A Papuan activist wins a prestigious prize for her work on the environment
Agung Rulianto
Yosefa Alomang has received the world's top environmental prize, but her struggle is far from over. An indigenous Amungme, from Timika, Irian Jaya, Yosefa has spent almost half her life fighting for the rights of the Amungme people against mining giant PT Freeport Indonesia. On 23 April 2001 in San Francisco, she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, which brings with it US$ 125,000 in cash.
First awarded 12 years ago, this year eight activists were selected by an international board of judges to receive the Goldman Prize. 'Their struggles have shed light on how the environment is affected by wars, international businesses, economic policies and the tendency to replace long-term solutions with short-term interests,' said Richard N Goldman, the founder of the Goldman Environmental Prize. Goldman's late wife Rhoda H Goldman was a descendant of Levi Strauss, of the world-renowned clothing company.
'She has managed to become a leader in a male-dominated society,' said Emmy Hafild, executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi). Two years ago the 54-ear old 'Mama' Yosefa received the Yap Thiam Hien Award in recognition of her achievement in defending human rights, but she refused to go to Jakarta to receive the award. 'I've been fighting for the sake of the Irianese. It is only proper that I receive the award here so that the people of Irian Jaya will be aware of its significance,' said Yosefa, who has only attended school until the fourth grade.
She began her fight when PT Freeport Indonesia appropriated the local people's land in the 1970s. Ten years ago, Freeport dismissed the right of the Amungme people to supply fruit and vegetables to the company and decided to import them from Australia and Java. The company then forcefully appropriated an 850-hectare vegetable plantation around the airport and in its place built a hangar, a Sheraton Hotel and some office buildings. To voice their disappointment the Amungme people cut up vegetables and spread them on the landing strip of Timika airport, and made a large bonfire in the middle of the strip. This not only prevented vegetable-carrying aircraft from landing but also aborted all other flights. Yosefa was thought to have masterminded the action.
One night seven years ago armed soldiers dragged her and her husband from their bed. 'We were tortured like animals, beaten up and degraded with vile language,' she was quoted as saying in a report on human rights violations in Timika drawn up by Jayapura bishop Mgr Herman Munninghoff OFM. For two weeks Yosefa and her husband Markus Kwalik were detained in a room full of human faeces.
Last year Yosefa set up the human rights organisation (Hamak). It also works to protect the environment and traditional cultures.
Agung Rulianto /LH, Tempo Magazine May 1 - 7, 2001
Life among Papuan and Timorese political prisoners in Jakarta
Jacob Rumbiak, with Louise Byrne
For quite some time I lived in Block E in Kalisosok Prison in Surabaya, and Block A in Cipinang Prison in Jakarta. These blocks were reserved for political prisoners from East Timor and West Papua. There were other blocks in the prison, just as big as ours, and always one distinguished by the presence of a number of cats, mostly rather fat, who hung around the inmates.
These particular inmates were 'koruptors'. For years in Indonesia the smartest businessmen have been koruptors. You won a government contract, stashed the money, got caught, and went to jail for two or three years. Thus, with minimal effort, your family accumulated a huge amount of money (with bank interest added) and only one member took the rap.
Life in prison for the koruptors was fairly easy. Family and friends visited with meat, fruit, fish, cigarettes, rice, knives and money. There was a special room for sex if you wanted it, or you could always go home for a couple of days if you paid off two or three guards.
None of the above applies to political prisoners. Jakarta is two thousand kilometres from East Timor and more than three from West Papua, so unless the Red Cross manages to keep track of where the army takes you, the military can hide its tortures behind the walls of its institutions that are situated all over the archipelago. One little lady from an Indonesian Christian church followed me to eleven different prisons, and I'll never forget the humbling experience of discovering, eventually, that she wasn't a soldier dressed in civilian clothes. As a political prisoner you assume your sentence will be shortened in one way or another. Forced to eat prison-prepared food, many die poisoned. Others hang themselves after hearing that their wives are raped or have run off with Indonesian soldiers.
Jesus loves me, and my life is part of his design. Of that I'm sure. But two men from West Papua inspired me to use my time in prison constructively. The first was Drs. Albert Sefnat Kaliele, a very spiritual man, jailed in 1989 for subversion. We were in Kalisosok together. When Abdurrahman Wahid was elected president of Indonesia, he relieved Kaliele of his eighteen-year sentence (although he is now back in prison in Jayapura, this time on a charge of corruption for the misuse of AU$7).
The other was Dr Thomas Wainggai, one of West Papua's most powerful intellectuals. In 1988 Dr Thomas was sentenced to life in prison for proclaiming the independence of 'West Melanesia'. His wife, who is Japanese, was jailed for eight years because she sewed the newly designed flag. Dr Thomas died in Cipinang Prison in 1996. At the moment I'm a refugee in Melbourne, and when I see Cathy Freeman on television, carrying the beautifully coloured flag of indigenous Australia, I often think about Dr Thomas. The world will also recognise these men one day, for Dr Thomas started our nonviolence campaign for independence and Kaliele is now leading it.
Bravo
Unlike most political prisoners I had a cat. A unique and clever cat called Bravo, who was my security and my very best friend. I found him, a lonely lost and hungry kitten, who soon befriended my family of baby birds who had fallen out of a tree. I taught the pigeons to carry messages to other prisoners, and Bravo learned to safeguard a key to my cell that I'd acquired by means of a small (but korupt-like) manoeuvre. With the key I was able to go to meetings at night - I would lock the empty cell, then Bravo would drag the key back through the grill by its pink soccer bootlace, and hide it in a special spot. Later, I'd whisper a code, and he'd bring me the key so I could let myself back in. His intelligence enabled discussions of issues like democracy and justice. It was, of course, our defence of these principles that condemned us to torture and prison, but they served equally to inspire our internment with a particular hue - a hue which the koruptors in the other block were unable to imbibe.
Bravo stayed lean and clean leaping in and out of a drain catching little fish. He usually gave me these morsels of protein, or otherwise laid them, unmarked, at the feet of some of my colleagues. Joao Freitas, a Falintil commander from East Timor, was a regular recipient, perhaps because he spent so much time treating my injuries. By the time I got to Cipinang, my heart was weak from electric torture, and I thought my eyes would never recover from the years of confinement in the dark. Joao's love and dedication, and his skill with traditional medicine and acupuncture enabled my remarkable recovery.
When President Habibie had me transferred to a military institution, Bravo adopted the patronage of Xanana Gusmao. Six months later Xanana was also put to house arrest, and Bravo, now called 'Rumbiak', accompanied him to a decrepit but well-guarded house in central Jakarta. Here, apparently, he occupied himself entertaining the numerous diplomats and dignitaries who visited East Timor's imprisoned chief. During the violence that attended East Timor's referendum, Xanana was moved again, this time in secret, to the safety of the British Embassy. But in the rush, everyone forgot about Bravo.
President's Cat
Vicki Tchong is one of the unsung heroines of the Timorese freedom movement. In 1975, after the brutal invasion of her homeland, the Tchong family escaped to Melbourne where Vicki spent years creating a relationship between her wealthier Chinese-Timorese community and other more politically motivated Timorese - who never had any money but nevertheless ran a successful independence campaign. In 1999, just before the historic referendum, Vicki moved to Jakarta to arrange for East Timorese students to return home. Living in one dingy rent-a-room after another, and with nothing except a cheap mobile phone, she managed to find the students, organise visas, buy air tickets, and arrange safe exits. Eventually she had fifty frightened Timorese sitting in the airport, ready to fly to Dili. And Bravo was with them; as usual, in the middle of the mob.
The Garuda officer said he couldn't fly, not without a cat box, so money was paid to find one. Then it was deemed he needed insurance, so money was paid to get some. Then, a separate compartment was required, so money was paid for that too. Then, and finally, the officer simply said it was impossible for the cat to fly to Dili. Since the students' escape was paramount, Vicki quickly re-christened Bravo 'Kay Rala Jose Alexandre Gusmao, the President's Cat' and left him behind with some Chinese friends in Jakarta.
Less than a month later the world gave birth to a new nation. But democracy, as they say, is easier said than done. The East Timorese are facing the challenges with the courage for which they are renowned. Indonesians are trying too, but struggling with the concept - primarily because there are still a few fat cats skulking about. Me, and all the other West Papuans, are still waiting for some. But when my country does manage to discard the thin layer of politics that binds us to a Southeast Asian empire, and becomes instead a new nation on the western rim of Melanesia Pacific, I want Bravo to be there, pulling the rope that raises the flag. It's the sort of prize that's absolutely appropriate for a lean, clean and personable cat who always got left behind.
Story by Jacob Rumbiak (jacobrumbiak@hotmail.com); edited by Louise Byrne.
Inside Indonesia 67: Jul - Sep 2001
What are Europeans doing about Papua?
Siegfried Z'llner and Feije Duim
Three kinds of organisations in Europe have a special interest in Papua.
Papuans fleeing Indonesian state violence have been coming to Europe for years. Especially in the Netherlands, a community of some 250 has developed. They have long been divided into two factions - one more radical, the other more church-oriented. But since the situation in Papua has gained momentum, Papuan efforts in the Netherlands have become more unified. The most effective lobby is organised by PaVo (Papuan Peoples). With an office in Utrecht, its representative Viktor Kaisiepo travels around the world, promoting the issues put up by the Papua Congress of 2000. PaVo maintains good relations with the Papua Congress and its Presidium, sharing its dream of independence. It also relates well (and lobbies together with) the human rights organisation in Papua, Elsham, sharing its dream of non-violent transformation and of Papuans one day living free of the fear of human rights abuse.
Activists form the second group. In Europe several well established and many smaller human rights groups are active on Papuan issues. Many became more active as they shifted attention from East Timor to Papua. Of course we have our branches of Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, managing information and urging for action. But regional human rights organisations such as Watch Indonesia! and others are gaining in importance. The latter have been stimulated enormously by the advocacy abilities of the German West Papua Network (see box). The network gathers information and co-ordinates action, linking churches and human rights activists, and working together closely with Elsham. The Uniting Churches in the Netherlands (UCN) have also linked up. The network also has a close relation with the World Council of Churches (WCC), for instance to facilitate Papuan testimonies at the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. All these organisations lobby for the right of Papuans to organise, to speak out, and to develop without fear of repression.
Churches, missions and development agencies, the more traditional partners of the largely Christian Papuans, make up the third group. Two of the most prominent are the German United Evangelical Mission VEM (Vereinigte Evangelische Mission) and the Dutch Global Ministries UCN. The most active European development agencies are the German (Protestant) Brot fuer die Welt, Dutch Icco (Protestant), Dutch Cordaid (Catholic) and the Franciscans, and the Dutch humanist development organisation Hivos. Since early 2001, Novib-Oxfam (general) and Justitia & Pax (Catholic) take a more active interest in the area. All these organisations are broadly interested in institutional and human resources development, socio-economic development, the environment, human rights, indigenous peoples issues and political advocacy. They often coordinate their actions. So the Dutch churches and Icco started some initiatives with the WCC, and others joined in. They tend to see Papua as an important issue within Indonesia, so that human rights are on their agenda but not independence. They support the efforts of Indonesian non-government organisations (NGOs) to work with Papuan ones.
Several smaller church bodies (at the parish level) in Germany and the Netherlands are involved in exchange programs with the Evangelical Christian Church of Papua (GKI Papua). Growing feelings of solidarity lead them increasingly to join demonstrations or write letters against torture and other human rights abuse. Other smaller, mainly orthodox Calvinist and evangelical groups are more interested in church and community development issues than in human rights.
Dr Siegfried Z(szoellner@t-online.de) coordinates the West-Papua-Netzwerk in Germany. Feije Duim (F.Duim@sowkerken.nl) works at Global Ministries, Uniting Churches in the Netherlands.
Inside Indonesia 67: Jul - Sep 2001
Without Suharto, who will protect Freeport from itself?
Denise Leith
In 1936 a Dutch geologist named Jean Jacques Dozy on an expedition to the centre of West New Guinea was struck by the magnificence of a 180-metre barren black rock wall covered in green splotches standing above an alpine meadow. Forbes Wilson, a geologist with Freeport Sulphur of the US, first heard of Dozy's discovery in 1959. He persuaded the company to send him to West Papua the following year. After seeing Dozy's 'Ertzberg' (Ore Mountain), Wilson was so excited that he correctly predicted that Ertsberg would prove to be the largest above-ground copper deposit discovered at that time.
The political turmoil in West New Guinea and the subsequent takeover of the region by the left-leaning Sukarno meant that in the early sixties the project was considered too great a political risk for Freeport. However, the company did not forget the possibilities it had glimpsed. Just two weeks after the military coup in Indonesia in 1965 the company opened negotiations with the generals in Jakarta. Although the political situation in Indonesia was extraordinarily unstable, Freeport's connections to the highest echelons of power in Washington, including the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House, must have given it some measure of assurance, as did the messages it was receiving out of Jakarta.
With the balance of power firmly with the American mining company there was little the insecure regime would not do for Freeport and its powerful friends. Jakarta requested that the company produce its own contract. Despite a question over the legality of Jakarta signing over Papuan assets, in April 1967 Freeport was the first foreign company to sign with the new government. The Freeport contract signalled the beginning of a complex but mutually supportive and beneficial relationship between the American company, the regime and its arm of repression (TNI) that was to last another thirty years.
Under the contract Freeport was given mining rights for thirty years within a 250,000 acre concession. The company was under no obligation to the traditional Papuan owners of the land, who were excluded from the consultations. Freeport was not required to pay compensation, nor was it obliged to participate in local or provincial development. There were no environmental restrictions on the mining operation.
El Dorado
In 1988, with the Ertsberg mine nearing exhaustion, Freeport announced that only a couple of kilometres away from the hole that Ertsberg had become it had found its El Dorado: Grasberg. Protected both physically and politically by the regime, the company was given two new contracts which by 1994 allowed it to explore approximately 9 million acres and mine one of the most promising mineralised zones of the globe for another 50 years. With Suharto and Freeport sharing an overriding desire to turn the copper and gold of the Carstensz Range into foreign currency as expeditiously as possible, the company was so successful that it became Jakarta's largest taxpayer, the largest employer in the province, and the source of over 50% of West Papua's GDP.
Many Indonesians felt that their all-powerful president was unable to deny the American company anything. However, such an assessment ignored the complexity of the relationship and the complementary interests which defined it. In 1967 the New Order government had simply been grateful for Freeport's support, but by the early seventies the regime's confidence had grown. It demanded a 10% share in the operation. With the announcement of the discovery of Grasberg and the extraordinary wealth that it promised, Suharto's demands on the company increased dramatically. Eventually, Freeport financed Suharto's government, his closest associates, and even the president into the company on exceptionally favourable, if not questionable, terms. By the early nineties the American company had become an integral part of Suharto's patronage system.
The president put Freeport to good political use as well. To all intents and purposes it became a quasi-state organisation for Jakarta in West Papua as the principal developer and administrator of its project area and surrounds. Through indirect support of the transmigration settlements and direct financial and practical support of the military in the concession area, the company also assisted Jakarta in its policy of 'Indonesianisation'. Finally, back in the US Freeport became an important public relations agent for the regime. Far from Suharto being a puppet of the company, Freeport had became a compliant and valuable asset which, with the company's complicity, was exploited by the president.
The confrontation between a highly traditional peoples and a Western mining transnational has given rise to complicated social issues. Initially the company cared nothing for the traditional landowners' rights and little for their concerns. By the early nineties, the benefits of Freeport's presence to the traditional owners were negligible. After the signing of the new contracts with Jakarta and the realisation that the company would remain in West Papua for another fifty years, Freeport began to make small efforts at community development. However, it was not until the release of the Australian Council For Overseas Aid (Acfoa) report into human rights violations in the Freeport concession in 1995 that the company began to seriously address the expanding social problems. Lacking direction, the development funds that Freeport initially pumped into the community after 1995 only served to heighten existing tensions by increasing divisions within, and between, competing landowning groups. By 1998 such tensions forced the company to reassess it programs and the distribution of development funding.
Generally over the last six years Freeport has been successful in expanding employment opportunities, building schools, medical clinics, a hospital and homes to improve the lives of the traditional landowners. However, development efforts continue to be undermined by the culture of the company, its inexperience, the behaviour of the local authorities, the fractures within the local community, and thirty years of antagonism. Today the area is awash with Freeport funds, while the mining company struggles to find answers to questions it is not equipped to deal with.
Military
Freeport had always welcomed the military in its contract area, and considered logistic and financial support for TNI a small price to pay for protection of its physically vulnerable operation. However, with the publication of the Acfoa report the company's relationship with the military left it morally and legally vulnerable, threatening to implicate Freeport directly in human rights abuses. Recognising that the continuation of this close relationship precluded any improvement in relations with the indigenous community, Freeport was eventually in the ignoble position of relying on the military to protect its operation while simultaneously attempting to distance itself from this increasingly discredited organisation. Freeport's subsequent decision to throw money at TNI only succeeded in strengthening the association in the eyes of the traditional landowners.
Freeport contends that it has always been committed to operating environmentally responsibly by adopting home-state standards. However, the history of the Freeport operation in West Papua demonstrates otherwise. The company's operating practices continue to destroy the environment to a degree which far exceeds that of the notorious neighbouring mines of Ok Tedi and Bougainville, and would be unacceptable in the US. Moreover, it is impossible for Freeport to predict what the long term damage of its operation will be.
Despite the great wealth still to be recovered in the Freeport concession, the directors of the parent company, Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc, are keen to sell the operating subsidiary in West Papua. The political uncertainties associated with the future of the unitary state of Indonesia are obviously of great concern to the directors. Freeport may be the lowest-cost copper producer in the world, but the loss of its erstwhile powerful protector in Indonesia has also made Freeport potentially vulnerable in a number of areas, so that the potential costs of its operation in West Papua could rise substantially.
Unlike the New Order era, the current ministers in Jakarta dislike the company and its heavy-handed tactics. They have at times found it expedient to make life difficult for Freeport. Investigations within Indonesia into the corruption, collusion and nepotism of the New Order regime, coupled with the fact that the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act forbids American companies from paying bribes, may force Freeport to legally defend its questionable relationship with Suharto and his cronies. The company is also being attacked within Indonesia over its environmental record and may eventually be held financially responsible for the damage it has created and will continue to create in the future. Mine closure costs could be extraordinary. Freeport's inability to resolve the escalating community relations problems also represents an ongoing financial and political burden on the company for which no end is in sight.
Finally, the financial and political costs of supporting the military, not listed in any Freeport balance sheet, is rising. American law courts have ruled that US companies can be held responsible for human rights violations which are carried out by it or on its behalf, of which it was a knowing beneficiary, or of which it was aware and which it could have prevented. Freeport's relationship with the Indonesian military therefore leaves it dangerously at risk. Today the future is as uncertain for this once seemingly invincible company as it is for its once powerful connections.
Denise Leith (djleith@hotmail.com) recently completed a PhD at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, on Freeport. A detailed article by her about the Suharto-Freeport relationship will appear soon in The Contemporary Pacific (Vol. 14, No. 1).
Inside Indonesia 67: Jul - Sep 2001
Jakarta's secret strategy to deal with Papuan nationalism
Richard Chauvel
On 8 June 2000, the Director General of National Unity in the Department of Internal Affairs, Ermaya Suradinata, held a meeting with representatives of the military and intelligence community in Jakarta. Among the latter were Bakin, Bais, Kostrad and Kopassus. From the meeting emerged a framework for Jakarta's response to the challenge posed by Papuan nationalism. By mid November 2000, the report of the meeting was circulating widely in Jayapura and its contents were summarised in the weekly Tifa Papua.
The context for this meeting was the Papuan Congress held a few days earlier. This was a critical juncture in the development of the central government's policy towards Papua. President Gus Dur had made important symbolic gestures to Papuan opinion during his visit for New Year. He declined the invitation to open the congress, but he did contribute one billion rupiah to facilitate a meeting that was to reiterate the Papuan demand for independence. In the first half of 2000 the Papuan independence movement had gained significant momentum. Through the congress and the earlier General Assembly (Musyawarah Besar), the Papuan Presidium Council had acquired legitimacy and been recognised by the Indonesian authorities in Jakarta and Jayapura as the de facto leaders.
The document signed by Ermaya Suradinata reveals much about how Jakarta assesses developments in Papua. It observes that the atmosphere down to the village level after the congress was euphoric about the idea of Merdeka. The 'conspiratorial groups' supporting Merdeka were increasingly cohesive, and were endeavouring to 'socialise' the congress results throughout Irian Jaya and beyond. Nevertheless, despite this appreciation of the Papuan enthusiasm for independence, the document estimates support at only 10-20%.
Particularly revealing is the analysis of these 'conspiratorial groups'. A diagram attached to the report, entitled 'Papuan political conspiracy', backgrounds the pro-independence Papuan leaders. Besides well-known public figures such as Theys Eluay and Tom Beanal, the diagram includes two former governors, one ambassador and a couple of members of the national parliament, one of the latter being the new governor Jaap Solossa.
The people in the diagram represent a broad spectrum of opinion within the Papuan political elite. It thus illustrates one of Jakarta's most difficult problems: the 'conspiracy' contains many of the Papuans who have achieved most in the Indonesian system. In an unintended manner, the document supports the common assertion that all Papuans, even those who serve the Indonesian state, in their heart of hearts are pro-'M' (Merdeka, or Independence).
The document recognises that even some provincial officials have been 'contaminated' by the Merdeka ideal, and recommends 'strong sanctions' against those who openly support independence. In September 2000 the Minister of Internal Affairs followed this up with an instruction to the governor to take unspecified action against pro-independence officials. This writer often saw one of those named in the report, Filip Karma, in Jayapura dressed in his Indonesian bureaucratic attire, proudly wearing a large Papuan flag pinned to his chest. These senior Papuan officials are not the key leaders of the independence movement, but their inclusion in Jakarta's version of the 'Papuan political conspiracy' highlights how fragile the foundations of Indonesian authority in Papua are.
The Ermaya Suradinata memorandum to the Minister of Internal Affairs argues for 'immediate, concrete and appropriate' actions to anticipate the burgeoning pro-independence climate. It envisages graduated activities, both overt and clandestine, targeting a broad spectrum of Papuan society. The proposed covert activities include recruiting, training and supporting pro-Indonesian militia at village level. The less sinister means involve providing those leaders who support Indonesia with government positions at all levels from the village to the province. Honours for local leaders and the elevation of 'national heroes' from Irian Jaya are two further suggestions.
The memorandum stresses the need for consistency in official central government statements in order not to confuse provincial officials - no doubt a veiled criticism of Gus Dur and his ministers.
At the provincial level, the draft strategy envisages creating a more 'conducive' environment by raising the level of material welfare in Papuan society. This, it is hoped, will improve the government's credibility and persuade people to support Indonesia.
Some of the approach and several specific measures advocated in Ermaya Suradinata's memorandum appear to have been influential. A 'crash program' of economic aid is consistent with the objective of raising welfare. It has so far distributed Rp 410 billion, nearly the size of the provincial budget again, to the district level administration (kabupatan). Its aim is to support social and economic development, human resources and places of worship.
Jakarta also clearly promotes regional autonomy, although whether its implementation will meet Papuan expectations is yet to be seen. Habibie's policy of dividing the province into three, rejected in the governor's draft special autonomy legislation, seems to have been put on the backburner. The detention and trial of some presidium leaders, and the rapprochement with other members of the elite also reflects some of the proposals. However, there is so far little evidence that the memorandum's recommendation to minimise the use of force has been widely heard by the security forces in Irian Jaya.
Richard Chauvel (richard.chauvel@vu.edu.au) teaches at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia.
Inside Indonesia 67: Jul - Sep 2001
There is growing international concern over West Papua
Nic Maclellan
For decades, human rights abuses in West Papua have received attention from advocacy groups, while environmental organisations have lobbied over pollution from the Freeport mine. But in the wake of Suharto's fall, the 1999 Timor crisis and growing tensions in Maluku and Aceh, there is increasing international concern over West Papua, as the crisis forces itself onto the regional and international agenda.
Most governments have dropped their mantra that West Papua's independence movement is irrelevant and lacks popular support. Now, they express concern over human rights abuses by the Indonesian military in West Papua, while stressing their support for Indonesia's territorial integrity. Growing international attention has been given to the call for West Papuan self-determination, but it has been overshadowed by a focus on the impact that independence will have on Indonesia's democratic transformation.
Pacific links
Many commentators view the current crisis in West Papua through the prism of Indonesian unity, ignoring historic ties that bind West Papuans to Melanesia and the Pacific islands. Neighbouring governments in Australia and Papua New Guinea have repeatedly asserted that West Papua is historically part of Indonesia (concerned as refugees again spill over the border into Papua New Guinea). Japan, Asean and the European Union (EU) have spoken against 'secession' in Aceh and West Papua. Even Timor's new leaders have also suggested caution rather than rushing to political independence.
However, the clear mood in the Pacific islands is that historically, culturally and geographically, West Papua has always been part of Melanesia and the wider Pacific region. Even under Dutch administration, West Papuans were active in regional Pacific meetings, before Indonesia's take-over in the 1960s severed links with other island peoples. West Papuans participated in the founding of key regional bodies. In 1950, Pacific island delegates came together in Suva, Fiji for the first South Pacific Conference. West Papuan leaders Marcus Kaisiepo and Nicolas Jouwe from the colony of Dutch New Guinea joined fellow Pacific Island delegates at this important regional meeting of the newly formed South Pacific Commission. Photographs from the time show Kaisiepo seated beside Ratu Sir Edward Cakobau of Fiji, Albert Henry of the Cook Islands and Prince Tu'ipelehake of the Kingdom of Tonga.
In the 1960s, West Papuans were studying at the Fiji School of Medicine and the Pacific Theological College in Suva. Pacific churches worked together to found the Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) after the Malua Conference of Churches and Missions in Samoa in 1961. At this founding meeting, a church delegation came from Dutch New Guinea, with Reverend Kabel and Reverend Maloali of the Evangelical Christian Church joining fellow Christians from around the region to establish the regional ecumenical body. West Papuan exiles have played a vital role in government, education and civil society in Papua New Guinea since they left their homeland in the late 1960s.
Today, these links are being recreated. Some Pacific island governments are providing increased support for West Papua's quest for independence. At the September 2000 United Nations Millennium Summit in New York, leaders from Nauru, Vanuatu and Tuvalu raised the West Papuan issue - the first countries to declare support for West Papuan independence at the UN. Four West Papuan leaders were given official delegate status at the 31st Pacific Islands Forum in October 2000 as members of the Nauru delegation. At the Forum, Vanuatu, Nauru and other countries supported the push for human rights in the troubled country, even as they deferred to Australian and PNG sensitivities by acknowledging Indonesia's current political sovereignty. The Forum governments issued an unprecedented statement calling for peaceful dialogue on the future of the country, and an end to human rights abuses.
West Papuan Presidium member Franzalbert Joku welcomed the statement: 'After four decades, we are back in our natural habitat, the South Pacific.'
Jakarta's proposal for a Western Pacific Forum, to be discussed in June 2001, seems to be in part a tactical response to the islands' initiative. The next Pacific Islands Forum will be held in Nauru in August 2001, ensuring that West Papua will remain on the agenda. West Papuan leaders have welcomed the Forum's April 2001 decision to accept Indonesia as a post-Forum 'dialogue partner', as they are seeking international support for a peaceful dialogue with the Indonesian government.
UN review
Mobilisation on the ground in West Papua is being supported by international diplomatic efforts. Many Presidium Dewan Papua leaders regard the December 1961 flag-raising as a valid declaration of independence from the Netherlands. They are seeking international support for a review of the so-called Act of Free Choice in 1969, arguing that this vote was deeply compromised, and cannot be regarded as a true act of self-determination. Scholars in Europe and the UK are researching the Dutch and UN role in this vote (see article by Richard Chauvel in this issue).
United Nations General Assembly resolution 2504 (XXIV) of 19 November 1969 'took note' of the report of Special Rapporteur Ortiz Sanz about the Act of Free Choice, without formally endorsing it. West Papuans are now calling on the international community to review the UN resolution. They are gaining some support amongst Pacific Island Forum members. Only three island nations were independent of their colonial powers at the time of Indonesia's annexation in 1969 and decolonisation issues strike an emotional chord with Pacific peoples (especially as French, British and US colonies in the Pacific - such as Guam, New Caledonia and American Samoa - are still listed with the UN Decolonisation Committee).
Even though most governments shy away from the issue of West Papuan self-determination, there is a significant focus on human rights abuses by the Indonesian armed forces. While supporting Indonesia's territorial integrity, a November 2000 statement from the EU presidency 'encourages the Indonesian authorities' efforts to find a solution to regional disputes through dialogue rather than by force'. At government level, Indonesia's stability and human rights issues are a focus of inter-regional meetings (for example, an EU-Australia ministerial meeting in Stockholm on 2 February 2001 agreed to work together to support Indonesia's efforts to ensure 'peace and stability in its backyard'.)
In 2000, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson visited Indonesia, expressing her concerns about human rights violations in West Papua. She reaffirmed the need for peaceful dialogue when she met with West Papuan human rights advocates during the April 2001 session of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. The former Irish president committed herself to working to improve the situation, reflecting awareness and support in Ireland for the West Papuan issue. At the UN human rights session, the Netherlands and the EU made statements, stressing the need for a genuine dialogue between Jakarta and the Papuans.
For many years, international lobbying on West Papua was conducted by exiled members of the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM). This has now been supplemented by members of the Presidium Dewan Papua, and other church and NGO activists. Early in 2001, John Rumbiak of the West Papuan Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy (Elsham) travelled in North America and Europe to lobby on human rights issues. His visit to Canada was the first time a West Papuan human rights expert had toured the country, giving talks to the public and university students and meeting with government and NGOs. The newly formed West Papua Action Network (Wespan) plans to continue lobbying on behalf of human rights and self-determination and establishing an ongoing network of supporters.
On 2 April 2001, Rumbiak intervened in the plenary session of the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva on behalf of the World Council of Churches. He highlighted the worsening human rights situation in West Papua as the result of repressive measures adopted by Indonesia in response to the West Papuan demand to exercise their right of self-determination.
Wahid
The Wahid government has been under increased pressure inside and outside Indonesia to investigate such human rights abuses. In the face of police intransigence, the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) has been conducting an inquiry into the Abepura incident on 7 December 2000, in which police raided student dormitories, with three deaths and many detained and tortured. Wahid supported autonomy for Papua at the beginning of his presidency, but this support fell victim to growing elite resistance in Jakarta to Wahid's policies. Proposals from West Papuan intellectuals and officials for a new autonomy deal are currently under consideration in Jakarta, but may falter because of concern over 'separatism' (Maluku is also partly Melanesian, and pro-Melanesian sentiment could spread).
While domestic Indonesian politics will have an important impact on West Papua, international opinion on human rights is setting the context for Jakarta's next moves. Australia remains a key player, especially as the incoming Bush Administration has welcomed its leading role in Timor in 1999. However for more than twenty years, Australia was one of few countries to give de jure recognition to Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor, only changing policy after the massacres committed by military-backed militias. There is a growing clamour for a similar policy change on West Papua, with Australian public opinion deeply shocked by events in Timor.
Since 1999, there has been increased attention on West Papua in the Australian media. Small West Papua solidarity committees are active in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Canberra, building awareness in broader church, trade union and human rights circles. Members of Parliament in the Federal and New South Wales Parliaments have joined committees in support of West Papuan rights. In October 2000, the Australian Council for Trade Unions (ACTU) signed a pledge of support for West Papuan human rights. Ironically, Jakarta blames Australian NGOs for agitating on West Papuan independence, although the issue of self-determination is a sensitive one for many NGOs which run development programs in Indonesia and see West Papua as part of Asia rather than the Pacific.
With the Australian Labor Party likely to win government in national elections in late 2001, the role of the labour movement will be crucial in influencing government policy. In Australia, both major parties maintain a position in support of Indonesian sovereignty over West Papua, but the issue is taking on increasing importance for civil society groups around the country.
The fortieth anniversary of the December 1961 declaration will be a focal point around the world. It will serve to sharpen the international community's dilemma of whether to work for Indonesian territorial integrity with human rights, or for Papuan self-determination.
Nic Maclellan (nicmaclellan@optushome.com.au) worked with the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC) in Suva, Fiji between 1997-2000.
Inside Indonesia 67: Jul - Sep 2001
When they hear the sacred texts of the church, Papuans see a better future
Benny Giay
In the Papuan mind, Papuans are Papuans. You cannot turn Papuans into Indonesians. Every Papuan, no matter who they are, believes that Indonesians and Papuans are different. This is borne out by experience.
In the 1970s a church worker in Beoga, in the Carstenz Range where the Damal people live, wrote a report about a non-Papuan government official who felt uneasy. The official knew he was not having much success persuading the Papuans that they were Indonesians (or that Indonesians were Papuan?). He had given endless lectures, in church as well as in his government offices, yet still the people believed they were different to the Indonesians. 'Mister district head', they said, 'you are Indonesian, we are Damal.' They pointed to the differences in food and clothes, skin colour and hair to prove their point: Damal people are not Indonesians, and Indonesians are not Damal.
When the Indonesian parliament in Jakarta sent a delegation led by Abdul Gafur to Papua in August 1998 to get to the bottom of why people wanted a Free Papua, Mrs Agu Iwanggin, deputy synod secretary of the Papuan Protestant church (GKI Papua) explained it to him. At the bottom there is God, because God created people to be different. Papuans are different to Javanese, and different to other people too. God gave Papua to Papuans as a home, so they could eat sago and sweet potatoes there. God gave them a penis gourd (koteka) and loincloth (cawat) for clothes. God gave them curly hair and black skin. Papuans are Papuans. They can never be turned into Javanese or Sumatrans, nor vice versa. The Javanese were given Java. Tahu and tempe is their food. Their skin is light and their hair straight. The real problem is that those in power in this republic have tried as best they could to make Papuans talk, think, look and behave like Javanese (or Sumatrans), and that goes against the order of God's creation. That is where the conflict comes from. How to end it? Let the Papuans and the Javanese each develop according to their own tastes and rhythms, each in their own land.
In the same meeting, held in the provincial parliament building with the delegation from Jakarta, the Rev Herman Saud, chairperson of the GKI Papua synod, said: 'When the Indonesians came to Papua, I was still young. With both my hands (he said, lifting up his hands) I took down the West Papua flag, the Morning Star, and with the same hands I raised the Red-and-White. From that moment I was taught to be an Indonesian. But I'm probably stupid, because I failed to become an Indonesian. For ever since then I have heard Indonesians say: Papuans are stupid, Papuans can't do it, Papuans are lazy, they are drunkards.'
Faith
For many years, the church's presence among the people in this land has undeniably been an inspiration and a pillar for the Papuan people's journey. The church has played the role of development pioneer, it has mediated between the government and the people, it has been a peacemaker and a prophetic voice addressing those in power. But rarely do we hear how the Christian faith that the church preaches has inspired a people who are oppressed. Let me explain some of the ways in which the gospel has given strength to people 'passing through the valley of darkness'.
The church has been working among the people in this land from February 1855 until now. Over the last three decades, people came to regard it as a liberating institution. Or at least as an alternative, perhaps a fortress of last resort, the bearer of new hope for a society shackled by the cold ideology of development that the New Order government taught.
The church has always preached redemption from sin, and the struggle for truth and justice in this world. But often people hear what they want to hear and interpret the message according to their needs. It is not surprising that the gospel the church spreads often functions by absorbing the aspirations for freedom in a New Papua. It becomes a means and an inspiration for the fight for freedom, on the understanding that God supports the freedom of an independent West Papua.
Such an interpretation grows directly out of their ominous experience of domination by outsiders in every area, whether ideological, social or economic. The Bible becomes a 'window' that gives people new possibilities, new dimensions to see a better world than the one they live in every day. The Bible portrays a new world, free from manipulation, intimidation and trauma. It lifts up the eyes of those who are oppressed to a new world. Sometimes people see in this new world a New Papua, an independent West Papua.
At the level of the village and the ordinary congregation, the biblical texts often acquire a powerful new meaning, because people read them in the context of their struggle for emancipation. The texts give new strength to Papuans who feel oppressed as they read. Unconsciously and unintentionally, Papuans in this situation identify their own experience of struggle with that of the people of Israel who struggled to leave Egypt. Everyone reads the Bible through their own eyes. The Bible gives them light and new energy for an emancipatory struggle against the shackles of trauma and ideology.
I caught something of that energy once when I heard an OPM fighter say to a preacher in a village who was trying to persuade him to surrender: 'Father, you have forgotten the gospel'.
For the needy will not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the afflicted perish forever; O Lord, you have heard the desire of the humble; You will strengthen their heart, You will incline your ear To vindicate the orphan and the oppressed, That man who is of the earth may cause terror no more. 'Because of the devastation of the afflicted, because of the groaning of the needy, Now I will arise', says the Lord, 'I will set him in the safety for which he longs.' [Psalms 9:18, 10:17-18, 12:5]
The church and many theologians will probably argue that this way of reading the Bible cannot be justified. Yet the very presence of a church that preaches these texts makes people engaged in a struggle for freedom do it anyway.
The road to a New Papua free from fear, manipulation and intimidation is a long one, but it has to be trod. Many thorn bushes litter the path. That is why the journey must be well planned, and Papuans must undertake it in a great spirit of liberty. So may it be.
Dr Benny Giay (sttwpirja@jayapura.wasantara.net.id) teaches at the Walter Post Theological College near Jayapura. This article and the accompanying box were extracted with permission from his book, 'Menuju Papua Baru' (Jayapura/ Port Numbay: Deiyai/ Elsham Papua, 2000).
Inside Indonesia 67: Jul - Sep 2001
History is central to the politics of West Papua
Richard Chauvel
In late May and early June 2000, thousands of Papuans gathered to attend the Second Papuan Congress. Its name drew a connection with the first congress held in 1961, before Papua became a part of Indonesia. Its purpose: to 'correct the course of Papuan history'. The history that Papuan nationalists sought to correct was that of Papua's integration into Indonesia during the 1960s. Their interpretation of it was summarised in the first three resolutions of the congress:
The people of Papua have been sovereign as a nation and a state since 1 December 1961.
The people of Papua, through the Second Congress, reject the 1962 New York Agreement on moral and legal grounds as the agreement was made without any Papuan representation.
The people of Papua, through the Second Congress, reject the results of Pepera (the Act of Free Choice) because it was conducted under coercion, intimidation, sadistic killings, military violence and immoral conduct contravening humanitarian principles. Accordingly, the people of Papua demand that the United Nations revoke resolution 2504, 19 December [sic - actually November] 1969.
History is no less important for Indonesian nationalists. Indonesia conducted a twelve-year long campaign to force the Netherlands to relinquish control of the last remnant of Indonesia. President Sukarno constructed the struggle to 'return' West Irian as an issue to unify the nation to complete the revolution. Sukarno's campaign enjoyed the support of all prominent political leaders and parties. Indonesians derive satisfaction from the fact that, through the UN's acceptance of the results of the 1969 Act of Free Choice, the international community had endorsed the process through which West Irian was 'returned'.
Sukarno's daughter, the now vice president Megawati Sukarnoputri, captured the sense of pride many Indonesians feel when in 1999 she recalled a childhood conversation with her father. Why had he visited Irian, it was so far away, she had asked. To which he replied: 'Without Irian Jaya Indonesia is not completeThe words ironically echoed those of the Dutch at the time of Indonesia's independence struggle: 'The Indies lost, everything lost'.
Backwater
West Papua was incorporated into the Netherlands East Indies during the nineteenth century more to pre-empt Germany, Britain or the Australian colonies taking an interest rather than for any economic or political advantage. Until the Netherlands transferred sovereignty to an independent Indonesia in December 1949, West Papua remained an economic and administrative backwater. West Papua was where the colonial Dutch exiled Indonesian nationalists as well as their own less successful officials.
Until the Pacific War West Papua was administered in conjunction with the neighbouring Maluku islands to the west. Many Ambonese, Keiese and Menadonese were employed as officials, police, teachers and missionaries. This gave the colonial administration a curious duality. It was as much east Indonesian as it was Dutch. Papuan Christianity and use of the Malay (Indonesian) language was strongly influenced by the east Indonesian teachers and missionaries. As the first generation of the Papuan elite graduated from Dutch schools, the jobs they aspired to were held by east Indonesians. In the small urban centres of Netherlands New Guinea, educated Papuans shaped their political and cultural identities in reference to the east Indonesians.
After the Pacific War, Papua's separation from the rest of the archipelago became more distinct. Under the first post-war Resident, J P K van Eechoud, boarding schools were established to train Papuans as officials, police, soldiers and teachers. Van Eechoud recruited students from throughout Papua with the explicit intention of cultivating a sense of pan-Papuan identity. The graduates of Van Eechoud's schools were prominent among the first generations of the Papuan elite. Notwithstanding the strong demands of the east Indonesian federalists, Papua was not included in the State of East Indonesia. In 1946 the Netherlands became a member of the South Pacific Commission as the administering power of West Papua.
Although the administrative separation of Papua from Maluku had been achieved, it was not until mid-1949 that the Dutch cabinet decided to exclude Papua from the impending transfer of sovereignty to Indonesia. The status of West Papua was left unresolved at the crucial Round Table Conference that brought together Dutch and Indonesian negotiators. The resulting compromise enabled the transfer of sovereignty to Indonesia, but kept West Papua under Dutch control until its constitutional status could be settled through further negotiations within a year. Both the United States and Australia supported the Netherlands' resolve to exclude West Papua from the transfer of sovereignty.
Negotiations at the end of 1950 as well as those of following years failed to resolve the conflict. In 1954 Indonesia took the dispute to the United Nations, where in that year, 1956 and 1957, it failed to obtain the necessary two-thirds majority in the General Assembly. The dispute over West Papua was a significant factor in the breakdown of post-colonial relations between Indonesia and the Netherlands.
The motives behind the Netherlands' determination to retain control of Papua were complex and at least as much related to domestic political factors as to the maintenance of Dutch interests in Indonesia. Van Maarseveen, the Minister for Overseas Territories, expressed to parliament in 1949 the principal public rationale: 'New Guinea does not belong to Indonesia proper. New Guinea is separate from Indonesia geographically, ethnographically and also politically. New Guinea forms a completely separate territory with a separate history.'
In 1952 self-determination for Papuans became an objective of Netherlands policy. However, not a great deal was done to further this objective until 1960, when under increasing international pressure the Netherlands began a program of accelerated political advancement. Over a ten-year period this was to lead to an independent West Papua. The decolonisation program involved establishing a representative council, increasing involvement of Papuans in the administration to replace Europeans and Indonesians, and establishing a Papuan volunteer corps. Like van Eechoud over a decade earlier, the political purpose was to create a sense of unity and a national ideal among the diverse peoples of the territory.
Political parties, both pro-Indonesian and pro-Dutch, had been established in the late 1940s. However, political activity began to flourish among the Papuan elite with the elections for the New Guinea Council. Papuan leaders became keenly aware that the fate of their homeland was the object of an international dispute, in which they attempted to participate, but ultimately had little influence.
Symbols
It was in this atmosphere of rapid political change in West Papua and its enmeshment in the politics of the Cold War that Papuans first formulated their national ideals and created national symbols. On 19 October 1961 the Komite Nasional Papoea, under the leadership of members of the New Guinea Council, issued a political manifesto. It urged the government of Netherlands New Guinea to permit the Papuan flag to be flown besides the Dutch flag, the Papuan anthem to be sung with the Dutch 'Wilhelmus', and the name of the territory to be West Papua and its people Papuan. On behalf of the Papuan people, the manifesto demanded that they be given a place among the free peoples of the world, live in peace and contribute to the maintenance of world peace.
On 1 December 1961, in front of the New Guinea Council, in the presence of the governor, members of the council and political party leaders, the 'Morning Star' was raised for the first time and the 'Hai Tanahku Papua' sung. This day has come to be regarded as Papuan Independence Day.
Protracted negotiations under UN auspices followed, accompanied by Indonesian military infiltration and driven by an American determination to see the dispute resolved in Indonesia's favour. In August 1962, the Netherlands and Indonesia signed the New York Agreement. Control of West Papua would pass from the Netherlands to Indonesia after a period of UN administration.
In the capital Hollandia (later renamed Jayapura), the New Guinea Council building became a focus for well-organised and well-supported demonstrations against the agreement. At the first such demonstration M W Kaisiepo, a leading member of the council and of the Komite Nasional Papoea, condemned the agreement: 'We were traded as goats by the Americans'.
The New York Agreement's provision for an act of self-determination under UN supervision may have been a face-saving formula for the Dutch, but it was recognised as critical by Papuans. Many Papuans argued that it should be held in 1963 under the UN administration, rather than in 1969 under the Indonesians. As reflected in the resolutions of the Second Papuan Congress, the injustice, manipulation and repression that characterised Indonesian conduct of the Act of Free Choice has now become central to Papuan understandings of their history.
The Papuan nationalist interpretation of the conduct of the Act of Free Choice has found support in recent archival research based on previously classified UN documents as well as on Netherlands, United States, British and Australian government sources. John Saltford argues that under the 1962 New York Agreement 'the Netherlands, Indonesia and the UN had an obligation to protect the political rights and freedoms of the Papuans, and to ensure that an act of self-determination took place, in accordance with international practice. On both these points, the three parties failed, and they did so deliberately since genuine Papuan self-determination was never seen as an option by any of them once the [New York] Agreement was signed.'
Papuan resistance to Indonesian authority emerged soon after the transfer of administrative control. The Free Papua Organisation(Organisasi Papua Merdeka, OPM) was formed in 1964 and became the principal institution to wage an armed resistance against the Indonesian government. The resistance was sporadic, ad hoc and local. It never threatened Indonesian control of Papua. However, although the OPM's military capacity was limited, its representation of Papuan identity and national aspirations was of much greater importance.
Richard Chauvel (richard.chauvel@vu.edu.au) teaches at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. He is writing a book on the West New Guinea dispute and researches contemporary Papuan politics.
Inside Indonesia 67: Jul - Sep 2001
Papua needs a clear political vision and be ready for the long haul
John Rumbiak
My activism goes back to 1985 when I was invited to Canada and saw how the indigenous Indians were treated. As part of the same program I also lived in a small village in Jambi, Sumatra. I noticed they were experiencing the same things as many Papuans - they were in debt to rapacious moneylenders and held to ransom by unaccountable officials.
Papuans are the First Nation People. They have lived there, close to the environment, for thousands of years. They were invaded and exploited by a powerful outside force, leaving them impoverished. That is colonialism. Indonesian government policies in Papua - whether in transmigration, mining, logging, agriculture, or tourism - have just been new forms of colonialism.
Jakarta sees Papua as its El Dorado, its Siberia full of resources out on the periphery, a place to make money and leave almost nothing behind. There is a mental distance too. How much do they really want to know about Papua? When Jakarta transmigrates 'expert' agriculturalists from Java to Papua it is also being racist, because Papuans already know how to use the land. Even mining is seen as a civilising work among primitive Papuans.
I believe all problems can be solved through dialogue and non-violence. But Papuan faith in the Jakarta government has been shattered by the systematic oppression of a militarised developmental approach over nearly forty years of 'integration' with Indonesia. If the central government wants to be serious about dialogue it should be serious about restoring confidence, about enforcing the law.
Papuans have put three very rational demands to the Jakarta government. First and foremost, they want to know about history. Was the integration (or as they say, annexation) of their territory a valid act of self-determination? Second, they want the systematic violation of their civil and socio-economic rights addressed. And third, they want to talk about their own crisis of identity as a Melanesian group within Indonesia. These issues drive the demand for independence.
After lots of people were killed over a flag-raising demonstration in Biak in July 1998, community and church leaders set up a reconciliation forum, Foreri. The forum sent a hundred representatives to meet President Habibie. The idea was to become a partner to government and run followup workshops on development problems. But when these long-oppressed people mentioned the word independence to Habibie, all dialogue stopped right there.
I try to be optimistic about Indonesian democracy, but from the Papuan perspective I feel the transition to democracy after 32 years of Suharto's authoritarianism will be very difficult. Indonesians who want change - students, non-government organisations - have no access to power. In the meantime, justice remains blocked.
Gus Dur is a moderate religious leader who became president. He has the ability to understand social problems, but he is unable to confront a mentality of over three decades. He has problems with his administration - including parliament and his own cabinet - who want no change at all. He also makes decisions without consulting. For example he responded to Papuan aspirations by changing the name Irian Jaya to Papua. But he did it without talking to parliament, with the result that some within the government now accuse him of supporting separatism.
Once Gus Dur goes, I am concerned about the future of Indonesia. As in Russia, the status quo groups still dominate so strongly. They talk this 'disintegration' language, all in the name of national unity, and this hinders democracy. I fear Megawati will also be unable to handle the explosive situations from Aceh to Papua, and after that the military will try to pull the whole country together. This will kill democracy.
If Indonesia wants to remain a united state, its leaders must understand that unrest in the regions indicates a real psychological need to say 'I am Acehnese', or 'I am Dayak, or Papuan, and I want to be acknowledged as I am before I will be an Indonesian'. Thus far, the system has no room for such an acknowledgement. The colonial system is too strong. I do not see Jakarta changing its view.
Papuan identity
However, even within Papua we are only building a foundation. This is a long project. Dialogue also involves building cross-cultural understanding among the 250 tribal groups in Papua. It is a process of healing the psychological scars of oppression. Papuans are frustrated, their soul has been broken. The struggle tends to lack a clear political vision, and that is dangerous.
First, we must address the issue of Papuan identity. Cross-cultural dialogue also involves non-Papuans settlers, who have a right to live in Papua too. Like it or not, they have intermarried with Papuans the last three decades. We need to say that, yes, Papua belongs to those 250 tribes, but I don't want it to be dominated by certain ethnic groups, as in Fiji. The future of Papua cannot be built on an exclusive basis, no matter how much Papuans have suffered. Superiority is dangerous and produces conflict. The rights of settlers must be guaranteed.
The OPM fighter Mathias Wenda is a Dani hero, whereas Kelly Kwalik is an Amungme hero. This is not a strong basis. We need to discover a First Nation People ideology for Papua that allows a Dani to say to me: 'Hey, you're no different to me!'
Second, we need to ask what we mean when we speak about independence. The struggle is not just about replacing Indonesians with Papuans. Independence will not automatically make everything easy. It is about changing a system. The substance of independence is welfare and equal rights for all. That means good human resources, equal distribution of wealth, law enforcement. The environment must not be destroyed. Papua is so rich it is scary. Development must be culturally sound, ecologically sound, and based on human rights.
The political vision must be clear. If you hope for Papua to become free simply by Indonesia breaking up you're going to be in big trouble. Because Papua itself is politically fragmented. It will be like Africa - which ethnic group will dominate? Lots of blood will flow. At the moment, coastal Papuans have more education and they would take over. But that would make highland Papuans unhappy, leading to war. For 32 years we have experienced divide-and-rule among these 250 tribes. I can sense those feelings among Papuan independence activists. These are dangerous signals. We must be like Arnold Ap and Tuarek Narkime, an Amungme chief tribe who introduced peace amongst the tribes in the highlands of West Papua, and liberate ourselves from such feelings, move beyond our own ethnic group.
Internationally too, it is a long-term struggle - fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years. Activists have to understand the way the global mechanism works. No nation anywhere, including the US, wants to talk about Papuan independence. Unlike East Timor, Papua is seen as an internal Indonesian affair. But nations will talk about self-determination, which is different in principle and could mean autonomy, independence, or lots of other things. It will be very difficult to put Papuan integration with Indonesia back on the agenda, but it can be done. Papuan activists need to build networks around the world - just working with Nauru or Vanuatu is not enough.
This article was composed from an interview conducted with John Rumbiak by Gerry van Klinken on 11 May 2001.
Inside Indonesia 67: Jul - Sep 2001
Review: Robert Cribb's Historical Atlas is breathtaking in its scope and presentation
Ron Witton
I have long found Robert Cribb's Historical dictionary of Indonesia (Scarecrow Press, 1992) a wonderful mine of information. Now he has produced a companion volume that is breathtaking in its scope and presentation. For those of us used to thinking of maps only as a source of geographical information, this volume begins to expand our cartographic universe. Maps cover the Landscape and the Environment, the Peoples of Indonesia, States and Polities until 1800, the Netherlands Indies 1800-1942, and finally, War, Revolution and Political Transformation, 1942 to the present.
Whether one wants to see the distribution of Krakatau noise and tsunamis in the Indian Ocean in August 1883 (Map 1.16), the languages of Borneo (2.4), population density in 1990 (2.74), Airlangga's kingdom in the eleventh century (3.14), how Golkar fared in the 1971 elections (5.38), regional unrest in Indonesia in 2000 (5.68), or the distribution of Muslims in Indonesia as shown by the 1980 census (2.27), this beautiful volume has it all.
Of particular fascination are such maps as Regional rebellions and provincial boundaries, 1950-1954 (5.20), Jakarta on the night of the coup, 1 October 1965 (5.32), or the horror of the New Order's Gulag system as shown by Detention camps for political prisoners ca 1975, as reported by Amnesty International (5.35).
If for example, you were interested in transmigration, you could begin with Slaving in the Indonesian archipelago, 16th-18th centuries (2.39), then examine maps illustrating colonial population movements, and finally move to the detailed maps on modern Indonesia's transmigration program. To check the international dimension you could then turn to Major migration by Indonesians beyond the archipelago, 17th to 20th centuries (2.49). Here you would learn that many Javanese worked in plantations and mines in the British colony of Queensland. Other migrations include those from China into Indonesia (2.51, 2.53 and 2.57).
Teachers will use these maps to make the region come alive and to explore a comparative regional focus. An informative narrative links the maps and draws out salient points. It may be too expensive for some individuals, but there is no excuse for institutional libraries not to obtain a copy. This is truly creative scholarship at its best.
Robert Cribb, Historical Atlas of Indonesia, Surrey, UK: Curzon, 2000/ Singapore: New Asian Library, 256pp, ISBN 0700709851/ 9810427719, Rrp US $100
(Dr) Ron Witton (rwitton@uow.edu.au) first visited Indonesia in 1962.
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
On the other side of 1965 lay a vibrant Indonesia worth remembering
Ann Laura Stoler
Political activists and academics these last two years have begun to open frank discussion of events that until very recently were literally unspeakable, at least in Indonesia. They are trying to understand the mass killings in 1965-1966 as something that has a history. The Coup was not about the beginnings of a military-dominated state in Indonesia, but rather the culmination of a politics in which the military and its choice of violences have been present at least since the colonial period. These investigations will lead to new histories that confront rather than circumvent the diverse experiences of those years.
Silences in history, such as those about 1965, are politically imposed. How historical events are framed can encourage later generations to 'remember' certain versions of history and 'forget' others. But this attention to l965 also raises other questions. How will this intense focus on the l965 killings figure on the academic and political agenda today? What possible histories are enabled or foreclosed by this incessant return to l965? Why are some aspects of Indonesia's postcolonial history now more possible to speak about than others?
If the past is a powerful tool in the present, nowhere is this clearer than in how Indonesians choose to remember the internment, torture and mass killings of alleged members of the Indonesian Communist Party PKI and its affiliates. How that history is retold can serve both as a 'weapon of the weak' and as a weapon of elite control. How Indonesians will rewrite that history is still up for grabs.
For many, retelling what happened in l965 serves as a warning. Their question is not 'whodunit' but 'can it happen again'? Others ask whether it is not already happening again, before our unknowing eyes because we do not yet know the right questions to ask.
However, what should be underscored in the question, 'can it happen again?', is not only the 'again' but what constitutes the 'it'. For the 'it' is a moving target, defined by different people in very different ways. For the military and its supporters, the fearful 'it' that may happen again is the rise of communism and a left-wing populism that supports it. But for others, that 'it' is not communism in its cold war manifestation, but rather popular, above-board and public forms of political mobilisation. Afterwards, the New Order regimes named these forms as criminal. For others still, the fearful 'it' is not the 'Untung coup' labelled 'communist', but the repressive counter-coup that followed and that brought with it a form of political control which needed violence to maintain its rule.
Rather than asking about the how and why of the killings and the intrigues within the army, the more important question may be to ask about the conditions of possibility that allowed Suharto to come to power and remain in power for as long as he did. The question then is not so much why l965 happened, but rather how a political culture based on mass violence could have been formed that changed the civil society within a generation.
Many Indonesians and foreigners think that the memories of l965-66 should be allowed to disappear. But this is not a viable option. Whether they want to or not, Indonesians are living that past today. There are strong generational differences between those who lived through those years and a younger generation who have known no other reality than the silencing tactics of the New Order. For this younger generation, schooled with state-sanctioned history books and with access only to bookstores immaculately emptied of ways of making sense of the world into which they were born, liberation from the past can't be attained by forgetting. They want to know how their lives have been shaped by it. Some older people may want to forget, but younger people looking toward the future (including Hilmar Farid in this edition) seem convinced they need to know.
Analysts asking questions about how 1965 is treated in today's public discourse see the 'silencing of the past' as an emblem of the New Order. The regime wielded 'l965' in a language of terror and as a tool of governance - not as a topic of history. This places a question mark over the suggestion that a truth and reconciliation commission, on the South African model, can serve important positive goals. For what would be on trial? If it is the events of l965-l966, then there is little in common with South Africa. Apartheid was a systemic structure of racialised rule. Its truth commission was not confined to any one event. What would have to be on trial would be the sustained terror of Suharto's New Order regime itself.
If it is the New Order for and from which some form of redemption and forgiveness must be sought, the task becomes more difficult. Such commissions must build on personal histories that are possible to speak and to share. People have to be able to tell stories that are grounded and experienced, instead of those scripted with visions of mutilated bodies and rivers of blood. Like massacres, commissions of inquiry (state-run or otherwise) can be moral stories that states tell themselves.
People in Indonesia perhaps turn away from '65 because it was horrific and they want to forget. But maybe there are other times to remember that hold more possibilities for the future. The events of l965 and the Suharto years themselves are only one episode in a longer history, on which many Indonesians may prefer to linger and not turn away.
Participation
The current focus on '65, and the histories that situate the l950s as the foreground to it, make all that happened before '65 little more than a prelude, an inevitable outcome. But the 1950s can also be envisioned in another way. Obsession with getting '65 straight may overshadow another past that we have only begun to re-imagine and bring into focus - one in which '65 was not inevitable.
This is not to romanticise popular participation and the viability of a public sphere before the Coup. But it is to note that there was once another civil society in Indonesia, that rapidly changed. Historians who have interviewed those politically active in the l950s show them to be more cosmopolitan, 'modern' and politically progressive than they have usually been portrayed. A researcher in rural central Java notes that villagers in the l970s talked with excitement about the l950s, as 'the years of living dangerously'. It was a time that held promise, because there existed venues for popular participation on the ground. Others report that former members of progressive labour and literary organisations retain vivid memories of a vibrant intellectual and political environment, of which they were a part.
The point is not to reinvent this period as one of full representation and political participation. Nevertheless, the early l950s was a time of much public and very local discourse about land and labour rights, when it was not a crime to congregate in groups of more than three persons on a village road (something that village heads were instructed to prohibit for decades after l965). It was a time when kiosks across Sumatra and Java had pamphlets and books by Marx, Lenin and Shakespeare (as some today in Yogya are brimming over with Indonesian translations of French social theorists such as Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault).
Making room for new histories, that situate the events of l965 as one of many possibilities rather than as a predestined outcome, may be one way of reviving the truth and reconciliation commission in another form. Such multiple histories would give credence to the fact that both political violence and progressive politics were part of a reality that was widely shared. Even before the internet, people participated in circuits of knowledge production that sometimes landed them in the Philippines and Paris as much as in Moscow and Beijing.
Violence is part of that history, but there are other stories of popular participation in social and economic reform that do not reduce to party politics and extreme polarisation on every front. These submerged accounts locate a broader horizon of possibilities, and remind people that there are other histories to write and unscripted stories to tell.
Popular and local histories of the l950s should not be overshadowed by the horrors of l965. Both are part of the multi-layered reality of people who have lived a range of postcolonial moments, who retain different senses of what has made Indonesia's history, and who trust in different ways of telling that story.
Ann Laura Stoler (astoler@umich.edu) is professor of anthropology and history at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. She is the author of 'Capitalism and confrontation in Sumatra's plantation belt' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 'Race and the education of desire' (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995) and 'Tensions of empire' (with Frederick Cooper, Berkeley: University of California press, 1997).
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
Prajurit jaga malam
Waktu jalan. Aku tidak tahu apa nasib waktu? Pemuda-pemuda yang lincah yang tua-tua keras, bermata tajam, Mimpinya kemerdekaan bintang-bintangnya kepastian ada di sisiku selama menjaga daerah yang mati ini Aku suka pada mereka yang berani hidup Aku suka pada mereka yang masuk menemu malam Malam yang berwangi mimpi, terlucut debu ... Waktu jalan. Aku tidak tahu apa nasib waktu!
Soldiers on guard at night
Time passes. I do not know what fate awaits time. Agile young warriors, strong old men, with sharp eyes, Dreaming of freedom, as certain as the stars in the sky, stand beside me, on guard over this dead region I love those who dare to live I love those willing to enter the night The night fragrant with dreams, stripped of dust ... Time passes. I do not know what fate awaits time.
This poem by the major Indonesian poet Chairil Anwar (1922-1949) was probably written late in 1948. It shows Anwar's commitment to the ideal of 'kemerdekaan', the full independence of Indonesia, as well as his characteristic enthusiasm for a life lived with great intensity, despite the ever-present possibility of death.
Merdeka
belum
Freedom!
no, not yet ...
20th May 1998
This poem, written by the contemporary dramatist Ikranegara (born 1943) was dated the night before Suharto resigned as the president of Indonesia. It shows that struggle to realise the dream of national independence has been a long hard one. Conventionally, when a politician shouted 'Merdeka!' at his listeners, the audience would return the cry with great vigour. The refusal to accept the proposition that Indonesia was yet truly liberated was extremely subversive - and a source of great humour for the audience. Ikra and his audiences could play with these two words for a considerable time.
Kita adalah pemilik syah republik ini
Tidak ada pilihan lain. Kita harus Berjalan terus Karena berhenti atau mundur Berarti hancur
Apakah akan kita jual keyakinan kita Dalam pengabdian tanpa harga Atau maukah kita duduk satu meja Dengan para pembunuh tahun yang lalu Dalam setiap kalimat yang berakhiran 'Duli Tuanku'?
Tidak ada pilihan lain. Kita harus Berjalan terus Kita adalah manusia bermata sayu, yang di tepi jalan Mengacungkan tangan untuk oplet dan bus yang penuh Kita adalah berpuluh juta yang bertahun hidup sengsara Dipukul banjir, gunung api, kutuk dan hama Dan bertanya-tanya diam inikah yang namanya merdeka Kita yang tak punya kepentingan dengan seribu slogan Dan seribu pengeras suara yang hampa suara
Tidak ada pilihan lain. Kita harus Berjalan terus
The republic is ours
There is no other choice. We must Go on Because to stop or withdraw Would mean destruction
Should we sell our certainty For meaningless slavery, Or sit at a table With last year's murderers Who end each sentence 'As Your Majesty wishes'?
There is no other choice. We must Go on. We are the people with sad eyes, at the edge of the road Waving at vans and crowded buses. We are the tens of millions who live in misery Beaten about by flood, volcano, curses and pestilence, Who silently ask for freedom But are ignored in a thousand slogans And meaningless loud-speaker voices.
There is no other choice. We must Go on.
This poem is by Taufiq Ismail (born 1937), a student writer and activist in 1966.
The poems were selected by Harry Aveling (H.Aveling@latrobe.edu.au), who teaches at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. He has translated numerous volumes of Indonesian poetry into English. The last two poems and their translations can be found in Harry Aveling (translator), 'Secrets need words: Indonesian poetry 1966-1998' (Ohio University Press, 2001 - see Bookshop).
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
What gifts did Aussie prime ministers bestow on President Suharto?
Pam Allen
Near the entrance gates to Taman Mini in Jakarta stands an impressive complex of conical towers that resemble tumpeng, the cone-shaped Javanese ceremonial yellow rice dish. Opened in 1993, this is the Museum Purna Bhakti Pertiwi. Most people simply refer to it as the Suharto Museum.
It was built by Yayasan Purna Bhakti Pertiwi. As is now well documented, Suharto has misappropriated funds from numerous foundations (or yayasan) of which he is head. He began establishing these yayasan in the early days of his regime, ostensibly to help the poor and disadvantaged, but they soon became a convenient means of money laundering. Yayasan Purna Bhakti Pertiwi is relatively new, and it officially owns only the museum. But its profits have skyrocketed because it in fact also has a twenty-two percent share in the company Citra Marga Nusaphala Persada (CMNP). Suharto's daughter Tutut is the major shareholder in this company, which manages a lucrative toll-road in the capital that some call 'Tutut's highway'.
The building is a stunning piece of architecture, but its collections are even more breathtaking. Meticulously curated, the museum contains all the gifts of state presented to Suharto and Ibu Tien during his 32 years as president of Indonesia.
This may sound somewhat dry. I must admit my initial interest in visiting the museum was curiosity about what sort of gifts Suharto may have received from successive Australian prime ministers, especially Gough Whitlam.
But this is no motley collection of tacky souvenirs. Covering three massive floors, and requiring at least half a day to view properly, the titles of the collections give a hint of the sheer volume of exhibits, and their opulence. As well as displays of paintings and collections of bone carving, silver and crystal that occupy entire walls, there is a precious stone necklace collection, a lacquer collection, glass cases full of exotic perfume, a marble collection, and a collection of tin soldiers. And this is a mere fraction of what is on display.
Then there is the Chinese jade bed, a gift from the (Suharto-related) Probosutedjo family. Along with businessman Sudwikatmono (also related), they were the prime financial backers of the museum, contributing Rp 300 million to its construction. The full size four-poster bed, a replica of one from the Ch'ing Dynasty, takes pride of place on the ground floor of the museum. Made entirely of jade, it is intricately carved and decorated and simply exquisite - though presumably somewhat uncomfortable to sleep on.
Empire in decline?
The most tantalising question as one gapes in awe at this ostentatious display of affluence and beauty is of course: 'What does it mean?' Is it a symptom of an empire in decline, building monuments to itself? Or was it an attempt by Suharto to accumulate sakti, the cosmic energy central to Javanese notions of power?
Benedict Anderson once (in a 1973 paper) wrote about the many extravagant monuments Sukarno built in the last years of his presidency. They can certainly all be interpreted as signalling a link to the past. But it is also possible to read them differently. In particular the phallic National Monument in Merdeka Square, in the heart of the city, is the symptom of a regime in decline. The regime is trying to secure some sort of permanency for itself in the form of dramatic, highly visible concrete structures. It is impossible to drive around Jakarta without being constantly reminded of the man who ordered the construction of these monuments. Sukarno thus immortalised himself in concrete, steel and gold.
When the Museum Puma Bhakti Pertiwi was built in 1993, Suharto had no inkling yet of the economic and political crises which were to cause his downfall. But he must have known that his remaining years as president were numbered. Like Sukarno before him, he may have viewed the construction of the museum (like the establishment of Taman Mini itself) as a way of making a dramatic mark on the Jakarta landscape, an extravagant structure which would long outlast him.
The Taman Mini site is in itself richly symbolic. The cultures of all twenty-seven provinces are on display at this massive government-funded theme park. (When I visited Taman Mini in August 2000, the 'East Timor' pavilion was still standing proud, with no mention of its newly independent status.) It introduced domestic and foreign visitors to the most visually exciting aspects of those cultures. Taman Mini was designed to symbolise the New Order's support for regional diversity (at least at the visual and decorative level), as well as its success in maintaining harmony among such diverse cultures.
One of the ways in which a Javanese leader traditionally ensured his continued rule was to accumulate sakti, the cosmic energy which manifests itself as political power. Because the amount of sakti in the universe is finite, a ruler should be constantly accumulating as much of it as he can. A ruler traditionally does this through ascetic practices such as meditation, fasting and making pilgrimages to holy sites. Sakti can also be accumulated by collecting objects that have supernatural qualities (pusaka), such as the revered Javanese sword, the keris.
In postcolonial Indonesia, some scholars have identified new methods of accumulating sakti. One that Suharto used a lot was to turn historical figures with presumably a great deal of sakti into National Heroes. The seventeenth century Javanese ruler Sultan Agung, the seventeenth century warrior Untung Suropati, the nineteenth century warrior prince Diponegoro, and Sukarno were all examples. The Russian scholar Victor Pogadaev thinks the logic may be that a leader who praises such great figures of the past will receive, through sympathetic magic, some of their power.
Immortalising oneself in concrete and steel may be interpreted as another contemporary method of accumulating sakti. The physical forms of both Sukarno's and Suharto's final monuments - the much-alluded-to phallic style of the National Monument, and the significance to Javanese ritualism of the tumpeng style of the Suharto Museum - can be read as highly visible and extravagant attempts to accumulate the supernatural power needed for continued rule.
Queensland premier
So, to return to the original motivation for my visit to the museum, what gifts did the Australians give Suharto? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, when compared to the sumptuous fabrics, the ornate silver, the priceless china - and of course the jade bed - the gifts successive Australian leaders made seem rather paltry. There is a bronze statue of an Australian soldier on a horse in a symbolic encounter with a water buffalo. It was obviously seen as a highly appropriate theme, because slightly different versions of the same statue were presented on two separate occasions.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer once presented a rather nice modernist leather wall hanging made by a prominent Canberra artist. But, juxtaposed against luxurious Middle-Eastern fabrics and African textiles, it looks rather tacky and - well, small. The prize for kitsch, however, goes to a copper clock in the shape of Australia, presented by a certain Queensland premier. Not only is Tasmania missing (an unforgivable omission of course), and not only is it hanging askew on the wall (below a very tasteful clock made of mosaics of jade - not a gift from Australia), the total effect of shiny Copperart copper overlaid with cute silhouettes of native animals severely tests the limits of good taste.
I searched in vain for the gifts Gough Whitlam must have made to President Suharto. Until my companion suggested to me that perhaps East Timor was too big to be contained even in a museum of these dimensions.
Pam Allen (Pam.Allen@utas.edu.au) is senior lecturer in Indonesian at the University of Tasmania, Hobart.
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
New Order generals needed new history books. Nugroho Notosusanto was their man.
Kate McGregor
The New Order regime relied for much of its legitimacy on official representations of history. Its version of the coup attempt of 1965, for example, described the event as a communist plot. This was of crucial importance for justifying the military take-over between 1965-67, as well as for the mass killing of communists in this period. Histories stressing military leadership in the 1945-49 independence struggle were also important for justifying the military's combined social, political and defence roles (dwifungsi). To produce these histories, the regime turned repeatedly to one man, Nugroho Notosusanto.
As a trained historian, Nugroho offered these projects academic credibility. Every country has official historians, and historians often work for the military or research military history. But Nugroho was different. He devoted himself to producing history for a regime dominated by the military. This earned him the enduring scorn of other Indonesian historians.
Why was Nugroho so devoted to the military? To understand, we need to reflect on his life story.
Authoritarian
Nugroho Notosusanto was born on 15 June 1931, in Rembang, central Java. At age fourteen he joined the 1945 independence struggle against the colonial Dutch. He served as a member of the Student Army, Tentara Pelajar, made up entirely of secondary and university students. Many of its members came from youth militias trained under the Japanese. Nugroho was probably too young to have joined these Japanese youth groups, but he shared with them an acceptance of martial mentalities. The Japanese occupation helped radicalise Indonesian youth and planted an authoritarian outlook in many young minds.
Members of the Student Army felt they belonged to a unique generation set apart from their elders by their vigorous 'spirit' (semangat), which of course included an unwillingness to make concessions to the Dutch. Like other members of the Student Army and the Indonesian National Army, Nugroho held little regard for civilian leaders, particularly those involved in diplomatic negotiations.
What is interesting is that Nugroho's criticism of the older generation was very personal. His own father clearly belonged to it too - he was a member of the negotiating team for the Republic of Indonesia at the Round Table Conference of 1949. This encapsulates the divide between Nugroho's generation of radical nationalists and that of their parents.
He once declared that his idol was General Sudirman, the first commander of the revolutionary Indonesian military. Sudirman had long believed that the military had a special role to play. What little faith Sudirman had in the civilian leadership disappeared after December 1948 when, after the Dutch launched an aggressive military campaign, the civilian leadership, based on a calculated assessment of international opinion, allowed themselves to be captured rather than join the guerilla struggle.
After the transfer of sovereignty in December 1949, the government of the Republic of Indonesia offered all members of the former Student Army a military education at Breda in the Netherlands. Nugroho now had to choose. Should he continue a career in the military, or follow his father's example and pursue a higher education? His father was a professor in Islamic law at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta.
Much later, Nugroho revealed that he would have chosen the military and gone to Breda. But his father prevented him. Nugroho's father, S H Notosusanto, was born into an elite Javanese (priyayi) family. He was one of the few Indonesians to attend a Dutch university in the Netherlands Indies. During his studies in the late 1920s and early 1930s he was exposed to important nationalist leaders such as Supomo, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta. Perhaps he shared Hatta and Sukarno's hesitation about the need for a national army. Yet here was his son - excited about joining precisely such an organisation.
Nugroho obeyed his father and enrolled in the Faculty of Letters at the University of Indonesia. But this did not stop him from identifying with the military throughout his life. A romantic view of the independence struggle endured in the short stories he wrote in the 1950s. Humanistic in style, most of these stories demonstrate a compassion for ordinary people affected by the revolution. They indicate a side to Nugroho he was later to suppress.
The short stories made Nugroho well known. He also became an active student leader. His obvious creativity and intellect attracted the attention of his peers and mentors. Among them were the historian Onghokham, and Priyono the left-leaning Minister of Education in the Guided Democracy period just before 1965. They all held great hopes for him.
By 1964 Nugroho was teaching history at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta. One day General A H Nasution, chief of staff of the armed forces and minister for defence, approached him to join a team of researchers. Their task was to write an army version of the history of the independence struggle. The aim: to challenge a similar history said to be planned by the leftist National Front. The army feared that the latter would leave out an account of the so-called Madiun Affair of 1948, a bloody event the army preferred to represent as a communist revolt against the government.
Nugroho seized the opportunity. History and politics now met decisively for the first time in his life. When completed, this history project led to the establishment of the Armed Forces History Centre, with Nugroho at its head. His most important project, as noted above, was to produce the first official version of the coup attempt of 1 October 1965. After this he set about consolidating the military's historical image by emphasising the military's role in the independence struggle. Nugroho wrote many history books, curated several museums, and assisted with some important film projects.
In 1984 he was appointed Minister of Education. He rewrote school history curriculums to place greater emphasis on the military's historical role. Nugroho had become the official historian of the New Order regime.
Criticism
Throughout his career, Nugroho's projects attracted widespread criticism from other historians. The more civil ideas of his father's generation had not died with their passing. Like his father, many of these historians did not share Nugroho's faith in the military leadership of the nation, and instead saw many dangers there.
Nugroho continued teaching history at the University of Indonesia even after taking up his position at the Armed Forces History Centre. The tensions of his dual careers were considerable. In 1978 he told a friend that he inhabited two worlds: those of the army and the university. In the army, he said, people have a sense of honour and are not always competing with each other. At university everyone was out for themselves. This reaction probably grew from a sense of rejection arising from his more controversial projects.
Yet whilst Nugroho felt the military world was more honorable, he was not completely accepted there either. A military man at the Army History Centre in Bandung once posed this question about Nugroho and himself to historian Sartono Kartodirdjo: 'Tell me Sartono, what is worse, a military man who pretends to be a historian, or a historian who pretends to be a military man?'
He was proud of his military promotions. Perhaps they made him feel nostalgic for the military career he might have had. Nugroho was awarded titular rankings because of his position as head of a military institution. In 1968 he was appointed titular ('in name only') colonel, and then in 1971 titular brigadier general. Nugroho considered these ranks a sign of respect from the leaders of Abri. One acquaintance of Nugroho's recalls him saying he liked to travel overseas, as it enabled him to wear his uniform and insignia.
Nugroho died in 1985, having served Suharto's military-dominated regime for two decades. Such a length of loyal service demonstrates his ambition to share in a world of power and privilege far greater than that which any academic career could have offered him.
Now that Suharto is gone, how will Nugroho's work be remembered? The histories he wrote have been at the centre of much criticism against the militarised official New Order historiography. In response to this backlash, his foreword was even erased from recent reprints of a history book. Memories of the independence struggle are fast fading. Nugroho's personal motivation for believing in military rule will become increasingly difficult for younger people to comprehend. If he is remembered at all, it will be as a defender of dwifungsi. In the light of day that exposed the widespread human rights abuses committed by the military during the New Order, this is an extremely negative label.
Kate McGregor (mcgregorke@hotmail.com) is writing a PhD dissertation in Indonesian history at the University of Melbourne.
The history of football is a history of Indonesia itself
Freek Colombijn
Association football, or soccer, was introduced to Indonesia in 1895, when the schoolboy John Edgar founded a club in Surabaya. The game rapidly spread from the elite to the workers and has become probably the most popular sport in Indonesia, both to play and to watch. But the history of football in Indonesia can tell us as much about Indonesia as it does about the game.
At first, matches were organised ad hoc. Then at the beginning of the twentieth century many local associations sprang up to organise leagues. Each league was confined to an irregular number of teams in one town. Usually all matches were played in a brief time span of, say, two months, on one field. The first matches between teams from different towns took place at the Colonial Exhibition in Semarang in 1914. The associations of Jakarta (then Batavia), Bandung, Semarang, and Surabaya sent teams composed of the best players of their respective leagues. These so-called 'city matches' between association teams were such a great success that they were repeated the following years. An umbrella Netherlands Indies Football Association (Nederlandsch-Indische Voetbal Bond, NIVB) was founded in 1919 to place the annual city matches on a permanent footing.
The name NIVB, later changed to NIVU, suggests it was an archipelago-wide association. But at first only the four associations present at the Colonial Exhibition were members. Gradually other associations from Java joined up, followed in the 1930s by associations from other islands. The expansion of the NIVU paralleled the way government administration and modern economic organisation was being standardised at the same time - first in Java and then spreading to the other islands.
Indonesia's enormous size has been a serious handicap for a national competition. Putting city matches at the pinnacle of the year's sporting calendar proved to be a brilliant and popular solution. By 1979 inter-island transportation had improved to such an extent that a national league was started. In order to reduce travel costs, the league is divided into a western and eastern division. In the end the national championship is decided in semi-finals and a final, reminiscent of the former city matches. As a result of the post-independence rise to predominance of the national capital, the finals no longer go from one place to another, but always take place in Jakarta. Only once, in 1999, was one held outside - in Menado. Fights between supporters had reached an unprecedented level. Perhaps reformasi had reduced respect for uniforms.
Nationalism
Political struggles have been fought out on the football field since colonial times. The NIVU reflected the social composition of colonial Indonesia. It had a majority of indigenous players, but Europeans dominated the board. Associations with an indigenous leadership were found at the local level, but they too were subject to the European hegemony in the umbrella organisation. In 1930, however, seven indigenous associations on Java founded the All-Indonesia Football Federation or PSSI (Persatuan Sepakbola Seluruh Indonesia). The word Indonesia in the name betrayed its nationalist ideology. The PSSI was no match for the NIVU in the number of teams and in financial muscle. But it was a useful vehicle to keep aspirations for an independent Indonesia alive in a decade in which the colonial state cracked down on all overt nationalist expressions.
During the Indonesian revolution of 1945-49, Dutch political leaders persuaded the NIVU to change its name to VUVSI/ ISNIS, an Indonesian-Dutch acronym for Football Union for the United States of Indonesia. The change of name brought the football federation into line with the short-lived and ill-fated colonial policy to encapsulate the Indonesian Republic within a federal republic sympathetic to the Dutch. The bilingual name, and the policy to co-opt more Chinese and Indonesian members onto the board, were attempts to win Indonesians to the Dutch side.
The Dutch federal policy quietly ran aground, because the various constituent states voluntarily merged with the Republic one by one. Within a year after the transfer of sovereignty from the Netherlands to Indonesia, federalism had collapsed and the unitary Republic of Indonesia was proclaimed. Likewise, member associations within VUVSI/ ISNIS in each town merged with the local branch of the PSSI. The VUVSI/ ISNIS became a hollow shell and was quietly disbanded in 1951. A few independent local associations continued to reject PSSI 'centralism', but in the course of the 1950s they were all swallowed up by the PSSI anyway.
Sukarno was aware of the role a successful football team could play in nation building. Organising the Asian Games in 1962 formed an element in Sukarno's policy to carve out a self-conscious international role for Indonesia. Hotel Indonesia and the Senayan stadium, which can hold 100,000 spectators, were constructed for this event. Success depended ultimately on an Indonesian football triumph. In line with the general atmosphere at the end of Sukarno's reign, however, a corruption scandal erupted shortly before the games. Several players were purged from the national team. Yet the Indonesian eleven still made it to the final. There they lost 2-3 to Malaya, of all countries.
After the alleged communist coup of 1965, Senayan and stadiums in provincial capitals became mass prisons for the detention of adversaries of the military regime.
Already in colonial times the local associations earned well from the gate takings. By the 1920s, teams and associations were paying their best players. When a national league with club teams was started in 1979, the local associations were reluctant to give up the revenues from the local leagues. This led to the unique blending of a competition between club teams and a championship between city teams. Club teams and teams representing local associations play together in the national league.
Club teams depend on sponsors for both funds and management. When a sponsor withdraws, the club usually collapses. Even teams that have been national champion and have played in Asian cups have disappeared this way. In other cases, teams moved to another city with a new sponsor. At the end of the 1990-1991 season no less than six league teams were dissolved for financial reasons. Under these circumstances, a regular league with promotion and relegation is impossible. Solvency, rather than last year's results, determines which teams play in the national league. Reformasi has left its mark - former sponsors such as the Bakrie brothers and Prajogo Pangestu are now in trouble.
Pancasila
During Suharto's rule, the PSSI wrote 'development plans' using the same discourse as the state. The proclaimed aim of the PSSI was to develop football evenly throughout the country (thereby integrating all regions), based on Pancasila. This general aim was elaborated into five principles, a sacrosanct number that implicitly showed allegiance to the New Order state. Not surprisingly, the New Order football technocrats sought western knowledge to improve the level of play. Western trainers were contracted. In Sukarno's time, when Indonesia was still a leader among the non-aligned countries, the PSSI had similarly employed a Yugoslav trainer.
Promising players were sent to Europe's top clubs as apprentices. A flood of well-paid foreign players (expatriate development aid workers?) of second-rank quality came to Indonesia, where they pushed young and gifted Indonesian players aside.
The wish to increase the level of play was one of the motives for establishing a national league. However, despite the improved transportation and the league being split into a western and eastern (or sometimes three) divisions, distance remains a problem. No schedule of regular home and away matches exists. The teams make brief tours to play their matches on one particular island. This practice seriously distorts the competition results. A Jakarta team, for example, will play all its away matches on Sumatra in a short time span. Tired from the gruelling travel, and alone facing hostile crowds (for its own supporters cannot afford to follow their favourite team), the team loses many of its matches, and descends to the bottom of the league table. By contrast a team that can play at home against exhausted teams rises on the league table, but will descend when it has its turn to play a series of away matches.
Most Indonesians only watch. When it comes to playing themselves, they have few facilities. They play on a beach or a plot of vacant land, with a goal made of sagging bamboo poles and a ball of plaited bamboo. In Papuan villages one can observe how a communal ball hangs in the goal net. Everyone can play a game with it, provided the ball is hung in the net again afterwards. Local rules and not the PSSI rules, derived from the global FIFA standard, apply.
Getting a kick out of football helps Indonesians to have fun, despite all the misery that is dumped on them from Jakarta.
Freek Colombijn (F.Colombijn@let.leidenuniv.nl) is an anthropologist at Leiden University. He began to play in 1970 and stopped as left-winger in 1997. In his last match he scored his first hat trick.
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
Tribute to a multi-talented, national figure
Catherine Mills
Romo Mangun
Yusuf Bilyarta Mangunwijaya was born on 6 May 1929 in Ambarawa, Central Java, from Catholic parents. At the age of sixteen, during the revolution for independence from the Dutch, he joined the Student Army. The troops' callousness towards the villagers shocked him. In 1950, after hearing a speech by Major Isman about the harmful effects of the revolution on civilians, he decided to repay his debt by serving the people as a priest.
After studying theology and architecture, Romo (Father) Mangun started his public life in Yogyakarta in the late 1960s. He became a parish priest, lecturer in architecture, practising architect, essayist, columnist, novelist, human rights activist and social worker. For six years he lived among the poor along the Code River in Yogyakarta, and built a Community Centre for them.
He died on 10 February 1999. Romo Mangun was a staunch advocate of democracy to the last.
Elections
'Although it claims to be public, the forthcoming (1976) election is clearly going to proceed in its exclusive la Indonesia style.'
On the face of it, this orderly queue of Javanese voters is a good example of communal response to the New Order's implementation of 'democratic' values. However, the shape of the queue recalls that of the headdress of two characters from the shadow puppet theatre: Bima and his son Gatutkaca. Both were associated in Romo Mangun's mind with Sukarno. Sukarno saw in Gatutkaca a heroic role model for modern Indonesian nationalists. The cartoon thus makes an implicit comparison between the early years of independence and 1976. The voters' closed eyes suggest that, this time, they are blindly obeying orders from above, instead of realising their potential for shaping democracy. Through this picture, Romo Mangun encouraged ordinary people to become once again politically aware and active.
School for individuals
'Because this New Order of ours is a military order, an authoritarian order, commando style, there is no education. There is only instruction, a mere taming experience.'
Romo Mangun believed education was a crucial pre-condition for Indonesian progress. Its aim should be to promote discernment and creativity in individuals. He strongly objected to teaching methods which crushed spirits instead. Most of all, he insisted it was for everyone, not just the elite. In 1993 he founded an experimental school for disadvantaged children in Yogyakarta under the research group Laboratorium Dinamika Edukasi Dasar. He often said: 'When I die, let me die as a primary school teacher.'
Two heroes
'However different they may be, Sukarno and Sutan Syahrir represent two poles of the same world of fighters. They were the soul of bravery and faced exile for the sake of their comrades' freedom.'
Romo Mangun looked back to the 1945 revolution as the golden age of Indonesian nationalism. Among his favourite heroes were former President Sukarno and former Prime Minister Syahrir. They are represented in this picture as the Javanese shadow puppets Bima and Yudhistira. According to Romo Mangun, Sukarno resembled Bima because of his tenacity of purpose, his flamboyance and his raw style of expression in the low Javanese language or ngoko.
Syahrir resembled the more refined Yudisthira because he used knowledge and diplomacy rather than brute force to solve national problems. Romo Mangun himself hated violence. He admired both heroes for their selfless commitment to the national cause.
Catherine Mills (millsca5@iinet.net.au) recently wrote an honour's thesis on Mangunwijaya at Curtin University, Perth, Australia. Photo from Y B Priyanahadi (ed),'Romo Mangun di mata para sahabat' (Yogyakarta: Kanisius, 1999). Line drawings by Romo Mangun, in Y B Mangunwijaya, 'Puntung-puntung Roro Mendut' (Jakarta: Gramedia, 1978).
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
Strange things began to happen when Indonesian refugees came to Australia during World War II
Jan Lingard
Before 1942 much Australian opinion about Asia focussed on preserving a 'White Australia'. Its vast spaces, it was assumed, could be nothing but an irresistible attraction for the 'teeming millions' to Australia's north. To most Australians, Asia was China and Japan. Most seemed unaware that the British, French, Portuguese and Dutch colonies in the region were also part of Asia. These they considered, like Australia, to be outposts of European civilisation, whose 'native' populations attracted little interest.
When war broke out in the Pacific, and Malaya and Singapore fell to the Japanese, Australians suddenly realised the Asian countries to the north had strategic importance. Newspapers were filled with previously little known place names, as one by one the islands, cities and towns of the Netherlands East Indies fell. Finally, in March 1942, the Dutch in Java capitulated. Senior members of the Indies administration fled to Australia. They brought with them several thousand evacuees - Dutch, Eurasian and particularly Indonesian subjects of the Royal Netherlands colonial empire. Between then and 1948, when the last remaining handful were repatriated, some five and a half thousand 'coloured' Indonesians had, through the exigencies of war, been brought to a country which had enshrined its 'White Australia' policy since 1901 through the Immigration Restriction Act.
The Indonesians came from all parts of the archipelago. They comprised merchant seamen, members of the army, navy and air force, clerical workers, civilian refugees, domestic servants, and political prisoners evacuated from the prison settlement at Boven Digul in Dutch New Guinea. A handful just happened to be working at ports or airfields in Java, and in the confusion were gathered up and brought against their will. Upon arrival, the Indonesians were dispersed to many different cities and country towns, particularly in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. They went to military camps, internment camps, seamen's hostels, ships or ordinary houses. Here Australians and Indonesians met one another in ways that neither had dreamed of. Indonesian children were born and went to school here, adults married here - occasionally to Australian girls - and others died here.
'Brown' people
Among the first were a group of Indonesians who came on their own - the first 'boat people'. In March 1942 a group of 67 Javanese men, women and children who had been living in Sumatra attempted to sail back to Java. Trained fitters and turners, the men were required to report for work at the Dutch arsenal in the town of Bandung. However, the speed of the Japanese invasion made this impossible, and the group turned south. After a hazardous journey they reached Fremantle, in Western Australia. There they were told to continue to Port Melbourne, arriving in April. As their ship docked, local Melburnians were treated to a sight they had never seen before. The Javanese were gathered on deck, wearing traditional dress: colourful sarongs, sashes and long lace blouses for the women, some of them suckling babies; sarongs, black jackets and caps and ceremonial kris for the men. John Guthrie, a young boy living at Port Melbourne at the time, recalls the excitement as word spread and he and his friends raced to the dock. Of particular interest was the fact that these were 'brown' people, whom the boys had never seen before.
Dutch officials met the ship, but were at a loss to know what to do with these unexpected arrivals. Finally they asked the advice of Rev John Freeman, minister of the Port Melbourne Methodist Church, who agreed to help. With permission from the church authorities the church hall was turned into home for the refugees for the next three years. Small rooms off the main hall were allotted to family groups. Single men used the hall itself. Dutch authorities and the Red Cross provided furniture, bedding, clothing and equipment. A communal kitchen was set up.
Aided by some of the local community, the Freeman family helped the refugees settle in to daily life in their temporary home. A kindergarten was established, attended by both Indonesian and Australian children. The older children attended the Nott Street primary school, where they soon learned English and excelled at their studies. Mrs Freeman took particular care of the women, taking them shopping, arranging hospitalisation when babies were born and generally looking after their welfare. A journalist from the newspaper The Argus, who visited the hall commented: 'In this little corner of Port Melbourne, East has met West'. The men, meanwhile, had much-needed technical skills. Rev Freeman had no trouble finding work for them in the government aircraft factory at Fishermen's Bend.
The Indonesians made many friendships in the Port Melbourne community. John Guthrie and other young men took the opportunity to explore a new culture. They even learned to speak 'Malay' (Indonesian). In return, they took their new friends to Australian Rules football matches, ice-skating and the theatre. These friendships later led Guthrie to take part in demonstrations and marches in support of Indonesian independence. They were held in Melbourne after the world learned of Sukarno's 'proklamasi' of 17 August 1945.
When war was over and the refugees were eventually repatriated, there were tearful scenes at Spencer Street railway station when they left.
The Freeman family, along with other Australian families, also opened their home to Indonesian merchant seamen and military personnel in this country at the time. There was a constant stream of visitors to the 'open house' they held every Sunday. In turn they often visited 'Indonesia House' which the Dutch had established at the Hotel Metropole. Together with other interested citizens of Melbourne, they enjoyed Indonesian food and cultural performances. Miriam Nichols and Bonita Ellen, two of the Freeman daughters, have maintained friendships with some of their Indonesian visitors to the present day.
Friendship
James Gibson is another Australian who enjoyed a special friendship with one Indonesian. Gibson was in the Royal Australian Air Force. With some other Australians he was co-opted into the 18 Netherlands East Indies Squadron, to make up for the shortfall in Dutch ground crew. The squadron trained initially in Canberra, but in November 1942 it was moved first to MacDonald and then to Bachelor airfield in the Northern Territory. There it commenced bombing operations against the Japanese. The Australians were instructed not to fraternise with the 'native' members of the squadron, but Gibson ignored this order and struck up a friendship with a Javanese man named Djadi. From Djadi he learned about Javanese culture and learned some Malay language, which he still remembers. The two men were inseparable at this time, but lost contact when the war ended and Djadi was repatriated. In 1997 Gibson was able to trace Djadi's whereabouts. He made a trip to Java to see his old friend again. This became a treasured experience, as Djadi died about a year later.
The Australian government played a role in eventually supporting the recognition of the new Republic of Indonesia by the United Nations. Much has been written about this. But the first support came at grass roots level from within the Australian community. In particular it came from the Communist Party and the labour union movement. It also came from individuals who shunned the racist attitudes of White Australia and seized the opportunity to learn about and enjoy friendships with Asian people.
The bans Australian waterside workers placed on loading Dutch ships they suspected were carrying arms to be used against the Indonesian revolutionaries are well documented. The former Dutch political prisoners from Boven Digul, who had initially been interned in the prisoner of war camp at Cowra in New South Wales, also played an important role. After their release many actively politicised other Indonesians and encouraged them to disobey the Dutch. They also educated Australians about their struggle, using Independence Committees established in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Australian sympathisers assisted their work - beginning from the time independence was proclaimed in 1945 until it was finally attained in 1949. The Indonesian Revolution, it could be said, was in some part fought on Australian soil.
Since those days, the political relationship between Indonesia and Australia has been like a roller coaster ride. But the friendships forged during the war years were the forerunner of ongoing 'deeply human people-to-people rapport between Australians and Indonesians', as the former Indonesian ambassador Mr S Wiryono once put it. He was speaking at a ceremony in memory of the thirteen Indonesians who died during their internment in Cowra. Their graves in the Cowra cemetery remain today as a tangible reminder of that rapport.
Jan Lingard (jan.lingard@asia.usyd.edu.au) teaches Indonesian at the University of Sydney. She is writing a book about this historical episode.
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
After the New Order, the lid on Indonesia's past is beginning to lift
Hilmar Farid
History is all about today. It helps us understand where we are and where we are heading. Indonesians are confused about the future because so much of their past has been covered up.
Globalisation, for example, is not an Indonesian idea, and as a collectivity, we don't know how to deal with it. But from history we learn that those who built this republic never intended it to become a place where the elite sell their own people. That is more or less what globalisation is - how to make use of Indonesian energies and channel them into the market. Those who drew up the constitution never thought like that, and no one can deny it is wrong, yet today it happens.
The school history textbooks don't help students to understand any of this. They are all about national heroes without any context, just like in the comics. If I were writing a history of the 1945 revolution, I would write about it as a liberating energy that came from the people. The 17 August proclamation was all about turning the entire colonial order upside down.
But then the story takes a turn. Those energies are shackled once more, this time from within the republic itself. It becomes a story of crushed creativity. Take the popular action to take over the Dutch colonial plantation landholdings, which started soon after the Japanese pushed the Dutch out in 1942. The newly independent central government quickly began to use Dutch concepts and Dutch laws to suppress it. It was ironic - they forgot they were reasserting an entire colonial order.
That is why people came out with the slogan 'The Revolution is Unfinished'. They were right. Rather than institutionalising this creativity and giving it space to develop, it was replaced with colonial era rules. Land ownership is the most fundamental thing. But the people who suppressed it put more value on order. They saw the revolution as disorder, a typically elite view. For the people who took over the land and worked it, there was no disorder. They were happy, they could grow things. The disorder was in the heads of the bureaucrats. They made an agreement with the Dutch to give the land back to its original owners, as it had been before 1942.
Things would have been different if the idea of order had been derived from the experiences of those at the grassroots. But all those efforts were undone, and on top of it was built another order, lacking popular consensus.
New Order
Indonesians have experienced this repeatedly. This is the story of the New Order. The New Order explained 1965-66 in a very simplistic way. There was the danger of communism, several generals were killed, and the communist party PKI did it. Extraordinary disorder followed, after which the military came along, cleaned up the mess, and erected the New Order. Millions of school children have learned this for over thirty years.
But when we go into the data, which is abundant, we get a very different picture. The generals were in fact killed by soldiers in uniform. There was no communist hysteria. A press already controlled by General Suharto spread much of this disinformation. The objective was to generate a lot of anger and direct it at the PKI. This then led to massive killings. People who know how the killings were done tell us they happened not in a disorderly fashion but systematically. Groups with known names would be checked out of jail to be executed. There was paperwork, a bureaucracy of murder. You certainly can't say this was communal conflict among naturally violent people.
What happened in 1965-66 was a complete overturning of the existing political system, economic structure, and cultural life. The prisons of the New Order were filled with the best and brightest of that generation. Once more, the energy of the people was crushed in a brutal fashion. Not only the exceptionally brilliant ended in jail. Farmers used to do their own research. They tried to educate themselves. Today there is nothing like that.
I'm told that Indonesia last year published only 22 scholarly papers in mathematics. In Vietnam, which only emerged from war in 1975, there were about 1,300. Of course the killings of 1965 alone can't explain this, but the New Order military had such an obsession to control everything that it managed to snuff out all initiative. A massive purge such as 1965-66 had never happened before. The New Order crushed not only the PKI but an entire nationalist generation, all those who came up in the 1940s and '50s. Many of them were not even involved in the PKI.
Many activists began to research the history of the New Order as soon as it ended in 1998. When Suharto resigned everyone agreed things had to change. But most thought only of combatting corruption and getting rid of the bad eggs. Why didn't they deal with land ownership, for example? Or labour reform, or the rehabilitation of political prisoners? The reformasi agenda was not radical enough. That is what drove us to try to understand what we were really up against.
We in Jaringan Kerja Budaya (JKB) had long been thinking about this. To us, the New Order was a cultural black hole. It was covered with a lid, and on that they erected what they called Indonesian culture. We wanted to know just how deep that black hole was, and what had been lost. We discovered that so many of today's issues had already been the subject of lively debate in the '40s and '50s. So many experiments, right here in our own country, were sucked into the black hole. Post-coloniality, for example - the question of how the colonial heritage influenced our culture. An economics of the people - this was not just a debate but actually put into practice. Organic farming - this too was a practice that was sucked into the black hole.
There's a famous hotel in Bali that was built in 1967. Apparently its foundations are in a mass grave of people killed in 1965-66. This literally demonstrates the black hole of the New Order, but it is also a metaphor. Those buried there belonged to a popular movement to build their own society on their own strength, without having to rely on foreign capital. On their graves was built this massive foreign-funded hotel, thus making Bali what it since became, a centre for the tourist industry.
Hilmar Farid ('Fay') was born in 1968 and spent his early childhood in Germany. He graduated in history from the University of Indonesia, and now leads the Network for Cultural Work (Jaringan Kerja Budaya, jkb@indo.net.id), which publishes the magazine Media Kerja Budaya (MKB, www.geocities.com/mkb_id/). He is a productive writer and translator. JKB is conducting research on the history of the New Order. This article was composed from an interview conducted by Gerry van Klinken on 4 August 2001.
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
Indonesian military intelligence kept Australia fully informed (and complicit) in its 1975 East Timor invasion plans
Paul Monk
On 3 July 1974, the Australian ambassador to Jakarta, Bob Furlonger cabled Canberra:
'Harry Tjan told Jan Arriens on 2 July that he intends to submit a paper to the president this week recommending that Indonesia mount a clandestine operation in Portuguese Timor to ensure that the territory would opt for incorporation into Indonesia[Indonesian intelligence chief Lt-Gen] Ali Murtopo would appear to have directed Tjan to draft a paper setting out the operation. Tjan's extreme frankness indicates that the Indonesians are confident that we would favour an independent Portuguese Timor as little as they do.'
Jan Arriens was then first secretary in the Australian embassy in Jakarta. Harry Tjan was a principal member of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jakarta. Furlonger remarked that the Indonesians appeared to want to 'take us along on a realpolitik approach to the problem.'Australia was being consulted, he observed, and needed to respond in clear terms. 'A failure to do so soon will be taken by them, I fear, as tacit agreement.' Canberra's response to Furlonger was that the information from Tjan was most valuable, but that 'we should not encourage the Indonesians in any way to talk to us along those lines.' Australia could not afford to be associated with a covert operation given 'the risk of exposure.' Any hint of our complicity 'or even acquiescence'in such things with Indonesia would 'be damaging to the government's reputation overseas, to its domestic credibility, and to the confidence in us of small countries, especially PNG.'
Yet the Indonesians were in no way discouraged from talking to us 'along those lines.' Tjan's revelation of 2 July 1974 was the first of some forty-five secret briefings to the Australian embassy up to June 1976. Australia gave tacit agreement to the clandestine operation being mounted. It was kept closely informed about its design and its progress. It was told in detail of the obstacles encountered. Very early on, it was informed that, if covert manipulation did not work, Indonesia would foment disorder in the territory as a pretext for military intervention. Australia went along with this realpolitikapproach to the problem - at the risk of exposure. No greater risk of exposure arose than the presence of five Australian network journalists at Balibo, in mid-October 1975. That's why the Indonesian forces killed them, and why the Australian government covered up their murders.
Australia and the Indonesian Incorporation of Portuguese Timor 1974-1976, published in September 2000 by Melbourne University Press, shows the significance of these secret briefings. They were an intelligence officer's dream. To see how they were used is to understand precisely what was flawed and unworkable in the Whitlam policy on East Timor in 1974-75.
Self-interest
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs told Furlonger that the danger in Indonesian planning was that 'self-interest may distort rational thinking and the assessment of risks.' This was true, however, not only in Jakarta but also in Canberra. Australia's self-interest, as its officials perceived it, lay in the inconvenient little Portuguese colony being quietly absorbed into Indonesia. It also lay in cordial relations with Indonesia, which was consolidating a 'New Order' of a broadly pro-Western and 'stable' nature. Quite as much as in Jakarta, the question was worth asking in Canberra whether self-interest might distort 'rational thinking' and 'assessment of risks.' The record suggests that it did.
The briefing notes for Whitlam's talks with President Suharto, in early September 1974, informed the Australian prime minister about Harry Tjan's plan. He was advised to tell President Suharto that self-determination for Portuguese Timor was a firm Australian policy and that such self-determination 'should not exclude any of the three future options for Portuguese Timor', ie sustained links with Portugal, incorporation into Indonesia, or independence. A more 'forward' policy than this on Indonesia's part would present problems for Australia's other interests.
Whitlam chose not to accept the guidance offered to him. He told Suharto that he personally believed Portuguese Timor should be part of Indonesia. This was not yet Australian policy, he said, but his views tended to become Australian policy and they soon would in this case. He added that incorporation should take place as the result of a genuine act of self-determination on the part of the Timorese. He knew that this was not what the Indonesians had in mind, but said nothing to the Indonesian leader about the advisability of a clandestine operation. Suharto took this to mean that Whitlam would align Australia's policy with his own.
Australian policy was now caught between two incompatible considerations that were only ever likely to be reconciled by the means Tjan had proposed, at the risk of exposure and failure foreseen by thoughtful Australian officials from the outset. Just to the extent that the Timorese exhibited an unwillingness to be absorbed into Indonesia, Australia would be faced with an invidious choice between the two incompatible halves of Whitlam's policy. This soon became crystal clear. On 30 September 1974, Tjan told Arriens that 'he had now developed a "grand design" on the future of Portuguese Timor, which had been submitted to the president.' This 'grand design' called for resolution of the matter in the course of 1975-76.
If Whitlam wished to see a genuine act of self-determination he now knew that this was not what Jakarta intended. To deflect the Indonesians from their realpolitik course at this point would have required pro-active diplomacy. This was not forthcoming from Whitlam or from his Department of Foreign Affairs. Not to initiate such efforts at that point was clearly to acquiesce in the 'grand design'.
On 16 October 1974, Furlonger sent a Secret Austeo (Australian Eyes Only) cable to Canberra summarising a conversation he had had with Lim Bian Kie, private secretary to Ali Murtopo. Lim had stated, he said, that if Indonesia could not influence matters decisively within eighteen months it would be 'unable to do so at all.' If it was clear by 1976, Lim said, that the Timorese would not vote for incorporation into Indonesia then 'the use of force could not be ruled out.' Harry Tjan confirmed this. Lim 'spoke of the possibility of fomenting disorder in Portuguese Timor and of the Indonesian forces stepping in to salvage the situation at the request of certain sections of the population.'
Military intervention
Seldom do governments get such clear intelligence on the thoughts and intentions of other governments in sensitive matters. Canberra had been told explicitly that Jakarta felt a sense of urgency, that it was not actually optimistic about its covert action having the desired effect in the brief time available, and that it would resort to military intervention, if need be, in order to have its way. In other words, the Whitlam policy was clearly non-viable.
This ominous outlook was reinforced on 26 October, when Tjan again met with Arriens. He told him that Murtopo had been replaced by Lt-Gen Benny Murdani as real operational chief of the 'grand design', that the latter had hardened into agreed policy, and that Indonesian 'determination to take over Portuguese Timor had now developed an almost irresistible momentum.' If Canberra had been at all serious about self-determination for Portuguese Timor then this was the time to make a stand. Late October 1974, not October 1975, was the end of the line for the policy Whitlam had espoused.
Whitlam failed to see this, however. He was too convinced of his own grand vision to heed the views of the people of East Timor - or Australia - in this matter. He had prime responsibility for the dilemma Australian policy now faced. He was fully briefed, but did not see a need to modify his policy. He wanted to see incorporation take place - by an act of 'genuine self-determination'. He persisted in believing that this was compatible with the 'grand design'. The policy, therefore, remained set on autopilot, as Australia flew with Indonesia towards the bloody invasion on 7 December 1975.
By early December 1974, Australia's most senior policy makers and intelligence officers were aware that the Timorese were unlikely to prove 'malleable', as Michael Cook put it at a top level meeting, and that voluntary incorporation was 'not a winnable goal.' Gordon Jockel, director of the Joint Intelligence Organisation, told the same meeting that intelligence estimates suggested Fretilin could and would stoutly resist an Indonesian military intervention and that an effort to crush it could become 'a running sore' for Indonesia. Richard Woolcott, soon to become ambassador to Indonesia, thought Jockel and Cook were being too pessimistic. Besides, he told the meeting, 'the prime minister wants to see incorporation take place. If things get messy he has escape clauses.'
Whitlam did not have escape clauses. His personal conceit had left the Labor Party, and government, with a policy heading inescapably for disaster. Over the twelve months that followed, Tjan kept the Australian embassy closely informed as that disaster unfolded. In its wake, Canberra chose to try to make the best of a bad job by suppressing evidence of the extent of the catastrophe. But truth will out. The recently declassified documents make clear how a devastating policy error was made. What has not yet been declassified is the defence and intelligence archive on the details of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. That remains suppressed, because the truth is so damning.
Dr Paul Monk (p.monk@latrobe.edu.au) is senior fellow with the Australian Thinking Skills Institute (www.austhink.org). He is a former senior defence intelligence analyst. A longer version of this article appears in Critical Asian Studies vol.33 no.2, April 2001 (csf.colorado.edu/bcas/).
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
Overseas friends stand by persecuted Acehnese human rights workers
Signe Poulsen
On 29 March 2001 Tengku Al-Kamal, a member of the team monitoring the 'Peace through Dialogue' agreement between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement GAM, was shot dead in South Aceh. Also killed were Suprin Sulaiman, a lawyer with the Aceh NGO Coalition for Human Rights (Koalisi NGO HAM Aceh), and their driver Amiruddin. They were returning from a police station where Tengku Al-Kamal had given testimony about his alleged involvement in a defamation case launched by the police against several human rights workers. Members of the Mobile Police (Brimob) said they had been falsely accused of raping five women in South Aceh. Eyewitnesses have stated that after leaving the police station, the car in which the three were travelling was followed by a vehicle carrying members of the security forces.
Inspired by the more open political climate in 1998, Acehnese activists began to organise. However, in exposing some of the truth about the conflict in Aceh and identifying some of the perpetrators of torture, killings and 'disappearances' that had haunted Acehnese society for the past decade, they soon found themselves facing intimidation.
The South Aceh killings were not the first tragedy to hit those working to improve the humanitarian and human rights situation in Aceh. The emerging community of non-government organisations (NGOs) had been reporting growing levels of threats for more than a year. Other tragedies reported internationally included: the killing of three volunteers with Rata (Rehabilitation Action against Torture in Aceh) as well as the torture victim they were accompanying in December 2000; the torture of three Acehnese staff members of the British-based humanitarian agency Oxfam in August 2000; and the disappearance that same month of Jafar Siddiq Hamzah, the founder of the International Federation for Aceh (IFA). But these were only the tip of the iceberg. From at least February 2001 onwards, activists say, everyday threat levels have escalated so seriously that they are prevented from carrying out much of their routine work outside the provincial capital Banda Aceh. Some activists have even been forced to leave the province, fearing for their lives.
The threats affect not only these individual human rights defenders but also the communities they are trying to help. These activists bring much more than rice and plastic sheeting to the civilian population hit hardest by the violence. They bring alternatives to the violence that has become part of everyday life for too many men, women and children in the province. Their presence is a source of hope in a conflict too often portrayed only in grim statistics and military terms.
Banda Aceh is considered a calm oasis compared to the areas outside of town. Still, even here the situation has deteriorated significantly since President Wahid issued a decree in April 2001 that cleared the way for a 'limited' military operation. Between April and June the security forces carried out almost daily road checks around town. Ostensibly to check driving licenses and vehicle registration, the checks raised popular fears of a return to the bad days between 1989 and 1998 when Aceh was classified a military operations area (Daerah Operasi Militer, DOM).
During the DOM, few civil society organisations were able to operate in Aceh, and most human rights violations went unnoticed by the outside world. All this changed with 'reformasi' in 1998, when Acehnese began to speak out against human rights violations in their province. With students at the forefront, activist began working on many issues ranging from environmental rights to humanitarian relief. They criticised both sides of the armed conflict for excesses and worked towards the promotion of human rights, an end to violent conflict and the rule of law.
The political opening in Aceh proved short-lived. Since early 1999 the armed conflict has intensified and civilians have once again become its victims. Today activists say that `shock therapyhas returned. The brutal phrase was first used by the military to justify its bloody operations in 1989-92 against the separatist Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM). The counter-insurgency campaign resulted in widespread human rights violations during the early years of DOM.
The pro-referendum organisation SIRA (Sentral Informasi Referendum Aceh) had its office raided in May 2001. YAB (Yayasan Anak Bangsa) followed in June. Afterwards, several heads of organisations received explicit warnings that their offices might also be targeted. On 20 July activists were taking part in a non-violent protest against militarism in Aceh at the offices of the Legal Aid Institute (Lembaga Bantuan Hukum, LBH). Security forces turned up, took a number of LBH staff to the police station for questioning, and confiscated the office computer, other office appliances, photos and legal documentation. On the same day some of those representing GAM in the peace talks with the Indonesian government that had been ongoing since May 2000 were arrested at the hotel in which the talks were taking place. This last outrageous violation of all international norms cast the possibility of future talks in doubt.
Working outside Banda Aceh is even more difficult. Humanitarian and human rights workers in villages are almost invariably viewed with suspicion. On 17 July two activists who had been carrying out investigations into human rights violations in Central Aceh were detained for two days and their research results confiscated as they were returning to Banda Aceh. Others delivering humanitarian aid to displaced people have been accused of cooperating with GAM, because of their 'free access' to villages where GAM operates. Meanwhile, GAM has consolidated its structures at the village level. There have been reports of members of GAM extorting and intimidating some NGOs, in particular those who choose not to come out in support of a referendum for Aceh.
'If a lawyer in South Aceh can be killed, anyone can be next.' This sentiment has been expressed by a number of activists in Banda Aceh. Some of them are now being questioned in connection with the same defamation case as Tengku Al-Kamal. This appears to be an attempt by the police to gather more information about the activities of NGOs in Banda Aceh.
In spite of the difficult environment in which they operate, Acehnese activists say they are determined to continue their work. At the same time, they are developing strategies to enable them to carry out this work without being harassed, detained, tortured or killed.
Protective accompaniment
There are some positive signs in this respect. One is the establishment of formal and informal networks throughout the province. Women's organisations were perhaps the pioneers in this respect, establishing networks at the village level already during the DOM. Students have also been pro-active. Meanwhile, following a conference of torture victims in Aceh in November 2000, survivors formed a network headed by SPKP (Solidaritas Persaudaraan Korban Pelanggaran HAM Aceh, Association of Victims of Human Rights Abuse).
At the national level, the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) has established a branch office in Banda Aceh, as have national human rights organisations Kontras and LBH. These organisations are playing an important role in impressing the human rights situation in Aceh on the national conscience.
The number of international organisations in Aceh is relatively small compared to other Indonesian trouble spots. One initiative is the 'protective accompaniment' carried out by Peace Brigades International. By providing a physical presence, PBI aims to deter threats against Acehnese human rights defenders, thereby creating a space for them to continue to carry out their work. For example, when one activist was informed that his life was in danger because his name was on a list of high profile Acehnese sympathetic to GAM, members of PBI's team in Aceh stayed with him for forty-eight hours, until he was able to leave the province. PBI volunteers have maintained a presence outside NGO offices, and accompanied activists to meetings, the airport, the police station or their homes. This not only helps to deter threats but is also a very visible show of solidarity and support of the work done by Acehnese human rights defenders.
In spite of these initiatives, as of July 2001 the prevailing feeling is that the space in which activists in Aceh are operating is becoming smaller and smaller. Yet no sustainable solution to the armed conflict in Aceh can be reached only by the power brokers. It has to involve all levels of society. Acehnese NGOs represent many voices of civil society at the grassroots level. They are still the key to ending the violent conflict. Their security must be protected and their work should be seen not as a threat, but as a vital part of any functioning democratic society.
Signe Poulsen is a volunteer with Peace Brigades International (www.peacebrigades.org).
Inside Indonesia 68: Oct - Dec 2001
Page 53 of 67
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