand this next chapter in the country's history.
Jemma Purdey (jepurdey@hotmail.com) and Charles Coppel (c.coppel@history.unimelb.edu.au), both from the University of Melbourne, organised the conference panel and workshop with the help of an advisory committee. For the program and abstracts see www.history.unimelb.edu.au/indonesia. Jemma Purdey is a PhD candidate researching anti-Chinese violence in Indonesia.
Inside Indonesia 64: Oct - Dec 2000
A different freedom
Islamic rebellion in Aceh and Mindanao is not so irrational
Jacqueline Aquino Siapno
'Mountain goats eat the corn; village goats get hit with stones.' This Acehnese saying poignantly captures the ongoing violence there. Unable to capture Free Aceh guerrillas, the Indonesian military go after Acehnese villagers. My own work in the Southern Philippines and in Aceh tries to help dispel the negative propaganda against the Acehnese and against Bangsamoro in Mindanao as 'fundamentalists' and irrational troublemakers. It is astounding to see how easily the government, media, and 'experts' can influence the public into forming opinions about these movements without a need for critical reflection and careful investigation. This fosters a pernicious cycle of violence and ignorance.
News coverage of the rebellions in Aceh and Mindanao against the Indonesian and Philippine states respectively has much to say about the 'terrorism' conducted by Free Aceh (GAM) and by Abu Sayyaf. The latter, leader of a splinter group of the factionalised Bangsamoro rebellion, was responsible for kidnapping tourists from a Malaysian resort in April. Yet hardly anything is said, at least not in the Australian media, about what the Indonesian and Philippine governments are doing to the unarmed civilian populations there, or about the political-economic dimensions of the conflicts, or about why independence movements emerged in the first place.
Mention is rarely made of a history of more than twenty five years of armed rebellion in Mindanao, producing at least one million internal refugees, including more than 100,000 Filipino Muslims who have fled to Malaysia, and about 120,000 dead. Propaganda against the Free Aceh Movement and against Muslim 'rebels' in Mindanao as 'security disturbing gangs' (GPK), as extortionists, kidnappers, and extremists is pervasive in the media, and uncritically reproduced even by progressive intellectuals. Institutionalised, systematic state violence in Aceh and the Philippines, meanwhile, is hardly ever called 'criminal'. Only recently are observers belatedly beginning to acknowledge that members of the government and the military have behaved like no less than war criminals in these two places.
Making a state
My own interpretation places the armed rebellions in Aceh and in Mindanao within a larger context. The construction of modern nation-states and citizen-subjects in these areas is itself a new and violent historical project. This project tends to paint populist movements that are anti-occupation culture, anti-colonial, anti-secular, and anti-capitalist as a sort of 'quintessence of evil'. It dismisses acts of resistance as 'fundamentalist', 'fanatical' responses to depressed rural conditions, conditions that need to be dealt with by education and the mediation of a secular, representative government.
The state-building project justifies state terror through a judicial system that makes it impossible for its victims to seek redress or even challenge its language. It portrays whole communities who threaten to break up the nation-state and put it to shame as terrorists, kidnappers, and 'subversives'. The Philippine government and the Indonesian government have failed in Mindanao and in Aceh. They have failed because they have had to resort to extremely brutal measures to implement their goals of integrating the Acehnese and the Muslims in Mindanao into the nation-state project.
The reasons for the continuing Acehnese and Bangsamoro rebellions are complex and numerous, but certainly not irrational. More than twenty five years now of political instability and violence, class conflict, and underdevelopment have produced impoverishment. The most basic infrastructure is lacking, as is access to schools and higher education. Moreover, occupation culture has been a culture of terror. It has produced militarisation and sadism. Both areas have suffered from policies of massive transmigration of non-organic groups: from over-populated Luzon to Mindanao, and from other areas in Indonesia to the under-populated, fertile lands of Aceh. This has created conflict by dispossessing people from their land.
In Aceh, colonising power has been institutionalised through an extensive system of surveillance, torture, road checkpoints, street harassment, sexual harassment and rape, 'sweeping operations' and house-to-house searches. Aceh's oil and natural gas resources are exploited for the benefit of Jakarta. Its over-centralised administration has alienated the people. The independence movement and its sympathisers are demonised as 'enemies of the state'. Indonesian government officials constantly use a language of paranoid absolutes, for example: 'referendum is out of the question'; 'separation would be a violation of national integrity'.
I do not wish to be misunderstood as an apologist for independence and/ or Islamist movements, nor for predominantly male nationalist movements which claim to represent their entire nation while keeping the female half of the population invisible. But unless the structural roots of the conflicts are genuinely addressed, any short-term measures will serve merely as band-aid solutions. That could include the humanitarian assistance and 'confidence-building measures' recommended these past few months by 'conflict resolution' consultants to the Indonesian and Philippine governments.
In both cases, armed rebellion has a history which spans several decades, if not centuries if we incorporate their anti-colonial struggles against the Dutch in Aceh, and against Spanish and American colonialism in Mindanao. Given these long histories, it would be fatal to bludgeon them from the arrogant centre with a quick-fix, ahistorical, militaristic solution.
In the Philippines, the historic peace agreement known as the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao, signed with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) led by its founder Nur Misuari in 1996, did not end the armed rebellion. A different faction, namely the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), rejected the agreement. Less than a year after the historic 'peace' agreement was signed, on 16 March 1997, the Philippine armed forces shelled the MILF's main Camp Abubakar and hit a religious school (madrasah), resulting in the deaths of ten female students and their male teacher. In June and July of 1997, armed clashes occurred between the MILF and the Philippine military that involved the aerial bombardment of the MILF's Camp Rajamuda. This produced more civilian and combatant casualties and evacuations, much like the present situation in Aceh.
This may be a useful comparative study for Acehnese who want to understand the lasting effect of 'ceasefires' and 'peace negotiations' that neglect to include all important groups. In a glaring omission, women's groups that have been at the forefront of political organising, among them the Duek Pakat Inong Aceh Congress participants of last March, were not included in the Joint Understanding on Humanitarian Pause for Aceh signed in Switzerland in mid-May. A genuinely democratic negotiation with any hope of lasting should include the women's groups, however ideologically diverse they may be.
There is too much emphasis on the role of the Free Aceh Movement GAM. The independence movement in Aceh today is much larger than GAM. Any genuine solution to the conflict ought to include all the other groups outside GAM. These also want independence, but talk about it in very different terms - in some cases extremely critical of GAM's policies.
Islam
The dominant myth that needs to be dispelled is that the conflicts in Aceh and Mindanao are religious conflicts aimed at setting up an Islamic state. Most analysts like to portray the Mindanao conflict as one between a dominant Catholic majority and a Muslim minority. This argument is seriously problematic. It says nothing about the just redistribution of economic capital or the problem of underdevelopment. And it is certainly not applicable in Aceh, where a Muslim majority is oppressing a Muslim community. In reality, the conflicts in Aceh and Mindanao are about natural resources, about land and capital, and about social justice for the victims of state terror. At bottom, they are about the structural re-organisation of the nation-state - much like the struggle for justice in West Papua and East Timor.
In any case, contrary to popular phobias against Islamic law as being somehow more oppressive of women than secular law, in some cases it is actually more egalitarian and in favour of women's rights, particularly in the fields of inheritance and divorce. The ongoing debate about gender and Islamic law in Aceh and in the Muslim world generally is complex, but it would serve us well not to assume that secular law is somehow more liberating for women.
Perhaps we should ask why it is that Islam in both these places has become such a powerful expression of cultural identity and mobilisation. Conceptions of social justice in resistance Islam are in fundamental opposition to the bureaucratic values of the secular state, which emphasise integration into the national economy and global capital rather than political community. The earlier idealisms of 'Islamic socialism', Third World nationalism, the 1955 Bandung Conference, and Sukarno's 'Go to hell with your aid!' have faded. But the vision of Islam as a form of community that demands social and economic justice remains very much alive.
Jacqui Siapno (j.siapno@politics.unimelb.edu.au) lectures in political science at the University of Melbourne.
Inside Indonesia 64: Oct - Dec 2000
More than six decades after being inspired as an undergraduate in Sydney, Ron Witton retraces his Indonesian language teacher's journey back to Suriname