Aceh is a neglected human rights horror story.
IRIP News Service
Marwan Yatim (see article 'In the Tigers Den' this issue) was lucky. He escaped with his life. A local government enquiry recently concluded 430 had died in 1989- 92, while 320 remain missing. Hundreds of houses were burned, cattle, cars and jewelry stolen. And that was only in the North Aceh regency of Aceh province. Data on the possibly hundreds of women raped remains sparse.
Just over a month after Suharto's resignation, local newspapers in Aceh, north Sumatra, began a determined campaign to expose abuses during a military anti-secessionist operation between 1989 and 1992. The metropolitan press soon picked it up.
Early in August the National Human Rights Commission said the situation in Aceh had been worse than that in East Timor and Irian Jaya. A few days later the Commission was digging up mass graves under the media spotlight. Many more graves remain unopened.
In response, armed forces commander General Wiranto on 7 August went to Aceh to apologise for human rights abuses, and to announce that the province's dubious 'special operations' status had been revoked. Much aid has flowed into Aceh since then.
Acehnese proudly remember Sultan Iskandar Muda (ruled 1607-36), who made Aceh the most powerful state in the region. Europeans began seriously to press in during the imperialistic nineteenth century. In 1873 the Dutch launched a costly and bloody war against Aceh. Despite superior arms, it took them four decades to win effective control against Acehnese guerrilla tactics.
When Indonesia proclaimed its independence in 1945, Acehnese leaders lent crucial support. But they were disappointed that Jakarta gave Islam, and themselves, far less importance than they had hoped. Aceh joined a major regional rebellion in 1953. Fighting wound down after the Acehnese won an agreement with Jakarta in 1959 that extended autonomy to Aceh.
In 1971 Mobil Oil discovered massive natural gas reserves in North Aceh. The Lhokseumawe liquid natural gas plant became the biggest in the world, supplying 30% of Indonesia's oil and gas exports. Industries mushroomed around it, and with it pollution and social disruption.
However, the Acehnese were well aware there was little in it for them. This was perhaps the main reason for the resurgence in 1989 of an Acehnese secessionist movement that had been led for years by Hasan di Tiro from his exile in Stockholm. The military crackdown that followed left deep wounds in Acehnese society that are only now being exposed.
Wiranto's apology is not enough. The Acehnese want justice for the terrible abuses of 1989-92, and they want a better deal on the natural wealth of the region. They also want independence, or at least they want the 1959 autonomy agreement revived.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Suharto always said it was the communists. Yet from the start, says Colonel Latief, Suharto himself was involved.
Greg Poulgrain
Indonesian President BJ Habibie has refused to release Colonel Latief, whose arrest in 1965 for involvement in a military coup was followed by Major-General Suharto's rise to the presidency.
Habibie has granted amnesty to 73 other political prisoners, even to members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) accused of involvement in the 1965 coup attempt. Refusing amnesty to Latief now shows how Suharto overshadows Habibie.
Interviewed in Cipinang Prison, Jakarta, three days after Suharto resigned, Latief told me that he expected never to be released. Despite various kidney operations and the stroke he suffered last year, Latief is still very alert. His explanation for his involvement in 1965 directly implicates Suharto.
By late 1965, President Sukarno was ailing and without a successor. Tension between the PKI and the armed forces was growing. Conspiracies rumours were rife. Who would make the first move?
On the night of 30 September 1965, six hours before the military coup, Latief confirmed with Suharto that the plan to kidnap seven army generals would soon start. Latief was an officer attached to the Jakarta military command. As head of the Army Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad), Suharto held the optimum position to crush the operation, so his name should have been at the top of the list. When troops who conducted the kidnappings asked why Suharto was not on the list, they were told: 'Because he is one of us'.
There was a rumour the seven generals were intending to seize power from Sukarno. Latief and two other army officers in the operation, Lieutenant-Colonel Untung (in charge of some of the troops guarding Sukarno's palace) and General Supardjo (a commander from Kalimantan), planned to kidnap the generals and bring them before President Sukarno to explain themselves.
The 30th September Movement was thus a limited pre-emptive strike by pro-Sukarno officers against anti-Sukarno officers. They kidnapped the generals and occupied strategic centres in Jakarta's main square, without touching Suharto's headquarters. The plan involved no killing, but it went terribly wrong and six of the seven died.
Although Untung was assigned responsibility for collecting the generals, this crucial task was then taken over by a certain Kamaruzzaman alias Sjam, evidently a 'double agent' with contacts in the Jakarta military command as well as the PKI. At his trial, Sjam admitted responsibility for killing the generals but blamed the PKI under Aidit. In 1965 when Suharto accused the PKI of responsibility for killing the generals, the Sjam-Aidit link gave Suharto enough leverage to convince his contemporaries.
Between Sjam and Suharto there was a twenty-year friendship going back to the fight against the Dutch in Central Java in 1948-49. This strengthened in the late 1950s when both attended the Bandung Staff College.
Suharto was also on close terms with Untung, who served under him during the campaign to reclaim Netherlands New Guinea in 1962 and who became a family friend.
During his trial in 1978, not only did Latief explain that he met Suharto on the night of the coup, but also that several days before he met both Suharto and his wife in the privacy of Suharto's home to discuss the overall plan. The court declared that this information was 'not relevant'.
Suharto, more than anybody, described the events that night as 'communist inspired'. Suharto's claim that he saw the slain generals' bodies had been sexually mutilated was shown to be deliberately false by post-mortem documents, not revealed till decades later. This false claim provoked months of killings against communists, particularly in Bali and Central and East Java.
The PKI, numbering 20 million, were mostly rice farmers. Accused en masse they became victims in one of the worst massacres this century. In the opinion of the author, many writers underestimated the death toll, which may be around one million persons. Another 700,000 were imprisoned without trial. The most notorious general involved, Sarwo Edhie, claimed not one but two million were killed. 'And we did a good job', he added. Traumatised by violence, the nation became politically malleable.
Using Suharto's own categorisation of crimes related to 1965, his prior knowledge of the alleged coup places him in 'Category A' involvement - the same as those who faced execution or life imprisonment.
The release of Colonel Latief is a litmus test of Habibie's willingness to promote genuine reform. Fewer than ten long term prisoners remain. Latief has pleaded: 'Most of them are already 70 years old and fragile. For the sake of humanity, please take notice of us.'
Dr Greg Poulgrain <g.poulgrain@qut.edu.au> is a research fellow at the School of Humanities, QUT Carseldine.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Islam is more important today than ever before. Four leading individuals state their case.
Hisanori Kato
'Milik pribumi', owned by natives. I saw this sign on the shutters of shops from the window of a city minibus. Its owners first put up the sign to avoid the wrath of rioters targeting Chinese businesses last May. At the end of September 1998, everything in Jakarta seemed normal, except this sign and some ruined buildings.
I knew something significant was going on in this society. Democratisation? Reformation? Or political manoeuvre for survival? I really wanted to find out what it was. So I decided to visit the people who would be key players in this 'something'.
Gus Dur
His doctor advised Abdurrahman Wahid, affectionately known as Gus Dur and the chairperson of Nahdatul Ulama, to work less. But his life seemed as hectic as before his operation in January 1998. I was lucky enough to have a long conversation with him. His warm, friendly and humorous nature made me feel at home, and brought lots of laughs to our discussion.
Yet he became serious when I asked him about racial and religious tension in Indonesia. 'Muslims blame non-Muslims (mainly ethnic Chinese), and also non-Muslims complain about their condition. This needs to be reconciled.' He went on: 'I am very much willing to head a National Reconciliation Committee if it is formed.'
'What do you think Suharto should do now?' I asked him. 'He should return all the money he collected during his presidency to the treasury of Indonesia, and apologise to the people.' 'That is a good idea. Would you tell Suharto to do it?' 'It might be hard for Suharto to come to me directly. But if he sends his daughter Tutut to me, I would pass on the message. If Suharto does it, I will do everything to clear his name.' And he laughed.
Gus Dur talked about the wrongdoings of Suharto's government - human rights abuses and corruption. But he is realistic about the prospects of immediate change. 'Change is a process. It takes a long time to change something. I think it might take two more elections to have civilians for both president and vice- president. Also, Abri's dual function can not be abolished right away.'
Knowing that some Nahdatul Ulama (NU) intellectuals are frustrated with Gus Dur's 'realist' political stance and autocratic attitude, I asked him about conflict within NU. 'I listen to other people's opinions, but I have to make a decision in the end. I know some people, especially young intellectuals, are not happy with my "slow" approach to reformation. But we talk about it. We also laugh about it. It is OK to have different attitudes and ideas because I belong to "Today's Generation" while they belong to "Tomorrow's Generation".'
I just nodded because I knew that although some NU people are critical of Gus Dur, they love him as they do their own fathers. He mentioned several NU young people as Tomorrow's Generation, and he also added Amien Rais. This was rather surprising to me.
Amien Rais
TV crews from Korea and America, journalists from Italy and three Indonesian magazines were waiting for Amien Rais when I had an appointment with him. He was a major player in the movement that brought down Suharto, and is now a presidential candidate as chairperson of the National Mandate Party. The party is based in the religious organisation Muhammadiyah, which Amien Rais chaired until recently.
I had little confidence I would be able to interview him on that day. However, I managed to catch him when he stepped out of his office. 'Pak Amien, do you remember when you were writing your PhD dissertation in Chicago? I am now in the same position. Would you spare some time for me?' He looked at me, and smiled. 'OK, I can give you some time.'
My first question to him was very simple. 'Did you change?' I had in mind the reports in times past that he was anti-Christian. He immediately said: 'Yes, it is a natural process. A stone never changes, I am not a stone.' 'In what way did you change?', I asked. 'I now have more appreciation of the plurality of the nation, and feel the necessity of building a strong nation.'
He told me of the time about three months earlier when Jakob Oetama, chief editor of the largely Catholic daily Kompas, came to visit him. He said: 'Amien, you are moving from a leader of Muhammadiyah to a leader of the nation. You need to make a step to be a leader of this nation'. 'It was exactly what I was feeling', Amien Rais went on, 'so I agreed with him, and here I am now.'
His willingness to lead the country was expressed throughout our conversation. As his ideas sounded very much like Gus Dur's, I asked him what he thought about the difference between the two. 'Probably, Gus Dur would be happy if more positions go to NU. But I want more than that, I want the leadership of the nation.'
At the same time, he was aware of criticism of his political style. 'I know that I am too straight and "un-Indonesian",' he said. 'But it doesn't really matter to me. It is better to express my opinions explicitly rather than hiding them.'
My last question to him was also simple. 'Who are your political heroes?' After a short pause, he said: 'J F Kennedy, Churchill, Gorbachev, Neru... of course, Sukarno, too.' Fadli Zon
Fadli Zon probably has a reputation as a hard-line Muslim. This young intellectual is one of the chairpersons of the recently established Moon and Star Party (Partai Bulan Bintang), which brings together some of the ideals and personalities of the intensely Islamic Masyumi party of the 1950s. He is always willing to explain his political stance. The main goal of his party, he said diplomatically, is to establish a 'better system'.
'I think Indonesian farmers should be protected. For example, wheat imports from America hinder the prosperity of Indonesian farmers. This has to be changed. To establish a fair system is important,' he said.
According to him, the pribumi (native Indonesians) are lagging behind in the economy. 'Affirmative action is necessary until the pribumi can stand on the same line as the non-pribumi,' he explained.
However, he said he did not approve of the anti-Chinese violence symbolised by the 'Milik pribumi' signs. 'Islamic principle is to protect minority peoples', he said clearly. 'This should be done by law.'
His party is regarded as more Islamic-oriented than the others, so I wanted to know about his idea of an Islamic state. 'We are not proposing an Islamic state, but are promoting a better system.'
'How about Pancasila?' I asked, referring to the ideology that has since 1945 been seen as a bulwark against both a communist and an Islamic state. 'We agree with it as a basic idea of the nation, but disagree that everyone has to accept it as a principle. Let political parties choose their own ideologies except communism.'
The last conversation I had with him was about his stay in America as an exchange student when he was in high school. 'I was in Texas for a year. My host family was Christian and they are nice people. I still keep in touch with them. They are my friends.'
Bismar Siregar
'I love Suharto.' It was not in the early 1990s, but September 1998. I was stunned when a seventy-year old former Supreme Court judge said this to me. For Bismar Siregar, Islamic moral principle is crucial in Indonesia today. 'In Islam, forgiveness is very important. Love others as you do yourself.' Looking at his gentle eyes, I remembered a Japanese Buddhist word: jihi, compassion.
As a legal expert, Bismar is of course well aware of Suharto's misdeeds. However, he dares to say that reconciliation can not be realised without forgiveness. He believes that forgiving Suharto would make him repent. It seems that almost everyone in Indonesia today hates Suharto. But Bismar thinks it is hypocrisy when people who enjoyed the New Order now criticise Suharto. 'Suharto's fault is one part of our fault, too', he added, as if he were telling himself.
When I left his office, he said 'Goodbye' in Japanese. He learned it during the Japanese occupation. I believe that he has already forgiven Japanese militarism. I thanked him for his compassion. And I wondered how Suharto would respond to Bismar.
Political development in Indonesia is rapid. Gus Dur, Amien Rais, and Fadli Zon are associated with major political parties such as the NU-based National Awakening Party PKB, the National Mandate Party PAN, and the Moon and Star Party PBB. We know that their path is not smooth. Just how PKB implements Gus Dur's modern and tolerant ideas will make a crucial difference. PAN is also struggling to maintain its inclusive orientation. The sensitive issue of the protection of minorities is always around PBB.
Only time will tell what will happen. Yet, one thing for sure is that the seeds of change and the will to create a better society exist in Indonesia. And the idea of democracy is ubiquitous. The conversations with four Muslims prove this.
Hisanori Kato is a PhD student in the School of Studies in Religion, University of Sydney. He comes from Japan.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Post-Suharto, the opportunities are wide open. Time is short. But a democracy that lasts must be built on solid ideas rather than popular individuals or religion.
Olle Tornquist speaks with Gerry van Klinken
What first drew you to Indonesia?
In the early 70's I wasn't interested in Indonesia but in what was missing in Marxism and why many radical popular movements in the Third World were failing. So what actually drew me to Indonesia was the destruction of its huge communist party.
But even studies of general theories have to be contextualised. And since empirical exploration rather than old theories have been points of departure in my efforts since the late 80's to analyse popular politics of democratisation, Indonesia 'in itself' has gradually become more important to me. But as an Indonesianist, I remain a fake!
Few expected Suharto to resign as quickly as he did. What really brought him down?
Let's look back. Because actually expectations have varied over time and with the theories in vogue. Till the late 70's or so, most radicals kept on analysing the New Order regime in terms of an unstable neo-colonial and parasitic dictatorship.
But the regime didn't fall, and many realised that the 'parasites' did invest some of their rents. So both students of the rise of capital and of clientelism began to emphasise continuity instead þ this thing might last forever. They tended to look on studies of popular movements for political change as idealistic and a waste of time.
And then, of course, there was the West's lack of interest in supporting democratic forces 'that couldn't even offer a realistic alternative'. So yes, in many circles the crisis and Suharto's resignation was somewhat unexpected.
What really was to oust him became apparent to me only with the crackdown on the democracy movement in mid '96. That wasn't 'business as usual', as many would have it.
The regime, on the one hand, proved totally unable to regulate conflicts, reform itself, and prepare an 'orderly' succession. When the financial crisis spread to Indonesia a year later the regime could not restore the confidence of investors, regardless of what economic prescription it tried - since that would have required fundamental political reforms.
The dissidents, on the other hand, were too poorly organised to make a difference on their own, and they were still neglected by the West. Instead, the West entrusted the problem to neo-classical IMF economists and their colleagues in Jakarta.
On May 4 1998 the political illiteracy of the economists combined with Suharto's attempt to prove that he was in control, caused the regime to increase prices even further than the IMF had sought.
Unorganised public anger thereupon gave a new dimension to the student demonstrations that had hitherto been rather isolated. Factions of the army tried making things worse to get an excuse to regain control by afterwards restoring 'law and order'. The rats began abandoning the sinking ship, and the captain had to choose between going down with it or resigning.
So in essence the problem was political: the inability of the regime to handle conflicts, to reform itself and thus restore confidence in the market place; the inability of the democracy movement to organise the widespread discontent among people, relying instead on student activists as organic spearheads; and the inability of the West and the IMF to boost reform and democratic forces that may have prevented social and economic disaster.
How would you describe what has happened in politics since Suharto's resignation?
To keep it brief, most actors focus on how to alter the old regime. Everybody is busy repositioning themselves, consolidating their assets, and forming new parties and alliances. Incumbents (and their military and business allies) are delaying changes and forming favourable new political laws in order to be able to adapt, making whatever concessions are necessary to be able to steer their course. Established dissidents, meanwhile, trade in their reputations and, occasionally, their popular followings, for reform and 'positions'.
There is a shortage of time. Even old democrats go for shortcuts like charisma, populism, religion, and patronage in order to swiftly incorporate rather than gradually integrate people into politics. Radicals try to sustain popular protests to weaken shameless incumbents who might otherwise be able to stay on.
Of course the markets and the West are mainly interested in anything that looks stable enough to permit the pay-back of loans and safe returns on investments.
Habibie and most of his ministers are New Order people. Yet they do not enjoy New Order powers. Doesn't that make this post-Suharto period 'somewhat' democratic?
Yes the rulers are weaker. For some years, even sections of the Habibie's association for Islamic intellectuals Icmi have had limited democratic reforms on their agenda, like their friend Anwar in Malaysia. By now, any new regime will have to be legitimised in terms of rule of law and democracy. There are continuos negotiations over new rules of the game. And there are a lot of opportunities. Genuine democrats, however, are short of capacity to make use of them. They now cannot rally opposition against an authoritarian ruler. They need instead to mobilise people in society on the basis of different interests and ideas. But that is much more difficult.
Incumbents and others with economic, military and political resources prefer elitist and limited forms of democracy. Sections of the middle class may well support ideas about a rather authoritarian but enlightened law and order state. Especially if actual democracy will mean that local strongmen and religious, military and business leaders mobilise the voters with the use of God, gold, goons and guns, only to divide the spoils among themselves.
These are risky days. What is the biggest danger? What are the signs of hope?
The danger I'm most afraid of is the historical tendency for local political violence to increase as central power becomes weaker and more divided. Less efficient top-down suppression of all the latent conflicts on the local level, centring on food, land and other vital resources, leaves space for not just democratic forces but also for devastating conspiracies and manipulation. As we talk, the killings in East Java, for instance, are still going on.
The best signs of hope, on the other hand, we rarely notice. They are difficult to extrapolate from what we know of Indonesia until the fall of Suharto. The so-called political opportunity structure is changing.
Three brief examples. First, it is no longer possible to simply repress angry workers. Even the most stubborn hardliners realise that it's better to negotiate with representative unions. So it may be possible for labour activists to take the initiative and cautiously enter into this field with a rather good bargaining position, since their opponents really need genuine representatives with whom to strike solid deals.
Second, after the financial crisis even sections of the IMF and the World Bank realise it's time for improved regulations. Neo-liberalism is on the retreat. Hence, there are ample opportunities to continue the struggle for democratisation and so-called 'good governance'.
Third, there will be comparatively free elections on all levels. And though there are many constraints those are opportunities for hitherto rather isolated activists (including 'liberated' journalists) to reach out, link up with grass roots initiatives, and build genuine mass organisations, including democratic watch movements.
What kind of reform is the most crucial, and the most feasible, right now? What should outsiders be supporting?
In Indonesia (as some ten years ago in Eastern Europe) the state and organised politics are seen as bad, and 'civil society' as good. When authoritarian politics have to be undermined there is much to this idea, but now there is less. Now it's high time to mobilise strength in negotiations by organising people and building a democratic culture. I do not share the view that support for civil society is always the best way of doing this. In many cases, such as the backing of free journalists, there are no problems, but all civil society associations do not necessarily promote democracy. And what is political culture but routinely practised remnants of yesterday's rules, institutions, and organised politics? Hence, it's on the level of formal rules and institutions on the one hand, and of organised politics on the other, that change and improvements have to start.
It is essential for the democratic forces to give priority to organising constituencies based on shared societal interests and ideas. They should not go for tempting shortcuts. Without well-anchored politics and unionism there will be no meaningful democracy.
Equally important, all efforts - including ours from outside - must be made to oppose new political rules of the game that make such efforts increasingly difficult, and to mobilise support for better alternatives.
One example is the need to back up genuine labour groups and unions by involving them in the distribution of support for the unemployed. Another is the new electoral law. Not only does it retain corporate military representation. It is also tailor made to promote local boss- rule in one-man constituencies and to prevent proportional representation of small but potentially genuine parties.
Finally, of course, in the run-up to the elections there must be massive support for independent voters education and electoral watch movements. The objective should be to build constituencies for the future among genuine democrats at the grass roots level.
Olle Tornquist commutes between Sweden and Norway where he is professor of politics and development at the University of Oslo. He is the author of 'Dilemmas of Third World communism' and 'What's wrong with Marxism?' (based on Indonesia and India), and the new textbook 'Politics and development - A critical introduction'.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
She is much more than an opposition politician. Megawati is an idol. And possibly Indonesia's fourth president.
Stefan Eklof
On 8 October 1998 the leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) and daughter of Indonesia's first president Sukarno, Megawati Sukarnoputri, opened the party's fifth congress in Sanur in southern Bali. The opening session was held on a large field in the outskirts of the Balinese capital Denpasar. Hundreds of thousands of Megawati's supporters dressed in the party's colours red and black flocked to the field to hear her speech.
Many had travelled for days to Bali from all over the archipelago to take part in the celebrations around the congress and to show their support for Megawati. Most of the audience, however, were Balinese youths from around the island.
As Megawati ascended the speaker's podium, the masses could hardly contain their excitement, ecstatically shouting 'Mega! Mega!'. For almost an hour, Megawati laid out her vision for Indonesia in the post-Suharto era, frequently interrupted by loud applause and choruses of approval.
Afterwards congress delegates moved to the Grand Bali Beach Hotel in Sanur to hold the rest of the sessions, all of which were closed to the public. The congress went smoothly. There were few visible lines of division between the delegates, and no disturbances occurred during any of the three congress days.
Megawati was unanimously re-elected party leader. Moreover the congress decided to nominate her as the party's candidate for the coming presidential election in November 1999.
Justice
Commonplace as it may seem, the decision by a political party to nominate its leader as a presidential candidate is unique in Indonesia's political history. No party ever dared to challenge Sukarno for the presidency before he was forced by the military to hand over power in 1966. Under the New Order, the political system was carefully designed to preserve Suharto's single candidacy for the presidency.
The government employed a range of manipulative and repressive measures to achieve this and to silence dissenting voices. In June 1996, after Megawati had hinted she might stand as a candidate in the March 1998 presidential election, the government engineered a PDI congress which ousted her as party leader and reinstated the party's former leader, Suryadi.
However, Megawati refused to acknowledge the legality of that congress, not even after Suryadi's PDI faction, backed by the military and by hired thugs, attacked and ousted her supporters from the party's central headquarters in Jakarta on 27 July 1996. At least five people were killed in the attack, which triggered the worst riot in Jakarta in more than a decade, with thousands of people burning and looting shops and government buildings in the area around the party headquarters.
Megawati continued to assert that she was the legitimate leader of the PDI, and she refused to compromise with the government and the Suryadi faction. However, the government barred her from participating in the May 1997 election. The PDI consequently performed disastrously, collecting only 3.1% of the votes, down from 14.9% in 1992. The result was widely interpreted as a sign of public disgust with the government's treatment of Megawati.
The government consistently denied her any formal role in politics. Even after Suharto resigned in May 1998 and the political climate opened up, the Habibie government continued only to acknowledge the PDI faction led by Suryadi. In August 1998 the faction held a government sponsored congress in Palu, Central Sulawesi. Here Suryadi was replaced with Budi Harjono, who had been the government's preferred candidate for the PDI chair in 1993, when Megawati first was elected.
Megawati's ousting in 1996 and the government's subsequent rough treatment of her, helped to heighten the public sense of injustice and lack of democracy under the New Order. Meanwhile, Megawati managed to stay in the political limelight through her uncompromising stance toward the government. While the affair exposed the government's heavy-handedness and manipulative methods, it also served to boost Megawati's public reputation for justice and incorruptibility.
'Megamania'
It was no coincidence that Megawati chose Bali as the venue for her congress in October. Bali is one of her strongest provinces of support. Many Balinese still hold Sukarno in high esteem - his mother was Balinese. As the congress approached, Megawati's popularity was clearly visible all around the island. The Balinese put Megawati and Sukarno posters outside their houses and stickers on their cars. Along the roads there were red flags with the PDI symbol of a buffalo head, and the text 'Pro- Megawati'.
Motorbikes had similar flags hanging from behind. People wore red T-shirts, capes, headbands and accessories with party attributes, such as badges, necklaces and key rings. Large home-painted billboards of Sukarno and Megawati decorated the roadsides in many villages.
Young Megawati supporters built bamboo sheds on poles in their neighbourhoods and hamlets, all painted red and decorated with posters of Megawati and political slogans. In the evenings, the youngsters assembled in the sheds to talk politics and to listen to protest songs and recordings of Megawati's opening speech of the congress. Every day, from the early afternoon until late at night, the main roads around Denpasar were crammed with thousands of people, mostly young men and teenagers, who rode around town in large and lively caravans of motorbikes, cars and trucks. Sitting on top of their vehicles or hanging out the windows, the celebrators tirelessly waved their red flags and shouted 'Mega! Mega!' or 'Hidup Mega!' (Long Live Mega) in chorus.
This exuberant eruption of political activity among the Balinese took place after several decades of repression of political activity. The Suharto regime aimed at depoliticising Indonesia's masses. It destroyed or emasculated existing political parties. The only approved political activity was to express support for the government's electoral vehicle, Golkar. Activists for other parties were often harassed.
Suharto's resignation in May brought about a more open political climate. It led to a virtual explosion of long-suppressed political activity around the country. Megawati's congress provided a welcome opportunity for the Balinese to celebrate their new-won political freedom.
Idol
Political commentators have often criticised Megawati for being a weak politician, lacking fundamental understanding of politics and economics and having little in terms of a concrete political program. Relevant as this critique may seem, it is primarily a view held by the political elites in Indonesia.
For Megawati's young followers, she is much more than an opposition politician, she is an idol. One Balinese high school student said: 'Megawati has been my idol ever since junior high school. [...] Because of her self-confidence, Megawati dares to be oppositional [and] to fight continuously to defend the truth.' Another student said: 'Mega is a super woman. She dares to face any obstacle whatsoever. I hope I can become like her.'
While there is no doubt that Megawati's popularity largely derives from her father's name, that does not go all the way to explain it. Megawati is able to benefit from her father's popularity because she has built a reputation for certain moral qualities of her own. Megawati's struggle against the New Order government boosted her reputation for justice, righteousness, integrity and political courage. These are also qualities that Sukarno's name represents to those Indonesians who still hold the former president's name dear. Many people also tend to see Megawati's struggle for justice against the New Order as an analogy to Sukarno's struggle for justice and independence against the Dutch in the 1930s.
Since Suharto's resignation in May, discussion about the wide- spread corruption and injustice under the New Order has created much public resentment. In contrast, Megawati symbolises justice and is untainted by corruption. She enjoys broad support among poor Indonesians who feel strongly that they were disadvantaged under the New Order, and who have yet to see things change for the better.
President?
Young Balinese showed extra-ordinary enthusiasm for Megawati, but she has large followings all around the country and from all generations. Many of her supporters belong to the poor urban masses who are among the hardest hit by the current economic crisis. If the May 1999 election even roughly reflects the popular political will, the PDI under Megawati may very well become Indonesia's largest political party, collecting perhaps 25-30% of the votes. Apart from Golkar, the PDI stands out as the only major non-Islamic political alternative.
Islamic credentials are no doubt an advantage in a country where close to 90% of the population are Muslim. But many non-Muslims and moderate Muslims are suspicious of political Islamic aspirations, and this works to Megawati's benefit. If after next year's election the PDI can strike a deal with one or more of the moderate Muslim parties, then Megawati stands a good chance of becoming Indonesia's fourth president in November 1999.
Stefan Eklof is a PhD student writing about the PDI at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author of 'Indonesian politics in crisis' (NIAS, expected out early 1999).
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Beyond humanitarian assistance, should our aid program stress 'governance' or 'human rights'? Actually, both.
Philip Eldridge
There are many different ways of perceiving Indonesia's 'crisis', with many corresponding Australian responses. But the extent of human suffering, social and economic disruption experienced by the Indonesian people is undeniable. And there is widespread agreement that the humanitarian crisis and political reform must be confronted interdependently.
Such a convergence between the need for humanitarian aid and political reform offers real opportunities for change in Indonesia. But given the great uncertainty of the whole situation, and the need for action and balance across many fronts, it is important that no-one pushes their diagnoses and prescriptions to extremes, insisting on false choices between government and non-government, macro and micro level action, short-term emergency relief and longer term development, incremental programs and deeper structural change.
While everyone must specialise, we can now see how, for example, seemingly obscure issues of financial management can impact at the base of society. On the other hand, while holistic solutions are essential, these can too easily paralyse specific action on any front.
Nevertheless, there are important differences in the way various groups perceive the connection between politics and economics. A useful guide to these differences is to compare 'governance' and human rights approaches.
Governance agendas focus on issues of legal due process, accountability and transparency, open and honest elections, efficient public administration and economic management, systems and structures supportive of the conduct of commerce according to clear market rules.
By comparison, human rights principles are more normative and universal, emphasising the dignity and the physical, social and cultural well-being of the human person.
The 1993 UN Vienna Declaration asserted the indivisibility of political and legal rights from economic, social and cultural rights, often artificially divided by both earlier Cold War and ongoing 'East versus West' and 'North versus South' rhetoric.
Here my aim is to clarify means and ends, rather than setting up yet another false dichotomy of the kind I warned against earlier. It would also be wrong to see the Australian government as exclusively pursuing governance, and NGOs as entirely committed to human rights. The Australian government combines the two in sometimes confusing ways. NGOs, while basically supportive of human rights values, often find legalistic and prescriptive aspects of human rights agendas in conflict with their core participatory and voluntarist concepts of partnership.
There are many obvious points of compatibility between governance and human rights concepts. Sound structures of law, government and commerce are essential to achieving human rights. But notions of justice and mutual obligation, closely linked to rights, appear to be lacking from governance models, whose language has in part been captured to serve goals of neo-liberal economics and to justify International Monetary Fund (IMF) packages of doubtful value to Indonesia.
Conversely, a thoroughgoing human rights approach would accord basic health, nutrition, education and employment opportunities a central place, alongside civil and political rights. Requirements on signatory states to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) to 'respect, protect and fulfil' such rights place clear obligations on both Australia and Indonesia.
Shallow
Indonesia's experience shows the shallowness of earlier development efforts, in face of deep-rooted poverty structures. Despite acknowledged, though often exaggerated improvements in basic indicators for the majority under Suharto, concentration of wealth at the top end of Indonesian society produced a too narrow base to survive full exposure to international market regimes.
The crisis faced by Indonesia's poor - again the large majority - has deepened on all major fronts. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that about 100 million Indonesians are in danger of falling below the poverty line in 1999, and more than twenty million are unemployed as a result of falling demand and production.
Growing malnutrition among children carries real dangers of their suffering long-term brain damage. The FAO has further projected an increase of 47% in rice import requirements for 1999 compared with its forecast in April, though recent news may suggest a partial recovery.
The effectiveness of Australia's contribution will in large measure depend on both the efforts of the international community and sustained 'political will' by Indonesia. The spirit in which it is given will also affect future relations. While the wisdom of Australian efforts to soften IMF conditionalities has been questioned by many Indonesians seeking political change, assertions of solidarity in hard times ('in for the long haul... not a fair weather friend' etc) by Australian leaders seem to have been mostly well received, as they have been backed up by solid financial and other support.
However, the rather didactic tone accompanying recent suggestions of a new Australian leadership role in overcoming the regional crisis requires modifying towards a language of dialogue if effective cooperation is to be maintained.
AusAid
Australian government responses have largely followed the 'governance' approach, though tempered by a considerable humanitarian spirit. Many new programs relate to statistical data gathering, financial and economic management in both public and private sectors, while new fields of technical assistance and professional exchange are opened up.
Given the overall tight budgetary climate, increases in financial allocations to Indonesia have been significant. Australia's annual pledge to the World Bank sponsored Consortium Group for Indonesia (CGI) rose from AU$74 million in July 1997 to AU$120 million in July 1998. Additionally, Indonesia may win up to half of a new AU$6m Asia Crisis Fund open to competitive bidding within the official aid agency AusAid. Flexibility has also been extended to local counterpart costs, which have risen by up to 100%.
AusAid has joined with the World Bank in supporting a scholarship scheme for secondary school students, aimed at keeping them at school during hard times. But the mass of poor children never proceed beyond primary level, while basic nutrition programs are essential to maintaining school attendance. Many local groups and small NGOs are either unaware of or are unable to access such schemes. Monitoring of World Bank programs has now become a major concern, not least to the Bank itself, particularly with regard to lower level distribution channels.
Drought relief and food aid have been stepped up, both directly and through NGOs, together with ongoing programs in the field of water supply and agriculture. Technical assistance is being supplied to programs coordinated by Indonesia's National Planning Institute (Bappenas) and the World Bank to design and monitor labour intensive works programs in four eastern Indonesian provinces, including drought relief programs.
At the same time, Australian exports of wheat and cotton will benefit from higher export insurance cover up to $900 million. Finally, in responding across a wider front, it appears that AusAid will maintain its long-term commitment to Eastern Indonesia, one of Indonesia's poorest regions, where experience, infrastructure and relationships have been steadily built up.
Beyond government
There has been an encouraging range of responses from semi- government and non-government groups, partly supported from AusAid funds. In the area of legal and human rights, AusAid has supported the Asian Forum of National Human Rights Institutions through the (Australian) Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), which provides the Secretariat. The Forum is an important vehicle for cooperation between HREOC and Indonesia's National Human Rights Commission.
The newly established Centre for Democratic Institutions will emphasise exchanges between practitioners in fields such as public administration, electoral practice and constitutional law.
The Australian Legal Resources Group, acting as funding arm for the International Commission of Jurists, cooperates with Indonesian NGOs and members of the judiciary in evaluations, exchanges and training. Administrative law and judicial ethics have been selected as key areas. Transparency International Australia is working with Indonesian NGOs towards a 'national integrity' workshop ahead of elections due in May 1999.
Space does not allow coverage of efforts across many fields, while some groups, on the advice of Indonesian partners, prefer to avoid publicity. Media is an emerging field of cooperation. Despite long standing links on the labour front, effective cooperation between Indonesian NGOs and the international union movement has yet to be established. Here, a large influx of US aid funds may distort goals of labour and democratic organisation more generally.
Smaller scale, but significant programs featured in the recent Australian Council For Overseas Aid (ACFOA) workshop included self-help groups working directly with the urban poor, assisted by Australian and New Zealand expatriates in Indonesia and individuals based in Australia. Some young Australians have been inspired by the generosity of Indonesians amidst their own poverty to conduct a round Australia cycle fund-raising tour.
My conclusion is both practical and theoretical. In action terms, Indonesia's crisis is multi-faceted, with opportunities for cooperation across the full spectrum of Australian and Indonesian life and society. Such efforts can and do make a difference provided they are contextualised and undertaken in a spirit of partnership.
Aims underlying my more political advocacy of a human rights approach - yet to be fully developed in Australia's regional relations - include: (1) balancing more technocratic aspects of the 'governance' agenda with an ethos of rights, justice and mutual obligation; (2) reinforcing integration and 'indivisibility' between politico-legal and socio-cultural- economic spheres of action; and (3) strengthening holistic perspectives of the Australia-Indonesia partnership in overcoming poverty.
Dr Eldridge is Honorary Research Associate, Department of Government, University of Tasmania. He is currently researching Australian human rights policies in Southeast Asia.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Indonesia's fragile post-Suharto transition is threatened by social conflict as much as by squabbles among the elite. But this international meeting of non-government organisations declares that the uncertainty is all the more reason to push on towards democracy.
Infid (and friends)
Indonesia's political situation is uncertain. The hand-over of power from Suharto to Habibie merely created an even more serious political crisis. The armed forces Abri, one of the pillars of the New Order, is experiencing delegitimation over revelations that they were involved in serious human rights violations such as kidnapping political activists and killing demonstrators. Yet Abri is still on the political stage, and the possibility that 'reformasi' may be reversed and turned back to authoritarianism remains very great. Recently, for example, there have been signs of increasing violence and the suspicion that murders are being committed for political ends.
The economic crisis, meanwhile, has grown more serious. Although in October the rupiah strengthened somewhat, this has coincided with signs of the impending collapse of global capitalism. In other words, the Indonesian economy faces not merely a national crisis but a global economic recession. The goal of strengthening the economy of the majority of ordinary people therefore requires a clear strategy not only at the national but at the global level.
Horizontal friction within society over religion and ethnicity (known in Indonesia as primordialism) is spreading. The political euphoria that has given birth to more than 100 political parties is an indirect expression of weak solidarity and of limited perspectives within civil society as it faces the challenge of an expanded political space. Conflicts within the body politic are now no longer confined to those between factions of the power elite, as happened in the run-up to the fall of Suharto, but are now tending to expand into conflicts between various groups within society, with serious implications.
This fragile political transition needs to be watched carefully so that these conflicts do not end up obliterating the opportunity to create democracy in Indonesia. Non-government organisations (NGOs) are being called on to play a more concrete and organised role, to sustain the transition towards democracy at every level - regional, national and international.
We who are attending this meeting have agreed to build a coalition of international NGOs on the basis of our common commitment to democracy and human rights.
The purpose of this coalition is to develop a democratic political process based on respect for human rights. Its strategy will be to mobilise the broadest possible non-partisan support for democracy in various constituencies within civil society by organising and by providing political education.
The coalition will seek to:
Maintain and expand the available political space;
Contribute to the transformation of non-democratic institutions and practices, such as a) Abri dual function, b) the centralisation of power and the looting of the regions by the centre, c) the five political laws of the New Order era, and d) corruption;
Build the broadest possible alliances to support these goals by recognising the specific needs of (for example) indigenous groups, local cultures, religious groups, etc;
Involve itself in creative dialogue with political parties and other social groups in order to promote healthy democratic debate;
Organise and mobilise international support for democratising initiatives;
Conduct public political education in order to develop democratic outlooks;
Urge the international community to support the empowerment of civil society and of social movements by giving its direct support (funding, information, networking, etc) to NGOs and other social groups.
Jakarta, 24 October 1998.
Infid is a coalition of about a hundred NGOs. Half are Indonesian, the other half are based in the major donor countries interested in Indonesia, including Europe, Japan, North America and Australia. The meeting in Jakarta 23-24 October 1998 was hosted by Infid. It aimed to consider the role of NGOs in the transition towards democracy in Indonesia. Invited participants from South Africa, South Korea, and Chile shared their experience of transition. This statement was produced at the meeting.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Obituary
Professor Herb Feith
Pak Wertheim, the founder of modern Indonesian studies in Holland, was nearly 91 when he died. Like others who die at an advanced age, much of his story had faded from public memory by that time.
W F Wertheim was Holland's counterpart to America's George McT Kahin. The first edition of his 'Indonesian society in transition' came out in 1950, two years before Kahin's 'Nationalism and revolution in Indonesia', and each was a foundational work on which many others built.
But Wertheim belonged to an earlier generation of Indonesia specialists. While Kahin's involvements began only at the end of World War 2, Wertheim arrived in Batavia in 1931 and soon afterwards began to teach at its Law School. In 1940 he was appointed to the small Visman Commission, a prestigious government body formed to examine the colony's constitutional future.
Whereas Kahin spent most of World War 2 in the American army, where he learned Dutch, Wertheim spent most of it in Japanese prison camps in Java.
Each was an active partisan of the Indonesian republic during its revolutionary struggle for independence. And each of them continued to be academics in an engaged style. In 1951 Wertheim declined an invitation to teach in Indonesia. His decision was a protest against the Sukiman government's inviting the Nazi-tainted Hjalmar Schacht to Indonesia as an economic adviser. Echoes of Dr Tjipto Mangoenkoesomo who ridiculed a decoration from the colonial government for his contributions to the eradication of contagious disease.
In the Suharto years Wertheim gave active support to Dutch and other European organisations publicising the plight of political prisoners in Indonesia. He also wrote frequently about the coup attempt of 1 October 1965, and specifically on Suharto's mysterious interactions on its eve with Colonel Latief, a key member of the group of plotters.
Pak Wertheim will be remembered for the encouragement he gave to people who went on to become scholars and teachers in their own right. One of those is the late Yale historian Harry Benda, who met Wertheim when they were both in Japanese prison camps in Java. A second is the Bogor rural sociologist Sayogyo, who as Kampto Utomo was Wertheim's assistant and PhD supervisee when the latter taught at Bogor in 1956-67. In recent decades Sayogyo has become famous for his research on innovative methods of measuring poverty.
When the transnational history of post-World War 2 Indonesian studies is written Wertheim will emerge as a foundational figure. And if there is ever a history of the radical stream within that tradition he will emerge as one of its most inspirational members.
Professor Herb Feith is himself one of the founders of Indonesian studies in Australia. He currently teaches in Yogyakarta.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Globalisation offers only disaster to Indonesia's poor. Student demonstrators should extend their protest to the powers governing their economy.
Wim F Wertheim
During the 1990s the word 'globalisation' has become a fashionable word. Literally it only means a worldwide spread, which could pertain to many different things including the spread of ideas. When the term 'globalisation' is used by politicians or the media it is mostly about the spread of market influence in economic and political life over the whole world.
However, when we speak of the Third World (which was the most important area of work for Gerrit Huizer and myself for the past 25 years) then globalisation has absolutely nothing to do with that kind of world.
The so-called 'Asian flu' which broke out in the financial world proves that whereas global players play at a sort of hazardous game, it has very serious consequences for the still poor peoples of East and Southeast Asia.
What has been happening in Indonesia during the last year, affecting its economy and social cohesiveness, may serve as a warning for the present near-religious belief in the benefits of the market being promoted on a global scale.
IMF restructuring
In reality there has not been much change under President Habibie. There are no massive protests against the real causes of the economic crisis. Yet if one follows the process which led irrefutably to the fall of Suharto, one should realise that it was a direct consequence of a damaging requirement by the IMF to restructure the economy.
One of these demands was the scrapping, or at least gradual elimination, of the long-standing government subsidies for energy, which existed to keep costs down for the population. The government was thus responsible for the massive increase of 50%- 70% in prices by withdrawing the subsidies.
Globalisation of the economy, introduced by western business, had absolutely no concern for the interests of the Asian population. The only purpose for Indonesian as well as foreign investors, bankers and creditors, was to make sure they could realise the return of their loans of millions that they had so carelessly advanced.
In this rage of western globalisation the IMF and the World Bank play a crucial role. A 'free market' has nothing to do with reaching a certain 'free economic trade' for the seriously impoverished population of Indonesia and other countries affected by the 'Asian flu', but has only the purpose of making investment in Asia advantageous for western bankers and investors.
The important journal Derde Wereld has devoted a special issue to the question: 'Are the World Bank and the IMF ready for the 21st century?'. One citation from it is as follows: 'As lender of last resort for countries with liquidity deficits, the IMF insures the investors against financial losses, and demands from the poor that they pay the price.'
The same issue of Derde Wereld says frankly: 'The IMF has been making a true religion of its neo-liberal economic policies. Consequently it is considered sacrilegious to ask questions about the basic principles of this new religion.' Anyway, neither the IMF nor the World Bank, established in the USA at the end of World War II, were bodies which represented the whole world; they were only products of the Cold War which had just started.
As far as Indonesia is concerned, the Wall Street Journal has all of a sudden discovered what people who studied the country already knew 20 years ago, namely that the usual praises of Indonesia as being one of the young Asian tigers were based on pure wishful thinking, and that the World Bank itself was not innocent of the creation of this image.
We can now easily see that all the misery which the population of Southeast Asia experience at the moment is for a great part the result of the whole process of globalisation that has been enforced by the western world - and that the IMF as well as the World Bank also have to share in the creation of this world disaster.
I would like to pose the crucial question: Is it possible for the Indonesian populace to expect something positive from a new multi-billion dollar loan from the IMF? For let us realise, it would only be a loan. And this will have to be paid back in the future, with interest. There is no way that the IMF or the World Bank will just cancel the debt of a Third World government from the 'goodness of their heart'. Jan Breman has said the same thing: 'The World Bank's aim is to protect its own outstanding capital and to have it returned with profit if possible. It does not differ in the least from an ordinary bank.'
It is clear that the present Habibie regime, supported by the military echelons, is again ready to adjust to the IMF decisions. This brings the important question: Will the spirit of this year's Indonesian opposition develop within the foreseeable future into an all-embracing resistance that might be able to withstand the foreign pressure and the demands of the IMF?
Students
We may certainly view the students' actions, which were so instrumental in Suharto's resignation, as a form of struggle for emancipation. What is still lacking is an ideological motive for a resistance that goes further than 'reformasi' of the state apparatus and which strives for a change on the political level.
It must be understood that in the first place it is not a question of substituting people at the top of the government, but of knowing what powers govern the economy. This must involve breaking a taboo that during the years 1965-66 became the basis of the 'Orde Baru' and that for 32 years has been considered inviolable.
In a very important doctoral thesis, the Dutch sociologist Saskia Wieringa demonstrated in detail that from the beginning of October 1965 the Indonesian military elite manipulated public opinion by systematically accusing the PKI of being responsible for the murder of the generals in which Suharto himself was closely involved. In this media campaign, Gerwani - the left-wing movement for the emancipation of women and closely linked with the communists - was portrayed as a group of godless prostitutes who attended the murders and had participated in all sorts of animal lusts. This was the signal for the terrible murder of communists when more than half a million innocent people were butchered.
This reign of terror has resulted in the fact that still very few people in Indonesia dare to state publicly that communist or socialist ideas might be a basis for a final solution of economic problems.
Under these circumstances it can not be expected that all of a sudden a new Indonesian government will come to power that can withstand the demands of the IMF on principle. At the most one could hope for a stronger nationalist-oriented government, which could emulate the Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who is trying to withstand the IMF's demands. But it is still too early for the development of a truly 'globalised' struggle for emancipation by the peoples of the Third World from the powers of Washington.
This article is extracted from the last paper Professor Wertheim wrote. He died, aged nearly 91, on 2 November 1998. Chris Williams was the translator.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Millions are on welfare. But can it make a difference to their future?
Vanessa Johanson
Hand outs. Everyone is doing it. Government departments ranging from the Department of Mines and Energy to the Department of Tourism, non-government organisations, the World Bank, fast-food joints and newspapers, middle and upper-class philanthropists from inside and outside Indonesia, foreign governments, foreign companies and village heads - all have their own reasons for wanting to give out food to Indonesia's 100 million or more very poor.
As unemployment and inflation continue to soar, the need for affordable food is indeed enormous. As of the middle of October '98, the cheapest rice available in neighbourhood markets in Java is between Rp 2,600 þ 3,000 a kilo. Compare this to the wage of a Jakarta building construction worker þ in most cases unchanged since the crisis began - who earns around Rp 6,000 a day. Meanwhile, the Bandung factory-worker who makes the bricks and tiles for the same building earns only about Rp 2,500 a day.
I went to the field on 18 October with Bandung Peduli, a small, nine-month-old food security non-government organisation (NGO) working in villages in Bandung and West Java. We traveled to the green back blocks of Padalarang, previously a busy industrial area. We carried several hundred packages of food, each containing 10 kilos of rice and 0.25 kilo of salted fish.
Two Bandung Peduli voluntary teams had preceded us there in the past weeks to survey the level of need in the area and identify the individuals most in need of help. Initially they had spoken to Bapak Machmud, a local social worker, who had introduced them to various families.
The Bandung Peduli volunteers þ students from local universities þ had asked the families about their weekly income expenditure, number of children, work, land, type of housing, sanitation and health-care used, and about other kinds of assistance available to them. In practice, those qualifying for help from Bandung Peduli are families with both parents unemployed and no fertile land.
In the kampung we visited, Cibadap, most families originate from other areas, and moved to Cibadap to work in small brick, tile and marble factories. The construction industry has collapsed in the economic crisis.
Ibu Elli and her husband work in a factory. 'The factories are still going', she said 'but we only work about two weeks in a month. Lots of people have been laid off.' Meanwhile, the green paddies and cassava gardens in the area are mostly owned by people 'from the city' who once employed locals to cultivate them. Now the 'city people' employ jobless relatives.
'Anyhow, the land is no good,' said another Cibadap woman. 'You can't grow much at all.' Part of the government's intensive labour program is to grow food on every centimetre of available land, employing the unemployed millions and utilising some of the long- controversial Reforestation Fund. This program has many critics. 'By the time the money gets to us half of it is gone and so has several weeks of our time. It's not worth it,' intimated a Palembang NGO worker.
What about the future?
Ridlo Eisy, the director of Bandung Peduli, says, 'We are proud of our careful multiple survey technique. Most government programs just turn up in the villages with a truck of food and unload it on the doorstep of the village head or at the village cooperative. Sometimes it then gets sold outside, or distributed to the wrong people. However, we know exactly who we are giving food to.'
One of the men in the village, his broken thongs repaired with a small stapler, approached Ridlo with important questions. 'We have already been given this and that: seeds and a small wage for labour from the government intensive labour fund in order to grow timber and vegetables, basic food stuffs from you. But what about the future? We all know that children here need to go to school. The factories only take high school graduates. And sooner or later there have to be work opportunities. Can't you help us finish building the school? We use it already, but the walls leak.'
Ridlo's answer reflects both his organisation's minimal funds, but also its philosophy of encouraging kampung people to help themselves. 'Well, why don't you set up "Cibadap Peduli"? If there's only 10% of people in the village working right now, they can help buy the construction material. The unemployed men can then finish the building.'
In several kampungs, Bandung Peduli has helped set up Warung Peduli, a self-sustaining rice shop. They get an initial batch of rice from Bandung Peduli, which they then sell cheaply and use the profits to buy more rice to sell cheaply, and also to fund other small local projects.
Other initiatives include giving help to local people to work on their own community development. One focus of such work is finding alternative employment for and educating the escalating numbers of young girls becoming prostitutes in almost every village.
As the packets of food were unloaded in a muddy vacant lot, I asked 12-year-old Nur where her school was. 'Oh, a few kilometres up the road,' she replied. 'I just came down here to watch the food distribution.' She was with a group of her friends, enjoying the entertainment. 'Does your dad work around here?' I asked.
'No. He doesn't work. He used to work in the factory. Now he doesn't.'
'Your mum?'
'She doesn't work either.'
'Does she have a garden?'
'Oh yes, she works in the garden.'
The other children listened carefully, inching closer, so I asked a collective question: 'Are you all going to school then?'
'Ye-e-es.'
'Do your dads work in the factory?'
'No-o-o .... Where are you from, miss?'
'This village is unusual in this respect,' confirmed Kania Roesli, a founding member of Bandung Peduli. 'People sell their furniture and even their cutlery so that they can keep sending their kids to school.'
Bandung Peduli estimates that over 4 million people in West Java are threatened with starvation, and that nearly 15 million live below the poverty line. They know their work is piece-meal and unsustainable. 'It's going to take the whole macro economy to turn around before we can really see a big change here,' says Kania. 'In the mean time we want to at least ease people's worries about basic food stuffs temporarily so that they can think about other opportunities.'
Food gardens
Other individuals and organisations are more active in chasing these other opportunities. In Central Java, for example, a group of local NGOs are focusing their efforts on teaching people with small plots how to produce fertilizer with compost. With the right procedure, a villager with a small amount of exhausted land can have flourishing food garden growing in a matter of months. With much of the densely populated land in Java severely degraded by chemical use and other problems, such programs are vital.
The total estimated aid for food security and the social safety net from various sources now stands at around Rp 17 trillion. In Jakarta, some of the 'hand-outs' from bi- and multi-lateral donors are filtered through the Community Recovery Program (CRP), which then grants the funds to small, short-term projects which otherwise 'fall through the cracks.' CRP insists that its grantees combine short-term food relief with medium-term goals, such as income generation and employment creation programs, which in practice translate into programs for micro-enterprise training, simple technology introduction to add value to products, developing new agricultural products and rice substitute crops and so on.
A glance at the most recent statistics on economic growth from the Central Bureau of Statistics should send a strong message to policy makers about priority areas to focus on. Small industry shows an 11% contraction þ a huge drop, but significantly better than medium to large industry which shows a 14% contraction for the same period from January to September 1998.
Meanwhile, the farming sector is the only sector which shows any growth at all so far this year, with 0.23% growth. The small enterprise and farming sectors absorbed the vast majority (an estimated 60%) of all Indonesian workers before the crisis, and have the potential to do so again.
On the macro level, in order to provide real and sustainable food security, and eventual economic recovery, the government must implement policies which encourage (or simply 'get off the backs of') small enterprise and farmers.
On the way home from Padalarang I ate toasted banana with cheese and chocolate under the canvas of 'Sense of Crisis Cafe', one of the new, trendy and cheap roadside warungs. The thousands of new city mini-cafes are the colourful face of krismon (krisis moneter), often set up by students, laid-off bank and other office workers, and even by singers and soap stars. They have become fashionable weekend hang-outs for those who can't afford restaurants and night- clubs anymore. They represent the kind of creative entrepreneurship which is capable of flourishing in Indonesia when given the opportunity.
Vanessa Johanson is an Australian writer in Jakarta. Contact Bandung Peduli at Jl Supratman No. 57, Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, tel/fax 62-22-705 527, email mridlo@melsa.net.id. Contact CRP at Program PKM, Jl Tebet Barat Dalam No. 38, Tebet Barat, Jakarta, Indonesia, tel 62-21-828 0050.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Funding cuts and apathy make life difficult for 2000 street kids in Semarang.
Jane Eaton
It is a sweltering hot Friday morning and I'm on a mission, but first I must go and visit some friends at the local bus stop.
'Hey guys, what's up?'
Hmmmm cool response.
'What's wrong?' Silence.
Definitely a cool response.
'Are you mad at me?'
Kneeling down I look for some explanation of the cold shoulder. And then I see the teardrops, pause before they fall. My heart shatters.
Others notice the tears. A small crowd of onlookers quickly assembles. After the apologies and hugging I finally convince him to take a break and come for a ride with me.
There are now over 2000 street kids in Semarang. Yogie, the young boy with the tough exterior is typical of the kids who visited the shelter. Initially when the drop-in centre first started there were around 10 to 15 boys residing at the shelter. The lack of social services in this, Brisbane's sister city (but bigger!), has meant that numbers grew quickly.
The shelter was established in early 1997 as a joint project between the United Nations Development Program, the Indonesian Department of Welfare, and local charities. Shelters were set up in all major cities with enough funding for two years of operation.
Needless to say, funds here were quickly 'dispersed'. In early November, only seven months after it started, the Semarang shelter closed its doors.
Four of us pile into a becak (pedicab) and head off to find the elusive Ibu Indrah, the proprietor of a now empty shop space at the back of the market. One young boy, who sleeps in the market, suggested we rent the shop space as a safe place for a couple of the kids to live. The boy at the market was actually sleeping in a small cavity between the roof of the market building and the top of the shop - a space 50cm high.
After the usual false starts we finally locate Ibu Indrah in her new premises. Eventually I'm allowed to enter. The boys are too 'dirty' to be allowed in and are asked to wait outside. 'Well it's worth a shot', I think to myself. 'She'll probably say no, but I can't come this far and back out now, especially not in front of the boys.'
Edi and I put forward our offer to rent the place so that the children will have somewhere safe and out of the rain to live. After some hesitation she decides that we may use the shop for free, as the building will be demolished in the coming months.
With the precious keys in hand we pile back into the becak and head back. This time the ride is much more cheerful as we boast to the becak driver of our success. We agree to meet later in the day to start cleaning the place up.
Back to the streets
Whether the original shelter will open again and what form it will take is still unclear. A meeting was held recently with rumours flying thick and fast that the shelter would re-open. It has since been made clear to the kids that this isn't going to happen. The high publicity event was perhaps just a political manoeuvre. One claim is that an ambitious local Welfare Department head was trying to impress, another is that the local partners were trying to cover up the shelter's closure from visiting dignitaries.
For a project bedded in altruistic motives, politics and corruption has sullied the street kids' chance at shelter. The situation first began to disintegrate in July of 1997, when the shelter's guardian quit in disgust at the corrupt management practices of the local Welfare Department.
Without any programme officers to monitor the shelter, local thugs moved in, and the children moved back onto the streets.
Another shelter in Semarang, where many of the children used to live before they were forced to move to this government sponsored shelter, had also been forced to close its doors after being attacked in a midnight raid by local thugs. There was nowhere to go, except back to the streets.
Why is there so much apathy and resentment against street children? It is unclear. The national authorities as well as regional and local authorities have little patience for the plight of street children.
But the problem isn't going to disappear through lack of attention, or as sometimes happens, physical intimidation. Around 15,000 people are losing their jobs every day in Indonesia. As the economy contracts so too does the ability of the family to afford their children's welfare.
In August the Education Minister revealed that only 54% of school aged children had actually enrolled, leaving 46% of Indonesian children out there in the 'real world' with the grown ups. It is a lot easier to intimidate and exploit a child than an adult. They make excellent workers in this period of international competitiveness and free trade.
It is now lunchtime and the heat is oppressive. The five of us meet outside the shop which the kids will soon call home. We're armed with brooms and detergent and are attracting the stares of passers by. The shop is located above the market's rubbish dump. On a day as hot as this one the smell is nauseating. However, like the first rule of real estate says - location, location, location.
We jiggle the key in the lock and push open the door to find a dark cave tangled with spider webs, rats, cockroaches and other bugs, not to mention a number of rotting cat carcasses. At least 5cm of dust covers the floor. How long has this place been empty?
We rip down the curtains and throw out the old magazines and newspapers carpeting the floor. The garbage scavengers come and pick out redeemable pieces of clothing and furniture. For four hours that day we clean, sweep, scrub, wash and sweat. Needless to say with enthralled onlookers adding their two cents worth where they felt necessary. How to clean the cat's imprint off the tiles - suggestions anyone?
Earlier this year research by the Jakarta based Atma Jaya University revealed that within the first three months of living on the streets in Indonesia children are sexually abused at least once.
The short and long term effects of this environment on the children is frightening. The International Labour Organisation has warned that the prostitution/ sex industry accounts for up to 14% of Gross National Product in Southeast Asian countries. This was estimated before the crisis took hold. Indonesia's sex industry depends on a constant supply of vulnerable children. A third of prostitutes are under age. Where do they come from? From previously stable families who no longer have choices.
The future
It is important to look beyond the immediate fiscal implications of the economic crisis. Much more is at stake than balance sheets and foreign reserves. The negative effects of the economic crisis are rupturing the very fabric of society.
What are the long-term consequences of having half a generation grow up in poverty on the streets, being used and using others to survive? What life skills are they acquiring and which of these will they be passing on to their children in 10 to 15 years time? Is this the 'lost generation', without hope and without a future? Will this generation be able to regain a sense of social structure not based on the survival of the fittest mentality of the streets?
What will be the face of Indonesian society in ten years time, when this generation emerges into the spotlight? Endless questions with no immediate answer. The problem is only made worse by the closing of social services, like the Semarang shelter.
We buy some straw mats for the floor, and sit down to congratulate ourselves on a job well done. We order drinks, and dream of how we will use the place for a part time informal school or drop-in centre. How this will be a safe house for the little kids, where no big bullies are allowed to beat us up or bring their girlfriends.
As we dream and plan, the rain finally begins to fall. At last the rainy season has come and the temperature has dropped. Lucky we found this place just in time, no more nights under a wet leaky roof.
Postscript: The rain kept falling that night until the city was covered with water. Edi, being the true gentleman that he is, escorted me through the flooded markets out to the flooded streets in the pouring rain. After paying an exorbitant price for a taxi ride, I finally crashed into bed; and stayed there for the next three days crippled with dysentery. The old market building was burnt in a suspected arson attack in late September.
Jane Eaton was a volunteer in Semarang who now lives near Brisbane, Australia.
Inside Indonesia 57: Jan-Mar 1999
Laine Berman, Speaking through the silence: Narratives, social conventions and power in Java, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998, Hbk ISBN 019-510-8884, AU$140.
Reviewed by DAMIEN KINGSBURY
There has been much acknowledgement of the 'levels' of language in Javanese society. Many observers - usually half informed - have noted the 'polite' and 'refined' aspects of the language. However, with Speaking through the silence, Laine Berman not only offers one of the most detailed accounts of Javanese culture, she identifies the quite pronounced power relations inherent in the Javanese language.
Berman's understanding of Javanese language and culture is based on her years of living and working in Yogyakarta, with ordinary families as well as within the confines of the palace. The focus of her study identifies the hierarchical power relations between different social levels in Javanese society, as well as between men and women.
Several characters in Berman's book are well brought to life, but she saves the most attention for a young woman who works in a local garment factory. Conditions are slave-like, but she has difficulty in even talking about them, or having them listened to. The 'silence' here is that which speaks most, though the gaps in communication are noticeable throughout. 'Politeness' is maintained through a use of non-language. One cannot offend or challenge if utterances are devoid of meaning.
When the protagonist does finally break loose of her restrictive 'cultural' bonds she is sacked. The lesson is that while what is defined as Javanese culture and its so-called refinement remains intact, there is little hope for the social or political emancipation of ordinary Javanese (and hence Indonesian) people.
From a scholarly perspective, Berman's work is thorough and detailed and it rewards close reading. Indonesianist academics and more general anthropologists and linguists should all find this book essential reading. It is a strong work and will undoubtedly find its well deserved place within the canon of texts on Indonesia. Only those with a vested interest in the Javanese status quo, or who have a misplaced sense of appreciation for what passes for Javanese 'politeness' and 'refinement', will come away from this book disappointed.
Dr Damien Kingsbury Damien.Kingsbury@arts.monash.edu.au is Executive Officer at the Monash Asia Institute, Melbourne, Australia.
Inside Indonesia 58: Apr-Jun 1999
Review: Damien Kingsbury, The politics of Indonesia, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1998, 286pp, Pbk ISBN 0-19-550626-X, AU$29.95.
Reviewed by JONATHAN PING
This is an accessible text. It is one of the few books to achieve simplicity while still providing the reader with insights that can only come from years of analysis. The text explains the basic elements of Indonesian politics and political history without resorting to excessive detail. The result is a text which enables the reader to understand the motivations and precedents of Indonesian politics.
Kingsbury begins with traditional and colonial influences and carries the reader, with ever more detail, through to the present political and economic crisis. His thesis follows a common line that Indonesian politics, based in Javanese history, essentially remains unchanged by modern international or Western society. They follow their own internally determined rather than externally influenced path. The motives of Suharto, student protesters and Abri, among the many groups discussed, are understood through examples of their actions and an understanding of this thesis.
The book is structured into short chapters, which are enhanced by brief sub-sections on elements within each topic. This allows for a cover to cover reading, or admission to a specific topic such as ‘Tommy’ and the national car project, or corruption and Abri.
For the advanced reader Kingsbury has included two sections of interest: ‘Looking ahead: 1998 and beyond’ and ‘Epilogue: The fall of Suharto’. Here he dips into futurology. Political ‘openness’, for example, is ‘likely to be a short term phenomenon’ (p246). On Habibie’s presidency: his ‘elevation appears only to have been accepted by Abri as a precondition for installing its own candidate at a more opportune time’ (p244). General Wiranto is included in the list of potential future dictators (presidents)! Kingsbury’s outlook is bleak. Rather than seeing an embryonic democracy he argues that ‘any future Indonesian government will be more, rather than less, influenced by Abri’ (p249).
This is a valuable starting point for more study and provides all the references required. Kingsbury’s writing style is readable and at times entertaining. For example his account of the ecstasy and heroin-taking, BMW or Mercedes-driving children of the elite is amusing in comparison with his discussion of their mass murdering and corrupt parents.
Jonathan Ping <jping@arts.adelaide.edu.au> is a lecturer and postgraduate student in politics at the University of Adelaide, Australia.
Inside Indonesia 58: Apr-Jun 1999
Never again
Frankly, as we began preparing this edition ahead of Indonesia’s first democratic elections in 44 years, I expected there to be more joy and optimism than there is in the pieces that make it up. Suharto is gone, the military is under enormous pressure to justify its existence on the political stage, press freedom is wide open, political parties and labour unions are free to organise.
There is a deal of euphoria of course, also in the articles you are about to read. Women are on the move with surging energy. The environmental movement is as vigorous as ever. And East Timor could be free within a year.
And yet there is more anxiety than euphoria. Fear that a history of fraudulent New Order elections may have permanently ruined the chances of holding a fair one. Dismay that the military will still refuse to allow the police to civilianise once more. Dread also of the demons within society itself. Even in a remote place like Sumba that has been peaceful for decades there is now conflict between neighbours. Exasperation that even the most radical pro-democracy activists, the students, are not radical enough to really demand total transformation (this last one was pointed out by the remarkable Mangunwijaya, who died aged nearly 70 as we went to press).
But of course it was naive to think that all would be rosy once Suharto was gone. You build a system on state-orchestrated violence for three decades and then it collapses. When the dust cloud clears what do you see? Certainly not a fully functional democratic system. You will see ruins, and feel a sense of anxiety.
So why burden readers in societies whose economies are humming along and whose democratic institutions actually seem to work with such gloomy reporting? For lots of reasons to do with human solidarity and just plain neighborliness, first of all.
But also because we can draw immensely valuable lessons here about the end result of authoritarianism. For years the West had little trouble thinking of Suharto’s regime as just something that suited Indonesians, who after all hold Asian values dear. Anyway, it was delivering the goods of economic growth. Now the long-term consequences of that view are becoming clear. Authoritarianism, militarism, elitism, kills. It kills individual victims, it also kills civic institutions. The lesson surely is: whatever the future holds, never again a military dictator, never again the short-cut to prosperity that Suharto offered.
Gerry van Klinken
Inside Indonesia 58: Apr-Jun 1999
Idealistic students want to take eco-travelers up remote mountains in Sulawesi.
Allyson Lankester
While working in Southeast Sulawesi I was lucky to be invited by some university students to join them on a hike to the peak of Mekongga Mountain. The students belonged to two ‘nature lover’ and adventure organisations on their campus. Yayasan Cinta Alam is for undergraduates, while Mahacala is for more senior students. Both were established in the early 1990s in Kendari, the capital of Southeast Sulawesi. They have decided they want to take eco-travelers on organised hikes of Mekongga and other adventures. This trip was to be an exploratory one. I was in it for the adventure and unpredictability of it all. The students are experienced climbers and cavers who can take you to some interesting places and educate you at the same time.
Mekongga (or Mengkoka) is at 2799m the tallest mountain in Southeast Sulawesi. It lies to the northwest of Kendari. It is also the name of the traditional owners of the region. The Mekongga people still inhabit the forests and mountains here, making a living from collecting rattan to pay debts they owe to middle businesspersons. They now also sell the scraps left behind by the logging company Hasil Bumi Indonesia (HBI), which started operations in Southeast Sulawesi in 1979. The Mekongga people have been losing their land to the logging company, and before that to Buginese and Makassar migrants from South Sulawesi, who plant cocoa, clove, banana and coconut (for copra).
My two companions were Ancu and Ardin. Ancu is a senior student with Mahacala who has hiked Mekongga several times. Ardin had never been to this area before and this was one of his first adventures with Yayasan Cinta Alam. Ardin set up camp each night, made the fire, and collected the water - like a scout being tested by his senior. They were a really good combination to hike with: Ancu little bodied, a healthy ego and talker, and Ardin tall, lanky, humble and a good listener.
Listening to the stories of their lives helped explain their different characters. Ancu was the first boy in the family. He had been able to get away with almost anything, enjoyed a lot of freedom and privilege. Ardin was the youngest boy and is now the main carer for his aging parents. He grew up with a lot of responsibility.
Students from Yayasan Cinta Alam and Mahacala say they were the first student organisation to climb the peak of Mekongga: in 1995 as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of Indonesian independence. It took 12 students 13 days to reach the peak using a compass, basic map and knives to make their path through the forest. This time it took three of us three days to reach the peak, helped by the logging roads that have made scars throughout a once pristine forest. Ancu hiked Mekongga in 1995 and was devastated to see the damage to the forest in such a short period. I saw photos the students took of places in 1995 that you cannot recognise now.
Karaoke
It took us a whole day to get from Kendari to the logging base camp via Kolaka, a little fishing port on the west coast. We traveled in public minibuses and 4WDs. The roads were bad from continual rains. As hesitant as the students were to deal with HBI staff, we arranged to get a lift in a logging truck to the middle camp that first night. The students are angry with the effect logging has had on these forests they have come to love. They are planning to work with Walhi, a major environmental justice non-government organisation, on an anti-logging campaign. Ironically, we were welcomed by the company managers with beer and karaoke. They were eager for some new interaction. They gave us a meal, a few rounds of really bad karaoke and then showed us to comfortable beds of our own.
We started early the next morning and were dropped at the bottom of an old logging road. We walked up and up along a monotonous dirt road, following fresh morning footprints of the anoa - this is a small buffalo-like animal endemic to Sulawesi - and wild pig. A beautiful rainforest valley lay on the east side, while forest sloped up steeply on the other. Now and again we would hear and see pairs of horn bills, as well as other birds. We also came across some major landslides that were a challenge to climb around.
The first night we camped in a cleared logging coupe and had a big fire from logging scraps to keep us warm in the cool higher altitude air. We had a great sunset view over the western mountain ranges.
The next day we kept climbing, past Coca-Cola lake (red tannin stained water) and past the extreme point of logging operations, into the untouched high altitude forests at about 2400m. It was so good to walk under a forest canopy and be encompassed by the cool, fern-dominated rainforest instead of a harsh open logging road. The path from previous student expeditions was quite easy to find with trees marked by small cuts. We hiked along fairy like valleys and cloudy ridges that took us up to a springy peat moss clearing, where we set up camp for two nights. It was raining when we arrived and it took much effort to start a fire. As night crept in we got colder and wetter. That night we all slept huddled close under the open tarp.
Early the next morning we walked to a point where we could view the peak of Mekongga, and look across mountains that stretched into Central Sulawesi. We then set out on a stunning day walk to the peak, through mossy rainforest declines, around boulder formations and amazing on-top-of-the-world views. The forest at this altitude has a spooky character. Brown moss draped off trees in an often clouded, rocky fern forest with lots of epiphytes. Now and again we came across trees, little herbs or orchids in flower; sometimes a little skink sunning itself or little birds being busy. I really appreciated the silence and space after months of living in urban Indonesia.
The peak came after climbing a loose rocky slope, where we saw yellow daisy and flannel everlasting flowers. We reached the top before too much cloud had set in and found a banner left by students from a South Sulawesi university. We took photos, breathed in the head-clearing mountain peak views, admired a predator bird enjoy its territory, put a record of the climb in a permanent jar the students keep there, and returned to camp.
We walked back to where the logging truck dropped us in one rainy day that led to a good blister collection and sore bodies. On our way back we were lucky to see a glimpse of an anoa as it retreated into the forest.
Our first sign of human activity was smoke from a camp of Mekongga people. They were sheltering from the rain under a blue tarp. As we got closer we could hear a guitar and singing. We stared at each other curiously for a while, said a few words and kept moving. They looked like indigenous forest dwellers, with long hair and mostly naked strong bodies. They had set up camp on this abandoned road as a base to collect the logging leftovers.
That night we stayed again at the luxurious logging karaoke camp, and the next morning caught a lift down to the coast and back to Kendari.
Afterwards, the students of Yayasan Cinta Alam and Mahacala talked with me about their futures. Some are lucky to have family with the right connections to land a job where they want. Others fear ending up tied for life to an Indonesian bureaucracy. Many are unsure - especially in the current climate. In a society that puts a lot of emphasis on marriage, these students face pressure to make money so they are acceptable to their bride’s family. One student turned down a job as an agriculture officer for a cocoa plantation company that planned to clear vast areas of rainforest: his ethics took the better of him. Student eco-tourism ventures will hopefully be one way for these students to make an ethical and enjoyable living. It is ecologically sustainable, generates income, and could help protect the forest from destructive logging practices.
To organise adventures with the students you can contact them directly: Mahacala & Yayasan Cinta Alam, Kompleks Unhalu D/1, Kendari 93121, Indonesia, tel +62-401-24991, email: Yascita@kendari.wasantara.net.id. Or contact Foko, a Dutchman with long connections in Southeast Sulawesi who recently opened an eco-travel business in Kendari called PT Pengembangan Ekowisata Indonesia (PT PEI). He works jointlywith the students on travel packages to Mekongga and elsewhere: Jalan Bunga Kamboja No. 60, Kendari 93121, Indonesia, tel/fax +62-401-327995, email: PEI@kendari.wasantara.net.id.
Ally Lankester recently completed an Overseas Service Bureau placement as marine conservation officer for Yayasan SAMA, a local community self help development organisation based in Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi.
Inside Indonesia 58: Apr-Jun 1999
Palm oil destroys forests and people.
Eric Wakker
Tropical timber campaigns have been highly effective in raising awareness over the loss of the world’s last primary forests. As a result, tropical timber consumption in Europe has fallen by 30-50% since the early 1990s, putting the heat on the trade and loggers.
This awareness came late. Southeast Asia has little ‘productive’ (primary) rainforest left after decades of severe overlogging. The logged-over forests should, in theory, be left to regenerate to produce secondary harvests in 20 to 50 years from now. That’s what the forestry policies say and that’s what Indonesian timber tycoon Bob Hasan said during his trips to the West to lobby for Indonesia’s forestry sector. But that is not what is happening!
Convert it
It does not take a college degree to understand the economics of opportunity costs in Indonesia’s forestry sector. Suppose you have the following options:
1. Manage a heavily logged-over forest concession in lowland Sumatra for, say, 30 years without being able to re-log it for exportable meranti-plywood as it needs to regenerate; protect it from the provincial authorities who are eager to develop the area into productive land, protect it from the Ministry of Transmigration and other players in the agricultural and pulp and paper sector; and invest heavily in forest recuperation, set aside ecologically valuable sites, negotiate do’s and don’ts with local communities, and survive on the promise of a market which will pay green premiums for any timber it can absorb from well-managed forests in 30 to 35 years time. Or:
2. Convert the logged-over site into an oil palm plantation and generate positive cash flows 7 years after planting!
What would you do?
Of course, it takes an investment to realise the oil palm plantation too: negotiate with provincial authorities, identify investors and markets, a strategy to win the support of local leaders and find people to help burn the site. But all that effort, compared to the first option, pays off. Have a close look at the first graph and you will realise how much pressure there is on the Indonesian authorities to re-allocate Permanent Forest as Conversion Forest!
The graph shows that companies have applied for approval to convert a huge amount of forest to other uses - far more land than the forest area that is legally available in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Even on a national level, there is a ‘Conversion Forest deficit’. Various cases of dubious re-allocations of ‘Permanent’ Forest into ‘Conversion’ Forest have already been recorded, especially in Kalimantan.
Indonesia already has about 2.4 million hectares of forest land converted into mature and immature oil palm plantations as of early 1998. The government plans to have yet another 3.1 million hectares converted in the coming years, particularly in Eastern Indonesia (Irian Jaya, Sulawesi) as these regions still have ‘plenty’ of undeveloped land available. It is questionable to what extent applicants for plantation development will be willing to invest in these regions, as they are far off the international Crude Palm Oil (CPO) shipping centres. However, whether by timber felling or palm oil conversion, Indonesia’s forests and its local inhabitants are now literally threatened with total destruction.
According to Oil World, the palm oil industry’s primary source of market intelligence, the rate of oil palm plantation establishment in Indonesia is likely to experience a major downfall as a result of the economic crisis. Early in the next millennium, however, conversion will return to its pre-crisis levels (see the second graph).
Opportunities
The crisis in Indonesia brings about hardship for many of its peoples and its forests. At the same time, it has also created unprecedented opportunities. For example, four oil palm plantation companies belonging to the Salim Group were in the process of obtaining concessions in biodiversity-rich swamp and tidal forests in East Kalimantan in early 1998. But since the Salim Group had close contacts with the Suharto regime, all applications for land from this group have been suspended by the reformation government pending investigation over corruption and nepotism.
The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and its partners EPIQ and the American official development agency USAID lobbied Forests and Estates Minister Nasution to completely cancel the applications and include the swamp and tidal forests in the proposed Sebuku-Sembakung Reserve. And they succeeded! Late in August Minister Nasution decided to cancel nine oil palm concessions in East Kalimantan. He announced that the 100,000 ha. area would be classified National Park instead. It was believed that these companies’ main interest was the value of the standing timber, since the suitability of the soils for oil palm was highly questionable due to tidal flooding. Furthermore, local communities depend on the swamp and tidal forests for their livelihoods.
Early in 1998 I worked with WWF-Indonesia on their Forest Fire Project, which aimed to investigate the disastrous fires of the previous year. A spokesman from Rabo Duta Indonesia, a branch of Rabobank Netherlands, told me his bank was closely monitoring a study into allegations that PT Mahapala Gelora had deliberately burned forest in East Kalimantan. The mother company, PT PP London Sumatra, had received credits from a range of banks to expand its oil palm estates to well over 200,000 hectares (starting with its current 70,000 ha.). The Dutch bank was concerned that its debtor might be prosecuted for practising open burning during the ban on burning announced by then-President Suharto in September 1997. Although the case remains unresolved to date, PT London Sumatra will be very sensitive to external screening of its activities in the years to come.
I also received a phone call from a private investor, who wanted to know WWF’s position on the ‘oil palm issue’ and the fires. I suggested to him he should be reluctant with his investment and should consider the ecological and social components of the investment plan. What struck me at the time was that this was not an investor from ‘ecologically aware’ Europe or Australia, but a private corporate investor based in Hong Kong.
A few months later, WWF-Germany asked me to coordinate a study on the relations among Germany’s palm oil consumption, Indonesia’s oil palm plantation sub-sector, and the forest fires. When the study’s report was launched, WWF requested European palm oil processing industries to expose their CPO imports from Indonesia. Some of them did, and this activity alone was enough to alarm major players in the edible oils industry, who are already plagued by campaigns against genetic modification and overfishing.
Normally, the first step in turning forest land into an oil palm plantation is burning. This so-called controlled burning significantly contributed to the 1997-98 forest fires and haze, in addition to wildfires and arson associated with expanding oil palm plantations (see Inside Indonesia no. 53, January-March 1998). However, for various reasons, the forest fires in Indonesia are likely to attract less international attention in the years to come. While the momentum is still there, NGOs have a window of opportunity to redirect the attention, away from ‘just-more-fires’, and towards deforestation, marginalisation of local peoples’ livelihoods, and the international trade, consumption and financing of palm oil. It looks like this may be the way in which things may evolve.
Various initiatives are now developing towards a campaign:
In 1998, a range of Indonesian grassroots NGOs founded Sawit Watch, an NGO network which aims to monitor developments in the oil palm sub-sector;
On the initiative of the Dutch environmental funding lobby group Both ENDS and Greenpeace Netherlands, a number of NGOs in the Netherlands (WWF-Netherlands, Netherlands Centre for Indigenous Peoples, Skephi Europe) and several individuals now have regular meetings to monitor developments in the oil palm sector in Indonesia and Malaysia and to identify approaches and activities.
Greenpeace Netherlands funded a study to assess the needs of Indonesian NGOs and to confirm whether or not these NGOs felt that campaign work in Europe would support their cause.
NGOs in the UK, Germany, Belgium and the USA expressed explicit interest in being informed about the oil palm issue and may be able to contribute to research and campaign efforts;
A project proposal is being developed to look into the involvement of Dutch financial institutions in oil palm plantation development in Indonesia. The final objective of this project is to have at least one commercial bank to review its current investments and adopt the strictest possible guidelines for funding oil palm projects;
WWF is planning to develop strategies and approaches to address the issue.
There are many opportunities to help Indonesian NGOs and other interested parties to promote their goals towards ecologically, socially and economically responsible forest and land use management in Indonesia. Of course, any campaign work on the expansion of Indonesia’s oil palm sub-sector will have to reach beyond the issue of who started fires where, when, how, and what zero-burning techniques are all about. And of course, a focus limited to Indonesia would do injustice to the problems associated with oil palm development elsewhere (e.g. PNG, Solomon Islands, Africa and South America). In the meantime, any ideas and proposals will be greatly appreciated, not least from Australia.
Eric Wakker is a consultant for Foundation AIDEnvironment in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Contact: wakker@aidenvironment.antenna.nl. He will also be pleased to direct enquirers to the other NGOs mentioned here.
Inside Indonesia 58: Apr-Jun 1999
Bulog had to feed Indonesia, pacify farmers, and support Suharto’s industrialisation policy. What will happen to it now?
Jeremy P Mulholland & Ken Thomas
Bulog, the national logistics board that controls the supply of rice and other basic commodities, has as many enemies as it does friends. Some praise it for maintaining rice supplies in difficult circumstances while keeping the price down. Others (including the IMF) criticise it for monopolistic practices. Some argue that Article 33 of the Constitution obliges the state to control the supply of basic commodities. But it has been undeniably corrupt in performing its functions.
Established on 11 May 1967, Bulog forms an important part of the New Order’s economic history. Industrialisation was the Procrustean bed of all policy in that period, particularly from the early ‘80s. To promote industry, the government aimed to increase rice production while keeping prices low for consumers so they would not demand higher wages. To stimulate production, the government improved infrastructure, especially irrigation.
Initially, the agency’s primary function was to purchase basic commodities for public servants and the military. From 1970 it was required to control the price and distribution of basic staples, especially rice and flour, important to social stability. Bulog was not alone in making rice policy. The other principal actors included the National Planning Board (Bappenas), the Co-ordinating Minister for Economics, Finance and Industry (Ekuin), the Minister of Finance, and the Minister of Agriculture. In the background stood the President, who had the final say.
Bulog had to stabilise the price of rice for both producers and consumers. It did this by setting a ceiling price for the benefit of consumers, and a floor price for producers. As far as consumers were concerned it was necessary to have adequate stocks available. This meant running stocks down when there was a surplus and the reverse when there was a shortage, usually by increasing imports. At the appropriate times, the agency purchased rice from the domestic or the international market.
On the production side, to encourage farmers to produce more it was essential to set a price which would act as an incentive. Bulog did this by entering the market when the price fell, withdrawing as it rose above the floor. Rice production increased beyond all expectations, threefold under the New Order. Increased production was essential to provide for the increasing numbers moving into the industrial sector as well as for an expected population increase. Bulog’s contribution through its management of the ceiling and floor prices was important. By the end of the period, the agency had warehouses scattered throughout the archipelago.
Not all farmers benefited equally from the operation of Bulog’s floor price, given the unequal distribution of land and therefore income. The use of new high-yielding seed varieties, introduced in 1967, enabled farmers to increase yields considerably and, with irrigation, to double crop. The main beneficiaries from the stimulus of Bulog's floor price and subsidies for fertilizers were the 20 percent of farmers with more than half a hectare of wet rice. The government seemed to be thinking along the lines of land reform and other measures to reduce inequalities among farmers in the late ‘70s, but eventually the discussion lapsed.
The agency's use of the government sponsored village cooperatives (Koperasi Unit Desa or KUD ) points to another element in the background to the progress of the ‘green revolution' under its auspices. These cooperatives were composed of the richer farmers, were presided over by the head of the subdistrict (the camat) and were designed to implement government policy, not to act as independent agents.
The presence of the non-commissioned officers known as babinsa in the village also served to minimise dissent with government policies. And it should not be forgotten that fear was an all-pervasive factor during the New Order, as an aftermath of the abortive coup in October 1965. Anyone who thought of opposing government polices would have thought twice about voicing discontent, and the babinsa would have been a constant reminder of the likely price of resistance.
It may well be that the open violence Indonesia is now experiencing is a late expression of anger at the way farmers were pressured to adopt the new seeds varieties, to the benefit of some but at a high social cost to most.
With the end of the New Order and the approaching elections, we may well ask what the fate of the government’s industrialisation policy will be, and along with it the policy on rice and Bulog’s role. Which interest group - rice consumers or rice producers - will now win out in rice policy?
Suharto’s friends
Since the late 1950s the ups and downs of particular business groups have generally been linked to powerful political actors. This pattern of patronage is also evident in the food sector. Bulog functioned as a ‘centre of the state’ during the New Order - comparable to the State Oil Company (Pertamina), the State Electricity Company (PLN), or Habibie’s Technology and Assessment Body (BPPT). Ever since Bulog’s operations commenced in May 1967, it has been an important ‘incubator of state tutelage’ (as Richard Robison once put it), aiming to promote private business that would help the state.
It helped accelerate the growth of the private Salim Group, owned by Suharto’s long-time friend Liem Sioe Liong, a Chinese Indonesian whose adopted name is Sudono Salim. The Salim Group’s astounding expansion and growth into many unrelated industries, from shipping to banking, all started with flour. Ever since 1969, the Salim subsidiary PT Bogasari Flour Mills has monopolised the import, milling and distribution of wheat. It became the largest domestic wheat flour producer, and one of the largest instant noodle producers and exporters in the world. It achieved this prominence because of support from Bulog. In return, the Salim group became one of the strongest private supporters of the New Order’s high economic growth.
An important part of New Order capitalism was the ‘tax free charitable foundation’, known as the yayasan. Controlled by top New Order officials, several of these bodies served as financial centres for the repayment of Salim’s ‘gratitude’ (hutang budi) to Suharto and his regime. The diversified Yayasan Harapan Kita (controlled by Suharto himself) and the Yayasan Dharma Putra Kostrad (run by the elite military unit Kostrad) received huge ‘financial contributions’ - purportedly 26% of their incomes - from Bogasari Flour Mills. The expectation of such a quid pro quo among friends was presumably the reason why Bulog helped accelerate the Salim Group’s growth in the first place and was an important element in the creation of a powerful network of conglomerates.
In turn, these yayasan (and others like them) were able to finance ‘palace circle’ ventures in a multitude of different sectors within the Indonesian economy, as well as to ‘bail out’ troubled (Suharto-linked) banks or private businesses. They helped create a tightly interrelated private sector network, with the aim of fostering well-connected private conglomerates. These conglomerates, it should be acknowledged, also contributed to real economic growth.
Realignment
The toppling of Suharto, and Indonesia’s recent economic devastation, have induced a re-configuration of patronage flows. The untimely (albeit honourable) dismissal in August 1998 of Beddu Amang, the head of Bulog, was an important indication of a realignment within Bulog’s ‘politico-bureaucratic web’. Beddu had refused to permit any erosion of the Salim Group’s monopoly of the wheat and sugar industries. He was ‘posted’ to another, less powerful, position in the Finance Department.
With Suharto no longer directly involved in these matters and facing enough difficulty of his own to help the Salim Group, Bulog’s role appears to be shifting towards a more nationalistic orientation of fostering non-Chinese capitalists. Possibly with the support of Indonesia’s top economic minister, Ginanjar Kartasasmita, Bulog now seems to be supporting a shift away from the (Chinese-owned) Salim Group, towards the Bakrie Group controlled by Aburizal Bakrie. There has been speculation that a new group of powerful post-Suharto political actors, among them Ginanjar, Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Finance and Industry, who also heads the Planning Bureau (Bappenas), Rahardi Ramelan, Minister of Industry and Trade, and Adi Sasono, Cooperatives Minister, now have enough control over the levers of patronage to support the growth and expansion of the Bakrie Group into the future, mirroring the Salim Group’s past commercial ascension.
But Bulog remains embroiled in corruption revelations, which demonstrate that any internal change is not going unchallenged. There is controversy over the tendering process for certain food monopolies awarded to Singapore-based PT Bakrie Nusantara International, a financial arm of the Bakrie Group. Also, a land-swap deal involving Bulog is being investigated by the Attorney General’s office. Among the prominent witnesses are Tommy Suharto and Beddu Amang.
Bulog now has Rahardi Ramelan as interim head, and its wings have been clipped: it is said that in 1999 it will be responsible only for rice stabilisation. The question for any new government will be the balance between growth and equity in its rice policy. Bulog would have a role to play in either case. Over time it has developed a certain level of skill, and it still has the warehouse capacity throughout the county to handle large-scale rice imports. The availability of rice for the consumer, and satisfactory returns to farmers whatever the size of their holdings, will remain important government concerns for decades to come.
Jeremy Mulholland, currently researching Indonesian conglomerates, is a PhD student in International Business at the University of Melbourne <j.mulholland@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au>. Ken Thomas, a long-time observer of the political economy of Indonesia, is an Honorary Visiting Fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia <k.thomas@latrobe.edu.au>.
Inside Indonesia 58: Apr-Jun 1999
For years, police were ‘little brother’ to soldiers. Will that now change? And will it bring back the friendly local cop?
Adrianus Meliala
Inside Indonesia said in a newsbrief (October-December 1998) that the Indonesian police want to be separated from the military. The National Commission on Human Rights supports separation as an important step towards improving human rights. But why did the police become part of the armed forces in the first place?
From the day they were set up in 1945, police joined the army fighting the Dutch. They willingly saw themselves as combatants and accepted the consequences of being treated as soldiers when captured. They had no other reason than the heroic intention to keep Indonesia independent, but it was contrary to the 1948 Geneva Convention, which views police as civilians. This view accords with the widely accepted concept of a police force that belongs to the community rather than to the state or any political party.
With the fighting over, the police were increasingly drawn into politics by politicians who took advantage of their relationship with the organisation. Aware of this tendency, the Temporary People’s Consultative Assembly (MPRS) decided in 1960 to place Polri within the armed forces. The intention was to remove both the police and the armed forces from influence by the political parties.
However, this new structure did not prevent the continuing politicisation of the armed forces. The communist party (PKI) had considerable influence within the police (as well as within the navy and the air force), whereas the army was strongly anti-communist.
This political factionalism within the armed forces exploded in the coup attempt of 30 September 1965, which the army leadership blamed on the PKI. Morale within the armed forces plummeted.
The new president, Suharto, then commanded a total integration of all wings, including the police, into a single and integrated military administration. Within half a decade Polri had lost its autonomy, its own ethos and also its special salary rank.
Youngest brother
Over the next 30 years as part of the military, the police developed a ‘youngest brother’ mentality. They often felt they were treated unfairly especially by the army, and lost their self-confidence.
The National Police Force, Polri, was in fact terribly exploited. Their role remained as political as ever - to maintain political security together with the army. The armed forces tended to back up almost anything Suharto’s government considered important for the maintenance of power. By using Polri and its police power, the military had legal approval to use extra-legal methods. For example, curbing the press, arresting critical persons and generally eradicating public protest.
The worst part of being the ‘youngest’ wing in the military was that the police were not free to uphold the law. Many well-connected people were untouchable and thus enjoyed legal immunity. Polri often became a ready scapegoat put forward by the military whenever people protested against the way the military mishandled cases, caused unnecessary violence or escalated confrontation.
Police budgets have always fallen behind those of other military wings. Lack of equipment and poor pay prevent them from doing a good job. In the eyes of the other military wings, Polri are losers. The public, meanwhile, constantly mock police incompetence.
When the possibility of the police regaining their independence from the military was first raised openly in June 1998, the police secretly welcomed it. But the suggestion did not come from the general public, who seemed largely ignorant of the implications. Instead, police independence has remained an elitist debate rather than a subject discussed in society as a whole. Generally speaking people don't care, as long as the police become less corrupt, less brutal, and more accountable to the public. Unfortunately, it is difficult for Polri to guarantee that they will fulfill all those hopes.
The problem rests in the imbalanced relationship between the State and the public. The State has been able do anything it chooses. Unless this relationship changes and a strong political commitment is brought to bear on the situation, any new structure won’t necessarily improve policing. Perhaps rather than promoting the rule of law, it would just turn old policing problems into new, more sophisticated ones.
The only factor driving separation has been the determination or otherwise at Armed Forces (Abri) headquarters to let Polri go. The wave of reform after the downfall of Suharto in May 1998 struck Abri in many ways. The public was flooded with revelations - the kidnapping of pro-democracy activists, the massacres in Aceh, Lampung, Tanjung Priok and East Timor, the continuing debate on the dual function of Abri, and lastly the issue of Polri as a part of the military.
Despite diminishing public sympathy for Abri, headquarters has hesitated to respond to Polri's idea of saying ‘goodbye’ to Abri.
Abri’s reason for retaining Polri as a part of the armed forces is rather peculiar. Despite Polri’s poor performance and image during its years in the military, the armed forces insist that ‘historically’ Polri belongs in Abri. Understandably enough, they over-emphasise certain episodes in that history, while failing to acknowledge others.
Abri’s recent plan to recruit thousands of civilians as ‘military-trained civilians’, rather than empowering the crippled police, must be seen as another signal for the public to give up thinking of a Polri separate from Abri.
However, even if it is excluded from Abri, it doesn't mean Polri's problems are over. The police themselves are not in any sense ready for this big change. More is involved than just a change in structure and the question of who will be in charge. Separation will mean turning the police back into a fully civilian force, in performance, behaviour and, above all, in their attitude.
Officers working the streets can no longer expect people to obey them, as they once did, simply because they have a military uniform, baton or firearm. They will have to depend on their personal capabilities when dealing with people. The separation could be a nightmare!
Internally, the new police force would need to solve a host of bureaucratic problems - for example, how to flatten the rank structure from 22 ranks to 6 or 7 ranks as in many other countries. Externally, there needs to be a decision whether they will fall under the Ministry of Home Affairs or have their own. Each choice has political consequences.
Finally, what about Polri’s ‘old brother’, the army? Soldiers may find it difficult to accept they are no longer able to ridicule the police. One situation we are most afraid of is when a soldier refuses to obey the police and fights back when about to be arrested for a crime.
Adrianus Meliala is a criminologist at the University of Indonesia, Jakarta. He is presently studying at the University of Queensland.
Inside Indonesia 58: Apr-Jun 1999
Why neighbours hacked each other to death in a remote part of Indonesia.
David Mitchell
The breakdown of government authority in Indonesia has led to so many outbreaks of violence that it seems to defy our attempts to understand it all. One of the more dramatic incidents was the outbreak of traditional warfare which engulfed the town of Waikabubak on the normally quiet and out of the way island of Sumba, on 5th November 1998.
The events in Waikabubak are notable for the absence of several of the usual suspects. There is no hint of racial or religious divisions here, and no sign of intelligence officers sponsoring one side or other. This was a case of violence between two neighbouring ethnic groups which usually get on well together. The people of Loli and Wewewa (also known as Waijewa) are connected by many links of marriage and amicably share involvement in the same churches and schools, and in trade. They do have a history of conflict over land in the border area, but the most recent outbreak of violence in 1992 was quickly settled after some house-burning without any deaths, and there had been peace between them since then.
Yet early in the morning of 5th November a raiding party of some 2000 or more men from the Wewewa district were dropped by trucks at the border of the adjacent district of Loli. These were all men who owned shoes and trousers and white shirts for going to church on Sundays. Now they had bare feet and wore traditional waist cloths and white headbands, with machetes tucked in their belts and spears in their hands. Many carried rocks for throwing, tucked into the fold of their waist cloths. Some carried bundles of dried grass, ready to be converted into firebrands with a click of the cigarette lighter. With these traditional weapons of war they crossed the border into Loli and marched along the road towards Waikabubak, the main town and centre of government of West Sumba.
The bustling town of Waikabubak lies at the foot of the hill where an ancient traditional centre is located. The traditional houses of Tarung, the Mother Village of the Loli district, cluster tightly together on the hill top for defensive purposes, and to watch over their ricefields below. Their tall thatched roofs tower above tree level, displaying an ancient dignity which contrasts with the shabby galvanised iron roofs of the modern town. The juxtaposition of the two worlds is fantastic for tourists, but creates many complexities for government and for local politics. These days the ancient and the modern are inextricably intertwined, and electric light cables can be seen disappearing into the thatch roofs. The skull tree in the central court of the village had the skulls removed back in the 1930s, but it remains a reminder of warfare. The inhabitants still remember the rituals for reading the omens before going out to put their lives on the line in battle.
The Wewewa raiding party had several reasons for confidence as they marched across the border. They are by far the largest ethnic group in West Sumba, with 125,000 people compared to the 20,000 people of Loli, and their man, Wewewa-born Rudolf Malo, was in office as head (regent or bupati) of the government of West Sumba.
They also had reason to feel justified in launching what they saw as a counter-attack against the people of Loli. Although the affair had started as a demonstration calling for reformasi, it had become transposed into the framework of inter-ethnic conflict. Now it was flaring out of control and moving towards a horrifying climax.
Demonstration
It had begun just ten days before, on 24th October, with a small demonstration by around thirty university graduates. They were protesting at the government offices about the systematic corruption of the civil service examinations that was cheating them out of the jobs they had trained for.
The demonstrations of disappointed candidates for the civil service grew in size on the 26th, 29th and 31st October, and took on an increasing level of animosity because the government was seen to be unresponsive. The action had clearly tapped a deeply felt resentment against the abuse of power by those already in office using their influence to get jobs for their relatives. Bupati Malo responded by declaring that it was not within his capacity to solve the corruption problem. Indeed, bribes paid to those in the provincial office were outside his immediate responsibility, but his declaration of powerlessness was disingenuous and not believed. When he added accusations that the demonstrators were politically suspect, this sounded like a threat to permanently exclude them from appointment. The demonstrators were not to be intimidated. Their numbers continued to grow and they now made personal attacks on the bupati and demanded his resignation.
Next came a counter-demonstration of 500 supporters and family of Bupati Malo. They were trucked into town to demand that the police and the army stand by Bupati Malo and clamp down on the demonstrators who had insulted him. The demonstrators had used the bupati’s taboo childhood name, Mete, which is indeed offensive in the local tradition. The bupati’s supporters said this had to be stopped.
The tactic of counter-demonstrations might have worked in years gone by, but in the post-Suharto era it produced a defiant reaction. The anti-corruption demonstration now erupted out of the control of the university graduates who had begun it. They had only been able to earn their degrees through the sacrifices of their relatives in the villages at home, selling their rice crops and their buffaloes to pay for their education far away in Bali or Java . Now the frustrated relatives were aroused and angry. They took over the demonstration and turned their wrath on supporters and family of Bupati Malo. They stoned the houses of anyone in town who they saw as part of the bupati’s clique. The occupants abandoned their houses in town and fled in fear back to Wewewa. Many of the empty houses were then broken into and the TV sets and other valuables carried away.
The original demonstration had not been a predominantly Loli group; they were a group united more by their shared experience of studying in Bali or Java, and by the discrimination against them. But the mob stoning and robbing the houses was drawn from the villages immediately surrounding the town. It was predominantly a Loli mob attacking the Wewewa people close to the bupati. This was the attack that had in turn enraged the Wewewa on the fateful 5th November.
The 2000-strong Wewewa raiding party did not head directly for the centre of town, though it was only 6 kilometres from the border. They first attacked the Lolinese border villages. The thatched roofs of Sumbanese houses make them highly vulnerable to fire, and fire spreads rapidly from one house to the next, so Sumbanese villages are quite indefensible once an enemy gets in close. Soon after about 5 am all 30 houses of the village of Patama We’e had been burned to the ground. Its inhabitants were fleeing for their lives across the fields. A quarter of an hour later, further along the road, the two thatched-roof villages of Tawiana and Kabu Ngaba were also ablaze and the raiding party was marching on in loose formation towards Waikabubak.
The town’s population of 15,000 spreads out along the roads to around the 3 km mark, so the raiders were soon passing between the houses of the town, mostly abandoned by their fleeing inhabitants. Small groups broke off to re-occupy the houses of Wewewa people which had been abandoned the day before, but the main group pressed on.
By 6 am they had reached the Christian senior high school, just 1 km from the centre of town. One eyewitness, watching awestruck from a hiding place across the rice fields, reported that as the leaders of the raiding party reached the school, the tail of the group was just passing the Mona Lisa Hotel 1200 metres behind. This must surely have been the biggest war party ever assembled in the history of Sumba, and they were now within reach of Kampung Tarung, whose tall, highly inflammable thatch roofs were easily visible protruding above the trees.
But 2000 men was not enough, and their progress had been too slow. The thick clouds of smoke rising from the burning border villages had sent a signal down the 20 km length of the Loli valley, an unmistakable one given the tension of the day before. There were no telephones, but the shouted message passed from village to village is still a powerful technology when the message is a simple one. The men from the upper Loli valley had time to respond. Some galloped their horses down the road, some strode on foot at a brisk pace, others commandeered trucks or hung onto the bumper bars of overloaded 4-wheel drives and Kijang vans. They stormed chaotically past the police and army posts in the centre of town and joined the men of the lower valley in defence of Tarung.
There is a small bridge on the main road which marks the western boundary of the centre of Waikabubak. A shallow creek running unobtrusively behind the Pertamina petrol station formed the last line of defence of Kampung Tarung. This creek marked the line that the Wewewa raiding party would never cross. Local villagers now speak of it in mystical terms, saying that the little creek suddenly seemed deep and wide to the attacking party.
The battle raged for most of the morning, and brought a complete and devastating defeat for the Wewewa raiders. The last of the fighting was ended by an early downpour of La Nina rain. When it cleared the people of Wewewa and Loli were confronted with a horrific scene that no-one had desired, no-one expected, and no-one would take responsibility for.
The official death toll is based on the 26 bodies that were escorted back to Wewewa. Other deaths may have been kept secret by their families. These were not the neat and quick deaths produced by bullet wounds. All had been chopped to death with machetes, or sometimes speared. Six had limbs or the head hacked off. Most were men, but one Wewewa woman died of machete wounds outside her home. One boy was killed as well, speared while trying to hide under a bed with adult men.
Why?
Even to try to analyse such an event can seem like an offence against decency. Yet try to understand it we must. In Waikabubak and in the provincial capital of Kupang several explanations have emerged.
The first treated it as a case of inter-ethnic conflict, ignoring the way it arose out of conflict within the political elite. This has been the official line, led by provincial governor Piet Tallo. The governor immediately flew in the police Mobile Brigade to prevent further outbreaks, and arrived himself the next day. He sidelined Bupati Malo, and presided over the peace-making process himself. But he rejected calls to sack the bupati. Although he did move to deal with the corruption in the civil service appointments, he treated this as if there were no connection with the bloodshed in Waikabubak. Fortunately Governor Tallo had some credibility here. Bribes and nepotistic appointments had been blatant throughout the province for many years. Tallo already had a record of intervening helpfully in some of the more outrageous cases that came to light while he was Deputy Governor from 1992-97.
The governor was not alone in his mediation effort. Several religious and academic figures, successful Sumbanese working in Kupang, stepped forward to support him, and the peace-making moved forward quickly. One of the measures of its success was an amnesty for a no-names-no-packdrill return of stolen good to the houses that had been robbed. Clearly, effective leadership is still possible in the reformasi era.
At first it seemed that blame for the bloodshed would not be sheeted home to the political manoeuvres of the bupati and his critics. But having been sidelined in the peacemaking process, Bupati Malo had no way of regaining his lost authority. On 21st November, 31 prominent Wewewa public figures, among them former Malo supporters, signed a letter calling for his resignation. More such calls followed. By 23rd December it was clear he would not be amongst the first-term bupatis to be given a second term.
To observers outside West Sumba it may make more sense to blame the failing political system rather than the individual. It could be said that Bupati Malo’s main fault is that he continued to act like a New Order bupati after the rules had changed. Perhaps his military background (he is an airforce colonel) gave him too inflexible a view of how he could manage political conflict in the reformasi era.
So far, details of the links between elite politics and the mobilisation of villagers have remained concealed. Even the provincial newspaper Pos Kupang, which has done a great job of documenting and explaining the events, seems to lack a tradition of investigative reporting. There remain major gaps in the story it has told. Pos Kupang put emphasis on the use of the bupati’s taboo name, and on a wild rumour that a Loli man had been murdered in Wewewa which had inflamed the situation. These details are indeed part of the story, but the emphasis on them presents the villagers as an emotion-driven irrational mob rather than as political actors who, however misguidedly, are attempting to defend their vital interests.
The villagers’ point of view has not been reported. But they do have interesting things to say. One of the most remarkable aspects of the story, the fact that all 26 deaths were on the Wewewa side, while no-one from Loli died, has not so far received any attention. Perhaps there will be sophisticated military or psychological explanations offered, but the village people have a simple explanation. The last outbreak of fighting on the border between Loli and Wewewa, in 1992, an affair much smaller than the events of 1998, had ended with a peace-making ceremony in which each side swore a classic poetic oath never again to invade the territory of the other: ‘If I break this vow, may I be struck by lightning as I cross the hills; If I betray my word, may I be struck by a snake as I cross the fields’. It was the Wewewa people who broke the vow, so the villagers say, and brought this curse down upon their heads.
This appeal to the mystical may not be a very convincing explanation these days, but to many in the villages it has a stark moral simplicity which helps to make sense of this sorry tale.
David Mitchell is a medical doctor in Melbourne. He lived in Sumba as a volunteer in 1968-75, and visits there often.
Inside Indonesia 58: Apr-Jun 1999
For 32 years they were condemned to a life of misery. Now former communist political prisoners are emerging, slowly, into the daylight.
Helene van Klinken
It’s my first day in Indonesia after five years. There’s a women’s congress in Yogyakarta, so I decide to take a look. Once among the well-dressed delegates I realise I should have worn that shirt with sleeves, instead of this sleeveless dress I’m wearing to survive the heat! But when I produce copies of Inside Indonesia - by chance with women in Islamic head-dress on the cover - everyone wants a copy: ‘A women’s magazine?’
Sitting next to me is a smart, middle aged delegate of the government-backed Indonesian Women’s Coalition (Kowani). She’s taken me under her wing. The first speaker is slight, elderly, Javanese, softly spoken. There’s trouble with the loud speaker, and everyone around me is chatting. ‘Am I hearing correctly?’, I ask my neighbour. ‘Is the speaker really an ex-political prisoner, a former communist?’ ‘I am not sure’, she replies, ‘she has not actually said so’. The speaker is calling for full rights to be restored to communists, who were stripped of them under Suharto.
Then the Dutch sociologist Saskia Wieringa is speaking. She was banned from Indonesia for her 1995 thesis on the communist women’s movement Gerwani. She tells how, early in Suharto’s New Order, Gerwani members had sexual immorality added to their other ‘sins’. Accused of complicity in the murder of six army generals that set in motion the so-called communist coup on 30 September 1965, they were said to have conducted sexual orgies and mutilated the generals’ genitals before killing them. Yet in fact, Wieringa says, the autopsy on their bodies never mentions such mutilation, and it was signed and accepted by then General Suharto. An indignant forensic doctor grabs the microphone. ‘It’s an indictable offence to lie about an autopsy’, she says resolutely. Enthusiastic applause.
I’ve read about changes in Indonesia. But this is staggering. Communists were outcastes throughout the New Order, and could never have addressed a major gathering like this. I can’t wait to ask other delegates what they think. Yes, Ibu Sulami, the opening speaker, spent twenty years in gaol for being the deputy leader of Gerwani. Yes, it’s the first time a Gerwani member has spoken openly.
But all is not sunshine at the conference. Delegates grumble that the Jakarta organisers have an ‘agenda’. Next day, amidst a chaotic display of ‘democracy’, a group walks out. Some, including Aisyiyah (the women’s movement within the Islamic group Muhammadiyah), resent what they believe is an attempt to rehabilitate communists. The final declaration of the congress on 17 December does not mention the shadow under which ex-communists still live, despite the wish of some delegates to include it.Tears
For now I’m excited about the attention given to these former political prisoners, or ex-tapol. I want to know what N, an ex-tapol friend who spent 13 years in gaol thinks about all this. I get rather vague directions to her place. After calling at two previous addresses I finally track her down amidst a relentless tropical downpour. She is not as excited as I’d hoped. Through her tears she tells how every time she moves house a report about her has to be sent around to a half dozen different officials. ‘Oh, so you’re like that ibu,’ one told her cruelly. ‘We’re all good people who live in this area, you know’. The report lists her as being ‘involved’ in the coup of 1965, so therefore she cannot be trusted. She fears this process, as she has to move again soon. She feels humiliated and abused. She fears eviction if her landlord finds out who she ‘really is’.
I decide I want to meet other ex-tapols and find out if life is any different for them since the fall of Suharto. Despite rules barring him from school for fear of ‘contaminating’ students, L has a job as a teacher. Like all the tapol I meet (except Sulami), L fears losing his job if I print his name. Tapol remain hidden within Indonesia. L’s students bring him articles about Marxism - he just listens and smiles to himself. He thinks students are a bit freer to think now, and certainly more open about discussing Marxism.
I ask L about his identity card, is the ‘ET’ mark still there - a forced declaration to the world, like the Star of David was under Hitler, that he is an ‘ex-tapol’? He shows it to me. ‘No ET’, he says. ‘But look, the card only lasts till 2000. I’m over 60 so it should say "lifelong". They still know!’ He quickly puts it away as if embarrassed to let me see it. Does L still report to the local government official regularly, as required throughout the New Order, I ask? No, not any more. But others do - he’d like to think they had the courage to refuse.
I take a bus ride through the congested Jakarta traffic to visit S in his small rented house. His neighbours trust and respect him. Some know about his background, many don’t. ‘For thirty years my parents and siblings have experienced trauma because of me’, he says. But since May 1998 his family seem less worried. He is even thinking of marrying, because there is a little less suspicion. Till now, he felt marriage would be unfair to his wife, and the stigma would pass to his children. S explains that research in one area of West Java showed a divorce rate for ex-tapol of over 50%. Often they were blamed for the trouble they brought on their families. Children, taught lies at school about 1965, came to hate their parents and grandparents. After years in gaol and almost no possibility of work, the families sometimes felt the released person was just a drain, an added burden.
My time’s running out - I just want to meet a friend of S who helps tapol and wants to record their stories. Some reveal all to this person just days before they die. For S, this is important history. The next generation must know the truth of 1965. Many tapol are now sick and old. Sometimes their families have forsaken them.
In Jakarta I ask activists what is being done for the tapol. Yes, like the organisers of the Yogya Congress, they agree that now is the time for justice, an amnesty for all communists. The events of 1965 must be investigated afresh, free from New Order ideology. I’m told that schools now no longer have to teach the New Order version blaming the 1965 debacle on communists. In fact there are seven versions - including one in which the perpetrators are Suharto and the CIA. Students and teachers can choose! But, say most activists, justice for communists is still a difficult issue. One reason I heard stated often is that the majority Muslim population cannot accept those ‘with no religion’.
At the end of my travels, I admire the organisers of the Yogyakarta Congress for highlighting the tapol issue. But I feel sad that the woman from the government-backed women’s organisation could not admit what her ears were telling her. I do hope that ‘reformasi’ will mean something for the 13 people still languishing in gaol, and the thousands of ex-tapol who continue to have their basic rights denied.
Helene van Klinken teaches Indonesian at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. She wants to start a support fund for aging female tapol. Contact her on tel 07-3371 3854, fax 07-3871 2525, email helenevk@ucaqld.com.au.
Inside Indonesia 58: Apr-Jun 1999
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