Artists rebuild community identity in new, democratic ways
Halim HD
Centralism violates everything that is good about society and the arts. It is the cause of the disintegration now threatening this nation of thousands of islands once held together by some common memory and some common hope. When we decided that 'decentralisation' would be the theme of an arts festival in Makassar, South Sulawesi, some of my artist friends enjoying the good life in Jakarta wrote to tell me they thought it was a poor idea. But those who came, not just from around Makassar but from all over Indonesia, thought it was fantastic.
We started talking about the concept of a Makassar Arts Forum in a coffee shop in front of Fort Rotterdam in July 1998, just two months after Suharto resigned. It was going to be something entirely democratic and separate from the official arts establishment. That coffee shop became our secretariat, where anyone could drop by and discuss ideas. Asmin Amin was there, a well-known activist in a non-government organisation (NGO) combating HIV/Aids in South Sulawesi. Another activist there was Shalahuddin, better known for his interest in maritime ecology and organic farming. These people had worked with theatre groups such as Teater Pilar and Teater Petta Puang, and with the music and dance troupe Batara Gowa, to spread their message all over Sulawesi since the mid 1990s. I was in Makassar for another festival, but these people asked me and some other arts activists from Java to stay and help them organise the arts forum.
It soon became clear that the official arts bodies were rather afraid of these influential NGO 'outsiders'. Word was that people in the Makassar Arts Council, the South Sulawesi Arts Council, the Indonesian National Arts Coordinating Body, and South Sulawesi Taman Budaya thought they would politicise the arts. The arts councils were set up in many regions under the New Order in the 1970s. In fact these institutionalised artists had themselves long politicised the arts. They had lots of money, were close to officialdom, but had only weak roots in the community. The success of the much more open Makassar Arts Forum was soon to make the arts council model look outdated.
Andi Ilhamsyah Mattalata, a local businessman and retired sportsman, said he was prepared to help out financially. He lent us some space and a telephone. We scrounged around for a computer and paper, and for more volunteers.
By this time it was nearly a year since Suharto's resignation kicked off reformasi. Friends wanted somehow to commemorate the date. We used donated old newspapers to wrap the 5-6 metre high walls of the historic Fort Rotterdam in newsprint. The idea was to celebrate the new press freedoms, and to remember that we are surrounded by news all the time. The participants also wrapped themselves in newsprint and paraded around town - buskers, dancers, theatre players, street kids, painters and even some sidewalk sellers, about 150 of them! All the kids joined in, as did lots of motorbikes, bicycles and cars. It was like a spontaneous carnival. For three nights from 19 May '99 there was music in the streets, and dancing, theatre, poetry reading, and art shows, holding up the traffic for a kilometre or more till midnight. Every night new groups came to participate. They liked it because it was so democratic, and there were no bureaucratic hassles like funding proposals.
At the same time the South Sulawesi Arts Council (Dewan Kesenian Sulawesi Selatan) was putting on a visual arts show with artists from around South Sulawesi. I heard they spent about forty times more than our meager two million rupiahs, and there were rumours of corruption. The governor and deputy governor opened it, but hardly anyone came because it was held at the cold and inaccessible Mandala Monument, built to commemorate the 1962-63 Mandala Operation led by Suharto to recover West Irian for the Republic.
Good art
In the 1970s the Makassar Arts Council became a place where ambitious people snuggled up to the governor and to big business, perhaps with an eye to getting into parliament themselves. Any artist close to Golkar was guaranteed to get lots of projects and official appointments.
But times have changed and now younger artists can see that this is not the way to promote good art. In the 1990s many new groups began to emerge who knew that to express themselves freely they needed to keep their distance from power. At the same time a NGO movement grew more influential among the people and also began to hold cultural activities. This offered new opportunities to the artists. As an arts practitioner on the ground, I can see that many of these younger independent artists see this as their protest against the Jakarta 'centre'.
Finally it was 7 September 1999, and the ten day Makassar Arts Forum was ready to open. It had been organised by just three people, Asmin Amin, Shalahuddin, and Pak Andi Mattalata, with minimal funds. But none of the artists made a fuss about how little they were paid. Local coffee shops sent packed lunches, some of the artists themselves contributed coffee, rice, bottled water. All personal contributions. It was amazing.
Nearly all the artists from around South Sulawesi came. More turned up from all over Indonesia. There were painters, dancers, musicians and theatre artists from Yogyakarta, Solo, and from so many other cities in Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan, all over Sulawesi, Lombok and Irian Jaya. Four hundred artists altogether. There were foreigners as well, from Australia, the US, Switzerland, Canada, South Korea. We worried about how we would feed them all. We went around to the restaurants in town and many contributed food or some money. Villagers sent fried bananas or cassava. All this happened outside the well-funded official arts organisations.
The 'decentralisation' theme was there as an expression of self-confidence by people on the 'margins', and as a statement welcoming difference. I thought it was a wonderful recognition of diversity and generosity, of empowerment.
Mak Cammana played the rebana - a traditional drum. She comes from a village in Polewali-Mamasa regency, in the Mandar region of South Sulawesi. She learned the rebana from her father and her grandfather. The rebana player is an important person in the community. They do not merely make music but also teach the Q'uran and officiate at weddings and circumcisions.
Mak Coppong performed the old courtly dances from Gowa, also in South Sulawesi. They are very slow and require a lot of discipline. Unfortunately many talented dancers are lost to the art when they marry and their 'modern' husbands forbid them from going on. Quite ironic, because there are older women who have danced all their married lives. The form remains very popular in the villages for traditional ceremonies.
In the New Order, these art forms were always shaped for public display by the demands of officialdom. These were occasions for officials to demonstrate their own ideas, and they would interfere in what the artists wanted to do. Sometimes officials themselves would dance, or at least train the dancers. It was all about their own ambitions.
The model of the Makassar Arts Forum has in fact been developing since the 1980s. In Solo, theatre groups have long organised themselves informally, based on mutual solidarity and sharing. Anyone can contribute ideas. News goes out and comes in by letters, telephone, fax or email, through a wide network of friends within the arts community and even beyond. That is how artists in Solo grew close to the NGO movement, which was flourishing at the time as a reaction to the total failure of the political parties to reach the grassroots.
Indonesia still exists. Otherwise all those artists wouldn't want to come from all over Indonesia. Some of them even suggested we should all stay together for six months or even a year and learn together.
Some wanted to make the Makassar Arts Forum an annual event. They thought of Makassar as an emerging centre for the whole of eastern Indonesia. But I hope the forum will not become a monument, an annual ceremony to the greatness of any 'centre'. It should be like sand by the seaside, where children build a castle and the waves wash it away again. We need to live our traditions every day, and not turn them into a ritual. To me, decentralisation is not about making new centres to oppose Jakarta. Makassar is just a small part of South Sulawesi and of the wider region. No area should be sacrificed for someone else's 'centre'. Decentralisation means that every region is its own centre.
HalimHD (halimhd@hotmail.com, pinilih@hotmail.com) is an arts networker in Solo, Central Java.
Inside Indonesia 64: Oct - Dec 2000
Naked truth
These young artists revolt against the political crisis with their own bodies
M Dwi Marianto
Young Indonesian artists have started using nudity in new and quite personal ways. One artist showed a video of he and his wife making love to climax on a wet canvas. Just as some segments of society are being drawn into more normative religion, and in the midst of a Javanese society that disapproves of frank personal expression, these artists are brazenly creating a space to make very private statements. This could be their personal revolt against a necrophilic mass media culture that revels in violence, chaos and death. Like so many Indonesians, they want to know what use it is to listen to the big ideas of an intellectual elite that seems so righteous yet is so powerless against the intrigues of that very same elite.
In June I visited the home of Laksmi Shitaresmi (born in Yogyakarta in 1974). She had just given birth to a baby girl. Her husband is also a painter. In their tiny living room I was shocked to see two large nude paintings of Laksmi. The breasts and pubic hair were quite naturalistic. I had seen the paintings before, but what shocked me was where she had hung them, precisely where every visitor could see. Amidst a society growing more puritan, Laksmi didn't care if anyone thought this was impolite. As I sat there snacking in her living room, my eyes were exactly on a level with her genitals. This was significant! Laksmi seemed to want to speak directly, without being bound by traditional norms that in practice stop people from saying anything personal or critical.
Erica (born in Yogyakarta in 1971) is a dropout from the Indonesian Institute of Art in Yogyakarta, and one of the few female painters making a living from her work. At present she is doing a 'bathing' series. Up till now she has been painting playful, nascenes from in and around her home, and she has become quite successful. But in 1999 she began to be more personal. Bathing in my favourite villa is a self-portrait in the bath. Only the pubic area is discreetly scattered with soap bubbles (see cover). She wants to depict bathing as a relaxing and refreshing activity, but also one in which she can shed her restrictive 'cultural' clothing, at least on canvas. That is something many Indonesians long for at a time when so many crises give them a headache.
Made love
Arahmaiani (born in Bandung in 1961) is different again. This artist, who once studied at the Bandung Institute of Technology, has long made critical statements through her art. She has occasionally made use of clearly depicted genitalia, which in her work symbolise domination and militarism in an Indonesian context. As one of the few critical Indonesian women artists her work might appear more radical because there is so little comparison. At a performance in the French Cultural Centre in Bandung in 1999 she took off her shirt (leaving a bra) and invited the audience to take a marker pen and draw or write anything they liked on her skin. This is the first time a Sundanese woman has done this. When Sundanese greet one another they only touch with the tip of their finger. Men and women do not touch at all - they just tip their hand to their own breast when they meet.
I thought Arahmaiani had been the most radical ever in terms of using the body as an artistic medium, until Nurkholis came to my home to show me a video. This artist, born in Jepara in 1969, is well known for his religiosity, and remains so to the present day. He hates pretence and has always acted just as he has spoken. His work could be called surrealist. The body painting on his VCD was truly radical. The first part showed him painting the canvas with his own naked body. That is already unusual for Indonesia, but it was nothing compared to the next part, which involved his wife. They made love, and let their natural movements imprint themselves on the wet canvas. He showed this VCD at the opening of an exhibition in the Dirix Gallery on 1 July 2000. The audience was stunned. Some reacted cynically, others looked embarrassed, while others again congratulated Nurkholis.
The technique came to him after a period of dryness, when conventional painting with the brush no longer satisfied. In frustration he kicked the wet canvas and it left an impression of his foot. He then developed this idea until his entire body was painting on a canvas already covered in wet paint. A simple idea, but it had a big impact especially among younger artists and collectors in Yogyakarta and beyond. I think Nurkholis' search for a new language to express himself is shared by many Indonesians, who are no longer satisfied with the 'true and correct Indonesian' (bahasa Indonesia yang baik dan benar) they were taught at school to understand their national crisis.
These four artists are looking for an answer to a personal problem, but their discoveries represent an open visual text and a symbolism with much wider relevance. They are working in the midst of a multi-dimensional crisis that directly or indirectly affects their personal lives. They speak visually in a language whose vocabulary is drawn from the body - a very private language.
When I still lived in Rawasari Kampung in Jakarta I often overheard the neighbourhood women bicker. A few times one of them would turn around, bend over and in her fury lift her skirts and say: 'Your face is just like my arse!' Maybe these four artists are like many other people who find themselves simply confused by all the very true but also very remote political analysis in the media. To all that big talk they want to say: 'Why don't you just shut up and learn to control your inner self first'.
M Dwi Marianto (isiyogya@yogya.wasantara.net.id) is a well-known art critic. He teaches at the Indonesian Institute of Art in Yogyakarta.
Inside Indonesia 64: Oct - Dec 2000
Review
Review: How one man's courage changed the course of history
Ron Witton
This book is a beauty. It tells how the sixteenth century Dutch East India Company, the grand old VOC, spread its tentacles across the globe in search of the inordinately valuable spices of the eastern islands of present day Indonesia.
The Dutch, like other European nations (particularly the English, their greatest competitor), initially followed Columbus westward from Europe in order to find a passage to the East Indies. This resulted in the Dutch establishing themselves on Manhattan Island, which they named New Amsterdam. They sailed up the Hudson River hoping to reach the Pacific. When that proved unsuccessful, they began to explore northwards in search of the fabled, but ultimately impassable, northwest passage. Others travelled northeast from Europe in search of an equally fabled, but also unpassable, arctic passage along Russia's northern coast. Mariners had horrifying experiences caught in winter ice floes thousands of miles from home, on routes that would prove fruitless.
Even the proven passage to the east via the Cape of Good Hope was perilous, but with luck they returned to Europe with cargoes of spices worth far more than gold. There are enough stories here of heroism, horror and adventure to keep the reader awake until late at night, exploring the roots of modern empire. Contemporaneous illustrations and maps are an added bonus.
Not till two thirds through this gripping book do we meet Nathaniel, whose 'courage changed the course of history'. He was an Englishman committed to his nation's titanic economic struggle against the Dutch. He succeeds in taking over and fortifying the now forgotten island of Run, which lies 'in the backwaters of the East Indies, a remote and fractured speck of rock that is separated from its nearest land mass, Australia, by more than six hundred miles of ocean' (p2). Forgotten today, it is not even shown on modern maps. However, Run Island figured prominently on seventeenth century maps because of the fragrant nutmeg that grew in abundance there. The island was the key to monopoly control of the world's supply of this fantastically valuable spice.
For five years, Nathaniel Courthorpe and his half-starved band of thirty men were besieged by a Dutch force one hundred times greater. Their heroism led directly to one of the most momentous geo-political rearrangements of the world. Stymied by Courthorpe's courage, the Dutch were forced to give the English the island of Manhattan in exchange for this now insignificant speck of rock. Thus New Amsterdam became New York. It is a tale so fantastic that one is left wondering why it has never been previously told.
Giles Milton, Nathaniel's nutmeg. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1999, 388pp, ISBN 0340696761 (pbk)
Ron Witton (rwitton@uow.edu.au) teaches at the University of Wollongong, Australia.
Inside Indonesia 65: Jan - Mar 2001
In this issue
The environment after Suharto
Gerry van Klinken
The colonial Dutch romantically called their tropical possessions 'a girdle of emeralds'. Even today many Javanese living rooms are adorned with paintings of rustic villages amidst luxuriant green in a style called Mooi Java, Beautiful Java. But the 'unspoiled' coral reefs and boundless wilderness proclaimed in the tourist brochures have been under threat for at least a century, and especially during the rapacious industrialism of the New Order. Now that the New Order is gone, how is the environment faring? This edition of Inside Indonesia addresses that question.
The single biggest change since the end of the Suharto era is the weakness of central government. Just as its strength under Suharto was a mixed blessing, so is its weakness today.
On the one hand, weakness in Jakarta provides locals living around destructive megaprojects with the opportunity to reclaim their right to clean water and land. We should welcome, not regret, local pressure on paper pulp, mining and other such companies.
On the other hand, weakness has robbed government of any leverage it may have had to keep destructive activities in check. If under Suharto the government was not brilliant on implementing environmental regulations (to say the least), today even that minimal effort has become nearly impossible, as Lesley Potter and Simon Badcock's article on the Riau forests demonstrates.
The answer, our authors seem to be saying, now lies elsewhere. Non-government organisations, of whatever nationality, working for a sustainable Indonesian environmental policy need support. And international companies with poor environmental records - Australian miners, Malaysian palm oil companies - need to be pressured in their home countries to raise their standards. We hope this edition will contribute to that answer.
As always, our sincere thanks to all those who made this edition a reality, especially our expert and therefore busy authors who made time to write.
Gerry van Klinken is the editor of Inside Indonesia
Inside Indonesia 65: Jan - Mar 2001
Pak Rabun and the wilderness
Across Kalimantan by boat and on foot
Ciaran Harman
Pak Rabun was padding along the mulch in the sparse undergrowth when he stopped and went tense. When he turned around, he had an enormous grin on his face. 'Babi!' he mouthed past me to his grandson Tusung behind me. 'Thank God!' I almost said out loud. Even I could see them. The track we were following sloped downward between giant rainforest trees and the straining saplings between them, and turned left to run upstream beside the Hubung River. Just on the other bank, lit up angelically (or so I remember it) by a shaft of light let into the forest by the slice the river cuts through it, were a family of wild boar.
Pak Rabun was doing a little dance while Tusung quietly dropped his pack and began stripping down to his shorts. They were as happy at the prospect of something other than rice and fish to eat as I was. Tusung took off his rubber shoes and the long flour-sack socks that tied up under his knees to keep the leeches off. He tied a bandanna around his head, picked up his ten-foot ironwood spear and with his grandfather right behind, trod down the track, around a tree and out of sight.
They were such an odd pair. Tusung was huge, his shoulders a mile wide, but coloured like an old map where the untreated eczema that covered them and ran down his arms had taken the pigment out of his skin. He spoke rarely but deliberately, and usually jokingly. He had an appreciation of sarcasm. I liked him. His grandfather Nyurabun, or just Pak Rabun, was the toughest 63 year-old I had ever met. He didn't wear shoes. Ever. He kept leeches off with chewing tobacco and a large and expertly wielded mandau, a type of machete. He had long stringy hair and a metal bar through his penis and I am quite sure he thought I and every other tourist he had taken through the jungle were completely mad.
The rainforests of Borneo have the greatest species richness of any patch of ground on this earth. They are also rapidly disappearing. Rafts of giant logs lashed together had floated past my riverboat every half-hour or so on my three-day journey up from the coast at Samarinda. Every now and then a red scar and a logging camp would appear on the banks as we pushed past. As though some rough beast had hauled itself up from the river and begun devouring the jungle. My plan was to travel up the Mahakam River in East Kalimantan as far as I could, then find some guides to take me across the Muller Ranges and into the catchment of the great Kapuas River, which led to Pontianak on the west coast. I wanted to see what was left of the wilderness. I wanted to breathe it all in. I wanted to become part of it. As it turned out I became more a part of it than I intended. The leeches siphoned off about a pint or so of my blood and thus made me well and truly part of the ecosystem.
From Samarinda in East Kalimantan, the Mahakam kinks and bends up through the lakes and the plains, through Long Iram where it crosses the equator, past mosques of diminishing size (the Javanese transmigrants prefer the coast) to the inland town of Long Bagun. You can only get so far inland by riverboat though. To get the rest of the way to the last major outpost on the river, Tiong Ohang, you have to either fly in with the missionary airline from the coast or spend a couple of exhilarating days in a high powered longboat shooting the rapids above Long Bagun. Always the sucker for the long way round, I spent one amazing day in a boat gunning against the forces of nature between cliffs of fern and waterfalls. On the second day rain set in. With water all around me I had little choice but to sit under a leaky tarpaulin beside chain-smokers and crying children, only now and then getting a glimpse up into the vast forests I was entering.
Fortune seekers
Tiong Ohang was a mixing place, a strange sort of frontier town where the local Penihing Dayak people co-exist with young Banjar men from the south. Upstream there was only the forest and a few small and very old Dayak villages, but in Tiong Ohang the Banjar fortune seekers live. They scale the crumbling limestone cliffs to collect edible birds nests for about four million rupiah (approx. A$800) a kilogram. The young men told me you could make a thousand dollars in a month. Many did, they said, only to go down to the coast and blow it all in a couple of days of carousing. One even bought himself a motorcycle and managed to lug it all the way back to Tiong Ohang.
Some of the young fortune seekers told me they knew some people that could take me across the mountains and into West Kalimantan. They took me to the end of the town, out where the slash and burn fields began. Pak Rabun's house was raised up on stilts like all the others, and inside was furnished with rattan mats. He certainly looked the part of the Dayak guide. He had broad feet and thick stumpy legs. His hair seemed like hanging lianas, black and ropy. At first Pak Rabun reminded me of an old English gaffer. He kept his viney hair under an old flat cap and smoked a pipe as we negotiated costs. No quiet old Englishman could boast Pak Rabun's strong nimble body though.
Across his muscled chest and shoulders the skin sagged only slightly under his tattoos. 'Devil' was printed roughly on his left arm. Pak Rabun was Catholic. He said it was to remind him that evil was always close by. As close as his left arm apparently. Across his chest was written 'Hatiku Bahagia Karenalah Engkau', or 'My heart is happy because of you'. He was always ambivalent about who this referred to. On his right arm was the most cryptic: 'Masaq Lona'. 'It is what it is,' he would say, 'Masaq lona. Far from my eyes, close to my heart.'
We settled on a fee for Pak Rabun and his grandson Tusung. A couple of days later we set out. In a long thin boat called a 'ces' we pushed upriver until well into the afternoon and camped in the unoccupied home of a friend of Pak Rabun. The next day we began climbing up from the river and into the forest.
Shades of green
The journey through the forest was painted in manifold shades of green. At times it was like walking underground. There was not the sense of distance or time that pervades the Australian landscapes I am used to. This was an ecology of the intricate, not the vast and explicit. Trees fought their way into the canopy, spreading roots like armies across the wet ground. When they died they did not really die, they were chewed up by a billion termites and bright fungi and became new. Sometimes a skeleton of fig vines would remain to mark the spot. The air was cool under the canopy but thick with life. It hummed. I had expected it to sound different. I thought rainforests sounded like zoos, with thousands of birds and howling monkeys. Instead, one bird would sing with a voice that filled up the whole forest, and always off to the left or the right was the bright rustle of the river. Otherwise it was quiet.
Perhaps the quiet was my fault though. My puffing stumbling frame could probably be heard for miles and could have scared off most animals. That was why when we came upon those wild boars on about the fourth day, Tusung and Pak Rabun hushed me up and sat me on the ground as they stalked off ahead. I picked leeches out of my shoes as I waited. Socks were no defence against them and wearing boxer shorts instead of briefs had been a very bad idea. Sitting there alone, the silent forest felt bigger. I felt like I was inside a living thing, rather than just surrounded by trees.
Suddenly, with a rustle and a crash, an animal bounded out onto the path in front of me. When it saw me it stopped rock still. It might have been a barking deer or a kijang. It was no more than four feet high and had a brown velvety coat. For about half a second, we stared at each other in shock. For that deer it must have been as strange to see me sitting there as for me to see a wild deer skipping through the centre of my native Perth. The lovely animal caught its wits and bolted, crashing away through the undergrowth again.
I felt like an intruder. As though I had walked in on Mother Nature in the shower. I had seen parts of nature that would otherwise have tried hard to remain hidden. It wasn't an epiphany or anything of that sort, but I understood then the importance of wilderness. To strip nature down to resources and a few scattered national parks was to leave it dressed in rags. Wilderness, the untamed places, where those like Pak Rabun and Tusung become part of the forest in order to survive within it, rather than bend it to their own will: those are the places were we can see into the life of things.
Tusung and Pak Rabun soon returned empty-handed. I was not really disappointed at all.
Ciaran Harman (ciaran69@hotmail.com) is a student in environmental engineering and Asian studies at the University of Western Australia in Perth. He was participating in the Acicis Study Indonesia Program in Yogyakarta (wwwshe.murdoch.edu.au/acicis/).
Inside Indonesia 65: Jan - Mar 2001
Future Indonesia 2010
What will Indonesia look like in 2010?
Dedy A Prasetyo
Four scenarios for Indonesia in 2010 were launched on 1 August 2000 at the Proclamation Statue in Jakarta. A quarter of a million copies were slipped into newspapers around the country. They contained four pictures of what Indonesia might look like, in the form of stories entitled 'On the edge', 'Into the crocodile pit', 'Paddling a leaky boat', and 'Slow but steady'.
These were not predictions of the future, nor were they strategic plans. They did not describe some utopian future or even one we would quite like, but simply possibilities that might occur because of what we do today.
One of several approaches to picturing the future is known as scenario planning. Scenarios are a tool to help us perceive different futures, each of which is influenced by decisions we make today. Put simply, they are a combination of stories - written or oral - that make up a bigger plot. A scenario gives a multi-perspectival picture of a complex future. Precisely because the future is unpredictable, scenarios are good planning tools.
Creating a scenario is a dialogical process that brings together different visions and interests. The aim is to bridge the gap between key analyses of present day problems and various possibilities in the future.
Our view of 'the future' usually contains three elements: what is likely to happen, what I would like to see happen, and what might happen. The first leads to prediction, the second to subjectivity (wishful thinking). But scenario planning emphasises the third - what might happen.
Scenario building has been much used in international business, but it has also been used at the national level. Perhaps the most famous example of the latter is the South African Mont Fleur process. In 1991/92 South Africans came up with four scenarios of what might happen there in ten years time (2002). In 1997/98 Columbians produced Destino Columbia, with four possible futures for the year 2013. Most recently, Guatemalans built three scenarios that they named Vision Guatemala. The small island state of Singapore has been using scenario planning since 1993. Japan has three scenarios for the year 2020.
The steering committee for Future Indonesia 2010 consisted of about thirty individuals - academics, human rights workers, politicians, economists, businesspersons, religious figures, military, and others. They were supported by the Future Indonesia Working Group, including Asmara Nababan, Marzuki Darusman, Binny Buchori, Emil Salim, HS Dillon, Felia Salim, Emmy Hafild, as well as some facilitators - Daniel Sparringa, MM Billah, Edy Suhardono, and Rudolf Budi Matindas. These groups wrote the preparatory studies and then spread the word to many different groups all over Indonesia.
It all began with a meeting in Bogor early in 1999, where activities were set in train to eventually come up with the Future Indonesia scenarios (Indonesia Masa Depan). The idea was to stimulate discussion, fresh thinking, and debate among Indonesians about the future of their country. We hoped that some collective consciousness would be born within society that tomorrow is the result of our actions and decisions today. We also hoped people would not stay trapped in mutual recriminations over the problems of today or yesterday, but would set out on a constructive journey in search of the alternatives stretched out before us in the future. This way, we hoped, the Indonesian public would take part in thinking about Indonesia's tomorrow, and become involved in creating that future.
Various groups within society, each as varied as the other, then began taking initiatives. They engaged in dialogue, while avoiding dogmatism. It began in East Java in July 1999, where about thirty quite different individuals from all over the province came together. For three days, they tried to build future scenarios for Indonesia in 2010, from an East Java social perspective.
Similar dialogues followed in other cities and regions, among them Medan, Mataram, Riau, Makasar, Samarinda, Pontianak, Palangkaraya, Bali, Yogyakarta, West Java, Kupang, Jayapura, Central Java, and Jakarta. Fourteen dialogues were held in all.
The results of all of these dialogues were then compiled and synthesised in a national dialogue meeting attended by representatives from each region.
A great number of fresh ideas came out of this dialogical process, as did much anxiety and sharp criticism about what kind of future Indonesia was heading for. Among the matters most often raised in the discussions were these: centralisation and decentralisation, injustice, religious conflict, the growth of democracy after Suharto (including cynicism about it), law enforcement, gender issues, constitutional amendments, national leadership, environmental and cultural exploitation, state involvement in the economy, relations between Javanese and non-Javanese, and the role of the police and military.
All these issues could be divided into two groups - those that mainly concerned people in Java and outside Java. Participants within Java focused more often on the rule of law, whereas those outside Java focused on (de)centralisation. However, civil society issues concerned everyone, whether within or outside Java.
New ideas are not always readily accepted, and so it was with this dialogical project. Depending on their region of origin or their personality, people responded in many and varied ways. People outside Java often felt suspicious there was some hidden agenda at work in the project. Inside Java, on the contrary, suspicion was far less. It generally revolved around the question of who would benefit from this dialogue, where the money came from, and whether there was a 'conspiracy' behind it. It was an exhausting process that now and then broke out into frustration when confronted by these various 'bad' thoughts.
Very clear explanation was especially required when speaking about the concept of the scenario. Unless misconceptions were cleared up here at the very beginning, they were likely to reinforce already existing prejudices. However, as the dialogue proceeded, suspicion, pessimism and cynicism tended to recede. Sometimes the dialogue closed in quite a touching atmosphere, as people said with tears in their eyes that their suspicions had been unfounded. Whichever wise person said that democracy is expensive and exhausting, said a true thing.
Scenario planning is a clever instrument to explore the views that live within society. Straight from the heart, these views can then become the basic capital for a strong civil society in Indonesia. Ironically, the Future Indonesia dialogues often threw up some strange contradictions. At a moment when so many participants had the opportunity to represent the strength of civil society, they often spoke like government spokespersons. As a result, it was hardly surprising if at times the vision put forward was no real alternative to the dominant vision produced and reproduced by the state. Even more saddening was the discovery that many participants seemed to retain the New Order perspective that there is only one truth. This made it very difficult to make the necessary linkages leading to a new future.
However, scenario planning is a vital tool in learning democracy. In several regions, the dialogue forum became a medium for reconciliation between various elements of society that had hitherto been at odds with one another over the spoils of office. Even if they did not become a collective movement, the forums bore witness to a new possibility and created a space that brought people together without regard for the attributes of power, politics, ethnicity, religion or social standing. Let us hope that this kind of dialogical process can continue, drawing on the lessons that have already been learned. The choice is ours - we, the people of Indonesia. And Indonesia's future is made today.
Dedy A Prasetyo (deape@hotmail.com) was a program officer with the Working Group for Indonesia Masa Depan. He is a law student at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta.
Inside Indonesia 65: Jan - Mar 2001
Constitutional tinkering
The search for consensus is taking time
Blair A King
The vague nature of the 1945 Constitution (UUD 1945) contributed to the rise of authoritarian dictatorships under both Presidents Sukarno and Suharto. Constitutional reform was thus one of the basic demands of the student movement that overthrew Suharto in May 1998. The First and Second Amendments passed in October 1999 and August 2000 have only begun to address the fundamental issues of constitutional reform in Indonesia. Much of the more important work lies ahead.
Despite its drawbacks, the 1945 Constitution has remained the basic framework for the ongoing democratic transition in Indonesia. UUD 1945 places implementation of popular sovereignty in the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR). One of the primary functions of the MPR is to establish and amend the constitution.
In October 1999, the MPR decided to begin in 2000 to hold annual sessions, in order to amend the constitution, to pass decrees, and to evaluate the government's performance. The 2000 Annual Session convened on August 7 amid persistent talk of a confrontation between President Abdurrahman Wahid and the MPR. In the event, the rumoured impeachment did not take place. Behind these headline events, however, a large amount of work was done on other issues a few of which made news, most of which did not.
In Indonesia, as in many other countries, 'constitutional' issues are not just resolved in the formal constitution but also in other sources of law, such as MPR decrees and laws themselves. In late 1999, the MPR Working Body (Badan Pekerja) formed two subcommittees, one to address formal constitutional amendments and one to draft MPR decrees, following the mandate given by the 1999 MPR General Session.
The first subcommittee (Ad Hoc Committee I, or PAH I) aimed to amend the existing 1945 Constitution rather than draft an entirely new one. At the beginning of its deliberations, PAH I reaffirmed support for the existing preamble, the unitary state, and the presidential system.
Responsibility for drafting new decrees for debate at the MPR Annual Session rested with Ad Hoc Committee II (PAH II).
Between November 1999 and May 2000, these two subcommittees conducted numerous consultations. After the legislature reconvened in May 2000, PAH I conducted a detailed chapter-by-chapter review of the 1945 Constitution, which it completed at the end of June. PAH II considered about 20 possible subject areas and narrowed the list down to six topics for seven draft decrees, among them some on regional autonomy and the separation of the police (Polri) from the military (TNI).
The final subcommittee reports were agreed at the end of July and were transmitted via the full MPR Working Body to the Annual Session. This session referred the reports to its commissions, who then reported back to the plenary session on August 15. The MPR approved the new decrees and the Second Amendment on August 18, the 55th anniversary of the promulgation of the original Constitution in 1945.
The PAH I proposals included revisions to 16 of the chapters of the existing 1945 Constitution, and draft text for five new chapters. In the event, only seven of these 21 chapters were approved.
Slow
There appear to have been two main reasons for the slow progress: the first related to political positions, the second to procedural issues. The political cause of delay was the lack of any real consensus on the major structural issues of the constitution. Elements in the MPR that are more conservative on constitutional change wished to conduct the debate in what they called a slow and cautious manner. The conservative camp is led by the largest bloc, PDI-P, and the TNI/ Polri bloc. Together these two blocs control 223 of the 695 MPR seats, nearly the 232 votes needed to block constitutional amendments. Both blocs argue that UUD 1945 is an 'inheritance of the nation's founding fathers' that should not be radically amended. Many of the other major parties say that, in the end, 'slow and cautious' may mean little significant reform at all. As compromises negotiated in PAH I broke down, debate started over again in Commission A. This led to procedural arguments as well.
Despite the difficulties, amended text was agreed for five chapters of the constitution: on regional authorities, the People's Representative Assembly (DPR), citizens and residents, defence and security, and national symbols. In addition, two new chapters, on human rights and on national territory, were agreed.
The constitutional amendments contained in the Second Amendment and several of the MPR decrees passed at the 2000 Annual Session can be divided into four themes: (1) civil-military relations, (2) the separation of powers and checks and balances, (3) the decentralisation of power to the regions, and (4) a bill of rights. Each of these themes contains important changes to the Indonesian political system.
The military was the backbone of the authoritarian New Order political system. Ending its role in domestic politics has been an important facet of the democratic transition. The 2000 MPR Annual Session represented one of the first opportunities for civilian politicians to address the military's role in politics on an institutional level. The results are mixed, but the MPR has laid a legal foundation on which the DPR can now build democratic, civilian control over the military in Indonesia. This foundation includes drawing the distinction between external defence, as the responsibility of TNI, and internal security, law enforcement and maintenance of public order, as the responsibility of Polri. It also includes requirements that presidential decisions to appoint and dismiss the TNI commander and Polri chief be approved by the DPR. Finally, the police will be fully subject and the military partially subject (for ordinary criminal cases) to the civilian judicial system. The previously all-encompassing military judicial system will now only handle breaches of the military legal code. The challenge now will be to pass laws and regulations that fully reflect these important changes, and then to implement the new system.
The main points of concern are the decision to extend the TNI/ Polri bloc's existence in the MPR until 2009, and the inclusion of the 'total people's defence system' (sishankamrata) doctrine in the constitution.
One of the primary weaknesses of the 1945 Constitution is the lack of clarity concerning one of the fundamental dimensions of any democratic system: is it presidential or parliamentary? Since the greater weight is on the presidential side, perhaps it is appropriate to call it 'presidential with parliamentary characteristics'. This MPR session endorsed the basically presidential nature of the system. At the same time, the MPR and DPR wish to restrict the formerly unchecked powers of the presidency. One of the challenges is that UUD 1945 does not recognise the separation of powers and checks and balances among the executive, legislative and judicial branches that is such an important part of a presidential system. On the whole, the amendments and decrees passed in August 2000 have helped to strengthen these principles, although they have not fully resolved the issue.
The New Order was a highly centralised political and economic system. Decentralisation of power was thus one of the central demands of the reform movement in 1998, and after Suharto resigned many regions began voicing their discontent. The transitional administration of President B J Habibie responded with a policy of 'wide-ranging regional autonomy'.
Despite concessions by the centre (Laws 22 and 25 of 1999), many regions remained dissatisfied that regional autonomy was based only in laws that were in essence a 'gift' from the centre that could be rescinded at any time. Thus pressure continued for the decentralisation of power to the regions to be enshrined in the constitution, making it harder to reverse in the future. Through the amendment to chapter VI of UUD 1945, the general spirit of Laws 22 and 25 is now reflected in the constitution. A strongly regional flavour is given by the principle that regions may act on any subject that is not reserved by law to the central government. The primary challenge remains the implementation of these laws, in a context of resistance from line ministries in Jakarta, poor human resources in local bureaucracies, and little tradition of government accountability to elected bodies at any level.
Human rights
The original 1945 Constitution contained few guarantees of civil and political rights. It more often referred to citizens' responsibilities to the state. It is thus quite significant that a substantial new chapter on human rights has been added to the constitution as part of the Second Amendment. The provisions of the new chapter XA of UUD 1945 on human rights have proven controversial, despite having been substantially drawn from the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR). In particular, the clause prohibiting prosecutions under retrospective legislation originates from Article 11(2) of the UDHR. The juxtaposition of international human rights standards and the calls for justice for past human rights violations by the military and police has created a dilemma for Indonesian and international human rights activists. However, the controversy surrounding this clause has largely died down in the months following the annual session. Indeed on November 6 the DPR passed a law establishing human rights courts across the country that are based in the current criminal code, thus avoiding the retrospective problem.
Some of the material that was not agreed at this MPR session was fairly routine, but some has proven highly controversial, relating to the basic structure of state institutions. These chapters include the form and sovereignty of the state, the structure and role of the MPR, executive powers (including the method of election of the president and vice president), the possible creation of an upper chamber representing regional interests (Dewan Perwakilan Daerah or DPD), and the procedures for constitutional amendment.
The MPR has decided to use the remaining material prepared by PAH I as the basis for a continuing constitutional debate, scheduled to take place between now and August 2002. This is the latest annual session at which it will be possible to pass major changes to the structure of state institutions with enough lead time to conduct elections under the new arrangements in 2004.
Many MPR members at the 2000 Annual Session may have felt that fundamental decisions on structural issues should not be finalised in an atmosphere of high tension over the relationship between the current president and the current legislature. Whether the atmosphere will be more conducive to debate on these issues in 2001, or 2002, is not yet known. However, the additional time available does create a very important opportunity for wider public debate.
Blair A King (baking@lycos.com) is a PhD candidate in political science at Ohio State University. In 1999 and 2000, he worked at the Jakarta office of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI). This article is drawn from a study he co-authored for NDI (' Indonesia's bumpy road to constitutional reform', see www.ndi.org)
Inside Indonesia 65: Jan - Mar 2001
Tribute to a proud Acehnese
Jafar Siddiq Hamzah died defending dialogue and human rights
Sidney Jones
Many knew Jafar as a political science student at New School University, New York. Others knew him as a leader of the very close Acehnese community in Woodside, Queens, where he'd lived since 1996. Some New Yorkers may have known him as one of the least aggressive taxi drivers this city has ever produced. Many of us knew him as a dedicated human rights defender, a lawyer who came to the aid of victims who didn't dare speak out for themselves. His was a voice for dialogue and moderation in a conflict that is now spiralling out of control. And he was a son, a brother, a husband, and a friend. Jafar would have been thirty-five in about two weeks.
He was a slight, gentle, self-effacing man, very bright, a little absent-minded, with a lovely sense of humour. He wasn't a rabble-rouser, he wasn't a fiery speaker, he wasn't a mobiliser of large crowds, and he certainly wasn't a guerrilla. What he was, first and foremost, was an Acehnese and intensely proud of it. He wanted the world to know and appreciate Aceh's past, and he was determined that the Acehnese should have a say in their future. Jafar was particularly angry over the long period beginning in 1990 - the year he became a human rights lawyer - when the Indonesian army declared Aceh an area of special military operations and began conducting a brutal counter-insurgency campaign against what was then a tiny group of guerrillas of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).
Jafar risked his life then to get the word out about the atrocities that were taking place. He helped Jakarta-based human rights organisations and foreign journalists get in to Aceh to find out for themselves. When Suharto was forced to resign in May 1998, Jafar didn't want revenge, but he did want justice. I think he also came to the conclusion that it was not going to be possible to protect human rights in the absence of major political change in the relationship with Jakarta.
Some months after Suharto's fall Jafar helped found the International Forum on Aceh. Its first conference was held at New York University in December 1998. It was the first ever international gathering to discuss the political dynamics of modern-day Aceh. By the time of the second IFA conference in the spring of last year, a nonviolent movement for a referendum on Aceh's political status, led by students, NGOs, and Muslim scholars, was well underway. The second conference was attended by an even wider range of well-known Acehnese, from members of parliament in Jakarta to rival factions of the guerrilla movement. Again, all viewpoints were represented, everyone had a chance to speak, and I remember Indonesian students in the audience pleading with pro-independence Acehnese to give them a second chance, now that Suharto was gone.
Jafar was not a member of GAM, and didn't try to idealise the guerrillas or their leadership. He was in contact with individuals in the movement, just as he was in contact with Acehnese members of the political establishment in Jakarta. Indonesian authorities, however, made no distinction between IFA and GAM. When Jafar disappeared on August 5, I didn't believe it at first. He went from a meeting in broad daylight on a busy street in the country's third largest city and was never seen alive again. His body was found three weeks later with four others about 83 km away. Those four have not been identified to this day, and the police in Medan purport to have no leads to Jafar's killer. Shortly after Jafar disappeared, another activist received a call saying, 'We took care of Jafar, now it's your turn.' The caller complained that the activist never raised GAM abuses but only those of the TNI. That's not an excuse for threats, let alone murder. Circumstantial evidence and the pattern of killing points to military involvement in Jafar's death, but there is no hard evidence, and we may never know exactly what happened.
Jafar's main flaw was that he trusted everyone. He couldn't believe that other people could be operating in bad faith when he himself was so open about his intentions. We know he had been threatened before his disappearance; we know he was worried enough to call home at regular intervals to check in. We also know that he didn't let fear deter him from pursuing a political settlement in Aceh.
The best tribute we can all pay Jafar is to do the following: 1. Keep up the pressure to find and prosecute his killers; 2. Continue to seek justice for victims of human rights violations and their families; 3. Raise the profile of Aceh so that more and more people across the world appreciate the culture and history of this complex place; 4. Press ahead with efforts to end the conflict through unrestricted dialogue; 5. Continue symposia like this one. We all want Jafar back, but this kind of gathering may be the most fitting memorial.
Sidney Jones (joness@hrw.org) is the Asia Director of Human Rights Watch (www.hrw.org). She read this obituary at a memorial service held in New York on 24 October 2000.
Inside Indonesia 65: Jan - Mar 2001
Inside the Laskar Jihad
An interview with the leader of a new, radical and militant sect
Greg Fealy
Laskar Jihad headquarters belies expectations. I went to the site in late August anticipating a large, well-equipped facility, bustling with various paramilitary training activities and white-gowned staff coordinating the operations of thousands of Muslim fighters in Maluku. Instead, the 'nerve centre' of Laskar Jihad was based in a small, dusty, rather run-down Islamic boarding school (pesantren). The school, Ihya'us Sunnah Tadribud Du'at, is in the village of Degolan, about ninety minutes drive north of Yogyakarta. It comprises about half a dozen buildings, including a small mosque, several houses and two cramped dormitories. Most of the buildings are rented and of simple construction. The main dormitory has dirt floors covered with mats and plastic, no ceiling or lining on the walls. There are about sixty students, many of whom are 'day' students who have lodgings in nearby villages. If the Laskar Jihad is receiving generous funding from the Suharto family and sections of the military, as is often alleged, there is little sign of it at Degolan.
The head of the pesantren and commander (panglima) of Laskar Jihad is Ustad Ja'far Umar Thalib, a 39-year-old Malang-born teacher and preacher of Arab-Madurese descent. Until the formation of Laskar Jihad earlier this year, Ja'far was little known outside the Arab community and militant Islamic circles, where his fiery sermons had made him a popular preacher. Much of his adult life has been spent quietly enough teaching Arabic and Islamic sciences in the al-Irsyad school system. By his own admission, the highlight of his early life was the two years he spent fighting with the Mujahidin against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in 1988-89. Ja'far had joined the Mujahidin after dropping out of the Mawdudi Institute in Lahore, where he had been taking advanced Islamic studies.
Somewhat portly, with soft hands that suggest it has been a long time since he engaged in combat, Ja'far is revered, and quite probably feared, by his students. Most refer to him respectfully as 'panglima' and speak constantly of his feats in Afghanistan or his knowledge of Islam. One student showed me a collection of Ja'far's articles and told me: 'You need not look elsewhere. This is the truth [pointing to the articles]. Just read Pak Ja'far and you'll learn what Islam is really about.' Another told me how Ja'far had shot down five Soviet helicopters with one missile in Afghanistan (Ja'far later recounted this story to me but did not claim credit for firing the missile). Ja'far's manner with his students is stern. In a plangent voice, he delivers instructions to students and quickly becomes irritated if they are not carried out to his satisfaction.
Origins
Laskar Jihad is the paramilitary division of the Forum Komunikasi Ahlus Sunnah wal Jama'ah (most simply translated as the Sunni Communication Forum) or FKAWJ, an organisation formed by a group of hardline Muslim leaders in early 1998 to promote 'true Islamic values'. FKAWJ is controlled by a 60-member board of patrons (dewan pembina), of which Ja'far is chairman. Most board members are leaders of pesantren or prominent preachers and it is their followers who form the core of the Laskar Jihad.
FKAWJ doctrine is notable for its narrow Islamism and exclusivism. Although most of Indonesia's main Islamic organisations regard themselves as ahlus sunnah wal jamaah, FKAWJ believe that only they can rightly use this ascription. For example, Ja'far states that neither Nahdlatul Ulama nor Muhammadiyah can claim to be genuinely ahlus sunnah wal jamaah because they have deviated from the Qur'an and example of the Prophet Muhammad and have doctrines which are corrupted by non-Islamic sources.
FKAWJ also rejects democracy as 'incompatible with Islam' and refuses to support any political party, including the more Islamist parties. According to Ja'far, 'in democracy, people who don't understand anything, and they are the majority, elect their leaders without any educated considerations at all. They only elect those that give them money or say what they want to hear.' By these means, religious minorities and nominal Muslims have been able to 'thwart the application of Islamic law' in Indonesia. In a genuine Islamic society, it is God's law rather than the will of the people that is supreme. FKAWJ calls for democracy to be replaced by a council of experts (ahlu halli wal aqdi) dominated by Islamic scholars who are learned in Islamic law.The council would have the power to appoint the head of state and control government policy.
Its attitudes to women also place it outside the mainstream. Women are not permitted to hold leadership positions in FKAWJ and cannot join Laskar Jihad. For Ja'far, FKAWJ's main responsibility to women is 'to educate them and then marry them to pious men who are capable of preventing them from falling into sin. Men's role is to supervise women and ensure that their behaviour is properly Islamic.' Ja'far has three wives, each of whom wears Middle Eastern-style black gowns and headdresses which cover their faces.
Maluku
Laskar Jihad was formally established on 30 January 2000 in Yogyakarta in response to what FKAWJ saw as deliberate persecution of Muslims in Maluku. According to Ja'far, the decision to form Laskar Jihad came after FKAWJ despatched a team of researchers to Maluku in late 1999 to gather data on the conflict. It found evidence that Protestant churches had plans to form a breakaway Christian state comprising Maluku, West Papua and North Sulawesi. Remnants of the former Republic of the South Moluccas (RMS) based in the Netherlands were actively involved in this movement. A key part of their plan was to wage war on Muslims in those provinces in order to drive them to other areas. It was, he said, a plan for 'religious cleansing'. When pressed on what evidence there was to support this, he referred to the testimony of Christians who were 'loyal to Indonesia' who had leaked documents detailing the Protestant churches' plans.
Based on these findings, the FKAWJ declared those Christians in Maluku who were attacking Muslims to be kafir harbi or 'belligerent infidels'. Kafir harbi are seen as the most dangerous category of unbelievers and Islamic law obliges Muslims to wage war against them. In the case of the Laskar Jihad, the labelling of Christians as kafir harbi gave a powerful religious licence to kill. FKAWJ subsequently declared the current Islamic year to be the 'Year of Jihad' (literally 'religious struggle' but also with the connotation of holy war) and stated any Muslim killed fighting Christian kafir harbi would die a martyr. Ja'far stated that in mobilising the Laskar Jihad, he was merely doing his duty as a Muslim, because 'clearly the Abdurrahman Wahid government is unable or unwilling to protect the Islamic community. If the state can't protect us [ie. Muslims], then we must do it ourselves.' Ja'far maintains that Abdurrahman's government is anti-Islamic: 'It is positioned to oppress Muslim interests and protect those of the infidels.' FKAWJ is committed to bringing it down.
Mobilising the Laskar
The Laskar Jihad's membership and notoriety grew quickly in its early months. Many of its members were drawn from poorer, less educated sections of the Islamic community, though a small number of tertiary graduates and professionals also joined. It first made national headlines in March when Ja'far led an assault on the followers of a Muslim leader in Cirebon who had alleged that it was extorting funds from local non-Muslims and who had also condemned its plans to send fighters to Maluku (Gatra, 25 March 2000). The following month, it undertook a series of demonstrations and marches in Jakarta, including to the presidential palace and parliament, with many Laskar members waving unsheathed swords and daggers. In late April, about 3000 members departed for Maluku. Press reports estimate there are now about 6000 Laskar Jihad fighters in Maluku, though Ja'far claimed the figure is less than 4000. Total membership, according to the FKAWJ secretary-general, Ma'ruf Barhan, is now at 10,000 and plans are afoot to send units to new troublespots such as Poso in Central Sulawesi, where several hundred Muslims were killed in religious violence earlier in 2000.
Like many other militant Islamic groups, Laskar Jihad has proved adept at promoting its views via the media. It produces a magazine, Salafy, at an office and dormitory complex four kilometres from Degolan on the road to Yogyakarta and also has a regularly updated website run from FKAWJ's Jakarta office (www.LaskarJihad.or.id).
Ja'far dismisses widespread speculation that the Laskar Jihad is backed by influential sections of TNI, saying that the Islamic community has learned through bitter experience not to trust the military. In interviews earlier in the year, however, he and his lieutenants boasted of their relationship with TNI. In one interview, Ja'far claimed to have a hotline to TNI commander Admiral Widodo (Panji Masyarakat, 26 April 2000). Another FKAWJ leader also admitted that TNI officers have assisted in the training of Laskar Jihad (Gatra, 25 March 2000). He says that most of Laskar Jihad's funds are raised through sources in the Muslim community.
Greg Fealy (gfealy@coombs.anu.edu.au) is a research fellow in Indonesian history at the Australian National University
Inside Indonesia 65: Jan - Mar 2001
Looking back to move forward
A Truth Commission could bring healing for a tragic past
Mary S Zurbuchen
Even seasoned observers had trouble predicting how difficult the 'post-Suharto era' would be. Yet, despite economic woes, social conflict and vacillating leadership, many Indonesians feel they have indeed embarked on a journey leading toward a more democratic society. Among the key milestones on the road, many say, are efforts to face up to Indonesia's troubled past.
The litany is familiar, from the mass violence and detentions following the 'failed coup' of 30 September 1965, through episodic suppression of dissent (Tanjung Priok, Lampung, Dili), to policies leading to systematic rights violations (Aceh, Irian Jaya, East Timor), and to student killings and mass violence in May and November of 1998. These events, and the patterns of impunity they point to, are troubling memories that to this day perpetuate dissatisfaction with government and undermine national cohesion.
In the public mind the New Order's controlling instruments - the military and police, intelligence, and bureaucracy - should account for this record. This sentiment is affirmed by a segment of the elite. Indications of commitment at the highest levels of Indonesia's new government to redress past wrongs include pending draft laws to establish a human rights court and a national truth commission. Still, the process of establishing 'truth' and 'justice' is a daunting assignment. It covers a diverse array of events including state as well as vigilante violence, sectarian conflict, detention, discrimination, disappearance, and systematic civil rights abuse. It must be dealt with at a moment when the state's relations with its citizens are undergoing profound redefinition (for example through decentralisation), while regional disaffections and separatism run high, and as an uneasy military relinquishes some of its formidable powers.
Two tough dilemmas face those who hope to shed light on matters long hidden under the New Order. One challenge is to determine whose truth needs to be told, and what definitions of victimisation and guilt are necessary to read accurately the long record of abuse. Another is to identify ways for 'truth-seeking' to create conditions for a stronger national compact, thus providing a foundation for reconciliation and social cohesion.
Uncensored
Previously suppressed accounts are being published for the first time. Colonel A. Latief, long jailed for his role in the events of 30 September 1965, has told his story in Tempo; Pramoedya Ananta Toer's once-banned book on Indonesia's Chinese was launched with much fanfare; and former persona non grata Benedict Anderson's commentaries are widely disseminated. Radio and television talk shows host uncensored discussion on topics such as East Timor's legacy of violence, New Order corruption, or the military's purported role in the deaths of the Trisakti University students in the Jakarta unrest of May 1998.
Once targets for official banning, book publishers are illuminating the past from new vantage points. Flower Aceh, an energetic non-governmental organisation promoting gender justice, produced a volume on women's accounts of Aceh's persistent violence (see Inside Indonesia April 2000). An important dissertation by Indonesian social scientist Hermawan Sulistyo has appeared analysing aspects of the 1965 mass killings. Garin Nugroho's semi-historical film Unburied Poem, which portrays an Acehnese 'didong' storyteller's memory of involvement with 1965 violence, even had a brief run in cineplex theatres. Despite the continued ban on the study of Marxism-Leninism, books on the left and socialism have proliferated, and were in fact best-selling items in book stalls during the August 2000 session of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR). In the world of arts and culture, meanwhile, an exuberant celebration of Chinese performance traditions suppressed under the New Order has taken place in many locales.
Other Indonesians are pulling the veil from patterns of violence through grass-roots voluntary service. The Volunteer Team for Humanity (Tim Relawan Kemanusiaan)has helped many victims and collected accounts of human rights abuse. Their work has inspired other networks in East Java, Bali, Medan, West Timor, Maluku, Pontianak, and Papua, often with links to faith communities and other NGOs.
Other types of local acknowledgement have challenged official versions of history. In early July 2000 Sultan Hamengku Buwono X of Yogyakarta dedicated a monument attesting that his father, the late Hamengku Buwono IX, conceived the March 1, 1949 republican assault on Dutch-held Yogyakarta. It directly counters New Order claims that then Lieutenant-General Suharto was the sole hero of that revolutionary operation. New private foundations and activist researchers have initiated studies into the legacy of 1965, the Tanjung Priok killings, and other events. Some of these groups seek to rehabilitate Indonesians long deprived of basic rights through political imprisonment after 1965.
Responding to growing public awareness, some senior figures have apologised publicly. In August 1999 then-armed forces chief General Wiranto apologised for military abuses in Aceh. During an otherwise low-key television appearance in March 2000, President Abdurrahman Wahid expressed his regrets over the involvement of his own Muslim organisation Nahdlatul Ulama in the mass killings of 1965-66 in Java. Many see apologies as inadequate, because they skirt issues of accountability and the complete revelation of the truth. But under the New Order, such gestures would have hardly been imaginable.
Popular concern has also led to formal processes. Commissions established at the national and provincial levels have submitted reports on abuses following East Timor's referendum in August 1999, on killings of civilians in Aceh, and on the fatal Tanjung Priok riots of 1984. A multi-sectoral fact-finding team that included legal experts, activists, department officials and military attempted to clarify the widespread May 12-15, 1998, violence and destruction in Jakarta. Another investigation, this one led by the national police, has attempted to fix responsibility for the violent takeover of the party headquarters of the PDI in July 1996. Each of these efforts has proved controversial. Each has been driven by the government's need to address specific political groups as well as international opinion. Public reaction has included charges of 'whitewashing', and complaints about weak prosecutorial follow-up. In the Aceh case, a trial and conviction (also much criticised) of low-ranking officers in the killings of Teungku Bantaqiah and his followers resulted from one such report.
Just as opportunities to bring perpetrators to account are opening up, the weaknesses of Indonesia's justice system appear especially glaring. Widespread judicial corruption, limited investigative capacity, and unreliable prosecutors are major constraints when 'truth and justice' are defined solely through the courts. Despite ongoing training programs for prosecutors and high court reforms, the judicial contests are slow. In frustration, some groups have called for 'people's trials' for Suharto and his family and associates.
Truth Commission
Recognising that formal legal process might not be adequate, some Indonesians have begun to look at establishing a Truth Commission to clarify the New Order record of human rights abuse. Early suggestions along this line came during the short-lived Habibie government, and highlighted the nation's need for 'national reconciliation'. The most detailed blueprint was created by Abdurrahman Wahid before he became president. His Independent Commission for National Reconciliation would have been a private effort involving prominent international advisors and a distinguished Indonesian panel of commissioners.
International donors have been willing to help Indonesians seeking to bring the past to light. In May 2000 a group of Indonesians from the government, military and police, research community and civil society groups went to South Africa for a two-week study of that country's efforts to confront its history of racial violence, including the well known Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Specialists from South Africa and other regions have visited Indonesia to share their knowledge. Senior government figures traveled to Seoul in July 2000 to learn about South Korea's prosecution of former national leaders. Human rights activists, women's advocates, and victims' groups have begun to learn about the growing record of international experience with truth commissions.
This experience shows that a society can stand to gain through the truth commission process. First, truth commissions allow individual victims to voice their own stories - and to be listened to, perhaps for the first time. Second, they promote public education through producing an official record of violations. Third, they can aid resolution by acknowledging the suffering of victims, mapping impacts of past crimes, and recommending reparations. Fourth, commissions can recommend specific reforms in public institutions such as the police and judiciary with the aim of preventing recurrence of rights violations. And finally, truth commissions can sort through issues of accountability and indicate perpetrators.
The twenty or so truth commissions that have taken place around the world have all operated in different ways, with various outcomes. There is no single model for Indonesia.
Would Indonesia benefit from a truth commission? What would be its objectives? What form would it take, and how much of the past would be included in its mandate? How would it accommodate Indonesia's great diversity, and the many 'truths' of different actors over the long New Order years? Would the commission have investigative powers? Could it establish a credible account of the past and meet the expectations of victims of rights abuse? Would it help or hinder the judicial process of bringing perpetrators to justice? Would bringing painful past events to light lead to vengeance in society? Is government committed to truth-seeking, or is a commission likely to be a weak instrument co-opted by political interests?
One of the greatest priorities is to promote public education and debate about the possible commission. Advocates believe that formal legal processes alone are not likely to provide the answers about the tragedies of the past. They are convinced that if Indonesia listens to the voices of diverse victims of rights violations, a different vision of society will begin to emerge. Both citizen commitment and consistent political will are needed. Only through looking back at such history can the country move forward to shape a better future.
Mary Zurbuchen (mzurbuchen@yahoo.com) directed the Jakarta office of the Ford Foundation, a private US philanthropy, between 1992 and 2000. She is now at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Inside Indonesia 65: Jan - Mar 2001
More than six decades after being inspired as an undergraduate in Sydney, Ron Witton retraces his Indonesian language teacher's journey back to Suriname