Violent Conflicts in Indonesia: Analysis, Representation, Resolution (Routledge Contemporary Souteast Asia Series)

Violent Conflicts in Indonesia

Indonesia has been affected by many conflicts arising from a variety of ethnic, religious and regional tensions. These conflicts have frequently resulted in serious violence. This book presents important new thinking on violent conflict in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation. It looks at the nature of violence and at the reasons behind violent outbreaks, considering a range of particular conflicts in detail. Chapters include analysis of conflicts in Aceh, East Timor, Maluku, Java, West Kalimantan, West Papua and elsewhere. The contributors provide analysis of political, ethnic and nationalistic killings, with a concentration on the post-Suharto era. The book goes on to examine how violence in Indonesia is represented in the media, and explores ways in which violent conflicts could be resolved or prevented. The last section turns the focus onto victims of violence and forms of justice and retribution. Of interest to scholars studying Southeast Asia and conflict, Violent Conflicts in Indonesia considers how violence is shaping, and is being shaped by, Indonesian society, politics and the Indonesian state. Charles A. Coppel is a Principal Fellow and Associate Professor in History at the University of Melbourne. He has conducted extensive research on the modern history of Indonesia and especially of its ethnic Chinese minority. His publications include Indonesian Chinese in Crisis (1983) and Studying Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia (2002).

Routledge contemporary Southeast Asia series

1 Land Tenure, Conservation and Development in Southeast Asia Peter Eaton 2 The Politics of Indonesia–Malaysia Relations One kin, two nations Joseph Chinyong Liow 3 Governance and Civil Society in Myanmar Education, health and environment Helen James 4 Regionalism in Post-Suharto Indonesia Edited by Maribeth Erb, Priyambudi Sulistiyanto and Carole Faucher 5 Living with Transition in Laos Market integration in Southeast Asia Jonathan Rigg 6 Christianity, Islam and Nationalism in Indonesia Charles E. Farhadian 7 Violent Conflicts in Indonesia Analysis, representation, resolution Edited by Charles A. Coppel 8 Revolution, Reform and Regionalism in Southeast Asia Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam Ronald Bruce St John

Violent Conflicts in Indonesia Analysis, representation, resolution

Edited by Charles A. Coppel

First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2006 selection and editorial matter, Charles A. Coppel; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0–700–71649–1

In memory of Herb Feith (1930–2001)

Contents

List of illustrations Notes on contributors Preface Acknowledgements

x xi xv xix

PART 1

Violence and the state 1 Violence: analysis, representation and resolution

1 3

CHARLES A. COPPEL

2 From Soepomo to Prabowo: law, violence and corruption in the Preman state

19

TIM LINDSEY

PART 2

Regions of violence

37

Recent violence in Java 3 ‘Eventing’ the May 1998 affair: problematic representations of violence in contemporary Indonesia

39

SAI SIEW MIN

4 Discursive violence on the Internet and the May 1998 riots

58

ELAINE TAY

5 The ‘other’ May riots: anti-Chinese violence in Solo, May 1998 JEMMA PURDEY

72

viii Contents 6 The killings of alleged sorcerers in South Malang: conspiracy, ninjas, or ‘community justice’?

90

NICHOLAS HERRIMAN

Violence in West Kalimantan and Ambon 7 Passing the red bowl: creating community identity through violence in West Kalimantan, 1967–1997

106

NANCY LEE PELUSO

8 The Maluku wars: ‘communal contenders’ in a failing state

129

GERRY VAN KLINKEN

9 Migration, provocateurs and communal conflict: the cases of Ambon and West Kalimantan

144

ANNE LOVEBAND AND KEN YOUNG

Violence in Aceh, East Timor and West Papua 10 Provoking violence, authenticating separatism: Aceh’s Humanitarian Pause

163

ELIZABETH DREXLER

11 Ceremonies of reconciliation as prelude to violence in Suai, East Timor

174

JAMES J. FOX

12 Violence and governance in West Papua

180

RICHARD CHAUVEL

PART 3

After the violence

193

Representation 13 The media as a control and as a spur for acts of violence

195

STANLEY

14 Writing the dark side: publishing about violence in Indonesia BIMO NUGROHO

206

Contents ix Re-education 15 Educating to handle conflict and avoid violence

217

SAMSU RIZAL PANGGABEAN

16 The Indonesian Commission on Violence Against Women

229

MÉLY G. TAN

Voices of the Victims 17 Tortured body, betrayed heart: state violence in an Indonesian novel by an ex-political prisoner of the ‘1965 affair’

242

BUDIAWAN

18 Violence, internal displacement and its impact on the women of Aceh

258

SURAIYA KAMARUZZAMAN

19 Political economy of violence and victims in Indonesia

269

HILMAR FARID

Glossary Bibliography Index

286 291 316

Illustrations

Figures 4.1 6.1

6.2

Photograph from ETISC website of a tortured woman The local police station being destroyed after the police arrested three suspects for the killing of Martawi, Ginah and Bukhori, South Malang, December 1999 Some of the men who surrendered after killing Martiah, pictured outside the local police station, South Malang, January 2000

65

93

95

Maps 1.1 7.1

Map of Indonesia Map of the sites of major violence in West Kalimantan in the 1960s and 1990s

2 107

Contributors

Budiawan completed his PhD dissertation at the Southeast Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. He is now teaching at Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta. He is the author of ‘When Memory Challenges History: Public Contestation of the Past in PostSuharto Indonesia’, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, 28(2), 2000. Richard Chauvel is Director of the Australia Asia Pacific Institute at Victoria University. His research interests are in Australia–Indonesia relations, West Papua and Maluku, as well as relations between Jakarta and the regions. His publications include Nationalists, Soldiers and Separatists: The Ambonese Islands from Colonialism to Revolt 1880–1950 (1990). Charles A. Coppel is a Principal Fellow and Associate Professor in History at the University of Melbourne. He has conducted extensive research on the modern history of Indonesia and especially of its ethnic Chinese minority. His publications include Indonesian Chinese in Crisis (1983) and Studying Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia (2002). Elizabeth F. Drexler is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Michigan State University. Her PhD dissertation, ‘Paranoid Transparencies: Aceh’s Historical Grievance And Indonesia’s Failed Reform’ (2001), is based on extensive field research in Indonesia on issues of state violence, terror, human rights and non-governmental organizations. Her current research project (‘Securing the Insecure Nation’) examines the politics of military accountability, state legitimacy and international humanitarian interventions as they intersect with the violent legacies of Soeharto’s New Order rule. Hilmar Farid is a member of the Volunteers for Humanity (Tim Relawan Kemanusiaan) and Editor of Media Kerja Budaya, an Indonesian bimonthly cultural magazine. He has been actively investigating and documenting human rights abuses in Indonesia. His publications include Timor Lorosae: Sebuah Tragedi Kemanusiaan (1999); Menentang Peradaban: Pelarangan Buku di Indonesia (1999); Jalan APEC Menaklukkan Buruh (1999); ‘Covering Strikes: Indonesian Workers and “Their” Media’

xii Contributors (1997); Indonesia, Fifty Years of Independence: Stability and Order in a Culture of Fear (1995); and, edited with John Roosa and Ayu Ratih, Tahun yang Tak Pernah Berakhir: Memahami Pengalaman Korban 65. James J. Fox is Director of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. He has been doing research on Timor since 1965. He was an international observer for the Carter Center during the popular consultation and was a member of the UN–World Bank Joint Assessment Mission to East Timor. He was also a member of the King’s College Study Team on defence and security issues, and was an international observer for the elections to East Timor’s Constituent Assembly. His many publications on Timor include Out of the Ashes: Destruction and Reconstruction of East Timor (2000), edited with Dionisio Babo Soares. Nicholas Herriman is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia. He is currently researching the killings of alleged sorcerers in East Java. Suraiya Kamaruzzaman was Executive Director, Flower Aceh Foundation (1995–2002) and a lecturer at the University of Syiah Kuala. In 2003 she received her Master of Law degree from Hong Kong University with a thesis entitled ‘Mass rape in a situation of armed conflict (1989–1998) in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam Province, Indonesia’. An active campaigner on violence against women, she is involved in empowering women, especially victims of state violence. She received the Yap Thiam Hien Award for Human Rights in 2001. Her publications include Women and the War in Aceh (2000), State and Violence Against Women (2001), The Beginning of Women Awakening for Aceh Peace (2001), Women Empowerment in Human Rights Perspective (2000), Peace (2000), and The Kerosene Lamp that is Never Off (1999). Tim Lindsey is Professor of Asian Law and Director of the Asian Law Centre at the University of Melbourne. He is a leading authority on Indonesian law, and his publications include Indonesia: Law and Society (1999), Indonesia: Bankruptcy, Law Reform and the Commercial Court (2000) and Corruption in Asia: Rethinking the Good Governance Paradigm (2002), edited with Howard Dick. Anne Loveband is presently completing her doctorate at the Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies at the University of Wollongong. Her PhD explores the dynamics of identity of Indonesian domestic workers in Taiwan. She has worked in the area of Indonesian studies for the last decade, her research focusing on issues related to labour, politics, inter-communal conflict and women. She also currently tutors in Anthropology at La Trobe University. Her publications include Positioning the Product: Indonesian Migrant Women Workers in Contemporary Taiwan (2003).

Contributors

xiii

Bimo Nugroho is a director of the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission and is one of the directors at the Institute for Studies on the Free Flow of Information (ISAI), which is currently doing research on ‘The Media Discourse on Bulogate I (Gus Dur) and Bulogate II (Akbar Tanjung)’. His publications include Megawati: Pantang Surut Langkah (1996), Sisi gelap Kalimantan Barat: Perseteruan Etnis Dayak-Madura (1997), Politik Media Mengemas Berita: Habibie dalam Pemberitaan Kompas, Merdeka, dan Republika (1999) and Golkar Retak? (1999), and he completed research Aktor Demokrasi (2000) under Arief Budiman and Olle Törnquist as supervisors. Samsu Rizal Panggabean is a lecturer in international relations at Gadjah Mada University. His publications include a chapter on ‘Maluku: The Challenge of Peace’ in Searching for Peace in Asia Pacific (2004), and a chapter on ‘Approaches to Ethnic and Religious Conflict Resolution in The Making of Ethnic and Religious Conflicts in Southeast Asia (2004). He is the Head of the Center for Security and Peace Studies at Gadjah Mada University. Nancy Lee Peluso is an environmental sociologist in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also currently the Director of the Berkeley Workshop on Environmental Politics and the Chair of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UCB. She has conducted extensive research on forest issues in East Kalimantan, Java and West Kalimantan. Her publications include Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java (1992); Borneo in Transition: People, Forests, Conservation, and Development (1996), edited with Christine Padoch; and Violent Environments (2001), edited with Michael Watts. Jemma Purdey completed her PhD dissertation in the Department of History, University of Melbourne (2002) on the subject of ‘AntiChinese Violence in Indonesia, 1996–1999’. Her article ‘A Contested Truth about the May 1998 Violence: Problematising the Place of Victims in Reformasi Indonesia’ was published in Asian Survey in 2002. Sai Siew Min is Senior Tutor at the History Department, National University of Singapore. She is also a PhD candidate in History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is currently working on her dissertation on Chinese communities on the Riau islands. Stanley is a journalist and deputy director of the Institute for Studies on the Free Flow of Information (ISAI). He is the author of Seputar Kedung Ombo (1994). Mély G. Tan is a senior sociologist, with research and writings on the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, societal development, and women and

xiv

Contributors

empowerment. After retiring from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) she was Chairperson of the Research Institute of Atma Jaya Catholic University, and now is mostly active in the National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan), which she helped found in 1998, and the Centre for Social Analysis and Civic Education (Pakem), established in 2000. Elaine Tay completed her doctoral dissertation at Murdoch University (2002) on ‘Unpicking the Semes: Power, Resistance, and the Internet’, and is now an adjunct postdoctoral research fellow at the Media Asia Research Group in Curtin University. Her research and teaching interests include media, literature and postcolonial studies. She has presented lectures and conference papers, and has published an article on ‘Global Chinese Fraternity and the Indonesian Riots of May 1998: The Online Gathering of Dispersed Chinese’ in Intersections, September 2000. Gerry van Klinken is Chief Editor of the quarterly Inside Indonesia magazine, and is currently a Research Fellow in the Modern Indonesia Program at the Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology (KITLV) in Leiden. He has recently written especially about the postNew Order political transformation of Indonesia, focusing on regions outside Java. He edited (with Edward Aspinall and Herb Feith) The Last Days of President Suharto (1999), and is the author of Minorities, Modernity and the Emerging Nation: Christians in Indonesia, a Biographical Approach (2003). Ken Young is adjunct Professor in the School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University and former Director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS) at the University of Wollongong. He previously held the Foundation Chair in Asian Studies at Swinburne University. His publications cover a wide range of issues on Indonesia and on Asia more generally, as well as debates in social and political theory, and he has conducted extensive research in urban and regional Indonesia.

Preface

My interest in violent conflict in Indonesia was aroused when I first began research on the ethnic Chinese minority during the turbulent transition from the guided democracy regime of President Sukarno to the New Order of President Suharto. Violence against Chinese was not the central focus of that research, but it was widespread during that period. Contrary to some reports at the time, I found that the Chinese were underrepresented in the horrific mass killings of 1965–1966. The most characteristic form of anti-Chinese violence was damage to their property. I still find it puzzling that some commentators continue to believe that the massacres were a kind of genocide directed at the ethnic Chinese. The killings, which are generally believed to have claimed half-a-million lives, have received remarkably little scholarly or journalistic attention, notwithstanding their large scale (Zurbuchen 2002). It is clear from the scholarly research that has been done, however, that the victims of the massacres were overwhelmingly Javanese and Balinese who were identified as communists or communist sympathizers. The mass killings of 1965–1966 are better viewed as ‘politicide’ – the killing of people for their political affiliation and belief – than as genocide (Coppel 1983: 58–61, 1999; Cribb 1990, 1997, 2001, 2002a; Robinson 1995; Sulistyo 2000; Eklöf 2002). I returned to the question of anti-Chinese violence in the late 1990s as another violent transition of regime was taking place in Indonesia. President Suharto’s sudden resignation in May 1998 followed on the heels of massive outbreaks of anti-Chinese violence in Jakarta and Solo. Once again there was also enormous violence committed by indigenous Indonesians against fellow indigenous Indonesians, this time occurring in many parts of the archipelago, even if the number of victims of killings was smaller than in 1965–1966. Before the 1990s, anti-Chinese violence had largely been viewed in isolation from other violence and framed within a wider picture of violence against the ethnic Chinese minority, either in Indonesia or in neighbouring countries. I was now convinced that anti-Chinese violence is best considered in the context of other forms of violence in Indonesia. With this in mind, I organized a panel on ‘Violence in Asia: Comparative Perspectives’ at the 13th biennial conference of the Asian Studies

xvi

Preface

Association of Australia and a workshop on ‘Violent Conflict in Indonesia: Analysis, Representation, Resolution’ which were both held at the University of Melbourne, 3–7 July 2000. Seventeen of the chapters in the present volume are based on papers presented to the panel and workshop. The exceptions are Chapters 1 and 12, which were written specifically for this publication. Although all of the conference papers were later revised and edited for publication, they have not been updated since July 2000 unless otherwise indicated. Updating was impracticable because the political situation in Indonesia in the last four years has been volatile, with further outbreaks of violence occurring in different parts of the country. To readers who wish to catch up with more recent developments, I recommend the reports of the International Crisis Group (http://www.intl-crisisgroup.org), Human Rights Watch (http://www.hrw.org), and Amnesty International (http://www.amnesty.org). Until mid-2001 the Indonesian National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM) published useful weekly human rights briefs called Fakta HAM, which as of May 2004 could still be accessed on the Komnas HAM group website (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/komnasham). The quarterly Inside Indonesia magazine (http://www.insideindonesia.org) also provides valuable recent material. The contributors to the conference panel and workshop included established academics and current postgraduates (from inside and outside Indonesia), as well as people from non-government organizations and journalists. Some of the papers were written in Indonesian and have been translated into English for inclusion in this volume. The prevalence of violent conflict in Indonesia was not only reflected in the large number of papers presented at our conference panel and workshop. This was just one of a number of such academic meetings to focus on violence in Indonesia. Related conferences or workshops were held in Berlin ( July 2000), Leiden (December 2000), Berkeley (February 2001), Los Angeles (April 2001) and London (September 2001). Collected volumes are in preparation or have already appeared from several of these meetings, and another volume consisting in the main of articles previously published in the journal Indonesia has also been published (Anderson 2001; Wessel and Wimhöfer 2001; Colombijn and Lindblad 2002; Hüsken and de Jonge 2002; Zinoman and Peluso 2002). Some may find such academic enthusiasm for the subject of violence in Indonesia parasitic on the suffering of its victims. The last three chapters in the present volume allow their voices – and the voices of those who care for them – to be heard. The approaches to violent conflict in Indonesia taken in this volume are discussed in more depth in Chapter 1. For present purposes, it suffices to say that the book is by no means confined to description and analysis of the violence. We actively solicited contributions that could address the ways in which the violence has been represented and in which conflict might be resolved. These concerns are reflected in the subtitle of the

Preface xvii workshop and of the present volume (‘Analysis, Representation, Resolution’). The scope of the present collection is largely limited to the period from the late 1960s, with some concentration on the 1990s. Readers seeking an understanding of the deeper historical roots of violence in Indonesia will need to look elsewhere (Colombijn and Lindblad 2002). The mass killing of 1965–1966 also falls outside the purview of this volume, although it was constitutive of the New Order regime (Van Langenberg 1990). Research on the massacres can be found in the references cited earlier in this preface. This volume is broad but not comprehensive in its geographical coverage. It contains chapters on Aceh, West Kalimantan, Maluku, West Papua, East Timor and Java, but not about the rest of Sumatra and Kalimantan or Sulawesi. Considering the scale of the violence in East Timor from the Indonesian invasion in 1975 to the slaughter after the ballot in 1999, it is clearly under-represented here (Carey 2001; Kammen 2001; Cribb 2002b; Robinson 2002). Nor can the collection claim to be fully representative of the various kinds of violent conflict in Indonesia during this period. As explained above, the project began with a desire to understand antiChinese violence in the context of other forms of violence in Indonesia. The strong representation of chapters dealing with the May 1998 riots should be seen from this perspective, not as an assertion of their overwhelming seriousness or importance. We have chapters that consider state-directed violence (e.g. by the military and police), violence by preman, inter-ethnic and racialized violence, inter-religious violence and vigilante violence. Less well represented in this volume is domestic violence (Sciortino and Smyth 2002) and violence against labour unionists (Hadiz 1997) or peasant protesters (Peluso 1992). In any case, a taxonomy of forms of violent conflicts is still in its infancy, posing problems for any attempt to provide ‘an anatomy of social violence in terms of their patterns, trends, regional distribution, severity and intensity’ (Tadjoeddin 2002: 2). It was disappointing not to be able to include more about the dilemmas faced by Indonesians in confronting their violent past. With the fall of the authoritarian Suharto regime many Indonesians had hopes of a transition to democracy which would enable them to deal with abuses of human rights, but so far the results have been meagre. Leftist victims of the mass violence in 1965 and Muslim victims of the Tanjung Priok killings of 1984 have been able to raise demands for justice and retribution, but have had little, if any, success. Others have hoped that the wounds of the past can be healed through a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the South African model, but a bill to establish such a commission took until September 2004 to be passed by the Indonesian parliament. Vested interests in the military and the political elite, the economic crisis which has afflicted Indonesia since 1997, corruption of the judiciary and civil

xviii Preface service, and regional challenges to central authority all pose formidable obstacles to truth, reconciliation or justice. Such problems, which are discussed further in Chapter 1, are of course not unique to Indonesia (De Brito et al. 2001). Charles A. Coppel Melbourne, November 2004

Acknowledgements

Limits had to be placed on the size of this volume, and for reasons of space I have regretfully had to exclude some of the papers concerned with violence in Indonesia which were presented in July 2000. Apart from my own, papers excluded were those by Richard Chauvel, Howard Dick, Chusnul Mar’iyah, Jacqueline Siapno, Richard Tanter, Frans Winarta and Mary Zurbuchen. (Richard Chauvel’s chapter on West Papua, which was not presented in July 2000, has been included to fill a perceived gap.) I am most grateful to them and to the other participants, who are too numerous to name individually, for their valuable contributions to the conference panel and workshop discussions. I shall name one of them, however. This volume is dedicated to the memory of Herbert Feith, who devoted his life to the peaceful resolution of conflict, the upholding of human rights and democratic values. Herb, who was admired by us all as a sympathetic and insightful interpreter of Indonesia and above all as an inspiring human being, was a key contributor to our discussions. His tragic death has robbed us of his further wise guidance in the serious matters with which this volume is concerned. On behalf of the contributors to this book, I wish to acknowledge the assistance of many other people and institutions whose help made the conference panel and workshop as well as the present volume possible. Arief Budiman, Richard Chauvel, Ariel Heryanto, Jemma Purdey, Mély G. Tan and Ken Young helped in organizing the panel and workshop and in selecting the invited participants. Dion Hallpike (Chapters 13 and 14) and Helen Pausacker (Chapters 18 and 19) assisted with the first drafts of translations of papers written in Indonesian. Jemma Purdey and Kate McGregor helped greatly in preparing the manuscript for publication, and Ian Boyle and Sue Armitage provided excellent copy-editing in difficult circumstances. Aline Scott-Maxwell and Helen Pausacker helped to chase down elusive references. Financial support from the Australian Research Council, the Asia Foundation, the Australia-Indonesia Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the Asian Law Centre at the University of Melbourne enabled a number of the participants to attend and present papers. The Australian Research Council, and the Department of History

xx Acknowledgements and the Indonesia Forum (both at the University of Melbourne), also provided support in other ways. I am grateful to Elaine Tay and Nicholas Herriman for the photographs, and to Robert Cribb and Nancy Peluso for the maps. Robert Cribb also made valuable comments on a draft of Chapter 1. Notwithstanding all this help, editorial responsibility rests with me.

Part 1

Violence and the state

THE PHILIPPINES ACEH SPECIAL TERRITORY Banda Aceh

L

A

A

Medan H RT RA NO MAT SU

SINGAPORE Pakanbaru

RIAU

Padang WEST SUMATRA

Y

M

Jambi JAMBI

SOUTH SUMATRA

S

I

A

EAST KALIMANTAN WEST KALIMANTAN Samarinda Pontianak CENTRAL KALIMANTAN Palangkaraya Banjarmasin

Palembang Bengkulu BENGKULU LAMPUNG Bandar Lampung

In early 2000, the Indonesian president, Abdurrahman Wahid, announced that the province of Irian Jaya would be renamed ‘Papua’. This change of name was not officially ratified by the Jakarta government, but the new name is in general use in the province itself. Local nationalists call the territory ‘West Papua’.

SOUTH KALIMANTAN

SOUTH SULAWESI Ujungpandang

CENTRAL EAST JAVA Bandung Semarang JAVA WEST Solo NUSASurabaya WEST Den- TENGGARA Malang YogyaJAVA pasar karta JAKARTA Mataram YOGYAKARTA BALI SPECIAL SPECIAL CAPITAL TERRITORY TERRITORY

NORTH SULAWESI Manado Ternate CENTRAL NORTH SULAWESI MALUKU Palu

SOUTHEAST Kendari SULAWESI

Jayapura Ambon

IRIAN JAYA (PAPUA) Wamena

MALUKU

Dili EAST NUSAEAST TIMOR TENGGARA Kupang © R.B. Cribb 2001

Map 1.1 Map of Indonesia (© Robert Cribb).

1

Violence Analysis, representation and resolution Charles A. Coppel

The recent history of Indonesia is tainted with blood (Colombijn 2001: 25) It is not really ‘politically correct’ for me to say this, especially as an Indonesian speaking before so many foreigners, but like it or not, politically correct or not, this whole culture in Indonesia is a culture of violence between tribes and ethnic groups. Indonesians can very quickly turn to violence. The word ‘amok’ comes from the lingua franca of this archipelago . . . (Prabowo Subianto cited in Collins 2002: 582)

Indonesia has experienced violence on a large scale. The anti-leftist mass killings of 1965–1966 rank among the worst massacres in the world in a ‘century of genocide’ (Totten et al. 1997). This volume is concerned with recent violent conflict in Indonesia, but it is not only the recent history of Indonesia that has been tainted with blood. Many tens of thousands of lives were lost in the Dutch subjugation of Aceh and Bali. Hundreds of thousands of Indonesians died as a result of their conscription as forced labourers by the Japanese. Thousands more lives were sacrificed in the fight for independence from the Dutch and in the social revolutions which accompanied it. Many more died in the prolonged armed struggle for an Islamic State in West Java, Aceh and South Sulawesi, as well as in various regional rebellions. As some of these cases suggest, if Indonesians have a ‘culture of violence’, it was not only Indonesians who contributed to it. The establishment of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the archipelago in the early seventeenth century was achieved with considerable brutality and violence. The same was true of the expansion of colonial rule in the late nineteenth century. In an album replete with nostalgia for the good old days (tempo doeloe) of colonial rule, we find photographs of soldiers of the colonial army with the bodies of slain Acehnese, posing like hunters with their kill (Nieuwenhuys 1973: 76). At around the time that these

4 Charles A. Coppel photographs were taken, the American historian Clive Day listed the ‘swarm of abuses’ that he said had characterized VOC rule in Java, but he concluded by saying, without any conscious irony, that they were all outweighed by ‘one great benefit’ that the Dutch had brought the Javanese, namely peace (Day 1904: 124). As indicated in the preface, this volume is not about the historical roots of violence in Indonesia. It is not even about the mass killings of 1965–1966. We are concerned here with recent violent conflict, in particular the last years of the long New Order period and the years immediately after Suharto’s fall in May 1998. By that time, Suharto had been Indonesia’s unchallenged President for three decades, and his New Order was no longer new. Although his authoritarian regime – euphemistically described as Pancasila Democracy – was given a modicum of legitimacy by general elections held at five-year intervals, its democratic credentials were weak. Indonesia, as the country hardest hit by the Asian economic crisis, had been in turmoil since late 1997. The exchange rate for the rupiah fell drastically, banks and other corporations became insolvent, basic commodities became scarce, prices of other consumer goods rose, and capital investment fled the country, seeking safer havens abroad. The Suharto government was caught between the structural reforms required by the International Monetary Fund in return for its rescue packages, and the vested interests of Suharto, his family and cronies. By the time Suharto was elected unopposed for his seventh five-year term as President by the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat) at its March 1998 session, it was apparent that the survival of his family and friends – those engaged in what their critics called KKN (korupsi, kolusi, nepotisme – corruption, collusion, nepotism) – was closer to his heart than the dictates of the IMF. In this situation, the preparedness of international lenders to provide the very large credit that Indonesia needed to stabilize the economy waned, the economic situation worsened, and agitation for reformasi (reform) increased (Budiman et al. 1999). As the economic foundations of the regime crumbled and the military monopoly over the exercise of state power was openly challenged, new possibilities for violent conflict emerged.

Structure This book is not confined to the description and analysis of violent conflict in Indonesia. We have been as much concerned to look at the ways in which the violence has been represented and at questions of conflict resolution. This volume includes studies of the role of journalists, publishers and the Internet in representing the violence. It looks deeply into the social and governmental structures that dictate how violence is represented. It also presents the voices of those active in caring for the victims and agitating on their behalf, thus allowing to some extent the voices of the victims themselves to be heard.

Violence 5 We originally intended to organize the book thematically, reflecting the themes of analysis, representation and resolution of its subtitle, but this did not prove to be fully practicable. The themes run through many of the chapters, and many of the chapters deal with more than one theme. As a result, the book is ordered geographically as well as thematically. In Chapter 2, Tim Lindsey examines the place of violence and the state. Where others have regarded the New Order as a bureaucratic authoritarian state, Lindsey sees Suharto’s rule as the exercise of lawless power. The New Order elevated Indonesia into a kind of Mafia state with the President as the godfather, a system he calls ‘state premanisme’. Just as ordinary preman (criminal thugs) were mobilized to demand money in return for protection, with the threat of extreme violence if the demand was not complied with, so too the New Order state operated as a corrupt and criminal enterprise. It offered its citizens the choice between protection (at a price) from gangsters or shadowy but threatening figures on the one hand and violent punishment (including murder) on the other. This chapter opens up important themes that are revisited in other chapters. It explores the complex relationship between private and state-sanctioned violence in a society characterized by corruption and the absence of the rule of law. The ten chapters in Part Two are geographically organized into three sections. The first section deals with violence against the ethnic Chinese and against dukun santet (sorcerers) on the island of Java. The economic and political crisis increased the vulnerability of the ethnic Chinese. When prices of basic commodities such as rice and cooking oil rose, a series of violent attacks against Chinese broke out across Java throughout January and February 1998. Although these attacks were in provincial towns rather than the largest cities and were directed mostly at Chinese property rather than the Chinese themselves, anti-Chinese sentiment was on the rise, fuelled by a deliberate campaign in Jakarta. Accusations that the Chinese had engaged in currency speculation, hoarded basic commodities and even, in one case, been involved in a bomb explosion, came from prominent military men and radical Muslim leaders (Sidel 1998; Coppel 2000). The violence in Jakarta in May 1998 attracted much attention nationally and internationally. Drawn by the continuing drama of mass demonstrations in support of reformasi by students and others, the media were heavily concentrated in the capital. The violence there took place in the full gaze of the media, and it was immediately characterized as ‘antiChinese’. Reports that large numbers of ethnic Chinese women had been publicly gang-raped were slow to appear in the conventional news media, but they spread rapidly on the Internet, generating widespread outrage especially among Chinese communities in other countries. The first three chapters in this section all address aspects of representation of the ‘May riots’. Sai Siew Min raises the fundamental question of whether one can ever know the ‘historical truth’ of such an event. In this

6 Charles A. Coppel case many aspects were strongly contested, and no generally agreed account has emerged. It is widely believed that the ‘riots’ were systematically organized but, despite pointers in the report of the Joint Fact-Finding Team, nobody has ever been held responsible. The police and military challenged the extent and even the reality of the rapes on the grounds that the victims had made no formal complaint to them. Courageous members of groups like the Volunteers for Humanity, who provided care and protection to the victims, were themselves subjected to intimidation and violence. Elaine Tay describes the way in which this issue was used by overseas Chinese websites to inflame anger and promote a sense of kinship among the Chinese worldwide. When their misappropriation of atrocity photographs taken from an East Timor website was exposed, however, those in Indonesia who denied that any rapes had occurred took comfort, claiming that there was a plot to discredit Indonesia and Islam. The 1998 ‘May riots’ in Jakarta are taken up in several other chapters later in this volume. Stanley discusses the treatment of the issue in the Indonesian media, including the invocation of nationalist and religious feeling. Mély Tan shows how the National Commission on Violence against Women had its origin in the solidarity among Indonesian women generated by their consciousness that the rape of Chinese women in the ‘May riots’ was part of a wider pattern of violence against women throughout the archipelago. Hilmar Farid challenges the conventional understanding of the events in racial or ethnic terms, reminding us that most of the victims were not ethnic Chinese, but were from among the urban poor of Jakarta. Jemma Purdey contrasts the representations of the May riots in Solo, which attracted far less attention from the media and the Internet. She asks why the violence there has been treated so differently from that in Jakarta, although its scale was proportionally greater. She finds that the Solo elite, whether Javanese or Chinese, was determined to deny that the violence in Solo was ‘anti-Chinese’ and insistent that race relations there were harmonious. Nicholas Herriman’s chapter examines violence against sorcerers (dukun santet) in East Java. This is a case study of the incidents that occurred in the villages of the South Malang area in 1999–2000, rather than of the better-known and more serious outbreak of killings of sorcerers in Banyuwangi in late 1998 (Brown 2000; Campbell and Connor 2000; Siegel 2001). He rejects the common assumption that such actions must have been masterminded by puppeteers (dalang) or provocateurs, arguing that those who attacked and killed sorcerers in South Malang were engaging in ‘community justice’ which they thought was a part of reformasi, and that the village leadership and police were unable to prevent or fully contain the violence. The second section of Part 2 is about violence in West Kalimantan and Maluku, two of the areas of Indonesia in which conflict has occurred on a

Violence 7 communal basis between ethnic or religious groups (or a combination of the two). Another major area of what Hilmar Farid calls ‘horizontal conflict’ is Poso in Central Sulawesi (Aragon 2001). Gerry van Klinken warns us against a simplistic understanding of the ‘religious’ violence in Maluku. He stresses the role of intra-elite competition at the local level in manipulating long-term ‘primordialist’ social patterns, rather than that of Jakarta elites or provocateurs. Nancy Peluso is interested in the connections between the ‘ethnic’ violence committed by Dayaks in West Kalimantan against Chinese in 1967 and against Madurese in 1997. In these cases, colonial constructions of Dayaks as the Headhunters of Borneo were redeployed to mobilize the Dayaks (see also Heidhues 2001; Davidson and Kammen 2002). Anne Loveband and Ken Young agree that the roots of the conflicts in Ambon and West Kalimantan are fundamentally local, but they are more ready to find national influences at work. They point to the destabilizing effects of mass movements of population under the Suharto regime. The movement was largely autonomous (spontan) in the case of the BBM (Bugis, Buton and Makasar) Muslims from Sulawesi to Ambon, but in West Kalimantan the Madurese had mostly come as part of the government’s massive transmigration programme. In either case, they argue, it was assumed by the regime that such large transplantations of ethnically different people could be achieved seamlessly without cultural friction or economic competition. In their discussion of the Ambon violence, they give more weight than does van Klinken to clashes between gangs in Jakarta and the involvement of Laskar Jihad vigilantes from Java. The third section of Part 2 examines violence in Aceh, West Papua and the now independent East Timor. These are regions that have been home to active separatist movements and counterinsurgency wars by the Indonesian military and militias it has promoted. James Fox describes how, shortly before the East Timorese cast their votes to choose between autonomy within Indonesia and independence from Indonesia, two local Catholic priests held a ceremony of reconciliation in the Suai church, where thousands of refugees had taken shelter from intimidation by prointegrationist militia. Intended to bring about reconciliation between the militia groups and supporters of East Timorese independence, the ceremony was a failure. Just over a week later the church was the site of a brutal massacre by militia, whose victims included the priests. Because the issue was still sub judice at the time of writing his paper, Fox did not go into details of the massacre or mention the names of the perpetrators of the violence. Under international pressure, the Indonesian government set up an Ad Hoc Court to try crimes against humanity alleged to have been committed in East Timor in 1999, including the massacre at Suai. Of the eighteen people brought to trial, twelve were acquitted. Those acquitted included the Suai-based Covalima police chief and acting district military commander, and the latter’s immediate subordinates in Suai at the time of the massacre. Their acquittal in August 2002

8 Charles A. Coppel (upheld by a majority of the Supreme Court in March 2004) was widely condemned internationally. In August 2003 the Ad Hoc Court sentenced Major General Adam Damiri, who at the time of the massacre was the commander of the Udayana military area which included East Timor, to three years’ imprisonment for his dereliction of duty in failing to prevent his subordinates from committing (and permitting pro-integration militias to commit) the atrocity in Suai. He was convicted despite a request by the prosecution for his acquittal, but his sentence was below the ten-year minimum for crimes against humanity. Ball and McDonald (2002) contains an extensive set of profiles of the key suspects in the East Timor violence of 1999. Indonesia’s ‘loss’ of East Timor after the ballot on 30 August 1999 was a shock to most Indonesians. In the post-Suharto era of reformasi and democratization, the opportunity that had been given to the East Timorese to choose between independence and autonomy within Indonesia gave some encouragement to dissidents in Papua and Aceh that they might be given a similar choice. On the other hand, those who had always believed that it was a mistake to allow ‘separatists’ to negotiate or vote their way to independence were confirmed in their determination never to risk losing any other part of Indonesian territory. This position was widely held, but especially so among the military and political elite who were only prepared at the most to offer autonomy within the Indonesian unitary republic. The impulsive decision by President Habibie to allow the ballot that led to the loss of East Timor was an important factor in his replacement as President by Abdurrahman Wahid in October 1999. In his turn, Wahid’s preparedness to deal with Papuans and Acehnese who wanted to separate from Indonesia aroused widespread opposition. For most Indonesians, the integrity of the Indonesian state was inviolable and non-negotiable. As Elizabeth Drexler says in this volume, the fear of national disintegration was promoted to consolidate the nation under the Suharto regime. Aspirations for independence from Indonesia were unthinkable within a discourse on separatists which was dominant among Indonesians throughout the New Order and continued to have a strong grip after the fall of Suharto (McRae 2002). Richard Chauvel describes how Papuan hopes for a peacefully negotiated independence were encouraged under Wahid, who allowed the use of the Papuan ‘Morning Star’ flag, agreed to the province being called Papua rather than Irian Jaya and funded the massive Papuan Congress held in May/June 2000. The resolution by the Congress in favour of Papuan independence was the turning point. Thereafter the Indonesian authorities took increasingly severe measures to repress Papuan aspirations for independence. There was a series of bloody clashes between the security forces and supporters of Papuan independence, and five of the pro-independence leaders (including Theys Eluay) were arrested and later charged with conspiring against the Indonesian government.

Violence 9 This was the stage at which Chauvel wrote his chapter for this volume. Despite the reversion to violence as the principal means of maintaining the authority of the Indonesian state in Papua, protracted negotiations followed to draft a special autonomy law for Papua. This culminated in the enactment of Law No. 21 on Special Autonomy for Papua in October 2001, although Theys Eluay and other members of the leadership council chosen at the Papuan Congress in June 2000 rejected this. Three weeks after the special autonomy law came into effect, Theys was kidnapped and killed by members of the Kopassus (Special Forces). In April 2003, seven Kopassus soldiers were convicted of ill treatment leading to his death and were sentenced to several years’ imprisonment. Although many members of the Papuan elite were, for various reasons, prepared to give autonomy a chance, such hopes as they had of it were undermined by President Megawati Soekarnoputri’s Instruction (Inpres) No. 1 of 2003. This instruction called for the speedy implementation of Law No. 45, passed by the Indonesian parliament in September 1999 shortly after the East Timor ballot. That law, which provided for the division of Papua into three separate provinces, had aroused strong Papuan opposition. It had not been either implemented or repealed, but it was widely regarded as superseded by the law on special autonomy. The Presidential Instruction in January 2003 to implement the 1999 law was issued suddenly without reference either to the Papuan provincial parliament or the Papuan People’s Council (MRP – Majelis Rakyat Papua) which was meant to be established under the special autonomy law (ICG Asia Briefing Paper 2003a). Moderate Papuans have been disillusioned by the repeated breaches by Jakarta of negotiated agreements. At the same time, the division of Papua has driven a wedge between members of the Papuan elite. There have been similar divisions and disillusionment in Aceh. Elizabeth Drexler and Suraiya Kamaruzzaman both wrote their contributions to this book shortly after the Humanitarian Pause in Aceh came into effect in June 2000. Neither chapter is optimistic in tone. Suraiya points out that, despite some improvements in the Indonesian human rights situation more generally under President Wahid, the Indonesian military (TNI) and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM, Gerakan Aceh Merdeka) continued to commit acts of violence. In her view the TNI and GAM agreement for a humanitarian pause was rhetorical rather than substantive. Drexler’s pessimistic conclusion about the prospects for an end to the use of violence in Aceh has been amply supported by subsequent events. As in Papua, the Indonesian parliament enacted a law for special autonomy for Aceh, in this case Law No. 18 of 2001, promulgated on 9 August 2001 by the incoming President Megawati in one of her first actions as President. Since the reintroduction of military law on 18 May 2003, this ‘autonomy’ has been rendered meaningless. As in Papua, there had been protracted negotiations with ‘separatists’, in this case with representatives

10 Charles A. Coppel of GAM under the auspices of the Swiss-based Henri Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HDC). The bilateral talks expanded into a Preparatory Conference on Peace and Reconstruction in Aceh, held in Tokyo in early December 2002, in which various countries and international organizations offered political and financial support. A Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (COHA), signed in Geneva on 9 December 2002 by representatives of the Indonesian government and GAM, followed this conference almost immediately. There was a temporary but significant reduction in armed conflict after the signing of COHA, but the security situation in Aceh deteriorated again in April 2003. Efforts through a Joint Council meeting in Tokyo in mid-May 2003 to find a way out failed, and within hours martial law was declared in Aceh. Five members of the GAM negotiating team were immediately arrested. They were later charged with treason, conspiracy and terrorism, and after conviction were sentenced to long jail terms in October 2003. Another negotiator was shot dead. The reintroduction of martial law in Aceh was originally proclaimed for a six-month period, but it was extended in November 2003 and many suspect that it will continue for years, as happened with the earlier DOM period (1989–1998). It has led to an escalation of violent conflict, a big increase in the number of casualties on both sides, the burning of more than 600 schools, and a massive expansion of internally displaced civilians. Verification of the extent of human rights abuses under martial law is difficult because of restrictions on access to Aceh especially of foreigners, the media and non-government organizations (ICG Asia Briefing Paper 2003b; HDC website http://www.hdcentre.org/ Programmes/aceh.htm). Part 3 takes up the themes of representation, conflict resolution and prevention, and the effects of violence on its victims. Two chapters address the problems faced by Indonesians writing about violence in their own country. Stanley, a journalist himself, examines the role and performance of the Indonesian press in the post-Suharto era of reformasi. For decades the press had been largely prevented from discussing SARA issues (those involving ethnicity, religion, race and inter-group conflict) and most journalists had been conditioned to parroting the government line. After succeeding Suharto as president, B. J. Habibie moved quickly to accede to some of the demands of the reformasi movement. Freedom of expression and association began to flourish to an extent that had been unthinkable while Suharto remained in power. Now journalists were unsure how to use their new-found freedom when covering situations of violent conflict. What should their role be? Should they take sides and intensify the conflict, or should they play down the influence of primordial elements of ethnicity and religion to avoid worsening it? Or should they seek to contribute to a resolution of the conflict? By way of illustration, Stanley evaluates the performance of the media in reporting on the events of May 1998 and the conflict in Maluku.

Violence 11 Bimo Nugroho writes from his experience of working for the Institute for the Free Flow of Information (ISAI), which has made a specialty of publishing books on violent conflict in Indonesia. This is a valuable activity, he believes, but it is open to abuse. On the one hand, it can serve to document the facts of the violence, to contribute to an understanding of its causes, and to help resolve conflict and lead to reconciliation. On the other hand, books on violent conflict can be partisan and inflammatory in their language. Although he acknowledges that in publishing about violent conflict along religious lines, as in the Maluku conflict, writers and publishers cannot help but be influenced by their own religious backgrounds, he demonstrates that authors with the same religion can produce books of either kind. Rizal Panggabean is concerned with how to resolve conflict peacefully rather than by using violence. Under Suharto, social conflict was treated as an unacceptable evil that required a repressive response. Rizal argues that conflict can be dealt with in a constructive way; that it should be seen as a problem to be solved, rather than as aggression; that the focus of attention should be the antecedent conditions to violence rather than violent behaviour; and that there should be respect for the autonomy of citizens rather than regarding society as a pressure cooker waiting to erupt in violence. His chapter is much more optimistic in tone than most of the contributions to this collection. From the perspective of mid-2000, he points to encouraging new initiatives and measures carried out since the fall of Suharto under presidents Habibie and Wahid. He discerns a trend away from the old approaches to conflict and violence, but later developments such as those in Aceh and Papua suggest that his optimism may have been premature. This is not to say that Rizal is wrong in his prescription of education for peace and conflict resolution. The current security approach of the Indonesian government and TNI to Aceh and Papua gives little ground for hope that the problems there will be resolved without a great deal more violence and suffering. Mély Tan is a founding member of the Indonesian Commission on Violence Against Women (Komisi Nasional Anti Kekerasan Perempuan usually abbreviated to Komnas Perempuan). Here she tells the story of its establishment by the Habibie government in October 1998 as the result of lobbying by a remarkable group of women. They were outraged by the denials in various quarters, police, military and civilian authorities, and certain Muslim groups that sexual assault and rapes of women occurred or even could have taken place in Jakarta in May 1998. Convinced by the findings of the Volunteer Team for Humanity (later confirmed, but to a lesser extent, by the Joint Fact-Finding Team) that sexual assaults and rapes had occurred, they took the issue to the President in person. At their meeting, Habibie announced the formation of Komnas Perempuan and of the Joint Fact-Finding Team. The May violence against ethnic Chinese women thus prompted the establishment of two unique Indonesian bodies. Komnas

12 Charles A. Coppel Perempuan has gone on to champion the rights of Indonesian women, irrespective of their ethnicity or religion, against violence, trafficking and sexual harassment. It has also taken up the cause of the urban poor, finding a voice for women and victims of violence. The composition of the Joint Fact-Finding Team was unique in including members of the military, police and government together with members from civil society organizations (Purdey 2002). The last section of the book takes the perspective of the victims. Budiawan examines the infliction of torture on political prisoners as represented by a novelist who was himself a former political prisoner allegedly involved in the 1965 ‘coup attempt’. He argues that this state-sponsored violence is a form of power itself, not just an instrument to extract information or seek ‘truth’. As a regime of power, its effect is to turn humiliation upon prisoners who succumb to torture and confess, and the resentment of other prisoners is projected against them rather than against the torturers and their agents. Budiawan suggests that their suppressed feelings of resentment against the latter help to sustain torture, but he argues that the price of the release of these suppressed feelings may be revenge, leading to another regime of torture. Suraiya Kamaruzzaman foregrounds the suffering of women as the victims of the violence in Aceh, reminding us that the effects of violent conflict go well beyond the appalling toll of people killed, raped and wounded. She draws our attention to the much greater number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and to those widowed and orphaned as a result of violence in Indonesia. The numbers of IDPs in Indonesia fluctuate over time, but they have been very large. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in November 2002 over 10,000 people had been killed and nearly 1.4 million remained displaced as the result of inter-communal violence in Indonesia since 1999. The same source pointed out that the crisis affected two to three million others who still lived in the conflict affected areas or struggled to cope with the influx of IDPs seeking refuge in their community (FAO Appeal 2003). A year later the Global IDP Project estimated that the total number of IDPs was now 700,000, down from an estimated 1.3 million in summer 2002 (Global IDP Project 2003). At the same time as many displaced people were returning to their homes or were settled elsewhere, the renewed conflict in Aceh led to a new wave of displacements. The extent of this is difficult to gauge, because of restrictions placed on the media and aid workers under martial law. In the final chapter, Hilmar Farid urges us to take a perspective based on the experience of the victims of violence as told by the victims themselves. Documentation of human rights abuses and statistics regarding the number of victims are all very well, but ‘if we are serious about re-weaving the fabric of communities in the aftermath of large-scale violence, if we wish to achieve recovery, reconciliation and reconstruction, we have to

Violence 13 start with the victims themselves’, he writes. He reminds us that the New Order was founded on mass slaughter of PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) members and sympathizers, under orders from military officers who have never been brought to account, let alone expressed regret, for their actions. He also draws attention to the effect of New Order economic development policies that have contributed to the violence, and have displaced many people and thrown communities into conflict with each other. The 1997 economic crisis and the austerity programme imposed by the IMF and World Bank compounded this situation. More than other contributors, he stresses the class aspect to violence in Indonesia. Any solution to violent conflict will require something more than a deal brokered within the political elite, he argues. Urban and rural populations will need to be empowered over the control of their sources of income and food. Hilmar also poses the question: ‘Who are perpetrators and who the victims?’ As he points out, in Jakarta in May 1998 ‘rioters’ and ‘looters’ burned to death in the shopping malls, and in Maluku ‘perpetrators’ and ‘victims’ keep changing places.

Themes The interpretations advanced in this book do not rest on presumed features of national character or culture to explain the acts of violence in question. Violence is a regrettable aspect of human behaviour that respects no national or cultural boundaries. Although local cultural forms can be, and have been, manipulated by parties to a conflict and may contribute to the intensity of the violence, explanations for the causes and timing of the violence need to be found elsewhere, as Geoffrey Robinson has argued in respect of the 1965 violence in Bali (Robinson 1995: 275–80). Furthermore, as Elizabeth Collins says, the characterization of Indonesian culture as violent ‘can be used to justify a return to authoritarian rule and further state violence’ (Collins 2002: 604). In her chapter in the present volume, Nancy Peluso discusses how the military and local Dayak leaders deployed the trope of the ‘Borneo Headhunter’ in West Kalimantan in the violence against the Chinese in 1967 and against the Madurese in 1996–1997. The notion that Indonesians are culturally predisposed to violence, as evidenced by the derivation of the word amok, is a commonplace one. For example, the journalist C. T. Sulzberger, speaking of the 1965–1966 massacre, wrote: Indonesians are gentle and instinctively polite, but hidden behind their smiles is that strange Malay streak, that inner, frenzied blood-lust which has given to other languages one of their few Malay words, amok. This time an entire nation ran amok. (Sulzberger 1966)

14 Charles A. Coppel This absurd, if not racist, formulation has little to do with the classical Malay notion of amok (Spores 1988), but it has a striking resemblance to the one attributed to former Lieutenant General Prabowo Subianto at the beginning of this chapter. The modern Indonesian meaning of the word amuk seems to have expanded from its classical Malay origins, however. Even a serious Indonesian publisher like the Institute for the Free Flow of Information has been known to use the term amuk in the title of a book about anti-Chinese violence in Makasar (ISAI 1998). Prabowo’s expressed belief that ‘Indonesians can very quickly turn to violence’ is closely allied, as Beth Drexler suggests in this volume, with the widespread belief in Indonesia that people are unable to act on their own, that there is always a dalang (puppeteer), mastermind or provokator behind the expression of violence. Jemma Purdey stresses the importance of a national figure like Amien Rais claiming that there was a dalang or mastermind (presumably from outside) behind the anti-Chinese violence in Solo in May 1998. Tim Lindsey reminds us that the New Order regime under Suharto was preoccupied with threats to security from ‘formless organizations’ and ‘shadowy figures’. The conspiracy theories of the postSuharto era now point to members or former members of the state elite rather than communists or ideological enemies of the state. Prabowo himself and Kopassus (the Special Forces Command of which he was formerly the commander) have been the most prominent among alleged masterminds of violence (Berfield and Loveard 1998; Tesoro 2000a, 2000b, 2000c). The ‘May riots’, in which violence, destruction and rape erupted across Jakarta and other Indonesian cities on 13–15 May 1998, proved to be a climactic event in modern Indonesian political history. Part of its importance lay in the resignation of President Suharto on 21 May 1998 after thirty-two years of authoritarian rule. Under Suharto it had been only too easy, as Hilmar Farid tells us, for people to lay the blame for all ills, including violence, on the state. After his fall, with the state and its agencies much weakened, new explanations needed to be found for the continuing violence in many parts of the country. Several other contributors to this volume concur. Gerry van Klinken rejects the idea that Jakarta elites were responsible for the violence in Maluku after the fall of Suharto, insisting on the local character of the conflict. Nicholas Herriman similarly rejects the belief that the violence against sorcerers in South Malang in 1999–2000 must have been masterminded by puppeteers (dalang) or provocateurs. He emphasizes autonomous action at the local level and an absence of state power. Paul Brass has emphasized the way in which, in the search for causes of riots, academics, journalists and politicians are all embroiled in the struggle to capture their meaning. He questions whether it is possible to develop a causal theory of ethnic riots separate from the discourses which encompass them, free from the pressures of the prevailing ideological and

Violence 15 social scientific paradigm and the master narratives into which they are so often placed, and opposes seeking ‘any single causal explanation or consensus on the causes and courses of riotous and other violent events’ (Brass 1996: 2, 46). The contributors to this volume attempt to analyse the causes of the violence they describe, but frequently they are forced to confront the problem posed by Brass of how this can be done in a way that is ‘neutral to the interests of those seeking to capture its meaning’ (Brass 1996: 2). It was an integral part of the planning of the conference panel and workshop from which this volume originated that the problem of the representation of violence should be addressed. This question of representation is central to the chapters by Sai Siew Min, Elaine Tay, Stanley and Bimo Nugroho, for example (see also Spyer 2002; Bräuchler 2003). Elaine Tay and Sai Siew Min both examine representations of the May 1998 violence in Jakarta, especially the gang rapes of Chinese Indonesian women. Elaine Tay is concerned with the political use (and misuse) of the Internet by ethnic Chinese activists in support of Chinese Indonesians, practices and discourses in which she finds a disturbingly homogenizing effect. The misappropriation by such activists of earlier photographs of the bodies of raped East Timorese women to represent Chinese victims in May 1998 contributes to a homogenizing representation of indigenous Indonesians as perpetrators and Chinese as victims of violence. Sai Siew Min comes nearest to the dilemmas posed by Brass when she points to ‘the structuring effects and limitations of truth-oriented discourses’ and argues that ‘any discourse may enable an event to be articulated, but only in particular ways and only through making some questions appear more important or more valid than other questions’. Any discourse may enable articulation of an event, she suggests, but at the cost of disabling, marginalizing and creating gaps, like the silence of the rape victims. Elsewhere, Jemma Purdey has paradoxically suggested that the final report of the Joint Fact-Finding Team was both ‘a highly problematic representation’ of the May 1998 violence and ‘a definitive account’ of it. It ‘introduced the Indonesian public to the notion of multiple truths’ in place of the monolithic history of the New Order, and ‘its flaws revealed clearly the political faultlines existing within the team that created the report’ as well as rifts in society at large (Purdey 2002: 622). The chapters by Stanley and Bimo Nugroho show a reflective concern for the morality and purposes of reporting on violence. Although such concern is not unknown among journalists in the Western world, publication is more often driven by what their editors deem newsworthy (and hence sells) than by a desire to help resolve conflict, to seek reconciliation, to bring perpetrators to justice or to listen to the voices of the victims. The other Indonesian contributors to the present volume are similarly concerned with what should be done after the violence. Even where

16 Charles A. Coppel they are scholars by profession, they are necessarily caught up in the consequences of the violence in their own society. Mély Tan, although an eminent Indonesian sociologist, writes here of her experience in the establishment of the National Commission for Women, formed in response to the mass rapes of ethnic Chinese women in the May 1998 violence. Suraiya Kamaruzzaman, a lecturer at the University of Syiah Kuala in Aceh, is also the Director of Flower Aceh and received the Yap Thiam Hien Award for Human Rights in 2001 for her campaigns as an activist on violence against women. Rizal Panggabean, a lecturer in international relations at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, is the head of the Center for Security and Peace Studies at that University. Hilmar Farid, a history graduate from the University of Indonesia, has been active in a critical intellectual network ( Jaringan Kerja Budaya) and an activist in the Volunteers Team for Humanity (Tim Relawan untuk Kemanusiaan) which has provided support for the victims of violence and was the first organization to document the May 1998 violence. Hilmar is sceptical and pessimistic about the prospects for commissions of inquiry into abuses of human rights, or the possibility of an Indonesian Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the South African model. He questions whether the faltering steps in this direction take into account the desires of the victims for justice. Prominent among those who reject such gestures as the March 2000 apology by President Wahid to the victims of 1965–1966 mass killings of communists has been Indonesia’s leading novelist and former political prisoner, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Pramoedya demands retributive justice through the courts against those who perpetrated the violence rather than reconciliation with them (Mohamad 2001: 132–4). Experience does not engender confidence that justice will be done through the court process, however. Apart from the susceptibility of the judiciary to coercion and violence, the cost of conducting criminal trials to deal with so large a number of cases seems prohibitive. The Indonesian government faces many other claims on national resources that might appear more pressing (including resettlement of people displaced by more recent outbreaks of violence) even if it has the political will to seek justice for the victims, and that will is itself open to question. From Hilmar’s perspective the political elite wants amnesia rather than truth-seeking and justice. Indeed, Goenawan Mohamad even doubts that there are many former political prisoners who share the uncompromising position of Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Mohamad 2001: 132–3). There was little support for President Wahid’s acknowledgement of the participation of many members of his own Nahdlatul Ulama organization in the killings even within the NU itself, and there was much resistance to his suggestion that the 1966 ban on the PKI and on the dissemination of Marxism–Leninism should be revoked. In May 2004 the military and police faction in the parliament sought the removal of the word ‘truth’ from the title of a bill on a truth and reconciliation

Violence 17 commission, warning that attempts to reveal the truth would only lead to new conflicts (Hari 2004). In East Timor it has been possible to establish a Serious Crimes Unit and a Special Panel for Serious Crimes which could have jurisdiction over crimes committed in 1999, such as the Suai massacre discussed by Fox in this volume. Prominent Indonesian military officers, including the former Minister of Defence and Commander-in-Chief of the Indonesian armed forces, retired General Wiranto, were among those indicted in February 2003 by the Serious Crimes Unit for crimes against humanity. As of late April 2004, when Wiranto was nominated by the Golkar Party as its candidate in the forthcoming Indonesian presidential election, applications by East Timorese prosecutors for warrants to arrest Wiranto had not been granted by Special Panel judges. Even if arrest warrants against senior Indonesian military officers are granted in East Timor, it seems unlikely that it will be possible to extradite them from Indonesia. Furthermore, those who have been acquitted by the Indonesian Ad Hoc Court of crimes against humanity in East Timor in 1999 will undoubtedly argue that they should not be tried again for the same offence. Short of a decision by the United Nations to take cases to an international criminal tribunal on the grounds that the Ad Hoc Court process was inadequate, it appears that those responsible for crimes against humanity in East Timor in 1999 will escape with impunity. Public opinion in Indonesia is largely unconvinced that senior military officers committed serious crimes in East Timor, believing that the violence there was simply a consequence of conflict among East Timorese. Indonesian national sentiment is hostile to the idea that Indonesians should be brought to justice elsewhere, and is suspicious of pressure from other countries for Indonesia to prosecute alleged perpetrators in its own courts. The Ad Hoc Court for East Timor was set up in response to such pressure, but only to head off a proposal to establish an international human rights tribunal for the purpose. Since the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, the United States and its allies have exhorted the international community to engage in a war against terrorism. Although the Indonesian government condemned the attacks, it did not back the campaign against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. As members of the world’s largest Muslim nation, Indonesians have long been sympathetic to the Palestinians and critical of United States support for Israel. A reference by President George W. Bush to the war on terrorism as a ‘crusade’ confirmed the suspicion of many Indonesian Muslims that it was intended as a campaign against Islam. When more than 200 people were killed as the result of a suicide bombing in Bali on 12 October 2002, Indonesians (and many Indonesia specialists) were slow to acknowledge the existence of an Islamist terrorist network in Indonesia, despite a series of persuasive reports by the respected International Crisis

18 Charles A. Coppel Group. Indeed, many denied the very existence of the Jemaah Islamiyah organization that was alleged to be responsible for the Bali bombings (and the suicide bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August 2003). Even the successful prosecution of many of those involved in the Bali bombing is unconvincing for those who believe that the police and the courts cannot be trusted. Their cynicism and scepticism is shared by those who despair at the apparent impunity enjoyed by most of those who perpetrated the many acts of violence discussed in this volume. In January 2004 the Indonesian Supreme Court upheld the acquittal by the Ad Hoc Court on East Timor of Police Inspector Timbul Silaen, who was free to take up his post as head of police in Papua. Despite his conviction and sentence to imprisonment by the same court, Major General Adam Damiri remained free pending an appeal and continued to serve under martial law in Aceh. Many of these reasons for pessimism about the possibility of retributive justice also apply to a truth and reconciliation process, but Mary Zurbuchen argues from experience elsewhere that a ‘truth commission looking into 1965 could prove especially valuable if it defined its purpose as historical clarification, rather than limiting its mandate to determining individual culpability or naming perpetrators’ (Zurbuchen 2002: 576). Some individuals and groups have already taken steps to document and publish victims’ histories. Former political prisoners Sulami Djoyoprawiro and Pramoedya Ananta Toer have established a Foundation for Research into the Victims of the 1965–1966 Massacre (YPKP, Yayasan Penelitian Korban Pembunuhan 1965–1966) and published memoirs of their experience (Toer 1999). The Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM, Lembaga Studi dan Advokasi Masyarakat) has collaborated with the Volunteers’ Team for Humanity and the Indonesian Institute for Social Research (ISII, Institut Sejarah Sosial Indonesia) to publish a compilation of oral histories of victims of the 1965 violence (Roosa et al. 2004). If Indonesians are ever going to be able to confront their violent past, it is essential that truth-seeking of this kind should be carried out while there are still survivors who can bear witness to it.

2

From Soepomo to Prabowo Law, violence and corruption in the Preman state1 Tim Lindsey

Since Suharto’s fall in May 1998, the Indonesian state has been under constant political pressure domestically and internationally to produce a convincing legal response to violence. The rapes, killings and rioting of 1998 have been a particular concern of reformers, but there has been a more or less constant stream of violent events since the New Order began to unravel in 1997. Most of these events have involved a mixture of private and state-sanctioned violence, often one occurring in conjunction with the other. These events are, however, not isolated products of the power vacuum created by the resignation of the effective dictator of Indonesia, the gradual pushing out or replacement of the elites through which he ruled and a concurrent loss of certainty in the military. They can also be seen as the latest in a long sequence of violent acts by Indonesians against Indonesians, usually accompanied by some form of state involvement. The rollcall is a long one. It begins in the Revolution with the Indonesians on both sides of the conflict; the killing of pro-Dutch traitors or personal or political enemies recast as such; and the massacre of communists after Madiun in 1947 (Siegel 1999: 211). It continues in the following decade through the guerrilla war with Darul Islam in West Java that lasted into the early 1960s, and the brutality that accompanied the crushing of the PRRI/Permesta rebellions in the late 1950s. From the 1960s there were the intermittent ‘security operations’ in Irian Jaya and, of course, the renewed slaughter of hundreds and thousands of communists and ‘leftists’, and the jailing of more still, following the supposed communist coup attempt (Cribb 1990). Under Suharto the violence of the war in Timor dominates, typified by the bloody invasion and the Dili massacre, but there were many other military attacks on civilians, such as the Tanjung Priok shootings, the Petrus killings of 1983–1985, and the killing – apparently by government and military figures – of individual ‘enemies’ such as the labour activist Marsinah (Fehring 1999), the journalist Udin, or even the troublesome mistresses of soldiers (Sunindyo 1999a, 1999b). In the lead-up to the fall of Suharto, the list includes the ethnic and religious violence in Kalimantan (Parry

20 Tim Lindsey 1998), Eastern Indonesia and Java; and the ‘ninja’ killings of dukun santet (mystic or sorcerer) and abangan religious leaders, apparently involving military or government support. After Suharto’s fall, the destruction of East Timor by military-backed militias continues the list, as do the communal wars on Ambon, Maluku and elsewhere in Eastern Indonesia; the war with the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the emerging violence in Irian. More recent events include growing urban vigilantism, continued rural killing of mystics, gang violence and terror bombings in Jakarta ( Jakarta Post 2000a, 2000b). All of these may be seen as part of a continuing pattern, one that Siegel (1999: 214) has described as ‘an intermittent civil war in which, by definition, members of the same nation kill each other’.2 Since May 1998, as indeed for thirty-two years beforehand, the Indonesian state’s formal legal response to this litany of horrors has been marked by confusion, lack of direction, contradiction and, in most cases, downright failure. As was the case under Suharto, rhetorical sops are offered, without real content. If legal remedies are offered – and, as in the case of the May 1998 rapes in Jakarta, they usually are not – then the usual recipe is followed. A toothless quasi-independent body of enquiry is established. It is closely monitored by the government and leads to the controlled show trial of one or two scapegoats, after which the state attempts to ‘bury’ the issue unresolved. A typical example is the Military Honour Board ‘trial’ of Prabowo Subianto for his involvement in the events of May 1998, where he was found guilty only of ‘misinterpreting orders’ and dismissed, despite admitting to involvement in kidnapping and torturing activists – some of whom have since disappeared – with electrical shocks and semidrowning (Tesoro 2000c). The trials of officers involved in the events in Aceh have followed a similar pattern, foundering in a procedural morass and disappearing witnesses and resulting only in the conviction of a small number of junior officers or enlisted men. The trials after the Dili massacre are the model for how the state has dealt with military violence in Aceh and the post-referendum devastation of East Timor. To a large extent this failure to provide legal solutions to violence lies in the failure of the legal system itself. From a systemic point of view the problems of corruption and incompetence in the judicial system are well documented and will not be explored again in this chapter (Butt 1999; Lev 1999a; Millie 1999; Lindsey 2001). It is sufficient to state that under Suharto the court system was, through a deliberate policy of the executive inherited from Sukarno, reduced to a state of disuse, political subservience and rampant corruption. It is yet to emerge from this institutionalized dysfunction despite the efforts of Indonesian law reformers since 1997 (Lindsey 2000a). The judiciary’s venality and incompetence has made it a national scandal and most Indonesians, quite accurately, still see the judicial system as an arm of the state and not a forum for addressing their grievances against each other, let alone the state.

From Soepomo to Prabowo 21 But this does not entirely explain the state’s failure to provide legal remedies for the spate of violent episodes since 1977. The answer to this question is, I would argue, linked to the reasons for the failure of the legal system. To a large extent the state’s attitude to both law and violence is determined by fundamental but often unarticulated notions of the role of law in the Indonesian state and, indeed, the nature of the state itself. Just as the pattern of violence – Siegel’s ‘intermittent civil war’ – can be traced back to the revolution, so the state’s attitude to violence can be tracked to this period and, in particular, to the 1945 Constitution and the political ideas that formed it. As will be seen, these ideas implicitly exclude law from a role in resolving disputes between the state and its citizens as dissenters. These are matters that are left to the state to deal with at its unfettered discretion. This means that providing citizens with effective remedies for violence conducted, or approved, by the state would require a fundamental rethinking of the nature of the state itself. Such a process may have begun. The first ever amendments to the 1945 Constitution slipped through the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) on the eve of President Abdurrahman Wahid’s appointment in October 1999 and a second tranche were passed in August 2000. However, there is still a long way to go.

The displacement of law The chief drafter of the 1945 Constitution was Dr Raden Soepomo, one of sixty-two experts forming a committee charged with the production of the basic statute in the months leading up to the Japanese surrender and the declaration of independence in August that year. He was an impassioned advocate of the rejection of Western socialist and liberal ideas, and he set out to create a Constitution that ‘can give the greatest accent to the government’, while being itself ‘also accountable to the government and primarily the head of state’ (Indra 1990: 44). Take for example, Soepomo on the state and the individual rights: There will be no need for any guarantee of Grund unde Freiheitsrechte of individuals against the state, for the individuals are nothing else than organic parts of the state, having specific positions and duties to realize the grandeur of the state. (Yamin 1959: 114) This was predicated on the fantastical notion that the integralist state – because it was ‘integrated’ – could never be at odds with individuals comprising it, on the grounds that ‘the state is not a powerful body or political giant standing outside the sphere of individual freedom’ (Yamin 1959: 114). As Soepomo said:

22 Tim Lindsey [A]ccording to the meaning of the Integralist State, as a regulated nation, as the organized unity of the people, then fundamentally there is no dualism between state and society, there is no conflict between the structure of the state and the legal structure pertaining to individuals. There is no dualism of Staat und staatsfreier Gesellschaft (state and society free from state intervention). (Yamin 1959: 114) On this view, there is no need for a civil (private) legal sphere independent of the state and thus able to check the state, because the state is all citizens, and their interests are therefore identical. As Nasution says: Evidently, there was no fear of abuse of power by the state nor any doubt that the state would always use its power appropriately. The state functionaries were assumed to be good and wise persons taking seriously the interests of the people as a whole, never thinking of their interests. It was not astonishing that given these assumptions, Soepomo thought there was no need to put limits on state power or to guarantee individual rights. (Nasution 1992: 93) The democratic metaphor of the state as the people, because it is chosen by the majority through a constitutional process of government, is not the reference here. Rather, as Bourchier (1999) and Burns (1989) before him have shown, the Germanic romantic notion of the state as the spiritual manifestation of the people, as a quasi-religious emanation of their racial and ethnic essence, is what is meant: the Volksgeist. Von Savigny’s and Puchta’s ideas of the nation ‘as an entity possessing an organic unity above and beyond the concerns of individuals’ (Bourchier 1999: 187)3 was filtered through the Leiden School of Law into Indonesia via van Vollenhoven. Soepomo, a graduate of Leiden, was a strong supporter of this school’s notion of Volksrecht, the people’s law, as opposed to Juristenrecht, lawyers’ law. From his thinking sprang the so-called adat (traditional) school of law, which saw Indonesian traditions as the only appropriate source of law because, he argued, it was the essence of Indonesianness, of the ‘national identity’. This Rechtsgeschichte (legal genealogy) he interpreted as based around notions of an imagined traditional village ‘family’ as the model of the state, with decisions made by consensus and the villagers’ communal life rendering them identical with the village, represented by its leaders. He ‘maintained that there was no place for divisive concepts of political rights in the constitution. He proposed instead a totalistic state philosophy he called “integralism”’ (Bourchier 1999: 191). On Soepomo’s reading, the state, being the people, cannot be wrong. It therefore is the source of law because, in the romantic tradition, the only valid law is that which expresses the Volksgeist, the spirit of the people.

From Soepomo to Prabowo 23 It follows that if the state does embody the Volksgeist then all state acts are inherently legitimate and legally correct. If the state’s actions conflict with legislation, then the legislation is in conflict with the Volksgeist and is to that extent without authority. This is a common approach in Indonesian statutes, which typically reserve discretion in the hands of the executive to overrule any of them ‘in the national interest’ (Lindsey 1999: Ch. 1). Equally, individuals acting against the state manifest as the government are therefore acting against society – the rakyat. One consequence of this is the legal system’s relative lack of interest in civil dispute resolution (that is, addressing grievances between citizens), and a continuing preoccupation with the authority of the state, manifest in a dominating concern for security and criminal regulation and administrative issues. So, violence is formally dealt with almost exclusively as a criminal problem or an issue of regulating the state structure and officers within it. Even this is done, however, with an overarching interest in protecting state institutions from damage caused by state officials, rather than dealing with acts of violence themselves. Again Prabowo is an example par excellence. A symptom of this is that officials in agencies charged with preventing violence – the prosecutors ( jaksa), intelligence agencies, the police and the courts – often actively work to sabotage the prosecution of ‘political’ acts of violence (that is, in Indonesian terms, ethnic or religious violence or the violence of state officials) when they feel that it could somehow, even indirectly or trivially, weaken the state. In other words, acts or events of violence are legally re-imagined not as wrongs involving perpetrators and victims but rather as issues of faulty administration and threats to state stability. At its extreme, to the extent that the legal process is seen as having the potential to damage confidence in the state by dealing with ‘political’ violence, the legal process itself is, ironically, perceived as a threat. On this view, ‘political’ trials (for example, of TNI members for murders in Aceh), if not controlled, may be more dangerous and serious than the murders themselves. They are therefore manipulated at every turn. On the other hand, acts of violence without political content are opportunities for the state to assert its authority. Relatively few civil actions proceed, but routine – and politically relatively uncontroversial – criminal trials (non-‘political’ thefts, assaults, kidnapping, murders, drug cases) nearly always result in a guilty verdict and are publicized as evidence of the state performing its function. They become legitimizers. A second important political result of Soepomo’s state model follows from the state’s monopoly on legitimacy and authority: citizens are component parts of the state entity and have no voice except through the state, as their duty is to obey it. Individuals who act contrary to the state government are, simply by doing so, outside the law, whether they are dissenters or criminals. This is not a legal status but it is implicit in Article XX of the Constitution, which provides that ‘all citizens have a duty to

24 Tim Lindsey uphold the state’. The state is therefore not constrained by law or any other state system in acting against its perceived ‘enemies’. They have placed themselves outside the Volk by opposing the state and thus no longer have rights. In this sense, then, there is no real role for law in dealing with opponents of the government. The government has an absolute right to punish its opponents and, of course, through armed forces, a virtual monopoly on the power to use violence to do so, so there is no need for law as a tool to deal with the disputes between the state and its dissenters. This means that state violence, or violence that suits those who control the state, usually does not reach the courts (witness the failure to bring to trial persons involved in Tanjung Priok shootings or the May 1998 rapes). If it does, then the state will determine the outcome as it wishes, regardless of the law, as in the Kedung Ombo case (Fitzpatrick 1999). Examples of the use of state violence to resolve disputes in its own favour are manifold, but more notorious examples include the murder of trade-union activist Marsinah by military figures (Fehring 1999), the sacking of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) headquarters in 1996 under the auspices of the military, and Prabowo’s abduction and torture of at least nine dissidents in the months preceding his father-in-law’s fall (Tesoro 2000c).

The necessity of treason in the (dis)integrated state The failure of Soepomo’s romantic union of the state and its people has been consistently obvious since his Constitution first came into play during the revolution, because, of course, governments and their population do not, in fact, think and act as one. Indeed, as suggested above, Indonesia’s ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983: 6–7) has been a fragile one, marked historically by constant violent objection to its existence. In the late 1950s, for example, four governments claiming to rule the archipelago existed: the PRRI and Permesta governments in Sumatra and Sulawesi, the Darul Islam Muslim state in West Java and the Republic itself. However, this awareness of the true ‘dis-integrated’ nature of the integralist state has not necessarily diminished the legitimacy of the Constitution for those who have governed by it and those who have accepted that government as legitimate. In fact, it has sometimes strengthened it. This is because Soepomo’s integralist model implicitly depends on the notion of the traitor: the state and the people must be one, because the people are under threat of destruction. On this view, any failure of the state or the law is a result not of its flaws but of sabotage and betrayal. The state, to justify the fundamentally extra-legality of its rule, had to construct a greater evil. This is because the New Order’s basic brutality, though not always fully acknowledged by the state, was pervasive and widely evident to its citizens – so much so that only a widespread acceptance of imminent crisis could make it acceptable, even if only acceptable

From Soepomo to Prabowo 25 in a rhetorical sense (because rhetoric was the fundamental formal mode of political communication and legitimacy under Suharto) (Hooker 1995). This is part of the explanation for the potent construction of Indonesian history since 1945 – but more so since 1965 – to justify the trope of the embattled republic, powerful but perpetually vulnerable from within. From Netherland Indies Civil Administration (NICA) traitors, to the communist ‘stab in the back’ at Madiun during the revolution, to Darul Islam and PRRI/Permesta as the dark threats that forced ‘Guided Democracy’ on the rakyat, through to the paradigmatic constructed betrayal from within, the ‘GESTAPU coup attempt’ of 1965; all of these were used under Suharto to build the trope of nameless subversives on the verge of toppling the republic who were able to act in a way that was virtually incapable of detection and produced no evidence. The quintessence of this genre was, of course, the notion of organisasi tanpa bentuk, the ‘organizations without form’, which must be destroyed by aggressive state force in order to maintain the union of state and people. Siegel’s description of the New Order fetishizing of invisible enemies (1999: 215) includes his account of Attorney General Ali Said banning a book by Pramoedya Ananta Toer on the grounds that it ‘was an example of the “infiltration of society that went unfelt by it.” He went on to say that communists had now decided that “organisations without form are best”.’ (Siegel 1999: 215) Likewise, Siegel describes Admiral Sudomo, Suharto’s one-time security chief, as arguing, in effect, that if the book were not banned, then because it hid within it a secret code form of instructions on Marxism–Leninism, ‘it is obvious that public order will be at an end’.

The law-less state, the criminal state It is easy to find examples of these sorts of statements from senior New Order politicians and security and enforcement officials, because they were so essential a part of the state’s public dialogue. They were common – however absurd they seemed at times – because they justified state violence. War was thought necessary against some Indonesians, once again, to prevent the far worse descent into chaos and national slaughter that those particular Indonesians threatened. In this sense it was not just likely that from time to time ‘enemies of state’ would have to be attacked. It was actually necessary that this happen, to give some weight, however feather-like, to the state’s constant polemic of brinkmanship. Tanter (1990) has memorably described the New Order as an ‘intelligence state’ based on a security model, but perhaps the more appropriate title may have been the ‘insecurity state’, because it relied on a constant and official state of precariousness to justify it acting in an essentially extra-legal – or, to put it more simply, ‘lawless’ – way. Siegel has described the consequence of this as the state becoming criminal, describing the Indonesian state and Suharto as ‘the new

26 Tim Lindsey criminal type of Jakarta’ (1999: 218). Examining the Petrus killings of 1983–1985, Siegel focuses on Suharto’s justifications for ordering the killings. The tattooed gali 4 victims were, the President claimed, ‘inhuman’: Criminals went beyond human limits. They not only broke the law, but they stepped beyond the limits of human endurance. For instance, old people were first robbed . . . and then killed. Isn’t that inhumane? If you are going to take something, sure take it, but then don’t murder. Then there were women whose wealth was stolen and other people’s wives even raped by these criminals in front of their husbands yet. Isn’t that going too far? . . . Doesn’t that demand action? Automatically we had to give it the treatment [in English]. (Suharto autobiography, cited in Siegel 1999: 218) This inhumanity or sadis (sadism) that Suharto attributed to the gali was then matched by the state’s brutality. With the threat established, the law was irrelevant to the state’s right to act. Disguised members of the military were sent to abduct and murder selected gali, usually with multiple bullets or stab wounds, sometimes with hundreds (Pemberton 1994), leaving the corpses in streets and rivers, as Suharto said, . . . just like that. This was for shock therapy [in English]. So the masses would understand that faced with criminals there were still some who would act and who would control them.5 Here the state has not only matched criminality, Siegel argues, it has also appropriated it to secure its unity with its citizens. Siegel (1999: 227) describes Suharto and the state as having implicitly identified themselves with their victims even as they asserted their difference from them. It is the imitation of the criminal that is predominant, while the assertion of difference at this point was mere camouflage. Siegel sees this as an attempt by the state to appropriate the power of the gali by asserting that it is the only institution that can go beyond limits (1999: 228). In my view this appropriation was unnecessary, because the integralist state has rarely, as a matter of fact, experienced real limits on its authority. It does not need more power. But this is a quibble. It is clear enough that the state emerged from the events as the unchallenged possessor of lawless power, the mediator of violence – as Suharto had clearly intended and as he, as a good integralist, clearly believed was its right. General Prabowo’s remarks on his role in the abduction and torture of perceived dissidents in the months leading up to his father-in-law’s fall demonstrate precisely the same ideas. Prabowo has described himself as a

From Soepomo to Prabowo 27 ‘good soldier’, ‘inculcated with the values of ksatria – the warrior – and patriotism’ (Tesoro 2000a), who ‘love[s] the army’. It was thus his duty, when instructed by the state (that is, the President who, according to the 1945 Constitution, is the mandatory of the MPR, the supreme sovereign body and embodiment of the people) to use violence to protect the authority of the New Order, like the ‘samurai’ he says he resembles, who will not ‘leave your lord’. This entitled him to remove and neutralize the threat presented by dissidents he saw as attempting to destabilize and destroy the state through a ‘campaign of terror’ (Asiaweek 2000a). For these high purposes, he saw few restraints applying – the interests of the government transcended the law – and so he was entitled to use criminal tactics against criminals ‘already on the police wanted list’ if necessary. In doing so, his actions, however illegal, should not, he says, be seen as ‘betraying Pak Harto . . . I never betrayed my country’ (Tesoro 2000c), the two in his mind being conflated.

Linking state violence and state corruption This notion of the state as lawless is a powerful one. The Petrus affair and Prabowo’s ‘disappearances’ of dissidents are closely linked events. They show the state acting as if it were a criminal gang, secretly (at first) establishing a brutal system of control to achieve its aims: violence used to secure the acquisition of power and money by an elite that was equivalent to the state itself. The securing of power, which was the principal aim of the violence, was also equivalent to securing wealth. I have written elsewhere on corruption and the law, arguing that the New Order state consciously created a parallel ‘secret’ state to ensure its access to illegal or extra-legal rents (Lindsey 2000b). It was through this system that business and administration were really carried out: [B]y the end of Suharto’s rule, the judiciary, like the legislature, effectively functioned (or dysfunctioned) as an arm of the bureaucracy. The consequences of this were, first, the removal of any formal avenue of opposition to the executive; second, the absence of functioning formal mechanisms for rational transaction management or dispute resolution, whether between citizens or between state and citizens; and third, the rise of alternative, irregular and informal methods of dispute resolution and transaction management to fill the vacuum created by popular fear of courts and politics. In other words, new ‘soft’ law arose – alternative, informal norms – to deal with issues that would be resolved by black letter law in a state with a functioning legal system. At their lowest level, these informal alternatives took the form of petty corruption and facilitation payments, as well as sophisticated traditions of informal dispute resolution. At their highest level they constituted something approaching a shadow

28 Tim Lindsey system, a ‘secret’ cronyist ‘black’ state, in which ‘real’ business and policy-making took place. The New Order state thus became one predicated on bad faith, that is to say, effective transacting, decisionmaking and politics at all levels were carried out in the shadow system, widely understood – a public secret – but not formally acknowledged. The officially-approved outcomes of this ‘real’ informal system were later legitimized in what I call the aspal (asli tapi palsu: original but false) state legal system. The result is a highly developed legal formalism (hard law) and public rhetoric; seemingly impenetrable and secretive politics; state-sanctioned ‘corruption’ and legal informality in practice (soft law norms); and apparent irrelevance and absurdity in the practice of law by reason of it being the interface between the two systems. To put it another way, there were lots of laws but, because only the politically powerful could ever win, they were reduced to nonsense. The creation of this system was not principally the product of an inherent cultural propensity to informal systems, as is often argued. The cause was not a supposed Asian preference for harmonious and informal dispute resolution or a deep-rooted tradition of corruption or informality (Taylor and Pryles 1997). Rather it is, I would argue, a rational response to the state’s failure to provide a functional and relevant formal system, hard law that works. As such the ‘black’ aspal state of soft law norms has necessarily grown to monstrous, if often invisible, dimensions and permeated most aspects of Indonesian public life. It has become the only effective way to ‘do’ politics and commerce – and thus law. (Lindsey 2000b: 185–6) This aspal metaphor is not, of course, confined to corruption and the judiciary. The same dynamics that drove the subversion of the pamong praja ( Javanese: ‘bureaucracy’) also lay behind the institutionalization of state violence and official criminal behaviour. I am arguing here that the key to the creation of the ‘black’ state was the state’s violence. It could use it to force compliance. It became the sanction that acted as the mortar to hold the ‘black’ state system together. So pervasive was it that for most, there was little real alternative. Complicity was the only real option for financial survival. However, for those who chose to operate outside it, either in competition as criminals, or as dissenters who attempted to assert the official state systems against the ‘black’ state, poverty – created by exclusion from access to jobs or rents – and, ultimately, violence were the sanctions. Perhaps the most startling evidence of this formalized, unofficial but bureaucratic system of ‘secret’ corruption and state-managed violence was the extraordinary evidence given at the trial of Marsinah by a local Ministry of Manpower official. The official claimed that regardless of the formal industrial relations system, labour disputes in the Sidoarjo region

From Soepomo to Prabowo 29 (where Marsinah had worked) were really conducted through a secret network of government, the military and employers, known as the Sidoarjo Intelligence System, run by the local Ministry office. What is more, identical networks existed all across Indonesia (Fehring and Lindsey 1995: 9). The New Order state was thus a stand-over operation. The bargain it offered was the classic mafia gambit: protection (against gali or communists, for example) or punishment in the form of brutality (as with Marsinah and Udin, for example). In this sense, the state was an enterprise that operated on the same basis as criminals – preman or, in their own slang, jawara. These are the ‘toughs’ found throughout Indonesia who extort illegal rents or japrem ( jatah preman) from people living or carrying on a business in territory they have ‘won’ by fighting and defeating other preman (Barker 1999: 119–22).6 Derived from the Dutch for ‘free man’ and used to refer first to irregular or demobilized soldiers (Ryter 2000), in everyday use the word has overlapped with jago (literally, ‘fighting cock’), the village ‘tough’ of ancient tradition who in urban context became a gang boss; rampok bandits; and laskyar, militias or irregular forces,7 particularly during the revolutionary period (Cribb 1991: 18–19; notes 26–7). Whatever its origins, however, the word has long meant in common parlance bandits or gangsters or, more commonly, ‘stand-over man’. Like the state itself, the preman today occupies an ambiguous position, surviving through a grudging acceptance underscored by fear: On the one hand, the jawara is resented for the extra economic burden he places on people, but on the other hand, there is always the attempt to keep up good relations with him . . . ‘If we are good to them, they don’t hassle us.’ (Barker 1999: 121, n. 49) These words could apply equally to the New Order blend of violence and corruption typified by the Sidoarjo Intelligence System, the Petrus killings and Prabowo’s abductions: state premanisme. This is a model of state oppression and intervention that goes far beyond the East-Asian model of authoritarian state capitalism (economic constitutionalism) proposed by Jayasuriya (1999) and others of a powerful central state committed to economic development. In fact, in some ways Indonesia’s state premanisme is the opposite of authoritarian state capitalism, because state development often was allowed to the extent that it provided rents to the elite – the Suharto family’s toll roads8 and the Busang/Bre-X gold mine scandal of the late 1990s are excellent examples of this. In fact, in some cases prosperity was an incident rather than an aim of development. As Barker shows, premanisme has historically been more, rather than less, prevalent when the economy is in boom and there is both more japrem available for

30 Tim Lindsey both individual criminals and, I would add, the criminal state (Barker 1999: 123). State premanisme is, however, a product, however distorted, of the fundamental inseverability of state, individual and economy that underpinned Soepomo’s 1945 Constitution. All that was required for the move from Soepomo’s romantic integralist state of the azas kekeluargaan (family principle: Article 33, 1945 Constitution) to the preman state was for Soepomo’s ‘benevolent father’ to be substituted by a wicked criminal ‘step-father’ – or should that be ‘godfather’?

The preman in the preman state The relationship between the preman state and preman themselves is not, however, a simple one. In his study of surveillance and territoriality in Bandung, Barker (1999) has described the overlap between, on the one hand, state-sanctioned security officials in the Indonesian local security (Siskamling)9 system and, on the other, preman. He makes the point that preman are often co-opted by the state, as an enforcer, ‘a necessary component in the maintenance of state power and the collection of taxes’, and that a preman’s control of territory for rent extraction is negotiated with the state (Barker 1999: 122). The key concept here is that of bekking or dekking (backing) by an arm of the state. This is a system by which the preman, having extracted dues from citizens, in turn pays setoran or ‘rent’ to government representatives, usually members of the military or police, in return for the right to operate. In a sense, the New Order system, predicated as it was on a deliberately low-wage economy and repressive control of the labour market by brutal bureaucratic–military ‘intelligence systems’ (Fehring 1999), made premanisme necessary by restricting access to wealth, particularly for the urban poor. As the economy boomed on the back of low-wage industries, premanisme was sometimes a rational way to get access to the ‘trickle down’, hence the increase in premanisme in boom times that Barker identified. Equally, the economic crisis that restricted access to wealth has brought with it a backlash against premanisme and a growth in anti-preman vigilantism. This is a development made possible by the weakening of state control and the loss of direction among the military since Suharto’s fall. As McLeod (2000) has demonstrated, Suharto’s departure stripped the corrupt political and business ‘franchise’ of its lynchpin, its ‘godfather’. This led to a fragmentation of systems of political control and the rise of intense rivalry for power between the political groups he once dominated. This slippage has both diminished tight control over the ‘masses’ and weakened the dekking protection available for preman. So in Jakarta, for example, popular protests against jawara have increased markedly over the last twelve months, as have ‘mobbings’, that is lynchings, of preman. Indonesian newspapers are full of reports of this trend, but to take one example, in June

From Soepomo to Prabowo 31 2000 Jakarta’s Cipto Mangunkusomo hospital reported 100 victims of mob vigilante killings since January ( Jakarta Post 2000c). A recent example of both the dekking system and the current backlash involves mikrolet (public minivan) drivers serving the Tanah Abang– Kebayoran Lama and Tanah Abang–Jeruk routes around Jakarta in 2000. A body known as the Association of the Big Family of Tanah Abang (IKBT) was established in 1997 at the initiative of the Mayor of Central Jakarta ‘to solve problems at the Tanah Abang market’ ( Jakarta Post 2000d). Specifically, IKBT collected a fee of Rp2,000 from drivers, which: was used to pay local youths so they would not create trouble, such as by asking for money from drivers entering the area. . . . [A]bout 150 mikrolet drivers staged a peaceful demonstration at the council asking the councillors to put an end to the unauthorized fee . . . other drivers continued the strike, [which] forced thousands to seek alternative transport. . . . Besides the ‘official’ levy by IKBT, the drivers also complained about other fees, such as those imposed by pak Ogah (illegal traffic wardens), which IKBT had promised to curb once they applied the Rp2,000 levy. Central Jakarta Police deputy chief Maj. Iza Fadri . . . was present. . . . ‘The police have arrested the illegal traffic wardens, but they will start asking the drivers for money again, once they are released’, Iza said. ‘The levy by IKBT is a solution to curb unauthorized fees in the area,’ he added . . . Another driver, Habib Muklis, 31, said the levy was a burden for them since they only made between Rp15,000 to Rp20,000 a day. ‘Pak Ogah often bang on or scratch our minivans if we refuse to pay,’ Muklis told the Jakarta Post. . . . [T]he drivers insisted that they would only operate again if Iza could guarantee their safety from IKBT members or other street wardens. ( Jakarta Post 2000d) The reality of the threat of violence that underlies these events was made clear the next day in a report in the same newspaper of five men ‘mobbed to death’ and then set alight ‘near the busy Kampung Rambutan intercity bus terminal in East Jakarta’ (Jakarta Post 2000c) The relationship between preman and state premanisme goes further, however, than Barker describes or the bus terminal examples demonstrate. From time to time, the preman with dekking can be mobilized by the state or by powerful individuals or groups within it to direct the violence in which they specialize to the needs of the state. This was what Ali Murtopo had achieved with his ‘zoo’ of gali – preman – who were used by

32 Tim Lindsey the New Order to attack, intimidate and sabotage opponents of the regime (Bourchier 1990). In their study of premanisme politik, Gunawan and Nezar (2000) argue that it is precisely this mechanism that was exploited by the military and senior members of government to set up violent youth organizations such as the pro-Suharto Pemuda Pancasila and the Pam Swakarsa. These groups were implicated in the violence, sexual abuse and destruction of property that has sporadically accompanied, and often provoked, political crises in Indonesia since late 1997. Gunawan and Nezar (2000) see that same mechanism at work in the creation of the pro-integration militias that laid East Timor waste after the 1999 referendum. Here then, the nexus between state corruption and violence and private corruption and extortion becomes blurred. The delicate political mechanism of dekking can transform private violence into a corrupt tool of the state. Extortionists and thugs morph into paramilitaries and political associations. The prevalence of this politicization of premanisme was demonstrated by the practice developed by student groups demonstrating in Jakarta in 1998 and 1999 of tying themselves together with rope while marching or protesting, or issuing distinctive identifying clothing among themselves to prevent infiltration by paid ‘saboteurs’. I describe dekking as a ‘delicate’ mechanism, because the state’s coopting and directing of private preman violence has never been an entirely reliable gambit. The power that is transferred to the private preman by the preman state when dekking turns preman into militias or mobs for the purposes of the state can also turn the ‘nationalized’ preman into a competitor. This can happen when the ‘private army’ of one elite member threatens another’s position, or when it threatens a branch of state or when premanisme becomes so widespread that it becomes difficult to control rival groups and factions. As mentioned earlier, this ultimately requires the state to assert its position as the head of the setoran pyramid of violence by attacking those it has used. Hence, Bourchier argues, Suharto’s enthusiasm for the Petrus killings can be explained not just by their value as tool for cowing society but also as a means of disposing of Murtopo’s ‘zoo’ of gali (Bourchier 1990). Barker (1999: 122–3) argues along similar lines that the deliberate expansion of the siskamling system was an attempt by the New Order to create a system of local surveillance to contain a boom in preman power in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as a result of both the economic growth fuelled by the New Order in the 1970s and, I would argue, the use of dekking methods by the New Order elite, including Murtopo. One consequence of the symbiosis between state premanisme and the private preman in the operation of the corrupt aspal state is the creation of an atmosphere of intimidation in most political, administrative and commercial contexts. The prevalence of extortion – extra-legal rents paid under duress of violence – accompanied by occasional acts of private or

From Soepomo to Prabowo 33 state-sanctioned brutality, as reminders or enforcement of the aspal system, leads to a common and understandable, if still inaccurate, perception that every aspect of the entire state system is unremittingly criminal. In other words, state premanisme inevitably creates a loss of faith in the state and an attitude of almost abject fear among citizens who are not ‘players’ in the aspal system. These responses are manifest in common attitudes of absolute cynicism towards any form of authority, an assumption of the worst in any assessment of government actions, and the proliferation of widely-accepted conspiracy theories as well as an expectation of violence as the state’s response to any crisis. Barker gives a small but compelling anecdotal account of this when he describes public reactions to broadcasts showing the destruction of contraband goods by police. [A]lmost without exception, they note cynically that the goods destroyed are only a small part of what was confiscated, or that the crates being burned are empty and that the remainder – those things not destroyed – are being sold by the police for profit. Thus, although the police may see the spectacle only as a demonstration of the power of surveillance, what viewers see is the generation and appropriation of a surplus. They see a performance in which the state’s power (of surveillance) is converted into personal wealth. (Barker 1999: 103) Of course, this expectation of corruption and violence itself feeds the corruption and violence that gave rise to the expectation. It becomes a selffulfilling prophecy: if the police know that everyone believes that they routinely steal confiscated goods or take protection money from jawara, then there is little reason not to do so. In this way corruption and violence become self-perpetuating. Another consequence of the prevalence of a common expectation of violence, corruption and conspiracy is the assumption that any unwanted event must be the product of these forces, that is, that hidden players are criminally and violently manipulating everything for their own enrichment. This is one reason why Indonesian gossip so frequently focuses on conspiracy theories involving supposed covert political dalang – masterminds – or their preferred tool, provocateurs and saboteurs. An Indonesian official remarked sarcastically to me, ‘when it rains, the little people say it must be Prabowo behind it. When it floods, it is Suharto.’ This is, of course, the flipside of the New Order’s preoccupation with ‘formless organizations’ and ‘shadowy figures’; only, instead of being communists or ideological enemies, these dark forces are now presumed to be controlled and directed by members or former members of the state elite. Common ‘bogeymen’ include members of the Suharto family, especially the fugitive Tommy Suharto, accused of bombing his enemies (Djalal

34 Tim Lindsey 2001a), Prabowo and Tutut and the ageing and supposedly ill Suharto himself. Other candidates include Akbar Tanjung, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Wiranto, Feisal Tanjung (supposedly once a market preman in Medan (Ryter 2000)), Hartono (McBeth 2001), Syarwan Hamid and Zacky Makarim – and even figures from the more distant past such as Benny Murdani. The state intelligence and security agencies Intel, BAIS and BAKORSTANAS are even more shadowy but sometimes more credible candidates. On my reading of state premanisme there is, of course, justification for some of these fears. My point is, however, that this fear of illegal semisecret activities against citizens by the state has moved beyond reason to become a pervasive expectation and dominating public emotion. In fact, it is almost state policy: Officials have pointed to Suharto’s fugitive son Tommy and other New Order figures, to Muslim radicals, and to at least seven generals, five of whom are still active. In a recent meeting with a civic action group, political coordinating minister Bambang Yudhoyono referred to a conspiracy of ‘old friends and old soldiers.’ Wahid told the same group that when Yudhoyono briefed him in late December, he named Hartono and ex-special forces commander Lt.-Gen. Prabowo Subianto, who both have links to Suharto, as ‘possible’ masterminds. (McBeth 2001)

Microlet as microcosm? Despite the end of the New Order, the limited statutory reforms of the last two years and the rise of Abdurrahman Wahid (who certainly has a longstanding opposition to the use of violence), Soepomo’s integralist Machtstaat 10 is still the framework of the Republic. His Constitution’s emphasis on obligations over rights and its statement that ‘all citizens have a duty to uphold the state’ still informs political and legal culture in Indonesia. This means that Abdurrahman is at the head of a government that must deal with, is infiltrated by, and even includes, exponents of state premanisme who have survived from the New Order, whether as members of the bureaucracy, armed forces or even ministers. In this sense the experience of the Microlet drivers may be a microcosm of Indonesia’s experience since 1998. The protests and demands of reformasi may have forced the state apparatus to chase some of the preman away, but it was only for a while. They are back, asking for money again. Unravelling the New Order system of violence and corruption, which dates back not to 1966 but to 1957, when Sukarno suspended the democratic process, is not something that can be done in the year and a half since Abdurrahman’s government was installed. The failure of the trial of Suharto shows that his government has limited authority to control the

From Soepomo to Prabowo 35 state apparatus. It can offer little guarantee of the proper functioning of the legal system; and it has almost no ability effectively to prevent or punish violence or corruption, whether through legal or political measures. There still has not been a single corruption trial decided at the final appeal level that has resulted in the actual jailing of a senior member of the New Order elite.11 If the best legal response to violence the reformasi state can deliver is a show trial of selected minor scapegoats then little has changed since the 1966 military court ‘trials’ of communists, since Habibie blocked legal action over the rapes and violence of May 1998, or since Prabowo was gently pushed aside by the Honour Board. There are, of course, alternative models for the legal relationship between Indonesian state and citizens, most notably the Constitutions of 1949 and 1950, with their strongly stated ‘Bill of Rights’, and the abandoned debates of the Konstituante (Constituent Assembly), all of which were strong reactions to Soepomo’s authoritarian Beambtenstaat (bureaucratic state). But Abdurrahman is increasingly a prisoner of state politics as he struggles to deal with the aspal systems of state corruption and violence. To suggest a new Konstituante now would probably be to hand a weapon to those survivors of the New Order who see the current government and the emerging democratic system as their enemy. It is therefore unlikely that there will be a real shift in the legal treatment of violence until the preman state is significantly re-thought – and that will require much more than Abdurrahman’s government has shown itself able to deliver so far.

Notes 1 The author thanks Simon Butt of the Asian Law Group for research assistance in preparing this article. 2 It should be noted, however, that many of those killing or being killed do not acknowledge the authority of the Indonesian nation state, for example, in Aceh, Irian and East Timor. 3 This paragraph draws extensively on Bourchier (1999) and Burns (1989). 4 Gabungan Anak Liar: groups of wild youths, a New Order euphemism for criminal gangs. 5 This and the previous quotation are taken from Suharto’s autobiography, as cited in Siegel (1999: 227–30). I have substituted ‘masses’ for Siegel’s rendering of orang banyak as ‘crowds’. 6 Barker’s definition is worth reproducing at some length. ‘In owning an area, the jawara establishes the right to collect on the debt that people have simply by virtue of living or doing business there. This debt is resolved by paying to the jawara a percentage of any commercial activity that takes place in his territory. . . . Even pickpockets who successfully extract a wallet from passersby through the area feel obliged to pay the jawara a tenth of their take, even though the jawara is not their boss. The money that is collected is called “tribute” (upeti) or japrem . . . and is generally collected not by the jawara himself, but by his underlings (anak buah or “kronco”). Indeed tribute is the right name for it: it is the fee paid under duress for the right to live or do business in the jawara’s domain.’ (1999: 120).

36 Tim Lindsey 7 Cribb’s definition runs ‘those armed groups which excluded themselves, or were excluded, from the official armed forces of the Republic’ (Cribb 1991: 72). 8 I am indebted to Dominic Gray for this observation. 9 Also known as sistem swakarsa, a combination of any of the Satuan Pengamanan (SATPAM or united security); the HANSIP (pertahanan sipil or civil defence); and the much older ronda or nightly guard. The SATPAM patrol commercial and public buildings while the other two patrol residential areas. SATPAM and HANSIP are low-paid workers, while ronda are usually volunteers. See, generally, Barker 1999, especially p. 95 and n. 3. 10 Loosely, ‘state based on might’, as opposed to the Rechtsstaat, the state based on law (see the Explanatory Memorandum to the 1945 Constitution, Article 1). 11 At the time of writing, Tommy Suharto had failed in his attempt to obtain a Presidential Pardon for his land fraud conviction but he remained at large as a fugitive (Djalal 2001a). Mohamad ‘Bob’ Hasan, (timber tycoon, intimate of the Suharto family and briefly Minister for Trade in the last cabinet of his business partner, Suharto) had been convicted of stealing US$75 million of Ministry of Forestry funds. He was fined Rp15 million and sentenced to two years imprisonment, of which he had already served fourteen months while on remand. He is behind bars but his appeal process is yet to begin (Jakarta Post 2001a), and it remains to be seen whether his sentence will stand. In a sense these two are ‘soft’ targets. Tommy has long been enormously unpopular, while Hasan’s Chinese ethnicity makes him vulnerable. The real test is whether a pribumi crony who retains political power can be convicted. So far this has not occurred.

Part 2

Regions of violence

3

‘Eventing’ the May 1998 affair Problematic representations of violence in contemporary Indonesia Sai Siew Min

What really happened on 13–15 May 1998? Is it true that the massive riots in several cities, now remembered as the May Tragedy, were orchestrated by an organized group? Who was the ‘dalang’? And why was the government so slow to take action? . . . This book, Country in Flames, does not pretend to answer the questions presented above. Its publication is intended merely as a documentation that embraces the details of the May Tragedy incident of 13–15 May 1998. Its purposes are clear: this incident that set feelings of humanity into commotion should not simply be erased from memory, and the attempts to discover the facts of the incident should not be summarily obliterated. (Setiawan et al. 1999: v)

These prefatory remarks cited from a book claiming to document the details of the May 1998 event highlight specific questions raised in the highly acrimonious public debates that followed the tragedy. More pertinent to this chapter, the authors of the book have justified its publication by defending the need for a collective memory and above all the need for historical truth about the May 1998 events. Their defence of historical truth in turn highlights a neglected subtext that has been marginalized by a highly publicized and acrimonious contest for historical truth. This subtext concerns the meta-discourses about historical truths that frame the points of contention. This chapter examines the social production of historical ‘truths’, ‘non-truths’ and ‘untruths’ about the May 1998 events in Jakarta. It will discuss the notions of truth circulating in contemporary discourses about the May 1998 events and especially about the May rapes. Although I am dealing in general with the May 1998 events, I will focus on the May rapes controversies for the reason that they have brought out issues of truth and credibility more starkly. This chapter will demonstrate and critique the efficacy, legitimacy and limitations of these notions of truth and their deployment in hierarchies of credibility and significance surrounding narratives about the May events. As such, it does not offer a blow-by-blow factual account of what really happened in the fateful month of May, but it does question the authority offered by the factual account.

40 Sai Siew Min I have taken this circuitous approach to the May 1998 events because of several considerations. The remarks cited in the opening paragraph suggest that the controversies generated engage several basic questions and common assumptions about historical truth. Despite the professed importance of establishing an historically accurate account, a critical examination of the notions of truth and their status within these debates is conspicuously absent. This absence results, arguably, from assumptions about the monolithic nature of historical truth itself. As such, the controversies about the May events languish at the level of who has the truth about what really happened and who did it. These assumptions configure the process of historical narration as a zero-sum game and as a matter of revealing what has so far been silenced or withheld without questioning why and how these questions become more significant than other questions. Moreover, this obsession with historical facts as a matter of raising a drawn curtain does not explain why an empirically grounded narrative may be as socially unacceptable as a narrative that is not. I will show in the section ‘Vulnerable truths’ that this has been the case with the May rapes controversy. I also suggest that we need to look at the mediation and intervention of discourses that may not be concerned with facts or truth but are, nonetheless, socially significant in narrating truth claims. In evaluating how notions of historical truth have been preconceived in these controversies, I am motivated first by the problem of framing the May events and second by the problem of silence. One issue that clearly emerges is that of naming and defining the events. I will show that defining the actions of the masses as ‘spontaneous riots’ or as ‘state-sponsored conspiracy’, and the May rapes as ‘political’ and not ‘criminal’, embed different kinds of truth claims. Thus, writing about the May events is not just a matter of taking another road to Rome.1 This chapter is fundamentally about the conditions (or lack thereof) for speech and representation: how it is or is not possible to speak of an event. It is also about the possibility of speaking up. While controversies over the rapes of women have generated rancorous public debates, persons directly involved in the acts of violence have been silent, remaining either unidentified or unidentifiable. This silence has, however, denied closure. Instead it has directed public attention to the figure of the ‘female rape victim’, making her silence the very subject of controversy. I suggest that this silence is manufactured, an effect of prevailing discourses about the May events that can only grant women the agency of the ‘raped female’.

The truths about what really happened Public debates about the May rapes and May events in general have so far centred on questions of discovery: on finding out who were the ‘real’ perpetrators and victims of violence, and hence what happened during that month. The contours of controversy are drawn around questions of estab-

‘Eventing’ the May 1998 affair 41 lishing historical truth, involving issues of ‘facts’ ( fakta) and ‘evidence’ (bukti). With specific reference to the May rapes, these questions have focused mainly on the veracity of reports about the rapes and, more specifically, on whether the rapes truly happened. Related questions have also surfaced concerning who is telling the truth and, conversely, who is lying or withholding accurate data on the May rapes. Reports stating that rapes of women, especially Chinese Indonesian women, occurred on a widespread scale on 13, 14 and 15 May 1998 only began to surface in the print media about three weeks after the event. Before this, the media were lavishing extensive attention on the claim that the riots that exploded after the Trisakti shootings were not spontaneous acts of criminal behaviour, as widely believed, but were orchestrated and systematically carried out. Talk had it that the highest authorities in the land were involved in ‘masterminding the riots’. Prominent reformasi leaders revealed they had obtained intelligence reports suggesting the riots were orchestrated. They called on the Habibie government to investigate the truth about the May violence.2 Their claims were supported by several non-governmental self-help groups in Jakarta, but were promptly denied by the government and the military. The quarrel between those who argued the riots were spontaneous and those who insisted they were planned was, however, quickly diverted by emerging media reports that rapes of Chinese Indonesian women had also occurred on a massive scale during the three days of rioting in May 1998. Jakarta was rocked by this revelation. Actually, according to the report by Human Rights Watch, immediately after the riots the Internet was already abuzz with news that Chinese Indonesians arriving in Singapore to escape the riots were reporting incidents of gang rapes of Chinese Indonesian women. By early June, feminists and human rights and religious workers in Jakarta were reporting that they were also receiving accounts of rapes from victims and their families and friends (HRW 1998a). However, it was only in mid-June, almost a month later, that the May rapes were widely reported in the print media. When the news broke, public attention in Jakarta quickly shifted from the rioting to the May rapes. For several months after June, and at least until the end of the year, the May rapes haunted the public, as one controversy over them followed another. Public discourse on the May events was inflected by the ensuing controversies. These have left an indelible mark on collective memory in Jakarta. The initial bewilderment over the May rapes provoked questions of interpretation and comprehension. More than just a simple process of discovery of facts, this process of ‘eventing’ the May rapes depends upon modes of discourse and narrative thoroughly social in nature and collectively produced. Through this process, the May violence is signified, becoming meaningful. As in the case of the riots, how the May rapes were framed and defined became very problematic. Among the many nongovernmental self-help organizations in Jakarta championing the issue

42 Sai Siew Min and providing much-needed support for victims and their families, Volunteers for Humanity (TRuK), led by Father Sandyawan, has been instrumental in redefining public knowledge about the May events. Using eyewitness accounts collected from residents, families and friends of victims, and professionals from other religious and self-help agencies, the Volunteers reconstructed an account of what happened during the three days of unrest in Jakarta. This was presented in a series of reports entitled ‘Early Documentation’ Nos 1, 2 and 3 (TRuK 1998a, 1998b, 1998c). These documents were circulated before the final report dealing with the rapes of Chinese Indonesian women was formally released. These initial reports argued against popular understanding of the ‘riots’ as spontaneous acts committed by an angry mob of urban poor. According to the Volunteers, who paid careful attention to the forms of violence, their timing and place of occurrence, the ‘riots’ were executed from a larger premeditated plan. They argued that because there was a ‘pattern’ to the acts of violence in May, the riots could not have ignited spontaneously. This ‘pattern’ emerged in a sequence of acts that led to the provocation of the masses. There was first ‘mass-conditioning’. Rumours were spread via the telephone, drivers and workers in public transportation services about potential ‘riots’ in targeted places, drawing crowds of people around specific locations such as shopping centres and residential areas. This was followed by the arrival of unidentified groups of strangers who were often described by eyewitnesses as tanned, strong and sporting crew cuts, or as men in high-school uniforms, or as men with tattoos. They would begin to loot the shops or destroy public facilities, shouting anti-Chinese slogans and/or invitations and commands to the crowds to join them. During the three days in May 1998, incidents of ‘rioting’ occurred in different locations in Jakarta but at approximately the same time. Although descriptions of the unidentified men varied from location to location, the general pattern to the violence indicated the existence of an overall mastermind motivating an organized network of perpetrators. In an interview with the newsmagazine D & R published on 20 June 1998, Father Sandyawan was quoted as saying that what was popularly conceived as ‘riots’ was in fact, a ‘massacre’. He also added that the violence was planned to look like spontaneous rioting to make it look as if the urban poor were responsible. On 13 July 1998 the Volunteers submitted the final part of their report on the May rapes to the National Committee for Human Rights (Komnas HAM). In the report, which consisted of citations of personal testimonies by victims and witnesses and a list of sixteen victims whose names were withheld, they argued that rapes of Chinese Indonesian women did happen during the riots. Not only were the May rapes real, the Volunteers maintained, but ‘the demolition, the burning down and the rapes were different elements of the same systemic and organized act. The revelation of this network of the think-tanks and actors of the May rapes will lead us to the same network behind the riots and vice versa’ (TRuK 1998a,

‘Eventing’ the May 1998 affair 43 1998b). Their contention was based upon the observation that rapes and other incidents of sexual abuse happened at the same time and in the same places, and followed the same pattern of directed violence, as did the rioting. The perpetrators consisted of groups of unidentified young men who were always strangers to the area they attacked. The Volunteers also cited testimony of witnesses who said that before the May rapes some men had tried to recruit young men from poor neighbourhoods, promising not only material goods but also the liberty of having sexual relations with Chinese Indonesian women. By the time the final report was released in July, the Volunteers claimed they had documented 168 rape cases throughout the country. Challenged by critical voices that implicated the state and its agents, the Habibie government maintained an initially ambiguous position that became increasingly capricious. As noted in the Human Rights Watch report, the government veered from initial denial to reluctant ‘condemnation’ to outright denial again, and finally to accusations of fabrication against the Volunteers and other non-governmental self-help groups supporting the Volunteers (HRW 1998a). When news of the rapes surfaced in the print media in late June, the initial governmental position was that the government could not verify that the rapes happened or undertake punitive measures until at least one report associated with the May rapes was filed in accordance with the law. The official demand for verifiable information on the rapes, coupled with the half-hearted attempts to launch official investigations on both the rapes and the May violence in general, were harshly criticized by the Volunteers, by feminists and by other human rights advocates and workers. They cited four main reasons why it was difficult to prove the May rapes. First, the mental anguish and disturbed psychological state of rape victims did not permit either the victims or their families to provide detailed and coherent accounts of what had happened to them, much less report to authorities they did not trust. The Volunteers and human rights agencies were also bound by an ethical code not to reveal the true identities of the victims, who, understandably, needed protection and privacy to recover from their physical and psychological wounds. Second, the lack of trust in the Habibie government as well as in police and military agencies was an additional stumbling block to attempts to report the rapes and any other instances of sexual abuse. Human rights workers argued that this distrust deepened because official reaction to the May rapes was callous and insensitive, leaving the impression of an official cover-up and the persistent violation of basic human rights by state agents. Third, the climate of terror that persisted in the months following the violence was a huge stumbling block, preventing victims and witnesses from coming forward. Incidents of rapes were still being reported as late as July. According to the Volunteers, the exposure of some victims to further acts of terror was possible because rapists had in some cases seized their identity cards.

44 Sai Siew Min Finally, the Volunteers, newspaper reporters and columnists, feminists and human rights activists also argued that the stigma attached to the raped female in Indonesia discouraged victims to reveal, much less publicize, their experiences. These four factors were repeated every time government officials challenged the Volunteers, feminists and human rights activists to produce legal evidence to support their claims that the rapes really happened and were part of the violence perpetuated in May 1998.3 In July, however, the Habibie government began a series of measures aimed, apparently, at placating their critics. On 3 July, at a meeting with academics at the Psychology Department at the University of Indonesia, the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Tuti Alawiyah, condemned the May rapes. The Minister agreed that the difficulties in accurate documentation of the rapes were partly caused by the lack of trust in the government. She also admitted that the May rapes really did happen and that no additional evidence was needed. Instead, she proposed that attention should be given to securing protection and rehabilitation for victims and their families. Subsequently, the Minister established two telephone hotlines and a Team for the Protection of Female Victims of Violent Acts to investigate the May rapes. Following this, on 15 July, President Habibie expressed regret and condemnation of the rapes, stating he had received ‘clear and authentic proof’ that the rapes did occur (Presidential Statement of 15 July 1998, as cited in HRW 1998a: 6). This was followed on 23 July by the announcement of the formation of an independent Joint Fact-Finding Team (TGPF). This series of manoeuvres in July appear to mark a shift in the government’s initial insistence on evidence, but the official line was by no means coherent. While the Habibie government was busy making these gestures, the police, on the other hand, continued to deny the rapes had happened. Some high-level military officers maintained that if there was no evidence, the rapes did not happen. On 25 July 1998, for example, Major-General Drs Da’i Bachtiar, who was a member of TGPF, reportedly said that the police could not find any ‘rape victims’, nor were any reports filed. When police checked the story of one ‘witness’, the ‘witness’ confessed to having heard the story from someone else. Bachtiar also complained that Komnas HAM and several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had been uncooperative and hindered police investigations by refusing to provide the police with the victims’ addresses. The police and the military were not the only groups insisting on a ‘no evidence, no rapes’ position. Other non-governmental self-help groups also questioned the veracity of rape reports. Two radical Islamic groups were most prominent; these were the Komite Indonesia untuk Solidaritas Dunia Islam (KISDI) and Badan Koordinasi Mubalig Indonesia (Bakomubin). They were unhappy over two issues. They were dissatisfied with media reports that, they claimed, discredited the Islamic community; they

‘Eventing’ the May 1998 affair 45 were also worried that the unverified rape reports were deliberate attempts to damage Indonesia’s national image abroad. In late July the Bakomubin joined the chorus of voices demanding that President Habibie investigate the rape cases in accordance with the law because ‘certain groups’ were using the incident to put Muslims in an uncomfortable position. Bakomubin cited reports by The Washington Post and The New York Times as examples of such ‘anti-Islamic’ moves. These newspapers had carried articles stating that the rapists had told their victims they were raped because they were Chinese and non-Muslim. In August, KISDI took offence at the same reports reproduced in the Indonesian magazine Jakarta-Jakarta and took legal measures against the magazine, arguing that the reports created misleading impressions of the rapists’ true identity and incriminated the Islamic community. Subsequently, KISDI also pressured the government, military and police to charge organizations that were supposedly threats against national stability. KISDI claimed these groups were clearly threatening to mobilize the masses towards toppling the government. It accused the Volunteers of fabricating the May rapes. The issue, they alleged, had been ‘politicized’ by a third party wishing to blow up the matter by accusing the government of being anti-Chinese. However, it was not until August that these voices became influential.

Monolithic truth: the legal and moral dimensions The quarrel between groups and individuals who suspected the veracity of the rape reports and those who believed them revolved around questions of evidence: the need for accurate documentation and legally admissible evidence and the difficulties in obtaining it. The quarrel, however, also involved an engagement in and exchange of notions of truth. Truth means many and different things in these debates. Sometimes, there seemed to be no common ground in the kinds of truth assumed by the different groups. Therefore, while the government insisted on abiding by a strict ‘legal’ definition of truth, civil society groups chose a ‘moral’ truth. At the same time, however, the question made central by the polemic – whether the rapes happened – suggests that the contending parties understood truth as monolithic. This notion of monolithic truth underpins discourse about the history of the May rapes and violence, forming a shared assumption and, thus, one site of contention. The notion that truth is monolithic is not a problem. The quarrel is, rather, about who has the truth and who does not, and whether facts are available to support the respective truth claims. In science studies, Mary Poovey observes that the European understanding of ‘the modern fact’ is marked by a peculiarity. On the one hand, facts seem to be valueless particulars; on the other hand, they also appear to exist as identifiable units only when they constitute evidence for some theory (Poovey 1998: 9). Lorraine Daston explains this distinction

46 Sai Siew Min between ‘facts’ and ‘evidence’ further. In order for facts to qualify as evidence, they must appear innocent of human intention; ‘facts fabricated as evidence, that is to make a particular point, are thereby disqualified as evidence’ (Daston 1994: 244). Although I see no comparable differentiation between the Indonesian words ‘fakta’ (facts) and ‘bukti’ (evidence) as they are used in these debates, this brief comment on facts and evidence in European science cited here highlights one commonsensical idea about ‘facts’ and ‘evidence’ circulating in these debates. They draw on the understanding that facts and evidence exist independently of any intentional manipulation and above all, independently of any narrative. Thus, the search for facts is more a matter of discovery than framing, producing and narrating knowledge. Both the Indonesian government and its critics assumed it was the facts that were crucial to the May rapes. The government initially approached the events as putative criminal offences and denied they happened, citing lack of legal evidence. Under Indonesian law, as the report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur noted, the Criminal Code states that ‘The testimony of one witness is not sufficient to prove that a defendant is guilty of the act of which he is charged’ (Coomaraswamy 1999). The testimony of rape victims was, accordingly, insufficient in itself. The government’s argument was that as neither victims nor witnesses could be found, hence there was no case. Insisting on investigating the May rapes on this legal premise, the government allowed the notion of legal evidence to frame its understanding of the events and the questions posed. The logic of their argument is not so much an absence of empirical evidence as it is the absence of evidence that fits the government’s legal definition and procedures. Thus, the problem is conceptual as well as empirical, although so far the public is more preoccupied with the latter. The government’s legal interpretation excludes the possibility of stateled violence or the possibility that the violence may be politically motivated. The juxtaposition between legal evidence and ‘politicized’ truth coincided with public calls by several civil society groups and individuals to guard against turning the May violence into a ‘political’ matter. Given the capricious position of the government and the persistence of the Volunteers in representing victims and their families, several newspaper reporters, journalists and public intellectuals warned that the May rapes could be used to advance political agendas of interested parties or as instruments of political propaganda. Evoking the presumed innocence of truth, the solution as they saw it was to establish the whole truth, independent of intentional manipulation. The ‘no evidence, no rapes’ position, supported by calls to ‘depoliticize’ the issue and focus on the search for truth, relies upon and is authorized by a legal and monolithic concept of truth. Non-governmental self-help groups such as those represented by the Volunteers consistently rejected these arguments. Indeed, they were arguing the opposite: the

‘Eventing’ the May 1998 affair 47 legal definition of evidence was inadequate, insensitive and not at all innocent, and the May violence was not spontaneous criminal activity. Despite this counter-narrative, the Volunteers failed to challenge the monolithic nature of truth. Instead, locking horns with the government on the issue of truth, they highlighted its moral quality. In their documentary reports, the Volunteers asserted that their representation of data was nothing but the ‘facts’ stripped of any interpretation (TRuK 1998a: 9). They argued that by framing the events as spontaneous outbursts of social envy and as criminal acts committed by the urban poor, government and military officials had made ‘scapegoats’ (kambing hitam) of the most powerless elements in Indonesian society. As the Volunteers noted, this ‘kambing hitam’ tactic was an old trick used to protect the network of ‘think tanks and actors’ behind the May violence. The focus of investigations, they urged, should be this hidden network of perpetrators rather than members of the urban poor (TRuK 1998d). In one of their documents (TruK 1998a), the Volunteers also explained that by emphasizing that there was a network of think tanks and actors, they were not themselves resorting to the scapegoating tactic. They claimed the difference between the account they provided and the scapegoating argument was that their account was based upon ‘facts’ and ‘evidence’ whereas the latter were baseless accusations. The Volunteers’ narrative, therefore, summons the notion of one truth supported by a commonly held belief in narrative-free facts. For the Volunteers, truth is not only independently objective but also moral. This is a crucial difference between the government’s and the Volunteers’ versions of the May rapes. In the latter, the May rapes had been consistently articulated through discourses proclaiming a ‘national moral crisis’. Their documentary reports describe the May rapes as ‘the climax of an uncivilized act’. Terms like ‘biadab’ (barbaric) and ‘sadis’ (sadistic) were often used to describe the rapes, and the revelation of truth was urged to return Indonesian society to a ‘beradab’ (civilized) state. In an introduction to their report ‘The Condition of Our Shared Life’, the Volunteers outlined the stakes involved in truth recovery: The past was soaked in violence and blood. The present is simply another space and time for similar blood-letting politics. If we do not break this recurring pattern, the future will never become the realm of civilization. (TRuK 1998d: 1) One way of breaking the pattern is to reveal the whole and complete truth. In the Volunteers’ moral understanding of truth, remembering and forgetting the past are two mutually antagonistic positions with grave ethical consequences. Not only is memory a panacea for restoring civilized life and values, the Volunteers’ reports also problematize forgetting

48 Sai Siew Min overtly. They configure forgetting history as having the same effects as its silencing, and memory as resistance to silencing. Forgetting is another way of silencing the past (and truth) because it only aids official efforts in covering up the acts of violence or in pretending the violence never happened. Behind such a move is an agenda, or rather a non-agenda, that ‘nothing can be done’. As repeatedly done in the past, a deliberate amnesia is being injected into public life. It is a betrayal of history, a denial of collective memory. (TRuK 1998d: 2) The consequences of remembering and forgetting are overdrawn as a moral choice between truth and falsity, good and bad, and barbarism and civilization. The Volunteers’ narrative about the May events, therefore, is not simply a search for truth but also deploys the moral authority of monolithic truth.

Vulnerable truths The May violence has been framed through narratives and debates about truth claims and issues of proof, evidence and credibility. The notion that factual truth is monolithic foregrounds issues of credibility of representations, especially the Volunteers’ representation of ‘female rape victims’, their families and eyewitnesses: either the rapes happened or they did not; there were either ‘real rape victims’ or there were not. Truth-oriented discourses seem dominant in shaping the way the May rapes were narrated publicly. However, controversies about the May rapes also reveal that the authority of truth, although frequently summoned, does not always confer authority to those who claim it. This and the following section will address questions relating to the credibility of the Volunteers’ narrative. I will show, first, the susceptibility of the Volunteers to attacks on their credibility and the absence of a final authoritative account of the May violence. I suggest that this is not simply a function of persecution by state power, as the discursive turns in these controversies do not attest to an equation between truth claims, credibility and power. Despite the Volunteers’ moral intentions, they were unable to defend their account. Two protracted incidents demonstrate this (HRW 1998a; Heryanto 1999).4 The first concerns accusations that the Volunteers had fabricated the May rapes themselves. The second refers to problems plaguing the Joint Fact-Finding Team during the process of its investigation and media dissatisfaction with its findings when they were published in November 1998. Beginning in early August, the tide of public opinion turned curiously against the Volunteers. Human Rights Watch and Heryanto both noted

‘Eventing’ the May 1998 affair 49 this reversal. The former called it a ‘major counter-offensive’. According to Human Rights Watch, individuals were writing in to Jakarta dailies claiming the rapes did not take place and that they were deliberately fabricated to smear Indonesia’s good name (HRW 1998a: 7). On 17 August the Chief of Police, Lieutenant-General Roesmanhadi, threatened to charge non-governmental self-help groups who had only raised the issue but had yet to prove the May rapes occurred. He threatened to investigate them on the charge of spreading ‘lies’. One day later, a group calling itself the League for Truth and Justice (LPKK), consisting of individuals and several Islamic mass organizations, issued a press statement demanding that police investigate those NGOs championing the May rapes issue. They argued that so far the Volunteers had failed to provide ‘evidence’ proving the rapes occurred, implying, therefore, that the event was a ‘big lie’ with disastrous consequences for Indonesia’s good name. Their denial of the rapes and condemnation of the Volunteers were repeated by General Wiranto, who reportedly told the Cabinet that the police had not found any evidence that the May rapes had happened. In the same month, a related controversy over photographs of alleged victims of the May rapes caused a further round of furious debate over whether the rapes were real. An article in the Asian Wall Street Journal published on 20 August 1998 declared that the photographs circulating on the Internet were not authentic, but were taken from pornographic websites and websites of activist organizations documenting atrocities committed by the military in East Timor. The ‘fake’ Internet photographs provoked speculation as to whether these proved that the May rapes were a non-existent event, falsified by unidentified groups to undermine Indonesia internationally. Foreign Minister Ali Alatas commented that the distribution of ‘fake photographs’ on the Internet was ‘engineered’ to discredit the Indonesian government. Citing the Asian Wall Street Journal article, he said the negative publicity over the May rapes on the Internet had generated false and distorted images of Indonesia internationally. Because of these images, some Indonesian embassies had even received ‘email bombs’, threatening their Internet networks with complete dysfunction and forcing them to shut them down. These efforts, by the highest-ranking government and military officials, to deny the May rapes and incriminate those insisting on their reality, were supported by some civil society groups and individuals, and persisted for months.5 The Volunteers’ narrative came to look increasingly implausible. One indication of this turn of tide was the withdrawal of sympathy for the Volunteers in the media. In September, for example, D & R magazine, which had previously been partial to the Volunteers in June, chided them for withholding information on the May rapes. It claimed that while it understood the need to protect the victims from the glare of public scrutiny, this right contradicted other priorities such as truth and national reputation.

50 Sai Siew Min The second incident that damaged the Volunteers’ credibility relates to the investigative process and findings of the TGPF. Doubts cast on its authority plagued the team’s work from the beginning. The head and several members of the fact-finding team, as well as the government’s critics, pointed out that it was premature and damaging to the process of fact-finding for so many state officials to deny that the May rapes truly happened. By doing so, the government undermined the authority of the very fact-finding team it had set up. NGOs complained that because of these statements, rape victims and witnesses had cancelled scheduled appointments with the TGPF. Throughout September and October, there were rumours that the team was threatened with dissolution because friction between its members was too intense. Doubts about the team’s ability to deliver an authoritative account of the May rapes dogged it even after its report was released to the press on 3 November 1998. For example, articles published in Tempo magazine on 16 November 1998 doubted the integrity and impartiality of the team. In one article, provocatively entitled ‘The Other Facts about the Fact-Finders’, the magazine pointed out several ‘abnormalities’ in the team’s work. It mentioned that parts of the final report were changed at the last minute, although general agreement on its contents had been reached on 31 October 1998. Tempo also discovered that while the team had recommended the investigation of a meeting apparently convened by Prabowo at Makostrad (Headquarters of the Army’s Strategic Reserves Command) on 14 May 1998, it had omitted another meeting held on the same day. The magazine concluded that the fact-finding team’s final report was ‘politicized’ because members of the team had their own agendas. Finally, the military was also unhappy with the report. General Wiranto contended that the team had overstepped its duty, which was to look for facts and testimony. It was not, according to the general, empowered to make interpretations, let alone recommendations. The report was thus far from authoritative, and this was reflected in the way questions were left answered. On the May riots specifically, the report affirmed the Volunteers’ analysis of causality of the rioting. Without accepting the Volunteers’ designation of the ‘riots’ as ‘massacre’, TGPF confirmed that the riots were a consequence of political infighting amongst the political elite. They were indeed the result of a deliberate effort to create an emergency situation that would require the authorization of extra-constitutional powers, benefiting only those in the highest echelons of power. It recommended, therefore, that General Prabowo be investigated in relation to a meeting he allegedly presided over at the Makostrad on 14 May 1998. It was this particular item that caught the attention of the public, and speculation was given over to conspiracy theories about whether General Prabowo was the mastermind behind the May violence. Regarding the May rapes, the team confirmed there were indeed sixtysix cases of rape but it did not connect these rapes to the general disturbances. It failed to confirm whether the May rapes were part of one

‘Eventing’ the May 1998 affair 51 systematic and orchestrated act of violence. It also concluded that there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that religious factors were involved in the May rape reports (TGPF 1998). An announcement in December by Akbar Tanjung, Minister for Internal Affairs, signalled the final official position. This was a quarrel with the Volunteers over numbers. The minister agreed with the report that there were indeed sixty-six rape victims during the May unrest. However, this still meant the Volunteers’ figure of 168 cases could not be proven. Nor could the occurrence of the sixty-six verified rape cases prove anything about the circumstances in which the May rapes took place or the motivation of the rapists. Although in the end no official repeated the government’s threat to charge the Volunteers, the TGPF’s report still fell short of vindicating the Volunteers’ account. With the media fixated on whether Prabowo was behind the May violence, any discussion of the May rapes was displaced by the growing circulation of rumour, gossip and speculation about the former general, and various conspiracy theories.

Narrative uncertainty: rumours, gossip and national dignity Public debates about the May rapes had anchored the May 1998 incidents as a significant event in the history of violence in contemporary Indonesia. Yet, as an event, it remains as unfathomable as ever. ‘The event is not what happens . . . The event is that which can be narrated.’(Steedly 1993: 29). In Hanging Without a Rope, Mary Steedly probes this relationship between events and their representation. Steedly’s argument, in brief, is that no event is in itself ‘non-narratable’. ‘Non-narratability’ needs to be produced in the form of exclusions within any narrative. Borrowing Bourdieu’s idea of ‘official discourse’, she writes that ‘official discourse’ both sanctions and imposes what it states, tacitly laying down the dividing line between the thinkable and the unthinkable, thus contributing towards the maintenance of the symbolic order from which it draws its authority. The ability to impose and sanction the rules of the symbolic order is of course, closely related to political authority (Steedly 1993: 134). On the other hand, standing tangentially to ‘official discourse’ are narratives like the stories of Karo spirit mediums, which Steedly terms ‘unofficial visions of narrative experience’. These stories are always ‘partial’ in that they are on one hand explicitly partisan, interested accounts, and, on the other, they are incomplete, fragmentary. Hence their fundamental indeterminacy: speaking only for themselves, and making no claims to narrative authority over another, they also accept no other’s claims over them. (Steedly 1993: 135, emphasis in original)

52 Sai Siew Min When ‘official discourse’ encounters stories of spirit mediums, these stories appear implausible or uncertain. Steedly contends that the uncertainty they evoke in the fields of ‘official discourse’ does not make the spirit medium stories simply ‘anti-official’. While this may be an effect of their incomplete appropriation within ‘official discourse’, for her, their interpretive indeterminacy is ‘the defining characteristic of an unofficial vision’ and this is ‘what makes it both subversive and open to official subversion’. I suggest that the highly contested history of May 1998 possesses characteristics of ‘interpretive indeterminacy’. No narrative in this instance has been authoritative. The history of that violence has splintered into different narratives, and the different accounts of the May rapes are especially seen as politicized and manipulative self-interested truths or lies. No single account of the May violence reads complete, and as the vulnerability of the Volunteers’ credibility also shows, the May events are hovering between official and anti-official truths and being used against as well by the government. However, narrative uncertainty surrounding the May violence does not arise from being positioned tangentially to an ‘official discourse’ that by Bourdieu’s definition is also politically efficacious; rather, the ambiguity arises because of an absence of authoritative voice, even though the truth-oriented discourses discussed in the previous sections were attempts at formal interpretive closure that is arguably one way in which ‘official discourse’ works. But this is a case where ‘official discourse’ has not been efficacious. This splintering of history poses questions for an assumed equation between ‘official discourse’ and political authority on one hand and the neat categorization of ‘official discourse’ and ‘anti-official discourse’ on the other. Being truth-oriented and claiming narrative authority, the fragmentary accounts posed of the May rapes were types of officializing discursive practices that failed and consequently possessed characteristics of an ‘unofficial vision’. In this section, I will discuss two sets of discourses surrounding the May rapes and violence that reveal the inadequacy of truth-oriented discourses as authoritative speech. I will also discuss how truth-oriented discourses have converged with other types of ‘unofficial’ discourse, in this case rumours and gossip that, despite all appearances, were closely tied to political authority. Political commentators in Indonesia have argued that the ‘nonnarratability’ of the May rapes was a direct consequence of silencing by those in power. Julia Suryakusuma wrote that clearly what was counted as ‘evidence’ required verification by those in power: In the context of an authoritarian regime, what counts is not ‘truth’ but power. The authorities can transform lies into truth, as ‘evidence’ is an object they construct, control and have power over. (Suryakusuma 1998)

‘Eventing’ the May 1998 affair 53 The numerous criticisms in the media about the TGPF report as a compromise consensus also recognized a direct relationship between historical truth and political power. Despite the seeming direct relation, the politics of narrating the May rapes demonstrate that the government does not always have hegemonic power, even in an authoritarian context, to narrate and create exclusions. Against the backdrop of a formal end to an era, the Habibie government had lacked political legitimacy from the very beginning. Meanwhile, as the military’s role in the Trisakti shootings came to light during the same period and its involvement in the history of state violence was exposed, the government’s prestige was undermined. This, together with the government’s capricious attitude towards the May rapes, proved to be a liability. Yet, even when the May rapes were officially designated as ‘fact’ by the TGPF, the Volunteers’ account of what happened was never accepted. Any discussion of the politics of narratives about the May violence must therefore attend to this apparent lack of persuasive power of both the government’s and the critics’ versions of truth. Many rumours and gossip surround the May rapes, making them uncertain. These often arose in major newspapers in Jakarta. Rumour and gossip do not answer questions of ‘truth’ or ‘evidence’, but they do offer satisfying ways of dealing collectively with the May rapes. This satisfaction is evident from the speed with which rumour and gossip about the May rapes are disseminated as well as from the controversies they have provoked. As one genre of representation and communication, the dissemination of rumour and gossip is not limited or hindered because they represent dubious speech; that is, rumour and gossip are not directly authorized by truth discourses. In fact, it is common in any exchange of gossip and rumour to hear participants acknowledge the dubious quality of their talk, thus showing they recognize their communicative acts as ‘gossiping’. Such cues include the qualification that they do not know how true the contents of their speech are or that they have only heard these stories from other sources. Thus, even as rumour and gossip stimulate talk and contention about what really happened, as a discursive form, their validity as a communicative genre does not originate from being truth claims; therefore, they do not answer questions relating to credibility. Although rumour and gossip are often seen as anti-official because they tend to be regarded as ‘alternative’ to official ‘truth claims’, this effect is itself an act of re-appropriation of rumour within truth-oriented discourses. Rumour and gossip can, therefore, be used to bolster truth claims while remaining distinctly ‘non-truth’ categories. In this respect, they appear narratively uncertain, in Steedly’s sense of being potentially subversive and open to official subversion at the same time. James Siegel comments that in New Order Indonesia, the connection between rumour and power is often taken for granted. Rumour and gossip, he claims, trace the way to power in Indonesia. They are not ‘subversive’ in the sense of offering an anti-official source to official truths.

54 Sai Siew Min Instead they are often perceived as more accurate and more truthful than publicized official truths because they map the networks of ‘insider’ information given out by elite figures who belong to the rumour circuit (Siegel 1993). Thus, in Jakarta, rumour and gossip about acts of political violence often presume that an all-powerful ‘puppet-master’ (dalang), usually a member of the political elite, is pulling strings from behind the scenes. Siegel terms these gossip and ‘insider’ stories ‘the discourse of manipulative and reassuring power’ (Siegel 1998a). The dissemination of gossip and speculation about who is the ‘dalang’ behind the May 1998 events, and, more specifically, about Prabowo’s role, fall within this discourse. Such rumours about a powerful ‘dalang’ staging and controlling acts of violence offer relief from scenarios of total anarchy (Siegel 1998a: 87–8). Even the arguably radically disruptive May rapes, he argues, were ultimately disciplined into the socially satisfying rumour that they were instigated as well (Siegel 1998a: 92 n25). It is important to note with Siegel the satisfaction and feelings of closeness to authority generated by gossip about the May rapes. Rumour and gossip demonstrate that narratives about the May rapes may emerge from collectively produced discourse that may not be ‘official discourse’, yet can be authoritative. Rumour and gossip about the May violence are not fundamentally concerned with the search for truth, yet they have influenced the way truth claims are narrated and interpreted. Rumours about the ‘dalang’ have converged with the search for historical facts, focusing this search only on specific questions. These questions – what really happened, and who did it? – have been translated into the idiom of the mastermind and conspiracy theory in ‘rumour language’. The preponderance of rumour and gossip and the quality of their narrative uncertainty, mediating controversies about the May rapes, may be one reason why, despite being empirically grounded, the Volunteers’ credibility was so vulnerable. Official and pro-official accounts were able to use rumour and gossip against the Volunteers without in any way gaining credibility for their own accounts. In the social production of truth claims about the May violence, ‘non-truth’oriented discourse needs to be recognized as a significant category. Their implication in the emergence of collective memory about the May rapes, and the May events in general, needs to be addressed. Discourses on national pride and dignity constitute the second set of socially significant discourses. These have the more powerful effect of providing additional meaning for the search for historical truth. This is especially so for the May rapes controversy. In the previous sections I have shown how several government and military leaders as well as several radical Islamic groups undermined the Volunteers by suggesting they were supporting a treacherous movement aimed at damaging Indonesia’s image internationally. The Volunteers, they claimed, had stained the good name of the nation by fabricating the May rapes. Supporters of the Volun-

‘Eventing’ the May 1998 affair 55 teers had returned the accusation, arguing that, by denying the incidents and wilfully disrupting investigative efforts, the government was really responsible for Indonesia’s loss of national prestige. This quarrel adds another dimension to the contested history of the May violence. The additional issue of national prestige in the global community provides an allegedly ‘larger context’ for the act of violating female bodies, as the significance of articulating truth is explained further with reference to national dignity. The violation of female bodies is thereby rendered provocative not simply because the violence was spectacular but also because that act signified the state of the national body. The government’s concern with national image and the Volunteers’ concept of moral truth, as well as newspaper articles at the time defending the Volunteers, serves to highlight the importance of the discourse on national dignity. Prominent commentator and columnist Chistianto Wibisono was among those contributing to the defence of a moral discourse. He argued that the May rapes were part of a ‘crime’ committed by the Suharto regime against the Indonesian nation, what he called ‘the rape of Indonesian dignity’ (Wibisono 1998a). Wibisono and others also applauded the Volunteers’ efforts in aiding victims of the May violence and documenting the facts in what they believe amounted to an effort to uphold the integrity of the nation (Wibisono 1998b). This defence of the Volunteers’ moral account of what happened was often repeated in the print media (Suryakusuma 1998). It resonated with the Volunteers’ sense of moral truth and how and why the search for a true and factual account is important for Indonesia’s state of civility, thus enjoining truth discourses with discourses on morality and the state of national well-being. Converging with the government’s purported defence of national dignity against the Volunteers, these discourses provide the overarching context to the May rapes, framing physical violence committed on female bodies as historically and nationally significant.

Conclusion: the significance of female speech and silence At the heart of the contest about the truth of what happened in May 1998 is a silence – the silence of women whose bodies have been violated. This silence, however, has not been comforting. Instead, the media and the Jakarta public have made consistent demands to hear a ‘true’ testimony from a ‘female rape victim’, rejecting any defence of silence as fabricating or withholding the truth and even humiliating the nation. This unsatisfactory silence, however, may be a manufactured one, an effect collectively produced, and perhaps unwittingly. In this chapter, I have shown how discourses of factual and monolithic truth, national prestige, Islamic integrity, and rumour and gossip shaped the contours of narratives about the May rapes. These entangled discourses by no means produced one seamless story. Their collisions exposed contradictions of meaning and

56 Sai Siew Min factuality that defy resolution. However, the discourses exerted tremendous pressure on individual women to prove the reality of the May rapes. Increasingly, the figure of the ‘raped female’ became determined even when an authoritative narrative was not. There had also been some consensus on the value of her speech. The value of her speech, in the form of ‘personal testimony’, lies in being ‘evidence’ for an event that had been deemed collectively as historically and nationally significant. As such, in these public discourses, the figure of the ‘female rape victim’ does not represent herself. That figure points to and reveals ‘truth’, ‘morality’, ‘political conspiracies’ and ‘national dignity’. Ironically, it is above all her silence that has been most provocative. In this chapter, I have demonstrated how the May violence in Jakarta has been publicly narrated. I suggest we need to note the structuring effects and limitations of truth-oriented discourses, showing how they can emerge as rumour and gossip. I argue that any discourse may enable an event to be articulated, but only in particular ways and only through making some questions appear more important and more valid than other questions. At the same time, however, as these discourses enable articulation, they also disable, marginalize and create gaps, like silences. The silence surrounding the May violence is remarkable because it has not emerged from exclusions imposed by interpretive closure, but from deep within the folds of narrative contest. Indeed, the contours of controversies have traced out the silent figure of the ‘rape victim’ and have led us back to her for historical truth. When public debates about the May rapes clamoured to open up a space for women to speak in the shadows of the figure of the ‘rape victim’, they also created silence through a public language that continues to deny women the power of signification over their own bodies.

Notes 1 Ariel Heryanto (1999) has argued persuasively for the need to expand debates about the May rapes by reconsidering issues of definition, in particular whether the term ‘mass rapes’ is suitable. Unfortunately, Heryanto’s call has so far been ignored. 2 See reports in Suara Pembaruan and Suara Merdeka in May and June 1998. 3 The four factors cited above are reproduced from major Indonesian newspapers in June and July 1998. 4 This section is based upon newspaper and weekly newsmagazine reports from late August 1998 to the end of the year. 5 In August and September 1998, the Minister for Information, Muhammad Yunus, said on several occasions to the press that a fact-finding team from Taiwan, conducting an independent investigation in Jakarta, had failed to locate any rape victims. He then concluded that this, coupled with the inability of police to produce any victims after investigating 103 alleged reports, showed that the May rapes were ‘wholly lies’ (isapan jempol belaka) (Forum Keadilan 1998a). The Minister also said the government’s efforts to locate victims were thwarted by Father Sandyawan, who had evacuated victims to Singkawang,

‘Eventing’ the May 1998 affair 57 Manado and Minahasa. (D & R 1998). This Taiwanese team later denied telling the Indonesian government they doubted the authenticity of rape reports. Well into October, General Wiranto repeated publicly on different occasions his report to the cabinet on 26 August 1998 (Jakarta Post 1998).

4

Discursive violence on the Internet and the May 1998 riots1 Elaine Tay

The Internet provides social activists with an avenue to reach, stir emotions in and enlist people far beyond the confines of immediate location. The increasing popularity of the Internet has been accompanied by a surge in the use of the web, email and newsgroups for activist causes. From June 1998, email messages describing rapes and violence against ethnic Chinese women in Indonesia were passed around the Internet. Sometimes, these messages included first-hand accounts, image-file attachments and/or links to photographs and other texts supporting the claims. Existing and new websites incorporated images that purported to be of the raped women and often hailed the Internet audience as ethnic Chinese, calling upon their sympathies as fellow Chinese. A variety of readings can be, and have been, made of the case of the May 1998 riots in Jakarta, in part due to the reach of its email and web dissemination; the variances in tone and perspective in print and radio news coverage in Indonesia and overseas; the actions of local and international activists; the intersecting racial, state and gender politics; and the context of general confusion and chaos in which these rapes took place. At least three texts have been written on the case of the May 1998 rapes: Ariel Heryanto’s ‘Rape, race and reporting’ (1999), Ien Ang’s ‘Indonesia on my mind: diaspora, Internet and the struggle for hybridity’ (2002) and Laura Lochore’s ‘Virtual rape: Vivian’s story’ (2000). Each of these authors works through the complexities of the events carefully, and, for reasons of brevity, the following summary cannot adequately capture the subtleties of their analyses. Heryanto discusses the Indonesian social and political environment before, during and after the events, and the difficulties in speaking about the topic of rape and violence in general and the May 1998 case specifically. Ang’s chapter deals with the question of the diasporic intellectual in analysing the website, Huaren, and the way it addresses and tries to construct a diasporic Chinese community. Finally, Lochore’s article discusses the violence of the print media’s appropriation of the story of one of the victims that had been told on the Internet. The present chapter addresses a topic that the above analyses necessarily refer to briefly – the medium of the Internet itself and the implications

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in developments in the way this technology is being used in cultural politics and activism, in this case Chinese global diasporic community formation. The primary focus here is upon the appropriation and use of images in online activism. The East Timor International Support Centre (ETISC) claims that some of the images sent around and displayed on websites, also subsequently printed in newspapers, originated from their website Timor Today, and in fact represented atrocities wrought on East Timorese by the Indonesian army and militia. The discursive violence done to the images under discussion on the Internet is part of a mobilizing strategy. The case discussed here led to what Anderson has described as ‘long distance nationalism’ that allows the activist to play a ‘national hero’ ‘on the other side of the planet’ (Anderson 1994). This has become possible through the transnational mediascape provided by electronic and other forms of media. The advantages of the Internet that led to the deployment of this communications technology on behalf of the East Timorese struggle for independence are the same ones behind the appropriation of these images for other struggles against oppression and violence. Images from this website (amongst others from elsewhere) were downloaded and redeployed to address the killing and raping of ethnic Chinese women during the May 1998 Indonesian riots. A manual for virtual activists, the Virtual Activist Training Course (Net Action 1998), begins thus: ‘So you want to be a Virtual Activist’. Produced and presented by NetAction, a project run by The Tides Centre (a US non-profit organization), this guide summarizes what the Internet has to offer for activists – reasons that are rather familiar: the opportunities the technology presents for networking and collaboration between activist organizations, reaching out to individuals and communities, collecting signatures for petitions, and raising membership and funds. The present chapter addresses the option that NetAction calls ‘email and web-based outreach’. Appadurai describes how the electronic media have transformed the work of the imagination as a crucial aspect of modern subjectivity (Appadurai 1996). Television, radio and other forms of electronic ‘media transform the field of mass mediation because they offer new resources and new disciplines for the construction of imagined selves and imagined worlds’. As in all forms of media, the Internet does not introduce something ‘new’ in that it, like print and other older media, along with other forms of electronic media, also provides ‘resources for experiments with self-making in all sorts of societies, for all sorts of persons’. The difference is that digital media refigure ‘mass communication’ and provide a form of media where audiences and producers are not as distinguishable. Thus we get a situation where an audience member/‘web surfer’ can view a website, download its photographs, perhaps alter them, and then display them on another website, perhaps with a different

60 Elaine Tay context, as a web producer. As Stone (1994) has commented, reading practices have altered. Computer-mediated forms of communication allow for a more interactive social practice in which the reader has an effect on the textual environment. Simultaneously, like other forms of electronic media, there is a distance from events brought to individuals by the Internet. This dislocation raises a further question in relation to the issue at hand – how then do we identify the ‘authentic’ under these circumstances? The body of writing about cosmopolitanism is useful for addressing these questions (Nielson 1999). The cosmopolitan is traditionally regarded with suspicion as the dislocated stranger/intruder exempt from the responsibilities of locals, who takes for granted the centrality of the West. The last decade has seen the reformulation of cosmopolitanism to include other forms, including the new forms of cosmopolitanism that are strongly located and/or originate from ‘below’. This chapter discusses the viability and necessity of retaining a strong link to the grassroots. In relation to global activism on the Internet, this is vital. For while I shall demonstrate how the traditional suspicion of the cosmopolitan stranger is applicable in the case today, I am not dismissing the possibility of ‘neocosmopolitan activists’ who work with or are part of local cultures they represent and yet utilize the global arena to achieve their aims. I want to demonstrate how the meanings attached to the images of women’s bodies that were distributed on the Internet contributed to the development of Chinese diasporic consciousness. This argument requires a brief description of the local context of these images and events in Indonesia. At the same time, there are special meanings attached to rape in general and to this particular case that also affect reactions to the images. Related to this, these images of women’s bodies are involved in the transnational production of meanings to support calls for global solidarity amongst ethnic Chinese. Further, contemporary technological developments in imaging and photography affect the consumption of these images. The motives, conscious or otherwise, behind the appropriation of these images have their foundation in the construction of diasporic solidarity. In the contemporary world, the distinction between an ethnic community and a diasporic one lies in the diasporic community’s effort to retain and build ties to the homeland and kindred communities in other nations and states. As Tölölyan (1996: 30) argues, a diaspora is not something merely defined by ‘being’ and birth, but also by ‘doing’ and ‘feeling’, implying that the boundary between ethnic and diasporic communities is not distinct but is now something defined by emotion and behaviour. Therefore, the Chinese websites featuring the Indonesian riots can be viewed in the context of raising diasporic consciousness amongst globally-dispersed ethnic Chinese. These websites acknowledge briefly the differences between different ethnic Chinese, but these are more often obscured in favour of promoting

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solidarity between ethnic Chinese living in, and with origins in, South-East Asia, East Asia, the United States, England, Indonesia and so forth. Tölölyan (1996: 5) claims that ‘the new meanings of diaspora have often been coupled with a larger project of re-articulating the nation-state and the concepts of national identity, indeed of identity as such’, mainly serving the interests of transnational elites and the diasporists. These mutual interests lie in the decline of both ‘the nation’s aspiration to normative homogeneity’ and ‘the state’s hegemony’ (Tölölyan 1996: 4). The renaming of dispersions into diasporas allows the assumption of local and transnational stateless power, based upon multiple and transnational belonging and loyalties, that could sustain both the homeland and the ethno-diasporan community. In the process, ethnic stereotypes are reinforced, as both global activism and popular notions of ‘Chineseness’ tend to assume a stable ethnic Chinese collectivity with shared cultural practices and beliefs that cut across localities, nations, dialects and histories. The construction of this homogeneity is accompanied by a reiteration of pain and loss that reinforces the ‘diasporic’ effect, and thus creates commonality. Wanning Sun describes, for instance, how the Nanjing Massacre websites demonstrate the power of reviving cultural memories, of ritualistic pleasure in sharing outrage and pain, resulting in a feeling of communal belonging (Sun 1998). This process cuts across and works through national boundaries and subjectivities, and it is my contention that the websites discussed in this chapter, featuring the photos of these abused women, also produce similar feelings. One of the factors identified by Tölölyan that leads to the rise of diasporic consciousness in some communities is the ease and speed of communication and travel in comparison to earlier dispersions, when immigration often led to isolation from homeland and kin. The relationship between the Internet as a form of media technology, the diasporic groups and activism can be understood in terms of Appadurai’s conceptualization of global cultural flows and how ‘they occur in and through the growing disjunctures between ethnoscapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, mediascapes and ideoscapes’ (Appadurai 1996). Disjunctures between the mediascape, technoscape and ethnoscape are reflected in ethnic politics and diaspora specifically. Feelings of community that used to be localized are now global, as Appadurai writes: ‘ethnicity, once a genie contained in the bottle of some sort of locality (however large) has now become a global force, forever slipping in and through the cracks between states and borders’ (Appadurai 1996: 306). The problems of long-distance nationalism are compounded by the unequal access of different people, in this case within the ‘Chinese diaspora’, to Internet technology. The Internet is not equally accessible to everyone, and is a technology that requires a large investment both financially and in training. The power to define the experience of members of

62 Elaine Tay a collective, in the Internet context, lies in the hands of those positioned advantageously in terms of their income and geographic location. In the final section of this chapter, I address the implications of this situation for the handling of the ethnic violence during the May 1998 riots by certain diasporic Chinese websites hosted in servers located in the US. The rapes occurred in the midst of the riots in Jakarta in May 1998, preceded by Indonesia’s economic crisis, beginning in mid-1997 (Blackburn 1999). Extensive demonstrations against Suharto were held, which escalated after the shooting of four Trisakti University students on 12 May 1998. The three days following were marked by wholesale looting in Jakarta and other cities, and the main targets of these acts were Chinese Indonesians in recognizably Chinese areas. It was only at the beginning of June that the rapes reached public awareness. Accounts of the rapes, along with the locations and details of the incidents, were compiled by the Volunteers Team for Humanity (TRuK). I cite the findings of TRuK with the qualification that of the 168 rapes they report, out of which there were twenty deaths, only fifty-two cases were confirmed by the government team. However neither of these sets of figures can be said to represent the real numbers. TRuK compared the rape locations to the location of the riots, and the conclusion of its early report was that the rapes occurred in areas of Chinese concentration (TRuK 1998e). The rapes happened at the same time as the riots, and in the more violent areas of destruction, burning and death. From certain common aspects in the modes of operation of the various cases, TRuK concluded that the rapes were organized, and its members raised questions as to the identity of the planners. According to their data, many of the main instigators and perpetuators were unknown to the victims and their families. Also, TRuK amassed material that seemed to indicate that rumours of the imminent rioting and rapes were spread prior to their actual occurrence. If this is true, the riots and rapes of 1998 could have been a pre-planned event. TRuK is careful to list a range of possibilities rather than singling out members of the military, which the report seemed to hint at: ‘whether they are of government body, of the armed forces (ABRI), of any exclusive syndicate, of groups of bandits or hired gangsters or any other group of society’. In the context of the deployment of these images and narratives on the Internet, it is also necessary to consider another aspect of the violence – gender politics. Rape is more than just another version of violence, and to treat it as such would be to ignore the pattern of domination and submission that defines and directs female sexuality – and who controls it (Websdale and Chesney-Lind 1998). Sexual violence against women in warfare is not new, and it is debatable whether it is a recent phenomenon in terms of ethnic violence. It is, most commonly, a matter surrounded by silence, or naturalized as an ‘unfortunate’ side-effect of war or violent conflict. The silence is paral-

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leled in academia; for instance, there is a dearth of research on the mass rapes in Berlin at the close of World War II (Siefert 1994; Appadurai 1998). While acknowledging the differences between the two cases, amongst Siefert’s explanations for rape drawn from the violence against women in the Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict, those most applicable to the present context are of rape as an attack on the culture of the opponent and rape as an ‘element of male communication’ (Siefert 1994: 59). During times of war, women are raped to communicate to other men that they are not masculine and competent enough to ‘protect “their” women’. This is qualified by Heryanto’s observation that the May 1998 rapes did not occur in the context of war or explicit military manoeuvres, as in Siefert’s study: In most of these troubled areas there was usually an official articulation of goals to be achieved, or rewards to be gained after or beyond the destruction of female bodies. (Heryanto 1999: 309) He comments that the context of the May 1998 rapes, in contrast, was distinguished by the absence of these goals and rewards, and he hesitantly uses the term ‘political rapes’. However, the negative message contained in communication through rape still exists, but in a different sense. Heryanto explains that it was a stock practice amongst police and military officers to force other victims to watch or take part in the violence, and thus to victimize on a greater scale. The victims, in fact, also included NGO activists who suffered emotionally when seeking out and hearing accounts of the rapes, as well as the audience of the media accounts and images. Coupled with the selection of ethnic Chinese women as the targets of rape, racialized accounts of the violence were encouraged. This racialized account, in gaining ground, obscured the other forces at work during the riots – for instance the strained relations between the military, the state and the Indonesian public – and instead pinned the blame on racism, economic envy and, latterly, religious differences. The above process, described by Heryanto, had repercussions overseas in the way the images of the abused women were read. Sun points out how ‘the images of violated female bodies may also be used as a metonym in representing the traumatized nation in anti-imperialist discourse’ (Sun 1998: 17). Rather than a representation of assault on the nation, the assault, in Chinese bulletin messages and websites, is represented as being against the transnational Chinese (imagined) community. The images are mobilized at speed and forms made possible by the convergence of Internet and digital imaging technologies. The compression of space and time has permitted long-distance nationalism, so much so that diasporas can begin to create transnational communal networks.

64 Elaine Tay An ethical problem to do with representation is raised in Laura Lochore’s analysis of the Sydney Morning Herald’s appropriation and retelling of the story of one of the victims of the May 1998 riots (Vivian) that was passed around the Internet (Lochore 2000). Lochore’s conclusion, that the voice of the subaltern ‘Vivian’ was appropriated to suit ‘neo(post)colonial ends’, applies also to the specific images used in accounts of the rapes. The women in the images I discuss here, like Vivian’s story, have been ‘virtually’ raped in the process involved in recovering their bodies and their violation from invisibility. The stories and experiences of these women, having been silenced, are recovered and reshaped and used for political ends. In this way, images of abused women are stripped of context and then re-contextualized to suit particular regional issues. The women are renamed – first by losing their names and identity and then by being re-identified as victims. Images of their bodies are then re-relabelled yet again as victims in a different context. The images under discussion were originally photographs, later converted to digital information that allowed them to be displayed on websites and attached to email and newsgroup messages. One photograph (Figure 4.1) showed the bruised and bloody body of a woman, her back towards the viewer, in a building scrawled with words written in Indonesian. This photo, along with a variety of other images, was seen in many of the websites I visited (Indonesian Free Press 1998). Another photo presented a naked woman being penetrated by one man, with another behind him. There were other photographs of battered bodies of women: some with men wearing army uniforms, some not; many displayed extreme acts of violence and were of seemingly dead women, as in the case of one photo where the body of a woman was apparently impaled through her vagina by a broomstick. All these images, either accompanying email or newsgroup messages, or on websites, were identified as being of Chinese women who were raped by either Indonesian army personnel or by pribumi (indigenous Indonesian) men. Photographs like this were relabelled as showing raped and/or murdered ethnic Chinese women. The ETISC website claims that the pictures depict the torture of women in East Timor by the Indonesian military and paramilitary stationed there, and this picture is one of forty photographs that can be downloaded from its site (ETISC 1997). These forty photographs are apparently a selection from 200 photos that were smuggled to the ETISC in late 1997. The words on the woman’s body are written in Indonesian. The words written on her back right leg and buttocks are: ‘Champion cat shit dead like a rat.’ On her back are the words ‘Like this, so that you get to feel the consequences’. In a couple of the photographs soldiers hold a sign, inscribed with the words ‘Hidup hadiah Nobel’ (‘Long live the Nobel award’), over her body. The ETISC explains that the text that accompanied the 200 photos surmises that the sign was probably hers, indicating that she was one of the crowd welcoming Bishop Belo

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Figure 4.1 Photograph from ETISC website of a tortured woman (reproduced with kind permission of the ETISC).

back after he received the Nobel Peace Prize. This might mean she was tortured and killed in December 1996. The relabelling of the images of these women is made possible by digital technology. Digital technologies enable the creation and storage of photographs that will not decay with time. This ‘manufactures a present that will forever be new and clear and always conveniently available’ (Chow 1993: 169). The digital forms of these images also allow their speedy passage through computer networks. The mobility and continued importance of images are paradoxically possible through the very technologies that make their ‘authenticity’ (as referents to reality) even more questionable than before. Staff reporters for the Asian Wall Street Journal wrote an article identifying the sources of some of the photographs of purported rape victims used in a variety of websites, including print media: Newspapers in Hong Kong and elsewhere ran the pictures, describing them as photos of rape victims. That the pictures have been accepted so readily illustrates the growing power of computers and the Internet. At least some of the pictures circulating – there are at least fifteen – were culled from an Asian pornography website, a gruesome U.S.-based exhibition of gory photos, and an East Timorese exile homepage on the Internet. (Wagstaff and Solomon 1998)

66 Elaine Tay Through the technologies of digital photography and the online media, pictures on the Internet can be downloaded and pasted up elsewhere, as can photographs sent as file attachments in email and to newsgroups. Attributing this redeployment and acceptance to the ‘growing power of computers and the Internet’ alone would be to make the mistake of assuming that technology is an autonomous agent. In fact, the Internet, like other media technologies, is influenced by the variety of institutions and organizations and the ideological motives of individuals that surround it. Even after the publication of the above report, several sites did not remove these photographs; instead, some captioned them as ‘fake’ and linked them to pages specifically about the Indonesian riots, even though they may not have originated in that context (Huaren 1998). The responses from people on web pages such as Huaren and Indonesia Online to these images do not give the sense that these participants are conscious of the issue of authenticity. The claim that we are witnessing the ‘death of photography’, so dear to those writing on the ‘visual age’ (Robins 1995), oversimplifies the complex ways in which we interact with images. The force and impact of images remain, regardless of the knowledge that images can be edited, manipulated, created and, hence, no longer considered as ‘evidence’ of events that occur far away. For instance, a woman describing herself as a Catholic Chinese woman who spent her school years in Jakarta,2 now residing in San Francisco, posts her reaction to the photographs: This evening, an Indonesian friend visited me at my home here in bay area. He showed me pictures about the raping of Chinese women by pribumi men recently. On the street, in the market, on the sidewalk, in broad daylight. I saw those horrendous pictures for fifteen seconds then closed my eyes and sobed and sobed [sic]. (Alacoque 1998) The continued inclusion of these photographs in the websites may be motivated by a desire to enable web surfers to distinguish between the falsely identified (that is, relabelled) and the ‘real’ photographs. The possibilities provided by the combined media of digital photography and the Internet enable a substitution of meaning whereby these photographs come to represent the atrocities conducted against ethnic Chinese women in the May 1998 riots symbolically, rather than referentially. The motives of producers of sites such as Huaren can be discerned in proclamations on their web pages: Chinese Diaspora had existed for many centuries and spread far and wide. Early mistreatments had caused many descendants to feel confused, indifferent, or ambivalent towards their heritage. With modern communication technology, this is the right time to bring us together and to promote the sense of kinship. (Huaren 1998)

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Of the ‘ethnic Chinese’, who has access to this technology? Who is writing here? The organization behind the Huaren website, the World Huaren Federation, is based in San Francisco and yet claims to speak for the ethnic Chinese as a whole. This is the other side of the picture, as opposed to the more positive aspects presented in liberal discourses about the Internet and new ‘postmodern’ communication technologies. The technology is being used to arouse feelings of solidarity amongst ethnic Chinese around the world in a way that accentuates racial distinctions to the detriment of locally-grounded activism that is sensitive to the regional politics of race – a danger of the ‘long distance nationalism’ that Anderson warned against. The meanings of rape in the context of extreme ethnocidal violence, that is, rape as an assault on the ethnic Chinese and rape as an aspect of men communicating to other men, have gone online. Witness this comment on an Indonesian online forum, from Nigel Ng: Subject: Chinese-Indonesian Men are A Bunch of Cowards The first thing that came to my mind when reading the rape reports was: ‘Where were the men?’ There was no mention whatsoever of any resistance put up by Indonesian-Chinese men to protect the safety and honour of their women. They seem to always rely on their money to ‘buy’ some soldiers or security guards for their protection. . . . What a bunch of cowards!! You gave bad name to all Chinese. (Ng 1998) The general sentiments in this posting are not commonly expressed, but it is typical of many postings in that it utilizes the patriarchal discourses of masculinity, male honour, and women and their bodies as property to be protected. The last sentence, ‘You gave bad name to all Chinese’, can be read as an instance of negative feelings about the diasporic ties between Chinese communities, especially when he refers to their reliance on money to perform their ‘masculine’ task of protecting ‘their women’. Even so, these ties between different ethnic Chinese communities have been naturalized and felt keenly. Just as Nigel Ng sees a connection between the ‘name’ or ‘face’ of all Chinese and what he perceives as the cowardice of the Indonesian Chinese men, the ethnic Chinese online activists and respondents echo this connection. The atrocities conducted on these women have become atrocities against Chinese as a whole. As explained earlier, the origin of many other photographs used in activist sites was also called into question, that is the photographs were not from the May 1998 riots in Jakarta, and this in turn affected how the rape issue was addressed by the media and people in power. Rape, especially on the scale of May 1998, is a difficult enough thing to prove without the added tag of ‘false’ or ‘inauthentic’. In the process of establishing communality amongst Chinese online, the diasporic activists have unwittingly

68 Elaine Tay complicated the investigation into this issue. A pro-Habibie Jakarta newspaper, Republika, in an article headlined ‘Is it true that mass rape took place?’ (2 August 1998), questions whether the mass rapes actually occurred (HRW 1998b). In a climate where the Indonesian state and the military were eager to deny the rapes, the questionable authenticity of the images circulated was seized upon by pro-government press and individuals in Indonesia. In terms of reactions outside Indonesia, however, while the narratives included in these emails were powerful in themselves, including horrific accounts of violence and hostility towards Chinese, burning of buildings, invasion of homes and businesses and so forth, the ‘rape’ images provoked a visceral reflex in the people to whom they were shown. The reaction was one of revulsion and, in turn, anger, often leading to the expression that ‘something should be done’. This reflex, together with the representation of the assaults as being the result of racial discord and economic disparity, made for a powerful means of drawing together Chinese around the world. As the email ‘forwards’ increased and the topic entered current affairs, some ethnic Chinese and some of the media addressed the rapes as crimes against ethnic Chinese as a whole. On web bulletin boards, people presenting themselves as ethnic Chinese called for greater Chinese solidarity around the globe.3 Such forms of diasporic communality are open to similar criticism to that of a feminism based on a universalizing discourse of global sisterhood. This is a universalization that uses the politics of location as an ‘instrument of hegemony’ (Kaplan 1994), reiterating boundaries and performing its own marginalizing, homogenization that ultimately subsumes a myriad different identities and injustices under one banner. In the calls for greater Chinese solidarity, patriarchal discourses of honour and protection (read ownership) of women are employed to feed into the sense of outrage felt by readers – a paternalistic attitude that applies not only to women, but also to the ‘less fortunate’ in the Chinese ethno-diaspora. As one poster protests: I’ve got a message for all of you who sent fake photos. Do you know that what you’re doing will only worsen things in Indonesia??? Sure, rich Chinese in Indonesia can just pack up and leave right away. But how about the middle-class Chinese??? They’re trapped in Indonesia. The more you try to divide the pribumis from the Chinese, another riot is more likely to happen. DON’T MISLEAD PEOPLE!! I’m a Chinese in Indonesia, and I’m only thinking logically and practically. (Uchoks 1998) This statement highlights the dangers in the way diasporic sites like Huaren have taken up the issue: in their eagerness to establish wrongs

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done to ethnic Chinese elsewhere, issues of class, transnationality and mobility (and lack thereof) become subsumed under all-encompassing collectivities. Despite frustration expressed on the Huaren site,4 the online furore has had an impact ‘offline’ or, in Internet parlance, IRL (in real life), demonstrating the potency of the distributed images and accounts, as well as the refiguring of the Chinese dispersion into diaspora, for transnational politics. In Singapore, the Philippines, China, Thailand, the United States and elsewhere, exhibitions and protests were held and the governments of these countries were compelled to at the very least demand an investigation into the rape cases. In Singapore, the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) put up an exhibition that included photographs culled from these diasporic Chinese websites (Siefert 1994; Zakaria 1998). Forty thousand Singaporeans signed the AWARE statement calling for sanctions should there be a re-occurrence of the rapes (Widyono 1998). The use of images of women’s bodies is problematic not least because the victims are not in a position to protest at the way their experience is represented and used. It is a reminder of how the plundering of bloodied body images has always been a feature of exoticism, patriotism, pornography, journalism, history and horror – and how these discourses merge and procreate with each other. The use of photographs from East Timor is an example of this plundering. The complexities of the local politics in East Timor itself were obscured in the dissemination of the photographs. While similar claims were made, that is, that the Indonesian army was complicit and actively took part in the violence and rapes there, the knowledge that some of these images originated from East Timor, combined with the captioning and the context provided in the emails and websites, did not dispel anger. In fact, some were aggravated further, race and racism were seen as the primary cause (sometimes accompanied by the economic) of the violence, and a simplistic opposition of ‘good/ victimized Chinese’ and ‘bad pribumis’ was employed. This opposition took on a global dimension, that is, ‘pribumis’ was substituted with ‘non-Chinese oppressor’, and incorporated grievances against the way diasporic Chinese were treated in various parts of the world. One message to the Indonesia Online forum, entitled ‘This is a small group of Indonesians. Not the entire Indonesia!’, reads: It seems the most debate on the news board is either ‘Indonesians are the bad guys’ or ‘It might not be the Indonesians!’ It is almost certainly the Indonesians, but in these revolting rape photos, it seems the most offenders are dressed in Army Uniform. Should you not shout your protest upon the Indonesian Army and not the Indonesians themselves? (‘An Australian’ 1998)

70 Elaine Tay This is followed by a response entitled ‘Shut Up Aussie!’: ‘Australians are racists too, they also party [sic] from queen hanson.racist have no right to speak here [sic]’ (‘freeman’ 1998). The posters of email and newsgroup messages responding to and distributing the images and narratives began to refer to a global alliance, a solidarity amongst all Chinese against oppression of Chinese. In the midst of this, the plight of the East Timorese was ignored, because it did not fit the binary. In addition to the East Timor aspect, an interesting development in relation to the discursive violence that can accompany cosmopolitans’ championing of local causes is in the independent spin-off of Huaren, the South-east Asian Hanren Network. The site also attempts to gather overseas Chinese under one umbrella, ‘South-east Asian Chinese’, ‘Hanren’ literally meaning ‘Han’ people, descendants of Emperor Shih Huang-Ti. However, there is some recognition that global solidarity has its problems: I was inspired to create this site by the need for a venue where the Chinese people in this region can speak out on issues specific to us. The recent troubles in Indonesia attracted a lot of attention. People all over the world were touched by the plight of the Chinese Indonesians and many tried to help. Many were also speaking on our behalf. Although the intentions were noble, I believe nobody understands our problems better than we do. Hence this site. I see myself first and foremost as Southeast Asian, not a Chinese who just happen [sic] to be living in Southeast Asia. I am deeply concerned about the destiny of my country and feel responsible for it. I’m sure many other Southeast Asian Chinese feel the same way. (Ooi 1998) The author informs visitors that he is Malaysian Chinese with a Malay grandmother, and a girlfriend in Jakarta. This chapter is not advocating against all forms of online activism, nor against the involvement of relatively well-positioned elites in regional issues. The online activism at the very least did draw attention to the rapes, raised awareness and kept the issue in the public spotlight internationally. This international attention compelled the then-new Habibie government, which took office after Suharto’s resignation, to set up a government team to investigate the accounts. The concern here is, however, with the homogenizing effect of the practices and discourses that this case illustrates. The case of the online dissemination of stories and images of raped ethnic Chinese women indicates how the particularities of a local situation can get buried in a politics that emphasizes ethnic solidarity and homogeneity. The indications that the riots and rapes could have been planned and instigated by people outside the local community were ignored in favour of a position that pre-

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ferred to emphasize an oppositional relationship between ethnic Chinese and non-Chinese. This is partly a consequence of the emphasis on diasporic identification and solidarity. The emphasis on race in directing the responses of readers and viewers of these stories and images online repeated the totalizing process behind the violence in Indonesia. The web bulletin boards of sites like Huaren included the occasional comment that reminded readers not to draw all pribumi Indonesians with a broad brush stroke, but these messages were often drowned out by heated responses that reasserted the bipolar image of Chinese pitted against pribumi and other non-Chinese. A hegemonic formation was established in the process, whereby ethnic Chinese were aligned globally within the ‘Chinese diaspora’. I have sought to identify, in this chapter, some of the problems with Internet activism. As I noted earlier, the same attributes that allow the Internet to be such a positive tool for social activism allow these problems of representation, authenticity and appropriation. These seem to point to the necessity to retain a strong grounding in the physical, cultural, political and social environment surrounding these issues. An organization with such close ties, with pronounced involvement of the locals affected by the issues at hand, would be able to deploy the advantages offered by the Internet to reach a wider international community, to collaborate with other organizations, and lobby for change.

Notes 1 A first version of this chapter was published in the fourth issue of Intersections, a refereed journal available at: www.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/. My thanks to John McCarthy, a doctoral candidate at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, for his help in checking the translations and for forwarding emails and news on this topic. Thanks also to Hugh Ekeberg, of the East Timor International Support Centre, for permission to use the images, owned by Maria Soares, from the organization’s website. Finally, I am indebted to Drs Kathy Trees and Hugh Webb, for their advice and help. 2 It is quite hard to verify the race and gender of people on the Internet, so when I refer to a poster as belonging to a certain ethnic group, etc., I am referring to how they present themselves through certain cues, quite often the surname (although Indonesian Chinese generally don’t have ‘Chinese’ surnames), through such phrases such as ‘we Chinese,’ or through more overt declarations as in the unquoted part of this message. 3 Presentation of identity can occur unconsciously or consciously through markers such as the names used and references in the body of messages. 4 Ang (2001) discusses the various messages on the bulletin board expressing frustration and cynicism about the online discourse being divorced from making an actual impact in Indonesia itself. She also describes briefly the various schemes thought up online – for instance, assisting Indonesian Chinese to emigrate en masse through sponsorships and funding.

5

The ‘other’ May riots Anti-Chinese violence in Solo, May 1998 Jemma Purdey

This chapter seeks to examine the discourses of violence that emerged locally in the aftermath of the Solo riots in the ‘struggle for control over the meaning of riotous events, for the right to represent them properly’ (Brass 1996: 1). It tells the story of a community of local people, tired by frequent violence in their city, who chose to ensure that the latest example of this violence occupied only a small place in history, rather than a large one. The difference, as they saw it, just as other communities have throughout history, was simply to control the representation of the riot at the local level, which would then filter through nationally and so on. In 1998, the riots of 13–15 May in major cities across Indonesia attracted great national and international attention. The precariousness of the economic and political situation in Indonesia at that time meant that international media and diplomatic interest were already focused on the capital, Jakarta. So, when this city erupted into violence on 13 May, many international observers were ‘on the spot’ to survey the violence and its aftermath. What emerged from their observations, and those of Jakartabased human rights groups, was that the majority of the rioting had targeted ethnic Chinese property and, it was discovered later, ethnic Chinese women.1 It did not take long for the ‘May riots’ to become synonymous with ‘anti-Chinese riots’ in national and international media and everyday discourse in Indonesia. This representation was such that ethnic Chinese were presented as the only victims of violence motivated by racial hatreds. Some commentators were critical of this approach to the violence from the beginning, arguing that by presenting the violence in such a racialized way, the majority of people could ‘detach themselves emotionally from the horror’ (Heryanto 1999: 317). Heryanto called for the violence to be recognized as ‘racialized state-terrorism’ (Heryanto 1998) rather than racist, and later argued that ‘ethnisation of the violence is emphasized out of proportion in the many analyses and media coverage’ (Heryanto 1999: 307). Despite being far more destructive, the riot in Solo was largely overshadowed by events in Jakarta. The contention of this chapter is that the

Anti-Chinese violence in Solo, May 1998 73 lower profile of the Solo riot is due in large part to representations of it, made at the local level. Upon witnessing the attention that the Jakarta riots had generated, and no doubt aware of the potential for Solo also to hit the headlines, locals recognized their power to control how the violence was represented, and thereby avoid similar attention. There is no denying that the attention given by the international community and national media to the ‘May riots’ was due to its ‘anti-Chinese nature’.2 Thus, when the residents of Solo represented their riots as anything but anti-Chinese violence in this sense, it remained largely unnoticed by outsiders. It is significant that despite the range of interest groups with varying political agendas in Solo, representation of what the May riot was not was uniform across all groups. Although actual representations of this violence varied from one group to the next, the political objective of each was the same – to oppose the representation of it as anti-Chinese violence. This chapter seeks to examine briefly the representations made by different groups, then to explore why they chose to make this interpretation and, more particularly, to understand why they did not want the Solo riot to be represented as anti-Chinese violence. By succeeding in this, the residents of Solo avoided the attention and condemnation that Jakarta attracted in the aftermath of its ‘May riots’. First, however, in order to place the representations that emerged later in some contexts, it is necessary to identify the elements and conditions that contributed towards understandings of the Solo riots and therefore informed its various interpretations. Key conditions that appear to have preoccupied interpretations of the violence include the pattern of the riot, analysis of ‘targets’, identification of actors and the role of security forces.

Conditions of the riot Pattern of the riot Locals say that the conditions in Solo in mid-May 1998 were ‘just right’ for a riot like this (Kompas 1998a; Solopos 1998a). Pro-reformasi student demonstrations began in early March 1998 at various universities across Solo, but particularly at UNS (Universitas Sebelas Maret) and later at UMS (Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta). The students were prevented from leaving their campuses and taking their protest onto the streets by security forces who were stationed outside the universities on almost a daily basis from March until mid-May. During these months the students and police clashed frequently. The security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the students, and many were wounded. One such clash, on 8 May 1998, was named ‘Bloody Friday’ after twenty-five students were shot dead and hundreds more wounded at UNS campus. During these

74 Jemma Purdey months large crowds gathered outside campuses to hear the protest speeches and to watch the clashes with police. As they watched these events daily, the people of Solo became involved emotionally with the students’ struggle. On 14 May 1998 students gathered at UMS Pabelan campus to protest against the killings of six students at Trisakti University in Jakarta.3 The security forces were already there when they arrived. A clash erupted between the security forces and the students, triggered, reports claim, by provocateurs throwing objects at the police from inside the campus (JFFT 1998a: 102–33). The assembled crowd of onlookers would not disperse when commanded by the security forces; instead they were now angered, and progressed eastward toward the city. Along the way they damaged public facilities such as street signs, public telephones and pot plants and moved directly to their first target, a ‘Timor’ car showroom ( JFFT 1998a; Mulyadi et al. 1999: 496). Already numbering approximately 1,000 people, the crowd moved together to the city centre around Jalan Slamet Riyadi. Here they attacked banks and public buildings. When troops prevented them from getting close to the Town Hall they split up, moving in all directions, breaking into shops and offices, looting and burning.4 At strategic locations around the city, such as intersections or near shopping or business centres, tyres were dumped and set alight (JFFT 1998a: 124). This had the effect of bringing people onto the streets to see what was happening, and soon violence would erupt around these locations. By mid-afternoon, smoke from burning tyres, cars, motorcycles and buildings filled the sky above Solo. Although it was scattered and involved thousands of people, the pattern of the riot did not appear random and spontaneous to eyewitnesses. They report having seen people on motorbikes and in minibuses, at the scene of an outbreak of violence, who shouted slogans including ‘support reformasi’ (JFFT 1998a; Mulyadi et al. 1999: 508). It was also apparent to onlookers that these men were selecting buildings and locations systematically. Once located, the buildings were then broken into with iron bars. Spectators were encouraged to enter and loot, and then each building was burned using prepared Molotov bombs. The riot continued past evening and into the night. Residents barricaded themselves into their kampungs. Ethnic Chinese fled the city or took refuge in churches or hotels owned by pribumi (indigenous Indonesians).5 Rioting continued unabated through the night, and Solo burned. In the early hours of the morning rioters began entering kampungs looking for homes and shops owned by ethnic Chinese (Mulyadi et al. 1999: 512). Throughout 15 May, people continued to loot and burn buildings not already destroyed. At the end of the second day troops descended on the city centre in tanks and effectively and quickly brought the city under control. The damage bill was estimated to reach Rp600 billion (later revised to Rp460 billion), thirty-one people had died, and over 500 motorbikes,

Anti-Chinese violence in Solo, May 1998 75 nearly 300 cars and hundreds of shops, banks and public buildings had been destroyed ( JFFT 1998a: 125–7; Solopos 1998b: 1). Targets To speak of ‘targets’ in a riot implies that it was organized and that particular places were sought out for attack. In Solo this was definitely the case. The places sought out by the rioters included obvious commercial sites such as shops, factories and showrooms. They targeted tokens of government, including public facilities like street lights, pot plants, government offices, public telephones and Harmoko’s house, as well as symbols of wealth such as the Atrium 21 cinema complex, cars and motorcycles. The Joint Fact-Finding Team’s report (JFFT 1998a) and others tell of the existence of an Operational Target List used by the riot coordinators, who then marked out sites with burning tyres. Eyewitnesses report that rioters visited kampungs demanding to know if a building, shop or house was Javanese or Chinese owned, and if found to be owned by an ethnic Chinese, it was destroyed (Mulyadi et al. 1999: 512). However, in the aftermath of the riot it is clear that whatever or whomever were the intended ‘targets’, the victims of the riot spanned the socio-economic spectrum. Most of those who died were people on low incomes caught inside shops when they were set alight. Also, it is estimated that 40,000 out of a total workforce of 298,000 lost their jobs as a direct result of the destruction of factories, shops, banks and offices (JFFT 1998a: 127). In most riots, no matter how planned and organized they are, as the crowds become larger and more diverse, their goals become less fixed and their targets more random (Brass 1996: 21). However, given the level of planning that went into this riot, it appears that an understanding of the damage to the Solo economy, and the overall hurt inflicted on Solo, could not have been absent from the organizers’ calculations. Actors The Solo riot occurred on such a scale that it may be said that a considerable percentage of the local population performed some role in it, if only as passive spectators. The TGPF concluded that the actors in the Solo riots fell into three groups. The first were the passive masses, those who came out onto the street only to watch the riot. Clearly these people did not feel threatened by what was happening around them, and indeed they may have felt excited by the violence. The second group were the active masses, people who came out to see what was happening and then joined in,6 smashing windows, setting cars alight and looting shops. The TGPF named the third and most influential group as the provocateurs. Only numbering about fifteen people, this group facilitated effective lines of communication via walkie-talkies and moved quickly about the city on

76 Jemma Purdey motorcycles. Using a van that travelled between key locations, they were supplied with petrol, iron bars and alcohol. The provocateurs wore headbands and in some cases gloves, and had distinctive physical characteristics and skills.7 They worked among the crowd, exciting them by calling out provocative statements and giving directions. They used iron bars to wrench open shop doors and smash windows, then invited the onlookers to ‘come in and take’ (masuk dan ambil). They then took Molotov cocktails from the van, filled them with petrol, set them alight and tossed them into the buildings ( JFFT 1998a: 123–8). When the riot was finally ended, they had disappeared. Security Perhaps the most startling factor in relation to the Solo riot, and what shocked the locals most, was that it was able to continue, unhindered by security forces, for two days. The evidence indicates not only ineptitude on the part of those forces but also their collusion with the rioters. An eyewitness reported that he saw police barricading themselves into their posts, rather than attempting to stop the rioters.8 In other cases, police and military stood by and watched as the looting and burning went on around them. The TGPF was told that early on the first day of the riot an army colonel issued a command, which he claimed came from the Surakarta District Commander, ordering that security personnel were not to fire warning shots into the air to disperse rioters. Most alarming, however, was the fact that the number of security personnel on the streets of Solo was extremely low on those two days. Through its investigation the TGPF discovered that eleven companies, consisting of Brimob (Mobile Brigade), Dalmas (Crowd Control troops) and Kostrad (Army Strategic Reserve Command) troops, were situated at the UMS campus on 14 May, therefore leaving the city of Solo largely unprotected.9 In the aftermath of the rioting, the TGPF made several curious discoveries, including the fact that Kopassus (Special Forces Troops) Group 2 troops had been flown out of Solo on 14 May, with the first of five flights departing at 8:30 am followed by others between 2:00 and 2:15 pm. The departure of the four afternoon flights coincided with the time at which the riot was gathering momentum. The destination for these troops still remains unknown, as does the date of their return (JFFT 1998a: 131). TGPF also discovered that although the Danrem (Military Resort Commander) had imposed a curfew between the hours of 10:00 pm on 14 May and 6:00 am on 15 May, rioting continued between those hours. Many security personnel later said that they had been unaware of the curfew. In addition, it was concluded that the majority of the meagre security actually available over those two days was concentrated in a few select places. These included the Sheraton Hotel (owned by Tommy Suharto), the Ibu Tien Suharto monument, Suharto’s house and the

Anti-Chinese violence in Solo, May 1998 77 Town Hall. The TGPF described the security situation in Solo during those two days in damning tones: ‘Efforts by the security forces to prevent the riot from emerging were not effective and virtually not carried out seriously’. They concluded that an onus of responsibility for these riots must be put on the armed forces, if only because they failed to act to prevent or to stop the violence.

How was the riot interpreted and represented in Solo? The residents of Solo and those who closely followed the Solo case would have had some knowledge of these elements of the riot when they came to interpret it and represent it. Coverage of the riots in the local paper, Solopos,10 was extensive, and news and rumour travelled quickly among the small population. The extent of people’s knowledge varied from individual to individual and was naturally based on their own experience, but the way in which they chose to understand these elements, to select a context and form, led to their representations of the violence (Brass 1996: 6). The local groups that were most important and active in interpreting the riots were the students, the government and military, the local elite and the ethnic Chinese, and although they all struggled separately to control how it was represented, their objectives were very similar. Students On 15 May, amidst the continuing riot, 10,000 student protesters and sympathizers at last made their ‘long march’ from UNS to the Town Hall in the centre of Solo. The crowd walked peacefully, singing protest songs as they went. At the Town Hall, students asked for forgiveness for the riots of the previous day and thanked security personnel for allowing them to complete their peaceful protest (Solopos 1998c). Later, in a press release, the UMS students angrily denied that the rioting was due to the student action, saying, ‘They [crowds outside the campus] continued to gather and to change direction going to the west and to the east, damaging and burning as they went’ (Solopos 1998d). The students insisted that their action on the campuses across Solo for two months, which had frequently erupted into violence, had in no way acted as a prelude to the rioting on 14–15 May 1998. Instead their interpretation of the riots was that it was mob violence that had no connection with the reformasi struggle or their own protests. By marching peacefully to the Town Hall on 15 May, the students aimed to set themselves apart from the rioters and, most importantly, from the violence that was occurring around them. Theirs was a pure and righteous, not riotous, cause.11

78 Jemma Purdey Government and military The reaction of national political leaders to the Solo riot was overwhelmed by the events of the following week. However, the most influential voice in elite politics to come out of Solo and to speak about the Solo riots was that of Amien Rais. At this time Rais was riding the wave of student demonstrations to ultimate fame and power in Jakarta. He was the highly respected leader of the Muhammadiyah organization, whose university, UMS, was the scene of the major clash between police and students on 14 May. At a rally in Solo in June 1998, Rais declared that the violence in Solo was more serious than in Jakarta: ‘I witnessed the riot in Jakarta which was terrifying. But in Solo it was truly more terrifying’ (Kompas 1998c). Yet despite the significance of this statement, the most influential comment he made that day was to claim that a ‘dalang’, or mastermind, was behind the violence. Coming as it did from a powerful and elite voice for Solo in Jakarta, Rais’s representation of the violence as being orchestrated from ‘outside’, together with use of the term dalang in Solo, had significant impact, making the headlines of the national daily Kompas. The emphasis on ‘responsibility’ for the riot was continued at this rally by ABRI representative Colonel Sriyanto (Kompas 1998b), who made an attempt to respond to increasing criticism of the role of the security forces during the riot. He asked forgiveness for the extent of the violence, yet continued to deny responsibility: ‘We are sorry if the riot was not fully brought under control by ABRI, but we can’t do everything’ (Kompas 1998c). He defended the behaviour of security personnel during the riot by arguing that conditions on the ground were extremely difficult. The military represented the riots to this crowd of Solonese in terms of mobs gone mad, acting in an uncontrollable and spontaneous manner and outnumbering the security forces. The representations that these powerful men gave of the violence deflected blame onto an unknown and intangible, yet convenient, ‘third party’.

Local elite A few days after the riot, the Sultan, Pakoe Boewono XII, issued a statement saying he deplored the violence of the past days and declaring that such behaviour was not in line with the cultural values held by ‘wong Solo’ (Solonese) (Solopos 1998e). On 19 May the Sultan and other community leaders visited an ethnic Chinese family whose home and shop had been burnt down in the riot, leaving them with only the clothes on their backs (Kompas 1998d). This visit, a rare public appearance by the ageing Sultan, was covered in the local and national press and had the intention of demonstrating the city elite’s solidarity with the victims of the riot, and more particularly with the traumatized ethnic Chinese community.

Anti-Chinese violence in Solo, May 1998 79 Following the riots, community leaders including artists, professionals, businessmen and academics formed the Association of Solonese (PWS) in order to assist the riot victims to rebuild their lives, and with the long-term objective of encouraging unity, equality and tolerance in Solo among ethnicities, religions and classes (Solopos 1998f). In the wake of the riot the respected community leaders in PWS and Surakarta Cultural Centre (TBS) saw before them a treasured city, and its people, facing not only a physical crisis but also a crisis of identity. In making their representations of the riot the local elite varied in their approach. Senior TBS member Mujiono and others at TBS refused to excuse the behaviour of the rioters and discounted the claim that it was provoked by outside forces. They maintained that the rioting was spontaneous for the most part and that the emotions and frustration of the people were such that they were easily enticed to riot, concluding that ‘the ordinary masyarakat [people] were responsible for the violence’.12 Others, alternatively, insisted that the provocateurs were to blame, that without these actors the local people could not have performed such acts.13 Whatever their interpretation of the riot, the local elite agreed that the ethnic Chinese were the main victims and targets of this violence. However, at the same time they spoke of relations between ethnic Chinese and pribumi in Solo as being ‘just like elsewhere in Indonesia’,14 and refused to believe that racialized motives were behind the actions of the ‘wong Solo’ during those days. A great sense of shame is particularly evident in the admission made by the people at TBS, the protectors of Javanese high culture, but there is also an avoidance of confronting why the violence occurred and particularly why the ethnic Chinese were its main targets. A founding member of PWS told of the need to teach the people of Solo about tolerance as a means to providing a lasting solution to violence and discrimination in Solo. However, among the local elite hers seemed to be a lone voice willing to speak openly of racial intolerance and discrimination as a cause of the rioting, and to represent this riot as at all ethnically motivated.15 Amongst the local elite are the journalists and editorial staff on the local daily Solopos, who played an extremely important and public role in representing the riot. As the most respected local newspaper, Solopos was the primary source of information for Solonese about the rioting. In its early responses to the violence, Solopos was obviously aware of its moral responsibility in reporting and editorializing on the riots, whilst also sensitive to the social context (Solopos 1998g). In addition to its editorials and daily coverage in July 1998, Solopos published a book of photographs and essays about the riot in response to demands from its readership for more information. In the introduction to the volume the editors explain that they hope it will ‘not only [serve] as an album, a souvenir of these events’, but also ‘that we can gain wisdom and learn from this event’ (Rahadi et al. 1998). In this publication Solopos represents the violence as a ‘social riot’

80 Jemma Purdey fuelled by popular frustration, brought on by the economic crisis, that was easily ignited in the electrified atmosphere created by the student–military clashes. The presence of ‘preman’ who guided the rioters ensured that the violence was carried out systematically. In an essay entitled ‘The fate of the Chinese residents’ (Arifin 1998: 1–8), the author argued that it was because pribumi and ethnic Chinese in Solo were divided not only by a wealth gap, but also by a ‘cultural gap’, that violence like this had occurred many times in Solo’s recent history. The representation of the riot he gives feeds similar explanations circulating in Solo about the violence and about the ethnic Chinese. Although this commentator acknowledges and attempts to understand why the ethnic Chinese were the main victims of the violence, like other local elite neither Arifin nor the Solopos editorial team try to understand why the ‘cultural gap’ and social jealousies remain. Ethnic Chinese In the weeks leading up to 14 May 1998, the ethnic Chinese community in Solo grew increasingly anxious as the economic crisis escalated and the student demonstrations became violent. Witnesses report having seen people moving about the kampungs in the days before the riots, asking if ethnic Chinese lived there and taking notes (Mulyadi et al. 1999: 487). On the night of 13 May, rumours circulated that a Chinese-owned shoe shop had been attacked in Singosaren. The rumours spread and stores were closed. Witnesses noticed that hotel and hospital car parks were unusually full on that night, later realizing that the cars were those of ethnic Chinese who had anticipated the trouble to come.16 When the riot hit, at around midday on 14 May, most Chinese-owned businesses were closed and many ethnic Chinese had fled from their homes to safety outside Solo or to hotels, hospitals and churches.17 Others were shielded from the rioters by their pribumi neighbours. The population of ethnic Chinese in Solo at that time was around 24,000, or 4.4 per cent of the total population, yet the head of Solo’s chamber of commerce estimated that 80 per cent of shop owners in Solo were ethnic Chinese. He believed this accounted for pribumi resentment and suspicion towards the ethnic Chinese at that time: ‘It is difficult to avoid the impression that they [ethnic Chinese] “play games” when at certain times products suddenly disappear from the market or distribution is at a standstill’ (Kompas 1998b). In the wake of the riot in which the majority of material losses were suffered by ethnic Chinese in Solo (Solopos 1998h), the overwhelming response of the ethnic Chinese community was to reject claims that this had been violence focused on race, and to represent it in other ways. The reasons given for rejecting the ‘anti-Chinese’ interpretations are numerous. Textile industry leader and owner of PT Batik Keris, Handoko, was

Anti-Chinese violence in Solo, May 1998 81 not alone when he argued that because pribumi-owned shops were damaged along with those owned by ethnic Chinese, this could not be deemed anti-Chinese violence. He told a meeting of ethnic Chinese and community leaders in June 1998 that ‘If this riot was an anti-race movement, then it would not have been possible for me to travel about among the masses without anything happening to me’. Further, he put it to them, if the riot had been based on anti-Chinese sentiment, then why did he have to stand down 11,000 pribumi workers as a consequence? One of the most popular arguments used by Solo’s ethnic Chinese community to refute the suggestion that this was an anti-Chinese riot was that in the immediate days after the riots relations between pribumi and ethnic Chinese returned to normal. That is, pribumi and Chinese neighbours got along as before and some pribumi even expressed regret for what had occurred. In arguing this point, Solo’s ethnic Chinese say that it was as though nothing had happened. For ethnic Chinese able to remember the riots in Solo of 1980, this riot, they said, lacked the strong anti-Chinese sentiment of that riot. This one was different, and the cordial relations among the community afterward proved it. Furthermore, they argued that evidence that the riot was engineered, and that provocateurs incited the people to violence, demonstrated that the rioters did not have a personal motivation to harm the ethnic Chinese; they were merely following the provocateurs. Some ethnic Chinese, such as Budi Mulyono, head of Solo Community Union (PMS) – a sixty-year-old community organization consisting mostly of ethnic Chinese – saw the causes of this riot as multifaceted. Political and social problems, compounded by the economic crisis and the wealth gap, were all factors, and he added, ‘And my eyes are not closed to the fact that there are people who do not like the ethnic Chinese’ (Kompas 1998b). However, Mulyono agreed that the perception of ethnic Chinese as wealthy and in control of the economy was understandable when Solo was viewed from the street level, and he was supported by others when he effectively excused the rioters’ actions: ‘Their [ethnic Chinese] homes open onto the edge of the street and by economic consideration usually their home is also their place of work. So it is understandable if they then become a target for masses running amok.’

Why was the riot interpreted and represented in this way? In order to understand why the community in Solo, both pribumi and ethnic Chinese, overwhelmingly rejected the suggestion that these riots were a case of anti-Chinese violence, it is necessary to examine the arguments or reasoning they used. It is interesting to note that the methods employed by the residents of Solo to interpret these riots are very similar to those used in and after riots throughout the course of history. The locals in Solo, particularly the ethnic Chinese and local elite who were older, framed their interpretations and representations of the riots

82 Jemma Purdey within an historical context that included prior incidents of anti-Chinese violence in the city (Coppel 1983; Siegel 1986). Interpretations were also framed in the context of political objectives, rumours, statistics, and most importantly, ethnicity. Although most ethnic Chinese and pribumi dismissed claims that the Solo riot, like the Jakarta riots, was anti-Chinese violence, the arguments used by them to support this position, while employing various interpretive tools, were highly racialized. As the basis for one interpretation of the riots, locals sought to identify the composition of the victims. They pointed to the fact that the composition of victims was ‘inclusive’ of all ethnic groups rather than ‘exclusive’ to one group – the ethnic Chinese. They made this argument on the basis of statistics of losses, including shops, houses and vehicles owned by pribumi and ethnic Chinese alike, and loss of employment, which was largely suffered by pribumi. Solopos ran statistics of losses relating to different industry sectors on a regular basis during May and June, meaning that this information was widely known. Another interpretive tool used by Solonese was based on assessing the emotions or intention of the rioters; that is, to determine if the rioters were motivated by strong anti-race emotions – if their intention was to harm the ethnic Chinese. The assessment made by many from these local groups was that the rioters were made up largely of people from the lower classes who were uneducated,18 together with hoodlums and common criminals of whom (residents insisted) there were an abundance in Solo,19 and ‘outsiders’.20 They targeted economic actors, symbols of wealth and government, and were motivated by frustration as a result of the economic crisis. By this conclusion the people of Solo were able to find comfort and reassurance that the violence was the work of marginal elements in society frustrated by the national economic crisis, and not indicative of social fissures in Solo itself. The question often asked following such racialized violence is – was there ‘hatred’ for the ethnic Chinese and a desire to ‘eliminate’ them? The answer must be: possibly, at least among a few. On the whole, however, such strong and implicitly racist emotions were probably not felt by the majority of those who rioted. However, in Indonesia this question of ‘racist emotion’ cannot be detached from economic frustration. Many rioters made an almost inseparable link between economic advantage and ‘Chineseness’ on those days in Solo (Ang 2001: 14). They were able, easily and probably unconsciously, to connect the causes of their frustration and the ethnic Chinese who owned 80 per cent of shops in the city. This association is not easily distinguished by them or by those struggling to interpret the riots later, because it has become so much a part of the process of identification in Indonesia. The third and fourth arguments used to reject the claim that these were anti-Chinese riots are based on the ‘normal’ relations between pribumi and Chinese the next day, and on the fact that provocateurs were

Anti-Chinese violence in Solo, May 1998 83 involved. The kindliness of their neighbours the next day convinced the ethnic Chinese in Solo that anti-Chinese sentiment was not present among the rioters the night before. This assessment was made for the most part by making historical reference, by remembering past incidents of anti-Chinese violence. Many ethnic Chinese old enough to remember the 1965/1966 or 1980 riots in Solo were adamant that nothing like the anti-Chinese sentiment experienced then was evident in 1998.21 Rather than putting this event into its own context, they used historical reference to measure ‘degrees of racist sentiment’ and only considered the results in absolute terms – that is, was it as bad as 1980 or not as bad as 1980? The presence and identity of the provocateurs before and during the rioting was particularly important to both ethnic Chinese and pribumi Solonese when rejecting the claim of anti-Chinese violence. Elite Solonese cultural and artistic leaders, including the Sultan of Surakarta, dismissed this behaviour as ‘out of character’ for Solonese, and Amien Rais spoke of a ‘dalang’. Evidence that provocateurs played a part in the riot acted to mitigate public responsibility and therefore any impression that Solonese were racist. For the ethnic Chinese, the identity of the ‘real actors’ in the riot was especially important. The ability to place responsibility for the riot on perpetrators who had come from ‘outside’ and were controlled by a ‘third party’ allowed the ethnic Chinese to return to ‘normality’ in their day-to-day relations with pribumis. Each of the interpretive arguments detailed here is set within a racialized context. However, rather than highlighting the presence of race and ethnicity as ingredients in the violence, as happened in respect to the Jakarta riots, the Solonese seek to dismiss it, to deny that anti-Chinese sentiment existed in Solo during the riot, and particularly, it seems, to deny that real ‘wong Solo’ are capable of feeling it. A question of normality The consequences of two days of unimpeded rioting left the city broken. Its infrastructure was paralysed, and great psychological damage had been done to a city that prided itself on its refined culture. Indeed, many Solonese were ashamed and saddened by what had happened to their city during those days and by the behaviour of many from among them. In the aftermath of the riot, cultural, artistic and business community leaders recognized the need to examine racial and inter-group relations, and Chinese and pribumi got together to work to rebuild Solo. They felt united by the oppression they believed had come from ‘outside’, from a ‘third force’ in the form of provocateurs and dalangs. Aided by this belief, relationships between pribumi and ethnic Chinese, I was constantly told by both groups, returned to ‘normal’ the following day. That is, they were ‘no better and no worse’.22 But what exactly constituted ‘normal’ relations between pribumi and ethnic Chinese in Solo prior to the May riots? Locals

84 Jemma Purdey told me that prejudice and discrimination experienced by ethnic Chinese in Solo ‘is just the same as elsewhere in Indonesia’. That is, ethnic Chinese are considered to be wealthier and to control the economy – even though, as elsewhere in Java, this is quite untrue in Solo – and Chinese continue to live concentrated in certain parts of Solo. Indeed, it is true that most ethnic Chinese in Solo remain caught in what Ang labels their own trap of ‘victimhood and the debris of history’ (Ang 2001). They remain exclusive in their activities because they are frightened, and also because government policies force them to do so. The often-repeated comment – ‘that discrimination and prejudice against ethnic Chinese in Solo is just like everywhere else’ – clearly indicates that these sentiments are tolerated and have been enculturated to the point where they are no longer remarkable or even noticeable to pribumi or ethnic Chinese alike – they are simply ‘normal’. In association with this somewhat distorted view of ‘normality’, one Chinese community leader believes that the explanation for the quick return to ‘normality’ in Solo is also linked to the special relationship between ethnic Chinese and the government and military (Coppel 1983). He believes that trauma experienced by the ethnic Chinese in Solo was largely due to the shock they felt when their guarantee of safety was not delivered, rather than to the violence itself. Like elsewhere in Indonesia, the ethnic Chinese in Solo positioned themselves very close to members of the military and Golkar and by doing so believed that their safety was guaranteed. When the riot came and these groups gave them no protection, the ethnic Chinese were left shocked and frightened. Their situation had drastically altered, and their safety was once again an all-pervading concern. The ethnic Chinese felt betrayed by these military and political leaders, and angrily rejected suggestions that the massa, ordinary people, were at all to blame for the riots. Rather, they blamed the elite who failed to provide them with the protection they had paid for, and as a consequence harboured no ill feelings towards the rioters. Whilst they were always victims of prejudice and discrimination in the community – indeed that was ‘normal’ – this time the violence brought a greater fear due to the loss of their guarantee of security.

The rape factor The international community became particularly interested in the ‘May riots’ following revelations in June and July 1998 that many women had been raped. They were mostly ethnic Chinese women, who had been gang-raped. The Volunteer Team for Humanity reported that it was possible that more than 160 women were victims of sexual violence during the rioting and in the days and weeks after it, across Indonesia. The majority of these victims, a total of 135, were in Jakarta and its surrounds (TRuK 1998e).

Anti-Chinese violence in Solo, May 1998 85 In Solo, local community groups reported that twenty-four families had come to them with stories that a family member had been sexually assaulted or raped during or after the rioting (Kompas 1998e). However, of these the local police received only one official report, that made by a twenty-four-year-old ethnic Chinese woman who later fled Indonesia after local police failed to find evidence of such a crime ( JFFT 1998a: 133).23 Representatives from the NGO and ethnic Chinese community in Solo will say adamantly that there were cases of sexual violence during and after the May riots (TRuK 1998f).24 In the Executive Summary of its Final Report released to the public, the TGPF did not find that any cases of sexual violence had occurred in Solo during the May riots (JFFT 1998b). Yet, in its detailed report on the Solo riot investigators wrote that the issue of rapes during 14–15 May in Solo had emerged during their investigation. They had been presented with conflicting reports from various sections of the community, but no solid evidence had been discovered. They concluded that this was largely due to lack of time to investigate, as much as anything else, ‘Therefore the team cannot yet be sure that rapes did or did not occur at the time of the riot. Verification is still needed in order to cross-check information circulating in the community’ (JFFT 1998a: 133). Considering these shortcomings of the verification procedures for sexual assault and rapes – which were admitted to in the TGPF Executive Summary – the conclusions brought forward in the final report cannot be regarded as complete. Together with reports from within sections of the Solo community there is strong indication that rapes and/or sexual assaults did occur during and after the Solo riot, and that the majority of victims were, in this case, also ethnic Chinese women.25 The fact that the TGPF was given conflicting reports about rapes, together with the virtual ‘non-mention’ of it in local discussion or reporting on the riot, indicates that the rapes may have been considered more of a taboo in Solo than in Jakarta. In Jakarta, human rights activists were able to convince a small number of the victims to tell their stories to the nation and the world; no such stories have come out of the Solo experience. The TGPF found it difficult to get past the first stage of identifying cases of sexual violence, because locals fed them contradictory stories when they made their initial inquiries. The importance of the response of national and international media, including the Internet, to the rapes issue cannot be overstated regarding the profile subsequently given to the ‘May riots’.26 That stories of sexual violence happening in Solo did not hit headlines and web pages across the world undoubtedly goes some way to explaining why Solo’s ‘May riot’ was able to remain largely a local issue. When examining representations made by the residents of Solo of the rioting in May 1998, something that becomes clear is that Solonese – pribumi and ethnic Chinese – were trying to protect their city from its past

86 Jemma Purdey experiences of anti-Chinese violence for which they continue to feel great shame. A local academic went so far as to claim that ‘Solonese have antiChinese characteristics’ (‘Wong Solo punya ciri-ciri konflik Cina’). The residents of Solo knew all about the damage this type of violence does to a city, the deep wounds it can create that take so long to heal. The local elite recognized that the riot was symptomatic of a deeper crisis in Solo. The people of Solo were entering a fragile and definitive period as they faced an increasing crisis of identity as Javanese, as ethnic Chinese and as modern Indonesians. Perhaps the conclusion was drawn that Solo could not survive the division and shame that this kind of violence brought. By refusing to represent the riots as anti-Chinese in the same context as the Jakarta or ‘May’ riots, the Solo residents were attempting to keep their community together. The very fact that they believed it necessary to do so reveals the deep social cleavages they are trying to hide. Another indication of this determination to protect the fragile unity in Solo is that no one was out to cast blame upon anyone from within Solo; rather they avoided doing so by diverting the blame onto an unknown ‘third party’. Nor did they seek retribution for those deemed responsible. The TGPF report on the Solo riot was read by only a handful of people in Indonesia27 and even fewer outside the archipelago. The TGPF released to the public an approximately twenty-page-long Executive Summary ( JFFT 1998b) of a collection of reports that amounted to hundreds of pages of detailed information about riots in numerous cities, including Solo, during May 1998. Virtually no reference was made to specific cases in the Summary, apart from Jakarta. Yet in the detailed thirty-one-page report on the Solo riot ( JFFT 1998a), the investigators spoke strongly of the importance of this case for providing clues to why the violence happened nationwide. They also concluded that for Solo the consequences of this violence were extremely serious: This riot has altered the image of the Solo community as polite to an image of them as wild destructive and uncivilized. This really represents an historical and socio-cultural tragedy for the people of Solo. More than this, this riot signals the re-emergence of a level of distrust and enmity between the pribumi group and citizens of ethnic Chinese descent. Social cleavages have become stronger and it will take a long time to repair them. However, the national and local press never had access to the reports and therefore these comments went unreported; furthermore, the Habibie government did not act to pursue even one of the TGPF’s recommendations. In the absence of the ‘official’ report on the Solo violence or political interest in it, the role of local residents was crucial in representing the Solo riot to the rest of Indonesia and to the world. The powerful Chinese

Anti-Chinese violence in Solo, May 1998 87 group PMS chose to play down any ethnic aspects of the rioting, declaring instead that the causes were ‘multifaceted’ and saying they understood why rioters might attack Chinese-owned businesses because – yes – they do look well-off. Their response was the key to how the ethnic Chinese community in Solo perceived the riots and how they responded, and it had positive results. Almost all ethnic Chinese who fled Solo during the riots returned soon after. In order to continue their ‘normal’ relations with pribumi and therefore their lives in Solo, a representation of this violence as something other than anti-Chinese violence was essential. The power of the interpretation and representation of violence is clearly displayed in the case of the May 1998 riot in Solo and in the ‘May riots’ more generally. Representation of the Jakarta riots as anti-Chinese, particularly by the international media, sparked an outcry from ethnic Chinese communities and human rights groups around the world, who pressured governments to respond.28 As a consequence, overseas Chinese capital was pulled from Indonesia, further damaging the economy during its time of crisis, and many ethnic Chinese did not welcome the increased focus on their ‘Chineseness’ all this attention brought. For the small Solo community, this was not a path they wanted for their city – history had shown them the damage that could be done, and it was far too costly. Following the riot, student groups made attempts to bring ethnic Chinese and pribumi businesses together, community groups instigated projects to rebuild the city and open forums were held to discuss how violence like this could be avoided in the future (Solopos 1998i). Through it all, the common objective was to put the riot in the past and get on with life; there was no real attempt made to talk about why this riot had happened, outside of the standard reasons. Therefore, despite the increased interaction and discussion between community groups, the majority of Solo residents, including students, military and community leaders, failed to admit that the fact that most of targets of the riot were ethnic Chinese had some connection with discrimination and racism. As Brass wrote, ‘The assumption behind such reasoning clearly is that people do not act solely on their mean prejudices, but in response to genuine and understandable grievances, the “real causes”’ (Brass 1996: 9). So whilst they repeated over and over, when asked about the position of Chinese in Solo, that it was ‘just like everywhere else’ – that is, the Chinese remained confined to the economic sector and seen as ‘other’ – the people of Solo could not make this link to the causes of violence. It is not clear if they deliberately overlooked its importance, or if they simply could not see that it was there – that it was indeed a ‘real cause’. Twelve months after the riots, unlike in Jakarta where ceremonies were held by victims to remember this dark period, the people of Solo did not pause to reflect or to remember. This was a wound they preferred to forget so that they could return to life as usual. Today in Solo some burnt-out buildings remain as reminders of the May riot, but they are

88 Jemma Purdey remarkably few considering the extent of the damage done. Solo moved quickly to rebuild its banks, shops and factories. The sad and telling fact is that although they returned to Solo, the ethnic Chinese moved just as quickly to rebuild fences surrounding their homes, perhaps even making them a little higher this time.

Notes 1 There were gang rapes of ethnic Chinese women during and after the May riots in Jakarta and other cities. Reports of the UN Special Rapporteur for Violence Against Women (1999), the Joint Fact-Finding Team (1998a, 1998b) and Volunteers Team for Humanity (TrUK 1998a, 1998f) confirm this. The numbers of victims vary from one report to the next, however the figure probably lies somewhere between sixty and 100. 2 International media, human rights groups and overseas Chinese took up this issue with great interest. In particular, overseas Chinese groups gathered in chat rooms and on Internet mailing lists on this issue. 3 The students also protested about the death of a bystander, Mozes Gatutkaca, in demonstrations in Yogykarta on 8 March 1998. 4 The riot spread to most districts around Solo city – Nusukan, Gading, Tipes, Jebres and surrounding towns such as Sukoharjo, Karanganyar, Boyolali and Sragen. 5 Interview with H.M. Dian Nafi’, Muslim cleric, head of a local NU pesantren and teacher. 6 The TGPF heard reports that prior to the riot beginning on 14 May, a group of people were organized as a ‘support group’ for these provocateurs. A meeting for interested people was held on 10 May at which they were instructed to ‘invite’ others to join a demonstration in the city (JFFT 1998a: 122). 7 Closer inspection reveals that this group can be broken up into three subgroups to better explain the part they played in the riot. The first were the coordinators – these men rode motorcycles around the city and used an ‘operational target list’ to mark out targets for the rioters (members of Pemuda Pancasila were identified among this group). The second group were members of the supply team, driving the van and perhaps dropping off the tyres, which were then set alight. The third sub-group were the real provocateurs. 8 Interview with Pak Bisyir, member of PWS. 9 There are also reports that police began to grow anxious as the situation in the city grew heated, fearing that police hostels could become targets, and were therefore keen to return to the hostels (Soedarmono et al. 1999: 488). 10 I am indebted to Helen Pausacker, who provided me with a vast number of clippings from Solopos. 11 Commentators in Solo and the TGPF concluded that the long-running student demonstrations had set the scene for mass violence such as this and ‘paved the way for local provocateur(s) to create the riot’ ( JFFT 1998a). 12 Interview with Mujiono, Sujani Sabdaleksono, St Wiyono SkaR members of Taman Budaya Surakarta. 13 Interviews with Bisyir from PWS and Ardus, journalist for Kompas in Solo, August 1999. 14 In interviews conducted in Solo in late August 1999, almost without exception people would use this term. They explained it to mean that Chinese are restricted to the economic sector and are subject to other discriminatory laws and behaviours.

Anti-Chinese violence in Solo, May 1998 89 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28

Interview with Yayah Khisbayah. H.M. Dian Nafi’. Churches were not targeted. However, this conclusion appears highly generalized and contrary to evidence. In a column in the Solopos entitled ‘Jadi penjarah hanya karena ingin merokok’ on 30 May 1998, the writer tells a story about an ‘orang kaya baru’ who looted cigarettes during the riot. In an interview, Soedarmono also reported that students and NGO members participated in the looting. Interview with Iswahudya, senior member of Solo’s ethnic Chinese community. This seems to be a generic term for anyone who lives outside Solo, including the surrounding villages. Interview with members of MATAKIN (High Council of Indonesian Confucian Religion), Indarto, Haksu Tjhie Tjay Ing (Chairman of MATAKIN), Bs. Prasetyo Wahyudi. Iswahudya interview. See Heryanto (1999: 299–331) regarding the difficulty experienced by NGO activists, journalists, academic researchers, police and public attorneys in investigating the rapes. Iswahudya said that he knows of ‘one to two’ cases of rape in Solo. TRuK recorded one incident of rape in Solo on 14 May 1998. The victim was raped and penetrated by a foreign object (e.g. metal rods, broken bottle), and fled overseas after the attack (TRuK 1998f). See TRuK 1998a, 1998f; Heryanto 1999: 317. For discussion relating to the international media’s great interest in the rapes, see Lochore 2000 and Chapter 4 (Elaine Tay) in this volume. Members of the Team and relevant government ministers are the only ones with the full reports. Including Taiwan, PRC, Hong Kong and the USA.

6

The killings of alleged sorcerers in South Malang Conspiracy, ninjas, or ‘community justice’?1 Nicholas Herriman

Around the 1999–2000 Ramadan fasting month, a series of brutal attacks and killings occurred in villages in the southern part of the Malang regency. These attacks were a continuation of the killing of alleged sorcerers in East Java – a phenomenon that has claimed hundreds of lives since 1998. This chapter argues that the attacks in South Malang were instances of ‘community justice’, in which local communities banded together to kill supposed sorcerers. This punishment was perceived as the only means to stop the alleged sorcerers practising black magic. Local communities were propelled by a sense that actions against ‘sorcerers’ were part of the reformasi (reform) movement. The state, in the form of the village leadership and police, attempted to curtail the attacks, but had only limited success. The chapter is also concerned to dispel the myths of conspiracy and of the involvement of ‘ninjas’ in the attacks.2 Magic is a part of everyday life in the Javanese and Madurese cultures of Malang. People visit shamans and pay a fee to be healed, have their future read, be given lucky mantras, and so on. However, sorcerers known as dukun santet or tukang santet are believed to practice ilmu gaib, or ‘black magic’.3 It is widely believed that their black magic can be acquired from an elder family member (Harin;4 Malang Post 1999a), and that if it is not used to destroy others, the power will destroy the practitioner. In the villages where killings occurred, the universal complaint against dukun santet was that they used sorcery to inflict ‘enlarged stomach’ (perut besar) (Harin, Romli5), a condition that causes vomiting and diarrhoea, the contents of which typically include blood, dirt, hair and other things. It is assumed to be incurable by doctors, and fatal. Dukun santet will employ this black magic after a difference of opinion or argument, or if they dislike someone. In contrast to some other areas in Malang regency and municipality, in the villages where the killings occurred there was a widespread belief that dukun santet were active. The killing of presumed sorcerers in Indonesia is not unprecedented. Incidents as far back as the Netherlands Indies colonial times have been recorded (Slatts and Porter 1993: 139). Though I have yet to find comprehensive statistics, it seems that in recent history the killing of a few alleged

Killings of alleged sorcerers in South Malang

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sorcerers in East Java every year would not be unusual. However, the issue became the focus of national media attention in 1998 with the killing of more than a hundred alleged sorcerers in East Java, mainly in the regency of Banyuwangi. Since then, there have been infrequent killings throughout East Java. The attacks against alleged dukun santet in South Malang around Ramadan 1999–2000, at least a year after the attacks in Banyuwangi had subsided, stand out because of the frequency of attacks in a relatively small geographical area.

Background The economy of the affected villages in South Malang is primarily agricultural. These villages are surrounded by non-irrigated plots (ladang or kebun), which have comparatively small nutritional and financial yields. All the victims’ houses are accessible only by unsealed road, which gives some sense of the poor infrastructure in the affected villages. Endemic poverty has resulted in many local residents seeking a livelihood away from their villages in spheres such as illegal forestry, factories and international labour. Malang could be characterized, linguistically and culturally, as Javanese. By contrast, in the villages where the attacks occurred the majority of people are ethnic Madurese, and Madurese is the daily language. However, attacks displayed no pattern of conflict with the Javanese minority, as attackers and their victims included both Javanese and Madurese. The religion in the four districts where attacks occurred is predominantly Islamic. Outside informants assert that this is a Javanese Islam (IslamJawa), or abangan Islam, but my informants in the villages denied this, presumably because they rejected the idolatrous implications of such a characterization. From a political perspective, taking one of the affected districts as an example, the voting patterns in the 1999 general election were typical of Indonesia as a whole, but atypical of East Java (Agus 2000).6 This chapter’s primary data are interviews with local residents, and village heads and secretaries, supplemented by reports and interviews with personnel from a local newspaper called the Malang Post (hereafter MP), from the police and from a legal aid organization. The analysis will concentrate on the discursive elements of the attacks, concerning how those involved perceived the attacks, based on their stories. Some may be apocryphal, yet all are instructive of the local residents’ understandings of the events. This chapter only considers attacks upon alleged dukun santet. It may therefore give a conservative impression of the extent of the violence in South Malang. Reports of attacks that were threatened but did not eventuate have not been included, because they were too difficult to verify. Nor does this account include one killing that was allegedly of a dukun santet, but for which there is no corresponding evidence.7 Furthermore, there is

92 Nicholas Herriman no account of the trauma experienced and, in some cases, the resettlement of surviving members of the families affected by the violence. By these criteria, the violence against alleged sorcerers in South Malang comprised seven attacks, resulting in nine fatalities and one serious injury.

Killings in South Malang: November 1999–January 2000 During the period from early November 1999 to late January 2000, numerous killings were carried out in villages throughout South Malang. The first attack took place in Simojoyan village at 7:00 pm on 8 November 1999, when local residents killed Mbok Armi, aged seventy. Armi had apparently learnt black magic from her stepmother,8 and admitted to having killed sixteen people (MP 1999c). Although local residents had wanted to kill her since 1977 (MP 1999d), this intention was only realized immediately following the death of a man called Sugianto. Earlier in the year, when Sugianto entered Armi’s ladang to get his kite, a coconut tree had been damaged. Later, he became sick with an enlarged stomach, and it was believed that Armi was using black magic for revenge. After a local hospital failed to diagnose Sugianto’s illness, residents brought Armi to Sugianto’s parents’ house to cure him. Apparently she failed, as Sugianto died while Armi was still at the house. As Armi left, a large crowd of people mobbed her. She was dragged behind a motorcycle, a sword was forced into her vagina, and then she was set alight (Subin9). It was related that her bamboo bracelet did not burn, which was taken as further evidence of her magical powers. Although the killing involved hundreds of people, the police arrested only two men (interview with Abdul Malik). One month later, on the first day of Ramadan, Martawi, his wife Ginah and their son Bukhori were killed in the village of Harjokuncaran. At around 11:00 pm on 8 December, local residents attacked the family at home and then strung up their corpses around the house. Another son, Gimun, managed to escape. The family had long been despised and feared for their sorcery. Martawi was infamous for demanding, and receiving, cigarettes, livestock or even land from people by threatening that he would kill them (Romli10). His son Bukhori had a reputation as an adulterer, who allegedly threatened married women and maidens (gadis) that he would use his powers against them unless they acquiesced. After the killings, no one wanted to enter the house of the deceased for fear of evil supernatural forces. Three local residents were arrested for the killings, and, in response, angry local residents destroyed the local police station (mapolsek) and demanded their release (Figure 6.1).11 A few days later, the men from the villages involved in the destruction voluntarily began rebuilding the police station (interview with Romli; MP 1999e, 1999f, 1999g). A week later, the residents of Pohjejer hamlet in Kalipare village tried to kill three alleged dukun santet: Maruf, his sister Marina and her daugh-

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Figure 6.1 The local police station being destroyed after the police arrested three suspects for the killing of Martawi, Ginah and Bukhori, South Malang, December 1999 (reproduced with kind permission of Jon S. and Malang Post).

ter Birai. Maruf’s and Marina’s parent was thought to have instructed the two in sorcery, and were killed in 1969 under suspicion of being a dukun santet. It was said Maruf had killed many people, and had been banished from another village three years earlier on suspicion of being a dukun santet (Ansori12). As a result of threats from local residents, Marina and Birai ran away. Around midday, 15 December,13 a small group of men, including preman (local hoodlums), stabbed Maruf. He managed to escape and local residents took this to be evidence of his supernatural abilities (kesaktian). In response the entire hamlet mobilized, with groups of men searching surrounding villages, while women and children waited vigilantly at the destroyed homes armed with machetes, in case the three returned (Harin; Nur;14 MP 1999a). Four days later in Putuk Rejo village, an estimated 400 people, some wearing ninja-style masks, went to the house of Siamah and attacked her. Residents said it took her half an hour to die, proving she had supernatural capabilities (MP 1999h). After this, the group went to Sugito’s house and attacked him with rocks, swords, and clubs, but his wife, son and

94 Nicholas Herriman grandson, who were present, were not touched (Tukinem15). It was believed that Sugito and Siamah were practising black magic together, and were also having an affair. A few weeks after the killing, six men surrendered to the police. I visited Sugito’s family on the fortieth-day commemoration of his death. They were preparing a selamatan (ritual meal) to which, they maintained, the killers were invited. Munakip was killed at his home in Kalipare village between 10:00 and 11:00 pm on 22 December by local residents, some of whom wore ninjastyle masks. He was a teacher of the Koran (guru ngaji), and as such the only ‘Muslim’ figure attacked under suspicion of being a dukun santet in South Malang. After the killing, all the men in the village except for Munakip’s relatives hid in the jungle (Udi;16 MP 1999i). The next night, 23 December, a group of men attacked Munatip, a resident of Sumberkerto village, while he was reciting the Koran with his family in a mushala (small mosque). He was dragged about 300 metres and then hanged (MP 1999j). Although at least seventy people were involved in the attack, a group of around twenty-two were detained, of whom eight remained in detention. It was said that Munatip and his brother Marluki had learnt sorcery from another dukun santet. In 1993 Marluki had allegedly used black magic to murder a local resident, after which the deceased’s family went to Madura, where they received conditional permission from a kiai (Islamic teacher) to seek vengeance (Ansori; MP 2000a). Munatip’s murder was this revenge. The final attack occurred in the village of Pringgondani on 19 January after local police, suspecting alleged sorcerers Martiah and Irsyad would be attacked, ordered the married couple to leave the village. When they returned a few weeks later, local residents attacked Martiah. According to the attackers, she admitted to murdering nineteen people. She was thrown from hand to hand through the crowd to the cemetery, where she was hanged. Irsyad managed to escape, and their two children were left untouched (MP 2000b). Immediately after the killing, about 200 men surrendered to the village secretary (Mohamad Ponimin;17 see also Figure 6.2). Explaining the killings: prevention, retribution and deterrence In each village, at least tens, if not hundreds, of local residents cooperated in attacking the alleged tukang santet. The residents of different villages engaged in collective actions. For example, residents of Harjokuncaran village destroyed the local police station in order to free their comrades arrested for killing Martawi, Ginah and Bukhori, and in Pringgondani villagers surrendered as a group after killing Martiah. Residents of Kalipare searched other villages and stood guard against Maruf, Marina and Birai. In this attack on Maruf there was no sense of division among the community, who acted as ‘one village’ (Mohamad Ponimin; Nur18). As the

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Figure 6.2 Some of the men who surrendered after killing Martiah, pictured outside the local police station, South Malang, January 2000 (reproduced with kind permission of Jon S. and Malang Post).

Pringgondani village secretary related, in killing the dukun santet, the local residents were ‘compact, together’ (‘kompak, bersama’).19 Thus, far from indicating a breakdown of the village community (Campbell and Connor 2000: 65), the attacks were a cooperative endeavour in which villagers were united. This cooperative endeavour was punitive in nature. The local residents ‘knew’ the victims were dukun santet (MP 1999k) and they killed the dukun santet as punishment for past crimes. The connection between perceived

96 Nicholas Herriman sorcery and punishment was most clearly demonstrated when residents of Simojoyan village attacked and killed Armi immediately following Sugianto’s death. My analysis, based on the actions and testimonies of those involved, is that the motivation behind the punishment (Scriven 1966: 227–8) had elements of deterrence, revenge, and prevention. The punishment was a deterrent in as much as it was a warning. An anonymous villager said, ‘So the Mbok Armi incident is a lesson for other villages not to use santet [sourcery]’ (MP 1999c). Part of the intention of the attacks was also revenge. At least some of those who were regarded as ringleaders in the killings stated that members of their family had been murdered by the dukun santet. It was related that Maruf had killed the child of Madra’i, and indeed Madra’i was one of those who led the attack on Maruf (confidential interview, 2000).20 The spirit of vengeance might also explain the ruthless nature of the attacks. However, the extent of the vengeance is questionable. No other family members of the victims were touched,21 and, although the houses and contents were damaged, nothing was stolen.22 Furthermore, while vengeance is usually a matter between individuals or families,23 the killings were cooperative endeavours involving local residents, most of whom had not been personally affected by the sorcery of the alleged dukun santet. When asked why so many people were involved in an attack, when at least some of them had not been affected by sorcery, a village secretary responded, ‘they would be, sooner or later’ (‘yang belum kena, nanti kena’) (Harin). Local residents thus endeavoured to incapacitate the alleged dukun santet by killing them. Commenting on the attempt to kill Maruf, Marina and Birai, one villager reportedly said, ‘The residents of this village will be safe if those three people are dead’ (MP 1999a). Banishment of the dukun santet had been tried in the past, but they only returned later (Ansori). Killing was therefore perceived as the only means to prevent the dukun santet from killing anybody else. In this sense, the punishment was an attempt at prevention, as much as retribution and deterrence. The brutal punishment was undertaken without any apparent compunction. In the eyes of the local residents, the alleged dukun santet had forfeited any right to be treated as ‘humans or even as animals’ (Harin). In the villages concerned, burying a corpse is normally a task undertaken by the entire community, however no one wanted to bury Armi (MP 1999c), nor Martawi, Ginah and Bukhori (Romli). A local resident explained: If a resident dies, all the other residents will help out, without even being told to. But if the dead person always disrupted [meresahkan] the residents, who would want to help with digging the grave? (MP 1999f)

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One of the 200 local residents who surrendered after the killing of Martiah stated: If we plant rice and there is any disease at all, we must eliminate it. In the same way if there is a disease in the community, we also have to exterminate it. Rather than allowing it to cause disruption . . . (MP 2000c) This analogy between social disrupter and natural blight assumed literal dimensions when the residents of Simojoyan decided to burn Armi on the road instead of the soccer field, because they were concerned lest her body touch the field (MP 1999k). Additionally, Armi’s grave was purportedly difficult to plough, and became narrower and shallower, ‘as if the earth was unwilling to accept the presence of Mbok Armi’ (MP 1999m). Another perception of the alleged sorcerers was scribbled on the walls of Maruf’s gutted house in Kalipare: DUKUN SANTET: PKI. There was no association between Maruf and the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia) except that he – like the regime’s construction of the PKI – was seen as a ubiquitous and clandestine menace to society. Dukun santet were thus constructed both as (un)natural abominations as well as anathema to the community, and hence brutal punitive measures against them were justified. In some cases there were reports of differences of opinion or jealousy, but these were not the reasons for the attacks. Gito’s family pointed to past disputes as a possible motivation for the killing. Munakip’s family insisted jealousy was the motive (Udi). Neither family doubted the existence of dukun santet, they only denied that those killed were dukun santet. However, I could find no pattern of economic, religious, political or ethnic differences between the killers and their victims. The victims were punished for their alleged crimes as dukun santet: the accusation ‘dukun santet’ was not simply a pretext (Harin).

‘Community justice’ As punishment for the perceived crimes of the alleged dukun santet, the attacks were acts of community justice. Generally, modern states have assumed the duties of justice, along with health, education and so on. In Indonesia, however, this aspect of the modernization process is far from complete. Communities have been unwilling to relinquish, to the state’s institutions of police, courts and prisons, the duty of justice.24 Throughout Malang, from November to January there were many cases in which hundreds of residents spontaneously banded together to attack, and sometimes kill, alleged thieves and petty criminals, and also to destroy brothels. For example, more than 150 residents almost killed a ‘recidivist’. After the police rescued him, the police station too was attacked (MP

98 Nicholas Herriman 1999n).25 Clearly, the killings of alleged dukun santet must be similarly understood as acts of community justice. Compared to cases of theft or prostitution, the contrast between community and state justice is perhaps further confounded with regards to dukun santet. The Indonesian state, like most other modern states, only allows for the existence of things that can be observed or measured. The presumed effects of black magic can be measured or seen, but there is no observable physical causation. Hence, the state and its justice system cannot recognize its existence, nor legislate against it (Geschierre 1998). By contrast, none of the local residents doubted the existence of black magic. One repercussion of this is a contradiction for the police, and village heads and secretaries, who, as part of the village aparat (apparatus), are located in the overlap of community and state. As members of the community, the aparat I interviewed privately condoned the attacks against alleged dukun santet (Harin). One senior policeman explained, ‘If I was a judge I’d set them all [villagers] free . . . dukun santet are far more cruel than the killers of dukun santet’ (Aryanto Sutadi26). Yet in their professional capacity as representatives of the state, it was incumbent upon them to curtail the ‘murder’ of alleged sorcerers. The aparat maintained that they took action to prevent the residents attacking dukun santet, working with local kiai (Islamic leaders) to instruct the villagers to refrain from killing suspected dukun santet (Mohamad Ponimin; Harin), or protecting suspected dukun santet against attacks (MP 1999a). On the other hand, the aparat displayed a degree of solidarity with their residents, pressuring for the release of, or organizing food and transport for, suspects detained for the ‘murders’ (Abdul Malik; Mohamad Ponimin). Having the highest official standing in the community, whilst only occupying the lower rungs of the state hierarchy, meant that the village aparat were pressured from above and below. An example of the pressure from above is seen in demands made by the regency-level police that the Harjokuncaran village head cover the cost of burying the bodies of Martawi, Bukhori and Ginah (Romli). Meanwhile, from below, local residents, who had already destroyed the police station, thought he was protecting Gimun and made threats against him. As a result, the village head had to use sakera (Madurese preman) to guard his house. He explained: ‘the community targeted me . . . even though he [Gimun] was wrong, we continued to protect him. But that’s the way it is’ (Romli). The village aparat was caught between a rock and a hard place. The arrest and trial of the suspects juxtaposed the state’s conception of responsibility with that held by the community. Culpability in the state’s legal system is based on a notion of ‘I’ as an agent whose volition is located in the individual person, so only individuals were held to be responsible for the murders. However, it is questionable whether this idea

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of personal responsibility has ever taken hold in the consciousness of Javanese or Madurese culture. This was exemplified in the attacks, where the sense of an individual person was diminished and group volition took over. In the killing of Martiah, for example, it was reported: Seven suspects . . . are thought to be the brains behind the butchery . . . of course the others who were involved reject that. In protest, they do not want to return home before their seven friends who have officially become suspects are freed. . . . Their reason for not returning home is that in their opinion they all killed Martiah [yang membunuh Martiah, adalah mereka semua]. (MP 2000e) A common explanation of the attacks on alleged dukun santet is that people ‘just joined in’ (cuma ikut-ikutan), without instigation. Admittedly, the evidence in some of the cases seems to point to people leading the attacks, either preman or individuals seeking vengeance. For example, a preman named Mariono and some of his friends were thought to be the leaders of the attack on Maruf, yet even in such cases the leaders were clearly supported by entire communities in the attacks. The police and the judiciary isolated individual murderers, such that the dynamics of a group were incorrectly perceived as, at best, a mitigating but not determining factor.27 Identifying certain individuals as being responsible for the killings was easier than putting hundreds of people on trial, and would help to give the impression that the situation was under control.

‘Reformasi killings’ My analysis of the killings has thus far explained the background to the killings: the persistence of ‘community justice’ in spite of the state’s legal system, the inability of the legal system to handle alleged sorcerers, and a conception of agency that is located in the group rather than the individual. However, the timing of the killings has not been considered. The local residents thought the sorcery had been practised for years, if not generations. So why, after a long hiatus in these villages (the last killings had been in 1969), did the attacks upon alleged dukun santet in South Malang only occur from November 1999 to January 2000? The response to this question given by a neighbour of the murdered Maruf was, ‘originally we were too scared . . . as soon as there was reformasi we had the courage’ (Nur). Similarly, the village head in Sumberkerto replied: Because in other areas there were killings like that. Imitating, joining in (ikut-ikutan). They didn’t have the courage before the reformasi era, they only had the courage after the end of Pak Harto [President]. The

100 Nicholas Herriman community doesn’t yet understand the meaning of ‘reformasi ’. To kill a person is regarded as ‘reformasi’. (Ansori 2000) The specific context of these killings could be explained by imitation. The first killing, of Armi, immediately followed the death of Sugianto. In its spontaneity, this attack was similar to the attacks on preman described above. After this, other villages in South Malang seemed to follow the example.28 The following attacks on alleged dukun santet were less immediate responses to a specific incident, and more premeditated. However, this specific context (the first killing and the attacks that followed it) must also be understood in terms of the prevailing conditions of reformasi. I believe that the ‘reformasi ’ that Maruf’s neighbour and Ansori were referring to was ‘a time to right past wrongs’, to exorcize evil from the village (Harin). Aside from this, Maruf’s neighbour observed that reformasi imbued people with sufficient courage to undertake these attacks. One characteristic of the reformasi period is the perception of devolution of the power of the centralized state apparatus that characterized the Suharto state,29 and a concomitant increase in the courage of people to demonstrate, riot and so on. As Ansori states, ‘in the reformasi era, the police are afraid of the people. Those police are only brave at the station.’ Consonant with this, six district police stations were destroyed in 1998–1999 in Malang, the sixth of these in response to the arrests of the three people accused of murdering Martawi, Ginah and Bukhori (MP 1999g).30 The perception that the police were weak might have prompted local residents to think they could ‘get away with it’, and in a sense the majority did escape punishment, because only a few individuals were arrested. However, this did not guarantee the communities’ complete immunity. Three weeks after the killing of Munatip, hundreds of police from the district, regency and regional police forces descended upon Sumberkerto village and arrested suspects (MP 2000a).31

Conspiracy theories Having outlined my interpretation of the attacks, I would like to consider popular alternative understandings of the phenomenon, or various conspiracy theories. In discussions and readings I came across too many different conspiracy theories to cover them comprehensively here, so I will consider just one example of the conspiracy approach in detail. The vigilant Legal Aid Institute (LBH) in Malang has produced a report typical of the conspiracy approach. Though full of inconsistencies, it lists the motivations for the killings as: [A]ttacking the Gus Dur government because South Malang is a mass base of the NU . . ., soldiers who . . . run amok, . . . the latent danger of

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the Communist Party of Indonesia . . ., a mastermind or provocateur who feels ‘troubled’ and resents the expression of rumours about human rights violations (Agus 2000) and so on.32 The evidence of such central planning includes a ‘hit list’ of people who were to be targets, which was allegedly circulated before the attacks (MP 1999p). However, neither the LBH nor anyone I asked has seen this list. Conspiracy arguments also point to the existence of provocateurs or masterminds who were part of a conspiracy. The existence of provocateurs is useful for the police, who have an interest in expediting matters by pinning the blame on a few people rather than on all the inhabitants of a village, and for the press, for whom the sensational value translates into increased circulation. Significantly, however, one of the people I spoke to in the villages where attacks occurred accepted the existence of provocateurs, even though it might have been in their interests to point the blame elsewhere. One of the purported provocateurs was a soldier from the local army post (koramil) in Kalipare (MP 1999q, 1999r, 1999s). Despite merely being one of the local residents involved in the killing of Munakip, he was represented as the brains behind the operation (oknum) (MP 1999t). A preman named Mariono was also presumed by the LBH, the press and the police to be a mastermind of the killings (MP 1999u). Yet he was later tried only for involvement in the attack on Maruf (Udi). Thus, the evidence of a hit list, or provocateurs, is not convincing. There are three further problems regarding the conspiracy theories. One problem is that if a conspiracy did exist, it failed. For example, Wahid’s new government was not weakened, nor was the Communist Party empowered as a result of the murders in South Malang in 1999. Another problem is that there are a number of theories, each equally (un)believable and thus mutually contradictory: a Communist conspiracy is equally as (un)likely as a New Order conspiracy. The third problem is that the identity of the victims requires explanation. It would seem that killing people with important roles in the community, such as community leaders, as opposed to common people, would have been more beneficial for the conspiracies discussed above. The strongest evidence for conspiracy theories seems to be the temporal and spatial spread of the attacks. A popular theory was that the army planned secretly to spread chaos, thereby legitimizing the role of the military. The evidence for this is that only a military campaign or conspiracy could account for the occurrence of so many killings in succession in one area. Yet surely other places in Indonesia (not least Surabaya, one hour’s drive to the north) and other times (such as before the 1999 general election) would have had more potential for generating social unrest than a

102 Nicholas Herriman small rural backwater in East Java in late 1999. For these reasons, the conspiracy theories do not adequately explain the attacks in South Malang and are little more than a list of possible motivations for the attacks.33 Ninja theories Some of the conspiracy theories also assert that ‘ninjas’ were behind the killings in South Malang. This ninja myth originated in 1998 when some of the killers of ‘dukun santet’ in Banyuwangi concealed their faces with cloth, ninja-fashion, leaving only their eyes exposed.34 Following this, a rumour was broadcast by the Indonesian and international media that ‘ninjas’ were targeting local kiai. This rumour was absurd, as it is questionable whether more than one kiai was killed during the killings in Banyuwangi. Nevertheless, a paranoid notion spread through East Java that ninjas were on the loose and murdering kiai. Those in Banyuwangi who had worn masks did not associate themselves with the fictitious ‘ninjas’, and even took part in vigilante groups to protect local kiai from attack.35 Around the same time (late 1998), several ‘ninjas’ were killed in South Malang. It is most probable that the killers were responding to the rumours of ninjas attacking kiai, and thought they were undertaking a service to the community by killing ‘ninjas’. However, the actual identity of the victims remains a mystery,36 and the killings may have been a result of mistaken identity.37 The rumour of ‘ninjas’ was revived one year later in South Malang. Reporting on the killings of dukun santet in December 1999, the Malang Post made allusions to the involvement of ‘ninjas’.38 In reality, there were no ninjas in South Malang. As in Banyuwangi, there were only local residents who in some of the attacks wore ninja-style masks to hide their identity and perhaps to evoke a sense of ‘mysteriousness’.

Conclusion There were no ninjas or conspiracies behind the seven attacks against alleged dukun santet around the 1999–2000 Ramadan month in South Malang. The attacks were undertaken by entire communities who assumed the duty of justice and united to punish putative sorcerers. These attacks may be understood given the perseverance of ‘community justice’ in Malang and the inability of the state to penalize perceived witchcraft. Much of the scholarship concerning the Suharto regime has characterized the state as an agent of violence and terror. However, in the attacks on alleged dukun santet that occurred in the post-Suharto reformasi climate in South Malang the state worked to prevent the violence, yet it was incapable of doing so because local residents, perhaps rightly, perceived that local authorities and security forces lacked either the repressive or the oppressive power to prosecute them for ‘murder’.

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Notes 1 My research in Malang for this chapter would not have been possible without the help of Achmad Habib and Jon S. I am also very grateful for the assistance and encouragement of David Bourchier, Greg Fealy, Michael van Langenberg, Angus McIntyre, Jim Siegel and Ken Ward in the preparation of the chapter for publication. 2 I refer here not to the practitioners of Japanese martial arts, but rather to the popular imaging of ninja in Indonesia which is, in part, informed by characters from film and television. In contemporary Indonesian history, ‘ninja’ has been a widespread and evocative concept. For example, there have been reports of ‘ninjas’ involved in clandestine military activities in West Timor and Aceh, and in the activities of the Muslim paramilitary in Maluku. Ninja-style masks are also worn in demonstrations (see cover photograph in Malang Post, 17 November 1999) and by children playing. 3 The term ‘black magic’ is also used in Indonesian, with a similar meaning to the English usage. 4 Interview with Harin (Village Secretary of Kalipare), 11 June 2000. 5 There were also reports of dukun santet being arrogant and deceitful, and using the threat of their sorcery to obtain loans and sexual favours (Harin; Romli; Village Head of Harjokuncuran, 19 February 2000). 6 In this district (Kecamatan Ampelgading), the PDI-P, followed by Golkar, were the largest and second-largest parties respectively, and together accounted for more than half the vote. 7 This was the killing of Mbok Seniwar on 28 December 1999. Seniwar was killed, her blind daughter injured, and their adjoining houses burnt. Unlike other attacks, there was no strong suggestion of sorcery, and apparently no mass cooperation. The village head suggested that the killing was based on a dispute over the sale of land, and that the killers also stole gold from the house. In the other cases considered in the present chapter, there were no reports of goods having been stolen (interviews with Seniwar’s grandson, 27 January 2000, and Jon S., crime journalist from Malang Post, 2 March 2000; MP 1999b). 8 Interview with Abdul Malik (Village Head), 15 March 2000. 9 Interview with Subiin (father of Sugianto), 15 March 2000. 10 Interview with Romli (Village Head of Harjokuncuran), 19 February 2000. 11 The Village Head reported that people from neighbouring villages were also involved, taking the opportunity to avenge years of police corruption (Romli). 12 Interview with Ansori (former Village Head of Sumberkerto), 15 March 2000. 13 This was the only daytime attack, all others occurring between sunset and midnight. 14 Interview with Nur (pseudonym, one of Maruf’s neighbours), 31 May 2000. 15 Interview with Tukinem and Sudarsim (Sugito’s wife and son), 27 January 2000. 16 Interview with Udi (Munakip’s son), 27 January 2000. 17 Interview with Mohamed Ponimin (Village Secretary of Pringgondani), 19 February 2000. 18 ‘Di sini nggak perang, satu desa’ (Nur). 19 This view is echoed in the confession of one of those involved: ‘Last night all the local residents agreed to undertake the action together (secara bersamasama). We even surrendered to the police together (secara bersama-sama).’ (MP 2000c) 20 Vengeance for the death of a family member was also a factor in the killing of Munakip (Ansori). 21 Unless they too were considered to be dukun santet. The one exception to this

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22 23

24 25 26 27

28 29 30

31

32

33

34

35

was Munatip’s wife. She maintains she tried to obstruct the killers when they were attacking her husband. She was hit, and apparently fell unconscious. The next day her left arm showed signs of bruising (Jon; MP 1999l). When I asked one of Maruf’s neighbours if anything had been stolen, he laughed, explaining, ‘Nothing was stolen, if something was stolen we would have been considered robbers’ (Nur). The personal nature of revenge was explained to me in the following terms: according to Madurese culture, if the father of a young boy is murdered, a relative or friend of the deceased should raise that boy to avenge his father’s death (Harin). Other institutions that might have provided ‘justice’, such as ‘traditional’ law (adat), the unofficial village leadership, or Islamic institutions, played no significant role with regard to the killings (MP 2000d). These are many other examples of community justice from this period (see Malang Post). Interview with Aryanto Sutadi (Police Colonel, Malang Regional Police Office), 2 March 2000. By May 2000, one seventeen-year-old male had been given a four-year sentence (for Pembunuhan Berencana ‘Premeditated Murder’ with a maximum sentence of twenty years) (interview with Itok, journalist from the Malang Post, 15 May 2000). Residents were well aware of the attacks occurring in different parts of South Malang. From what I could ascertain, the Malang Post kept local residents ‘informed’. Harin related that ‘our forebears before 1965 were courageous . . . after 1966, we weren’t brave enough even though there was black magic’. Amazingly, in this case this perception of immunity was also expressed as the possession of invulnerability (ilmu kebal). According to Samsul (Crime Section Co-ordinator, Malang Post, interviewed 2 February 2000), during this raid on the police station the police shot rubber bullets into the crowd. The local residents, however, thought the bullets were metal. When they saw them bouncing off their bodies, they took it as a sign that they were invulnerable. This was during the period of lebaran, which marks the end of the fasting month, but the area chief maintains that the timing was coincidental (Aryanto Sutadi). Apparently afraid that they would be shot by police after this raid, the six men from the village of Siamah and Sugito gave themselves up to police the following day (MP 2000f). The Communist Party conspiracy seems especially unlikely considering the graffiti on Maruf’s walls described earlier, which accused a victim, Maruf, and not the attacking group, of being associated with the Communist Party. For another example of the Communist conspiracy theory, see MP 1999o. In the early days of the Wahid presidency, there was still a palpable angst concerning reformasi, a fear that the nation was descending into chaos, or that forces were trying to reinstate the regime. Perhaps the ‘ninja’ rumour expressed an unarticulated fear of a covert nemesis spreading destruction through the nation. Conspiracies per se are not bad explanations. The conspiracy theories regarding South Malang gained currency because the public was both cynical and anxious. According to some of the prisoners accused of murdering the dukun santet in Banyuwangi, prior to the killings they had approached the police for permission. The police, being sympathetic, advised them to conceal their identity with ninja-style masks. This information is based on a series of visits to Porong Prison February–June

Killings of alleged sorcerers in South Malang

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2000, where I discussed these events with the men jailed for the killings of sorcerers in Banyuwangi. 36 Ruli Marianti, personal communication. 37 Gerry van Klinken, personal communication. 38 An image of a ‘ninja’ first appeared in Malang Post on 23 December 1999 and accompanied subsequent articles concerning the killing of dukun santet.

7

Passing the red bowl Creating community identity through violence in West Kalimantan, 1967–19971 Nancy Lee Peluso

In the mid-1990s, Dayaks mobilized for violence all over the western districts of West Kalimantan, starting in Sambas district and moving to Pontianak and Sanggau districts. Dayaks from other parts of West Kalimantan also allegedly took part, travelling to these westernmost districts to participate. Their targets were specific. Of all the migrants living in these rural districts, only Madurese were killed or evicted. Not all Madurese were passive victims; certain Madurese aggressions prompted Dayak violence at the beginning and throughout the events (Human Rights Watch 1997; Harwell 2000; Peluso and Harwell 2001). People in West Kalimantan refer to this violence as the Dayak–Madurese war. It was not the first violence between Dayaks and Madurese, but it was the largest ever in terms of geographical extent, numbers of Madurese affected and numbers of Dayaks involved.2 ‘Threads of Blood’3 (Alonso 1995) from this massive explosion of Dayak–Madurese violence can be traced back to what I see as an important point of origin: the 1967–1968 ‘Demonstrasi Cina’ (The Chinese Demonstration). The 1960s marked the first purposive synthesis of so-called ‘Dayak’ modes of violence with selected practices of guerrilla warfare that have caused observers to conflate war with headhunting in West Kalimantan. Over approximately three months during Demonstrasi, tens of thousands of rural Chinese were violently evicted from their homes in West Kalimantan by Dayaks and the Indonesian military.4 Thousands of Dayaks in these districts in particular, but also further inland, were mobilized to evict Chinese from their rural homes. Tens of thousands of rural Chinese were evicted from the very same districts – and some of the very same agricultural plots – occupied by Madurese when the 1990s wars took place. While some commentators have remarked on the geographic coincidence of these violent events, little or no systematic comparison of them has been made. It is important, therefore, to reassess the 1960s violence in this area in light of the violence in the 1990s. The 1960s and the 1990s saw major political and economic transitions, both globally and nationally. During each decade, Dayaks perceived as threatened their control of space, resources and the terms of their

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Map 7.1 Map of the sites of major violence in West Kalimantan in the 1960s and 1990s (© Nancy Lee Peluso and Darin Jensen).

108 Nancy Lee Peluso collective identities as part of the Indonesian constellation of citizens (Peluso and Harwell 2001). These were times in which the legal and everyday terms of governance, resource control and collective identity were being transformed. In both, Dayak political participation was also severely constrained by politically constructed obstacles. Broader similarities almost stop there. The usual axes of comparison were very different in these two time periods: political economic circumstances, the politics of resource access, the forms of Dayak and Madurese subjectivity, and even the degree of regional militarization. Yet, precisely because of these differences, the similarities in the forms and symbols of violence become even more striking. I see violence as both an outcome and a generator/shaper of this change. The obvious similarities in the two periods’ forms of violence include the movements of people across the landscape, the actual sites of key struggles, the strategic construction of violent ethnic identities to mobilize people, and the role that the media played in creating terror, ‘images of causality’ and residues of explanation. This chapter compares the first two of these dimensions of the 1960s and 1990s conflict,5 the territorial strategies of the actors, and the deployment of ethnicity as a tactic of war. The third, the role of the media in maintaining the public’s view of these stereotypes, is briefly discussed here, but is treated in depth elsewhere (Peluso and Harwell 2001; Peluso 2003). Theoretical considerations Anna Maria Alonso coined the term ‘Threads of Blood’ to refer to the connections between the patterns of violence during the Mexican revolution and that of settlers against Apaches on the ‘Mexican’ frontier at the time of early Spanish settlement (1995: 3). She asks three questions of great import to the analysis of the violent events in contemporary Kalimantan: ‘“What are the practical stakes in constructing the past?” “How does memory become a key site for the negotiation of identities and the making of community?” and ‘What effects of meaning and power are secured by likening [Pancho] Villa to an Apache?’ (Alonso 1995: 6). While the third question seems site-specific, it is easy to modify to fit the Kalimantan case: ‘What effects of meaning and power are secured by making “Dayaks” into “headhunters”?’ Tania Li (2000) has suggested that a ‘tribal slot’, representing certain kinds of indigenous identity, has been created, deployed and occupied by various sets of people in Indonesia in the context of resource struggles. In Kalimantan, that slot has been long set aside for various peoples constructed as ‘Dayak’ by anthropologists, missionaries and government officials as far back as Dutch colonialism. The ‘tribe’ label has long been dropped for peoples of other ethnicities, such as Malays, and was never used to describe Chinese, Indians and Arabs. Similarly, the old

Passing the red bowl 109 British colonial term ‘races’ to describe all of these groups has been exchanged for ‘ethnicities’ or ‘tribes’. It is telling, however, that the Indonesian word for ‘tribe’ is ‘suku’, which also translates as ‘ethnic group’. The choice of an English term has political implications. While someone may describe himself or herself, or be described, as ‘suku Jawa’, this is never translated as ‘Javanese tribe’. Javanese are never ‘tribesmen’. Yet, in many descriptions of violence in Kalimantan, Dayaks are slotted as ‘tribesmen’. One effect is to deflect the understanding of the violent events away from their contemporary context into an imagined, primordial and primitive past. If it is ‘tribes’ and ‘tribesmen’ who are doing it, it must be primitive, they must be primitive people. In the cultural politics of development, this type of association has great meaning. ‘Primitivity’ or ‘wildness’ engenders a particular kind of treatment in a modern development society. In West Kalimantan, I argue, this primitivity has a distinctively modern flavour. Michael Taussig (1987), in a classic and still highly relevant book, shows how Indians in the Peruvian Amazon turned a similar notion of primitivity and wildness on its head. Native healers used colonial perceptions of them as ‘wild men’ to muster power. This turnaround was accomplished, however, only after a long period in which the colonizers had acted quite wildly and violently towards the Indians – enslaving and killing them, forcing them to work on pain of death and torture, and terrorizing many of them to the very margins of death. This powerful ‘space of death’, created by terror, was made up of a combination of Spanish fears and imaginings about the Indians, and the fears and imaginings of the Indians themselves. Terror and violence thus occupied hybrid cultural spaces. The Indonesian military, perpetrators of Dayak violence against the Chinese in the 1960s, employed a tactic that had been used in different ways by government forces in other parts of Borneo at earlier historical moments (Pringle 1970; Harwell 2000; Peluso and Harwell 2001). In a cultural politics of violence, military strategists worked with some local Dayak leaders to use selected Dayak cultural symbols and practices to mobilize West Kalimantan Dayaks against the rural Chinese. Specifically, they deployed a generic image or trope that I call ‘The Borneo Headhunter’ as both a mobilizing and a screening device in the anti-Chinese, anti-Communist violence of that era. It is my contention here that although the Indonesian military may not have mobilized Dayaks in 1997, the spectre of the 1960s military played an important role. This spectre was embodied as a cultural symbol of allegedly ubiquitous Dayak violence,6 but one whose actions were influenced by more hybrid sources. Any analysis of the discourses and representations of violence in the late twentieth century needs to take some account of the press. Whether

110 Nancy Lee Peluso through press releases prepared by various government agencies (including the military), through detailed pieces claiming to be investigative (and therefore authoritative) reporting or through the sensationalist, fly-by articles of journalists and other observers who report as ‘eyewitnesses’, key impressions are framed for the reading public by the press. Similarly, in the 1990s, because the violence took place on Borneo and involved Dayak peoples, much of the reporting asserted or assumed the return of the Borneo Headhunter. This time, however, the image did not need to be mobilized by the military – it was already out there as a tactic of war. Different people used the image in different ways. In the 1990s many Dayaks took part in or talked about rituals associated with ‘traditional’ headhunting and war, such as the passing of the ‘red bowl’ to call allies to war, the performance of invulnerability rites in the sacred places where warrior ancestors were buried, and the voicing of the bloodcurdling tariu to inflict terror in the hearts of the enemy. And as every report stated, people were being decapitated. Yet these rituals and practices were not exactly following ‘traditional’ forms: placing heads on oil drums or parading them on poles were not traditional practices of headhunting. Moreover, such practices were combined with tactics, movements and symbolic representations that could only be understood as more modern forms of warfare. War and headhunting both involve territorial encounters. However, war differs from headhunting in the ways it is organized. Leaders command large bodies of soldiers responsible to a hierarchy of commanders. War involves siting command posts at strategic points in the field – central places where on-the-spot decisions are made. People move across the landscape differently in war than in headhunting. Guerrilla warfare, used in this region during the 1960s and 1970s, combines some of the strategies of war with headhunting tactics such as stealth, silence and surprise (Peluso 2003). Nevertheless, it is nested within larger contexts of waging war. Guerilla warfare is not a ‘traditional’ practice, although it often uses local ‘traditional’ symbols of violence and terror to mobilize people and to inspire fear. Both guerilla warfare and the symbols of headhunting play important parts in the histories and historical memories of West Kalimantan Dayaks. In this chapter I briefly describe the two events. I then compare similarities in three forms of violence in each period, what I call ‘Threads of Blood I, II and III’. In the conclusion, I consider the policy implications of charging ethnic violence with violent symbols of terror.

Madurese–Dayak violence in 1996–19977 On 29 December 1996, at a pop music concert in Ledo, Sambas District, West Kalimantan, two Dayak youths were stabbed by a group of Madurese

Passing the red bowl 111 seeking revenge for being beaten and humiliated at a previous concert after ‘bothering’ a Dayak girl. Rumours spread that the two Dayaks had been killed, although they were treated and released from the hospital that night. The police denied having made arrests out of fear that the accused would be victims of the crowd’s vigilante justice, although they had in fact arrested two Madurese whom they were afraid to release to the crowd. A large group of Dayaks demanding legal and customary retribution stormed into town, and when the police failed to produce evidence that they had arrested the accused, the Dayaks rioted and burned houses. Over the next month, thousands of Dayaks raged through the western districts of West Kalimantan,8 burning hundreds of Madurese houses and market stalls and destroying Madurese crops. Official reports on damages at the point of origin only – Sanggau Ledo – amounted to some Rp13.56 billion, then worth approximately US$6 million (HRW 1997). Mosques were left undamaged, even those in Madurese neighbourhoods, in a pointed effort not to damage places of religious significance to other ethnic groups, and thus to demonstrate, as some people said, that the disagreement was not about the usual scapegoat of religious differences. Within a week of the initial riots, some 6,000 Madurese from Sanggau Ledo had been evacuated to police and military posts in the city of Singkawang. Some Madurese retaliated in organized fashion within the same month. Others continued to engage in violence in other parts of the affected region. Large gangs of Madurese men burned Dayak houses in communities in and around Singkawang, and assaulted Dayak women in and around the city of Pontianak (the provincial capital) and elsewhere. On 28 January 1997 a throng of Madurese tried to burn down a Catholic NGO office in Pontianak, also stabbing two young Dayak women at a nearby asrama. Other victims of Madurese violence also inflamed the Dayak community, including a mentally-disturbed Dayak man allegedly chopped to pieces by Madurese in a Singkawang market. Madurese men also set up roadblocks and tried to intercept and kill all passing Dayaks, pulling them from cars and buses and stabbing, shooting, drowning or dismembering them. These symbolic and revenge killings added fuel to the fire of Dayak resentment that had resulted from years of violence directed against Dayaks by Madurese in the district. By 2 February, enraged by what they saw as the government’s unwillingness to stop the escalating violence, Dayaks passed the ‘red bowl’ (mangkok merah), carrying it from village to village calling Dayak villagers to war. It remains unclear who actually ordered the distribution of the red bowl in this event. The red bowl was specifically a Kanayatn and Salako Dayak tradition for calling allies to war when the community felt threatened. As Madurese violence had occurred all over the western districts by this time, Dayak war parties were mobilized in villages of

112 Nancy Lee Peluso multiple districts – not just Sambas, but Pontianak and Sanggau districts as well. Hundreds of Dayaks went to the hills for those rituals and descended into the streets in mobs, some on foot, some riding in vans, trucks and other transport vehicles. Command posts were set up in schools, in key villages and at strategic intersections. Dayaks at roadblocks inspected all vehicles – including military vehicles – coming through. Some Dayak participants were said to be in ‘the killing trance’, their bodies occupied by ancestral warrior spirits who controlled their actions. Others carried amulets and traditional protective objects that they believed protected them from harm, hid them when they were hunting Madurese in the forest and gave them the courage to do things many of them (particularly the massive numbers of them under the age of thirty) had only heard of in stories. Dayak crowds demanded justice, though exactly who would administer this justice was not clear. Some demanded it from the Indonesian government; others declared this was no longer the government’s business. Dayaks burned and smashed Madurese houses, and killed Madurese people and their livestock. Ultimately, some 25,000 Madurese were displaced from the homes they had occupied over the last thirty years. In the aftermath of the 1997 events, some Dayak men hunted Madurese in the forests and rubber-fruit gardens where they had hidden when running from sites of violent struggle. Madurese had been migrating to West Kalimantan spontaneously – that is, generally not under the sponsorship of government-organized transmigration schemes – for sixty years or so, but most had come since the 1960s. The end of Konfrontasi – Sukarno’s war against the Federation of Malaysia – and the coming to power of Suharto had resulted in a series of structural changes that increased the number of employment activities (Peluso and Harwell 2001). Many Madurese made their way into the interior, finding places to work along the roads they were helping to construct as part of the great counter-insurgency/development effort being embarked upon at the beginning of the ‘New Order’.9 Given the violent turn of events in 1996–1997 and at various points between 1968 and 1996, it was eerily ironic (in retrospect) that Madurese bought or borrowed wet rice land previously farmed by the rural Chinese who had been violently evicted by the middle of 1967. Over time, they also took up many of the entrepreneurial activities that characterized Chinese enterprise: Madurese ran many of the market shops and transport businesses, ranging from becaks to mini-van transport. After the Madurese–Dayak war of 1997, in approximately one-third of the area affected the local people purchased or appropriated Madurese fields, gardens and house sites. It is important to note that these land acquisitions were not the goal of the violence, but became a symbol for claiming authority in its aftermath. In other areas, Madurese families returned within a few months and began rebuilding their

Passing the red bowl 113 destroyed property with housing grants provided by the national government.

‘Chinese–Dayak’ violence Journalists, academics and other contemporary observers of West Kalimantan in the late 1960s reported that July through October 1967 were months ‘ filled with panic’ for the Dayaks who lived near the border with Sarawak. Armed men described as ‘bandits’ roamed the countryside, robbing, burning houses and terrorizing the population (Widodo 1967a). One story suggested that in the month preceding 14 October 1967 the Sarawak People’s Guerrilla Force (PGRS) killed twelve Dayaks, on three different occasions (Feith 1968). The accounts of Feith and others, and my retrospective interviews in the region, imply that it was only partially the news of these killings that engendered the response of a violent ‘tradition’ long unseen in the region: the passing of the red bowl to declare war on the PGRS. The red bowl was a Chinese cup filled with blood to symbolize war, a feather for speed, a piece of flammable tree resin to light the way and a piece of iron for strength against the enemy’s bullets and knives. On 14 October 1967 the former Dayak governor of West Kalimantan, Oevang Oeray, gave the order to send the red bowl around, after an allnight meeting in a Singkawang hotel with local Dayak leaders and military advisors.10 Dayak bands of men and boys, wearing red headbands and carrying elongated bush knives (mandau), homemade hunting guns or military-issue firearms, set about the business of evicting all Chinese from the rural areas. That is, not only known members or supporters of the PGRS were targeted. All men, women and children identified as ‘Chinese’ were evicted from their homes, some violently, some less so. Many houses were looted; some were burned. Some Chinese on the way out were robbed of the few belongings they could carry, the clothes they wore, and even, reportedly, their gold teeth (Widodo 1967a; Feith 1968: 134). It is difficult to know how many people actually died during the worst violence and in the aftermath (Coppel 1983: 145; HRW 1997), yet most estimates of deaths during the eviction period (assessed as lasting through December of that year) range from 300 to 500. Many thousands more became refugees: Feith (1968: 134) reported some 53,000 of them by the end of December. Later estimates are much higher. Soemadi (1974) estimated about 75,000 refugees; Douglas Kammen (personal communication 2000) estimated nearly 117,000.11 Whatever the number, by early 1968, when the mass violence had subsided, only a few Chinese remained in or returned to the rural areas of West Kalimantan.12 Most of them were never able to return; of what little they had, many lost everything – land, gardens and shops.

114 Nancy Lee Peluso Military sources of the period referred to the Demonstration as ‘a clean sweep operation’ (operasi sapu bersih). It is now clear that the area in which the Dayak bands wrought their havoc – an area roughly 80 miles square, between Pontianak and the Sarawak border – is much the same area as one which the Pontianak military authorities, or at least a group of them, wanted to have cleared of Chinese. . . . An apparently dominant group of staff officers at the military headquarters in Pontianak took the view that the guerrilla fish could best be caught if the water (or the people, in this case the Chinese people) in which he swam, or proposed to swim, was drained off. (Feith 1968: 134) The military had identified PGRS as communist fish and the Chinese of West Kalimantan as the rural water they swam in.13 Yet Chinese farmers, rubber tappers and agricultural labourers, small shopkeepers and petty miners living throughout the rural western districts made up an – unusual for Indonesia – 11 per cent of the province’s population compared to the national average of only 3 per cent (Coppel 1983). Chinese had been landholders in West Kalimantan, particularly in Sambas. Although colonial law had not allowed them to ‘own’ land, most held long-term leases on irrigated rice land their ancestors had converted from peat forest or swamp. Others had highly productive rubber and forest gardens on higher land. The status of this land was state land, however, and these Chinese had no rights to sell it. Violence continued well after Demonstrasi. The military’s search for PGRS guerrillas in the forests of West Kalimantan’s western border districts went on until 1974. Thus, in addition to the years of military buildup in this province toward the end of the Sukarno period, seven more years of terror and violence marked the region’s initial experience of New Order Indonesia under Suharto.

Threads of Blood I: borders, territory, nation The echoes of 1967 first struck me in the 1997 violence when I recognized undeniable similarities in the locations involved (These are shown in Map 7.1). The places that experienced the worst violence in 1967 were just outside the Indonesian military bases at Bengkayang, Singkawang, Sanggau Ledo, Sanggau-Kapuas and Seluas. In 1996–1997, it all began at a rock concert in Ledo and near the police station. Violence rapidly spread to Bengkayang/Montrado (and all along the Bengkayang–Singkawang road). According to one account, this was because the Dayak victims of the Madurese stabbings had relatives in that district.14 After the red bowl was passed, the fighting spread to Pontianak and Sanggau districts, and people from Seluas and other parts of

Passing the red bowl 115 Sambas district and the interior areas along the border with Sarawak’s Salako/Kanayatn region came to fight. Notions of borders, and of protecting borders, of having national and ethnic territories, were important in both periods. However, the idea of borders and what they represented in 1966–1967 was different from the importance of borders in 1997, although still parallel. In the years of Confrontation (1963–1966), the international border in Borneo became a crucially symbolic place. According to local accounts today, that border was closed more tightly during the three years of Confrontation than before or since. The international border between West Kalimantan, Indonesia and Sarawak, Malaysia, was nearly impossible to cross. West Kalimantan was the key site from which the Indonesian military had been positioned to stage two violent nation-building efforts (Mackie 1974; Dennis and Grey 1996). Confrontation took place under Sukarno, while the violent evictions of Demonstrasi and the subsequent seven-year search for residual communist guerrillas were carried out under Suharto. Both of these local Cold War dramas were intimately tied up with Indonesia as a relatively new nation-state. However, while the first war was directed outward, the second was about internal security. This internally directed violence was intended to secure a particular form of Indonesian national unity. Neither ‘communists’ nor ‘Chinese’ were to be equal partners in this vision of New Order Indonesia.15 Thus, while national troops were put in West Kalimantan to face down an ‘external’ enemy beyond the international border, these troops remained in West Kalimantan because Jakarta perceived the enemy to be ‘within’. This ‘enemy’ was given a face that had been a familiar one in West Kalimantan since at least the eighteenth century – it was Chinese. West Kalimantan was virtually the only place in Indonesia where communism was politically and publicly conflated with Chinese ethnicity. This meant different kinds of borders had to be constructed. Soldiers – lots of them – were keepers of the border in the 1960s. In addition to the regular army troops moved into West Kalimantan during Confrontation, Suharto put in elite troops to effect the anti-Communist movement after declaring the PKI illegal. These troops included the Army Paracommando Regiment (RPKAD) and the Mobile Brigade (BRIMOB), a 20,000-man strong paramilitary arm of the National Police (Dennis and Grey 1996: 212).16 The military presence in the 1960s and 1970s was openly violent, and a powerful shaper of the social, political and cultural experiences of everyone in the province. This extraordinary militarization and its focus ‘within’ rendered violence, and the fear of it, a fact of everyday life. People remember life being more fearful after Confrontation because the government’s quest to find enemies of the state was directed locally. Barracks and bases were established in the villages and towns closest to the border. Jungle camps and helicopter landing pads dotted the most inaccessible interior terrains.

116 Nancy Lee Peluso West Kalimantan was a landscape of war, and the broad border area was a key site of the struggle. In the 1960s, a large expanse of land – well beyond the international boundary line with Sarawak – was considered ‘the border area’. The landscape still consisted largely of forest and agro-forestry production. It was described in the Western press as a ‘jungle’, implying difficulty of movement for the non-locals – especially the Indonesian army – in penetrating it. Movement through the province, particularly in border districts, both during the Demonstration months (mid-October 1967–February 1968) and after was monitored by the army and the police. The military required passes for any vehicles to enter various roadways, and Chinese who wanted to travel anywhere had to have several forms of written permission. Thirty years later, in the violent events of 1996–1997, the important notion of borders was not international but rather internal to the province. The jungles were gone – roads built for ‘development’ and resource extraction had replaced the borderless and internal jungle. All kinds of statemaking internal borders had been constructed on these former jungle landscapes. Indeed, in English the term ‘jungle’ was used no more. These territories were now referred to as timber and plantation concessions, rainforest conservation resources and sedentarized administrative villages. During the violence, new borders, though fuzzy, were defined by ethnicity. Dayaks would say, ‘This is Dayak territory’ (‘Dayak punya kawasan’), or simply state that interior rural areas were Dayak areas (Holleman 1981; Peluso and Harwell 2001). Cities were mixed (‘Pedalaman kawasan Dayak, kalau kota campur’ ). As the violence proceeded, groups of Dayaks guarded the entrances to their villages (even though people of different ethnicities inhabited them). There were Dayak roadblocks and Madurese roadblocks, each claiming a kind of territorial authority. Intersections and entranceways into communities off the main roads were special kinds of territories that became symbolic sites of violence and protection. Madurese set up roadblocks outside Madurese settlements as sites of struggle: places to stop cars and pull Dayaks out – just as Dayaks later pulled Madurese out of cars at their roadblocks. Madurese and Dayaks defended their own houses in the villages and neighbourhoods where they lived. Dayaks set up patrols at the entries to villages, and oil drums to mark those entries. Oil drums were also tools for blocking roads into the interior, into ‘Dayak territories’. They were also iron bases on which to display the heads of victims. Another tactic – of invading villages far from one’s own – was said to be intended to keep the violence from becoming too personal. Nevertheless, the reasons given for involvement in relatively distant places were often related in highly personal terms – for example, a family member or a close friend may have been killed there. Although headhunting in earlier days had territorial dimensions, these movements were not headhunting tactics. The terms of war, not head-

Passing the red bowl 117 hunting, were used to describe defensive measures in the villages: ‘ngepos’ (to keep guard at the post), ‘patroli’ (to patrol) and ‘posko’ (command posts). The protection of territories using these means and in the patterns described here were territorial in the sense of defence and security when under siege, an approach that derives from the military. Territoriality took on another special dimension during each of these violent periods. Violence resulted in a re-inscription of the region’s landscape in racial terms. In the late 1960s, Chinese were evicted from the countryside. Though some moved back eventually, most moved permanently to cities. While Dayaks were not confined to the interior, the virtual elimination of Chinese farmers and others gave them more room, and for a short time inscribed the territory as a new kind of ‘Dayak’ territory. Even though the formal status of the land left behind by the Chinese was ‘state land’, and much of it was wet paddy fields that Dayaks at the time did not generally want to cultivate, most of it was re-allocated to Dayaks. The sub-district government formed committees with military and village-level members, and the land was distributed. Some Dayaks refused to take such land, calling it ‘land filled with tears’ (Peluso 1996). Many kept it as reserve land for future use; many eventually sold, lent or lost the land to Madurese. Again, this land acquisition was not a goal of the violence but a byproduct – one that had great symbolic value from many sides. Thus in the ensuing thirty years another re-inscription of this interior land emerged, as massive development projects began. Madurese who migrated to the region to build roads, drive pedicabs or engage in other work bought, borrowed or were ‘given’ land by local Dayaks to farm. Madurese preferred sawah to swidden cultivation. At the same time, the national government started to make good its claims to ‘empty land’ and ‘state forest land’, moving in transmigration projects as well as plantation schemes and logging operations. Sambas and Sanggau districts were amongst the most heavily subscribed with transmigration (Hardjono 1977, 1991; Potter 1996; Davidson 1998). Military resettlement areas were also established in Sambas and elsewhere in West Kalimantan. On the Singkawang–Bengkayang road alone, an army transmigration (TransAD) and a police transmigration (TransPol) were established on land formerly held by Dayaks (Peluso 1996). One local Dayak woman described this ethnicized territorialization project as: ‘They sent Chinese out and brought in their own people’. 17 The public ideology of transmigration was a ‘deethnicization’ of land ownership. Many Dayaks – and Chinese – did not see it that way. When the violence in the 1990s took place, Dayaks only fought Madurese, and vice versa. Since many/most Madurese did not live in transmigration areas but in settlements near their fields, organized transmigration cannot be automatically blamed for the violence (Peluso and Harwell 2001). However, violence was territorial because of the patterns in

118 Nancy Lee Peluso which people settled. Many Madurese – but again, not all – clustered in neighbourhoods and hamlets within Dayak and mixed villages. As devout Muslims, some did not want to live near the dogs and pigs Dayaks kept for hunting, food or cash. When the violence took place, Dayaks as well as Madurese burned each other’s houses and levelled whole neighbourhoods. Many Madurese villages/neighbourhoods were entirely erased. When Dayaks reclaimed some of these areas they changed the names of the settlements, just as the government had changed the names of many former Chinese settlements after the 1960s. While in the 1960s violence had thus helped temporarily to re-inscribe the rural landscape as ‘Dayak’, this was not the case in the 1990s. Only Madurese were evicted, and they made up only about 2 per cent of the entire provincial population (HRW 1997). Tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of Javanese, Sundanese and other transmigrants remained. These tactics, movements and territorial assertions, though reminiscent of some of the practices of traditional headhunting and war, are more like the territorial practices of organized modern warfare or terrorizing violence – the echoes of military territorialities deployed there in the 1960s.

Threads of Blood II: the ethnic/racial dimension Both sets of violent incidents in the 1960s (Demonstrasi) and the 1990s (Perang Madura) had clear ethnic or racial dimensions to them. These ethnic dimensions had to do with the ways people mobilized along ethnic lines, which ethnic associations were selected and how victims or common enemies were constructed. The birth of the Borneo Headhunter18 The Borneo Headhunter as a trope – a generic image or metaphor that comes to stand for a whole range of assumed characteristics, practices and beliefs – is a product of the nineteenth century. This is not to say that headhunting as a practice was ‘invented’ during that time, though some claim that it increased with the expanding presence of Europeans in the region (Pringle 1970). It is hard to say whether literature, reportage or ethnographic and political accounts contributed more to the general association. Whatever its heritage, the generic image of the Borneo Headhunter and the things it stood for took on an almost tangible form (and a life of its own) after Europeans started writing about it. The image of the Borneo Headhunter actually underwent subtle changes that paralleled changes in colonial power in Borneo: from fierce, wild and bloodthirsty, to ever more tameable, pacified and romantic (Irwin 1955; Lindblad 1988). However, after colonial regimes on Borneo were replaced by the Indonesian and Malaysian states, the Borneo Headhunter image pulled up from the past was more likely to be a wild one

Passing the red bowl 119 (Pringle 1970; Maxwell 1996; Harwell 2000). While colonial governments may have felt they had pacified the Borneo Headhunters, government officials in New Order Indonesia often acted as if they still needed to be tamed. The label, ‘the former headhunters of Borneo’ accompanies virtually any popular or government description of Dayaks, even three or four generations after pacification and Christianization. More than 100 years after the Borneo Headhunter had colonized the European imagination, Indonesian nationalism brought him back to some of the same forests and villages. In the years and months leading up to the Demonstrasi, Suharto’s military forces first used the trope to create fear and terror amongst the Dayak population. In this region of Western Borneo, many Dayaks claim that Salako and Kanayatn Dayaks did not go to war or practise headhunting except for revenge and retaliation. Why, then, would they be afraid of the symbols of the Borneo Headhunter? These images and stories about the Borneo Headhunter derive from an era that preceded and continued through colonialism – when Dayak groups fought each other. As a mobilizing force, the Borneo Headhunter was thus useful in this region. To respond to the threats from other Dayak groups in the early colonial and pre-colonial periods, Salako and Kanayatn Dayaks of these western districts had their own institutions, practices and violent leaders. This included the position of Panglimas (pangalangok), which roughly translates into ‘general’ (IDRD 1998). These generals could be real fleshand-blood leaders, or perceived as embodied spirits. Human generals were still connected with spiritual beings of war and violence, and often described as ‘possessed’ by the ancestors. Whether or not everyone actually believed in this notion was irrelevant, in the 1960s or the 1990s; the imagery of ancient, ‘cultural’ territorial protectors had come into play. For the ordinary populace, other cultural practices were revived for their protection in battle and in their homes. Amulets and certain rituals were meant to impart invulnerability. Such stories of invoking magic are common all over Indonesia during times of war, but this does not diminish their importance to these events in West Kalimantan. The Borneo Headhunter, as I use it here, is thus not just an image but a whole associated set of stories about the violent cultural dimensions of what is told as a ‘common’ Dayak past. It creates a community by including multiple groups in those common stories. As the details of regional, practical or institutional difference are overlooked, the contemporary ‘memory’ of this common past helps to rewrite the cultural and political history of the region. The 1960s In the 1960s, the military’s strategy in mobilizing Dayaks against Chinese was to have stories of terror and threat seem real by emerging ‘logically’

120 Nancy Lee Peluso from the local cultural milieu. The army had learned that sustained acts of violence by the same individual or by a ‘group’ could incite violent revenge. Using psychological warfare techniques (Klare 1972; Kahin and Kahin 1995), soldiers spread racially-tinged rumours and committed racially-charged crimes aimed at making local Dayaks believe their Chinese neighbours were turning on them. Rumours and ‘frame-ups’ of such actions had to be repeatedly put forward, as many Chinese planters and labourers lived too much like their Dayak neighbours for the Javanese soldiers to guess who was Chinese or Dayak by occupational practice. Also, intermarriage and a long history of generally good or at least accommodating relations had characterized their regional history. Soldiers used images of headhunting, cannibalism and disrespect for ‘Dayak’ customs to enrage the Dayak populace and turn them against those considered more ‘Chinese’ than ‘Dayak’ (Peluso 2003). As part of this process, all Chinese had to be conflated as a single common enemy. Thus those in the rural ‘pond’, and the ‘fish’ hiding in the forests, had to be connected to the terror campaign. There were two ways to do this. The first was to conflate communist members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) or PGRS with ‘communist supporters’. Being a communist supporter was made out to be part of the ‘problem’. The other tactic was to play the Chinese ethnic card and to construct and ‘prove’ ethnic relations to be more tense than they had been. The combination of these two tactics resulted in the conflation of ‘Chinese’ with ‘communist’ in a manner that did not hold true in any other part of Indonesia during the anti-Communist violence of the 1960s. Many stories were circulated and violent acts committed against Dayak leaders, then blamed on Chinese. The son of a former Dayak sub-district officer posted at the border (Seluas Sub-District) in the 1960s during the post-Confrontation period told me the following story of his own experience. The story illustrates one way the Chinese race card and the Borneo Headhunter both constituted critical characters in the same ill-fated story. We [my father and my siblings] were travelling somewhere by army truck, when we were ambushed, the vehicle was shot at. [He shows me an old wound on his leg.] We were injured but no one was killed. We were told it was ‘Chinese guerrillas’ and the army took us to a ‘safe house’, where we stayed for a month. During that time, the word was passed that we had been killed and people became very upset because my father was very beloved. Who actually shot at the vehicle, and who spread the rumours of the killing, remained unclear. But real people known by other real people actually disappeared. With other stories and actual strategic killings, that incident provided part of a traceable set of seemingly logical ‘triggers’ for the subsequent evictions and killings.

Passing the red bowl 121 Why did the general Dayak public go along with this? The populace had been terrorized by the military build-up and fighting and war, and then further terrorized by the military’s mobilization of its most frightening cultural myths and practices. It began to become chillingly clear that if the Dayaks were not with the military, they would be accused of being against them. The military used or threatened violence against the Dayaks to force them to give up the names of ‘Chinese’ or ‘Communists’ and to put violent tactics on display. People reported that captured PGRS were sometimes kept in cages along the roadside, periodically poked and prodded with the bayonets on soldiers’ rifles. Some described incidents in which Dayak youths or middle-aged men were hung by their heels, or had their heads held under water until they provided the names of alleged ‘communists’. Other men, young and old, were recruited by the army for their tracking and shooting abilities and for their knowledge of the forest. They accompanied troops through the forest to the actual boundary with Malaysia. Some returned alive, others dead. While the army always claimed their killers were PGRS, many Dayaks who survived these treks disagreed.19 Local trackers always went first, and if approaching PGRS did not kill them the Indonesian soldiers could shoot them from behind. Perhaps the decision of the ex-governor and other Dayak leaders to pass the red bowl in 1967 was motivated – at least partially – by concerns about how Dayaks would be treated as a whole in the ensuing regime or even more immediately. The Borneo Headhunter was thus a technology of power that could be deployed by people in very different positions relative to the Indonesian state. By making them all allies of the government in the eviction or ‘clean-up’ of the Chinese, the military provided the various sub-groups of Dayaks all over the province with a common cultural experience, a common historical memory of struggle at the time of the New Order’s birth. Dayaks had to use the ethnic card themselves – a marker of difference – to do so. The 1990s 20 While the military in West Kalimantan was actively engaged in creating this kind of atmosphere in the 1960s, it was not a necessary vector in the 1990s. Participants in the violence – and all kinds of observers from the press to the government, NGOs and others – launched and carried it out themselves. The image, of course, had quite an active life of its own. This independent life could also be used to their advantage; it could be used to deny agency. The image could be used to deny and cover up agency by both Dayak participants and the military. Moreover, the military could turn around the explanation of violence in the history of the region to justify maintaining regional military commands there in the past and the present, by arguing that the province was prone to riots and violence.

122 Nancy Lee Peluso For example, in February 1997 the red bowl was passed but it was not clear who sent it. Nevertheless, the bowl called to war all manner of young and old Dayak men and some women. They embarked across the nowextensive network of roads through villages, plantations, development projects and managed forests to fight Madurese. Because they also felt under attack by Madurese, Dayaks who remained in their villages described a prevailing atmosphere of great fear. They described this atmosphere as punctuated by the danger sounds of village gongs, the shrieking of war cries (tariu), the crowds of other Dayaks travelling in vans and trucks, and Madurese roaring into the marketplace on motorcycles or in their own vans. Rumours of imminent Madurese attacks were constant, but also unattributable to particular leaders. As individuals, many of the Dayak participants and local observers of the violence ‘raided their own pasts for images of headhunting’, as Janet Hoskins (1996: 242) shows elsewhere in Indonesia, to describe what happened. No matter that many of the worst stories about the Borneo Headhunter had historical origins in other regions. That generic image of Dayak violence had great strategic value. ‘Traditional’ Dayak rituals of warmaking were mixed up with the counter-insurgency tactics and techniques used by the Indonesian army during the 1960s. Dayaks themselves, as well as missionaries, government officials and ethnographers, were freely writing and talking about the specifics of ‘their traditions’, explaining why Dayak cultural practices – the same violent Borneo Headhunter who had been prodded and poked and misrepresented by the military in the 1960s – remained relevant on the verge of the twenty-first century (Yeremias 1997; IDRD 1998; ISAI and IDRD 1999). Practices and images associated with headhunting emerged repeatedly in the unfolding and telling of these events by Dayaks and non-Dayaks alike. Dayaks used hunting metaphors to describe what happened when they were possessed. The practice – and language – of ‘hunting down’ Madurese who had fled to ‘the forest’ (what were now intensivelymanaged forest gardens and rubber plantations) in the months after the worst violence also paralleled the ‘tracking’ and ‘hunting down’ of PGRS in the jungles for the seven years following Demonstrasi. Yet the concept of Dayak community was forged even stronger, as most Dayaks claimed that this was war. This creation of a common Dayak political identity through anonymous ‘community-based’ violence became particularly salient in the 1990s. While ‘Dayak’ as a term to refer to all interior non-Muslim, native people of Borneo goes back to the early years of Dutch anthropology (Veth 1854–1856), it was not until recently embraced as a positive rather than a pejorative descriptor (Harwell 2000). The role of violence in cementing this identity becomes evident when listening to people retell the violent stories of the 1990s. Calling oneself ‘Dayak’ today is an intentional move in the cultural politics of subjectivity.

Passing the red bowl 123 Constructing the enemy: Madurese and Chinese Dayak violence – and, in the 1960s, military violence – was directed at people with collective ethnic identities that had been negatively constructed throughout Indonesia, especially in Java. These targets were Chinese in the 1960s and Madurese in the 1990s. Nationally, Chinese had been (and still are) constructed broadly as ‘predators’ and ‘landlords.’ Yet the history of the Chinese in West Kalimantan until 1967 was very different from that of the other regions of Indonesia (Veth 1854; Coppel 1983; Davidson 1998; Peluso and Harwell 2001). At the time of the violence, there were more poor Chinese than rich ones – many labourers and small farmers as well as many who had never been to a city as large as Singkawang, let alone Pontianak. As mentioned above, their demonization as ‘communists’ or ‘communist supporters’, and the explicit labelling as resident aliens (WNA), were all tactics meant to separate them from Indonesian citizens – even if they had become Indonesian citizens (see, for example, Soemadi 1974). Indeed, historically, tensions in West Kalimantan had been more serious between Dayaks and Malays than between Chinese and Dayaks (Avé et al. 1983). In the 1960s, the entire rural population of West Kalimantan became a target of suspicion. The Chinese were the most directly targeted; other groups became different kinds of victims and players. As Coppel wrote in 1983, many political ideologies and loyalties both divided and brought together the Chinese of rural West Kalimantan. Notions of national borders, political and cultural allegiance, and citizenship also plagued the Chinese residents. PGRS, overseas Chinese nationals, and Chinese who were Indonesian citizens alike were in a sense de-territorialized because of their particular ties to Indonesia, the PRC and Taiwan, and their history in the Netherlands Indies. When they became citizens, they had to carry special cards to indicate their status as Indonesian citizens (WNI); if not citizens, they had to carry special cards to indicate their alien status (WNA). Some people were caught up in the greater regional politics, particularly between the PRC and Taiwan. This led to questions about their loyalty to Indonesia (Coppel 1983). Although they were descendants of other immigrants who had transformed forest and swamp to irrigated fields or gardens that they cultivated continuously, the Dutch excluded them as full rights holders in the land by the 1870 Agrarian Act. By the 1990s (and well before) the Madurese had in turn been demonized as a group all over Indonesia – as thieves and as violence-prone. Seemingly everyone told ‘Madurese stories’ about losses or having a knife pulled on them by a ‘hot-tempered Madurese’. Symbolic of this is a police officer’s statement that ‘four out of five criminals arrested for theft or violence in their Singkawang station was Madurese’.21 Whether this ‘statistic’ is true or not, it shows the power of a violently stereotyped identity that

124 Nancy Lee Peluso was well-known and reinforced both through national government actors and institutions, as well as in national discourses of ethnic subjects. The relationship of many West Kalimantan Dayaks with each of these ethnically defined ‘common enemies’ was also very different. As described above, most Dayaks in the 1960s had to be convinced over the course of several years, and then threatened, tortured or made examples of, before the army could mobilize them as a group against the Chinese. In the 1990s, it took almost no effort for Dayaks to mobilize other Dayaks against Madurese. The military and police did not have to demonize the Madurese as a racial group, or construct them as a single homogeneous entity. Unlike the Chinese, Madurese all spoke the same language, and practised the same religion – Islam – and many shared a common history of relatively recent migration to Kalimantan. By 1996, Madurese had been locally constructed as ‘enemies’ because of the abovementioned history of violent acts by individual Madurese against local Dayaks. Cultural stereotypes dominated the telling of these stories of violence and Dayaks’ interpretations of their meanings.

Threads of Blood III: the role of the press Although it is impossible here to detail the myriad ways the press has perpetuated and re-invented the trope of the Borneo Headhunter, I cannot avoid some mention of it (Peluso 2003). Indeed, if the key to understanding the relationship between the 1960s and the 1990s is the redeployment, re-referencing and (arguably) re-inventing of violent cultural stereotypes, the press has been a central actor. In the 1960s, this trope and the tropes of ‘his’ invented enemies hid the military and territorial dimensions of the violence from a popular audience in Jakarta and overseas. These audiences had already been primed to accept the primitive violence being ‘documented’ in Kalimantan – the nineteenth-century Borneo Headhunter had already captured their imaginations. In the 1990s, the trope and the new ‘victims’ (the Madurese) were sensationalized in many media accounts. However, as mentioned for the nineteenth century, it was not only the press that invoked this early image. Dayaks deployed the image in multiple ways to display a claim on this ethnicized symbol of terror, violence and power, while journalists, human rights observers and other government and non-government actors used it simply to ‘identify’ people, to ‘contextualize’ complex stories of communal violence in simplistic images of a poorly understood and ultimately misrepresented cultural history. Notes from the Staf Chusus Urusan Tjina (SCUT) report of 1968 indicate that these cultural images were purposively deployed (Republik Indonesia 1969: 37–9).22 Moreover, as soon as the violence began in West Kalimantan, a reporter from Kompas went to ‘document’ what he saw. In order to travel around Kalimantan during this military ‘clean-up’ opera-

Passing the red bowl 125 tion, however, he had to disguise himself as a soldier. He is shown in a picture accompanying one of these articles in his army clothes, arm thrown around a Dayak ‘friend’ in an eerie image that evokes the notion of an alliance between the national government and the Dayaks (Widodo 1967b). Given the travel restrictions of the times, however, his trip to West Kalimantan might not have been possible without the blessing – or invitation – of the military. With this in mind, it is critical to understand the era’s constraints on journalists. In the 1990s the situation was a much more Foucaultian one, in which the images of a violent past emerged from many different contexts and from journalists of different sensitivities and experiences. Intentional or not, their evocations tended instantly to stereotype all the actors under discussion. At one end of the spectrum of sensationalized ‘investigative’ reporting was a reporter from the London Independent who travelled to Kalimantan, ‘to find evidence of real headhunting’ – which, not surprisingly, he managed to find despite his lack of any Indonesian language ability (Parry 1998). Even more shocking was the facility with which a major literary journal, Granta, picked up the piece. At the other end of the spectrum were those reporters who tried to report events in a nuanced manner, but could not resist the temptation to ‘explain’ who these ‘Dayaks’ were with a single reference to ‘the former . . .’, ‘the notorious . . .’ or ‘the fierce . . .’ Borneo Headhunters. Such apparently innocent parenthetical phrases or ‘expository’ clauses were enough to evoke the whole panoply of associations and assumptions. The impact of the press is even more insidious in the ways many reporters use their articles to rewrite history. Some reporters claim righteously to write only what they witness, but their explanations are framed through pre-fit lenses that limit how they see. The choice of a phrase, the determination of an ‘angle’, the editors’ selection of a photograph – all these create a ‘reality’ that confirms not only the historic myth of the generic Borneo Headhunter but also re-sets the stage for the modern acts of violence being re-enacted and re-invented by new Dayaks in new parts of Kalimantan, even as this chapter is being written. Young Dayaks from Central Kalimantan did not learn to put heads on drums or poles by sitting around the fire with ‘the elders’, as one Washington Post reporter half-suggested, half-inquired of me. They saw it in the newspaper, on the TV, heard it on the radio when it was reported from West Kalimantan. Old headhunters, if nothing else, would certainly have treated heads with a great deal more respect. But these new battles, of course, are not headhunting, they are ‘war’.

Conclusion: violence, wildness, modernity, citizenship I have argued here that the 1960s war and its aftermath taught local people that ethnicized images of wildness and violence can be effective

126 Nancy Lee Peluso tools in war. However, acting out a piece of a violent past, both temporally and culturally out of context, can have important and certainly unintended political implications. As Foucault and Gramsci have taught us, the deployment of images is a power tactic and the image-tactic lives on, shaping possible future interpretations, shaping possible framings of knowledge. Both colonial and postcolonial national actors have used wild images of Dayaks against Dayaks as subjects and citizens, while at the same time expropriating their resources, or otherwise disempowering them. It is not coincidental, I would argue, that in 1967 the Indonesian government passed the Foreign Investment Act and Forestry Act No. 5. These laws enabled foreign companies to set up extractive timber operations in Kalimantan’s forest. Kalimantan was divided into hundreds of overlapping timber concessions, many of which were allocated to the armed forces as a sign of gratitude from the Suharto government for their service. Moreover, the stage for Suharto’s ‘development’ regime was largely set in the late 1960s. Through jungle wars, images of the Borneo Headhunter and the creation of the political forest in West Kalimantan, the Suharto regime tried to take control of the province’s people and forests. Dayaks of course have the biggest stake of all in nuanced, complex representations of themselves and their identity as some sort of political community. Yet, in representing themselves and their histories, contemporary Dayaks conflate information from their own group’s oral traditions and from ethnographers’ representations of themselves and other Dayak groups; they also borrow ideas put forth by the state, by journalists and even by Orientalist colonials. The sources of information about Dayak pasts are thus inextricably entangled and murky. Given the powerful life this image of the Borneo Headhunter has had on its own, in some ways it seems that contemporary Dayaks have been ‘borrowed’ by the historical image as well. It seems, moreover, that New Order policies created ethnicity and regionalism as primary sites of violence, even while criminalizing the writing or discussion of ethnic conflict. Class and political party were destroyed as means of talking and thinking about difference and struggle by Suharto’s rise to power. Talking ‘class’ associated one with a political left that had been systematically eliminated within months of Suharto’s taking over; the political left remained a criminal political position throughout his thirty-two years of rule. Talking ‘party’ was no longer possible, because most political parties were also criminalized. What remained, therefore, was an oddly constrained ethnicity and regional identity – the smouldering embers from a colonial period that reified and conflated ethnic identity and territory (Burns 1989; cf. Holleman 1981). Though legally eliminated, legal pluralism based on ethnicity or ‘race’ retained a great deal of local currency. This was particularly true where whole sets of people felt excluded from both the benefits of development,

Passing the red bowl 127 and the political participation promised by their Indonesian citizenship and participation in the violent construction of the New Order. Dayaks all over West Kalimantan have felt excluded. The West Kalimantan violence thus has not been about secession from Indonesia, as in some other regions. The violence may partially have been about the terms of citizenship, a demand to recognize local property rights, and a striking-out against people – a stereotyped cultural group - they claim did not recognize them as equal citizens even in ‘their own territory’. Although space limitations prevent my discussing this in detail, these factors partly explain why other migrant groups were not attacked (Peluso and Harwell 2001).23 In this chapter, I have illustrated a sub-set of connections between the violent events of the 1990s and the wars of the 1960s. A more complete explanation of these connections still remains to be made. As memories of the 1960s wars fade, the construction of Dayaks as wild or as common descendants of a generic ‘Borneo Headhunter’ serves as an historical basis for this imagined community. Unfortunately, when ‘wildness’ is systematically marshalled, embodied and publicly displayed – as Dayaks have done both in West and Central Kalimantan – the image and its implications live on. After the violence subsides, the image – and the violent acts committed – will continue to haunt these claimants to the Borneo rainforest. As they have in the past, these wild images and practices may provide the basis for the Indonesian government to deny Dayaks opportunities to participate in Indonesia’s future beyond what they can violently demand.

Notes 1 A version of this paper was presented at the Australian Association for Asian Studies conference in Melbourne, 6 July 2000. I am grateful for funding provided by Charles Coppel enabling my travel to that conference. Subsequent comments on earlier drafts of this paper were provided by Charles Coppel, Denise Leto and Peter Zinoman, whose advice I valued highly. I have also benefited from extensive interaction with Emily Harwell and Christine Padoch about Dayaks and community in West Kalimantan. They are, of course, not responsible for the interpretations and shortcomings of this chapter. 2 There was violence between Madurese and Dayaks at various times through the 1970s and 1980s, even as early as 1968. See HRW (1997) and IDRD (1998). 3 The term is Ana Maria Alonso’s (1995). 4 ‘Demonstrasi Cina’ is what Dayak informants call these events today. During the events, many of the reports (Feith 1968) referred to it as ‘Demonstrasi Dayak’, which was more likely the military’s desired representation – i.e., that Dayaks were ‘demonstrating’ against the Chinese. 5 In referring to ‘the 1990s’, I am referring to the first major incidents in 1996–1997 only; I am not including the 1999 violence. 6 Many early commentators on ‘Dayak’ cultural practice asserted that the cultural characteristic that bound them together as a single ethnic (or ‘racial’) type was their practice of headhunting. Though the writers acknowledged that the different extents, contexts, practices, rituals and relative importance of

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headhunting varied widely, its existence was a common cultural marker. Anna Tsing (1996) disputes headhunting’s ubiquity, particularly amongst ‘Dayaks’ in the Meratus mountains of South Kalimantan. This section is summarized from Peluso and Harwell (2001). The main areas affected were the Districts (Kabupaten) of Sambas, Pontianak and Sanggau. It is often forgotten that ‘development’ was initially a very clear counterinsurgency tactic, particularly in this part of the world. However, whereas the efforts to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the rural populations of Malaya – where the strategy had its origins in the communist uprisings of the early 1950s – were real efforts to provide rural services and employment or land acquisition opportunities, in Kalimantan, development was much more large-scale, government-sponsored extraction. Interview with priest at Catholic Church, Singkawang, October 1998. Chinese refugees were housed in makeshift quarters – old rubber warehouses and barracks left over from Confrontation – in the towns of Singkawang and Bengkayang. Of those who reached Pontianak, Feith reported that some 15,000 were encamped in public buildings, schools and churches, 12,000 were with families and 21,000 were still in the Singkawang area (1998: 134). Everywhere shortages of food, money, medical supplies, and jobs led to further deaths (Kompas reports, November 1967–February 1968; Poerwanto 1990: 207–9; HRW 1997: 11; author’s interviews, 1993, 1997). Interviews in the 1990s revealed that some Chinese, married to locals or for other reasons, were hidden and protected before and after the violence. Feith (1968: 134) reported that some 1,500 of the earlier refugees returned to their regions in the early months of 1968. PP10, the presidential decree that precluded Chinese trade in rural areas, was meant to ‘legitimate’ the violent evictions. It had been passed in 1959, however, and virtually never implemented in West Kalimantan. Interview with Dayak leader, Montrado October, 1998; see also Peluso and Harwell (2001). Of course, the irony of this was in the enabling of wealthy Chinese Indonesian investors to take on major contracts, concessions and corporations in the immediate aftermath of this violence. See Anderson (1983) and Winters (1995). During 1965–1966, units of the KKO, the police Mobile Brigade and RPKAD took part in operations in Borneo, as did units of the Siliwangi, Diponegoro and Brawijaya divisions of the army (Dennis and Grey 1996). An important element in enabling the army to keep control of ground operations in Borneo was the fact that from late 1964 all army combat forces destined for Kalimantan were transferred first to KOSTRAD, under Major-General Suharto. Interview, October 1998. This section is excerpted from Peluso 2003. Author’s interviews, October 1998. These incidents were recounted to the author by eyewitnesses, participants, and bystanders in interviews conducted in 1997 and 1998. Interview, October 1998. I am grateful to Charles Coppel for providing me with some of the notes he took on this report from the Bureau of Chinese Affairs. There is no ‘smoking gun’ connecting this violence directly to transmigration, nor are displacement arguments alone persuasive.

8

The Maluku wars ‘Communal contenders’ in a failing state1 Gerry van Klinken

Throughout the Suharto era, among the most useful tools of political scientists were Latin American corporatist models of the all-pervasive state. However, the Maluku conflict forces us to re-examine these long-held convictions. Today nobody talks corporatism, and observers are looking for other heuristic aids. Perhaps we should be looking at Africa’s failed states. According to a comprehensive study of communal conflict around the world conducted by Ted Gurr and his colleagues, 42 per cent of subSaharan Africans belong to a politicized communal group. Their leaders manipulate ethnicity not in order to break away from the state but to grab a bigger share of state power for themselves. Gurr labels this kind of conflict the ‘communal contenders’ (Gurr 1993).2 A ‘communal contenders’ perspective assumes a situationalist (or instrumentalist) view of ethnicity rather than a primordialist one (Brown 1994). This chapter argues that the Maluku religious violence can best be seen as the result of an interaction between long-term ‘primordialist’ social pathologies and a short-term instrumentalization of those pathologies in the context of intra-elite competition at the local level. Religious passions were mobilized at certain precise times (elections, the inauguration of a new province) and in certain exact locations (within the bounds of Maluku province). Elites were able to do the mobilizing largely because society in Maluku was hierarchically structured into competing religious segments. Inherently hierarchical clientelist models of politics in Indonesia have a long history, and their importance becomes apparent once more today. Highlighting the role of patronage networks in state–society articulation at the provincial level helps move the analytical focus away from Jakartacentric concepts of a highly centralized state to more disaggregated ones. The unstable nature of these local networks in a moment of regime transition provides, in this analysis, the key to understanding Maluku’s wars. There are clearly global aspects to the reduced ability of the central state to impose its will in Maluku, but these fall outside the scope of this chapter (van Klinken 2001).

130 Gerry van Klinken

The story in a nutshell The human cost We need to use the plural ‘wars’ because there were a great number of violent incidents. They can be broadly grouped into Ambon-related fighting in the south of Maluku province from January 1999 onwards, and North Maluku fighting following the establishment of a new province there in the second half of 1999. Estimates of casualties and internally displaced people from the Maluku wars of 1999–2000 are very sketchy. By September 1999, before North Maluku had assumed serious proportions, the Jakarta-based humanitarian and human rights organization Kontras estimated that 1,349 had died because of inter-communal violence and repressive action by security forces since 19 January 1999 (detikcom 1999). The North Maluku conflict was bloodier than that centred on Ambon. The North Maluku provincial government said that, between October 1999 and 20 March 2000, 2,004 had died, 1,769 had been injured and 2,315 had disappeared or run away into the jungle (Antara 2000). These figures were consistent with other published estimates. For the entire Maluku conflict, a figure of 3,000–4,000 deaths by early 2000 was perhaps not far off the mark, with more than half of those occurring in just a few days in North Maluku, as estimated by the Catholic bishop of Ambon (Jakarta Post 2000e). These mortality figures are higher than those estimated for Aceh over a similar period at the height of the 1989–1992 rebellion, and higher than those in the West Kalimantan unrest of 1997, which (apart from the East Timor invasion) were the worst cases of collective violence since Indonesia’s 1965–1966 bloodbath. The number of internally displaced persons due to the conflict, meanwhile, was put at between 123,000 and 370,000 (Government of the Republic of Indonesia and International Agencies 2000: 8, 17). These figures are comparable to the number displaced by the East Timor crisis in late 1999, which received overwhelming world attention.

Ambon Violence between majority Muslims (about 85 per cent nationally) and minority Christians has been rare in Indonesian history. When it did occur, it was usually a side-effect of anger against (often Christian) Chinese shopkeepers. However, the end of the New Order was marked by an increasing number of Muslim–Christian incidents. On 10 October 1996 all the churches in Situbondo, East Java, were destroyed or damaged in the space of a few hours. On 22 November 1998 fighting broke out between Protestants and Muslims in Ketapang, central Jakarta, in which fourteen were killed and twenty-seven Christian buildings damaged. On 30 November 1998 a demonstration in sympathy with Christian victims of Ketapang turned into an anti-

The Maluku wars 131 Muslim riot that damaged or destroyed fifteen mosques and many shops in Kupang. The latter two incidents were much discussed around eastern Indonesia, where Christians outnumber Muslims in some localities. Several disturbing confrontations also took place within Maluku – the biggest a riot in Dobo, south-east Maluku, on 14 January 1999, leaving eight dead. On 19 January 1999 fighting broke out between gangs of young men in the Batumerah transport terminal in the heart of Ambon city, the hub and capital of Maluku province (Human Rights Watch Asia 1999). It was the holiest day in the Islamic calendar, Idul Fitri. Unlike previous such fights, this time the trouble soon spread throughout the city, especially in lower-class areas. Although at first it tended to be defined (especially by Christian Ambonese) as a fight against largely Muslim non-Ambonese ‘newcomers’, the fight quickly acquired a purely religious character of Muslim versus Christian regardless of place of origin. Fire was a major weapon; homes and houses of worship belonging to adherents of minority religions in any particular area were torched by the hundreds. Fighting broke out in many places around the southern part of the archipelagic province of Maluku. Sometimes local elites – village heads, district heads – were named as direct protagonists. More violence broke out in Tual, capital of the regency (kabupaten) of East Southeast Maluku, on another date with religious significance: 31 March 1999 fell three days after the Muslim Idul Adha festival and two days before the Christian Good Friday. Vicious fighting, between neighbouring villages but spoken of in Protestant (‘Christian’) versus Muslim terms, soon left hundreds dead and tens of thousands displaced from their homes. Lesser incidents broke out in many other villages around the far-flung regency. On 24 July serious fighting broke out in the city’s middle-class suburb of Poka. Ignoring the many smaller incidents that had occurred after the Idul Fitri event (including the expulsion of all Christians from the beautiful Banda Islands in late April), Ambonese called this the Second Riot. It soon spread back to the centre of Ambon city. The largely Chinese-owned business district along A. J. Patty Street was devastated. As in January, militants attempted without success to reach the symbolic heart of the enemy side – the Al Fatah mosque and the Maranatha Protestant church respectively, separated in space by just 300 metres but in the imagination by a yawning gulf of hatred. The Second Riot proved more shocking than the first to members of the more educated middle class, who told me it destroyed the optimism they had held till then that reconciliation remained possible. The Third Riot in Ambon once more took place near a religious holiday – 26 December 1999, the day after Christmas. Within five days, seventy people were reported dead. The Fourth Riot took place in June 2000, and again killed about fifty. Whereas in January 1999 no one outside the police and armed forces had modern firearms and only a few used primitive homemade guns, by

132 Gerry van Klinken December both sides had acquired semi-automatic rifles from sources that remained largely mysterious, and clandestine workshops were producing sophisticated rifles that used military ammunition. Homemade bombs were in abundant supply. The legacy was a deeply segregated society, but not one in which either side ‘controlled’ more territory than could be expected, based on the religious distribution of the population. Ambon’s economy lay in ruins. Displaced persons had no visible prospect of returning to their homes if they belonged to a local minority religion. North Maluku North Maluku initially remained largely free of conflict, but during 18–20 August 1999 fighting broke out between neighbouring villages at Kao and Malifut on the western side of Kao Bay on Halmahera’s northern peninsula (Tomagola 1999; Alhadar 2000; Nanere 2000). The quarrel concerned a government plan announced late in June 1999 to create a new governmental district (kecamatan) in Malifut, a plan Kao leaders rejected. The Kao, Jailolo and Tobelo people who inhabited the villages near Kao are indigenous to this peninsula, and say they are traditionally ‘allied’ to the Sultan of Ternate. They are also mostly Protestant. The inhabitants of Malifut, meanwhile, were transmigrants from Makian Island south of Ternate. Makian are apparently well represented in the provincial bureaucracy, they are Muslim, and they do not have the same affection for the Sultan of Ternate. To make matters more explosive, an Australiandiscovered gold mine had started operations in mid-1999 in Kao territory, and many Kao suspected the Makian of wanting to control local revenue and employment in the mine by incorporating it in their new district. Moreover, by August 1999 it seemed certain that North Maluku would become a province in its own right – in response to a long-standing demand from North Malukan elites. The change heightened tensions among these same elites for the spoils of office. These tensions crystallized around the sultanates of Ternate and Tidore, traditional institutions officially recognized only as ‘customary leaders’ but evidently still capable of invoking considerable loyalty despite a century of ‘modern’ government in North Maluku. For them, control over territory was the key to strategic success. The August 1999 incident left several dead on each side, and hundreds of houses burned down. Makian refugees trickled into Ternate and Tidore. The issue then lay dormant until it exploded again on 24 October 1999. The entire Makian settlement was burned to the ground. All 8,000 Makian who lived there became refugees. On their way to their own island of Makian, they spent time in Ternate (but in its southern part, where loyalties to Tidore are strong) as well as Tidore. There their stories of woe fuelled the anger against Christians of any sort that had already been

The Maluku wars 133 inflamed by the year’s events in Ambon. Christians fled from there to North Sulawesi, where their numbers eventually reached 13,000 (one report says 22,800). Many were civil servants (including desperately needed teachers) or in private business. On 27 December, Protestant Christians in Tobelo, the second area of local Christian dominance besides Kao, attacked several Muslim transmigration villages in the nearby district of Galela and massacred between 400 and 500 people – mostly women and children – in two mosques. It was the worst single massacre in the Maluku wars (Reuters 2000). Reports of the massacre enormously strengthened the determination of militant Islamic groups in Ternate as well as Java to wreak vengeance on Christians remaining in North Halmahera. Local elites were directly implicated in the violence. The sultans of Ternate and of Tidore each controlled ‘traditional troops’ (pasukan adat), essentially private armies that they brought into play at crucial moments, when instead they should have called on the state apparatus to restore order.

Why Jakarta didn’t do it The view that Jakarta elites were responsible for the Ambon tragedy remains widespread, but I think it is wrong. Most often thought of as the provokator par excellence was an unreformed military, presumably financed by Suharto and his Golkar and ‘crony’ old guard brought in to destabilize the newly democratic governments in Jakarta and thus hasten the return of military dominance. However, the evidence for an intelligence operation in Ambon is not convincing. The military names that were mentioned were those of Ambonese actors trying to influence Jakarta, rather than the reverse. Indeed, the more the military provocateur theorists wagged their heads at the ‘sophistication’ of the Jakarta intelligence operation for its ability to exploit pre-existing tensions, the less convincing their case became. Jakarta intelligence does not have a record of local sensitivity. This is not to say the security apparatus did not do well out of Ambon. In March and again in December 1999, the military temporarily took over control of security from the newly-independent police force. In May 1999 Maluku was made a new military area command (kodam) – the first such reorganization in a decade and a half. The Maluku police, meanwhile, had their organizational status lifted from ‘type C’ to ‘type B’ in November 1999 to cope with the crisis. Both developments meant more personnel and equipment, higher ranks, and more funding for the army and police. On 27 June 2000, martial law (technically a ‘civil emergency’) was declared in the region under a 1959 law. The military solution was adopted after strong urging by local Ambon elites, perhaps especially but not exclusively the Muslim ones. It implied a serious reversal of the democratic progress that had been achieved elsewhere in Indonesia.

134 Gerry van Klinken However, the security apparatus performed poorly. There were numerous instances of soldiers and police taking sides, and even shooting at one another across the front line in Ambon city. In a pattern notoriously familiar to students of East Timor, new troops did not fall clearly under the local territorial command. As each unit came under public scrutiny for its failures, it would be replaced with another. All this surely amounted to the failure of a vastly over-rated organization, indeed a failure of the state, rather than a devious plan hatched in Jakarta to create unrest. Another much-discussed Jakarta connection was political thugs (preman) (Far Eastern Economic Review 1999). The link between high politics and street-level criminality in Jakarta and other big cities around Indonesia is intimate (Barker 1998; Ryter 1998). Maluku toughs are prominent in the Jakarta gang scene. The arrival of several hundred Christian hooligans in Ambon city after losing a Jakarta turf battle just before the outbreak of fighting certainly helped raise tensions there. However, just like the controversy in May and June 2000 over Islamic fighters (laskar jihad) from Java who were going to Ambon and North Maluku to help defend their brethren against the Christians, and like the allegation that separatist rebels (RMS) had come to Ambon from their exile in the Netherlands just as the fighting started, something is wrong with our perspective if we think of these outside thugs (or outside laskar, or outside separatist rebels) as the end of a tangled thread that, if we follow it to Jakarta, will help us make sense of the Maluku wars. To understand the Maluku wars we must abandon the Jakarta-centric perspective and embrace the one thing that makes Maluku such an important, if depressing, case study for post-New Order Indonesia – its fundamentally local character. The sheer inability of anyone in Jakarta to come up with any constructive ideas on how to resolve the Maluku crisis throughout 1999, other than to form yet another ‘team’ to pester the locals with more inane questions, should have warned us that Jakarta was not the master key to understanding Maluku.

A bottom-up view There were a lot of young men in Ambon whose one hope for material security in life lay in getting a job in the public service, and who knew that to get one they had to have the right connections. To approach the problem of communal violence from below we therefore need to begin with some demographics, move on to employment patterns, and then describe the way in which valuable goods such as employment in the civil service are exchanged across Maluku’s social landscape. As will become apparent, they are exchanged not in meritocratic ways but through patronage networks marked by place, religion and social hierarchy. Such patronage networks lie at the heart of the Indonesian polity and explain its volatility at moments of regime change.

The Maluku wars 135 Urban Malukan society is extraordinarily young. Where contemporary industrial society has sometimes substantially less than 40 per cent of its population under twenty-five years of age, and where Java comes in at around 50 per cent, that figure in Maluku stands at just under 60 per cent, and locally can climb even higher (Supas 1995; UN Statistical Office 1995). Many of them, moreover, were out of work, even before the economic crisis of 1998. Benteng, for example, on the western outskirts of Ambon city, had 73.2 per cent of the population listed as not (yet) employed in 1994. This high figure included children, of whom there were a lot (33 per cent under the age of fifteen), but this still seems to amount to a great deal of unemployment (Alfons 1994: 39, 45). Of those who were employed, these admittedly fragmentary statistics further suggest a high dependence on the civil service in some Protestant Ambon city suburbs, whereas Muslim suburbs tend to depend on the private sector. In Benteng, for example, 71 per cent of those who did work were in the public service. Before the violence broke out, Benteng was 71.5 per cent Christian (52.7 per cent Protestant, the remainder Catholic). By contrast, in the inner-city suburb of Batumerah (75.7 per cent Muslim) less than 8 per cent of the working population was employed in the public service, while 77.8 per cent were either selfemployed traders (pedagang) or in business (wiraswasta) (I have no figures on unemployment there) (Latulumamina 1996: 40–1). Civil service employment is secure, and most Indonesians regard it as desirable for that reason. However, recruitment is notoriously corrupt, and this makes competition for such positions a volatile matter. If we roughly eliminate Maluku’s rural working population by taking out those employed in agriculture (which includes fisheries), then we can estimate the proportion of the urban workforce employed in the civil service. In Maluku, the figure for 1998 came to a high 21.6 per cent – more than double the national average of 8.5 per cent (Statistik Indonesia 1998: Tables 3.2.5 and 3.2.15). Maluku also shows a high provincial dependence on central government handouts and contracts (Barlow and Hardjono 1996: 6). If we add the 1998 economic crisis, which may have imposed a bigger burden on civil-service-dependent Christians than on private-sectordependent Muslims, then we can sense the potential for considerable tension between young men of neighbouring suburbs, and also of a religious nature. Indeed, both Benteng and Batumerah, lying near suburbs with a different religious majority, saw much fighting in 1999. Religion and place are important in the lives of Maluku’s inhabitants. They make it more difficult to establish a civil society in which citizenship is not conditional on either. The proportion of Muslims in Maluku province as a whole has grown from 49.9 per cent in 1971, through 54.8 per cent in 1985, to 56.8 per cent in 1990.3 Thus Muslims form a slight but growing majority

136 Gerry van Klinken throughout Maluku, while Protestants continue to make up a local majority in Ambon city, and Catholics in south-east Maluku. Catholicism and traditional religion are insignificant everywhere except in south-east Maluku. Maluku is one of the few regions in majority Muslim Indonesia where Christians do make up local majorities. Others can be found in Irian Jaya, East Nusa Tenggara, North Sulawesi, North Sumatra and some parts of Kalimantan. Bloody Idul Fitri (19 January 1999) opened the conflict, and we have already noted the importance of the religious calendar at other key moments in the conflict. Millenarian fears may have played a role too, especially (but not only) in Christian circles. Most villages take pride in either a huge church or a similarly impressive mosque that forms its centrepiece. Throughout the 1999 conflict, rumours that houses of worship had been burned down, or that worshippers were massacred while at prayer, repeatedly inspired new violence. Local religious leaders are often older, better educated and better paid than the local government leaders, whom they clearly regard as their social inferiors (Matauseja 1995). Even in urban areas, let alone rural ones, there are no significant voluntary social organizations outside the church or the mosque. In his study of youth in Ternate, Christian Kiem (1993: 87–118) underlined the importance to young lives of Islamic youth organizations. In Ambon at least, such strongly segregated youth socialization leaves its adherents with a sufficiently different vocabulary that locals say they can instantly identify someone’s religion. Near the south-east Maluku town of Tual, P. M. Laksono described a ‘segmentation’ into Christian and Muslim villages that is so complete even the water wells are designated as Perigi Islam or Perigi Kristen. Laksono (1996: 166) concluded darkly that this was a deeply riven society, unable to resolve its differences through everyday dialogue. Maluku’s religious map is the product of a long history in which politics and religion have been closely intertwined. State-funded missionaries sailed out on Portuguese warships in the sixteenth century, part of an imperial strategy to win the lucrative spice trade by means of arms and political manipulation. Not always reluctantly, Dutch Protestant missionaries continued the game of winning Asian hearts and minds for the tiny Netherlands by winning them for God. From the early nineteenth century, the colonial administration paid more to recruit Protestant Ambonese men as soldiers than they did Javanese, because the former were seen to have greater loyalty to the House of Orange (Chauvel 1990). So many accepted the offer to join not merely the army but also the corps of teachers and civil servants all over the Indies, that Chauvel wrote of the emergence of a new ‘middle class’ in Ambon. It was entirely Christian, and worshipped in the state-run Indische Kerk.

The Maluku wars 137 Ambonese soldiers had been sent in to fight Dutch colonial battles against other Indonesians so often that when Indonesia became independent they were afraid of retribution. In 1950, they led a South Maluku revolt against Jakarta. It failed. By the late Suharto era, powerful interests in Jakarta had increasingly come to regard not Christians but Muslims as ‘loyal and dependable’. In that sense, the Maluku wars of 1999–2000 may be seen as a much-delayed reaction to the political changes since 1950. Religion is not the only cleavage within Maluku society. Place – the village or kampung – retains an autonomy that surprises visitors from Java. David Mearns (1999) has shown in a study on Ambon kampong that origin myths and place magic remain potent and serve to separate ‘outsiders’ from ‘insiders’. ‘That even President Habibie can apparently have been fooled into believing that Ambon was an example of mutual tolerance for the rest of the nation prior to the outbreak of the terrible violence’, Mearns concluded, ‘only adds to the tragedy’. Village heads in this part of Maluku, to this day retaining the reverential title ‘kings’ (raja negeri) in a terminology frozen since Dutch colonial times, can tell stories with gusto about inter-village battles that took place in the seventeenth century. The way place, religious community and the patronage ties that flowed through them fed the fighting in Ambon became somewhat clearer to me when an Ambonese non-government organization (NGO) activist, a young Muslim outraged by the bloodshed, showed me a map he had drawn. On it were marked the red and white militia posts (posko) situated near the front line as it snaked through Ambon city. As might be expected, some were held by local men. However, most were occupied by men not from the city but from famous ‘fighting’ villages in the hinterland, either Protestant or Muslim. This map of a city at war showed that different localities in it had robust identities as being either Protestant or Muslim. Moreover, these identities were constantly reinforced by ties of obligation to co-religionist villages in the hinterland. The rural end of the clientelist bargain was to live up to a ‘tradition’ of martial valour with a religious flavour, while the urban end consisted of providing access to money and jobs. This social landscape became the setting for the Ambon violence. Most of the ‘fighting’ hinterland villages themselves have long memories of conflict with neighbouring villages of the opposite religion. Land titles are one source of conflict – the system is still largely village-based and cannot readily handle non-local landowners. A case can be mounted for the argument that the Maluku conflict represents a resurgence of a ‘Malay’ political pattern that predates the arrival of the centralized modern state, one characterized by many small centres of power with local bases. However, that would overlook the importance of the (weak) central state, which by its very weakness lends vehemence to irregular, clientelist forms of competition for control over its resources.

138 Gerry van Klinken The third important type of cleavage is a closed social stratification system in many areas that separates a hereditary aristocracy from commoners. Among the Kei people who dominate south-east Maluku, these social segments (Laksono refused to use the term ‘castes’) are known as mel-mel (or orang kaya, sometimes but not quite appropriately known as the nobility), ren-ren (commoners) and iri-iri (slaves). In his study of intra-elite dynamics at the regional parliamentary assembly in south-east Maluku, Jusuf Madubun noted the absolute dominance up to the present day of the ascriptive mel-mel segment within the formal institutions of power (Madubun 1997: 55). Membership of the aristocracy is the first (but unwritten!) rule governing participation in the local governing elite. Unsurprisingly, patron–client relations rather than Weberian legal– rational relations dominate recruitment mechanisms to positions of power within the local government. If south-east Maluku knows a traditional aristocratic social segment, Ternate retains a sultan who perpetuates myths of divine sonship. Formally speaking, this sultan, like the other two or three sultans who survived centuries of colonialism, is acknowledged only as a ‘traditional chief’ (ketua adat) without real powers. Van Fraassen, who later wrote the definitive history of Ternate, thought in 1984 that the institutions of the Ternatan sultanate ‘survive only in folklore, not as politically significant elements’ (Kiem 1993: 93). This makes the re-emergence of the sultanates in 1999 all the more remarkable.

Local elites and their interests Unlike the refugees, the nation’s elites were quick with explanations for the Maluku violence. Nearly all explanations invoked the provokator. It was not an unreasonable suspicion, as there have been times in modern Indonesian history where the state did use provocateurs. The trouble was, as a common saying had it, that the provokator is ‘like the wind – you can feel their effect but you can never grasp them’. Provokator allegations had over the two years since Suharto’s resignation become part of the competitive game the nation’s rival elites played against each other. Any serious analyst found it difficult to take this factless and contextless intrigue seriously. Provokator talk reflected a mindset in which order was constantly imperilled by disorder, but mysteriously, without involving social forces. Yet the deeply-held conviction that elites have followers who are likely to clash with other followers – clientelism in more scholarly language – was an important insight not always grasped by foreign observers. Clientelism is a situationalist tool that lays the burden of moral responsibility for the violence at the feet of elites within an unequal society. A local perspective on the Maluku wars quickly leads us to the main problem elites there face – how to control the bureaucracy. We have already glimpsed how important the civil service is to the provincial

The Maluku wars 139 economy. If in Java it is perhaps possible to get rich without being close to the bureaucracy, the same is not true in Maluku. Endemic corruption furthermore elevates unwritten rules far above written ones, and makes this a dangerous arena. Corruption and authoritarianism are part of a clientelist system in which elites that represent no one but themselves fight behind the scenes for the spoils of office. In Maluku, perhaps more than anywhere else, religion has long been the most important identity marker of the various clientelist networks. The Protestant Dutch belief that Christianity made the natives ‘loyal’ created an Ambonese Christian culture dependent on the government. In the 1990s, a rival Muslim network began to emerge that offered access to government patronage also for Muslim Ambonese, as well as for nonAmbonese Muslim migrants. Ambon Complaints common among ordinary Ambonese Christians, that Muslims were about to push them out of the civil service, and complaints equally common among ordinary Ambonese Muslims, that Christians were defensive of their privileges, showed that the average Ambonese was well aware that this war was about patronage, not about the correct way to worship God. In October 1998 an anonymous pamphlet appeared in Ambon. It alleged, to my knowledge without any factual basis, that the governor of Maluku planned to replace ‘all thirty-eight’ top civil servants with Muslims. In March 1999, the governor acknowledged that the allegation in this pamphlet was one of two triggers for the bloody Ambon conflict, the other being resentment against ‘outsiders’ for dominating the market place (Ummat 1999). In fact, the big challenge to Christian dominance of the top levels of Maluku’s civil service had come not from Saleh Latuconsina but from his predecessor (and distant relative) Akib Latuconsina (1992–1997). He was the first Muslim Ambonese to win the top provincial job, and the first Ambonese since G. J. Latutumahina stepped down in 1968. Akib’s appointment coincided with a new readiness on the part of President Suharto to play the religious card. Suharto had recently encouraged the formation of the Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals Association (ICMI). Akib Latuconsina was its Maluku and Ambon branch chairperson. The subsequent overhaul saw top bureaucrats with Christian names make room for Muslim ones. Saleh Latuconsina continued the trend. One Indonesian source presented some credible recent data on the religious distribution within Maluku’s bureaucracy (Ecip 1999: 69–70). Of the ‘thirty-eight’ top provincial officials mentioned in the pamphlet, 74 per cent were Muslims. This was not 100 per cent as alleged by oppositionists, but it was a little higher than the proportion of Muslims in the provincial population. Further down the bureaucratic ladder, where most of the

140 Gerry van Klinken jobs are, the percentage of Muslims declined to half, or somewhat less than the proportion of Muslims within Maluku’s population. How might this transformation of the top levels of the bureaucracy have influenced the 1999 violence? A military intelligence document dated April 1999 alleged that the key event was the election of a new Maluku governor in October 1997 (Tajuk 1999). Akib’s chief rival in 1992 had been Freddy Latumahina, a Golkar national parliamentarian and senior party functionary, and a Christian. However, the connection seems tenuous. Latumahina’s defeat had been irreversible history for over a year when violence broke out. Moreover, Latumahina was a social climber who lived in Jakarta and did not enjoy great popularity in Ambon. Much more likely as a trigger for the fighting in Ambon, glaringly obvious yet surprisingly under-reported, is the election that fell in the middle of the year. This open-ended event brought together all the elements we have discussed thus far into a volatile mix – numerous unemployed young men socialized along religious lines, local elites who felt this election could make or break them, and personalized, weakly institutionalized links between the elites and those dependent young men. Ambon was throughout the New Order a Golkar preserve, consistently turning up Golkar votes comparable to the national average of around 70 per cent. Such results could only have been achieved with the collaboration of local elites. However, Suharto’s sudden resignation in May 1998 threw Golkar into such disarray that internal predictions soon had it losing the next election. Unease had already begun to infect the nation’s elites from late 1995 onwards, as evidenced by a series of explosive corruption allegations clearly fuelled by cabinet-level leaks. As had happened during the previous period of major elite circulation in 1965–1966, inter-communal fighting began to break out in various places from late 1996. After May 1998, established elites at both the national and provincial levels had little reason to believe that the old deals struck under Suharto would survive. They began to weigh up the potential of the alternative political parties to secure their access to power. Many of these parties were new, time was short and the stakes were high. The initiative lay with those who dared. Early in December 1998, the date for the election was officially set at 7 June 1999. Electoral preparations were thus just getting into full swing when the violence broke out in Ambon in mid-January. The coloured strips of cloth the fighting men tied around their foreheads or arms from the very beginning were more reminiscent of party colours than of the religions. Christians at first wore red-and-white, and in some places red or black T-shirts, and later exclusively red. Muslims at first wore green or white, and soon exclusively white. Red, red-and-white and red-and-black are the colours of Megawati’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), while green is the colour used by most Islamic parties, including United Development Party (PPP) and Crescent and Star Party (PBB) (The

The Maluku wars 141 Australian 1999; HRWA 1999). White is associated with Middle-Eastern Islam. Tantalizing glimpses into the names of those involved with the Ambon violence (Kontras and Lerai 2000) seem to amount to a group of urban individuals who moved easily between business, party political and religious circles, who were aware that party politics was now the way to bureaucratic power, and who knew that religion could provide them with the manpower they needed to make an impact. However, just how they conducted their campaigns, and to what extent they either egged on their supporters to acts of violence or were dragged into them by those followers, remains less than clear. The connection between party politics and the Ambon violence became even clearer when the election results were finally announced on 21 July 1999. In one sense, the result for Ambon City looked remarkably New Order. The three New Order parties Golkar, PDI(-P) and PPP between them sewed up 86 per cent of the votes. The remaining votes were spread rather evenly between all the other forty-five competing parties. The most successful of these others was the Islamic PBB, which won just 2,438 votes – less than 2 per cent of the total. However, the collapse of Golkar – it won only 19 per cent of the national vote, and the same in Ambon – made this election different. The PDI-P had for a long time run neck-and-neck with the Islamic party PPP as the smallest party in Ambon. Now it had won outright victory: 53 per cent of the Ambon vote, leaving PPP with just 14 per cent. PDI-P was clearly Ambon’s new establishment party. The small parties had much reason to be disappointed, as did the Islamic parties generally. All the Islamic parties together won only 21 per cent of Ambon’s vote – just half what they might have won if all Muslims had voted Islamic. The parties then went on to appoint delegates to the national, provincial and municipal assemblies. All but one of PDI-P’s delegates (the ‘one’ was someone in the municipal assembly) were Protestants. This identification of Protestantism with the PDI-P is surprising, because there is no such association nationally. The key lies in history. Ever since it was formed in 1973 as PDI out of a fusion of Sukarno-era parties, the PDI-P in Ambon had been largely a continuation of its Protestant ‘component’ Parkindo (Idrus 1990). The 1998–1999 collapse of Golkar transformed the political stage from an at least superficially ‘modernist’ one back to the volatile pattern of religiously based politics evident in the 1955 election. In that election, the last free one before the 1999 event, Parkindo had stormed home with 49.36 per cent of the vote – more than twice its nearest rival in the multiparty field, the Islamic party Masyumi (24.10 per cent). The secular party PNI came in a poor third with only 7.89 per cent (Alfian 1973).4 There is some evidence to suggest that the Second Riot was triggered by the shock political elites in Ambon experienced when they realized the depth of this transformation.

142 Gerry van Klinken A situationalist view of the Maluku wars takes the elite rhetoric on both sides of the conflict with more than a grain of salt. Elite Protestant opinion-makers traced the conflict to an irruption of radical Islam, of what the New Order used to call the subversive, anti-Pancasila ‘extreme right’ (Titaley 1999).5 Elite Muslim opinion-makers also appealed to themes likely to gain a sympathetic ear in Jakarta. They proclaimed that this was another Christian RMS revolt (Putuhena 1999; Tim Penyusun alMukmin 1999; Kastor 2000). Both sides made liberal use of history. North Maluku If the argument that provincial elites should be held largely responsible for the Ambon violence is somewhat circumstantial, it is much more direct in the case of North Maluku. There, all reports use the language of clientelism. They speak of sultans, regents, district heads, and their ‘traditional allies’ at village level. One of the most remarkable aspects of the Maluku wars is the reemergence of two sultanates that throughout the New Order had been politically moribund. As the new province was announced, North Malukan elites fell into a competitive pattern that settled on the two centres most likely to have mobilizational appeal, namely the long-dormant Tidore and Ternate sultanates. Each could call on a large number of ‘traditional guards’ (pasukan adat) drawn from communities with allegedly traditional loyalties to that house.

The future The ‘communal contenders’ model of the Maluku wars implies that any resolution of the conflict must be sought within the framework of a common Indonesian state. This means that ways must be found (a) to democratize that state, especially at the local level, thereby depriving warmongering elites of their legitimacy; and (b) to make the state effective for all its citizens, especially by providing a sense of security. This two-part recipe is commonly prescribed in similar situations elsewhere (Scarritt 1993). Indonesia’s unstable clientelistic state–society relations must move towards more democratic ones. Olle Törnquist (2000) has written a stimulating agenda-setting paper along these lines, focusing on political parties and drawing on the ideas of Nicos Mouzelis and Sidney Tarrow. Most political and religious organizations in Maluku are complicit in the fighting, but there are several groups, mostly of young people, who do want to carry this agenda forward and who should be crucial in the post-conflict phase. Making the state effective at the local level for all citizens will mean depoliticizing the police and armed forces, paying them exclusively

The Maluku wars 143 through the state budget, strengthening the independence of the courts and making recruitment procedures to the bureaucracy transparent, to name just the four most urgent out of a well-known litany of needs. Without such reforms, it will be impossible to restore a sense of security and eliminate the communal militias. Clearly, this two-part agenda represents a long-term project, and it may not succeed. However, there is no viable alternative, and it demands the support of the international community.

Notes 1 This paper was essentially finished by May 2000 and does not deal with the renewed fighting in June 2000. A more extended version of the chapter appears in van Klinken (2001). 2 The other categories are ethnonationalists, indigenous peoples, ethnoclasses and militant (religious) sects. On communal contenders, which concerns culturally distinct groups within a heterogeneous society, see Scarritt (1993). 3 Calculated from Biro Pusat Statistik data. Thanks to Lance Castles for these and previous calculations. 4 The Alfian data set is slightly distorted because it excludes Nahdatul Ulama, which in 1971 won 5.93 per cent of the vote. 5 Rev. John Titaley is the brother of the Maluku Protestant Church (GPM) Synod Chairman Rev. Sammy Titaley, and was at the time a PDI-P candidate for the nation’s supreme law-making body, MPR.

9

Migration, provocateurs and communal conflict The cases of Ambon and West Kalimantan1 Anne Loveband and Ken Young

There were times when it seemed that the New Order would last indefinitely, limited only by the mortality of its leader, Suharto. It is important to remind ourselves that the regime’s central rationale, that of order for development, met few sustained challenges inside or outside Indonesia. It is only now, with the relaxation of authoritarian constraints, that the true social, economic and political costs of authoritarian developmentalism can be fully discerned. Indonesia, and its first democratic government since the 1950s, appears close to being overwhelmed by an ever-growing catalogue of problems that were created, suppressed or ignored for more than three decades. Some problems are more pressing than others. The energies of the government are absorbed with critical matters that will not wait, such as threats of secession, or the many-sided problems of the economy. Other urgent issues are simply pushed down, or off, the government’s list of priorities. Among them, possibly because they seem less concrete and immediate, are some important issues of identity politics. We want to examine the patterns of communal conflict in West Kalimantan and Ambon from this perspective. The new laws on regional and local autonomy that came into effect in January 2001 are welcome from many points of view, not least because they allow real scope for the expression of local political aspirations. So, too, the de facto abandonment of the long-standing programme of internal transmigration interrupts one of the suppressed irritants in regional patterns of conflict. Both, however, break with the official nationalist position on national integration that has treated the internal movement of peoples as unproblematic. Policies were premised around the proposition of a homogeneous Indonesian identity that would overcome local ethno-religious particularities. If it did not, measures would be taken to bring this state of affairs into being. ‘Unity in diversity’ tended to be drained of practical significance, and open discussion of ethno-religious sensitivities were proscribed by bans on ethnic, racial, religious and intergroup tensions (SARA – Suku, Agama, Ras, Antargolongan). Since the state’s penalties against the articulation of local aspirations were removed, and laws passed to give provinces and districts (kabupaten)

The cases of Ambon and West Kalimantan 145 substantial autonomy, all manner of contests and issues have broken out at the local level. While we might hope that it were otherwise, by no means all of the social forces unleashed have been pro-democratic. The context is also one of economic crisis (of variable impact between regions), of the demoralized, ineffective and sometimes partisan forces of law and order, of vigilante groups, of money politics, of the formation of local armed militias, and a legacy of old scores, fears and resentments that provide the dry tinder for provoking conflicts among a bewildering kaleidoscope of groups. Local conflicts also interact with and feed back into national political conflicts in Jakarta. Each region – West Papua, Aceh, the Moluccas, West Kalimantan and, indeed, parts of Java itself – exhibits its own irreducible particularities. These eruptions of violence are not explicable without reference to their local dynamics, yet each is tied, in varying degree, to national political considerations. Each displays the magnitude of the challenge of constructing Indonesia in its full diversity and richness. Each reveals the difficulty of building open, democratic and law-governed political processes, and the concomitant danger that social and political dialogue at the grass roots can be overwhelmed by inflammatory primordial politics, with or without the machinations of elites who hope to secure the spoils of the restructuring process. Clifford Geertz’s observation remains true today. He noted that because it is ‘archipelagic in geography, eclectic in civilization, and heterogenous in culture, Indonesia flourishes when it accepts and capitalizes on its diversity and disintegrates when it denies or suppresses it’ (Geertz 1963). We will review the situations in Ambon and West Kalimantan from this perspective. We will examine the unfolding of these crises not in an attempt to catalogue them comprehensively, but to illustrate the extent of the difficulties that have to be resolved at the local level, and to reflect on what the implications are for both the politics of national identity and the strategies of reconciliation. Of these two cases Ambon is the more complex and Kalimantan the more puzzling. While it is clear that Ambon’s conflicts are specifically tied to its regional history and multi-religious situation, it is one where national influences and the deliberate fomentation of conflict have also been important. Indeed, we introduce our consideration of the Ambonese case by reference to the murky activities of provocateurs in the Ketapang district of Jakarta.

Ambon Understanding the significance of the links between Jakarta and the Outer Islands is part-way to understanding the processes of violent intercommunal conflict in Indonesia today. Connections of this kind were evident in the Ketapang ( Jakarta) incident of 22–23 November 1998. A

146 Anne Loveband and Ken Young Jakarta-based gang of Christian Moluccan youths working as security guards at a gambling centre clashed with Muslim Ambonese gangs, ostensibly over control of gambling resources.2 Local inhabitants were drawn into the clash by rumours of Christian attacks on the neighbourhood mosque. The result was the deaths of eighteen gang members ( Jakarta Post 2000f) and a riot that, having spread to the surrounding area, targeted Christian churches, schools, homes, shops and cars. This clash had ramifications beyond Jakarta itself. The Muslim gangs were linked to a Pancasila Youth group member and Muslim Moluccan, Ongen Sangaji. He had close ties to members of the Suharto family, especially with Bambang Trihatmodjo and Siti ‘Tutut’ Hardiyanti Rukmana. Likewise, the Christian gangs involved in the Ketapang riots were connected to Milton Matuanakota (a close friend of Tutut and Yorrys Raweyai of Pemuda Pancasila3) and Ongky Pieters, both of Ambonese origin. Shortly after the Ketapang incident, hundreds of Milton’s and Ongky’s followers returned to Ambon (Aditjondro 2000a: 18). At the same time large groups of Pemuda Pancasila members and Muslim gang members were sighted in East Timor (allegedly having travelled on the Indonesian Navy ship, the Teluk Cirebon) before arriving at their final destination of Ambon. It was shortly thereafter that the first large-scale violence between Muslims and Christians took place in Ambon, setting in train the intense and uncontrolled pattern of inter-communal conflict that has devastated Ambon City and the region beyond it. Bartels (2000) has pinpointed two distinct stages in the violence in the Moluccas. The initial phase featured hostilities between Christian and Muslim communities with relatively equal resources. In May 2000, when it seemed that locals were exhausted by the violence and an uneasy calm might prevail, massive numbers of Laskar Jihad (Holy War Forces) vigilantes arrived from Java. This heralded the second stage of the conflict, which escalated both in size and sophistication of weaponry. The balance of power consequently was skewed dramatically in favour of Muslim forces. We will not add to the many detailed accounts of the chronology of events that began in Ambon during Ramadhan on 19 January 1999 with an altercation between a Christian public transport driver and a Muslim youth (see, for example, Gatra 1999a; Chauvel 2000; ICG Asia Report 2000). Suffice it to say that despite the incidental nature of the initial encounter, the warring between the Christian and Muslim communities escalated out of control, spreading beyond Ambon to nearby islands, fluctuating between simmering unrest and maelstroms of violence. Finally, a state of civil emergency in Maluku and North Maluku was declared on 26 June 2000 (Jakarta Post 2000g). Costs in both human and infrastructural terms have been massive. The Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) has estimated that at least 5,000 people have been killed and 570,000 are

The cases of Ambon and West Kalimantan 147 internally displaced (Komnasham 22, 2001: 5; see HRW 1999 for 1999 figures). The economic loss has also been huge – lost production, extensive unemployment, increased competition over scarce resources and so on (Komnasham 22, 2001). The violence in the Moluccas took many by surprise, as this was a place renowned for its religious and ethnic tolerance. Indeed, it was the home of the pela gandong system4 of peaceful coexistence and mutual cooperation between Muslims and Christians. Pela gandong may have been somewhat mythologized, but its capacity to secure inter-communal peace and cooperation was renowned until disrupted by post-colonial power shifts, by the dynamics of economic development and by the transformation of the demographic balance that resulted from the post-independence influx of migrants (mainly Muslims from Sulawesi) (Chauvel 2000). Migration and experience of cultural difference was not new to the Moluccas – from the sixteenth century, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese and British traders had operated in this area (Ricklefs 1981: 20–9), which was ruled by the Muslim sultans of Ternate, Tidore, Bacan and Jailolo. By the early nineteenth century, however, the political and demographic landscape had changed significantly because of Dutch colonial rule and a significant degree of Christianization. The Moluccas was a favoured region from which the KNIL (Royal Netherlands Indies Army) recruited Christian soldiers to key units and privileged positions within the Dutch colonial army. Under the New Order, the Moluccas had also become an attractive destination for streams of migrants from Sulawesi, the new arrivals being drawn mostly from three areas – hence their description as BBM (Bugis, Buton, Makasar). Unlike Kalimantan and West Papua, which are well known as transmigration sites, the Moluccas were primarily a recipient of spontaneous migrants. These settlers found work in the informal sectors of the economy. There was also a clear tendency for key bureaucratic and administrative posts to go to talented migrants or pegawai (government employees) imported from Java. For a variety of reasons, provincial and central administrators felt more comfortable with the promotion of certain elite figures that they then depended on to maintain harmonious relations in the local community. However, if the upsurges in violence have demonstrated anything, it is that the actual authority of elite figures, Ambonese or otherwise, proved extremely flimsy. Local perceptions of marginalization through the experience of BBM in-migration, feelings of bureaucratic favouritism, the decline in traditional authority structures and the Islamization of the Moluccas intensified tensions within the community (HRW 1999). Sectors of the community felt that their earlier status was being eroded – sentiments exacerbated by pressures from the economic crisis and resentment at the massive disparity of wealth across Indonesia. In 1990 Suharto publicly announced that Eastern Indonesia was lagging behind in a developmental

148 Anne Loveband and Ken Young and economic sense when compared to the western provinces of Indonesia. Clearly pemerataan (the levelling out of inequalities – a basic policy of the Sixth Repelita (1994–1998)) had not yet been achieved (Tirtosudarmo 2000: 13). Transmigration was seen as a major tool to address such disparities. Although the experience of transmigration for local populations differed somewhat between major transmigration sites (such as Kalimantan), what was common, regardless of location, were feelings of alienation, displacement and resentment among local residents directed towards the incoming migrants. The locals felt that they had not been treated equally with regard to government benefits of land, housing, food, educational and health facilities etc. Moreover, New Order officials did not take the significant cultural differences between the indigenous populations and incoming migrants sufficiently seriously, and public discussion of inter-communal tensions was strongly discouraged. There was enthusiasm for modernization, but complacency about the consequences of the transformation of local demographic and economic landscapes, and little thought given to new processes of negotiation and conflict resolution. Added to this, there was a decline in traditional authority structures that, prior to such marked demographic changes, may have been able to resolve inter-communal conflict. Indeed, as President Abdurrahman Wahid noted in 2000, ‘the division of the spoils’ had changed in the Moluccas (ABC-TV 2000) and the tensions already present in Ambon and many of the other islands needed little provocation to rise to the surface and from there to spiral out of control. In addition to tensions of this kind, which had been building under the surface for a long time, there is some evidence that, in the Moluccas and certain other regions shaken by inter-communal conflict, calculated and deliberate attempts to precipitate violence were made by outsiders.5 The series of explosions across the Moluccas has resulted in a massive displacement of people. There has been a marked trend of reverse migration back to migrants’ communities of origin, where returnees face uncertain economic futures and further social tensions. Refugee centres are overflowing and, together with the conflicts in West Kalimantan, Aceh, East Timor, Medan and West Papua, Indonesia is facing an ever-growing refugee crisis, with estimates of the total number of internal displaced people as high as one million. However, the trend to return migration is further complicated by the refusal of some provinces to take back such migrants or to accommodate displaced peoples. For example, all districts in West Kalimantan openly refused to accommodate Madurese refugees except Tebang Kacang, Sui Raya sub-district, Pontianak regency, which probably only did so because the area was already predominantly Madurese (Ranik 2000).6 Ultimately, however, we must return to the problems associated with the assumptions underlying the development model of the New Order state – that people could move or be moved en masse unproblematically.

The cases of Ambon and West Kalimantan 149 The presumption of seamless integration within a context of a unitary national identity failed to take into account the politics of identity in a culturally diverse nation. Such an oversight provided an ever-increasing mountain of tinder that only needed to be ignited by local incidents or by agents provocateurs, following which it would continue to burn out of control. The present Indonesian government’s objectives of granting substantive regional autonomy carry within them the need to reconfigure the politics of identity in Indonesia. We will advance reasons below about the need to break with the homogenizing, integralist interpretations of Indonesian national identity that became fundamental to the ideology and practice of the Suharto regime, driving out the celebration of real diversity – Ibu Tien’s Taman Mini Indonesia notwithstanding. This will return the energy and imagination of Indonesians to the discovery of the nature of their unity in the rich complexity that Geertz recognized decades ago.

West Kalimantan The balance of political, economic and cultural interests of the various communities of the Moluccas has been enmeshed with the politics of the Javanese centre for centuries, from early colonial times to the present. Inter-communal harmony was a complex balance, easily disturbed by outside intervention. Resource-rich but peripheral, both geographically and politically, West Kalimantan has until recent decades enjoyed a comparatively stable working relationship between the different ethnicities, ways of life and religious orientations that distinguish the Malay, Dayak and Chinese communities there. Yet in the 1990s the West Kalimantan province became notorious for fierce inter-ethnic conflicts between Dayaks and Madurese migrants. Large-scale clashes in 1997 and 1999 cost thousands of lives, a great deal of destruction of property and the creation of tens of thousands of refugees, mainly Madurese driven out of their villages in kabupaten (district) Sambas and elsewhere. While there are some accusations that provocateurs funded by groups tied to Suharto family interests (Aditjondro 2000a) had a hand in complicating an already tense situation, the conflict appears to have had largely local origins. Of course, it is also true that the relative political calm of the Province was seriously destabilized during the New Order period. This, however, was not a matter of policy so much as a secondary, almost unintended, consequence of the declaration of programmes of large-scale resource development and expansion of resettlement programmes from Java and Madura. Local Dayaks were most adversely affected by the development and transmigration programmes. The denial of custom-based land claims, the stripping of forests, the creation of vast plantations, the pollution of

150 Anne Loveband and Ken Young rivers and the resettlement of Dayak swidden agriculturalists in small-scale, market-oriented nuclear estates profoundly disrupted the Dayak way of life. In the villages and towns they often fell behind in adapting to the new expanding economic sectors, where they competed with hard-working individualistic Madurese migrants and administrative hierarchies staffed largely by non-Dayaks. The newcomers took no trouble to disguise their disdain for Dayak religion, diet, diligence and commercial sophistication. With their way of life and culture thus disrupted, and finding themselves economically marginalized and the object of ridicule by newcomers, it is not too surprising that Dayak resentments could fester to an explosive degree. Their resentments erupted in serious clashes with Madurese in 1977, 1982, 1983, 1992 and 1993 (HRW 1997; Gatra 1999b). These clashes from 1977 to 1983 were responded to by the provincial government with ritual peacemaking ceremonies guided by community leaders. This did little in the long term to redress the underlying grievances. There was never any serious reconsideration of resource development strategies, and the rate of transmigration accelerated without regard for the political consequences. The failure in policy responses was not simply a matter of poor judgement or complacency. Policy was based on axiomatic views about the essential cultural homogeneity of Indonesians (see Nitisastro 1970; Visser 1988), an emerging uniformity that could be speeded up through transmigration, thus securing the highest degree of national integration (Tirtosudarmo 2000: 10). This drew on a strong current in Indonesian nationalism, since even under the Old Order ‘several ideological leaders, such as Yamin and Sukarno, . . . perceived transmigration as a tool for assimilating different ethnic groups to construct a homogenized cultural identity and national integration’ (Tirtosudarmo 2000: 10). As the New Order state faltered, graver conflicts between Dayaks and Madurese followed in 1997–1998 and 1999. Certainly by 1999 the resolve of the military and the police energetically to suppress local unrest had been greatly weakened because of the public anger about the military’s political behaviour in the transition from the New Order, and the open recognition of Indonesian National Army (TNI) crimes in Aceh and elsewhere. The scale of inter-communal violence in West Kalimantan in the late 1990s far exceeded any of the earlier incidents, with thousands being killed (mainly Madurese) and tens of thousands displaced. These conflicts are examined at greater length elsewhere (Young 2001). The conflicts in 1997–1998 were unambiguously inter-communal, with large groups of Dayaks, numbering in the hundreds and sometimes in the thousands, raiding Madurese settlements, creating roadblocks and seeking to drive out Madurese from entire areas. Many Madurese families fled, faced with the ritual taking of heads and the prospect of a gruesome death directed at all Madurese – but only Madurese. Some chose to stand and fight, and Madurese bands were formed. They were dismayed to dis-

The cases of Ambon and West Kalimantan 151 cover that the Dayak bands had high-powered rifles as well as traditional weapons. The Dayaks feared the army and were spurred on by the belief that they had to act first before army units, whom they believed to be proMuslim and pro-Madurese, counter-attacked. Most of the Dayak casualties were to military fire, but this was because the Dayaks pursued Madurese who had fled to the airforce base seeking military protection. While the 1997 clashes were much worse than earlier incidents, they conformed to the established pattern of Christian Dayaks fighting Muslim Madurese. The 1999 conflicts, however, were less clear-cut. Some Malays and Chinese were also involved in attacks on Madurese communities. Dayak leaders complained that, although raiding parties had dressed as Dayaks and observed their ritual preparations for war, many were not clan members. What local non-Dayak groups had to gain is far from clear, but Dayak community leaders protested that they were being held responsible for opportunistic aggression launched by other groups in the province.7 As time goes on the conflict becomes murkier. As on Ambon, it is not entirely clear that traditional community leaders are speaking for the most active groups. However, even if we put these difficulties to one side, the superficial explanation of religious and ethnic hostility is not satisfactory either. The Dayak anger is specifically directed at the Madurese. Javanese who have settled there, the local Malays and the Chinese are all ethnically different. The Malays and Javanese are Muslim. Therefore, the attacks are not based simply on religious or ethnic differences. Just as the trigger for the slide into violence on Ambon was little more than a fight between youths from rival communities, so too was the intercommunal fighting in December 1996 set in motion by a couple of incidents involving fights, the exchange of insults, the sexual harassment of a Dayak girl and clashes between small groups of youths, leading to the hospitalization of two Dayak youths with severe knife wounds. Rumours spread that they had been killed, and Dayak community groups mobilized demanding revenge (Hamdani 1999a). This set in motion conflicts that escalated on both sides, only to die down then burst out with greater ferocity following an attack on the Pancur Kasih Social Work Foundation, a Dayak Catholic NGO and student hostel in the provincial capital Pontianak. The Madurese youths who attacked the hostel were enraged by reports that Dayaks had shot a Muslim religious leader. The reports were false – the religious leader was unharmed (Gatra 1999a: 30). Fighting now spread to five of the eight kabupaten in the Province, and escalated to an unprecedented scale. Cultural incompatibility Both the Madurese and the Dayaks are inclined to settle serious wrongs by violence, and many minor incidents add cumulatively to the growing

152 Anne Loveband and Ken Young demands for retribution. Once mechanisms of reconciliation have failed, the gravitation towards violence follows distinctly different cultural prescriptions in the two communities. Madurese feuds operate at a more individualized level. They are pursued between individuals and between families with long and unforgiving memories. Vengeance awaits the right opportunity, but then it can be taken honourably, without warning and often with knives. The Dayaks for their part are not surreptitious, nor are they inclined to wait patiently for the right moment to strike. Retribution for them is not an individual enterprise. The spilling of Dayak blood, or affronts to the honour of Dayak women, are an affront to all, and must be answered collectively. The clan as a whole is obliged to fight, and retribution is directed against the opposing clan or group as much as against the individual wrongdoer. The clan prepares itself for conflict with binding rituals including the sharing of the ‘red bowl’ (mangkok merah) laced with chicken blood. Thus fortified, Dayak groups seek out their enemies in frontal assaults. These rituals and cultural prescriptions were, of course, much stronger in previous times, when Dayaks lived in forest or seafaring communities. Even following their physical resettlement and their incorporation into the modern economy (albeit at the margins), and the erosion of many old traditions, these practices can be revived in times of social distress. The divergent ethics of retribution and the honourable exercise of violence against external wrongdoers is perhaps only a token of a more thoroughgoing cultural incompatibility between these two groups. Gadjah Mada University’s Kuntowijoyo has offered an analysis that suggests why the values and ways of life of the Dayaks and Madurese should be so mutually aggravating, where both have far less difficulty living alongside the Muslim Malays of West Kalimantan. Kuntowijoyo argues that the two groups belong to distinct cultural, economic and normative orientations that he calls ‘padi ’ (wet rice) culture and ‘tegal ’ (dry rice) culture. According to his thesis, the Madurese are from an overcrowded dry island (off the north coast of Java) where the prevailing mode of agriculture is tegalan, or dry field farming – known in Kalimantan and elsewhere as ladang. What is important here is that it is a form of farming that requires little cooperative labour. Madurese tend to be intensely hard-working but individualistic farmers, working at most in small family groups. The economy, culture and style of work tend towards strong and assertive individualism, with each member of the village fiercely protecting his rights against others (Mohammad and Setiawan 1999). The Dayak, according to Kuntowijoyo, while not usually wet-rice farmers, do share with the coastal Malay padi farmers the far more cooperative work patterns of what he calls ‘padi culture’. In the case of padi cultivation, communal cooperation is important for maintaining irrigation systems, organizing labour at key phases in the rice-cultivation cycle and harmonizing rights to work and shares of the produce (Gatra 1999a: 31). Similar norms of cooperation

The cases of Ambon and West Kalimantan 153 and harmony are upheld in Dayak cultivation cycles and they have worked alongside the Malays in relative harmony for hundreds of years. The emigrant Javanese also are familiar with the cooperative norms of this culture, but the Madurese arrivals have little patience with the plight of the Dayaks who, according to Madurese values, should exert themselves to better themselves individually. Inter-communal conflict in West Kalimantan proves to be more complex than it appears on the surface, and remains very puzzling. Economic dislocation, environmental degradation, marginalization and displacement all provide Dayak communities with reasons to feel seriously aggrieved. We might expect their anger to be directed more against the state, against the large firms and conglomerates that have transformed their environment, against the officials and corporate bosses who control much of their lives and against outsiders in general. Such resentments are not absent, but the outstanding pattern of conflict is much more specific – they want to be rid of the Madurese. As we have observed, this is not simply an issue of religious or ethnic difference, since other ethnoreligious groups do not inspire the same pattern of sustained hostility. We are far from confident that a full account of the sources of these conflicts in West Kalimantan can be discerned in what is known at this stage. However, we are convinced that the failure of policy in the province can to a significant extent be linked to the ideological incapacity of state bureaucrats and nationalist intellectuals to take local ethnic identities, and their associated political, legal and economic claims, sufficiently seriously. Money politics, provocateurs, the corruption of local officials and community leaders, the entrenched stake of large firms and military business interests in resource exploitation projects and other causes all contribute to this situation. Transmigration decisions have assessed the economic and agricultural viability of sites in the receiving province. They have been evaluated from the perspective of military-strategic objectives, but far less attention is given to investigating whether Madurese and Dayaks have the right preparation and institutional supports to prosper alongside each other. It is assumed that sharing Indonesian identity should be enough. Clearly, it is not.

National integration under the New Order The New Order established the power of the military victors of the nationwide bloodletting of 1965, and of Suharto in particular. Its perspective of the Indonesian nation, and of the overriding importance of national unity, was built on its experience of politics in the Old Order. The New Order entrenched the military’s reading of the Pancasila, giving particular stress to national unity, and insisted on the sanctity of the 1945 Constitution. The army itself was not only vigilant about these themes because of its experience in putting down regional rebellions in the late 1950s and

154 Anne Loveband and Ken Young early 1960s. It had found it necessary to purge itself painfully of one heritage of the struggle for national independence – the regional and partisan loyalties of important units and officers. This reconstitution, unification and centralization of the army itself was of a piece with Sukarno’s reversion (in July 1959) to the 1945 Constitution, the stress on principles of kekeluargaan (family) and the ‘organicist’ philosophies that shaped Soepomo’s drafting of the constitution. Integralism, national unity, Pancasila, dwifungsi (dual function) and the territorial organization and strategy of the army all demanded and took for granted a uniform identification with the Republic of Indonesia that transcended particularistic loyalties to region, ethnicity or religion. Even the claims of Islam were subordinated to the ‘secular nationalism’ that predominated among the armed forces elites. The debates over appropriate constitutional reform (konstituante – see Nasution 1994), about the plurality of aspirations of different groups and peoples within Indonesia, were dismissed as part of the pathology of the Old Order, the narrow self-interested squabbling of irresponsible self-interested politicians. The dominant role of Golkar structured around ‘functional groups’ and the subordinate non-adversarial roles deemed appropriate to the other two authorized political parties, United Development Party (PPP) and Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), flow from this overriding obsession with national unity, and find justification within organicist conceptions of state and nation (Simanjuntak 1994; Bourchier 1996). It is notable that Megawati has remained attached to the 1945 Constitution and suspicious of Western-style adversarial opposition politics through the period of transition from Suharto’s presidency. Organicism springs from continental European traditions that emphasize the wholeness, integrity and organic interconnection of all parts of a nation. Influenced by thinkers such as Herder, Schelling, Fichte and Hegel, it emphasizes the distinctive and deep historical spirit, the Volksgeist, of nations, and the formation of its people within ‘a matrix of a particular culture with its own unique, historically evolved language, customs and collective memory’ (Bourchier 1996: 16). The indigenous tradition, based on customary law and practices, is the view of Indonesia as a negara kekeluargaan – a state based on the family principle, stressing the well-being of the whole rather than the individual or that of regional or other groups.8 Professor Soepomo, the author of the 1945 Constitution, consciously drew on the European organicist tradition. Far from being embarrassed by the equation of organicism in the twentieth century with totalitarianism, he explicitly drew attention to its links with Nazism (Bourchier 1996: 264–5). As Marsillam Simanjuntak (1994) stresses, Soepomo lost the argument to Hatta on this issue during the debates that took place in the Preparatory Committees that drafted the constitutions in 1945. Nevertheless, this school of thought, which came to be called ‘integralism’ in government ideological and legal circles in the 1980s,

The cases of Ambon and West Kalimantan 155 remained a strong influence in the constitution, opening the possibility for ‘integralistic’ interpretations to be revived under the New Order. Integralism was first rediscovered by New Order ideologues determined to give the Unitary State a sound philosophical foundation that all citizens would be expected to absorb. While not necessarily reflecting the views of pragmatic and technocratic figures within the New Order, by the late 1980s it became profoundly entrenched and was an unchallengeable foundation piece of New Order ideology (Bourchier 1996: Ch.8). Simanjuntak (1994) and Bourchier (1996) comprehensively expose integralist theory and practice as being inimical to human rights and political pluralism. We would add further that it is also a view of the Indonesian nation and its putative cultural homogeneity that is dismissive of the significance, and even the existence, of the substantial diversity of regional cultural identities. As Bourchier (1996: 163) observes of New Order ideologues: in remoulding Pancasila, the emphasis was on return to origins – not only to 1945 but to Indonesia’s cultural roots . . . The ‘indigenous values’ promoted by pro New Order ideologues were those which organicist lawyers and scholars associated with anti-party forces had propagated since the days of Soepomo: hierarchy, harmony and order. Through the reinterpretation of Pancasila, the precept of ‘Indonesian Unity’, originally conceived by Sukarno to ‘encourage allegiance to the national idea by diverse regional groups, was . . . transformed and expanded to define the proper character of the relationship to the state, i.e. unanimity’ (Bourchier 1996: 229). Once a symbol of inclusiveness and diversity, Pancasila was redefined as exclusionary, conformist and ultimately subordinate to an homogenizing national identity. The pervasive influence of this ideological onslaught can be observed in fields as diverse as anthropological theory (Visser 1988) and transmigration policy. As Tirtosudarmo (2000: 10) remarks: Since the beginning of the New Order, the real motive of President Suharto for the continuation of transmigration, however, is not difficult to identify. The explanation lies in the idea of harmony among the Javanese, which in the Indonesian political context can be translated into the concept of cultural homogeneity and national integration, as suggested by Koentjaraningrat, strongly endorsed by the President and the military. In the New Order, several discrete influences flowed together to impose outlooks and practices within the State that devalued the economic, historical and even cultural traditions of local peoples. First, the antidemocratic organicist philosophies that inspired Soepomo’s drafting of

156 Anne Loveband and Ken Young the 1945 Constitution favoured a unitary state and a unitary nationalism both as goals and as an emerging reality. Second, this constitutional and political outlook fused readily with Huntingtonian arguments about ‘order for development’ (Huntington 1968) as well as reflecting the conservative development policies advocated by multilateral aid agencies in the late 1960s. National programmes, including the series of five-year development plans (Repelita), expressed the belief that the economic, educational, social and even cultural advantages of the centre could be diffused to the smaller communities in the regions through planning, administration, budget allocations and specific programmes such as transmigration (Tirtosudarmo 2000: 12–14). Third, the new military–bureaucratic elite imbibed heavily from the paternalistic administrative traditions of civil servants and the military (those of the 1945 generation with training received it from the Dutch or the Japanese, or both) (Anderson 1983). Up until the 1980s senior regional government positions were predominantly staffed by military officers – governorships, certainly, and to a large extent bupatis (district heads, Regents) also. Local particularisms in selfgovernment, such as Batak marga or Minangkabau nagari, were set aside by the Old Order’s administrative hierarchies, and territories defined largely in accord with the Javanese model. Smaller regional communities thus found that the link was severed between their cultural or ethnic selfidentity and their capacity to govern themselves. As a consequence, many of the previously resilient institutions atrophied (Kahin 1999: 252–61).9 Cumulatively, the centralized state rapidly adopted the stance that all Indonesians could be drawn into a single, largely undifferentiated administrative structure sharing the same ideological orientation (with Pancasila from the 1980s being mandated as the ‘sole basis’ of all social organizations). ‘As noted by Kuntjorojakti (1978: 139), several Presidential edicts on regional matters were issued at the national level treating the regions as simple administrative units within the framework of a highly centralized national bureaucracy’ (Tirtosudarmo 2000: 7). Transmigration policies under the New Order belong very clearly within this kind of integralist framework. Reasons of national security and ‘resilience’ came before economic, demographic and social rationales for this policy. The dispersal of migrants blended local populations, providing, it was believed, a more reliable basis on which the total people’s defence security doctrine (SISHANKAMRATA) depended, enhancing the military’s capacity for social control. Furthermore, viewed from Jakarta, Eastern Indonesia contains only 13.3 per cent of the national population; ‘the Javanese-dominated bureaucrats in Jakarta therefore easily perceive Eastern Indonesia as empty land’ (Tirtosudarmo 2000: 18). Given this uniform, homogenizing perspective, it is hardly surprising that issues of serious cultural incompatibility rarely surfaced.

The cases of Ambon and West Kalimantan 157

Decentralization and democratization Once Suharto stepped down, President Habibie responded quickly to the widespread demand for meaningful regional autonomy. By April 1999 two laws (Laws no. 22/1999 and 25/1999) had been passed, granting (from 2001) the provinces and districts of the Republic a greater share of taxation revenues and the exercise of a wide range of government powers. Aside from defence, ‘strategic’, foreign, judicial, fiscal, monetary and religious affairs, provinces now have broad autonomy to make their own policies (Simorangkir 2000). This is encouraging for the growth of democracy, since local communities now have much more significant scope to shape their own lives, to choose their leaders and to hold them accountable for their policies and promises. Unfortunately, it also intensifies interest in the division of the spoils of new resources, attracting opportunists and the growth of money politics. Other adverse consequences follow too, exposing intercommunal rifts long suppressed under the New Order. Large enterprises operating in the regions that formerly sought to consolidate their interests in distant capitals have had quickly to become accustomed to serious negotiations with district-level authorities. As contributions to renewed national dialogue about the nature of Indonesian citizenship, this could enhance the growth of Indonesian society. If, on the other hand, it degenerates into a mechanism of exclusion (of migrants, minorities and others), then the years ahead will be difficult indeed. There are numerous challenges to policy, administration, to the equitable distribution of resources, to the control and coordination of different levels of government, and much else besides. The politics of identity forms an inescapable part of the re-negotiation of the Indonesian polity, and the contest over its future shape. Unfortunately, by no means all of that contestation is handled through legitimate institutions.

Policy, provocateurs and preman Viewed from the perspective of the political necessity of meeting the often intensely-held expectations of regional societies, the decentralization reforms seem unstoppable. Viewed from the standpoint of state functionaries who have to make them work in a very short time, they appear tremendously difficult to implement in an orderly and just manner.10 Seen from the point of view of advancing democratization they are very promising, since they offer local communities a real prospect of taking greater control over their own lives through democratic processes, building competence and confidence among citizens that could in time be important beyond local affairs. The degrees of political and economic autonomy thus achieved also give them considerable scope to reassert the vitality of their local cultural identities.

158 Anne Loveband and Ken Young At an abstract level this seems unexceptionable, but not necessarily difficult or urgent. However, as our case studies show, the situation in most provinces is not one of starting to write on a blank sheet of paper. There are major challenges implicit in keeping regional identity within a harmonious national framework while reconciling very serious legacies of grievances between regions and the centre (as in Aceh), between local groups and in-migrants (as in West Kalimantan). There also remain major legal–constitutional challenges about how best to establish regional rights within the framework of law. Crucially, the establishment of autonomous regional and district governments immediately crystallize difficulties about the translation of these freedoms into bureaucratic practice, given the pervasive role of what were highly centralized administrative and planning structures. Will there be a strong insistence on staffing state positions with local recruits? Furthermore, there may be challenges that unsettle the highly entrenched territorial organization of the armed forces, including the chains of command that previously ran parallel to the centralized civilian bureaucracy. From all these and other policy challenges facing post-Suharto Indonesia, we have largely limited our discussion to issues implicit in the legitimate expression of regional cultural identities, and the reconciliation of tensions between local communities in a climate of political openness. Given the other major crises the government confronts, these problems might be seen as important, but not necessarily of the first rank. We trust the discussion to this point goes some way to showing that they are in fact challenges that will not wait. The integralism that guided policy under Suharto is inappropriate for emerging pluralist democratic Indonesia. Policy-makers and citizens alike will be challenged to articulate a coherent vision of the new Indonesia that can give a consistent orientation to policy. Some of the most influential military and bureaucratic interests are entrenched at a local level (McCarthy 2000a, 2000b). Further, as in the case of logging and plantation firms in West Kalimantan, large-scale commercial enterprises with an important stake in the regional economy can very effectively resist any attempts to curb their privileges. In doing so, they do not necessarily resort to solving problems by acting in an official capacity. If violence is to be exercised to protect established interests, or other moves made to frustrate the meaningful empowerment of local communities, then much can be achieved through discreet support for civilian surrogates while the instigators of the conflict remain at several stages removed from the action. The repertoire of provocation, violence, dirty tricks and money politics is extensive. It ranges from the buying off of democratically elected officials to the physical harassment of targeted individuals and groups, and destabilizing acts of terror with no clear rationale beyond the creation of a general climate of fear. Foreign observers who were startled by the spectacle of pro-integration militias in East Timor operating in close concert with regular armed

The cases of Ambon and West Kalimantan 159 forces would be even more surprised to learn that, though their actions in East Timor were extreme, militias of this type have long been part of the Indonesian social and political landscape. Such groups vary enormously in terms of their size, recruitment base, outlook, discipline, legitimacy, funding and degrees of involvement in crime or politics, and in the nature of their links to the state and other mainstream social organizations (see McBeth and Murphy 2000; Djalal 2001b). They have nevertheless contributed to the patterns of political contestation, particularly in times of crisis and social turmoil, over a long historical period. Who were the trained assassins, the so-called ninjas, who created grave social tensions in East Java by murdering dukun santet (mystic, sorcerer) and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) religious leaders prior to the national elections? What is the full story of the Pam Swakarsa (Voluntary Security Guard) who confronted students in the special session of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) in November 1998? Of more immediate relevance to our case studies, we need to ask what is known about the Laskar Jihad force recently active in large-scale murderous attacks on Christians in Halmahera. They are widely reported to have strong links with current or former military figures, and there are reports that the military has at least acquiesced to their reign of terror, and may even have participated. The Minister for Defence himself has made charges about associations of this kind ( Jakarta Post 2000g). Repeatedly, extra-state forces intervene in regional crises. Does the Minister know who is behind these attacks? And if he does, why is he unable to take effective action to stop them? Repeatedly we come up against a lack of answers about such groups – where are they from? How were they organized, trained and transported? Who provided funding for their operations? Who planned and directed their intervention? To what ends? Initially, in the Timorese case, outsiders exercised proper scepticism and took these Timorese militias at face value, accepting that they may have been the spontaneous expression of the anxieties of the proautonomy (or anti-independence) Timorese minority. We now know otherwise, and have learnt much more about the systematic planning, recruitment, training and direction of the Timorese militias by outsiders, principally by the TNI, who also stiffened their ranks with volunteers from the Special Command Unit (Kopassus) and other units. While money politics takes other forms than organized violence, the ongoing incidence of militia violence orchestrated by well-funded provocateurs is the most troubling perversion of open democratic processes and community self-expression. Unless the maintenance of public security and order can be kept in the hands of legitimate, democratically accountable institutions of law and order, then there is little hope that reforms that empower local societies will find solutions to the many instances of deepseated inter-communal conflict.

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Conclusion Decentralization, democratization and openness could be important to the solution of inter-communal conflicts in the regions. However, the problem of public order precedes other considerations. The fact that democratic reform needed an end to military and police interference in civil society has strengthened a widespread distrust of the security forces and the sense of relief that their political roles have been challenged. And indeed the army must withdraw from politics if democratization is to succeed. However, these forces also constitute the only legitimate means of preserving public order within the rule of law, and if violent civil strife, whether fomented by malevolent outsiders or not, is to be constrained, then they have an indispensable part to play. Of course, many who are fearful of the military’s return to politics are quick to observe that the army is one of the prime beneficiaries of civil disorder. Violent civil conflict creates public pressure for the state to intervene and rescue society from itself. There is an important cultural dimension to the problem as well, since, as we have seen, the role of jago (gangsters) and their modern equivalents draws on a long tradition in Indonesian society – an ambivalent one that is not entirely negative. Such fighters have been celebrated particularly in revolutionary times. A guerrilla army fighting a difficult war of national liberation can make good use of auxiliaries. However, civil militias are dangerous to the political process in other times. The view that the state must have (indeed is defined by) the monopoly of the exercise of legitimate violence is surely more than a Western liberal preference. As a practical matter, if the state does not possess this monopoly and insist on it, then the rule of law is meaningless and the authority of the government is compromised. Whether the Indonesian government can, in present circumstances, realistically expect a reformed military and police to change soon into an institution of this kind is very doubtful, as is the expectation that they have the trust of the parties in civil conflicts when they intervene. If situations like those in the Moluccas and West Kalimantan are made more uncertain because of the presence of provocateurs and the ambiguous intentions and capabilities of the military, it nevertheless remains important to identify policies that can best respond to them. We saw that the issues in West Kalimantan – involving confrontation between indigenous communities and transmigrants – were largely local, even if exacerbated by predatory development and environmental projects from outside. By contrast, we saw in Ambon and the Moluccas – where the conflict has become one of bitter fighting between long-established religious communities, but involving the presence of large numbers of spontaneous migrants – as one where outside influences have always had a significant influence. In spite of these and many other complicating factors, it is still

The cases of Ambon and West Kalimantan 161 the case that the roots of the conflicts, and therefore hopes for their resolution, are fundamentally local. For that reason, we believe that lasting solutions to these conflicts are tied to the success or failure of the decentralization reforms. These reforms place significant powers in the hands of district governments and (third-level) district parliaments. There are grounds for significant optimism about regional and local societies having the capacity to take responsibility for the conduct of their own government. However, there are a number of ways, including money politics, in which the growth of local democracy could be frustrated (Snyder 2000). Even allowing for the best outcomes, there is an abundance of challenging policy and budgetary issues to be addressed if decentralization is to work, starting with the recruitment and training of local officials and professionals, and the control and coordination of the different levels of government. On the positive side, stronger local self-government can contribute to renewed confidence in local communities and cultures. On the negative side, the strengthening of local identity could feed old resentments against outsiders and local minorities. The unfortunate events in the Moluccas show, for example, that actions against a local minority – say Muslims in certain districts – can inflame resentments and encourage outside intervention. More frequently, but without eliciting any outside protective response, migrant minorities are experiencing a political backlash as resentment against the ‘privileges’ they have received in the past are turned against them (Cohen 2000a). As we have seen, migrants have been caught up in local conflicts. Nationwide, they represent a significant element in the large number of displaced people who have been forced from their homes by civil strife in recent years. The fact that they find themselves living in areas where incompatibilities with local cultures and ways of life have seriously complicated their resettlement can in part be traced to the Suharto regime’s systematic failure to address the cultural dimensions of migration. We have shown that this is no accident, since assumptions about the cultural homogeneity of Indonesian societies and the prohibition of discussion about the negotiation of inter-communal differences were an important corollary of the integralistic (or organicist) principles that became the unchallengeable basis of New Order policy-making, and the orthodox interpretation of the constitution and the state, as well as the authorized view of Indonesian society and national identity. To the extent that that integration has been discarded in the reform process, and the legitimate diversity of Indonesian regional cultures reconfirmed, there is as yet no systematic view of how that cultural variety is captured within a shared national consciousness. While this remains the case, the old integralist orthodoxy is still entrenched in the theory and practice of so many institutions in Indonesia that a consistent policy response to the challenges of devolution and regional dispute settlement may be some time in coming yet.

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Notes 1 We would like to acknowledge a number of people and institutions who have greatly assisted us. First, our thanks to RUSSIC at Curtin University, and to Ian Chalmers in particular, for arranging a public lecture by Young on this topic in Perth in November 1999, and for much useful advice from colleagues there. Thanks also to Hendro Sangkoyo, Yekti Maunati, Robbie Peters, Aris Arif Mundayat, John McCarthy and numerous others who provided valuable input. Our special thanks to Riwanto Tirtosudarmo of LIPI in Jakarta, who shared with us the results of his own studies. 2 Many such clashes have occurred since Krismon (the monetary crisis of 1997–1998) as a shrinkage of resources saw increased competition over ‘turf’ in the extra-legal arena as well as the usual market locales. It should be noted that this particular clash cleared the way for a gambling monopoly, the Paradise Entertainment Centre, which has close links to the Suharto family and Yorrys Raweyai of Pemuda Pancasila (Aditjondro 2000b: 13). On Yorrys and Pemuda Pancasila, see Ryter 1998. 3 Pemuda Pancasila was one of the most prominent youth gangs in the Suharto era. 4 This refers to customary practices of consultation and collaboration between Christian and Muslim communities in Ambon, which have developed over a long period. 5 Tamrin Amal Tomagola, a Moluccan sociologist at the University of Indonesia, Komnas HAM, Kontras and many other sources document the case for systematic and calculated outside provocation in the Moluccas. See Aditjondro 2000a; Cohen 2000b; Tomagola 2000; Jakarta Post 2000f, 2000h, etc. 6 It is worth noting that while the world was outraged at the spectacle of 300,000 displaced Kosovars in 1999, it remains unaware of the very difficult situation of hundreds of thousands of internally displaced peoples in Indonesia. 7 Interview with Indonesian anthropologist February 2000. 8 Nevertheless, as Bourchier (1996: 251) notes, there are some difficult contradictions for integralist ideologues in acknowledging this European tradition as articulating the fundamental principle of the Indonesian state while also emphasizing the essential indigeneity of their concept. 9 In her discussion of the ‘destruction of the nagari’, which had been ‘for centuries, the centre of Minangkabau rural life’, Audrey Kahin (1999: 257) observes: ‘The measure that struck the most decisive blow against the indigenous structures of social control in West Sumatra was the administrative reorganization that took place at the lowest level of government. This involved the replacement of the traditional extended village (the nagari) by a smaller administrative unit that corresponded to the Javanese desa’. 10 Consider the demand that all key positions be filled by locals – putera daerah – and what that means in practice, particularly in regions of established mixed populations.

10 Provoking violence, authenticating separatism Aceh’s Humanitarian Pause Elizabeth Drexler

‘FREE ACEH FROM THE SHACKLES OF PROVOCATION’1 reads the sign held by a young man in a wheelchair. The photograph has no caption. It appeared in January 1999 in a local Acehnese tabloid alongside a story entitled ‘When Referendum Begins to Threaten’ (Kontras 1999). While ‘provokator’ (provocateur) and ‘provocations’ have become two of the most prominent political terms used in post-Suharto Indonesia, they rarely appear as more than mere mentions, snapshots and slogans. These terms – provocations and provokator – are explanations; they do not need to be explained. They are a type of public secret at the same time that they are a public threat. Provokator functions as an explanatory placeholder for an indeterminate threat and a weapon in evading accountability. Representatives of the armed forces of the Republic of Indonesia (TNI) and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) signed a Joint Understanding for Humanitarian Pause in Davos, Switzerland, on 12 May 2000. They formally agreed to a pause in the conflict in order to allow for the distribution of humanitarian aid. The parties also agreed ‘to assist in the elimination of all offensive actions by armed elements which do not belong to the Parties to this Joint Understanding’ (Joint Understanding for Humanitarian Pause 2000). These armed elements are what the press and local discourse calls the ‘third force’ element, or provokator. This chapter argues that the recently signed Humanitarian Pause agreement cannot free Aceh from the shackles of provocation by eliminating the armed elements that belong neither to GAM nor to TNI,2 precisely because the agreement itself distinguishes and formalizes those element(s) within the logic of the provokator, which perpetuates violence and defers justice.

Decentralizing violence President Abdurrahman Wahid’s government, the first freely elected government to lead Indonesia in more than thirty years, inherited a nation on the brink of collapse. While the media may be quick to blame violence on the provokators, ongoing violence in Maluku province raises

164 Elizabeth Drexler questions as to how much control the centre – military or civilian – is able to wield outside Java. Whilst the President and his supporters may have seen this ‘humanitarian pause’ agreement with GAM as the last hope to forestall the domino-style disintegration of Indonesia unravelling from Aceh, his critics count the signing of this agreement not as a success but as a ‘blunder’ ( Jakarta Post 2000e)3 that threatens Indonesian sovereignty by internationalizing a local conflict. Referring to this agreement as a ‘blunder’ recalls criticism of former President Habibie’s decision to allow East Timor a referendum ballot, and discloses the anxiety of reformers among the Jakarta elite towards attempting political resolution of regional conflicts. Violence in Indonesia is not limited to Aceh. The archipelago is plagued by widespread incidences of local ethnic, religious and separatist violence. Throughout Suharto’s thirty-two year authoritarian rule, ethnic and religious diversity was subordinated to the nation-building project. Now, some leaders and many ordinary people fear that Indonesia is poised on the verge of a major religious war and national disintegration. The shocking departure of East Timor, now nearly forgotten amidst the range of other more pressing anxieties, underscores the urgency with which many Jakarta-based elite feel the possibility of national disintegration must be considered. Jakarta’s fears are not imagined, Indonesia is at a crisis point; however, this crisis was precipitated by a deliberately promoted fear of national disintegration, which was used to consolidate the nation under the Suharto regime. The state no longer has a monopoly on the use of violence, and those who are the legitimate holders of the means of violence have not demonstrated the ability or willingness to control widespread horizontal violence occurring between citizens. Regional autonomy legislation and a decentralization of political and economic powers are meant to placate those who are unhappy with the legacies of Suharto’s highly centralized state; however, the rewards of even hastily implemented legislation are still far off. In the short term, only violence has been successfully decentralized in post-New Order Indonesia.

State of violence/state violence/violent states Although there has been a decrease in media-reported violence in Aceh, everyday violence, intimidation and terror might have actually intensified for ordinary Acehnese as a result of the Humanitarian Pause agreement. Average daily death tolls do not reflect significant improvements. The agreement itself has become part of a discursive struggle to represent violence and human rights abuses in Aceh in a translation process from abuse to compensation, or political rights based on victimhood. In this context, justice circulates as a political commodity always unattainable. Therefore, the issue becomes what to do in the face of the overwhelming impossibility of reaching justice for past crimes. Thus, justice is indeed unattainable

Provoking violence, authenticating separatism 165 because it is no longer the issue. In an economy where past abuse is equated to the right to self-determination, the struggle becomes one not for justice, but for independence. This in turn reinforces a belief (held by some of the population, who are not necessarily direct victims of violence) whereby independence, through whatever means, compensates for the past denial of rights or abuses. This is readily seen in a context where discussions of justice have been hijacked by the referendum campaign. Ultimately, this is an example of the type of reasoning used to perpetuate the belief that violence is the only means of resolution. The conflict in Aceh has moved from a problem of separatism justifying a military operational zone (DOM) to separatist sentiment widely enforced and popularized by increasingly public GAM separatists and decentralized violence, which the military is unable or unwilling to control. The transformation of the conflict has gone through several phases since Hasan Tiro founded the GAM on 4 December 1976 in Pidie. Aceh was given the status of DOM in 19894 in order to rid Aceh of ‘separatist forces’. National newspapers and personal testimonies do not, however, recall the interim period (1976–1989) as one marked by violence. Following the fall of Suharto, the outpouring and exposure of past human rights abuses generated a public apology from armed forces chief General Wiranto on 7 August 1998, and his promise to end the DOM status. The promised withdrawal of troops at this time was marked by an attempt to engineer riots.5 These riots failed to develop, and the tone remained one of public euphoria and widespread support for the testimony of past abuses by survivors. Despite the shocking revelations of torture, rape and disappearance, private statements and public discourse in Aceh did not favour any sort of separatism. Demands for justice were resolute, but not flamboyant; it seemed that the crimes would speak for themselves – their revelation would guarantee justice. Some thirty-nine investigative teams from Jakarta and Banda Aceh, government and nongovernment, failed to deliver on promised justice or compensation. The congress of Acehnese students formed a committee for the distribution of information to promote the idea of a ‘referendum’ on Aceh’s future in February 1999. In order to realize a GAM-advocated boycott of Indonesian national elections, violence intensified in June of 1999. Low-level but widespread violence, attributed to mysterious provokators, punctuated by spectacular cases (many of which were demonstrated to be the work of the armed forces), resulted in an atmosphere of danger. However, despite increasing frustration with the lack of serious attention from the Jakarta civilian government to discussions of justice and compensation, the emergent referendum movement was adamantly non-violent and advocated a political resolution. This fragile coalition of divergent interests and constituencies converged on Banda Aceh on 8 November 1999 to demonstrate peacefully for a referendum. Pressure steadily increased for a referendum with independence as an option, which ultimately became a

166 Elizabeth Drexler campaign for independence through the referendum process. However, there are notable exceptions to the increasing and widespread popularity of the referendum issue. The Aceh Women’s Congress (Duek Pakat Inong Aceh) did not include the referendum in its final statements, despite a walk-out by a minority of participants. Given the extreme pressure to support the referendum, such as the threats received by participants in the Women’s Congress, the fact that the majority of the women made a statement only for peace is extremely significant.6 Thus, it would be a mistake to consider increased popular support for a referendum with independence as an option as evidence of a long-suppressed separatist movement flourishing the moment that military presence is decreased. While the problem in Aceh is one of an accumulation of unspeakable violent acts, it is also a problem of violence done by words. ‘Referendum’, which some suggest was initially a provocation, and ‘provokator’ itself are two words that people had hoped might facilitate a peaceful resolution, but instead have intensified violence. The banner ‘Referendum’ enabled many different constituencies to form an alliance in which they were aware that the strength of their threat and therefore position depended upon a unified appearance. This banner hid many conflicting interests, and imposed silence rather than dialogue. Some civilians asked if the signing of the Humanitarian Pause meant that Aceh would never be safe again. Others express a different anxiety about the fact that the exposure and evidence of military involvement has not resulted in justice. One proIndonesia Acehnese businessman said, ‘People are afraid that if there is no violence, they will lose their bargaining position’.7 This view disregards the risks that many people are taking, most notably in the Women’s Congress, to try to move beyond politics in order to move beyond violence. Indeed, acts of violence, particularly human rights violations of the magnitude that occurred during DOM, are the basis for the political debates about the future of Aceh; however, political interests and constraints have marginalized these atrocities. Interests in Aceh are both political and economic. Initially, natural resources in Aceh and the potential profits to be gained may have enlivened both a separatist movement and a military operation determined to acquire its share. Such resources were important to separatist rhetoric, as an indication of economic inequality, a source of future income and, among a few cynics, a motivation for opportunist leaders to rebel. In contrast to the New Order period, in which stability secured by violence created valuable economic gain for the central government, violence and conflict now empower both a wellintentioned humanitarian aid industry and extortion and protection rackets, which are extremely lucrative in an atmosphere of terror and uncertainty and perhaps more sustainable than the natural resources formerly exploited.8 In the atmosphere of sustained uncertainty, conspiracy theories abound and often reinforce the power of those forces that they wish to

Provoking violence, authenticating separatism 167 criticize. Rather than difficult-to-prove conspiracies, what must be considered is the coincidence of certain apparently opposed interests in promoting the same conditions. In other words, what are the conditions of possibility for certain events at specific points, which prove to be impossible at other times? Why, given the state of militarization of both sides (TNI and GAM) would it be possible for a million and a half civilians to gather in Banda Aceh without incidence of violence, while the current Humanitarian Pause fails to secure an atmosphere without violence? Criminal activity, otherwise glossed as provocations in some reports, continues despite the large military presence in Aceh. Many high-level figures, including the President, have said that there is military involvement in the violence in Aceh (Republika 2000a). While the veracity of these suspicions is extremely important, and exceedingly difficult to document, the effects of the rampant criminality and the rumours themselves are easily documented. Tolerating criminal activity extends the practices of terror that were systematically carried out by the military during the DOM period. The effects of ongoing random criminal activity are numerous. There is a pervasive sense of lawlessness, and security forces have been unable to resolve even one incident of theft or extortion. Gradually this enforces a sense of powerlessness of citizens to effect any change, thus producing the depoliticization of society through criminal activity (as opposed to the previous New Order practice of criminalizing political activity). In such an atmosphere, suspicion destroys weak civil society alliances or efforts towards reconciliation because, as many Acehnese citizens emphasized, ‘before it was clear who the enemy is; now no one knows who is a friend and who is an enemy’.9

Authenticating separatism At this point in the conflict GAM is seen to have a solid existence and long history; however, very little about that history is clear. What is known is that a separatist movement, GAM, was declared on 4 December 1976. It is also known that several individuals were tried together at a hearing in Banda Aceh in 1990, mostly young intellectuals who might have been critical of the New Order, but according to their own testimonies they were not linked to any armed separatist movement. Two members of this original cohort are now involved in the Humanitarian Pause committees, giving an appearance of continuity between earlier arrests and present protest. Prior to their appointment as committee members, they acknowledged they did not have strong links to the current GAM leadership. National newspapers from the New Order period feature very little information about GAM. In interviews, Acehnese more easily recall the violent accusations by the military that they were sheltering rebels, rather than the actual presence of rebels. This reticence, however, could be linked to the fact that to admit to knowing anything of it during the DOM

168 Elizabeth Drexler period would have guaranteed interrogation for an ordinary citizen. Diplomatic staff recall that in the early 1990s Indonesian military sources were reporting greater casualties from combat in Aceh than in East Timor.10 Information regarding this period is exceedingly difficult to verify. Some Acehnese suggest that GAM was a fabrication of the Indonesian military in order to justify their financially lucrative operations in Aceh. They note that the mythic, exiled GAM founder Hasan Tiro failed to secure a lucrative business contract in Aceh before he began his separatist campaign.11 An Acehnese member of the army noted that there was very little separatist threat at the outset of the DOM period in 1989.12 In fact, conflicts occurred within the military between Acehnese and nonAcehnese personnel over military involvement in prostitution, gambling and other activities that were seen to conflict with local standards. Beyond the exiled leadership and those arrested and jailed in the early DOM period, there are very few resistance figures associated with GAM. Splits and factions have developed over time and, more recently, by virtue of the Humanitarian Pause agreement one group has inherited the ‘resistance’ title, whilst other groups will be eliminated, sometimes literally.13 Activists who suggest that GAM may not represent the only voice of the Acehnese people are frequently harassed and intimidated, surprisingly, both by members of GAM and by police and military officials.14 Early human rights investigations document abuses committed by GAM as well as the TNI (Amnesty International 1993). Many Acehnese civilians I interviewed expressed a fear of both GAM and the TNI. The relationship between GAM and ordinary citizens is difficult to ascertain as, prior to the Joint Understanding, most Acehnese differentiated between the many strains of ‘opportunist’ or ‘engineered’ GAM, and a ‘pure’ GAM that has the best interests of the people in mind. The effect of the Humanitarian Pause agreement has been not only to make the shadowy provokators real, but also to consolidate and legitimate a public GAM. Why would the Indonesian government legitimate and recognize internationally a separatist movement? Many critics note that at the time of the signing GAM had lost momentum. Some suggest that President Wahid’s intention was to turn GAM into a regional political party that would then be absorbed by a wider civil society. Wahid effectively demonstrated that the international community supported Indonesian territorial integrity, despite the million-person march for a referendum. The 4 December GAM anniversary passed without incident in 1999. The Aceh Women’s Congress had not included the referendum in their demands. The text of the Humanitarian Pause agreement recasts GAM in a powerful role to pressure NGOs and civil society groups as they compete for roles in dispersing humanitarian aid; furthermore, GAM is elevated as the most powerful voice in representing Acehnese civil society. One interpretation is that reinstating GAM as a powerful force in Aceh will shift attention

Provoking violence, authenticating separatism 169 from justice issues and state accountability for past human rights abuses, which were demanded by victims of the DOM in 1998. The issues will become political, and past violence will be justified in terms of quelling strong Acehnese resistance.15

Provokator An understanding of the Aceh conflict requires an understanding of the national political context, or how the discourse of elite intervention and engineering intersects with actual instances of violence as they are imagined and experienced by those remote from control and others who hold ‘the remote control’ (as the Jakarta military elite were described by an Acehnese human rights investigator).16 A florescence of political expression followed Suharto’s fall in May 1998. The articulation of long-disallowed politics took many forms – demonstrations, distribution of printed materials (pamphlets), media coverage, graffiti and banners, amongst others – and, even for some longterm opponents, an entrance into formal political institutions or parties. Many critics shared a desire to reduce or eliminate the military’s political function. In contrast to New Order stability in which ‘nothing happened’, there was an eruption of horizontal conflict and public discourse of violence indexing the profound uncertainty and anxiety most Indonesians experience. A freer press exposed many instances of past state violence, but news of current, engineered or spontaneous violence flooded the media, creating the impression that the state and military no longer had a monopoly on the use of force. In this new reform period, there are stories of violence taking several forms: violence by the state against its citizens; by ‘armed civilians’ against the state (and sometimes ordinary people); by members of different religious or ethnic groups against rival groups; and a continuation of New Order stories of criminal violence (Siegel 1999). Provokators permeate the stories of each type of violence. The exposure of both state violence and spontaneous violence contributes to widespread anxieties over the fate of the nation. Stories that document military involvement in past human rights abuses increase calls for an end to the military’s dual-function (social–political) role, whilst stories of seemingly uncontrollable horizontal violence create the impression that the military is still necessary. Often, spontaneous violence is said to be provoked or engineered by various parties (sometimes specified, but most often not) to satisfy their own political ends. Suspicions are never followed with conclusive investigations, either by the media or by the authorities, that would prove or disprove popular rumours of manipulations, nor are there plausible explanations about how the desire among the masses to participate in this engineered violence is developed. In the absence of resolution, these incidents take on a life of their own in public discourse. Intense struggles occur as the

170 Elizabeth Drexler violence is attributed to and claimed by different parties, in locally specific and nationally complicated conflicts. In ‘reform Indonesia’, most often incidents are said to be incited by provokators. The term ‘provokator’ appeared on the scene precisely at the time that there was more widespread public acknowledgement of military involvement in violence and human rights abuses. Despite the frequent appearance of ‘provokator’, it is difficult to ascertain exactly who they are. ‘Provokator’ is the legacy of the maldistribution of power in the New Order and Guided Democracy periods. For almost four decades the Indonesian state, especially the army, was the most powerful political force in Indonesia. Citizen attempts at political expression were consistently criminalized, manipulated and/or redirected for the various interests of power. ‘Provokator’ has its antecedents in terms like Opsus (Special Operations), Petrus (Mysterious Killings), terlibat (involved), provokasi (provocations) and many others that were used by the New Order regime to locate mysterious enemies elsewhere and to avoid responsibility for violence that only the regime was powerful enough to cause. Critics also used these terms to confirm that there were powerful interests at work, but abstractly, so as not to become involved. Despite the fact that the Suharto regime has ended, there continues to be a suspicion, or expectation, that conflicts will be manipulated by the powerful. At the same time, there is evidence that those in power are unable or unwilling to control local violence once it has been engineered or ignited. During the New Order period, most political activity was said not to represent the political aspirations of Indonesian citizens, but to have been organized by ‘masterminds’ or ‘puppet masters’. If there were no logical scapegoats, mass political action was said to be the result of unidentifiable, but still sinister, provocations. The Joint Fact-Finding Team charged with investigating the 1998 riots in Jakarta used the term provokator for the first time to suggest the military was behind the riots. Building on, but departing from, the usual myth that the Indonesian people are incapable of acting alone, this report pointed to the organized nature of the mayhem, which could only have been arranged by the military. Provokator emerged as a term to sharpen the meaning of provocation as a way to talk about elite and military manipulations of violence. In media accounts post-Suharto, provokators are ever present in igniting the violence sweeping Aceh, and are never caught despite the professed best efforts of security forces. Provokators are said to throw grenades, fire guns and burn buildings, and both civilian and military are among their victims. Provokators are ‘impossible’ to unmask, but if by chance they are, then they become a single undisciplined armed forces member who does not represent any systematic plan of the military; alternatively, they are declared GAM separatist rebels whose confessions are usually extracted after torturous interrogations.

Provoking violence, authenticating separatism 171 In Aceh, provokator appeared coincident with the campaign for the referendum. The referendum issue – not necessarily meaning independence17 – was initially suspected as a provocation. Some saw the referendum as at odds with GAM’s non-negotiable demand for independence. It is in that context that it gained popularity and supporters, as a civilian-led democratic process. Now both provokator and ‘referendum’ have grown from vague whisperings to formal figures at the centre of the Aceh conflict. Provokator resonates nationally with anxieties about the role of the military: that it may actually be necessary to stop disintegration, but that it may not be able to control violence once ignited. In Aceh, the overwhelming evidence of the involvement of the TNI in human rights abuses and violence has been overshadowed by the hysteria over provokators and an increasingly powerful GAM. Provokator is a supplement that authenticates the latent dangers imagined by the regime. Now, more than a year after its initial appearance, opposed political interests converge in using the popularity of the referendum issue to prove that all Acehnese want to separate from Indonesia. Each query and every accusation brings the shadowy provokators into existence. The phantom provokators are attached to the concrete, physical evidence of corpses and burnt-out buildings. Such provokators then require a special security campaign, thus transforming what might be isolated criminal activities into a systematic, coordinated political violence. Every incidence of ‘sweeping’ or identity-card checks to restrict the mobility of citizens travelling through Aceh creates an atmosphere of danger and insecurity. Fear of both provokators and the campaigns to eradicate them enforces a system where political expression and daily life are dangerous.

Conclusion For ordinary Acehnese, who are the provokators? One young Acehnese civilian answered, ‘To ask who the provokators are is itself a provocation’.18 Indeed continuing to try to unmask provokators compounds the problems in Aceh. Truly unmasking the provokators might in fact show that the discourse of ‘provokator’ perpetuates the climate in which violence thrives and in which individual agents are able successfully to act as provokators. Jakarta elite of many political persuasions are scared and confused by these forces as well. Many seem genuinely scared that Aceh may be lawless, violent and filled with real provokators who are not responsible to anyone they might be able to pressure politically; and they worry that they could lose control of abundant natural resources in Aceh. Provokators might be captured one by one, but the word ‘provokator’ is more difficult to arrest, as it spreads fear and perpetuates violence. There might be some consensus among reformers and democracy supporters of the Jakarta elite, and new government officials, that the military’s political role needs to end, but at the same time the long-instilled

172 Elizabeth Drexler fears of national disintegration and violent rebels haunt them. Faced with widespread violence and a desire not to reinstate the military in its powerful position by seeking its intervention, they can do very little. Thus they unwittingly follow the military’s lead in pointing to the human rights abuses committed by the various others – GAM in Aceh, Independence Forces in East Timor and separatists throughout the archipelago – or, in less clear-cut cases, including Ambon’s religious strife, they point to provokators as an implicit legitimation of the continued use of military violence. The logic of provocation and manipulation criminalizes political participation and implies that people are unable to act on their own, but must be led by a ‘mastermind’. Such masterminds are always embroiled in conspiratorial plots. Thinly veiled in these arguments, and sometimes directly stated, is the idea that the Indonesian people, or masses, are not ready for democracy. They are prone to ‘running amok’. Thus, the public acknowledgement of high-level involvement, rather than moving towards justice, has merely provided further evidence of the judicial impunity enjoyed by the powerful.

Notes 1 The Indonesian text uses bebaskan, which means to release or free, but is different from merdeka, which is typically translated as ‘Free’ in the name of the rebel group Free Aceh Movement, or Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM). 2 In the context of the agreement, ‘TNI’ refers to both the armed forces and the recently separated police forces. However, it is important to note that the relationship between various elements of the armed forces and the police is extremely tense in Aceh. 3 Dewi Fortuna Anwar, quoted in Jakarta Post 2000i. 4 No references or documents establish a date or month for the implementation of this status. 5 During this time, sites of military interrogation were destroyed along with important evidence regarding crimes. In addition, local residents burned gambling and prostitution locations. 6 Interviews, Banda Aceh, 30–31 May 2000. 7 Interview, Medan, 7 June 2000. 8 It is difficult to obtain exact figures for the volume of extortion, but the amount of promised international aid associated with the Humanitarian Pause agreement will likely exceed previous extortion income for GAM. It is difficult to ascertain how the military will profit from the dispersal of humanitarian aid. The informal sector of unofficial extraction and payoffs for protection to the military is difficult to measure as well as to document (see McCulloch 2000). 9 Interview, Medan, 10 June 2000. 10 Interview, Jakarta, 19 July 2000. 11 Interview, Medan, 16 September 1999. See also Tim Kell (1995), The Roots of Acehnese Rebellion, 1989–1992 for an excellent analysis of the primary role economic disparity has played in a conflict that is narrated very ideologically. 12 Interview, Banda Aceh, 5 June 2000. 13 Tengku Don, the leader of the MP GAM, which supported non-violent means, was killed on the first day of the implementation of the agreement in Singapore (Kompas 2 June 2000).

Provoking violence, authenticating separatism 173 14 In public statements, GAM also blames violent incidents on provokators. Prior to the agreement when GAM was still a completely underground movement, it was very difficult to discern who the actual perpetrators were. Both TNI and GAM potentially could have disavowed members. In this atmosphere, several strains of GAM were distinguished, including a GAM provokator, to which most criminality was attributed. 15 For an excellent discussion of the effect of TNI violence on the development of GAM, see Geoffrey Robinson 1998. 16 Interview, Jakarta, 7 November 1999. 17 Most Acehnese agree that there must be a political resolution to the violence in Aceh. Most have been united under the banner of referendum; however, many admitted off the record that they do not want to separate from Indonesia. 18 Interview, Banda Aceh, 5 June 1999.

11 Ceremonies of reconciliation as prelude to violence in Suai, East Timor James J. Fox

Suai was the scene of some of the worst violence to occur in East Timor. The town of Suai is the capital of the district of Covalima, on the border between East and West Timor. From the time that the option was proposed to allow the East Timorese to conduct a population consultation on autonomy within Indonesia or independence from Indonesia, Covalima was at the forefront of the struggle to determine the future of the territory. A campaign of intimidation and violence was begun well before the final agreements between Indonesia and Portugal were signed on 5 May 1999 to allow the United Nations to proceed with the ballot. Two militia groups were formed to carry out this intimidation. One militia group, Laksaur (‘Eagle’), recruited supporters mainly from the western side of the district and from West Timor; the other group, Mahidi (Mati Hidup untuk Indonesia: ‘Live or Die for Indonesia’) recruited its supporters from the eastern part of the district, particularly from the area of Zumalai. The Covalima area has been a source of contention for centuries. The population of the district consists of Tetun-speaking groups in the lowlands who have close kin relations to similar groups in the adjoining area of Kovalima on the Indonesian side of the border, and of Bunak-speaking groups in the uplands with similar links to Bunak-speaking groups across the border. Both the Dutch and the Portuguese disputed boundaries on both sides of the border. As late as 1911, the Dutch claimed an area known as Maucatar, which embraced much of present-day Zumalai (Fox 2000). The final boundary settlement between the Portuguese and the Dutch led to further unrest, with a portion of the population shifting across to the Dutch side of the border. After the Indonesian takeover of the territory in 1975, Covalima developed a strong ‘partisan’ group who, for several years, fought Fretilin forces on behalf of the Indonesian military. Recruitment to the specially formed militia – Laksaur and Mahidi – although limited in numbers, was based on earlier allegiances. The passion and commitment of many militia members were genuine. The commitment of the militia as a group was continually fostered by elements

Violence in Suai, East Timor 175 of the Indonesian military, including members posing as civilians, who were locally referred to as Kopassus preman (Special Command Unit ‘thugs’). Militia members were called upon to take part in acts of violence directed by the military and were thus drawn deeper into a personal commitment to the cause of integration and to the bonds that united members of the group. At the same time that the militia were being formed, there was growing organizational activity on the part of the CNRT and its armed wing, Falintil, with evident grassroots support. Key ‘partisan’ leaders, who had previously fought for the Indonesian military, shifted allegiance and were working surreptitiously against them. Most of the local leadership of the People’s Front for East Timor (Barisan Rakyat Timor Timur), who were supposed to be conducting the official campaign for autonomy, were in fact secretly working for independence. Clandestine activities were widespread, and the suspicion of collaboration was pervasive. As the time for the ballot approached, tensions mounted. A concerted campaign of intimidation by the militia in outlying villages led to the displacement of thousands of local villagers who sought refuge on land surrounding the Catholic church in Suai. A huge new cathedral was under construction near the older and much smaller church, which continued to function as the main parish church of Suai. By August, some 4,000 refugees were settled in and around the two churches. Some had been camped there since April, others had arrived more recently. Most refugees were living in makeshift huts; some had taken up residence amidst the scaffolding inside the walls of the new cathedral. On the second floor of the cathedral structure, a group of refugees had set up a CNRT headquarters, complete with CNRT posters and pictures of Xanana Gusmao. Nothing of this, however, was visible from outside the cathedral structure. Food for these refugees was provided through UNAMET (The United Nations Missions in East Timor) and had to be trucked in from outside at regular intervals. Expectation of delays in food shipments were part of daily life in the camp; piped water was available but had been disconnected by the local Bupati (district head or Regent), who was then forced through international pressure to reconnect water to the camp. The presence of such large numbers of refugees in a small town, their evident allegiance to the cause of independence, and the protection afforded them by international agencies was a singular provocation to the militia and Indonesian military. The Bupati of Covalima, who had previously been Bupati of Baucau, was a Javanese who had served in East Timor since 1975. In addition to his position as Bupati, he held the rank of colonel in the Indonesian army. By August, he was nearing the end of his period of service; his family had already returned to Solo and he was facing the prospect of a humiliating loss of all that he had devoted his career to achieving.

176 James J. Fox The local military commander stationed in Covalima, who was the chief organizer of the campaign of violence in the district, was reputed to be among the most vicious local commanders in East Timor. However, just prior to the ballot this commander was recalled to Dili, leaving military leadership under more junior command. Local East Timorese greeted his removal with cautious optimism. On hearing the news, one East Timorese (mistakenly) remarked, ‘a snake does not function well without its head’.

Efforts at reconciliation In the lead-up to the popular consultation, two local Catholic priests attempted to achieve some form of reconciliation between the prointegrationist militia groups and supporters of East Timorese independence. Father Hilario Madeira and Father Francisco Soares were seemingly the most ordinary of men, barely distinguishable in dress and appearance from the majority of their parishioners. Both had spent considerable time in Suai, but neither was from the district. Father Hilario, who was the head of the parish, was an able activist with some experience gained from travel overseas but with deep roots in the Timorese countryside. Father Francisco was an equally able, thoughtful priest. The two priests worked closely together, complementing each other’s strengths. Just prior to the ballot they were joined by another priest, Father Tarcisius Dewanto, a recently ordained Javanese Jesuit. Assigned to teach at the seminary in Dili, he had personally decided to join the priests in Suai to assist them in their parish work. One of his first tasks was to take responsibility for Sunday mass in Zumalai. For months, Father Hilario’s and Father Francisco’s efforts at reconciliation involved engaging with members of both sides to emphasize common bonds of relatedness that could be called upon to avoid the use of violence. Most of these efforts were directed towards members of the militia, who viewed the priests with considerable suspicion because they were closely associated with providing support and protection to the refugees who were aligned with the independence movement. The work of the priests was aimed, inevitably, at undermining the solidarity of the militia groups by emphasizing individuals’ personal relations to others in the community. In the most frequently cited metaphor of the militia, if the population were to choose autonomy, blood would drip (menetes); but if the people chose independence, blood would flow (mengalir). The priests’ reconciliation efforts were intended to lessen the mounting intimidation and to prevent the possibilities of future violence. Several meetings were held between members from both sides, and a document was prepared espousing reconciliation and eschewing violence. This document was intended to form the basis for a reconciliation ceremony to be held on the Sunday prior to the formal vote on Monday, 30 August, 1999.

Violence in Suai, East Timor 177

Violence in Timor Timor has a long history of violence. For most of the nineteenth century, despite grandiose claims, the European colonial powers exerted little influence throughout most of the interior mountains. Much of this interior region, on both sides of the border, consisted of local polities that carried on regular warfare among themselves. This warfare consisted mainly of headhunting raids carried out in the dry season. Headhunting was ritually organized and linked to ceremonies of harvest increase, and drew upon younger men who – if the raids gained heads for the group – were ritually initiated as headhunters (Middelkoop 1963; McWilliam 1997). The Dutch mounted various military expeditions to ‘pacify’ the interior of western Timor in the first part of the nineteenth century, but after 1822 most of these efforts were curtailed. In the twentieth century, the Dutch relied on missionary efforts to convert the Timorese as their major means of pacification. Armed pacification efforts were resumed but carried out only on a limited scale to bring local rulers into alliance (Francillon 1980). By contrast, the Portuguese developed a policy of active military forays from the middle of the nineteeth century well into the twentieth century. Between 1847 and 1913, the Portuguese launched no less than sixty armed expeditions to pacify the territory they claimed. With only a limited armed force, the Portuguese in Dili would organize the rulers of the areas under their control to provide the warriors needed to attack and punish a recalcitrant area. Virtually every year the combination of forces and area or areas under attack shifted. Headhunting was part of these punitive actions, and until 1913 a celebration was held in Dili each dry season to welcome the heads taken in these forays. Militia (moradores) were an integral part of this system, and consisted of local East Timorese who were loyal to the Portuguese and formed a ‘second line’ of armed supporters for the Portuguese (Pélissier 1996). From an historical perspective, little in the array of violence that occurred in East Timor in 1999 could be claimed as totally foreign to Timor’s cultural traditions. Indeed, in the lead-up to the ballot, militia groups attempted to revive indigenous traditions associated with some of the more fearsome aspects of latent practices. The differences were in scale and in the systematic way they were perpetrated.

The ceremony of reconciliation The ceremony of reconciliation, organized by Father Hilario and Father Francisco, was to be the culmination of their efforts at reconciliation. Bishop Belo was invited to come to Suai to celebrate a mass of reconciliation, and this was to be followed by a public ceremony near the church.

178 James J. Fox A large podium had been erected in an adjacent field for this purpose, and a CNN television crew was on hand to record the proceedings. The United Nations provided a helicopter to fly the Bishop from Dili and he arrived in time for a mass at 8:00 am. Both the head of the United Nations police and the head of the United Nations civilian contingent in Covalima accompanied him. The church itself was packed, but surrounding the church on three sides a crowd of several thousand East Timorese stood listening to the mass from the outside. Pews at the front of the church were filled with members of both contending factions: CNRT supporters on the left, members of the militia on the right. Mass was celebrated by Bishop Belo and Father Hilario. At the offertory of the mass, a group of traditional dancers led a procession to the altar, followed by the Bupati and the Head of Police, who carried the offertory vessels, and then by a group of militia members who surrendered a bundle of home-made weaponry. At the point in the mass when members of congregation wish each other ‘peace’, the front of the church erupted in an outpouring of emotions as members of the two factions left their seats and embraced each other. At the end of the mass, there was a brief ceremony in which the weapons, set before the altar at the front of the church, were handed over to a contingent of Indonesian police. After the mass, attention shifted to the public ceremony. Even before it began, prominent militia leaders began giving interviews to the CNN television camera, proclaiming their desire for reconciliation. The ceremony that followed consisted of declarations by speakers on both sides, all of whom enunciated their unswerving commitment to peace and to the restoration of brotherly relations between the factions. When it came time for Bishop Belo to speak, he called on one of the militia leaders to be an ‘apostle of peace’ and to go forth from Suai to carry the message of peace throughout East Timor. During the ceremony, I sat at the back of the podium beside Father Francisco, who translated the Tetun speeches for me and kept up a running commentary on their significance. He himself remained sceptical of the sincerity of the different militia speakers. His hope was that, at least for some of them – and he placed great hope in the change of heart of one particular militia leader – the ceremony was more than just words. At the ceremony, leaders from Mahidi were more evident than those of Laksaur. In fact, as Father Francisco was quick to point out, the chief leaders of Laksaur made no appearance at all. In the end, Father Francisco’s realistic scepticism about the effectiveness of his own ceremony of reconciliation would prove to be well founded.

Traditional ideas of reconciliation The idea of reconciliation – or, more appropriately, a formal agreement to restore a rupture in relations among groups – is by no means foreign to

Violence in Suai, East Timor 179 the traditions of Timor. The idea, however, has more to do with restoring balance and making restitution. Major restitution generally involved an exchange of livestock or other valuables as well as the exchange of women between appropriate groups. It had little to do with an emotional change of heart, nor was it a matter of individual responsibility. It was a formal act between groups through their acknowledged representatives, who took it upon themselves to act on behalf of their group. In the past, such agreements would also involve the drinking of blood, mixed in local gin or arak, and the swearing of an oath that, if violated, brought a curse on the perpetrators and their descendants. Like a stream of tiny red ants, such curses were believed to pass down the generations. The ceremony of reconciliation in Suai had none of these traditional elements, and in many ways was significantly at odds with such traditions. It was predicated on different principles and did not succeed in encompassing the leadership of the militia, but served rather to humiliate the Indonesian officials who were pressured to take part. It was an expression of hope but it was also public theatre, sandiwara in Indonesian terms, and was played as much to an international audience as it was to local Timorese. And as a form of reconciliation, it failed. On 6 September, just over a week after the ceremony, the church of Suai, filled with refugee women and children, was systematically attacked by militia reportedly led by specific Indonesian military officers. Dozens were slaughtered and their bodies trucked to a site across the border, where they were buried. The three priests – Father Tarcisius first, then Father Hilario and after him Father Francisco – were killed. The killing of Father Hilario was carried out personally by leaders of the Laksaur militia. Much more can be said of this act of violence and its consequences but this is neither the time nor the place to do so.1 The ceremonies of reconciliation in Suai proved to be a prelude to a violence that was planned and directed, itself a demonstration in response to the effort at reconciliation.

Note 1 In this chapter, I have intentionally avoided mentioning the names of most of the key participants in the events that I describe. At the time of writing (July 2000) the massacre in the church in Suai is the subject of two separate but coordinated judicial hearings, one in Indonesia and the other under international auspices. At some point in the future, it will be possible to be more explicit about what occurred in Suai.

12 Violence and governance in West Papua Richard Chauvel

Violence has been a central element in the governance of West Papua1 since the territory came under Indonesian administration in 1963. The propensity for violence has its roots in the history of the territory’s integration into Indonesia. This chapter suggests that violence has been used as the principal means of maintaining the state’s authority in a society where its legitimacy is low. The use of violence has served to foster Papuan identity and national aspirations. The Sukarno-led diplomatic and military struggle against the Dutch had broad support from all political groups in Indonesia, and the success in securing the ‘return’ of West Irian through the 1962 New York Agreement was regarded as a national triumph. Under the New York Agreement and the 1969 Act of Free Choice, unlike the later incorporation of East Timor, West Irian’s status as part of Indonesia was recognized by the international community.2 Indonesia’s difficulties in West Irian were with the indigenous population. The Papuan political leaders felt that they had not participated in the negotiations that had resulted in the transfer of their homeland from the Netherlands to Indonesian sovereignty. A strong body of opinion among the small Papuan political elite had supported the Dutch plans for a process of decolonization over a ten-year period leading to an independent West Papua. Among the pro-Indonesian Papuan leaders there was a confidence that President Sukarno would honour his promise to grant West Irian a special status within Indonesia (Kirihio 1962a). Sukarno also impressed Fritz Kirihio, the first Papuan to study at a Dutch University, with his determination to use force against the Dutch, if necessary. This persuaded Kirihio of the need to protect Papuans from armed conflict between Indonesia and The Netherlands (Kirihio 1962b). Indonesians had participated in a national struggle to assert their claim that West Irian was part of Indonesia. Ironically, Papuans had not shared much of the nation-building experience of the struggle against the Dutch or the immediate post-revolution period years, having been the object of the struggle rather than participants in it. There had been only a few minor revolts against the Dutch, led by Indonesians with a few Papuan

Violence and governance in West Papua 181 supporters. Instead, developments in Papua had been influenced by those who had escaped from the Revolution – the Eurasian and pro-independence (RMS) Ambonese communities. Dutch policy in education and political development had sought to emphasize the differences between Papua and the rest of the archipelago. Papuans were encouraged to think of themselves as Papuans, not as Indonesians, and to envisage a future as an independent state, more part of a Melanesian world of the Pacific rather than the Malay world of South-East Asia. The Netherlands’ administration in West Papua was a curious affair. It was in most respects a continuation of the Netherlands East Indies, but there was an additional element of benevolent and paternalistic missionary zeal. The Netherlands’ motives in retaining West Papua after the rest of Indonesia became independent were complex and numerous. Among them was a desire to demonstrate that the Netherlands was a ‘good’ colonial power. The ideals that informed the post-1950 policies in West Papua were in part a throwback to the ‘Ethical Policy’ and in part influenced by ideas of trusteeship. The advancement of the Papuans was an objective that did not have to be compromised with the imperatives of resource exploitation. The development of Papua’s natural resources was difficult while the conflict with Indonesia continued. From a Papuan perspective, the Netherlands’ colonial administration offered education and occupational opportunities for an emerging elite, and, although the rapid social and cultural change involved dislocation, the Dutch did not have to rely on much force to maintain their authority. Papuan memories of the Netherlands’ administration have become rosier with the passage of time, in part as a mirror of their experience of Indonesian governance since 1963. Indonesia assumed the administration of West Irian in difficult circumstances. The new citizens did not share the sense of achievement many Indonesians felt. The takeover took place in the last chaotic years of Sukarno’s Guided Democracy. The economy was in sharp decline and the military had assumed a dominant role in provincial government. At one level, Papuans were transformed from being subjects of a European colonial power to citizens of an independent state. At another level, they swapped a relatively benign form of civilian rule for a military-dominated authoritarian regime. Papuan resistance to Indonesian authority emerged soon after the transfer of administrative control. The Organisasi Papua Merdeka (Free Papua Organization, OPM) was formed in 1964, and the first substantial revolt took place in Manokwari the following year (Djopari 1993: 100, 109–10). The OPM became the principal institution to wage an armed resistance against the Indonesian government. The resistance was sporadic, ad hoc and localized. It never threatened Indonesian control of the province. Although the OPM’s military capacity was limited, its representation of Papuan identity and national aspirations was of much greater importance.

182 Richard Chauvel Under the New York Agreement, Indonesia had recognized a Papuan right of self-determination and had agreed to hold an act of selfdetermination. None of the powers that had supported the resolution of the dispute between Indonesia and the Netherlands desired that an independent state emerge, and hence Indonesia was under no pressure from the international community to observe the letter and the spirit of the New York Agreement with respect to the Papuan right of self-determination. Nevertheless, the process did occur. The Act of Free Choice resulted in a unanimous vote for integration in Indonesia. Today’s proindependence activists reject the Act of Free Choice as illegitimate because of the method of consensual consultation (musyawarah) used and the intimidation that accompanied it. Although there was no pressure from governments, there was some media scrutiny. Before and during the Act of Free Choice, numerous Western journalists visited the territory. One such visitor was Garth Alexander. He briefed British diplomats in Jakarta on his impressions of political opinion in the territory:3 Probably the most striking feature of Alexander’s report was the further confirmation of what we have been told before that the majority of the West Irianese . . . are very far from wishing to become integrated with the Republic of Indonesia. Of all the people he spoke to, and he met between three hundred and four hundred, none was in favour of such a solution. The impression he has is that the Papuans loathe the Indonesians, perhaps in the same degree and as a direct consequence of the way in which the Indonesians have despised and belittled the Papuans. Reflecting on Alexander’s observations after more than three decades, two points are worth noting. First, while there has been great social, economic and demographic change in Irian Jaya, Indonesia has not made great advances in convincing Papuans that their preferred future should be as part of Indonesia. Second, Indonesia has been able to sustain an administration in Irian Jaya largely without the consent of the indigenous population of the territory. In being able to do so, the use of violence and the threat to use further violence has played an important part. Indonesian authority has appeared most vulnerable in the brief period of political openness and reformasi ideals following the fall of Suharto, during which relatively free expression and organization of Papuan national sentiments were permitted. Indonesian control seemed fragile because it became apparent that the sentiments Alexander had observed in 1968 were still widespread. The emergence of Suharto’s New Order from the ashes of Sukarno’s Guided Democracy brought about profound changes throughout Indonesia. Two aspects of the transformation had an influence on governance in the regions, including Papua. First, there was the institutionalization of

Violence and governance in West Papua 183 violence, or what Benedict Anderson has called the ‘process of brutalization’. It was related to the increasing role of the military in politics and administration since 1957, but there was also a change in the values of political culture through which the military viewed political dissidence. In the 1950s and early 1960s, those who opposed Jakarta’s authority in the regions were regarded as misguided but were treated as members of the ‘Indonesian family’. Under the New Order, enemies of the state were no longer regarded as fellow Indonesians, however misguided, but rather as ‘animals’, ‘devils’, ‘objects’ and ‘possessions’. Anderson argues that ‘A culture has developed in the military according to which in “security” matters every element of human decency can be set aside, with complete impunity: provided “the boss” gives them the order’ (Anderson 1999: 8). The massacres of 1965–1966 were the first example of this process of brutalization, on a massive scale. In Aceh, Papua and East Timor this approach was systematically applied. Anderson contends that Papuans were simply not thought of as fellow-Indonesians, but rather as possessions. Instead of welcoming the Papuans and the East Timorese into the Indonesian family, the military sought to ‘subjugate’ them, just as Dutch Governor-General van Heutsz had done with the Acehnese at the end of the nineteenth century (Anderson 1999: 5, 8) Second, there was an ideological transformation, specifically relating to Pancasila, but in a more general sense involving a reformulation of the Indonesian nation as a cultural polity. David Bourchier has argued that Suharto’s New Order promoted itself as ‘the exemplar of Indonesian cultural tradition’ (Bourchier 1996: 295). Bourchier emphasized that the function of Suharto’s Pancasila and the P4 indoctrination campaign – ‘to Indonesian-ize Indonesians’ – was to purge the remnants of the culture of conflict and competition and replace it with a discourse of harmony and obedience. By excluding alternative discourses – Marxism, social democracy and some strands of Islam – it placed their followers outside the Indonesian family (Bourchier 1996: 238, 240). It is suggested here that this process of exclusion also applied to regional discourses about Indonesia. The organicist arguments on which Suharto drew had their origins in Dutch adat law scholarship, which contended, inter alia, that the archipelago constituted a discrete and coherent cultural area (Bourchier 1996: 31). The unity, oneness and harmony of Suharto’s Indonesian culture in effect excluded the diversity from the unity. With respect to Papua, Suharto’s institutionalization of violence and cultural exclusion came together. Papuan resistance was met with repression and Papuan attempts to preserve something of their own cultural identity within a broader Indonesian context were thwarted. The violence of the New Order was amplified by the perceived cultural differences. There is a paradox about the way Papuan identity has developed under the New Order. Expressions of Papuan identity vis-à-vis other groups, particularly Indonesians, are made in very clear terms: ‘we’ Papuans and

184 Richard Chauvel ‘you’ Indonesians. The differences with Indonesians are expressed in simple physiognomical, cultural and ethnic terms. Externally, Papuan identity is an ethnic identity. In its political expression, it is an ethnic nationalism. Yet internally there is a recognition that Papuan society consists of around 250 ethno-linguistic groups, some of which have had little contact with each other and have diverse histories of contact with societies outside Papua. Ironically, the politics of violence and cultural exclusion have served to sustain and nurture Papuan identity and national aspirations. Papuan theologian Benny Giay has depicted the period of Indonesian rule as the ‘Suffering of the Papuan people during thirty-five years of Pembangunan’ (development). It is that experience that motivates the struggle for separation and independence – the experience of being treated as stupid, incapable and drunks; the intimidation involved in the acquisition of land for development. Systematic discrimination in work and educational opportunities, together with institutionalized abuse of human rights, gave birth to anti-Indonesian sentiment and a contempt for Indonesian culture as that was represented in the New Order (Giay 2000a: 55–8) This experience of Indonesian rule has shaped much of the Papuan response to the new political environment that emerged following the fall of Suharto. Those in Papua alienated by institutionalized violence, cultural exclusion and economic exploitation have tended not to join the reformasi movement of their fellow Indonesians in Jakarta and elsewhere in the struggle for a more democratic and inclusive Indonesia. Rather, they have used the new political space created by a weakened central authority to advance Papuan national aspirations.

The Papuan elite: between nationalism and colonialism If the Indonesian administration in Irian Jaya has been sustained largely without the consent of the indigenous population, the Papuan elite has been instrumental in enabling this to happen and at the same time limiting the reliance on violence to maintain state authority. The dominant mode of the Papuan elite’s accommodation with the state is born out of a pragmatic acceptance of Indonesian authority over Papua and the opportunities it provides for economic, political and social development of the territory, as well as for personal political and career advancement. With respect to the Papuan Churches’ leaders, Benny Giay has argued that senior churchmen became agents, mediators and peacemakers for the government. He cites such examples as the Moderator of the Evangelical Christian Church (GKI), the Reverend Rumainum, who issued a pastoral letter in support of the Indonesian conduct of the Act of Free Choice; also the role of church leaders in negotiating settlements of the 1977 revolt in the Baliem Valley; and the revolt of the Me in Paniai (Giay 1996: 2, Giay 2000b). These churchmen were motivated by their sense of

Violence and governance in West Papua 185 responsibility to protect their flock against what they perceived to be the overwhelming force that the Indonesian authorities were able to mobilize. The political agenda of the more conservative members of the elite remains structured by their appreciation of political realities: how can less than two million Papuans hope to wrest their freedom from 210 million Indonesians? Perhaps when the New Order generation of political leaders, with their narrow and militaristic notions of national unity, is no longer in power things might be different. Church leaders have their counterparts in those members of the elite in senior positions within the Indonesian administration. The then governor, Frans Kaisiepo, was the Reverend Rumainum’s contemporary during the Act of Free Choice. At critical moments, such as the Act of Free Choice and the 2000 anniversary of Papuan ‘independence’, when the Indonesian authorities determined on a course of action, those Papuans in the senior posts were in a position where they felt they had to use their influence to contain Papuan resistance in order to save lives and limit violence. As they see it, the cooperating members of the elite are responsible for the protection of their people and have to act to secure the continuation of Papuan society. The newly-installed governor, Jacobus Solossa, was in this position on Papuan ‘independence’ day, 1 December 2000. In an interview on Radio Nederland, he provided some insight into the predicament he confronted. Asked why, in the circumstances of a broadly conceived freedom (merdeka) that the Governor was advocating, could the Papuan flag not be flown, he replied: Don’t incite our people to demand independence. It has to be explained that Indonesia would not accept the demand that easily. There would be many complex problems and our people would be the casualties. We must explain clearly and see with clarity so that we do not behave emotionally. [If not,] our people will become the victims. Who will be responsible for the people? (Radio Nederland 2000a) The Governor implicitly recognized the widespread support for independence in Papuan society. He was among the 100 Papuan leaders who demanded independence at a meeting with President Habibie in February 1999. Yet, as a long-serving Golkar politician, he is keenly aware of the political realities of the struggle for control of government in Jakarta, the determination of nearly all sections of the Jakarta political elite to maintain Irian Jaya as part of Indonesia, and the implications that they have for the province. There is a duality in the Papuan elite’s accommodation with the Indonesian state. Those Papuans who reach the middle and senior levels of the administration have publicly accepted the demands of loyalty the state imposes. However, their commitment to the state, its values and ideals may not be what they seem.

186 Richard Chauvel The duality of loyalties among senior Papuans was captured by the striking figure of Filip Karma, independence activist and senior government official, who was often seen in Jayapura in the days before the ‘independence’ anniversary, in his Indonesian bureaucrat’s uniform, with a Papuan flag proudly pinned to his chest. The government’s own intelligence assessments of the Papuan opposition would seem to acknowledge the ambiguity of elite loyalty. In one intelligence document some of the most senior Papuan officials, including the newly-installed Governor and the Ambassador to Mexico, were included in what was labelled the ‘Papuan political conspiracy’. It recognized that the provincial government had been ‘contaminated’ by the independence ideal, and recommended that strong sanctions be applied to well-known supporters of Papua Merdeka amongst local officials (Nota Dinas 2000). It was announced in September 2000 that sanctions would be taken against Papuan Government officials who openly supported the independence movement (Antara, 27 September 2000).

Violence and the end of reformasi in Papua The economic crisis and the fall of Suharto ushered in a period of relative political openness in Papua, as in most regions of Indonesia. It was the first time since the Dutch left in 1962 that Papuans had had the opportunity to organize politically and articulate their demands for independence. Papuan resistance was transformed from the OPM’s sporadic and localized struggle in the jungles of Papua to a mass-based, urban-led movement advocating a non-violent struggle for independence. Habibie and Abdurrahman Wahid accommodated the new Papuan leadership as part of Indonesia’s process of democratization. Although they never entertained the sort of independence-oriented dialogue the Papuan activists desired, channels of communication were established. In February 1999 Habibie met with a large delegation – the Team of 100 – that was broadly representative of Papuan political opinion. On a visit to Jayapura for New Year’s Day 2000, Abdurrahman Wahid sanctioned the use of the Papuan flag and gave his support for the change of name for the province from Irian Jaya to Papua. Wahid gave substantial funds that enabled the Papuan Congress to be held in May/June 2000. The principal resolution of the Congress was a demand for independence. In retrospect, the Papuan Congress was a turning point in the central government’s policy-making about Papua. Policy makers recognized that the independence movement posed a serious threat. An intelligence assessment from the Department of Internal Affairs observed that the atmosphere, all the way down to village level, following the Papuan Congress was one of euphoria and enthusiasm for the idea of Merdeka (independence). The ‘conspiratorial groups’ supporting Merdeka were increasingly cohesive and were endeavouring to ‘socialize’ the results of

Violence and governance in West Papua 187 the Papuan Congress throughout Irian Jaya, elsewhere in Indonesia and internationally (Nota Dinas 2000). The Annual Session of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) in August 2000 put more pressure on the central government to change policy. Despite the efforts of Papuan representatives to defend and explain Papuan ideals, members of all factions in the MPR attacked Abdurrahman Wahid’s accommodative attitude. The President’s agreement to change the name of the province to Papua and his granting of permission to fly the ‘Morning Star’ flag were rejected. Commission C of the MPR stated that ‘The President has not yet been able to deal with separatist movements which have been threatening the totality of the unitary state of Indonesia especially in Aceh and Irian Jaya provinces’. Abdurrahman Wahid was given the task of taking decisive action against separatism and implementing special autonomy for Irian Jaya and Aceh (Xinhua News Agency 2000). The MPR session was indicative of how the President’s approach to the separatist movements had become an issue that his opponents used to attack his Presidency. Wahid’s approach had few supporters and the detractors came from across the political spectrum. The MPR members’ desire to see a more decisive and less tolerant stand reflected a broader body of opinion in Jakarta. A Tempo survey of Jakarta residents on attitudes towards the Papuan struggle for independence found them to be unsympathetic and strongly supportive of the government’s efforts to maintain the unitary state and Irian Jaya as part of it (Wicaksono 2000: 12). The ‘Morning Star’ flag became the focus of the struggle between the central government and Papuan pro-independence leaders. For Papuans, it had long been associated with acts of defiance against Indonesian authority. Its history was linked with the 1961 ‘declaration’ of independence. Since the fall of Suharto and after Abdurrahman Wahid had sanctioned the flag’s use there had been seven clashes with security forces over flying the flag, in which scores of Papuans lost their lives (Ansaka 2000).4 Indonesians regard their own national flag with great reverence, and to have the ‘Morning Star’ flying as a symbol of Papuan national values was an affront. The ‘Morning Star’ had been a focus of the MPR’s criticism and the President accepted that the Papuan flag should no longer be flown after the MPR session finished on 18 August. By the end of 2000, the Indonesian authorities’ determination to prevent the flag from being flown had exacted a heavy toll in human life and reinstated the use of force as the centrepiece of governance in Irian Jaya. This happened despite much official rhetoric about the government taking a ‘persuasive’ approach. Sorong was the locale of the first forced lowering of the flag by the security forces after the MPR session. Three Papuans were killed and twelve wounded in the confrontation with the police. There were further incidents in Manokwari and Hamadi ( Jayapura) in September, without

188 Richard Chauvel any loss of life. Government determination to remove the flag was further clarified with an instruction from General Bimantoro, the Indonesian Chief of Police, on 27 September, that seemingly had the blessing of the Vice-President. On 3 October there was an agreement between the proindependence leaders and the provincial authorities (Muspida) that the instruction would not be implemented until the Papuans had discussed the issues of the flag and the name of the province with Abdurrahman Wahid. On 6 October, notwithstanding this agreement, the Police Chief in Wamena (Central Highlands) ordered his troops to lower the numerous ‘Morning Star’ flags then flying in Wamena and disband the Papuan militia’s command posts (Tim Kemanusiaan 2001). The forceful removal of flags in Wamena precipitated a series of events that led to the deaths of about thirty people, many of them Indonesian settlers.5 The importance of the violence in Wamena was not merely in the loss of life and injury, but in the tensions it revealed between Papuans and Indonesian settlers and among Papuans. The violence in Wamena sent a shock-wave through the province. The security forces had demonstrated their determination to impose their authority. There is a suspicion among some Papuans that the violence in Wamena was related to an attempt by the security authorities to shift the dynamics of political conflict from the demand for independence to one of ethnic tensions (Giay 2000c; Radio Nederland 2000b). This suspicion was given some credence a few days after the violence at Wamena by Brigadier General S.Y. Wenas, then Chief of Police in Papua. Wenas encouraged settlers to arm themselves against any attacks from Papuans (Maniagasi 2000). There was a large-scale exodus of Indonesian settlers and coastal Papuans from Wamena that fed into the rising political tensions. Wamena, together with clashes between Papuans and Indonesian settlers at the Abepura markets in Jayapura, appeared to stimulate a significant exodus of Indonesian settlers and their household goods from the province. With tensions mounting in Papua amid fears of further violence, the pro-independence leaders met with the provincial civil and military authorities (Muspida) on 9 November. Both sides recognized that there had to be a ‘cooling down’ period. They reached agreement concerning the ‘Morning Star’ flag and how the Papuan ‘independence’ day could be marked. It was agreed that the flag could be flown in public until 1 December. From 2 December it could only be flown at the houses or offices of the traditional leaders in five regions (kabupaten) in the province. A thanksgiving prayer would be permitted on 1 December, after which the Irian Jaya Arts Centre would have to be vacated by the Papuan militia (Satgas), who would, along with the flag, move to the house of the principal independence leader, Theys Eluay (Radio Australia 2000). The deal involved significant concessions on both sides. The authorities had to postpone the implementation of Jakarta’s instruction to remove the flag in the centre of Jayapura, and indeed continue to permit it at

Violence and governance in West Papua 189 traditional leaders’ houses. The commemoration of ‘independence’ day would be tolerated. Supporters of independence had very high expectations about what might happen on 1 December. Some hoped there would be a proclamation of independence. To persuade supporters to accept that the flag would no longer be flown after 1 December was a challenge, as it indicated that the independence movement had lost some of its momentum. The pro-independence leaders were nevertheless optimistic. They thought they had secured the authorities’ agreement to ‘independence’ day activities. They were confident that agreement on the flag could be extended to all fourteen regions. They considered that the proposal to declare Papua a ‘zone of peace’ had been placed on the agenda (Interview, Willy Mandowen, Jayapura, 10 November 2000). The cautious optimism persisted through the preparations for 1 December, despite ominous signs from Jakarta. Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono warned that any commemoration of the independence declaration would be regarded as an ‘act of treason’ and tough measures would be taken (Sydney Morning Herald 2000). Additional troops were dispatched to Papua following the MPR session, and further reinforcements were sent during the last weeks of November. Estimates of the numbers varied, one source reporting that four battalions of army and mobile police had been assembled in the port area of central Jayapura (DetikWorld 2000). Some of the reinforcements were landed very publicly in the main harbour. The optimism vanished and the tension rose another notch when, in the days before the ‘independence’ anniversary, five of the pro-independence leaders, including Theys Eluay, were arrested. For the previous two years these people had been the negotiating partners of the authorities in Jayapura and Jakarta. On 29 and 30 November Jayapura was placed under military occupation and the security forces put on an impressive ‘show of force’. Convoys of trucks fully laden with troops sped up and down the main thoroughfare between Jayapura and Sentani, with sirens blaring and motorcycle escorts. The key installations in central Jayapura were occupied. In this atmosphere, indeed within hearing of the military convoys, the leaders of Papua’s Christian churches held a press conference in which they appealed for restraint and avoidance of anything that might provoke conflict between the security forces and the people or between different groups within the society (Astaga.com 2000). The churches in Papua have an infrastructure and network to the village level superior to that of the independence movement and possibly the government. They enjoy the confidence and trust of Papuan society beyond any other institutions. The substance of the press conference, rather than the text of the press release, was that the church leaders had no confidence in the Indonesian authorities and did not believe that their opinions were taken seriously.6

190 Richard Chauvel Under great military pressure, the ‘Independence’ day anniversary was marked. The Imbi Square in the centre of Jayapura, where the flag-raising, thanksgiving prayers and speeches took place, was cordoned off by police in full riot gear. The pro-independence leaders still at liberty managed to contain the dissatisfaction of their supporters at their agreement that the flag would no longer be flown and the great constraints that the military presence had imposed on the commemoration. The following day the ‘Morning Star’ flag was not raised and the Papuan militia were removed from the symbolic centre of Papuan nationalism, the building of the former New Guinea Council, located on the Imbi square, where thirtyeight years previously the flag had been raised for the first time. On 7 December some 300 people armed with traditional weapons attacked the police station near the Abepura market (Jayapura), killing three policemen as well as burning down shops. The police were unable to identify or capture any of the attackers. On suspicion that the attackers were highlanders, the police raided the student dormitories (mainly highlanders), attacked the sleeping students and detained ninety of them. In detention some of them were tortured and three of the students were killed (ELSHAM 2000). Beginning with the violence in Wamena in October, there has been an identification of highlanders as pro-independence hardliners and as being responsible for the attack on the police station at Abepura on 7 December. The Abepura police chief, Alex Sampe, ‘declared war’ on the highlanders (AFP Jakarta 2000). The tension between highlanders and the security forces is also reflected in the exodus since early December of Wamena people resident around Jayapura, seeking refuge across the border in PNG (Astaga.com 2001; PostCourier/PINA Nius online 2001).7 The eyewitness description by Swiss journalist Oswald Iten of the ‘orgy of torture’ against highlander students in the Jayapura jail where he was imprisoned suggests how fear and perceptions of cultural difference serve to amplify violence (Iten 2000).

Conclusion After a three-and-a-half month struggle beginning with the MPR session, the central government succeeded in removing the symbols of Papuan nationalism and restricting the public expression of Papuan national aspirations. In doing so it appears to have closed much of the political space that had developed during the early reformasi period of Habibie’s presidency and the first year of Abdurrahman Wahid’s government. However, the human and political cost of the central government imposing its authority on Papua has been considerable. The manner in which Jakarta’s authority was imposed was a powerful demonstration of the fact that Indonesia has few ‘assets’ in its political control of Papua, other than its near monopoly of the use of military force. The lack of other ‘assets’ is reflected in the difficulty the central government has in formulating

Violence and governance in West Papua 191 policies that do not depend on some degree of force, as well as its unwillingness to engage in ‘dialogue’ that forms a centrepiece in the proposals of almost all the political groupings within the Papuan elite. The two years of relative political openness, with the emergence of proindependence leaders as the de facto representatives of their society, indicated that after nearly forty years Indonesia had not succeeded in convincing many Papuans that being part of Indonesia was the preferred future. Although there is a broad range of opinion within the Papuan elite on independence, autonomy and the means and timeframes for achieving these objectives, there are few Papuans who publicly advocate an Indonesian future. The willingness among the elite to cooperate with Indonesia is born of a pragmatic assessment of Indonesian control, and the sense of responsibility to protect Papuans and ensure the survival of Papuan society. In the crackdown on political activity in late 2000, the reliance on force in the central government’s approach to the problems of Papua is not likely to see the issues resolved but rather compounded. The first edition of Tifa Papua for 2001 observed that: The Satgas Papua (Papuan militia) are no longer to be seen. The Papuan flag is not flying any more. Nevertheless, the ideal of Papuan independence remains the topic of conversation in front of shops, in the markets as well as in food stalls and even in the villages. (Ansaka 2001: 3)

Notes 1 West Papua, West Irian and Irian Jaya are used in this chapter to refer to Indonesia’s easternmost province – the western half of the island of New Guinea. The alternate names for the territory have been politicized since the 1940s. Papuan nationalists prefer Papua, while the Indonesian government wants to retain Irian Jaya. 2 The result of the Act of Free Choice was noted in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2504 of 19 November 1969. 3 Mason to D.F.B. Le Breton, 3 April 1969. Public Records Office (London): FCO 24/447, quoted in Saltford (2000). Garth Alexander was a British journalist who visited West Irian in early 1968 and briefed British officials on his return to Jakarta. 4 The incidents were: Biak 6 July 1998; Sorong 5 July 1998; Manokwari 26 Sept. 1999; Timika 2 Dec. 1999; Nabire 26 Feb. 2000 and 3 March 2000; Kaimana 10 April 2000; Manokwari 5 August 2000. 5 Indonesian settlers constitute about 30 per cent of the province’s population. The settler proportion is higher in urban centres. Settlers dominate the economy. (M.C. Rumbiak, ‘Sumber Daya Manusia Papua’, unpublished paper, Fakultas Ekonomi, Universitas Cenderawasih, Jayapura, 2000, p. 2.) 6 The author attended the press conference in Jayapura, 30 January 2000. 7 A Tifa Papua editorial, 11–16 December 2000, made a direct link between the security force’s pursuit and detention of highlanders and refugee flow of highlanders into PNG.

Part 3

After the violence

13 The media as a control and as a spur for acts of violence1 Stanley

The freedom of the press has experienced a number of fundamental transformations under President Abdurrahman Wahid. There are no longer taboos regulating discussion of problems relating to politics and power. The President himself has stated his intention to free society from state control over information and all matters connected with social work. This has been accomplished in part by dissolving the Department of Information and the Department of Social Affairs. Following the dissolution of the Department of Information, the mass media experienced an extraordinary reflorescence. In addition to the emergence of a number of new publications,2 the media have enjoyed greater freedom in the coverage and dissemination of news. As if they had just reached independence after thirty-two years of repression under Suharto’s government, the media competed with one another to write robustly. Some publications adopted a critical attitude towards the government and the rapid democracy movement, whilst others only appeared to be strong and courageous, as if that proved they were true supporters of reformasi and democracy.3 Newspapers in this latter category were the cause of a number of complex problems. In response to news items that tended towards ‘originality’ or ‘difference for the sake of it’ and which gave the impression of ‘haphazardness’, editorial offices were attacked by a number of community groups who attempted to destroy journalistic equipment. Interestingly, this potent violence, which is best referred to as ‘communalism’, actually derived from two militant components previously considered supporters of the reformasi movement and democratization – the Security Unit (Satgas) of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and an arm of the youth organization of Nahdlatul Ulama (Banser NU) – the former being fanatical supporters of Megawati and the latter fanatical supporters of Gus Dur.4 Following from this, when the Department of Information was dispersed there was effectively a transfer in the capacity for repression from the ‘state’ to the ‘people’. In this regard, media repression came from groups who possessed a direct relationship with state elites. So, how was this any different from the situation before the New Order ended?

196 Stanley Senior journalists and media observers in Indonesia perceive no meaningful advance in the state of the Indonesian press. Of course, many new media have emerged, but from a journalistic standpoint there has not yet been any significant progress. These new publications more often convey the ‘emotions’ of their directors, as opposed to incorporating facts and examining deviations from due process. Some commentators suggest that the press in Indonesia is in the midst of a euphoria that degrades the quality of journalistic coverage.5 A number of journalists and media who are aware of the weakness of the press in the era of ‘post-state control’ are hurrying to develop the craft of investigative journalism and to establish a press council. At the same time, some people are initiating the creation of institutions for media scrutiny, a press ombudsman and press consumer information. This has not yet led, however, to meaningful outcomes, due to the fact that journalists have for decades remained unfamiliar with the skills and requirements of investigative reporting. Rather, they are accustomed to quoting statements from officials (civilian or military) and incorporating into their reports official data supplied by the state apparatus. This practice, and the quoting of counter-statements from experts, has been described as ‘talking journalism’ ( jurnalisme omongan). What then, is wrong with ‘talking journalism’? How far do the media influence behaviour in society? And is it true that the media possess a force capable of persuading and stimulating different groups into action? What sort of action could occur among readers of media full of biased information?

The Pancasila Press: the power of ‘talking journalism’ There are many journalists who are of the opinion that ‘talking journalism’ is equivalent to false or fabricated journalism. For example, each time there is an uprising or violent event, forces sent to calm the situation are asked for confirmation by journalists, and are always quick to reply that ‘the situation is once again safe, calm and under control’. In reality, what this often meant was that the uprising remained beyond their control. This was the situation before the ballot in East Timor. Whenever it was confirmed that the Indonesian Armed Forces (ABRI) had committed human rights abuses or engaged in shootings, the Department of Foreign Affairs assured journalists that the sources were false. The press principle of ‘big name big news, no name no news’ in the paradigm of Indonesian media discourse, especially where it involves officials, is an engine for the production of various distortions. An extreme example of this arose in the 1970s when President Suharto announced that Indonesia was no longer illiterate (buta huruf ) and the press published the statement as a headline the following day. Yet they never sought confirmation of its validity from the millions of illiterate people in the

Media as a control and spur for acts of violence 197 country. With the help of the media, the President’s utterances, which previously had the status of ‘statement’, were changed into ‘fact’. The effort to transform this particular ‘statement-fact’ was further propped up by compelling villages to display slogans that ran ‘Our Area is Free of the Three Bs’ (Daerah Kami Bebas 3B).6 In theoretical works, mixing and engineering between the false and the real is known as simulacra or hyper-reality. More to the point, there was a tendency in the media during the New Order not only to create simulacra through official statements, but also to establish a discourse that involved the creation of ‘false truths’ (kebenaran semu) in the community, better known as pseudosophy. When there is a tendency for officials to cover up the facts, then the press becomes accustomed to quoting lies. Over time this becomes a matter of habit, notwithstanding the responsibility of the media to give a balanced coverage from both sides. The coverage of investigations and the gathering of data in the field can be undermined by official denials, and run the risk of provoking reprimands from the authorities. In a number of cases in practice, the Pancasila Press managed to change the meaning of such journalistic maxims as ‘check and re-check’, ‘cover both sides’ and ‘balanced reporting’ into attempts ‘to play people off against each other’ (adu domba), ‘to corner high officials’ (menyudutkan pejabat tinggi) and ‘to reveal state secrets’ (membongkar rahasia negara).7 In order to get rid of the lies from official sources, the Indonesian press generally sought alternative voices from academics or experts who were often in no position to be in command of either the data or the problem. ‘Talking journalism’, which is more inclined towards seeking sources from high state officials and members of the military as a basis for legitimizing ‘factual truths’ ( fakta kebenaran), takes on the form of an official approval of gossip, rumour or even outright fiction.8 When Suharto was in power, official circles in the military and intelligence frequently spread whispers and accusations that were absolutely fictitious. The most extreme example of this is the ‘27 July Incident’ in 1996. That incident actually consisted of excesses committed by the security forces in their attack against the headquarters of the pro-Megawati PDI, causing such mass anger in the community that the people ran amok, destroying and burning buildings in a number of parts of Jakarta. These actions were then said to be the sole responsibility of the People’s Democratic Party (PRD). In their coverage of the events of 27 July, the media included statements from high officials in the military and intelligence as matters of fact. Accusations that the PRD was a militant communist group, a bunch of devilish ‘skin-heads’9 and disturbers of the peace were launched by a number of media without providing any opportunity for PRD and other activists to defend themselves. Astonishingly, numerous media simply quoted the Armed Forces Chief of Staff for Social and Political Affairs

198 Stanley (Kassospol ABRI), Lieutenant General Syarwan Hamid, who, when commenting about the PRD said, ‘I can tell that they are communists simply from hearing the way they sing’ (Kompas 1996). The journalists covering the 27 July incident were silent recipients of military ‘guidance’ and lies, even though there were many among them who had witnessed some military personnel participating in the attack on PRD headquarters. The most extreme example of this type of biased reporting about 27 July was presented by Gatra magazine.10 The magazine carried interviews with military men, and even used its access to and proximity with the military to open up all the military investigation and interrogation files that portrayed the PRD as a dangerous communist group.11

Press coverage of the events of May 1998 A re-examination of the media coverage of the violent events of pillage and rape suffered by the minority ethnic Chinese Indonesians in Jakarta, Medan, Solo and Surabaya during 14–17 May 1998 also reveals that the working ‘ethics’ employed by the mass media are by no means firm or reliable. In this situation the media were unable to conduct thorough investigative journalism, and so were once again dependent upon ‘talking journalism’. Fear instilled through top-down demands and other pressures during the New Order period still cast shadows over their role. The habit of self-censoring, by reducing as far as possible the problems of ethnicity, religion, race and inter-group friction (Suku, Agama, Ras, Antargolongan, SARA), was most pronounced in the media reports of the Kerusuhan Mei (May riots).12 Journalists wrote reports full of racial prejudice (Forum Keadilan 1998b) and diverted the issue from the lack of security for the ethnic Chinese minority to the lack of nationalism among this group and negative reports about them. Examples of the headlines appearing at this time include ‘Flights to Singapore Full to the Brim’, stressing the fact that ethnic Chinese were seeking safety by flying overseas; and ‘Chinese Indonesians are asked to Demonstrate their Solidarity’. The news was angled in such a way as to ‘prove’ that there had emerged a deep-seated hatred towards the supposedly asocial behaviour of ethnic Chinese Indonesians who did not want to intermingle, chose to live exclusively, dominated the economy and so on (Tim LSPP 1999). Furthermore, the public seemed responsive to this negative attitude to the ethnic Chinese at the time, as may be seen from the outbreak of letters to the editor that were anti-Chinese in tone and the flurry of editorials that sounded an anti-Chinese sentiment (Bisnis Indonesia 1998). This was really not very different from the action of the masses in scrawling graffiti on the houses of ethnic Chinese with racial statements such as ‘Cina komunis’ (Communist Chinese), ‘Cina babi’ (Chinese Pigs), ‘bunuh Cina’ (kill Chinese) and ‘perkosa dan bakar Cina (rape and kill Chinese), or those written by non-Chinese to protect their

Media as a control and spur for acts of violence 199 property, such as ‘milik pribumi’ (owned by indigenous Indonesians), ‘Jawa asli’ (native Javanese) or ‘milik Haji’ (owned by a Haji – that is, a Muslim who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca). Only a small number of publications were successful in locating witnesses to the rapes committed by those referred to as ‘trained forces’ (pasukan terlatih).13 The remainder only presented information whose status was ‘it is reported that . . .’ (kabarnya), ‘it is said that . . .’ (katanya) or were even in the category of ‘it may be that . . .’ (konon). Some news reporting leads us to the conclusion that journalists wrote emotionally, confusing opinion with a factual analysis of the real problem (Tim LSPP 1999). With regard to media reportage, it appears that efforts to confirm the occurrence of sexual assault and rape suffered by ethnic Chinese women were a complete failure and resulted, once again, only in further gossip and rumour. The failure to locate and summarize facts led to frustration amongst the media and others that was later manipulated by government officials who released various statements to turn the ‘facts’ of what had occurred into kabar bohong (falsehoods).14 For example, the statement made by the Jakarta Governor, Sutiyoso, ‘If indeed rape did occur, I will join in the crying’, was quoted widely in the media, with the implication that it had not occurred (Muryono 1998; Sadli 1998; Suara Pembaruan 1998b). News items relating to the violence and mass rape suffered by the ethnic Chinese women were portrayed as an attempt to target Muslims. For example, when the head of the Muslim group KISDI, Ahmad Sumargono, denied that the rapes had occurred, his statements were widely reported: ‘I absolutely do not believe in the news of rape during the recent riots, and I call upon Allah Akbar as my witness. This does not make sense and clearly only points the finger at the Islamic community’ (Suara Karya 1998). The movement for the defence of the victims, led by Romo Sandyawan Sumardi SJ and friends associated with the Volunteer Team for Humanity (TRuK), was also cornered by spreading accusations claiming that their movement was adapting Marxist methods of liberation theology from Latin-American church circles. Meanwhile a number of TRuK’s leaders were accused of having made controversial statements about the rape of hundreds of Indonesian women of Chinese descent; along with this the organization itself was terrorized – by, for example, a grenade being thrown on the front veranda of the TRuK secretariat, and telephone death threats being made against Romo Sandy and Ita F. Nadia. Another TRuK member, also named Ita, was actually killed in October 1998. Later, an official attempt was made by the police to contradict all the findings of TRuK. Among other things there was an attempt to infiltrate the group by a Lieutenant Yenni Setyo Winindyati, who went to work undercover in order to penetrate the organization’s ranks. It failed

200 Stanley because a TRuK member became aware of the policewoman’s purpose. This failure was then covered up by the police in Media Indonesia, when they denied that there were mass rapes and cast doubt on the validity of the figures compiled by TRuK (Media Indonesia 1998). In this way the Indonesian press has developed inconsistently, simulacrum by simulacrum. In the case of the May Riots of 1998, the press failed to attend to the realities of what really transpired; instead it participated in the state’s stigmatizing of the victims. In the May riots there were two parties who became victims of such stigmatization: first, there were approximately 1,400 people vilified as looters; second, there were hundreds of ethnic Chinese women who were sexually assaulted and raped. This latter group, along with those people assisting and championing the cause to bring the perpetrators of the violence to trial, have been stigmatized for slander and attempting to discredit the Habibie administration, which had the support of the ummat (Islamic community) (TRuK 1998e)

A portrait of the Indonesian press in the coverage of conflict It can be said that the Indonesian press is not very experienced in the reporting of conflicts involving issues of ethnicity, religion, race and intergroup conflict – SARA. Throughout the thirty-two years of the New Order rule, the press was prohibited from reporting on all matters relating to SARA. Although the New Order era has passed, the press is not yet fully capable of and has not developed strategies for covering conflicts where issues of ethnicity, religion and race are critical. Close analysis of the mass-media reportage concerning the highlycharged conflict in Maluku will provide us with some interesting insights. In contrast to a number of well-known militant publications such as Hidayatullah, Media Dakwah and Sabili,15 larger and more established national papers such as Kompas and Suara Pembaruan tend toward excessive selfcensorship and therefore appear to hide the real conflicts. At the same time other papers, like Republika, tend to intensify accounts of the conflict. As such, there is not one publication among all of them that positions itself as a part of the process of solving this conflict. At the beginning of 1999, when the conflict in Maluku worsened, Republika was still adopting a cautious approach. However, gradually this paper showed its sympathy with the Islamic faction there. In the view of Republika, the situation in Ambon was part and parcel of a Christian effort to eradicate the Muslim groups. These Muslims were portrayed as a sector that had been victimized and, in terms of population and weaponry, overpowered by the Christians (Agus Sudibyo 2000; Eriyanto 2000; Eriyanto and Qodari 2000; Qodari 2000). By placing the entire conflict in this frame, the Republika personnel situated themselves as a group with an interest at stake – that is, in represent-

Media as a control and spur for acts of violence 201 ing the Muslims in Maluku. There are a few defining features of Republika’s coverage of the rioting in Maluku. Amongst other things, Republika projects the case of Ambon in a confined spatiality and temporality. The causes and consequences traced are limited to the arena of physical conflict, and the targets are those who started the ‘attack’. Because of this simplism, the cause of conflict in Maluku is not placed in proper historical perspective but is only looked at as a happening in its own right. With such an orientation of reportage, the chief issues for consideration become no more than who was attacked first and who was the attacker. Republika news also distinguishes between an ‘us’ and a ‘them’, between Islam and Christianity. This differentiation not only limits the identification of implicated groups in this conflict but also, more significantly, the position articulated is ‘we are like this, they are like that’. In such a scenario the provision of a voice or empathy for alternative groups is not possible. The group referred to as ‘us’ is incorporated clearly, and empathy is accorded to the Muslim victims of violence. The Christian victims are not only denied any empathy, but also a place in the news. In short, the ‘we’ are good and the ‘they’ are bad. Apart from this, Republika sees ‘them’, that is the Christians, as a problem, and only focuses upon the winners and losers of war. It is not the conflict that is of interest, nor is it the lessons to be gained from the conflict; rather ‘they’, the Christians, are considered the source of all problems and as being responsible for the whole disaster in Maluku. Like many other reports of war, the coverage focuses on the winners and troublemakers and blatantly disregards the initiatives for peace and antikekerasan (anti-violence) that might also be present. Republika often highlights events of physical victimization. Killings, including the number of dead, material loss and other such things are placed in the foreground. Non-physical violence, such as the trauma of war within the broader community and the destruction of cultural structures in the community, is not granted an appropriate place in their accounts. In contrast to Republika, Kompas and Suara Pembaruan attempt the role of mediator and cover both sides. However, even Kompas and Suara Pembaruan are covering up more than they reveal of this conflict. These two papers view the case of Ambon as a normal social conflict, coverage of which need not be disturbed by matters of religion. Kompas and Suara Pembaruan clearly do not deliberately operate in accordance with a policy to play down the case of Maluku in their news coverage, but by the ‘touching up’ or obscuring of information the problems in Maluku cannot be completely transparent when they reach the public. There are several characteristic ways in which the events in Maluku are conveyed in Kompas and Suara Pembaruan. The two newspapers present the conflict in Maluku as a controversy between locals that is unrelated to matters of religion. This obscuration arises not only in relation to the

202 Stanley causes of the conflict, but also in relation to the groups involved. Furthermore, Kompas and Suara Pembaruan wish to remain safely distanced from the possible protests of groups involved in the conflict. Consequently, the reality cannot be reported as it is. Apart from this, Kompas and Suara Pembaruan do, to a small extent, provide for the voices of other groups involved in the conflict, but more often put forward official sources. This is perhaps a method and strategy adopted by both to ensure that their news is not judged as a statement on behalf of one of the groups embroiled in the violence. This tendency is not meant as a declaration of neutrality on the part of Kompas and Suara Pembaruan; more likely it is a strategy to safeguard against any possibility of protest by groups that might be upset or displeased by their accounts. Kompas and Suara Pembaruan are also inclined to ‘dress up’ the facts surrounding the events and the factions involved. It may be that these publications do not deliberately intend, through such ‘dressing up’, to diminish the incidents that really occurred, but the result is the same. Because they do not wish to be framed in a conflict of interest as supporters of either Islam or Christianity, both Kompas and Suara Pembaruan foreground other matters in their reportage, thereby obscuring the essence of the Maluku problem. Republika, Kompas, Suara Pembaruan and Pos Kota have different orientations in their reports on the conflict in Maluku. This cannot be removed from the political and economic situations of the respective publications and from how each of them views the Maluku conflict within the wider picture. Republika – an Islamic newspaper – speaks for and defends the interests of Islam in the Maluku conflict. Although they are known to be close to the Christian community, Kompas and Suara Pembaruan do not automatically become the defenders of the Christians. Both of these newspapers function in a society in which the majority follow Islam, so they do not try to defend either Islam or Christianity. What they do is create harmony, maintaining the distance between the parties that are in conflict. In this way, the realities of religious conflict are submerged and do not even appear in their coverage of the violence. The practices of Republika, and those of Kompas and Suara Pembaruan, are equally unhelpful in solving the problems in Maluku. By sharpening the issues, the media can provoke the masses. Media reportage that centres upon a number of victims and the cruelty of only one group can fuel public anger not only among those on the battlefield but also in the wider community. On the other hand, the coverage of this conflict by Kompas and Suara Pembaruan also fails to educate the public. By obscuring the issues, by reporting as though the conflict in Maluku is not a religious matter, they fail to stimulate the public critically so as to prevent such problems recurring in the future. In the media coverage of this conflict not one publication has positioned itself in the role of problem-solver. Throughout the New Order

Media as a control and spur for acts of violence 203 period the media have never been openly confronted with religious turmoil on such a large scale, so extensive, so prolonged, and involving the emotions of both Muslims and Christians alike. The media are therefore perceptibly timid – a timidity caused by confusion not only about where to position themselves in the midst of the conflict so it will not escalate, but also about how to situate themselves publicly in order to guarantee their own survival. Thus they are faced with only two alternatives: to become involved by taking sides, or to withdraw from the conflict altogether.

The press as a propaganda tool Those in power in Indonesia always see the press as the party that should be held responsible for the growth of ordinary conflicts into large-scale ones involving SARA. Yet the press, for its part, says its responsibility is to reduce the seriousness of social conflict. Which is the correct view? The riots in Los Angeles on 29 April 1992 clearly demonstrated that the media have the potential both to stimulate mass movements and to calm them. In its coverage of the riots, the various sections of the media presented reports that enraged both the black and the Korean communities. However, when the media subsequently made sharp criticisms of the state’s discriminatory practices, the violence calmed down. In the hands of the government, parties or specific groups, the press can be used as an effective form of propaganda. A good example of the use of the media as a tool of propaganda occurred during the Falklands War, when the military junta in power in Argentina instructed the editors of the country’s mass media to announce an Argentinian ‘victory’ against the more sophisticated weaponry of the British forces. This was done to encourage the youth to join as military volunteers and to lift the fighting spirit of the Argentinian troops, whose morale was deteriorating. However, the reality on the battlefield was exactly the opposite. The use of the media on the British side was different again. Reacting to the news that two Sea Harrier jets had been shot down, Prime Minister Thatcher appealed to the BBC not to broadcast this news. The director of the BBC protested, and stated his intention to go ahead with the broadcast. Not wanting to relent, Thatcher then threatened to cease government subsidies to the BBC. Consequent upon this, the BBC made public Thatcher’s threat and went ahead with its announcement of the shooting down of the planes. This BBC report caused a shock-wave amongst the British people, and Members of Parliament later broached the possibility of prohibition of attempts to block the community’s right to truthful information. The media’s strength can be derived from, among other things, the process of framing, the technical packaging of facts, the narration of facts,

204 Stanley the particular angles chosen, the touching-up of photos and drawings, and other such techniques. As such, the media clearly have the potential either to put a brake on conflict or to spur it on. The media can clarify and sharpen the conflict under investigation, or can obscure and submerge it. The media can reconstruct reality, but can also summon up a hyper-reality. Theoretically, there are three positions that the media can take when reporting a violent conflict (Arnow, as quoted in Prajarto 1993: 2–6; Braham 1982: 268–86).16 One is as an issue intensifier, where the media is in a position to highlight an issue or conflict and exacerbate it. Issues that are taken up by the media will attain a greater degree of seriousness. In this case, the media blow up the reality so that each and every dimension attains transparency. A second role is that of conflict diminisher, that is, the media submerge a particular issue or conflict. The media can consciously deny the issue publicity, especially when matters touch upon the selfinterests of the media, ideological motivations or pragmatism. Apart from these roles, the media also function to influence or bring about conflict resolution – that is, they mediate by presenting the issue from a number of perspectives and direct the parties in conflict towards a resolution. It can be hoped that through media coverage the parties involved can understand the point of view of the other side, overcome prejudice and suspicion, and re-evaluate their basic original attitudes (Manoff 1998; Eriyanto and Qodari 2000).

Notes 1 I extend my deepest thanks to my ‘media watch’ colleagues at ISAI, such as Veven Sp. Wardhana, Eryanto, Muhammad Qodari and Agus Sudibyo, who have indirectly through their writings assisted me in writing this chapter. 2 The number of press permits (Surat Ijin Usaha Penerbitan Pers – SIUPP) has now reached around 1,600 in total. This number reflects the dramatic expansion compared with the ‘Pancasila Press’ in Suharto’s period, which limited the number of officially-approved media to only 180. Nevertheless it is generally assumed that only 600 of these publications with permits are actually published. 3 An example is the daily Rakyat Merdeka, which broke away from the daily Merdeka, a member of the Jawa Pos Newspapers Group ( JPNN). It has been criticized for its style, its haphazard coverage and its tendentiousness. 4 Because these two figures nowadays represent the ‘face’ of those in power, there has occurred a shift in the understanding of Satgas PDI-P and Banser. During the Suharto period they were perceived as part of the pro-democracy forces, but nowadays they have the task of defending the government. 5 The failure of the media to convey truthful and precise information is visible in the coverage of former President Suharto’s illness, when he suffered a stroke in July 1999. Research on this matter may be seen in Stanley 2000. 6 ‘Daerah Kami Bebas 3B’ stands for ‘buta huruf, buta aksara dan buta angka’ (inability to read and write, and innumeracy). 7 These were among the reasons cited for the muzzling of numerous publica-

Media as a control and spur for acts of violence 205

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tions in the New Order, from Indonesia Raya and others in 1974 and culminating in the Tempo, Editor and DeTIK bannings on 21 June 1994. At the beginning of the New Order, Suharto used two newspapers that were controlled by the military, Angkatan Bersenjata (The Armed Forces) and Berita Yudha (War News), to expound lively anti-communist propaganda. They spread lies about the cruelty and torture allegedly committed by Gerwani, the women’s organization of the PKI. According to these New Order newspapers, the Gerwani had killed the ‘Seven Revolutionary Heroes’ one by one. This nickname was conveyed by Suharto to journalists during a conversational meeting on 24 June 1996 in Jakarta, when he explained matters concerning the activities of the PRD members who had shown support for Megawati at the PDI office on Jalan Diponegoro, Jakarta. This magazine is headed by Herry Komar and his friends who had worked for Tempo before it was banned. Younger journalists associated with the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) considered this group traitors, in terms of both their commitments and their ideological dispositions. A number of columnists, led by Arief Budiman, launched a movement to boycott Gatra. Following the events of 27 July, this magazine carried reports attacking the PRD and Romo Sandyawan Sumardi SJ, who gave protection to activists. These reports drew their material from military interrogations based on torture. Some journalists criticized this model of journalism, labelling it ‘intel journalism’. Later investigations by Indonesian Police (Polri) have shown that there was direct interference by the Kassospol Lt Gen. TNI Syarwan Hamid, Commander of the Armed Forces (Pangab) General TNI Feisal Tanjung, and even President Suharto and senior military officials, in the attack upon the headquarters of the PDI on 27 July 1996. In this regard there was excessive self-censoring undertaken by the management of Gramedia magazine, who called for an entire interview with Romo Sandyawan, scheduled for the Jakarta edition of August 1998 (no. 610), to be cancelled and replaced. Thousands of freshly-printed copies of the magazine were pulped. It is noteworthy that only Media Indonesia, Suara Pembaruan, Surya, D & R and Tempo were successful in interviewing a number of witnesses. Reports based upon interviews with the victims originated in the writing published in Tempo Interaktif (1998). This frustration amongst journalists was also the result of a shared misunderstanding about the notion of supporting victims of sexual abuse. It was felt that the well-being and mental recovery of such victims would be maximized by guarding them from efforts to recall the traumatic experience. These three Islamic publications are well known for fierce and vigorous treatment of non-Muslims. In the case of Maluku, the three of them voice the interests of the groups that call for a Holy War (Perang Jihad). Braham mentions various tendencies of the media when reporting racially inspired events, which are regarded as sensitive. There is a tendency for the media to inflate these matters, but there are also those who strive to cover them up and seek harmony as opposed to reporting the facts.

14 Writing the dark side Publishing about violence in Indonesia Bimo Nugroho

Why publish books about violence? Unlike criminal cases and crime fiction, the issue of violence is not a sexy topic that grabs the public’s attention. Common sense tells us that people do not like reading true-tolife books about violence for many reasons. First, their daily life is full of violence, either in reality or symbolically. People who read for entertainment feel that books about violence do not give any new insights and are a waste of time. Second, there is a trauma factor from which people have not yet recovered. People do not like to remember what they have done (or what was done to them) during a violent event. There is so much violence in Indonesia, especially in the trouble spots of Maluku, Aceh, Sambas and Jakarta. Those that have experienced such violence might be the victims, or even the aggressors, and there are the many witnesses. None of these differing perspectives is pleasant to recall, especially when those experiences are given back to them in the form of a book, a sharp reminder to them of an unpleasant time in their lives. Despite the pain it can cause, the Institute for the Free Flow of Information (ISAI) has made it one of their main tasks to produce books on the violent happenings in Indonesia. There are three important ways, I will argue, in which publishing books on violence is important. First, there is a thorough political education to be gained from a survey of the events surrounding a particular case of violence. Indeed, there are too many cases of political violence in Indonesia that spill over and regenerate conflict, seemingly without end. The piling up of case after case appears to be a deliberate ploy of political elites to maintain their grip on power. It follows from this that the public is overwhelmed and confused by the violent twists and turns. Before one case is solved, another one will be consciously constructed so as to divert the public’s attention once more, and even before the latest case is ready to be solved yet another will appear as a public issue. The documentation of important ‘public’ cases of violence is important for the development of detailed material to cover the contingencies of any separate incident. From the available documentation and from thorough investigation we have often found indications of the involvement of the Indonesian National Army (TNI) in bloody horizontal conflicts.

Writing the dark side 207 Second, there is the weighing up of the past. Indonesian histories, and not just those of the New Order period but also those concerning the Sriwijaya and Majapahit kingdoms, Dutch colonialism, the Japanese occupation and Sukarno’s reign, are often written with a ‘golden pen’. That is, these histories praise the heroism and the victories as if they were a Hollywood film in which the noble male actors overcome the fierce evildoers and save the pretty maiden (in the Indonesian case, the pretty Mother Earth bedecked with jewels and behaving politely, in an ‘Eastern’ fashion). This is understandable because historical writing is rooted in a ‘courtly’ paradigm (istana), the paradigm of power and the powerful. In fact, courtly histories are usually far removed from the actualities of past events. My generation, those of us born after the political turmoil of 1965, have had such a monumentalizing historical consciousness drilled into us. It is written that the Borobodur temple, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, was created by Wangsa Syailendra nan adiluhung bijaksana, the just and wise. But just imagine, if you visit Borobodur temple, how many coolies would have been sapped of their vital energies to create a temple almost one hectare wide at the peak of a mountain range in the seventh century! Court manuscripts, beginning with the Pararaton through to the government’s white book on the G30S/PKI,1 have been administered to students as the standard criterion for a perspective on the past. Indonesian history is filled with romanticism of past greatness and the struggle to protect and uplift the beloved motherland. However, underlying such greatness and struggle much suffering and sacrifice were experienced by the Indonesian people, especially those of the lower classes, women and children. In times of war, combat and bloody conflict, these people were the victims of violence. These matters must also be recorded and analyzed so that through the generations a false or pseudo-historical consciousness does not emerge. We need to be aware that the Indonesian experience was not only a matter of victory and heroism, but that also, along with that, there was violence and much suffering. The perpetrators of such violence were not only white foreigners but also darkly-tanned indigenous Indonesians, even amongst those of one religion, one ethnicity, one sex and even one family. A third consideration for this chapter is the zeal for reconciliation. Due to the political and historical dilemmas mentioned above, Indonesians are often compelled to repress their sadness and are living in fear of the greater authorities. This sadness and fear facilitates violence and victimization and implants a trauma that is difficult to overcome. Trauma is internalized, for there is no law and order, and there is no solidarity outside the bounds of the community where, for whatever reasons, outsiders do not recognize or relate to the violence suffered. Victims of aggression and attack inevitably nurse wounded feelings and suffer shock. These people have two options: to give rise to another cycle of violence by repressing

208 Bimo Nugroho their sadness in such a way that retains the possibility of revenge at the right moment, or to choose to declare their grief, accept their loss and recover from their trauma through a process of reconciliation. Publishing books on violence is work that aims at facilitating such reconciliation of differences and providing an avenue for the expression of grief. In our experience, compiling books on violence does not involve merely the writing up of events; also important to the process is the support provided to victims, and the very act of listening to their respective misfortunes and sufferings. In order to publish a book concerning cases of violence and suffering, what is needed, beyond the skills of a writer, is a profound capacity for empathy.

Reassessing the mission of books on violence ISAI first published a book with the title Bayang-bayang PKI (Shadows of the Communist Party of Indonesia) in 1995. This book presented an alternative to the official account of what actually happened with the Gerakan 30 September (30 September Movement) in 1965. Among other things this book was significant for releasing information about the violence sponsored by the Suharto regime, in the killing of PKI members and those accused of connections with the PKI. Not long after its publication, the book was banned by the Attorney General. Prohibitions against books dealing with political violence in the latter years of Suharto’s rule (no one suspected in 1995 that Suharto would stand down four years later) did not lead to a standstill in sales of such books; on the contrary they grew in popularity through sales on a hand-to-hand basis, and their inconspicuous display on the shelves of booksellers. When it finally got into the hands of the reader, the price of the book had usually multiplied numerous times. ISAI publications on political violence suffered by mass groups in the pro-Megawati PDI Perjuangan (Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle) were also positively received in the marketplace. Two books were published by ISAI on such matters, the first entitled Megawati Soekarnoputri: Pantang Surut Langkah (Megawati Soekarnoputri: Forbidden to Withdraw) in 1996, and the second Peristiwa 27 Juli (The 27 July Affair), which was also translated into English and published in 1997 as Jakarta Crackdown.2 In many cities far from Jakarta, such as Medan, North Sumatra, for example, these two books were taxed by an unidentified group who reaped the benefits of sales. At that time ISAI did not suffer directly and did not demand, let alone investigate, the identity of these extortionists. It was ISAI’s view that public awareness of such a black market would invite the public to critically assess the authoritarian demeanor of the Suharto regime, which was accustomed to the use of violence in attempts to silence political opponents. Critical perspectives targeting authoritarian regimes are an obvious pursuit when publishing books on violence. In contrast to general books

Writing the dark side 209 that are published with the name of the author or editor on the front cover, books from ISAI almost never are. This is especially the case for books about violence, and ISAI usually forms a compilation team consisting of a coordinator, an editor, writers, reporters and material/photo researchers. What stands out most after production is that each book is a collective work, not the result of an individual’s efforts. Furthermore, the names included in the list of a book’s production personnel are not the real names of the people involved, because they do not feel secure enough to reveal their identities. At the same time, the presentation of these books elicits a style that does not fit the parameters of disinterested commentary where the title explains the content, and the language is somewhat academic. Books about violence published by ISAI appear with loud covers3 (usually illustrated with raging flames), have a somewhat bombastic title, and use journalistic language and photos of events to urge readers to enter the atmosphere of the violence. Books about violence, of both vertical and horizontal conflict, eventually attain a special readership. Comprehensive publications on violence that were originally received half-heartedly have now been seized upon by consumers,4 beginning with intellectual circles, activists, police and NGO workers. A segment of this readership uses the books on violence published by ISAI as a reference for criticism, and to conduct ‘black propaganda’ against violence sponsored by the New Order regime. In this respect, the mission of ISAI to reveal the truth of the repression committed by the Suharto regime appears to have succeeded. After Suharto fell from office, publications on violence surged dramatically and many publishers competed with ISAI in the handling of certain cases. Unfortunately, it was as though all publishers on violence were keen to stigmatize groups from alternative ‘enemy’ ranks. Thus, it appears that the mission to publish books on violence in Indonesia needs to be rethought. Before Suharto fell, it was indeed necessary that books functioned to open up the wounds of violent repression that had hitherto been distanced or ignored. However, along with the fall of the Suharto regime, up until the government of Abdurrahman Wahid, violence which is often more sadistic, especially perang antar-golongan (wars between social groups), has erupted all over Indonesia. Conflict that was originally topdown between the community and state forces was transformed into horizontal conflict between different ethnic groups, religious factions and racially inspired groups. Indonesia certainly needs a resolution of conflict and reconciliation. The publication of books, including books about violence, can be hastened in order to press forward these processes of resolution and reconciliation. A transformation in the mission amongst such publishers, from a campaign hounding the New Order to a campaign seeking peace, has clearly brought consequences, including subtle changes in the conceptualization and construction of books on violence. Because the changes have not only

210 Bimo Nugroho occurred in the methodology and language but also in the ‘metaphysical’ aspect of the writing, greater attention has to be placed on the framing of a discourse on violence.

Publishing on violence in post-Suharto Indonesia: the case of Maluku Generally, there are two types of writings about violence in post-Suharto Indonesia that touch on the issues foregrounded above. First, there are books about violence that are pursued with a view to confronting and countering the views of opponents. Second, there are books that are compiled in an effort to describe how violence in horizontal conflicts emerges, and how countervailing efforts at a resolution to such conflicts through discourses on peace might be engaged. The case of violence in Maluku is the most recent example in which the framing of the discourse on violence has led in different directions. In what follows, I will discuss two books that are considered representative of the Islamic perspective. The first is Ambon Bersimbah Darah, Ekspresi Ketakutan Ekstrimis Nasrani (Ambon Bespattered with Blood, Expressions of Fear of Extremist Christians), written by H. Hartono Ahmad Jaiz,5 with an introduction by Al Chaidar6 and published by the DEA Press in 1999.7 The second book, Menyulut Ambon, Kronologi Merambatnya Berbagai Kerusuhan Lintas Wilayah Di Indonesia (Igniting Ambon, Chronology of the Spread of Various Riots through an Indonesian Province), is written by S. Sinansari Ecip8 and published, also in 1999, by Mizan.9 However, although they are both considered to be texts from Islamic groups, these books differ greatly from each other. The first book is highly fundamentalist in style and basically attacks the Christians. The second book attempts to distance itself from each of the groups involved, yet despite this the author cannot deny that his background is deeply Islamic, and this shows in the content and framing of the book. Viewed in terms of its construction, the first book nearly always makes use of secondary data taken from the Islamic groups involved, especially data of Majalah Sabili.10 The author of the second book, however, used secondary data and also travelled to Ambon in search of data from Christians and Muslims involved in the conflict. From the editors’ introductions, we can determine the intended targets of such books. In the first book, Hartono Ahmad Jaiz (1999) begins his introduction with the following: Al-hamdulillaahi Robbil ’aalamien. All praise to Allah, Lord of all the earth. It was He who reminded his Prophet, Muhammad SAW, with the statement [written in Arabic]: ‘The Jews and Christians are not happy with me so you must engage with their religions’ (QS Al-Baqarah: 120).

Writing the dark side 211 From a religious perspective, Allah SWT has also reminded his followers [in Arabic]: ‘They do not cease in their attacks upon you until they have turned you away from your religion (towards the infidels) it is as if they were content . . .’ (QS Al-Baqarah: 217). By facing their attack, Allah SWT has already indicated to all Muslims [in Arabic]: ‘And do not bring down your guard in your pursuit of your enemy. If you suffer as you combat with them, then at least you can gain from Allah what they do not hope for . . .’ (An-Nisaa’: 104). Signs of grace are conveyed to us through the example of Muhammad SAW. Therefore pray and hope that in the name of Muhammad SAW, his family, his friends, tabi’in, tabi’it tabi’ien,11 and the followers of the Prophet are loyal in their observance of the faith until the end of time. Wa ba’du This book presents to the reader the events of slaughter suffered by Muslims in Ambon and surrounding areas in the Province of Maluku which has been perpetrated by Ambonese Protestants, and from Catholics in other areas. We call this slaughter Ambon Bersimpah Darah (Blood-bespattered Ambon) which means that Ambon is glistening with pools of blood from Muslims slaughtered at the hand of infidel enemies of Islam. From this introduction, even from the title of the book given by Hartono Ahmad Jaiz, we can determine at a glance the framing and discourse pursued by the author. In the title the writer has made use of the label Ekstrimis Nasrani (extremist Christians). This terminology gives the impression of organized provocateurs operating to fulfil their ideology, which should be differentiated from ‘terrorists’ or paid provocateurs. Extremism is recognizably more difficult to put down because the militant energies involved tend to be far more irrational. At the same time, the term Nasrani (Christian), in the framing and discourses found in books and hard-line Islamic media such as the magazine Sabili, evokes an impression of enemies towards Islam with whom there can be no compromise. Furthermore, such matters are written in reference to the Al-Quran, as quoted in the introduction above. Throughout the book by Hartono Ahmad Jaiz, and in the introduction by Al Chaidar, references are made to ongoing pembantaian (slaughter) of Muslims. Literally translated, pembantaian means killing and loss of life, but the term inherently provokes a more intense reaction because it is killing on a mass scale, it is shameful and harsh. Because the term pembantaian is here associated with Islam, a nominalization occurs that heightens the significance of the events (the verb membantai becomes a noun, pembantaian), which somehow extends itself to imply the entire Islamic

212 Bimo Nugroho community (a number of Muslims in Maluku suddenly becoming the entire community, ummat, of Islam). As such, the subject of this slaughter is obscured. It is not clear who the named perpetrator is or from what institution or which community the killing is inspired, so what occurs to the reader is a subjective awareness that the killing must have been perpetrated by the Christian community. This subjective imaginary is framed even more crudely with the force of language employed by Hartono, that the slaughter was being committed by Protestants and Catholics, the kafiran (infidel) enemies of Islam. It is clear that the desired effect, especially targeting an Islamic readership, is to heighten distrust and hatred towards Christians. Compare this with the introduction of the second book, written by Sinansari Ecip (1999): This book is only one in a range of books from the publisher Mizan concerning recent events in Indonesia. The riots in Ambon and surrounding areas constitute a human tragedy and a deeply moving tragedy of our people. Previously, it could not enter the imagination that such mass conflict between adherents of differing religions would lead to this type of bloodshed. In order to write this book, I personally visited Ambon and stayed several days there. Fortunately, I was able to mix with Ambonese of Bugis–Makassar origin who had returned to Ambon as refugees from South Sulawesi. The flight of tens of thousands of Buton–Bugis– Makassar refugees from Ambon is another tragedy of equal concern. It is as if they have no right to live in the land of Indonesia, and ironically their ancestors have lived here for hundreds of years. They attempt to live according to the ways set out by their ancestors. Sadly, a number of them – also the Buton people – do not possess land in their place of origin and have lost contact with their families. Acting as a journalist, I strive to obtain documentation from both sides involved in this conflict, and even information that might come from a third party. I mean by this the Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international institution for the protection of human rights. In their written report, HRW have compiled data in thorough detail and which appears to take in both sides of the picture and provide analysis. One important requirement in compiling journalistic notes is the presence of the journalist in the place of action. This placement not only enables the journalist to witness the place of events, but also involves them at a deeper level and stimulates them into writing. By travelling to the place of conflict there arises a heightened tension and spiritual stimulation. Up until now, the reports of the Ambon riots and surrounding troubles – especially that written in the mass media – is piecemeal and only deals with the outer layers of events, the superficialities. The

Writing the dark side 213 Ketapang (Jakarta) and Kupang riots have been referred to for a comparison with the riots in Ambon. This book attempts to trace the root historical causes of these problems and presents this comprehensively and with attention to deeper analysis. Of course my presentation makes use of journalistic language that is simple and to the point. One reason for this is that the book might be appreciated by the wider community. The degree of objectivity and openness available in the present time has made possible this writing. Almost all the data from the various groups has been included whatever the situation. The community is increasingly open in its discussions, and because of that should be capable of evaluating these ideas without impulsive emotional reactions, but rather, critically and enabling readers to draw their own conclusions. I have deliberately quoted at length from the introduction above so as to grasp the central dynamic of why and how Sinansari Ecip goes about writing his book Menyulut Ambon. First, Ecip views the riots in Ambon as a human tragedy, unlike Hartono Ahmad Jaiz, who simply sees it as a slaughter of Muslims. Second, Ecip positions himself in the field of activity, attempting to observe with his own two eyes what is happening and trace the root causes of the events. By implication, Ecip is critical of writing about riots in which the author does not attend the scene of events and only makes use of information and explanations, even writings, from groups that feel they know about such matters.12 Third, by relating to the sufferings of the Buton–Bugis–Makassar people, Ecip indirectly acknowledges that in whatever he writes (as is made obvious from his framing of the discourse) he stands in a relative position, as a Muslim and a victim of violence. Nevertheless, he has made use of data from the Christians and from HRW (whom he calls the neutral third party13) to advance his thesis that what is occurring is indeed a tragedy of large proportions. The fourth aspect to consider in Ecip’s writing is the open political situation at the time of its publication. The readership is supposed to be able to evaluate it without emotional reaction. In the final sentences quoted above, Ecip heatedly criticizes books about violence written in a partisan way that regards the readership as easily emotionally aroused, uncritical and unable to draw their own conclusions from the data, so they must be burdened with provocative writing. The consistency of Ecip’s purpose in writing about violence is seen from the final section of his book. Let us pay attention to the closing paragraphs: There are many groups suffering from the violence in Ambon and surrounding areas. The younger generation, especially students and those from university, can no longer study in any ordered way. At

214 Bimo Nugroho every moment, their study is disturbed because the school or lecture hall is closed. They are chased away and moved to another spot, in which they are not readily accepted into the education system. Though officials might offer to assist them in this, they do not. This abandonment can have deep consequences for the future of this generation. It is difficult for these people to come by essential objects of daily life. Help outside of Ambon is limited so that people are forced to survive in whatever way possible . . . Ships can still moor on the beaches of Ambon, not in the civilian ports, but rather in the Halong ports owned by the navy. The distance between the Halong ports and the town is more than 10 kilometers, but this troubles Muslims because that area is controlled by the group, Pita Merah.14 At the same time the distance between the civilian port and the Masjid Al-Fatah and the Masjid Jamik is only 500 metres. The shift in mooring by the passenger boats did not favour any one group. How long will the Ambonese riots continue? Compare this then with the closing paragraph of Hartono Ahmad Jaiz: The direct message we have from Allah concerning the tragedy in Ambon is that normal missionary efforts are failing. In this tragedy, the young children, Islamic youth and other Muslims that have suffered these horrible events, should naturally be capable of recording and studying the potential spitefulness of those Christians. And this only adds strength to their identity as Muslims. It is in such a way that the physical language of reality is more powerful than an account dressed with millions of words. From the comparison offered above, there are a number of macroperspectives that can be addressed for further informative publications on violence in Indonesia. First, we cannot afford to map out the background perspective of the author or that of the publisher simplistically, especially when these groups want to stimulate their side into action. The writers or publishers of Islamic or Christian antecedents should not classify their religion as sources of conflict with other religions, whether such conflict is ethnic, racial or inter-group in character. Writers and publishers with an Islamic background, as I have noted in the case of Ambon above, demonstrate differences of approach despite their nominal adherence to the same religion. Furthermore, a publishing house should be capable of producing books on violence with differing angles. ISAI provides an example of a publishing house that has as its goal the reconciliation of all factions embroiled in conflict in Indonesia, but their writing is still framed within a very strong anti-militarism. In the ISAI publications on conflict in Maluku that are soon to be published, the framing of hatred towards the military

Writing the dark side 215 gains in significance stemming from data of direct military involvement and also indirect interference in the conflicts in Maluku. As an example, bullets and ammunition belonging to the TNI that were somehow obtained by the members of Pita Merah and Pita Putih who were slain in the bloody conflicts have been discovered. It needs to be made public that TNI forces are involved in the sales of (or stocking the rioters with) ammunition. Finally, straightforward analysis of the framing and discourse can be used to classify books into two types: first, where violence is raised to attack those considered of the enemy rank; and second, where violence is highlighted for description regardless of how brutal, so that conflict resolution can be achieved by breaking the chain of violent events and targeting peace. If a book serves the instruments for drawing violence to a conclusion or minimizing violence in Indonesia, then this sort of framing and discourse is equally important and needs to be developed.

Notes 1 Gerakan Tiga Puluh September – alleged communist takeover on 30 September 1965. 2 The 27 July Affair refers to the government-sponsored attack upon the PDI office in an attempt to remove Megawati from political contention. This had followed the pre-selection of a PDI leader suitable to the Suharto government. 3 If we were to visit bookstores in Indonesia in the post-Suharto period, we would commonly discover creative cover-designs with contemporary art that is far removed from the actual content. 4 I use the word ‘consumers’ here to indicate that people want to buy such books, because before there were any books from ISAI, except for those prohibited by the High Court, many more books were accumulating in warehouses and were being disseminated freely to student activists from the universities and to pro-democracy movements. 5 I cannot clarify the identity of this writer. 6 This writer is now famous for the accusation directed against him by the Official Head of Police Intelligence, Nurfaizi, as the orchestrator of mass Islamic gatherings at the National Monument, January 2000. This was an effort to garner solidarity with Muslims in Ambon. Before this, Al Chaidar had written many books about Islam and one book on Aceh with the title Aceh Bersimbah Darah (Aceh Bespattered with Blood). 7 This publisher has not included an address or contact details, except for the telephone number 8573969, which lacks a city code. If it is Jakarta, then the prefix would indicate the area Utan Kayu. There is never any answer when this number is dialled. 8 The writer is a journalist for the daily Republika, a newspaper with a national circulation and under the direction of exponents from the Institute of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI). 9 A prolific publisher of Islamic books. 10 This magazine was published underground during Suharto’s rule. PostSuharto, Sabili emerged openly and claimed that each publication was circulated to over 100,000 people. 11 Tabi’in means those followers of the Prophet Muhammad SAW who lived with

216 Bimo Nugroho the Prophet or his acquaintances, and tabi’it tabi’ien refers to the followers of the Prophet Muhammad SAW who have not been amongst the Prophet and his acquaintances. 12 Translator’s emphasis. 13 In books about partisan violence, international institutes such as the Human Rights Watch are considered by Islamic fundamentalists as conspiring agents from the West, and by extension the West is linked with Christians or Jews. 14 In the conflicts of Maluku, the two sides involved make use of ribbons on their head or arms; the red ribbon (Pita Merah) indicates the Christian groups whilst the Pita Putih (white ribbon) indicates Muslims.

15 Educating to handle conflict and avoid violence Samsu Rizal Panggabean

Indonesia is in the middle of a pancaroba period, when the old is dying and the new is yet to be born. The time is ripe to assess old practices and approaches to conflict and processes for dealing with and resolving violence. This chapter will discuss lessons from the past approach to conflict and sub-national violence in Indonesia, before attempting to outline some new principles for an alternative way to handle conflict and avoid violence. Finally, a brief survey of the current developments towards peaceful conflict resolution in Indonesia in accordance with these principles will be given.

Lessons from the New Order approaches to conflict Conflict is destructive The first characteristic of the approach to conflict in Indonesia during the New Order period was the belief that conflict was always destructive and negative. Conflict is regarded as evil because it challenges stability and disrupts social harmony. This perspective featured strongly under the Suharto regime, as it put stability and economic growth above all other national concerns. Under New Order rule, stability was to be maintained at all costs, to the extent that a paradoxical situation existed, namely when the effort to maintain stability itself resulted in violence. This emphasis on stability limited formal political participation. A further implication of this approach is society’s now weak capacity to take care of its own conflicts. Since conflict was regarded as something negative, there was a natural tendency to avoid it as much as possible. However, when this effort failed and conflict emerged, society, accustomed to ‘avoiding’ conflict, was unprepared to deal with it. When conflict is not managed, there is a possibility that it will escalate into violence. Finally, there was a conservative element in this past approach to conflict. As conflict was perceived as destructive, challenges to the status quo were also considered dangerous. Despite enduring repression and injustice, the people were expected to accept the status quo and obey the

218 Samsu Rizal Panggabean government. Conflict, especially in the form of protests against the established order, was considered a challenge to the government, and this was deemed inappropriate behaviour for a citizen. In accordance with this approach, school students were taught to achieve a ‘dynamic stability’, and to obey their rules and elders (Mulder 2000: 91, 94). Conflict as behaviour The past approach to conflict emphasised only one aspect of the conflict, namely the actual actions or behaviours of the parties concerned. However, conflicts are embedded in social interaction and therefore are complex and multifaceted. In addition to outward behaviour and actions there are underlying factors and processes involved. Nevertheless, in government perceptions and in media reports during the period under discussion here, conflict was usually presented as ‘behaviour’, especially violent behaviour. Therefore, when the word ‘conflict’ was mentioned, it evoked images such as stabbing, struggling, rioting and other violent behaviours. According to this approach, there was no ‘conflict’ before violent behaviour erupted. In other words, there was a tendency to underestimate existing social problems and incompatibilities (such as among ethnic groups, among religious groups and between social classes) before they intensified into violence. Therefore, various conflict indicators and incompatible situations that have the potential to lead into violence were discounted. Furthermore, the authorities and consequently the media labelled these indicators as social jealousy, immature attitudes, unreasonable expectations and other such designations. Thus it was a characteristic of the Suharto regime not to consider other equally important aspects of the conflict apart from violent behaviour. For example, emotional or psychological factors of conflict, such as feelings of anger, distrust and resentment, were not taken into consideration because they were not perceived as part of a conflict. In addition, perceptual aspects of conflict such as stereotyping, prejudice and enemy images were very rarely dealt with. As a consequence it was easy for the government to pretend that legitimate grievances in provinces or segments of the society did not exist. It was only when resentment escalated into outbursts of violence that the government began to acknowledge that conflict had occurred. Even then, the government was only interested in dealing with the behavioural aspects of the conflict. Its solution was to send in the security forces, who simply responded with their own violence. In cases when acts of violence were widespread, such as urban upheavals, the government would then warn the people about the threat to the unity and integrity of the country. In accordance with this understanding of conflict as behaviour, the police and the military would take harsh measures against ‘looters’ and ‘rioters’.

Educating to handle conflict and avoid violence 219 The government did not attempt to examine why people participated in social protest, what the particular reasons behind social conflicts were, or how incompatibilities were built into society. By focusing only on the actions and behaviours of conflict, the government could then ignore the conflict situation and the attitudes of the people involved. This approach is particularly dangerous in rebellious provinces like Aceh and Papua, where the central government is concerned with repressing the provinces militarily whilst ignoring the incompatibilities, misperceptions and anger that pervade relations between these provinces and the central government. Conflict as aggression A third characteristic of the New Order approach to conflict was to think about conflict in terms of aggression. An example of this is clearly seen with regard to conflict arising from land disputes led by peasant groups. The government and military almost always perceived the peasants’ actions as aggressive or potentially aggressive. The implication of this approach was that the means used by the authorities to handle it was repression. The more serious the government and military perceived the conflict to be, the more repressive their response. Using repression to deal with conflict perceived as aggression was a centrepiece of Suharto’s approach to conflict. For that reason, protests, grievances or, in some cases, petitions were considered aggression. Troops were sent to manage industrial disputes involving workers and management, to scatter student demonstrations or to control peasant protests. There were two important outcomes from this approach. First, again and again the state violated people’s rights and the security apparatus became an instrument of violence against civilians. Most of the cases of human rights violations by the military in Indonesia during the New Order were situations where repression was used to deal with social conflicts and protests that were interpreted as aggression. Second, whenever conflict is considered as aggression, people involved in conflict will be regarded as aggressors and treated as less than human. Citizens were therefore dehumanised. Participants in social conflicts and protests were labelled criminal, uneducated, immoral, extreme left, extreme right or the enemies of God. Of course, dehumanisation is an effective mechanism that enables the security apparatus to repress protesters without feelings of guilt. When twenty-three soldiers were put on trial in Aceh, the judge remarked on their lack of remorse. During the Suharto period there were numerous examples of the vocabulary associated with the dehumanisation of citizens-deemedaggressors, such as ‘formless organisation’ (organisasi tanpa bentuk) and ‘elements of disintegration’ (anasir-anasir disintegrasi). There were times when government officials labelled students or NGO activists as communists, stating that it was therefore permissible (halal) to shed their blood.

220 Samsu Rizal Panggabean Hydraulic perspective The fourth characteristic of the past approach to conflict is the so-called ‘hydraulic perspective’ of social conflict (Tilly 1975: 390). According to this approach, a society is regarded as a pressure cooker in which the pressure of amok, rage and frustration builds up until it erupts in violence. Thus, for instance, when people face difficulties because of decreasing income, increasing prices and unemployment, the political pressure will increase, leading to an ‘eruption’ of social unrest. An important aspect of this argument is that citizens are regarded as vessels for grievances, strains and frustrations. Citizens are regarded as being susceptible to investigation. They are not considered human, able to act on the basis of rational principles. There is a whole vocabulary from the Suharto era that supports this. Terms such as ‘intellectual actors’, ‘fishers in the muddy river’ (pemancing di air keruh), ‘irresponsible third party’, ‘provocateurs’ or ‘riders who take benefit from the crisis’ were used to describe those whom the authorities believed to be behind the conflicts. In keeping with the belief that human beings act on the basis of impulse, government officials demanded that the people control themselves so that they were not influenced by ‘negative issues’ or an ‘irresponsible third party’ who wanted to destabilise the political nation.

Toward transformation The state and society in Indonesia need to learn new approaches to deal with conflict and to create a better system of governance. The new approaches should be able to avoid the previous mistakes made in dealing with conflict and violence in Indonesia since 1957. In addition, the approaches should be compatible with the norms and principles of democracy, such as peaceful resolution of conflict, respect for human rights and fulfillment of basic human needs for different communities in Indonesia. The transition from authoritarian regime to democratic regime demands a shifting of paradigms in dealing with conflict and violence. If the past approach is impoverished and unsustainable, what sorts of principles of peaceful conflict resolution should emerge in its place? Drawing on the above analysis, the following principles are necessary elements of a peaceful and less violent approach to sub-national conflict in Indonesia. Conflict may be constructive The first tenet is to recognise that as well as having a negative and destructive impact, conflict can also have positive and constructive influences,

Educating to handle conflict and avoid violence 221 and it is the responsibility of the people and the government to ensure this outcome. In order for these positive outcomes to dominate, the people should learn the skills to deal with conflict constructively and the government should design institutions and rules for peaceful conflict resolution. Conflict is similar to cooperation in the sense that it needs to be handled creatively, and must be handled within universally accepted rules of the game, so that it can benefit the society. Conflict is needed to avoid ossification in a society. The energy or dynamics of a society can arise from powerlessness. During the crises in many parts of Indonesia, people who were previously powerless began to be more dynamic and energetic. The experience of going through the crisis during a period of pancaroba, or interregnum, may strengthen the people and the state. The more serious the crisis, the more energy emerges, which can then be used to strengthen and cement the society in the future. In order to be positive and constructive, the existence of the conflict needs to be acknowledged. The habit of ‘covering’ or concealing conflicts, out of a belief that they will disappear by themselves, should be avoided. In addition, conflict should be analysed scientifically now that research in conflict and conflict resolution has been developed, and people in conflict can benefit from it to solve their own conflicts. There is no use discussing theories of conflict resolution if the government and the people believe that conflict is always a threat to whatever it is that is valued, from Pancasila to development to unity and national integration. A broader understanding of conflict The second principle of this approach is a broader understanding of conflict. A quick review of conflict definitions among researchers indicates that conflict has three components, namely conflict situation, conflict attitude and conflict behaviour. Lewis Coser emphasises conflict behaviour in his definition of conflict as ‘a struggle over values and claims to scarce status, power and resources in which the aim of the opponents are to neutralise, injure or eliminate their rivals’ (Coser 1956: 8). Kenneth Boulding emphasises the situation of the conflict when he says that conflict is ‘a situation of competition in which the parties are aware of the incompatibility of potential future positions and in which each party wishes to occupy a position that is incompatible with the wishes of the other’ (Boulding 1962: 5). Louis Kriesberg, on the other hand, maintains that conflict is about belief. According to Kriesberg, ‘A social conflict exists when two or more parties believe they have incompatible objectives’. He also says, ‘social conflict refers to a situation in which parties believe that they have incompatible goals’ (Kriesberg 1982: 17–18). Finally, Jeffrey Rubin et al. say ‘conflict means perceived divergence of interest, or a belief that parties’ current aspirations cannot be achieved simultaneously’ (Rubin and Pruitt 1986: 4).

222 Samsu Rizal Panggabean The understanding of conflict as behaviour is popular among the people. Furthermore, the media, usually working on the belief that violence sells and conflict resolution does not, reinforces this phenomenon in their reports and interpretation of social conflict. Of course, polarising violent behaviour is an important component of a conflict, especially violent conflict. However, as mentioned above, naively focusing on conflict behaviour can lead to disastrous results. Therefore, attention should be paid to antecedent conditions of conflict. What situations precede a conflict in the society? How are incompatibilities – regional, economic and social – built into Indonesian society? Perceptions and attitudes involved in conflict are also important, as well as the way they are formed and sustained. This broader understanding of conflict is still a far cry from public understanding. Hence, during the New Order period when security or government officials commented after a riot that ‘the situation is under control’, what they really meant was that people had been beaten, detained or put into jail. The New Order government never investigated the root causes of the conflict; the anger, grievances, perceptions and misperceptions involved in a conflict. Conflict as a problem The third principle of this alternative approach is that conflict, including violent conflict, is better treated as a problem rather than as aggression. To view conflict as aggression may lead to a fatalistic belief. Whilst it is held that people are intoxicated with violence, that parties to a conflict are resistant to persuasion and that it is not possible to manage or disentangle issues of contention, then coercion and violence are facts of life even if they are undesirable. As a result, the methods then employed to deal with conflict are those thought to be appropriate in such a situation, namely armed repression. Contrary to the view that conflict is basically aggression, the new perspective treats conflict as a problem. In principle, there are problems in Aceh and Papua provinces. These include the problems of political representation, distribution or redistribution of resources, identity, and cultural and religious recognition. There are problems in Jakarta and other big cities, including unemployment, lack of space and urban stresses that lie behind masses running amok and student brawls. None of these problems, it must be emphasised, is amenable to resolution by repression, not to mention armed repression. If conflict is treated as a problem, then an appropriate response to it will be a problem-solving approach. The people and their representatives will think of those conflicts and violence all over the country as problems in need of a creative, non-violent solution. The state will equip itself with necessary institutions and mechanisms to solve those problems. Needless to say, this attitude will renew the social energy of the people and the

Educating to handle conflict and avoid violence 223 government, and reinvigorate public creative power. At the same time, it will tame the New Order habit of using troops to deal with social problems and problems of governance. Citizens’ autonomy Finally, the fourth precept of this approach is respect for citizens’ autonomy, including during situations when they are in conflict and when the means used in conflict are outside mainstream mechanisms and processes. There is no doubt that the hydraulic approach to the human situation grossly undermines citizens’ autonomy, namely their capacity to do something and to influence their environment independently, whether regarding political, economic or social matters. Moreover, the hydraulic perspective limits citizens’ participation to certain arenas such as membership of political parties and parliamentary representation. Outside these official structures there is no politics, only rumours, irresponsible issues, unjustified protest toward the central government, and criminals and looters. Therefore, riots are never regarded as acts of criticism of the government and holders of authority who are regarded as having failed to satisfy citizens’ needs, or being unable to maintain the chains of production, distribution and consumption of basic staples. The Suharto regime was authoritarian in the sense that it ignored or even suppressed practical and local processes that in the past had played an important role in solving local conflict. For example, for people in Aceh, Papua, Maluku, West Sumatra and other regions, Law No. 5 of 1974 (about local government) and Law No. 5 of 1979 (on village government) had a predominantly negative effect. These laws weakened local roles, customs and capacities to govern and deal with local problems in a decentralised way. In Indonesia, efforts to introduce a more appropriate mechanism to deal with conflict and sub-national violence are faced with the legacies of old approaches. The residues and remnants of the old approaches can still be found in the governments that have followed Suharto, including the present one. That is because the old approaches were used and extensively implemented for a long period. For a new approach to begin to take root, the old ones must be replaced. That is why education for peace and non-violence becomes necessary.

Educating for peace and non-violence What does education for peace and non-violence look like, based on the above principles? In my opinion, peace education or conflict resolution education in Indonesia should focus on four issues. In order to deal with conflict in a constructive way, institutions and organisations at the state

224 Samsu Rizal Panggabean and societal levels must be designed for this purpose and citizens must be educated in the skills to deal with conflict. Public awareness about the need to examine various aspects of the conflict situation, conflict attitudes and conflict behaviour when dealing with conflict also need to be raised. Fundamentally, the authorities and society must begin to perceive conflict as a problem to be solved and not as an act of aggression to be repressed. Most importantly, however, peace education should contribute towards establishing citizens’ autonomy by giving them the freedom to act and to choose for themselves and the capacity to repudiate external authority. Ideally, these characteristics should be embedded in public institutions and organisations as well as social and everyday interaction. This is the fundamental and long-term task of peace and conflict resolution education in Indonesia. However, since the end of the New Order some significant developments in this area have been made by the state and civil society organisations, and in education towards achieving this long-term goal. The state, non-violence, conflict resolution When social protests mounted in 1996–1997, the Suharto regime continued to use repression as its main response in addition to the use of threats. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces stated several times that he would smash (libas) protesters and participants of demonstrations. However, the frequency and intensity of social protest in 1997–1998 made it increasingly difficult to use this method. At the same time, the protesters increasingly politicised their demands. Some of the contentious conflict situations emphasised during the protests of 1998 were the high prices of goods, monopoly, corruption, collusion, nepotism and succession. Furthermore, in April 1998 more and more protesters demanded that the five ‘political laws’ and publishing permits be abrogated and the legislative and judiciary branch of government be strengthened. With the abductions and killings of activists in the background, protesters demanded that the government respect human rights by ratifying an antitorture convention (signed by the government in 1985). However, politicisation of demands only succeeded in forcing the government to make non-committal ‘promises’ of reformation. For instance, the government promised to start reforms in the year 2003 and beyond. The real changes happened only after Suharto stepped down on 21 May 1998. Two days after being sworn into office, President Habibie agreed to conduct elections before 2000. Two days later, for the first time, the government proposed many radical moves, including lifting the limit on the number of political parties, allowing more room for political activities, permitting new labour unions to form, limiting the period of presidency to two five-year terms, and eradicating corruption, collusion and nepotism. The government also introduced an unprecedented and surprising measure regarding East Timor, which later led to the referen-

Educating to handle conflict and avoid violence 225 dum and independence of the territory. The Habibie government, working under strong public pressure and the need to cast off its negative image, responded to most of the demands of the social protests with surprising speed.1 Abdurrahman Wahid’s government has continued this process of reform by taking measures including dismissing the Ministry of Information, establishing an ombudsman commission, and dismissing the students’ regiment. Wahid’s government is also considering real reforms of the military, such as breaking its relations with Suharto and Golkar, and maintaining its independence from partisan politics. With regard to secessionist movements, Wahid’s government started negotiations with representatives of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), something unthinkable during the Suharto era. The result of the negotiation, facilitated by the Henri Dunant Centre in Switzerland, was a three-month pause in hostilities, effective 2 June 2000. If peace and conflict resolution is best understood as process, the developments in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto indicate that the state began to move away from the old approaches to conflict and violence. The state reduced the level of destructive actions and transferred issues of political conflict from an arena of violence to a non-violent and political level. Clearly, however, there continue to be situations of conflict in many parts of the country. There is violence in provinces such as Aceh, Maluku, North Maluku and Papua. Nevertheless, the processes of reformation and democratisation have already created an environment that supports peaceful resolution of the problems. One of the main tasks ahead is to continue the process of creating problem-solving institutions for peaceful domestic conflict resolution and allow those institutions to work. Society’s role Over and above the state, society also can promote peaceful conflict resolution. Civil Society in Indonesia has been involved in many activities intended to strengthen the role of autonomous organisations in solving social problems and facilitating peaceful social transformation. Groups, individuals and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been working on diverse issues such as civic education, human rights, workers’ rights, religious issues, media, environment, security, conflict resolution, women’s issues and drugs. The international NGOs play an important role in helping these organisations through technical and financial assistance. The nascent but vibrant development of civil society organisations in Indonesia is part of the emergence of global civil society. It is interesting to observe several tendencies in the working of organisations in the society. Most of the NGOs in Indonesia respect ‘the norms of tolerance and concern for the greater good’ (Ohlson et al. 1994: 236). While news about religious and ethnic conflicts in Indonesia tends to

226 Samsu Rizal Panggabean emphasise the role of ethnicity and religion in violence, among the NGO communities in Indonesia it is easy to find resistance to forces of extremism and support for social pluralism and tolerance. Starting from problems and issues relevant to everyone, irrespective of their religion, ethnicity and other backgrounds, these NGOs find little or no difficulty in creating a space where everybody is welcome. For instance, an NGO for women’s issues attracts members and volunteers from different backgrounds, and an NGO for women’s issues within an Islamic organisation finds a lot in common with similar NGOs outside their religious circle. Within the NU tradition, the younger generation, such as those in the LKIS (Lembaga Kajian Islam dan Sosial), promotes pluralism, participation and tolerance through their publication and research activities. The IRM (Ikatan Remaja Muhammadiyah) is involved in ‘active non-violence’ training and advocacy in several provinces, involving youngsters from different backgrounds, religions and ethnicity. A Yogyakarta-based NGO, Dian-Interfidei, is promoting pluralism and inter-religious dialogue through research, publication and training in many provinces. In passing, it can be mentioned that when the leaders of these two largest Muslim organisations created political parties, those parties, namely the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the National Mandate Party (PAN), pledged their commitment to toleration and pluralism. In other words, there have been quite a few investments in social capital made by social organisations and NGOs. If the ideal is to create a social and political environment supportive of peace and reconciliation during this volatile period of Indonesia’s history, these constituencies of participation, tolerance and pluralism among civil society need more attention, assistance and research than they have been given so far. Moreover, to increase the role of NGOs in the creation of a healthy environment for peaceful conflict resolution and problem-solving, two important improvements must materialise. First, there should be improvement in the relationships between NGOs and the government, and vice versa. Many NGOs do not consider it their duty to maintain contact with members of the legislature. Local and national party leaders do not find it useful to maintain good working relationships with NGOs, for example as a means to reach citizens. These two groups were largely in conflict during the Suharto regime, and need some time and effort to get along together and work for the greater good. Second, there should be improvement in relations among NGOs themselves. The NGOs in Indonesia suffer from a lack of coordination and division of labour. Having worked under a repressive regime, which made their survival difficult and dangerous, a significant lack of coordination with each other is understandable. Nevertheless, coordinated approaches to various immediate problems and issues in many troubled places in Indonesia are needed, and NGOs need to work together effectively for the sake of the nation.

Educating to handle conflict and avoid violence 227 Peace and conflict resolution studies From the point of view of prevention, schools and classrooms are the best places to educate citizens about the importance of peace and nonviolence. During the Suharto era, Pancasila Moral Education, and later Pancasila and Civics Education, focused on indoctrinating people to become obedient and disciplined subjects. During the reformasi era, there have been discussions on how to replace Pancasila education and about what will replace it. In addition, it is important to consider how lessons in conflict resolution and peace-building can be incorporated into a new national curriculum. In Bandung, the Center for Indonesian Civic Education (CICED) has organised conferences on civic education. In cooperation with the United States Information Service and other institutions, the centre has also developed concepts and content for civic education for schools. Other work carried out by the centre includes drafting a need-assessment for civic education report, based on a national survey. In this assessment, the centre maintains that the current civic education curriculum is moraloriented and its content is organised around the detailed concepts of Pancasila. Its teaching and learning processes are less student-oriented, being boring, repetitive and poorly taught by rote methods, and students do not believe it is effective. The report also states that strong and widespread support exists for a new civic education for schools, due to the popularity of the democratic movement and advocacy for democratic citizenship education in Indonesia (CICED 2000: 44). Another illustration of the work being done in this area can be found at the Faculty of Social and Political Studies, Gadjah Mada University. Several classes focusing on peace education and conflict resolution are being offered, namely introduction to peace studies, conflict analysis and transformation, and negotiation and conflict resolution.2 The graduate programme in sociology at the same university also offers classes on violence, non-violence and conflict resolution. The university also established a Centre for the Study of Peace and Security (CSPS) at the end of 1996. Currently, CSPS is involved in designing a new curriculum for national security studies and conflict resolution studies, to replace the national resilience studies now available at Gadjah Mada University and the University of Indonesia.3

Conclusion I have proposed a new approach to handling conflict and avoiding violence as an alternative to the dominant and highly repressive approach taken during the New Order era. The ideas developed in this chapter could prove helpful in assessing the failure of the past approach and designing an alternative approach in the future. Finally, this chapter has

228 Samsu Rizal Panggabean attempted to demonstrate the importance of some new initiatives and measures being carried out by the state, civil society organisations and in education in conflict resolution and peace-building today, in order to ensure a peaceful Indonesia in the future.

Notes 1 Included in the liberalisation and democratisation policies during Habibie’s presidency were: (a) releasing political prisoners and labour leaders; (b) allowing new labour unions to form and freeing them from restrictions on their activities; (c) allowing new political parties to form and freeing them from restrictions on their activities; (d) abolishing publishing permits (SIUPP) and easing the restrictions on the media by allowing them to carry a wider range of opinion; (e) establishing term limits for the president and vice-president; (f) speeding up the ratification of all international treaties and conventions on human rights; (g) cancelling the extraordinary power given by the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) to the president in March 1998; (h) rewriting the electoral law; (i) adopting a law to eradicate corruption, collusion and nepotism; ( j) adopting laws on regional autonomy; (k) reducing the presence of the military in the parliament; (l) reducing the number of presidential appointees in the MPR; and (m) starting an investigation of former president Suharto’s illegal fortunes. 2 The three classes were offered for the first time in the academic year of 1997. 3 The national resilience programme ‘studies how a nation uses its geography, demography, natural resources, ideology, politics, economy, society, culture, and defense and security in order to survive and grow further in the international and global arena’. ‘Program Studi Ketahanan Nasional’ in Buku Panduan Program Pasca Sarjana 1997–2002, Universitas Gadjah Mada, p. 406. In the year of 2001, CSPS is preparing a course for Gadjah Mada University called ‘democracy and peace’ to replace kewiraan (patriotism) course, a required course for all students.

16 The Indonesian Commission on Violence Against Women Mély G. Tan

On 15 July 1998, a group of women from a diversity of professional and social backgrounds came together to protest to President Habibie over the lack of recognition being paid by authorities to the extent of the violence that had occurred in mid-May in Jakarta and other major cities. Their primary concern was to draw the President’s attention to the cases of sexual assault and rapes of women during this time and to demand government assistance for the victims. Following this meeting, President Habibie announced the establishment of the Indonesian Commission on Violence Against Women (Komisi Nasional Anti Kekerasan Perempuan), known as Komnas Perempuan. The violence in Jakarta and other major Indonesian cities on 13–15 May 1998 terrified the entire population. Together with rioting, looting and arson, it was also disclosed in the weeks after the violence that women and girls, mostly ethnic Chinese, had been sexually abused and assaulted, and a significant number gang-raped, during those days.1 For the inhabitants of Jakarta this had been a time of intense fear, not least because it was totally unexpected. Although the days and months preceding the riots were chaotic, wide-scale violence seemed unlikely as the authorities, both civil and military, continued to state that Jakarta was the best-policed city in the country and that no riots would occur. As a consequence, no one was prepared for this terrible outburst of violence. Thousands of students continued their largely peaceful demonstrations in front of the parliament building, despite shootings at Trisakti University on 12 May in which four students were killed. Then on 13 May riots sprang up all over the city and continued unhindered until 15 May. The capital became a frightening scene of conflagration. In areas attacked by rioters, people were aghast when they realized that there was no response to their frantic calls for help from the police and military stations.2 When the realization hit them that their basic right of protection by the state was not forthcoming, the immediate reaction was to flee the area to places within Jakarta considered safe, such as certain parts in the south of Jakarta and the many hotels in the centre of the city. Others left Jakarta for places outside Java, such as Bali, West

230 Mély G. Tan Kalimantan, North Sulawesi and Bangka, while those who could afford it (and could get a ticket), left the country, mostly to Singapore, Malaysia or Australia, but also to the USA. Images of the destruction and violence beamed around the world by television news channels like CNN and the BBC generated a storm of reactions and responses, both national and international, expressing outrage at this horrifying outburst of violence.3 Pictures of mobs rampaging through business and residential areas with a high concentration of ethnic Chinese particularly enraged ethnic Chinese communities in cities in Asia and the USA. There was a rash of demonstrations at Indonesian embassies in these states. How do we explain this terrible outburst of violence? What were the events leading towards this phenomenon? A thorough analysis of this would need to distinguish the larger and longer context of the development of Indonesia in the thirty years and more of the Suharto government, as well as the shorter period leading up to the violence. However, it is the task of this chapter to analyze the reactions and responses to the May riots, as illustrated by the actions of a group of women academics and activists who formed the Society on Violence against Women, subsequently formalized into the Indonesian Commission on Violence Against Women. I will start by providing some analysis of the period of increasing tension leading up to the violence in May 1998, including the rapes, which led directly to the formation of this group.4

Building tensions: the lead-up to the May 1998 violence The violence in May 1998 should be seen in the light of the increased social and political tensions in Indonesia during the year or so before this event. From mid-1996 until January 1998 there was a series of social disturbances with political, ethnic and religious overtones in Indonesia, including the attack on PDI headquarters on 27 July 1996 and riots in Situbondo, Tasikmalaya, Rengasdengklok and West Kalimantan (Selo Soemardjan 1999: ix–xxi; Djajadi 1999: 9–10). These events generated feelings of insecurity and deep apprehension within Indonesian society at this time. It was also during this period that reformasi politics began to emerge in Indonesia, although this was largely confined to students and members of some political parties. However, as economic and social tensions increased in early 1998, the desire for change to the socio-economic and political situation also reached the lower and middle classes, where it was perhaps felt most strongly by women who were directly affected by the monetary crisis. The sudden drop in the exchange rate of the rupiah to the dollar, from Rp2,400 before the crisis to Rp5,000 in early January, and later to an incredible Rp17,000, sent people rushing to supermarkets amid rumors that the rupiah would continue to drop and that the factories would not be able to produce any more goods. As a result of this panic, within hours

Indonesian Commission on Violence Against Women 231 the shelves of supermarkets and the huge hypermarkets were bare. Basic commodities such as rice, cooking oil and sugar disappeared from the markets, and food lines suddenly appeared. Shoppers, mostly women accompanied by small children, were forced to stand in line in the hot sun to get small plastic bags of rice, cooking oil and sugar. As a result of this rapid escalation in the prices of basic goods, the burden on women and children increased greatly. In response, a small group of largely middle-class women in Jakarta decided to make a public protest. One sunny morning, on 20 February 1998, in what has become an important moment for women’s activism in Indonesia, they positioned themselves on the circle in front of the Hotel Indonesia in the center of Jakarta (Adnan and Pradiansyah 1999: 144). They carried signs saying ‘Suara Ibu Peduli’ (Voice of Concerned Mothers) and ‘Susu untuk Bayi’ (Milk for Babies), and distributed flowers to the motorists passing by. Inevitably traffic slowed and a traffic jam ensued. Suddenly a truck carrying police stopped at the circle and the women were asked to disperse. A heated argument arose, and three of the women were put in the open truck and taken away. They were Karlina Leksono-Supelli, the coordinator of the group of demonstrators, Gadis Arivia, the editor of Jurnal Perempuan, and Wilarsih, a young woman who happened to pass by and decided to join them. They were held overnight and released the next morning. In an interview in the journal D & R (14 March 1998), Karlina related her experience of being taken by the police and explained why the group acted in the way they did.5 At the trial held shortly after the incident, Karlina stated in her defense: From the depth of my being I cannot comprehend how an act as delicate as praying to God and singing the song Ibu Pertiwi while standing at a certain place could cause the person doing this act to be grabbed by the arms, pushed into an open truck, and taken to police headquarters at high speed with the sirens wailing. Karlina became a symbol of caring for women and mothers concerned about the babies of poor families, at risk of undernourishment because the price of milk had sky-rocketed. The fateful demonstration was a spontaneous act to draw attention to the plight of mothers and babies, and was meant to get people to donate milk to be distributed to mothers of poor families. Later, Karlina and other women who had participated in this demonstration over price rises in January 1998 also came to the aid of the victims of sexual assault and rape during the May riots. For even more women across Indonesia, the act of defiance demonstrated by these women over the price of milk for babies was also translated into more diverse activism in the context of reformasi politics at the time. Meanwhile, the situation in Jakarta from March to May became increasingly tense. The university students, as the instigators and the center of

232 Mély G. Tan the reformasi movement, played a crucial role in the dramatic events leading to the end of the thirty-two-year-old regime. Their actions and reactions towards the measures taken by Suharto and the government to remain in power were the triggering factors that galvanized the people, and eventually the political elite, to stand up and declare ‘enough is enough’. The students had been holding demonstrations since 1997, but they were sporadic and more or less localized to the campus grounds. By February 1998 they had stepped up their activities, and ‘reformasi’ became the rallying cry. Starting in March, rallies became an everyday event and the session of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) from 1 to 11 March 1998 became the rallying point. The re-election of Suharto for a seventh term by the MPR, and his selection of Habibie as Vice-President together with some members of the cabinet, including his daughter Tutut and close associates Bob Hasan and General Hartono, elicited the further ire of the students. The choice as a member of cabinet of Wiranto Arismunandar, a former Rector of ITB known for his repressive measures against student activists when Minister of Education, added to this rage. The students became fed up with the restriction of their activities to campus grounds, and took to the streets. Clashes with police and military personnel who tried to contain them could not be avoided. By the end of April and beginning of May the students’ demands had escalated. They wanted the cabinet to resign because it could not resolve the economic crisis and they wanted the MPR to hold a special session. Then on 12 May 1998 the Trisakti Incident exploded. The shooting and killing of four students who were already inside the campus shocked the students and the entire nation (Pattiradjawane 1999). The next day, despite the tense atmosphere gripping Jakarta, people came to the Trisakti campus to honor the dead students and they were proclaimed Pahlawan Reformasi, or Heroes of the Reformasi Movement. This incident galvanized the people to stand up against the government. As already detailed, from 13 to 15 May Jakarta was the scene of horrifying rioting, looting, arson and attacks on persons, including rapes. The areas hardest hit were those with a high concentration of ethnic Chinese residences, shopping malls and business areas. Following the violence, attempts by Suharto to hold onto his position were futile and on 21 May 2000 he finally stepped down. The thousands of students who had occupied the Parliament (DPR) building since 18 May 2000, supported by faculty members, prominent figures and celebrities, their parents, and women’s groups providing food and drink, were euphoric and left the building on 22 May 1998. However, for many Indonesians, particularly women, who were soon to learn about the cases of rape and sexual assault during the days of violence, these celebrations soon gave way to an important new struggle.

Indonesian Commission on Violence Against Women 233

Reactions and responses to the May violence: the Indonesian Commission on Violence Against Women The events of 13–15 May 1998 were some of the most traumatic experiences in the lives of the people of Jakarta, and in particular in the lives of the ethnic Chinese among them. There has been a proliferation of writings, in book form and especially articles in magazines and newspapers, giving both accounts of personal experiences and scholarly analyses (Heryanto 2000; Wibowo 2000). These personal experiences clearly indicate their authors’anguish and feelings of deep confusion. Although the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia have a history of trials and tribulations including violence, this time the attacks were not only on their property but also on their lives, and especially on the lives of their women and girls. Strangely, although there were persistent rumors about sexual assault and gang rape of ethnic Chinese women and girls during the riots, ‘hard evidence’ about these atrocities only surfaced with the reports of a group of volunteers (Volunteer Team for Humanity), under the leadership of Jesuit priest I. Sandyawan Sumardi. This young priest, usually called Romo Sandy (Romo – ‘Father’ – is the Javanese term of address for a Catholic priest), was already known for his activities in a non-government organization (NGO) to help the urban poor and street children. Following the riots, the Volunteer Team released three reports collectively named Reports of the Volunteer Team on Humanity (TRuK 1998a; 1998b; 1998c). These reports were used as one of the major references for the investigation on the circumstances and the incidence of the riots by the Joint Fact-Finding Team (TGPF) set up by the Habibie government. The name ‘Joint Team’ referred to the fact that the members were from the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), the military and the police force, from relevant government ministries and from a number of NGOs, including Romo Sandy himself. Perhaps the most widely circulated document, both nationally and internationally, is the Volunteer Team report on the rape cases. According to this document there was a total of 152 cases of rape of which twenty victims died. The TGPF, on the basis of their verification of the cases mentioned in the Volunteer Team report (1998a; TRuK 1998b, 1998f) and other evidence, came up with a total of eighty-five cases, of which fifty-two were of rape, fourteen of rape and torture, ten of sexual assault and nine of sexual harassment (TGPF 1998). They concluded their report with eight recommendations, but at this writing neither the Habibie nor Wahid governments have taken any action on them. Nonetheless, although the TGPF explicitly confirmed that the rape cases did occur, denials continued on the part of police, military and civilian authorities (including the State Minister for the Role of Women, at the time Tuti Alawiyah) and certain Muslim groups. Some such groups even asserted that the report released by the Volunteer Team was a fabrication intended to discredit

234 Mély G. Tan people of a certain religious group, that is, Muslims. This denial rested on the observation that no victim had come forward to complain to the police or any other authority. The police team in charge of investigating the rapes stated that when they visited the addresses mentioned in the Volunteer Report, the people they found there all denied that rape had taken place on the premises. Similarly, they could find no one in hospitals who would confirm that women who were victims of rape had been admitted. Faced with this systematic state of denial, a group of women, loosely organized under the name Society on Violence against Women, got together and decided that the best strategy to counter this denial was to get the support of the highest authority in the country, then President Habibie. This group of women comprised all ages, with the youngest in her early thirties and the oldest in her mid-eighties. They came from a variety of walks of life, and included academics, professionals, activists, feminists and housewives. They came from the government organizations Dharma Wanita and KOWANI, and from a variety of NGOs. Most, however, were from legal aid groups concerned with violence against women, especially domestic violence, violence in the workplace and state violence, and from groups promoting the empowerment of women in the political arena. All were middle class, and some were upper middle class. Communication among them was by telephone, mostly mobile, and by word of mouth. The group’s coordinator, Saparinah Sadli, a Professor in Psychology at the University of Indonesia and Director of the Women’s Studies programme at the same university, was also a member of the Komnas HAM. Finding a voice for women and victims of violence When the group (which included myself) attempted to make an appointment to meet with Habibie, it proved difficult to get past the palace protocol staff, despite the fact that Saparinah knew him and his wife personally. The group made the decision to meet with him in mid-June, but the meeting was eventually scheduled for 15 July 1998. Even then, they were confronted with obstacles as the protocol staff insisted that the President would meet with Saparinah only. However, she demanded that the entire group on the list submitted be allowed to meet him. The meeting was eventually scheduled for 2:00 pm and was to be held in the Bina Graha Building, the office of the President. Everybody arrived on time and we were asked to wait in the ante-room. Suddenly we were informed that the meeting was postponed and that only a limited number of the women could meet with Habibie. At that point Mrs Sumhadi6 of KOWANI, a very proper lady, said in a firm voice: ‘We are not going to move from here until we all meet him, even if we have to stay overnight!.’ Eventually we were called in. Habibie stood up to welcome the group of about twenty women, giving both Saparinah and myself a friendly hug. We

Indonesian Commission on Violence Against Women 235 sat in easy chairs with Habibie at one end with only one aide, Sintong Pandjaitan, sitting next to him, and a number of other functionaries at the back of the room. Habibie opened the meeting with a few remarks and then Saparinah explained the purpose of our visit. She detailed our concern about the incidence of violence, including the rapes of ethnic Chinese women during the May riots, and about the authorities’ state of denial. She expressed our alarm that there appeared to have been no attempts made to look for the culprits and bring them to court. She stated that to remedy the situation the group had decided that the highest authority in the land, that is the President, should make a public statement condemning the riots and the violence, including the raping of ethnic Chinese women that accompanied the mayhem. The group had already formulated a statement and Saparinah presented it to him. Habibie first wanted to know more about what had happened, and the members of the Volunteer Team who were present related their experiences in aiding and attempting to aid victims. Habibie then told the group that he had heard a story of a rape case from his niece, which convinced him that these acts had really happened. He then said he was willing to make a public statement but wanted our draft changed. Sintong, his aide, tried to prevent him from taking this action by saying that he should consult with the relevant cabinet ministers first. Habibie responded that he could make a decision on this matter without consulting them. With Nana Kamala (who later became the Secretary General of Komnas Perempuan) taking notes and all of us listening and making comments, he then proceeded to revise the draft. The whole process lasted more than two hours. When it was finished, the press, including some foreign press, who had been waiting to hear what had transpired in the meeting, were called into the room. Habibie read from the statement for the TV cameras and it was broadcast in the evening news. Aside from demanding that he make a public statement, the group also demanded that he set up a team to investigate the riots and establish a commission on violence against women, in parallel with the existing Komnas HAM. Habibie agreed to these demands and invited the group to meet with him again on 22 July. On this occasion he was accompanied by his wife and Tuti Alawiyah. All the relevant ministers of his cabinet were present, including the Coordinating Minister for People’s Welfare (Haryono Soeyono), the Coordinating Minister for Politics and Security (Feisal Tanjung) and the Minister of Defense (Wiranto) and their wives; the Minister for Social Affairs, the Head of the Police, the Minister of Health, the Minister of Education, the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Home Affairs and the Attorney-General. The wives of Ministers were probably present because the topic of the meeting involved women and because the wife of the President was present. Almost all women’s groups were represented, from the young feminist-activists to members of establishment organizations such as the Dharma Wanita and the KOWANI. Mrs

236 Mély G. Tan Nuriyah Rahman, whose husband would later succeed Habibie as President, represented the Masyarakat Pesantren Perempuan. At this meeting Habibie announced the formation of Komnas Perempuan, and instructed Saparinah Sadli to be the coordinator and to select its members as soon as possible. He also announced the establishment of the TGPF to investigate the riots of 13–15 May, including the incidence of violence against women and rape. The team was given three months to do the work. Komnas Perempuan at work The group took several months to prepare a draft Presidential Decree and the list of names of the members of Komnas Perempuan to present to the President’s office. Presidential Decree Number 181 of 1998, concerning the Indonesian Commission on Violence Against Women, was finally issued in Jakarta on 9 October 1998. A leaflet released by the Komnas Perempuan at this time states clearly that it ‘was set up in response to Indonesian women’s outcry against the sexual assault and violence during the May 1998 riots’. Although established by Presidential Decree, it is an independent body that runs programmes, publishes and disseminates reports to the general public and raises non-government funding.7 Like Komnas HAM, its link with the government indicates the government’s commitment to the issues in its sphere, whilst allowing it to operate autonomously. Its office is on the same premises as Komnas HAM. For the operational costs of the secretariat, Komnas Perempuan receives financial assistance from the State Secretariat, although it is insufficient to cover its expenditure fully. The objectives and strategies of Komnas Perempuan include consciousness-raising and dissemination of understanding of all forms of violence against women through publications and public dialogues. It aims to create an enabling environment in order to eliminate all forms of violence through advocating legal and policy reform. Furthermore, Komnas Perempuan acts to strengthen capacities for the prevention of violence and for dealing with its consequences through networking on the national, regional and international levels. The members of Komnas Perempuan must be women and men with a track record of active involvement in the advancement of women’s rights and interests, and must include people from outside Jakarta and outside Java. Komnas Perempuan was deliberately set up with a wide-ranging membership, reflecting the diversity of women’s organizations concerned with women’s issues that also focus on violence against women. By having the leading persons in those organizations as members of Komnas Perempuan, it has secured a network of cooperation that can only enhance the objectives of all groups concerned. The members of Komnas Perempuan represent a highly impressive group of professionals and activists with a great sweep of experience and

Indonesian Commission on Violence Against Women 237 expertise. Like the group that preceded it, its members vary in age from the youngest, aged thirty-five, to the oldest, aged eighty-five. They also come from a range of regions and ethnic and religious groups. Many members have already had great experience working in women’s organizations and human rights organizations in Indonesia and overseas. These include the Chairperson of Komnas Perempuan, Saparinah Sadli, Myra Diarsi,8 Rita Kolibonso,9 Tati Krisnawaty,10 Ita Fatia Nadia,11 Nuriyah Rahman12 and Suwarni Salyo.13 Among the members there are practicing lawyers such as Nursyahbani Katjasungkana,14 as well as Rita Kolibonso. Suprapti Samil15 and Boen Setiawan16 are physicians with a particular interest in issues related to the health of women and children, and Mély G. Tan and Saparinah Sadli are academics. Representing regional and religious groups are members like Lies Mailoa-Marantika,17 Nunuk Murniati,18 Ir Samsidar19 and Yusan Yeblo.20 In addition, members with associations with government agencies include Hartini Hartarto21 and retired Police General Koesparmono Irsan.22 The most senior member of Komnas Perempuan, Herawati Diah,23 brings expertise and contacts related to the media. Kamala Chandrakirana,24 the Secretary General of Komnas Perempuan, is also a highly respected academic and activist. This brief sketch of the membership of Komnas Perempuan serves to indicate the prominent social position of this group. The women and men involved provide connections with the grassroots movements active in this area, as well as important and necessary links to elite social and political structures. Most members, including those from outside Jakarta, participate actively in some, if not all, programs. The programs now under way or planned include the ‘Mapping of Violence’ project, the ‘Services for Survivors’ project and the ‘Protection of Victims and Witnesses’. Two publications in the Key Documents Series have already appeared, namely ‘Findings of the Joint Fact-Finding Team. Appendix Report of the Volunteer Team for Humanity’ (TGPF 1999) and ‘Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women. Mission to Indonesia and East Timor 20 November–4 December 1998’ (United Nations Special Rapporteur 1999). Further publications are being prepared, including a collection of writings on different forms of violence against women, and a directory on crisis centers and organizations providing assistance to women victims around the country. At this writing (June 2000), Komnas Perempuan has held a number of public dialogues, seminars and workshops as part of its efforts to increase public awareness of the incidence of violence against women. Through these public dialogues Komnas Perempuan also aims to encourage women who have experienced or are experiencing violence at home and in the workplace to come forward and testify in order to make it possible for the perpetrators to be taken to court. The first of these public dialogues, Violence Against Women (October 1998), was the occasion of the formal launch of Komnas Perempuan, and included discussions of violence

238 Mély G. Tan against domestic and migrant workers, and violence against women in Aceh and East Timor, as well as sessions focusing on resolution and justice issues. Other public dialogues have focused on Islam and peace, and the role Islam can play in peace-building (November 1999). More recently the dialogues have turned to questions of ‘truth seeking’ about cases of violence and to thinking about ways to support and protect witnesses and victims of violence during such a process (May 2000). In association with this discussion, Komnas Perempuan received visitors who had been involved in truth and reconciliation processes in other countries. These included Paul van Zyl, the former Executive Secretary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa; Douglas Cassel, former advisor to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of El Salvador; and Priscilla Hayner, a researcher on Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in thirty countries. The Ford Foundation sponsored their visit to Indonesia, and a meeting was held jointly with members of Komnas HAM. With regard to its international ‘reach’ and greater recognition of the problem of violence against women in Indonesia, the visit by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women in late 1998 was of immense importance. Radhika Coomaraswamy visited Indonesia from 20 November to 4 December 1998, and paid a special visit to East Timor. She had also intended to visit Irian Jaya and Aceh, but the Indonesian government insisted she had no time to do so. The Special Rapporteur spent a whole morning with Komnas Perempuan members, and heard testimony from those who were involved in giving aid to victims of sexual violence and rape. In her official report she included graphic descriptions of cases of sexual violence during the May riots in Jakarta and elsewhere in Indonesia. This report was rejected by the Indonesian government, and Komnas Perempuan responded by registering a letter of protest sent to the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ali Alatas (UN Special Rapporteur 1999). These various visits from international experts in the areas of human rights and reconciliation indicate that a network of connections with important outside agencies is in place. In addition to this, the Secretary General and other members of Komnas Perempuan have participated in a series of international and regional meetings and conferences dealing with issues of human rights and violence against women.25 The activities of Komnas Perempuan, including public dialogues, publications, and expanding international and national networks of interaction and exchange of ideas on issues relating to violence against women, have come about as a direct consequence of the tragedy of May 1998. Although the rapes of mostly ethnic Chinese women in Indonesian cities in May 1998 marked a horrific moment in Indonesian history, these events succeeded in stimulating action to prevent this type of violence from happening again and to provide support to the victims. Nonetheless, much still needs to be done to allow Komnas Perempuan

Indonesian Commission on Violence Against Women 239 to reach its objectives effectively. In the progress report presented to the members of Komnas Perempuan in March 2000, the Secretary General noted that the ‘gaps’ in the performance of Komnas Perempuan are related to various factors. These included the regional role of Komnas Perempuan, cooperation with the media, relations with the public in general and lobbying with the relevant decision-makers – for example, the State Minister for Human Rights. Hence although the physical resources are in place (office space, workplace, meeting room) and the programs are ongoing, Komnas Perempuan’s impact on society, and in particular its objective of eliminating or even reducing violence against women and children, is still unreachable. Conflict situations continue to arise and even seem to be on the increase, as for example in Maluku. What is needed is a strong movement by all concerned people in society to stand up and declare firmly, ‘Hentikan Kekerasan Titik! Stop Violence, Period!’.

Notes 1 For many examples of laws, regulations and policies discriminating against ethnic Chinese, enacted and implemented under Suharto, see Solidaritas Nusa Bangsa (2000). 2 The May 2000 issue of Suara Baru, the publication of INTI (Indonesia Tionghoa), the organization of ethnic Chinese that functions as a pressure group, commemorated the second anniversary of the May incident with the caption ‘Haruskah pil pahit ditelan lagi?’ (Must the bitter pill be swallowed again?). It included an article about a family who were trapped in their shop-house in one of the riot areas. The whole family, including the grandmother, was holed up in one of the rooms. They could hear people going up and down the stairs and ransacking the store downstairs. People outside were throwing stones and shouting: ‘Cina! Cina! Keluar!’. They survived the ordeal, but lost everything in the shop. 3 Many households in Jakarta had access to foreign news channels via satellite or cable television connections. As a result, many were able to watch the coverage of the May violence on CNN, the BBC and the ABC. 4 For analyses of trends in women’s activism in Indonesia prior to 1998 see OeyGardiner and Bianpoen (2000) and Bianpoen’s chapter ‘Women’s Political Call’ (283–302) for a well-documented update of events since then. 5 Karlina was the first woman to receive a degree in astronomy from the Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB). She later went on to study philosophy, receiving a doctorate from the University of Indonesia. 6 Sadly, Mrs Sumhadi passed away on 8 March 1999, International Women’s Day. 7 Komnas Perempuan’s projects, programs, publications and public dialogues have received funding from several foreign and international agencies and foundations. 8 Myra Diarsi is a Vice-Chairperson of Komnas Perempuan and is of the younger generation. She is known for her work in aiding women victims of domestic violence. 9 Rita Serena Kolibonso is a Vice-Chairperson of Komnas Perempuan as well as being the Executive Director of Mitra Perempuan, a women’s crisis center set up in 1996. In the aftermath of the May 1998 riots this group has been directly involved in aiding victims of sexual violence and rape.

240 Mély G. Tan 10 Tati Krisnawaty is with Solidaritas Perempuan, and has focused especially on the plight of migrant workers abroad, and in particular in the Middle East. She has been to the area and visited some of these workers. 11 Ita Fatia Nadia is with the Kalyanamitra, one of the first women’s groups concerned with the plight of women in marginal positions, such as commercial sex workers, domestic workers and production workers in factories. She was among the first women to come to the aid of the rape victims in May 1998, and during that period was also a victim of threats from unknown telephone callers who tried to terrorize her into stopping her work with the victims. 12 Hj. Nuriyah Rahman, M.Hum has a postgraduate degree in Women’s Studies from the University of Indonesia. She had a terrible car accident, which resulted in her being wheelchair-bound but did not deter her from finishing her studies and being active in a number of NGOs. She is still active in NGOs, and a number of the meetings of Komnas Perempuan have been held at the presidential residence to avoid the protocol problems that arise if meetings are held outside her residence. 13 Suwarni Salyo is a former chairperson of the National Commission on the Status of Women. She is a senior member of the group, with years of experience working in human rights and women’s rights activism at governmental and international levels. 14 Nursyahbani Katjasungkana is a national and international figure on the human rights scene. Since 1975 she has been in the forefront of advocates for the inclusion of women in political activities, and in the struggle to eliminate all forms of violence against women. At the NGO Forum of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, she and her group came with huge posters proclaiming ‘Stop State Violence’, which received a lot of media attention. The vehicles for her work on the political and legal fronts are the KPI (Koalisi Perempuan Indonesia) and the LBH APIK (Lembaga Bantuan Hukum – Asosiasi Perempuan Indonesia untuk Keadilan). 15 Suprapti Samil, also of the older generation, is a practicing gynaecologist, very concerned with problems of reproductive health, including abortion. 16 Boen Setiawan is known for his interest in and support for education, especially of gifted children. He is a founding member of the Creativity Foundation. 17 Lies Mailoa-Marantika is a Protestant minister, very much involved in the turmoil and its consequences in Ambon and other islands in Maluku. She is Komnas Perempuan’s contact-person for the people in the area, and is especially concerned with the problems of internally displaced persons. As part of Komnas HAM, she has visited the displaced persons from East Timor in the camps in Atambua. 18 Nunuk Murniati is one of the regional members who live in Yogyakarta. She initiated the movement there against violence towards women, and is very active in various Catholic Church groups. 19 Ir Samsidar, an agricultural scientist, is another regional member, and at thirtyfive is the youngest member of Komnas Perempuan. She is from Aceh, and is involved in the group called Flower Aceh, which is concerned with women whose husbands were killed or disappeared during the time when parts of Aceh were declared a special military area, and in a group involved in providing micro-credit for women. 20 Yusan Yeblo is a very outspoken woman from Papua who has a vast network with NGOs in Papua and in Papua New Guinea. She is known as a human rights activist focusing on the rights of the indigenous people of Papua and the rights of Papuan women. 21 Hartini Hartarto is active in the Dharma Wanita organization of wives of civil

Indonesian Commission on Violence Against Women 241

22

23 24 25

servants, and when her husband was one of the coordinating ministers she was the chairperson of the organization. She is known to be very critical of the system of this organization. Koesparmono Irsan is a retired police general, who is also the Rector of Bhayangkara University. He is a member of the Komnas HAM, and has shown sensitivity to the plight and aspirations of women. His network with the police force is useful to Komnas Perempuan. Herawati Diah, aged eighty-five, was the founder of the first English-language newspaper in Jakarta. She was also the first Indonesian woman to study in the US in the mid-1930s. Kamala Chandrakirana, the Secretary General, is in charge of the working body that does the day-to-day work, the monitoring of the programs. Among these were the ICPD+5 meeting on population in New York, the AsiaPacific preparatory meeting for Beijing+5 in Bangkok and the Beijing+5 meeting in New York (June 2000) (for which the Secretary General prepared a paper entitled ‘Indonesian Women’s Approach to the Consequences of Armed Conflict: Engendering Humanitarianism, Peace and Justice’); also the AsiaPacific Forum of National Human Rights Commissions in Fiji (May 2000).

17 Tortured body, betrayed heart State violence in an Indonesian novel by an ex-political prisoner of the ‘1965 affair’1 Budiawan Within the Baconian perspective, torture is a discourse of ‘discovery’. Like violence and coercion, which are essential for the domination of nature, torture is an appropriate technique in other realms of human inquiry (Dubois 1994; Hanson 1998). If so, it must necessarily not be practised when the ‘truth’ is already in hand. In practice, the aims of torture as an intentional act of inflicting severe pain and suffering on a person for certain purposes (United Nations 1985: 3–4), quite often go beyond the ‘truth’ inquiry. In a regime of control by fear, for instance, the effects of torture upon the (potential) victims are more anticipated than the ‘truth’ the victims tell. By exploring an Indonesian novel written by an ex-political prisoner allegedly involved in the 30 September 1965 affair2 (‘1965 affair’), this chapter attempts to show the limits of the instrumentalist Baconian perspective of torture. More specifically, by closely reading the narratives of state violence in the novel, it tries to explore how and to what extent the power of the regime operates through the effects of torture upon the victims. The novel discussed here is Merajut Harkat (Knitting [Human] Dignity), written by Putu Oka Sukanta.3 The story is about the ‘obsessive’ struggle of a human being – as represented in the central character, Mawa – to regain his humanity after he has been severely dehumanized through being imprisoned without knowing what he has been found guilty of. This novel is much inspired by the author’s own experiences and observations during his imprisonment without trial from 1966 to 1976. However, it is neither a testimony as such nor an historical account of the bloody period marking the change from Sukarno’s rule to Suharto’s ‘New Order’ regime – both being types of works that have ‘boomed’ since the fall of Suharto in May 1998 (Dhani and Herlambang 1999; Sulami 1999; Latief 2000). What makes this novel slightly different from the latter is that it constitutes a testimony bound in its own central human theme, by which its narrative is structured. This human theme is to serve as a ‘preservative’, so that the work is supposed to ‘transcend’ its historical boundaries, at least as it is understood in the predominant notion of ‘fiction’ vis-à-vis ‘non-fiction’.

Tortured body, betrayed heart 243 Before exploring the narratives of the state violence in the novel, this chapter will first contrast the New Order regime’s official narrative on the 1965 affair with narratives by ex-political prisoners accused of having been involved in the affair, or eks-tapols4 as they are popularly known. It is important to understand how eks-tapols are predominantly represented and how they represent themselves. These representations in turn shape the ways in which they signify their experiences of being tortured by the state apparatuses, as will be explored in the second section. An exploratory reading of the novel will then be framed in a ‘theoretical’ discussion of torture and examination of the Baconian perspective. Finally, some ‘practical’ implications of this exploratory reading will be detailed, toward a possible discursive agenda to eradicate the use of torture.

Challenging the official and dominant narrative of the 1965 affair In the official narrative of Suharto’s New Order regime and the popular discourse of the 1965 affair, what ‘really happened’ on 30 September 1965 was an abortive Communist coup. The Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was believed to have masterminded the putsch by the regiment of Presidential guards (Cakrabirawa), who kidnapped and killed six top army officers ‘as a way of controlling the military, before finally controlling the state’, the ‘White Book’ of Suharto’s New Order regime claims. This is based ‘on the evidence from the trials of the top PKI leaders and those who were involved in the revolt of the 30 September 1965 Movement’ (Sekretariat Negara 1994). However, Suharto and the army in fact began the campaigns to exterminate the PKI and its mass organizations just a few days after the 1965 affair occurred, while they held the ‘trials’ months or even years later.5 Such a version (or perhaps accusation) implies that every member and sympathizer of PKI and its mass organizations must have already known in advance what would happen on 30 September 1965. Yet this is doubtful, as they themselves only heard about the affair from the radio and other mass media – which had been controlled by the military – the following day or even later. Even when the mass media reported that the coup had been masterminded by the PKI they did not believe it, as they had never heard of any plan for such a bloody movement led by the Party leaders. Furthermore, even if the coup did involve the top Party leaders in the PKI, this does not mean that it involved the PKI as a political organization.6 In other words, the eks-tapols were at the time, and remain, confused and curious about ‘what really happened’ on 30 September 1965.7 In Merajut Harkat, such confusion is seen in the course of Mawa’s life story as a political prisoner without trial. He has heard about the mass arrests and the mass killings of those being charged of having some affiliation with PKI. Yet he has no expectation that the military and a group of civilians will finally arrest him, as he is convinced that he has never done

244 Budiawan anything against the law. He is a diligent teacher and also a writer who, together with other writers, manages a literary magazine where those sharing the common ‘ideology’ of authorship can articulate their ideas. Even though he has to acknowledge this part of the accusation, still he does not understand why he has been arrested, interrogated, tortured and detained for an indefinite period of time. Other tapols in this novel share such an experience. Like Mawa, they too do not understand why they have been arrested and imprisoned. Some have admitted to their membership of the mass organizations affiliated with PKI but, as Mawa comments, ‘by then becoming a member of a mass organization was just like joining a football club, without necessarily knowing about PKI’ (Sukanta 1999a: 496). Even if one were a member of a PKI-affiliated mass organization, commented one tapol, ‘what has been wrong with that?’. As another who is a member of PR (People’s Youth, a mass organization of PKI) remarks, ‘I remain proud of being a member of PR. But is it wrong? I have never committed any crime. I did not take part in any activity in Lubang Buaya8 and I know nothing about it. But in the eyes of the rulers, we have to admit that we know everything’ (p. 497). The men are confused and wonder about ‘what had really happened’. They are puzzled as to what has brought them into the prisons and what has caused the mass killings in the countryside.9 They articulate various ‘analyses’. For instance, one tapol believes ‘it was the fault of Aidit’, the PKI Chairman, ‘who was too ambitious’ (p. 296), while other tapols curse the cunning general, ‘who was a burglar yelling ‘“burglary”’ (p. 217).10 Yet other tapols perceive it as an espionage war (p. 465) in which ‘the extermination of PKI – since [it was] the largest supporter of Sukarno – was just a means of overthrowing Sukarno’ (p. 469).11 In any case, they are only individual analyses, rather than factual reports. As one tapol says, ‘anybody can indeed make any “analysis”’ (p. 465), and another, ‘nobody knows exactly what has really happened’ (p. 486). At any rate, as there had been a powerful judgement that PKI was the mastermind of the murder of the six top Army officers, which then quickly led to the mass hysteria of anti-communism, there was hardly any space left to resist such allegations. What the would-be New Order regime needed to do then was not to ‘prove’ whether or not one had really been involved in what happened on 30 September 1965, but only whether one was a communist or gave an indication of being one.12 This was the primary motive for torturing the prisoners, which would then have its own implications for the victims, as the following section will explore.

Torture and its effects upon the victims in Merajut Harkat Torture is always practised in an unbalanced relation of power between the torturer and the person being tortured. As the former is powerful, the latter is powerless. In such a relationship, torture is an embodiment of

Tortured body, betrayed heart 245 power with its multiple effects upon both the torturers and the victims. The practice of torture itself is not only enabled by but is also a demonstration of the power network of the torturer upon the person being tortured. The ‘truth’ obtained from the victim – regardless of its validity – in turn not only ‘justifies’ the structure of the power behind the practice of torture, but also increases the number of targets of the torture itself. Torture is thus a means of reaffirming and re-accumulating power. On the other hand, from the perspective of the victims, the practice of torture has multiple effects of powerlessness. Being tortured without being able to resist, without even being able to recognize the torturer, is itself a form of powerlessness. However, a more significant form that potentially goes beyond the primary motive of torture occurs when the victims accumulate an even greater sense of resentment towards their fellow victims, who in their eyes have ‘betrayed’ them, than towards the torturers themselves. Blaming one’s fellow victims is a form of powerlessness, as it is unconsciously a kind of agreement with the torturers’ position. In this case, then, those who have ‘betrayed’ them are quite often regarded as worse than the torturers. Since being a traitor is perceived as more evil, the struggle to become human again is translated negatively, as a struggle to not be a traitor, to not betray one’s fellow victims. This is the obsession of the central character in the novel, as this section will explore. Mawa feels that something bad may happen to him, since someone has told him to be cautious, and three men with close-cropped hair and a muscular build have been spying on him around his house. Since the mass hysteria of anti-communism has been on the rise, he suspects that his arrest is probably related to his activities as an author. He manages a literary magazine, Mimbar Rakyat (People’s Forum), which publishes works advocating people’s aspirations. Still he questions this suspicion, as he has nothing to do with the PKI. Mawa’s suspicion, however, is confirmed when he is interrogated. The first allegation against him is that he is a PKI member. He rejects this charge, as he has never been a member, although he admits that he has been a member of a mass organization in which he works as a teacher. Suddenly the interrogator – who wears sunglasses to obscure his expression – asks him about his activities in Mimbar Rakyat (MR). As Mawa makes his denials, the interrogator threateningly tells him that he can produce a witness. Still Mawa insists that he knows nothing about MR. It then seems as though the interrogator has no idea in which direction to further his questioning, when all of a sudden he asks Mawa about Yogi, Mawa’s friend and the manager of MR. Mawa admits that he has met Yogi once, but it was in connection with other business. Unsatisfied with this answer, the interrogator then threatens Mawa (pp. 67–8): You have played games with me. Do you think I know nothing about your relationship with Yogi? Come on, before I punch you, I’ll give

246 Budiawan you one last opportunity not to tell a lie. How often did Yogi come to see you?’ ‘Once, sir.’ Just as I answered one of the interrogators landed a blow on my face. I was flung from the chair and fell head over heels to the floor. Before I realized where I was, a kick had made a nest in my stomach. My body bent over with both hands pressed to my stomach, as if pierced by a spear, in pain and confusion. My hands moved spontaneously to my buttocks, which had just been kicked. I felt as if I had broken my backbone and the pain was flowing up to my nerves. Then I could no longer use my hands to save other parts of my body from being kicked repeatedly. My hands were powerless, as they had been repeatedly crushed by the toes of the boots kicking several parts of my body. Despite such a powerless condition, Mawa does not give in to the interrogator’s threatening questions; his answer remains the same. Then the interrogator confronts him with the responses given by Yogi, who has also been tortured during his interrogation. As Mawa’s answer is not the same as Yogi’s, he undergoes another series of tortures. If the first round of torture is aimed at forcing Mawa to admit what the interrogator urges him to admit, the second is a form of punishment, and seems to be more cruel, as the interrogator – assisted by some guards – finds Mawa to be deceiving him. In the eyes of the interrogator Mawa is doubly guilty, that is in giving evidence of being a communist and then denying it. This in turn pushes the interrogator to extract more ‘information’ from Mawa. He seems to delve further into Mawa’s organizational networks and keeps asking Mawa about a number of people. As Mawa insists that he knows nothing about them, he is tortured for the third time (p. 71): I heard steps approaching me. Then a match was applied, burning my toe. I swayed unsteadily because of the heat. Several lashes of the whip hit my calf. The wounds were so painful. His body, having been treated as the site of power of the interrogators and the torturers, is not only stiff but also trembling and sweaty. He is breathless and wondering (p. 71): Are my lungs no longer able to breathe in, to sustain my life? This series of tortures terrorizes Mawa, so that every time he is called to the interrogating room he wonders whether what has happened to him will be repeated (p. 76).

Tortured body, betrayed heart 247 I wondered whether my body would endure this any longer? Would my joints still hold together? Would the wound in my flesh be wide open? Would my teeth fall out after those boots attacked them?’ What makes it more painful is that Yogi has betrayed him: In fact I did not keep any secret. I only kept to the deal with Yogi. What a fucking devil! He had broken the deal, and I had to bear the painful consequences. Shit! In the following interrogation, he is confronted again with another detainee, Siman, who has previously been tortured. Mawa almost fails to recognize him, as his eyes had pushed deeply into his swollen eyelids. His mouth was twisted and his lips were thickened and formless. When the interrogator asks Siman to speak, he says (p. 77): ‘I came to his [Mawa’s] house to convey some information.’ Mawa tries to deny that he has met Siman before. This denial seems to act as a spontaneous command for the interrogators and the guards to torture him again (p. 77): The lashes of the stingray tails thrust at every inch of the surface of my body. The painful effects were quite different from the lashes of rattan I had suffered the night before. Stingray tails are jagged, tearing and stinging the skin. I tried to hold back the pain from the lashes. I did not fall down from the chair. I strengthened myself by covering my face with both my hands. I cried out loudly every time a lash thrust at my body. It was my trick to beg the torturers to stop lashing at my body with the tails. . . . Eventually I fell down from the chair, fluttering on the floor. Boots several times stepped on my body, and several kicks landed on my stomach. I was breathless. . . . My chest was so painful. They stopped torturing me, leaving me sprawled on the floor. Mawa seems to have reached the limits of his ability to endure the pain of his tortured body. Being now without hope, he wants to be shot to death. Some of his fellow tapols encourage him to rebuild his spirit of life. However, he is almost at a point of desperation. Life seems no longer meaningful (p. 78): ‘But why try to remain alive? Two people have betrayed me.’

248 Budiawan Although many of his fellow tapols show empathy and solidarity with him, the pain he suffers is inflicted not only on his body, but also in his heart. The sense of betrayal makes him feel alone in the world. In his loneliness Mawa takes refuge in his memories, as though only people in his past, in his memories, can be trusted not to betray him (pp. 78–80): I tried to relax, empowering myself. I was reminded of a story about the tortures suffered by the Chinese people when fighting against Chiang Kai Shek. I was reminded of the experience of my father, a farmer who knew nothing about politics but had to suffer from the lashes of a samurai scabbard during the Japanese occupation. All of a sudden, the face of my late father clearly appeared in my head. He smiled as if deriving happiness from my present suffering. A thin smile, full of pride at the sight of his son who had not yet died of the torture. His smile was like a whisper: ‘Strengthen your heart!’ Mawa then regains a new spirit of life. He becomes less desperate. However, the summons to an interrogation session remains a terror for him; being interrogated and tortured is ‘like walking through a mass graveyard guarded by giants with bleeding teeth. It was really horrible’ (p. 81). Were he able to choose, he would prefer being shot, without suffering any long pain. ‘But one thing, I would die with my clean name intact, not to die as a traitor’ (p. 82, emphasis added). Not to die as a traitor seems to be the only way for Mawa to struggle for what he imagines as human dignity. He indeed has an idea at one stage to escape from the prison, as he can no longer stand the pain of his tortured body. Being tortured is not only suffering from the physical pain, but also from being insulted. He knows how it is to be undignified. He wants to speak up. Yet there is no space left to resist, or even simply to question the system of power, ‘which is like Japanese fascism and Hitler’s Nazism’ (p. 291). It seems that the only thing he can do is to struggle for survival without betraying other people. What does such a struggle mean for the attitude towards fellow tapols who betrayed the others? If one becomes a traitor in such terrorizing conditions, is it voluntary, or only because one has been compelled? Yogi and Siman have been tortured so severely that finally they betray Mawa. Mawa himself realizes that they have betrayed him not because they wanted to, but because they were compelled by violence. Even though Yogi explains that the military trapped him into saying something different from the deal he had made with Mawa, and he cries when he sees Mawa tortured, still Mawa does not believe it completely. He remains suspicious of Yogi and Siman. It is Harun, another tapol, who has caused him to remain suspicious of his fellow tapols, for Harun told him, when he was about to be interrogated for the first time (p. 37):

Tortured body, betrayed heart 249 You have to be suspicious of everybody here, even of me. Heavy tortures can quite often make people unable to bear their sufferings, and this tempts them to give wrong confessions. We all want to survive, but the ways to do so are quite often at the expense of others. Mawa becomes ever more convinced of what Harun has said to him, as he learns that many tapols who are bitterly regretful at their imprisonment can easily fight with their companions over trivial things. He observes that (p. 94): [it was] not only ideology that could make people fight against each other. Even coffee and cigarettes among those sharing the same ideology could make them fight against each other. Particularly to those being imprisoned with a very deep sense of regret, as they felt that they had been deceived by the struggle of their organizations, or they had failed to reach their ambitions of getting rich or obtaining high and important positions due to the ‘30 September 1965 affair’, which suddenly befell them. I found that they joined the organization [PKI] for ulterior motives. With such a realization Mawa learns that, despite being in the same boat, not every tapol shares the common signification of their present condition. Not every tapol regards this imprisonment as the cost of or the risk involved with an ideological struggle. He does not mean to judge them. He merely tells himself that such tapols could easily be (forced to be) traitors. In the language of the interrogators and the torturers, such tapols could easily (be forced to) ‘cooperate’ with the rulers of the prison, so that he has to be separated from them. However, Mawa himself learns that an offer to cooperate places a tapol in a very difficult position. He finds himself in such a position when he is called to the interrogating room for the fifth time. An invitation to cooperate has really terrified him. As he can no longer deny the person with whom he had formed a network of activism, it is impossible for him to reject the offer. Besides, rejecting will mean another series of tortures. But if he accepts the offer he will lose himself, as he becomes a traitor (pp. 96–7): [Imagine if] I turned into a traitor. Could I catch up and arrest those who were running and hiding themselves as a mouse flees from a cat? Could I punch them to force them to admit all of the allegations? What would their wives say [about me]? What would their children, who had been personally known to me, say [about me]? Wouldn’t they charge me with having sent them into a valley of suffering? . . . I would do, and do again and again, everything which I had never imagined, which I had never expected, which had never been my

250 Budiawan ambitions. But you would do a service for your country and people. Would that be right? Would it be right to be a traitor [cecunguk, literally ‘cockroach’] and a hero at the same time? Although Mawa repeatedly says to himself that he does not want to die as a traitor, that he wants to die with honour, he has to accept the offer, as he can no longer deny his relationship with the person whom the authorities will arrest with his ‘assistance’. He must help to arrest Acong, his fellow in one organization. He is supposed to show the way to Acong’s house. But in fact it is a trap, as the military men already know the way, thanks to information from another tapol, Hanja. Afterwards Mawa realizes that Acong’s children deeply hate him. They will never forget his betrayal of their father. Yet he still retains a hope of apologizing, of asking forgiveness, as his betrayal has not been voluntary (pp. 103–4): ‘Yes, you have the right to hate me. You have the right to accuse me of betraying your father, although I did not know what had really happened. You have the right, every right, to give whatever should be received by a traitor. But one day, I would like to let you and your family know what has really happened to me. I have no energy now. Are you willing, if I am still alive, to listen to what really befell me? Everything was beyond my control. Are you listening to me? I was a victim. Could you understand it? I was a denigrated victim . . . tonight I was a tool, a victim and defamed. This was not my wish; this was not my plan.’ However, knowing that it was Hanja – also his friend – who gave the officers Acong’s address and who then suggested the officers take him as their guide, Mawa is in a very dark state of mind. He has been betrayed in order to betray someone (p. 105). Such a ‘divide and rule’ trick had been undertaken repeatedly to make tapols suspicious of one another. . . . I just yelled in my heart, ‘You [Hanja] have sacrificed me, damn you!’ In spite of that, Mawa maintains a deep sense of guilt about the fate of Acong’s family, and he is obsessed with freeing himself from such a feeling. He is restless and sleepless, haunted by what he has done – ‘betraying’ his own fellow. He himself hates it, yet he has been powerless to reject it. Does it mean he can excuse a tapol who is forced into becoming a traitor like himself? In his own case, Mawa wants an excuse for his act of ‘betrayal’ but he cannot excuse those who have betrayed him. He wants his case to be understood but he is unwilling to understand the cases of other ‘traitors’.

Tortured body, betrayed heart 251 He is not alone in harbouring such an attitude. Most, if not all, of the tapols share it. This is indicated in the question they raise every time the prison guards raid a block of cells, ‘Who has been the traitor for all of this?’ (p. 233). Being a traitor is intolerable. No reason for betrayal is acceptable, even if one ‘becomes’ a traitor as a result of being tortured, let alone if the reason is for your own survival. This is because almost every tapol has experienced torture and every tapol can potentially be tortured at any time. In addition, as a senior tapol said to Mawa when the latter was about to be interrogated (and tortured) for the first time, ‘[Be strong within yourself], no one has died because of being tortured’ (p. 63). Even if one died from torture, adds another senior tapol, ‘this would have a political meaning for the Party and the succeeding cadres. He would be a martyr for the Indonesian communist movement’ (p. 135). Mawa has no doubt about the consistency between what the senior tapol said to him and what he has experienced, as he, the senior man, has been severely tortured, yet has never complained. It seems that such an ‘heroic’ discourse of the experience of being tortured significantly shapes the intolerance of any reason for betrayal. Whenever one betrays one’s fellows, the police or military officers are able to arrest them more easily, ‘like catching fish in an aquarium’ (p. 112). This makes a rather disgusting kind of sense to a traitor. However, as Mawa tells the other tapols when they discover that one among them, Handi, is a traitor, ‘the way we treat a traitor has to be different from how the rulers have treated us. We should have a higher appreciation of human dignity. . . . Otherwise, what is the difference between “them” and “us”?’ (pp. 348–9). It sounds ambivalent. On the one hand, there is a sense of disgust towards a traitor. On the other hand, there remains the will to treat him as a human being, in the sense of not repeating what the torturers have done to them. But this does not lessen the intolerance of betrayal. Even then the obsession with holding onto human dignity is translated ‘negatively’ into a struggle for survival by not betraying other tapols (p. 367). This means that, to Mawa, however bitter the grievances he suffers, he will keep them to himself. But how long can such a struggle persist? At the end, Mawa falls sick. In his sickness (pp. 548–9): . . . he no longer recognized himself. His body was rushing around, but his spirit was flying off, penetrating into the bodies of people he met. He was disappearing but alive. He was lost from sight to the prison guards . . . he was climbing up to the sky, riding the clouds blown by the wind. Then he realizes what has obsessed him: ‘I have set free my humanity.’ However, ‘He left no trace’ (p. 549).

252 Budiawan Mawa achieves what he has struggled for, not to die as a traitor, although he was once trapped into becoming one.

Baconian perspective and the discourse of torture Despite the difficulty of reaching a clear-cut definition of torture, it is commonly understood as an infliction of severe pain and suffering upon anyone for certain purposes. By this definition, torture is therefore distinguishable from other forms of political violence, such as murder, disappearances, kidnapping or intimidation, although in practice they are quite often interconnected. It is distinguishable also from similar actions performed by mentally-ill individuals, as the latter usually have no purpose, or are practising torture for pleasure. The notion of torture derives from the thoughts of the English natural philosopher Francis Bacon (1561–1626). The practice of torturing to gain information, rather than as a form of punishment, can, however, be traced back to the early Middle Ages (Forrest 1996). As a man of science, Bacon is well known as ‘a champion of the discovery of nature’s secrets’ (Hanson 1998: 25). In the light of the Renaissance project of ‘discovery’, he perceived ‘truth’ as something hidden behind nature, and only through violence and coercion could nature be made speak for itself, so that it could be dominated (Dubois 1994; Hanson 1998). Bacon adopted such a perspective in his legal practice in Elizabethan England. Since the society at this time was threatened by the subversive dangers of Roman Catholicism, as an agent of the state Bacon developed the idea of torture as an instrument of accessing the secrets of the victims (Dubois 1994: 185). It is ‘a way of knowing that would make those treasons, as discoverable forms of action, constitute the truth’ (Hanson 1998: 27). He realized that English common law did not allow the accused’s own testimony to convict himself, but he took for granted the use of torture as a means of ‘discovery’. As he explained, ‘By the laws of England no man is bound to accuse himself. In the highest cases of treason, torture is used for discovery, and not for evidence’ (cited in Dubois 1994: 183). This means that ‘information gathered by torturing the accused can be pursued and used to incriminate others’ (Dubois 1994: 183). As a means of ‘discovering’ the truth, the objective of torture was not to make the accused confess his guilt, but ‘to gather information which could be used for a variety of purposes: to gain more information, to discover more activities, and eventually, to aid in prosecutions’ (Hanson 1998: 40). Bacon’s perspective on torture is highly instrumentalist.13 It perceives torture merely as an instrument for achieving certain objectives. The moral implication of such a perspective is that as long as the objectives are justifiable, the use of this instrument is tolerable. This poses some problems: who is qualified to justify the objectives? What constitutes the base(s) of such justification? How valid is such justification?

Tortured body, betrayed heart 253 Despite such questions, this chapter is not concerned with the ethical or moral discourse of torture. By raising these questions, it attempts to show the insensitivity of the instrumentalist Baconian perspective on torture toward the structure of power it represents. The indication of this insensitivity is that it cannot explain why torture persists, regardless of the accumulated information from the victims, or why torture is practised even when the ‘truth’ is already in the hands of the rulers. These questions raise a ‘suspicion’ that torture, rather than being an instrument of power, is itself one form of power. It is from where power operates, rather than to where power operates. This implies that the persistence of torture should be understood through its various effects upon its victims, rather than in the objectives of its practices. As Elaine Scarry contends, the objectified pain, as the effect of torture upon the victim, ‘is denied as pain and read as power’ (Scarry 1985: 45). A close reading of Merajut Harkat shows that the very effect of torture upon the victims is not only their powerlessness to resist it, but also their powerlessness to avoid humiliating their fellow prisoners who have ‘betrayed’ the others. It is the ‘traitors’ rather than the torturers who constitute the ‘direct’ foes of every prisoner. This is not to say that a sense of hostility towards the torturers and the prison’s rulers as the extension of the ruling regime is absent. It is certainly present, but it is subordinated to the resentment toward the ‘traitors’. Such a double powerlessness shows that torture is a form of power that not only breaks the (possible) resistance of the victims, but also breaks down the victims at once (Kordon et al. 1992). In Merajut Harkat this powerlessness is explicitly expressed by a senior tapol who describes the major challenge for tapols as being ‘a struggle for survival, rather than a struggle to resist the military regime’ (p. 417). This inability to resist is the manifestation of fear, since torture not only locates and isolates the victims but also ‘cripples their “soul”’. ‘It breaks them and makes them lose their will. It beats them to make them afraid’ (Rejali 1994: 169). The objective of such a manifestation of power is ‘to transform the prisoners into dependent, apolitical and asocial individuals’ (Rejali 1994: 175). Being suspicious of other prisoners and ‘escaping’ into past memories – as Mawa does after being tortured for the fourth time – is likely a manifestation of being an asocial individual. Therefore, instead of engaging with fellow prisoners and experiencing the common condition, a tortured prisoner imagines himself ‘communicating’ with the dead people whom he can trust. This is the manifestation of his ‘absolute helplessness’, the centrality of pain in torture (Langer 1998). In such helplessness, the pain of the tortured body cannot be shared. As Scarry argues, torture is a form of negation of language, and the intense pain that results from torture is a form of language destruction (Scarry 1985). Therefore, in imagining communication with dead people, a prisoner does not share (the description of) his pain, but complains

254 Budiawan about who is responsible for him being tortured. This means that it is his revulsion towards the ‘traitors’, rather than his resentment towards the torturers, that he ‘shares’ with the trusted dead people. Torture is thus a form of power that ‘covers itself’ (Scarry 1985: 59), as the victims are not only unable to recognize the identities of the torturers, but are also incapable of identifying the ‘web of power’ enabling the practices of torture themselves. It is not only the faces, but also the minds, of the victims that are masked. Seeing such effects upon the victims, torture is thus a form of power that both dehumanizes and absolutely negates the human dignity of not only the victims but also the torturers. This is because torture is the violation of the physical and mental integrity of the individual human being par excellence. Wounds may heal, but the psychological damage in most cases is permanent and often leads to the disintegration of the personality. And it is their personality that makes humans ‘human’, which constitutes their dignity. (Kooijmans 1995: 15) In other words, it is a form of power that reduces the body to a substance that produces pain (Lingis 1994). Thus it is ‘the grossest form of inhumanity that exists’ (De Zulueta 1996: 87). In Merajut Harkat, such dehumanizing effects can be read in how Mawa makes sense of being a tapol. He finds that ‘being a tapol and being a “thing” is only slightly different’, since (pp. 398–9): all things have functions like tapols. All things have prices like tapols. . . . All things cannot reject when they are moved here and there like tapols. All things have no hands and legs unlike tapols. All things have no sense of longing unlike tapols. All things are counted in numbers like tapols. Some people will get sad when they lose their belongings, but the rulers will not be so when a tapol dies. All things can be destroyed at will like tapols. All things have no desire, unlike tapols. All things are ordered by law unlike tapols. All things are controlled by their owners like tapols under the rulers. All things cannot curse unlike tapols. All things do not need food and drink unlike tapols. All things can be kept in storage like tapols. All things can be dumped anywhere like tapols. With the dehumanizing effects having reached such an extreme point, it is no wonder that knitting together human dignity becomes another obsession, an obsession to separate tapols and things into separate categories, as a tapol is, after all, a human being, and a thing is a thing. Rejecting the offer to cooperate with the torturers is one way of realiz-

Tortured body, betrayed heart 255 ing such an obsession. By so doing a tapol has at least affirmed that he is a human being, since he has a will or is able to revive his own will, and is not simply a ‘thing’ that can be moved anywhere. Witness the example in Felicity de Zulueta’s chapter in Duncan Forrest’s A Glimpse of Hell; a Tunisian man, ‘when asked why he did not co-operate under all of the pressure, answered that he wanted to preserve his dignity. He could not admit that people can be forced against their will. To admit it “is to feel humiliated in the very depth of my being”’ (Bloomstein, as cited in De Zulueta 1996: 87). It is no wonder then that there is no tolerance towards a ‘traitor’. Refusing to cooperate is, to some extent, a form of resistance, although it is not an act against the power penetrating into the body. It is at least an effort to keep oneself acceptable to one’s fellow prisoners, so that there is still a sense of community, one thing a regime of torture always attempts to destroy. On the other hand, as the very implication of the obsession to preserve human dignity is revulsion towards the ‘traitors’ rather than towards the torturers, it is (unconsciously) a form of agreement with the latter’s accusations. Blaming the ‘traitors’ is an acceptance of what the torturers have charged. Thus it is paradoxical – intrinsic in its resistance there is some obedience. Such obedience has something to do with the working mechanism of torture. As Herbert Kelman argues, torture is best understood as ‘a crime of obedience’ (Kelman 1995). It is a form of power that always desires to produce ‘obedient’ subjects who are supposed to function in a hierarchical structure, and this is undertaken by (re)producing a radical insecurity within the victims and potential victims (De Zulueta 1996: 90–101). Torture is therefore a form of power that bases its persistence not on its objectives but on its ultimate and escalating effects – that is, the fear and obedience of its actual and potential victims. In this case, torture ‘took on a life of its own’ (Taussig 1992: 164). However, unlike Taussig’s argument it is not an embodiment of a ‘culture of terror’, in the sense of ‘a totalizing condition that orchestrated the rhythms of daily life’. Rather, it is a form of power from which ‘punishable categories of people’ are created (and reproduced) (Margold 1999: 64–6). In the context of Suharto’s New Order regime, since it legitimized itself on the basis of its success in ‘saving the state ideology Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution from the betrayal of the PKI’, being charged as a communist is nothing less than being categorized as a punishable person. Therefore, if in Merajut Harkat the struggle for survival is translated into an effort to reject the accusation (of being a Communist) by not betraying the others, it is nothing less than admitting the ‘truth’ of such a punishable category (Hanson 1998: 34–5). Hardly any characters in the novel at once accept the accusation and challenge it: ‘Yes, I am a member of PKI, and what is wrong with that?’.14 A regime of torture is, it seems, so powerful that death, as in Mawa’s experience, is the only way to break

256 Budiawan and end the paradox of the response to it, in knitting together (human) dignity.

Concluding remarks As a form of state-sponsored violence, torture is more than just an instrument to obtain the ‘truth’. It is not merely a means of extracting information from the victims; rather, it is a form of power itself. Its persistence and how it operates are not completely determined by the objectives designed by the state, but it ‘tak[es] on a life of its own’. Rather than the instrument of a regime, torture itself is a regime that governs and controls. As a regime of power, torture demonstrates its power by covering itself. This is undertaken by directing the sense of humiliation of the victims towards their fellows who have betrayed them, rather than towards the torturers. However, a sense of resentment toward the latter is not absent. It is suppressed in such a way that it is as if a regime of torture exists and operates because of the ‘faults’ of the ‘other’ victims upon the (re-)victimized ‘self’. Thus, torture is a regime of power that produces a common suffering that does not enable its victims to feel unified by their shared grievances. Instead, the victims suspect one another. Perhaps because of such an effect, torture persists. Yet its persistence is only possible so long as the sense of resentment towards the torturers (and their supporting agents) is suppressed. Releasing such a suppressed feeling can perhaps eradicate the regime of torture, but the possible cost is revenge. Deconstructing the punishable categories of people produced and re-produced by a regime of torture is one way to eradicate torture. Yet this deconstructing project is only possible when the historical narrative serving as the source of producing the punishable categories is decomposed, de-simplified, and re-examined. A discourse of martyrology that purports to counter a regime of torture should be avoided, as this can potentially produce another regime of torture.

Notes 1 Special thanks are due to the Australian Research Council, which funded my participation in the Conference. I also would like to thank Ariel Heryanto, Arief Budiman and David T. Hill for their insightful comments, and Bruce Lockhart for his language editing suggestions. None of them, however, is responsible for the final draft of this paper. 2 This refers to the kidnapping and killing of six top army officers by a regiment of the (Presidential) Palace Guard (Cakrabirawa), which then brought about Suharto’s rise to power. 3 Sukanta was an author contributing his works to various print media, including the ones managed by LEKRA (Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat – the Institute of People’s Culture – a mass organization of artists affiliated with PKI). This ‘connection’ is why he was charged with being a member of LEKRA, when in fact he was never a member of any organization (see Kompas 2000a).

Tortured body, betrayed heart 257 4 This term literally means ex-political prisoner, but in practice it often refers specifically to the ex-political prisoners associated with the 1965 affair, rather than with any other events. 5 The trial of Sudisman, a member of the PKI Central Committee, for instance, was only held in August 1967, while the Chairman of PKI, Aidit, the commander of Cakrabirawa, Lt Col. Untung, and the top commander of the Movement, Brig. Gen. Supardjo, who might have had key information about the 1965 affair, had already been killed by the army. 6 All of the respondents – twenty eks-tapols – whom I interviewed during field research in various areas in Java (October 1999 to early January 2000) share such an opinion, regardless of the degree of their (political) education and political affiliation with PKI. They say that they have never understood why they were imprisoned without trial, except that they were the members of or sympathizers with PKI or its mass organizations, which were then legal. 7 Some of the respondents say that they are very keen to study every new account of the 1965 affair. It was not until after the fall of Suharto, in May 1998, that several alternative versions, previously circulated in the limited community of academics only – having been officially banned – were translated into Indonesian and became easily accessible. 8 The place where the kidnapped six top army officers were killed and thrown into a disused well. It was somewhere outside the Halim Perdanakusuma Airbase, East Jakarta. 9 It is roughly estimated that between 500,000 and one million people alleged to be communists, or having ‘indications’ of being communists, were killed in the four strongholds of PKI (i.e. Central Java, East Java, Bali and North Sumatra), between late 1965 and mid-1966. On the mass killings after the 1965 affair, see Caldwell (1975), Cribb (1990) and Robinson (1995). 10 See the remarks by well-known artist Djoko Pekik, a former member of LEKRA and detained for twelve years, in Kompas (1999a) and D & R (1999). 11 Most of the respondents who are well educated share Sukarno’s opinion, expressed a few months after the 1965 affair, that what really happened on 30 September 1965 was inseparable from the Cold War, in which context the unexpected tragedy took place because of the ‘astuteness of the “neo-colonialist and imperialist forces”, the wiliness of Suharto, and the dizziness of Aidit’ (in the original phrases: ‘lihainya nekolim, liciknya Suharto, dan keblingernya Aidit’). 12 The logic of Suharto’s would-be New Order regime was that: ‘PKI masterminded the “30 September 1965 affair”, and when one was proved to be a communist, or to “have an indication” of being a communist, then s/he must have been involved in the affair’. 13 Studies on ‘torture worldwide’ (such as Kordon et al. 1992; Kelman 1995; Jempson 1996) show that this instrumentalist perspective is mostly known in authoritarian regimes of the modern world. As not a few such regimes have undergone a transition to democracy, and international pressures are growing stronger, the practice of torture tends to be eliminated. Yet it still persists in many parts of the world, ‘even in highly developed democratic societies’ (Kelman 1995: 25). 14 All of my respondents were enthusiastic in recounting their bitter experiences during their imprisonment, but were reluctant to talk about their political activities before the 1965 affair occurred. Many of them even said that their activities had nothing to do with PKI. This seems to contradict their ‘analysis’ that the extermination of PKI was a significant part of the agenda of the ‘neoimperialist’ forces to overthrow Sukarno. If they maintain such an analysis, there seems no need to deny their political engagement with the Party, or any of its mass organizations.

18 Violence, internal displacement and its impact on the women of Aceh1 Suraiya Kamaruzzaman

With the trend towards reformasi spreading throughout Indonesia, there have been a number of changes in the way human rights abuses are being handled and in the management of the humanitarian agenda. This can be seen in a number of decisions initiated by Abdurrahman Wahid since he was elected President of Indonesia in 1999. Wahid formed a Human Rights Ministry within his cabinet, and there have been efforts to uphold the law. The political decision has been made to bring an end to human rights abuses through investigation, and a Commission of Inquiry into Violations (KPP HAM) has been set up to investigate cases of human rights abuses in a number of regions of Indonesia. Important positions in the civilian bureaucracy that were held throughout the New Order by military officials, such as Attorney General, have now been given to civilians. However, at the lower levels the steps taken by the government have not yet resulted in the cessation of human rights abuses in Indonesia. In particular, these efforts have not brought about an end to the long conflict in Aceh.

Background Aceh is one province in Indonesia rich in natural resources. This abundance has resulted in a massive process of industrialization that began when the first gas drillings commenced in Aceh in the 1970s, and was followed by the emergence of large companies such as Arun LNG Ltd, Mobil Oil Indonesia (MOI), Perusahan Terbatas (PT) Pupuk Iskandar Muda (Iskandar Muda Fertilizer Company Ltd), PT Asean Aceh Fertilizer (AAF) and PT Kertas Kraf Aceh (Bond Paper of Aceh Co. Ltd), all of which are situated in North Aceh. In addition there are companies in other areas, such as PT Semen Andalas Indonesia (Andalas Cement Company) in Greater Aceh. As a result of the formation of these large industries, Aceh has become a fertile field for the newcomers who dominate the large businesses and have luxurious lifestyles. This has eventually resulted in the inhabitants of the region feeling envious of the newcomers, and the situation is aggravated further because the local population is not given the

Violence and its impact on the women of Aceh 259 opportunity to work in these companies. Commonly, the reason given is that they do not have the skills to work at the level required by these large businesses. In general the community is able to accept this explanation, but what upsets them is that the people who live in the area where the companies operate are often further marginalized. The companies pay little attention to them, whilst the employees working in the companies lead glamorous lifestyles that sometimes violate local cultural norms. North Aceh is known by the nickname ‘the Petroleum Dollar Region’ because of its abundant wealth. The region includes approximately 2,115 villages, 1,266 of which are ‘under-developed’ or poor. This means that about 70 per cent of the population are not enjoying the profits of their own natural resources. According to a number of sources, about Rp33 trillion each year is channelled to Jakarta, whereas less than 2 per cent (about Rp600 billion) is returned to Aceh annually. The prolonged conflict in Aceh began on 4 December 1976, when Hasan Di Tiro and his associates proclaimed Free Aceh (Aceh Merdeka), an armed movement that aimed to separate Aceh from the Republic of Indonesia. The government (aparat pemerintah) and the military (ABRI2) called the movement GPL/HT (Movement of Illegal3 Agitators/Hasan Tiro). In order to stamp out the movement, the government conducted a military operation codenamed Operasi Nanggala.4 From 1990 to 1998, the government conducted a further military operation in Aceh under the code name Operasi Jaring Merah (Operation Red Net). Despite being conducted over such a long period, this operation was still unsuccessful in solving the problems in Aceh. On the contrary, it resulted in human rights abuses, and the civilian population became victims of state violence. During this period those people who refused to work with the military were called GPK (Movement of Disturbers of the Peace5). Women also suffered, with thousands becoming widows when their husbands were murdered or abducted, and children became orphans. Some women were also physically tortured and suffered sexual violence. They were used as sexual objects by the military and as a means to terrorize and destroy the movement, which resulted in considerable psychological trauma. Their burden was even greater because they were ostracized by the community, who were frightened of being accused of having connections with, or helping, the families of GPK. The women did not feel safe to go to their fields because they were afraid of being suspected of providing logistical support for the GPK, whereas in reality the women were there because they had become single parents and were solely responsible for their children’s welfare. The Commander of the Indonesian armed forces, General Wiranto, declared an end to Aceh’s status as a Region of Military Operation (DOM) after various parties revealed a number of types and forms of human rights abuses by the military that had occurred in Aceh during the years

260 Suraiya Kamaruzzaman 1989 to 1998. Statistics announced by the Coalition of Human Rights NGOs on 7 August 1998, in a meeting with officials, community leaders, student representatives and the Acehnese community at the Great Mosque Baiturrahman in Lhokseumawe, stated there were 7,727 recorded cases of human rights abuses in Aceh during the period of DOM. However, despite the decision by ABRI to end the status of Aceh as a DOM, there was no change to the situation of human rights for the people of Aceh; their lives actually became increasingly bad. According to the Coalition of Human Rights NGOs, from January 1999 until February 2000 there were nine cases of massacres resulting in the deaths of 132 civilians, and 472 wounded, 142 cases of torture, 304 arbitrary arrests and detentions, 318 cases of extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions and 138 cases of involuntary disappearance. None of these cases has yet been subjected to a legal process that would meet United Nations human rights standards.

Internally displaced persons Reasons for internal displacement The first Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) emerged when the military began to use violence when carrying out search or sweeping operations6 on villages. The numbers of IDPs have since fluctuated, depending greatly on the security situation. The largest number of people displaced was between 250,000 and 300,000 people between June and August 1999. By May 2000 the number of IDPs had decreased, until only about 250 people were living in the Politeknik Lhokseumawe (Lhokseumawe Technical College), including about 200 IDPs from Jantho, who were unable to return home because their houses had been burned. However, after the peace pause (Jeda Damai) was announced on 12 May 2000, the number of IDPs actually increased. According to the daily newspaper Serambi Indonesia (27 June 2000), 8,200 people had become IDPs in East Aceh and had sought refuge at the Nurul Imam Mosque, the Matang Neuhen Mosque and the Baitun Manan Idie Rayek Mosque. At the posko (coordinating post) of the Baitul Manan Mosque there were no less than 4,110 people, including 818 children under five years old, 712 babies, fifty-two pregnant women and 112 women who were breastfeeding, the remainder being adult women and men. Generally the villagers have fled their homes for a number of reasons. These include searches (penyisiran) conducted by the military from village to village on the pretext of looking for their fellow members who have been reported missing, but in fact looking for suspected members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). Such searches occurred in, for example, Peudada in June 1999, and Samalanga in the same month. Investigations have found that the military treated members of the community inhu-

Violence and its impact on the women of Aceh 261 manely during the searches, subjecting them to abuses such as beatings and torture. People were also abducted by force or had their belongings plundered.7 Gunfire between the military and GAM that occurred in their villages or in nearby villages made the communities feel threatened and unsafe. Villagers’ homes have been burned by riot police (Brimob, ‘Mobile Brigade’), for example thirty-seven houses were burned in Jerumpa between July and November 1999, and also by unknown groups, for example the burning of transmigrants’ houses in Jantho, Greater Aceh. Certain groups have also ‘urged’ or forced inhabitants to leave their villages, and some villagers have been forbidden to return even after conditions have returned to normal. A number of villagers have also been abducted by the military and by armed civilians who, ‘according to the people’, were GAM fighters. In addition to the causes detailed above, internal displacement has also occurred because of extortion and intimidation, allegedly by GAM. This intimidation was carried out openly by the groups who came to the inhabitants’ houses (usually entrepreneurs or people considered fairly rich) bearing official letters stamped ‘Nanggro’. Another pattern is that they come to the victims’ houses in the middle of the night, bearing weapons and asking for large sums of money. There are not large numbers of this type of IDP, but what is significant is that they move permanently to other provinces and start up new businesses there, hence further draining the local economy. According to one witness, a number of people who received such visits did not pay money and the next day their houses were burned. It is not known for certain if the people who carried out these actions were really GAM or people who claimed to be GAM for their own personal benefit, whether military personnel or criminals taking advantage of the situation in Aceh. The pattern of internal displacement If we look at the locations of the internal displacements, a number of patterns are clear – for example, internal displacements are usually undertaken by a whole village, sometimes together with a neighbouring village. The community flees to places where there are public facilities and which they regard as reasonably safe, such as mosques, schools or pesantren (Islamic boarding schools). The length of time they stay away from their homes is dependent on their sense of security, but it is usually two or three months. Commonly, they leave their homes because the military has come to their village and conducted searches (sweeping), followed by violence against the local inhabitants. For this reason villagers usually leave openly. Internal displacement is also carried out on an individual or family basis. This type of internal displacement is usually long term. The families sell or rent out their houses or, if they are unsuccessful in finding a buyer

262 Suraiya Kamaruzzaman or tenant, simply abandon them. They change their children’s schools and usually move to another province outside Aceh. Most of these are people originally from other provinces who moved to Aceh for work, as well as people of Acehnese descent. They move because they no longer feel sufficiently secure living and working in Aceh, because they have experienced trauma in seeing so many victims of the violence, and because of the conflict between GAM and the Indonesian government that shows no clear signs of ending. These migrants are usually former transmigrants from Java who feel threatened and intimidated by armed civilians whose identity is unclear. Internal migration from Aceh to other provinces usually takes place over an unspecified period and is done secretly. As a rule, these people flee to the houses of relatives in a province adjacent to Aceh. They may flee because they have witnessed a villager being abducted by GAM fighters as identified by the village community. They feel threatened because someone has intimidated them by warning that if they give evidence regarding the identity of the abductors, then a member of the village will disappear. Those in this category are usually adult men of working age. The general condition of the IDPs Although a community leaves its village to find a place where it feels safer, in reality this is not always the outcome. A number of cases show that leaving their villages does not guarantee a feeling of security for the people whilst the conflict in Aceh continues. For example, the military attacked the refugee camp in the Abu Beureueh Mosque in Pidie on 13 October 1999. This attack was aimed at finding a number of suspected members of GAM who, it was thought, were hiding in the refugee camp. The volley of bullets, which were fired in a number of different directions, caused chaos, with 10,000 IDPs running for cover and many women who were victims of sexual violence suffering from shock. In a further case, on 29 December 1999 there was an attempt to poison IDPs through their food in the camp at Seulimum Mosque, which resulted in 150 IDPs having to seek medical help from the hospital. The facilities for the IDPs in these makeshift camps are wretched. The houses in the refugee camps have roofs and walls made of plastic, and leak when it rains. People sleep on mats on the ground. They have very little clean water, and sanitation is poor. Whilst they have sufficient rice or staple foods, none of their other needs are accounted for – including the availability of milk and additional food for pregnant women and for babies. The facilities in the camps do not meet the United Nations standards for IDPs.

Violence and its impact on the women of Aceh 263 Conditions for women and children From the statistics gathered by a number of NGOs and humanitarian workers, there have been dozens of babies who through necessity have been born in the refugee camps with very little medical help, often without any medical facilities at all. One woman and her baby died during childbirth at a refugee camp at Simang Mamplam, North Aceh. IDPs, particularly women and children, become sick because of unclean water, inadequate nutrition and the lack of medicine. Many old women have fallen ill due to weakness caused by walking long distances during their internal displacement. As IDPs, the women have also suffered violence. Whether they realize it or not, women experience double the suffering of men. First, they become victims of physical and psychological violence as a result of the conflict and the arrogance of the state authorities (this is also experienced by men). Second, women become victims of violence that is a result of patriarchal culture. In their normal life in Aceh, women’s place is in the domestic sphere. Although many women work in the fields or sell goods at the market, or work in other informal sectors, this work is nevertheless only considered to be ‘helping their husbands’. As a result, most women consider that the area of their authority is in the kitchen and surrounding area. In refugee camps, however, cooking becomes a public task. Women are not involved, and are removed from the role they have always had. Women lose their place and feel unwanted. Everything is done by men, from the planning and cooking to the distribution of food. In the end, women have practically no access or activities during their time in the refugee camps. Sometimes, through the lack of activity, they feel they are unneeded and useless, which in turn makes them feel overtaken by events, bored and confused about how to pass the time of day. In addition, the committees in each of the refugee camps are made up entirely of men, who do not always understand and therefore neglect needs specific to women in the camp. Furthermore, cultural obstacles make women feel unable to demand their rights or express their needs because of taboos or through embarrassment. As many of the women in the refugee camps became widows during DOM, they find it even more difficult to get access to additional food and other information. Amongst the women who are IDPs, there are those who have been victims of torture and sexual violence. Members of a number of NGOs are now counselling some of them. Internal displacement has a severe impact on these women, particularly if the police launch an attack on the refugee camp under the guise of looking for members of GAM. During such an attack shots are fired in a number of directions, people who are fleeing are suddenly seen lying face down on the ground and terrified screams are heard. Women who are already traumatized become more frightened, and the process of their counselling takes longer and is more difficult.

264 Suraiya Kamaruzzaman It is impossible to separate women’s problems from children’s problems. For children who are living in refugee camps, the most serious problem will probably be the trauma that they will carry with them into the future. What they see and feel will strongly influence their development, their ability to learn how to control their emotions and to interact with other people. They will find it increasingly hard to develop a system of moral values. What they have already experienced will be made even worse because they have been raised in a harsh environment in the refugee camps. At the same time, their parents, who are educating them, are in an oppressive environment. When the activists from the groups of women volunteers distributed paper and felt-tipped pens to the children in the camps, they drew pictures full of violent symbols. They drew military marching in lines, GAM fighting TNI (Indonesian Armed Forces), guns, decapitated dead people, helicopters, tanks and the like. Apart from this, the influence of listening to lectures that contain propaganda about ‘revenge’ will also influence the emotions and behaviour of children in the future. The emerging desire for revenge among the adults results in a desire for revenge by the children, without taking into account humanitarian values and the upholding of human rights. If this is developed, then a long period of revenge will only lengthen the conflict in Aceh. This will have a negative influence on future generations in Aceh. According to statistics and reports from groups of women volunteers and NGOs working in Aceh, more than 11,000 children in Aceh have had their schooling interrupted due to conflict and have been forced to flee with their parents. Apart from that, hundreds of school buildings have been burned down.8 This action means that the suffering is increased further, for it is those children who will be perpetuating life in Aceh.

Humanitarian agenda The continuing conflict and the violent methods used to bring about an end to the problems in Aceh have often resulted in exchanges of fire between GAM and TNI, with severe consequences for the civilian population. The victims can be anyone – children, university or school students, farmers, fisherpeople, sellers of bakso,9 doctors, journalists or humanitarian workers. After witnessing the crowds being fired on by the military on 3 May 1999 at the crossroads in front of the PT Kertas Kraf,10 which resulted in dozens of people being killed and hundreds wounded, Flower Aceh, together with Madika,11 attempted to provide humanitarian assistance. However, the violence did not cease; throughout 1999 the streams of IDPs increased and it became necessary for Flower Aceh and Madika to seek help from as many groups as possible in order to carry out their humanitarian agenda. On 2 June 1999, Flower Aceh initiated a discussion between women – activists from NGOs, as well as students and housewives – to discuss the

Violence and its impact on the women of Aceh 265 situation in Aceh, its effect on women and the steps they would have to take together. At the end of the discussion the decision was made to set up a network of individuals called Women Volunteers for Humanity (RPuK), with the specific aim of helping women and children in refugee camps. Many networks, institutions, groups and individuals then began to work together for humanitarian assistance. Women volunteers mapped the amounts, origins, reasons for internal displacement and needs of the IDPs. The women volunteers distributed relief, at first working together with the posko set up by tertiary students in the area, and later working directly with the IDPs. Apart from this, the women volunteers also supported the women by devoting attention to them and the children. When the IDPs returned home, the women volunteers continued to visit them in their villages to observe the general conditions and assist them with their needs. The women volunteers identified some of these needs as staple foods (rice, sugar, oil), additional foods (mung beans, milk, fish, eggs), facilities for the sick (mattresses, pillows), special needs of women in general and pregnant women in particular (sanitary napkins, additional food, milk), educational materials for children (books, writing equipment, copies of the Koran, clothing), and new and second-hand clothing. The assistance is provided to the IDPs by a number of different bodies, including the women from Acehnese communities through their programmes of communal prayers, NGOs in Jakarta, Palembang and other places as well as from individuals.

After internal displacement When communities feel that the security situation has improved they gradually return to their respective villages. The only people left behind in the refugee camps are those whose houses have been burned, and who do not know how to return. However, those who return to their villages face many new problems. An example of this hardship can be seen in the experience of women from the village of Mane, a sub-district of Geumpang, to whom Flower Aceh gave support. In this village, all of the married women had become widows – victims of DOM – as all adult men had been killed during DOM and only adolescent boys remained. When the women returned home from the refugee camp they found that their village had been virtually destroyed. The doors of many of the houses had been smashed, household furniture and other items had been ransacked, and the fields were also ravaged. All the clothes they had left behind had disappeared. They faced a new problem: how were they going to live when they didn’t even have a single rice seedling? In the refugee camps at least they had received cooked rice, but after returning home the assistance from a number of different parties came to an end. The women tried working as labourers in other people’s fields, receiving a few kilos of rice as payment in order to provide food for their

266 Suraiya Kamaruzzaman children. They also cooked the core of banana tree trunks to feed their children. In addition, not all of the children who returned from refugee camps were able to resume their schooling. Apart from the fact that their schools had burned down, it was also the case that many children could not attend school because their parents were unable to pay the fees. Women volunteers tried to provide food relief to the village and Flower Aceh supported the women to build up the village economy by providing capital loans for agriculture. It was hoped that as long as there were no conflicts or disturbances of the peace, they would begin to yield produce in three months. The process of counselling the residents of the village, which had to be postponed while they were in the camp, was also resumed. A key obstacle to rebuilding this village and the lives of its residents is the fact that it lies within territory controlled by GAM. Although the women are not frightened of the GAM fighters, almost all of whom they know personally, they are frightened that the military will conduct a search operation for GAM members and that exchanges of fire will result in victims amongst the villagers. At night the women usually gather together in one house to sleep. This lessens their fear. The village of Mane is just one example of a village that was destroyed when the occupants fled. Many villages experienced similar fates and need the support of everyone to rebuild.

Efforts to end the conflict Groups who are concerned about the problems of violence and human rights abuses in Aceh have taken a number of strategic steps to end the conflict in Aceh in a just way. These efforts include boycotting the general election, mass strikes, and demonstrations, together with a general session on the referendum. It is extremely important that women are involved in the process of bringing an end to the conflict in Aceh because, apart from making up 53 per cent of the population, women have always been victims of the conflict. Many are victims of violence by the state (rape and sexual violence by the military), as well as being victims of patriarchal culture, incorrect interpretations of Islamic law (forcing women, through violence, to wear the jilbab, the Islamic women’s head covering) and domestic violence (husbands beating and raping their wives). It is also important that women are involved in decision-making as, according to statistics produced by the regional government of Aceh, there are currently 460,000 female heads of households, of whom 377,000 are widows. Women of Aceh have carried out and participated in a wide variety of actions to seek an end to the conflict. These range from communal prayers organized by women volunteers and performed in each regency on the same date, to negotiating with TNI and presenting a statement to the United Nations Commission in Geneva. Women have also engaged in

Violence and its impact on the women of Aceh 267 peaceful actions in the street, giving out flowers with the message, ‘Stop the violence against women!’, and have met with the commander of GAM, Abdullah Syafi’l, to discuss possibilities of a peace zone for women. They have campaigned nationally and internationally about issues of violence towards women and about human rights violations. Women have also participated in theatrical performances and actions in support of the victims, and taken part in talk shows on a number of radio stations and in meetings with Gus Dur (President Wahid’s nickname). All these actions and efforts have been made with the aim of empowering women victims and of bringing an end to the problems in Aceh. One of the most significant actions undertaken was a congress held from 19 to 22 February 2000, which provided a forum where Acehnese women could sit together and talk (Duek Pakat Inong Aceh). The central theme for this first Acehnese women’s congress was ‘peace’. Four hundred and thirty-seven women from all regencies in Aceh took part, except for delegates from Singkil who were unable to attend for security reasons. Those participating in the congress represented women’s organizations and organizations that foster empowerment for women, such as women farmers, fisherwomen, housewives, victims of DOM, victims after DOM, domestic servants, women working in the informal sector and professional women. Significantly, despite the intimidation of the participants and the steering committee in an effort to force them to take up a different agenda, the women continued to talk about the issue of ‘peace’. This congress produced twenty-two resolutions, among them the importance of forming a ‘committee for peace’. An organization (lembaga) called ‘Balai Sura Ureung Inong Aceh’12 was set up to continue the aspirations of the women at the congress. Beneath this organization are three committees: the peace committee, the people’s economic committee and the (religious) canon law organization (lembaga), which specifically separates traditional customs (adat istiadat) and practices (kebiasaan) that disadvantage women.

The Humanitarian Pause There was a new feeling of hope, when we first heard that there had been an agreement between the Indonesian government and GAM to sign an agreement for a Humanitarian Pause (Jeda Kemanusiaan). This agreement opens up the opportunity for humanitarian relief to be carried out effectively, so that those who have been the victims to date have the chance to resume their life again. There is also an agreement to cease violence and armed conflict. However, the hopes for peace are still far from being realized. Both TNI and GAM are still committing acts of violence, both those which are openly acknowledged and those performed clandestinely. TNI is still conducting searches that have resulted in the people of East Aceh starting to

268 Suraiya Kamaruzzaman leave their villages. It appears that the agreement for a humanitarian pause at this point still only exists on the level of TNI and GAM rhetoric.

Notes 1 This chapter was translated into English by Helen Pausacker. 2 During the New Order, the armed forces were named ABRI (Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia). The new name since the April 1999 separation of the police from the military is TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia or Indonesian National Army) (translator’s note). 3 Liar can also mean ‘wild, uncontrolled’ (translator’s note). 4 Nanggala teams were part of the Kopassus counter-insurgency units, which were well known for their acts of terror and their brutality. Nanggala were also active in East Timor. See, for example, Tapol Bulletin Online 154/5 – November 1999, ‘The Kopassus–Militia alliance’, at: www.melanesia.org/views/tapolNov1999. htm. 5 The term GPL/HT was the term used for GAM during Operasi Nanggala. GPK is the term used by the government for GAM during Operasi Jaring Merah. 6 Human Rights Watch defines ‘sweeping’ as an ‘identity check of passengers on every public or private vehicle passing through the town’ (www.hrw. org/hrw/campaigns/indonesia/fourth.htm). Houses can also be searched. 7 Information on Peudada and Samalanga can be found in the article ‘Death who came in from the hill’ at: www.gatra.com/_english/V/29/ NAS6–29.html, in the letter by Suraiya to Mary Robinson (12 June 1999) at: http:// meltingpot.fortunecity.com/albania/726/urgent.htm and in the article ‘Teror Makin Menjadi-jadi di Aceh’ in Suara Pembaruan Daily at: www.suarapembaruan. com/New . . . 06/220699/Headline/hl04/hl04.html (translator’s note). 8 For information on schools that have been burned down in Aceh, see the website: koalisi-ham.homepage.com/data-pembakaran-sekolah-aceh.htm (translator’s note). 9 Bakso is soup with meatballs (translator’s note). 10 Reported deaths in the village outside Lhokseumawe ranged from thirty-one to 100, and numbers of those wounded ranged from 101 to 200 (ASIET weekly newsnet digest no. 18, 3–9 May 1999 at: www.asiet.org.au/netnews/ and18_v3.htm. A detailed account of the massacre is available in the article ‘Indonesia: The May 3, 1999 killings in Aceh’, Human Rights Watch 1999 World Report: Indonesia; chapter at: www.hrw.org/hrw/campaigns/indonesia/ second.htm (translator’s note). 11 Madika is a Lhokseumawe-based NGO. See: www.jaringnet.org/aceh/ aceh_21.html (translator’s note). 12 Balai Sura Ureung Inong Aceh: Balai Sura were places of learning about women (in the past when Aceh was still independent).

19 Political economy of violence and victims in Indonesia Hilmar Farid

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the mass violence in Indonesia in recent years is its inscrutability. If the violence could be explained, the solution to prevent it from occurring again would appear more or less obvious. Under the Suharto regime, it was fairly easy to understand most cases of large-scale violence as state violence. Even the ‘mysterious killings’ of neighbourhood hoodlums in 1983–1984 were not so mysterious, as it was an open secret that the military was organizing the executions. Indeed, it was too easy to explain mass violence. A dictator and an omnipresent military, with its myriad territorial commands and freedom to conduct covert operations, could be blamed for just about every case of mass violence, from the mass killings in 1965–1966 onward. However, once the Suharto regime, the major cause of political violence in the past, disappeared from the scene, the violence did not abate. Having only this paradigm of state violence, many analysts of Indonesian politics have been caught flat-footed in trying to understand recent cases of mass violence that have emerged from complex social conditions. Analysts have either tried to fit these cases into the paradigm of state violence (trying to determine who among the army officers and Suharto’s cronies was the hidden mastermind, or dalang, and what his political motives were) or have reverted to the Suharto regime’s own perspective: that the Indonesian people are primitive and prone to conflicts over primordial identities – religion, race and ethnicity (Siahaan 1998; Mangunkusumo 1999).1 In this chapter, I will not attempt to present a new explanatory framework but rather a different perspective, a different way of approaching the problem. The perspective I would like to propose is based on the stories of the victims of violence. I intend neither to offer a chronicle of their suffering nor to represent the ‘voice of the victims’. Instead, I would like to suggest that we pay very close attention to the experiences of the victims, as narrated by the victims themselves, in order to obtain a clearer overall picture of the violence. I am concerned that many of our current approaches are ignoring these experiences. Human rights reports, for instance, often bring out the stories of the victims in order to document particular violations of legal norms and to compile statistics on the

270 Hilmar Farid number of violations, but neglect to see how these stories can help us explain the social and historical causes of the violence itself. If we are serious about re-weaving the fabric of communities in the aftermath of large-scale violence, if we wish to achieve recovery, reconciliation and reconstruction, we have to start with the victims themselves.

A history of violence The history of the New Order is the history of violence. Beginning with the slaughter of about one million people who were accused of being involved with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and its dozens of affiliated organizations, the New Order evolved into a regime that regularly used violence, often in subtle, secretive ways, to suppress all opposition and keep the populace passive. It is impossible to look at the vast number of massacres as discrete ‘incidents’ or particular cases; they form a pattern of dictatorial and militaristic governance. The military officers who ordered these massacres have never expressed regret, and have routinely justified their acts as appropriate, necessary procedures for the defence of ‘the state’ and ‘national integration’. We need to keep this pattern of state violence in mind when trying to understand the violence today. Many analysts are preoccupied with conspiracy theories to understand the violence, such as the theory that has stalwarts of the Suharto regime funding and fomenting violence to sabotage the new government and prevent it from prosecuting their past crimes.2 While there is some evidence to support this theory and it appears partly accurate, it is not a full explanation. It does not capture other factors that have contributed to the violence, such as the New Order’s economic development projects that have displaced so many people and thrown communities into conflict with one another over seemingly scarce resources. We cannot explain the civil war in Maluku, for instance, by speaking only of the secret machinations of the political elites. The economic crisis, and the government’s response to it, must be taken into account in any explanation of the current round of violence. When the economic crisis occurred, the state institutions were incapable of helping the millions of people who lost their jobs and the millions of others who were thrown further into poverty. The neo-liberal austerity programme imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank has further enervated the health system, which had always been weak. In this context of economic misery, the political elites of the New Order, who trained for thirty years in the pursuit of unprincipled short-term self-interest, have turned to ethnic, religious and family networks to build up their own strength, rather than to building organizations around serious principles of reform. The flare-up of conflicts between ethnicities and religious communities cannot be separated from

Political economy of violence and victims 271 this political mobilization of poor people by opportunistic politicians, both at the national and the local levels, who, as good products of the New Order, strive only to line their own pockets and create their own little fiefdoms. While attempting to identify the common sources of much of the violence in the country, whether in Maluku or Jakarta, Aceh or Tasikmalaya, we must not lose sight of the specific, local circumstances to such conflicts. The various cases of political violence should be studied in all their particularity without falling into the trap of thinking of them all as separate incidents. Rather, a rough classification may consist of grouping incidents by the type of violence experienced; for example, the military’s war of counter-insurgency in Aceh, Papua and East Timor (in the latter case, prior to its independence) comprises one group. Another grouping involves military attacks on street demonstrations, as in the Trisakti and Semanggi killings, and a third includes violence between or within communities, or what is known in Indonesia as ‘horizontal violence’, as in Maluku, West Kalimantan, Lombok, Poso and various cities in Java in 1996–1997. These classifications are not entirely satisfactory. The military has often manufactured ‘horizontal violence’, by directly funding and ordering civilian militias to attack other civilians, as in East Timor in 1999, by provoking tension and conflict between groups or by exacerbating conflicts, such as by allowing the entry of Laskar Jihad into Maluku and Ambon. Furthermore, given the penetration of the army in everyday life in Indonesia there is rarely any case of purely vertical violence (the army recruits civilians to provide plausible deniability, as with the attack on the PDI headquarters in Jakarta in July 1996) or horizontal violence (the formation of community identity having been influenced by the army’s involvement in the society, such as through its businesses and Mafia gangs). The greatest weakness of existing studies of violence in Indonesia is the neglect of the aftermath of the violence, and more especially the fate of the victims. When reading the newspapers or watching the TV news in Indonesia, one sometimes has the feeling of watching an action film where hundreds of people are gunned down but no scenes are shown of the families that grieve for the loss of their loved ones and who must spend the rest of their lives coping with the loss. The media rush from one bloody event to the next, and do not stay around to report on the community once the blood has been cleaned up. Having been shaped by the media’s focus on the spectacular, the public discussion of the violence tends to gloss over the fortunes of the refugees or ‘internally displaced persons’ who leave their land searching for a more peaceful place, and the psychological trauma suffered by a community struck by brutal violence, especially the women and children.

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Mass violence in Indonesia, 1998–2000 On the basis of the limited data that have been collected, particularly by human rights groups, it can be seen that violence is spreading throughout the whole of the Indonesian archipelago, even to remote towns and villages that until now have been considered peaceful. A brief, partial listing of cases of mass violence over the past two years can indicate the scope of the problem. In Aceh, the NGO Coalition of Human Rights Workers (Koalisi NGO HAM) has recorded 650 dead, including a number of military officials; 1,280 people were arbitrarily detained and tortured and another 119 are missing since the Military Operation Zone (DOM) in that area was withdrawn by the government. After the ‘Humanitarian Pause’ in mid-May 2000, violence claimed fourteen lives, including those of three military officials (Koalisi NGO HAM 2000a; 2000b).3 During 1999, some 300,000 people in Aceh, usually small farmers or casual labourers, became refugees (Koalisi NGO HAM Aceh 1999).4 In East Timor, between January and May 1999 there were 330 attacks by the army-backed pro-integration militias. About 400 people were killed in these attacks, which reached their climax after the announcement of the results of the referendum in September 1999. It is thought that about 3,000 people died in the post-ballot scorched-earth campaign, while tens of thousands were forcibly deported and hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced persons suffered injuries and contracted diseases (Yayasan HAK 2000a). In Jakarta in May 1998, about 1,200 people died as a result of the burning of a number of shopping complexes and the shooting by the military to ‘contain’ the rioting. Apart from this, dozens of student activists, workers and youths were shot and killed by the military in a number of demonstrations during the years 1998–2000. During the same period, hundreds of others suffered serious or minor injuries. In Banyuwangi, East Java, in 1998, a number of religious teachers and santri (students of Islam) were accused of being ‘dukun santet’ (practitioners of black magic) and killed. About 250 people were killed, most of them in September–October, around the period of the Special Sitting of the People’s Consultative Assembly (Sidang Istimewa MPR) in Jakarta (Tim Pencari Fakta PWNU 1998). The perpetrators are unknown, but the general assumption is that military intelligence was trying to provoke a conflict between the supporters of Megawati’s party, the PDI-P, and the Muslim followers of the Nahdlatul Ulama. In Ambon, the government recorded the death of 2,573 people and 3,475 others injured in the one-year period from January 1999 to January 2000 (Government of RI and International Agencies 2000). If the victims of other cases of violence throughout Indonesia were added to this short list, there would be a total of about 10,000 deaths. It is

Political economy of violence and victims 273 difficult to estimate the number of victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence because of obstacles to the investigation processes, but there is no reason to consider that acts of this nature have not occurred. A number of reports suggest that rape and sexual violence have formed part of military operations in Aceh, East Timor and Ambon (UN Special Rapporteur 1999). According to government figures, about one million people have been displaced by the violence and are now internally displaced persons (IDPs) (US Committee for Refugees 2000).5 The violence in Maluku, Aceh and East Timor has produced most of these IDPs. A portion of IDPs are living in government buildings such as army posts, soccer stadiums and large meeting halls; however, a significant number have fled to other areas, living in places of worship or in the houses of local residents, sometimes in open fields under plastic tents. Humanitarian institutions like the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) usually only record ‘official refugees’ who are accommodated in camps and who have been counted by government officials; they do not trace those living in villages and mountainous regions. The faces of the victims behind the statistics To understand the victims’ situation and the overall consequences of violence, one needs to understand the identity of the victims. The mass media and political observers usually speak about the victims in abstract terms, such as ‘the residents’ or ‘the people’, leaving such matters as class, gender, race and ethnicity hidden from view. It is important to understand the victims within their concrete histories, not just as a series of statistics. Unfortunately information that would enable the development of a framework of this kind is very limited, whereas the demand to uncover the ‘truth’ is emerging rapidly, with the result that human rights groups prioritize statistics.6 The May 1998 tragedy in Jakarta is usually described as a racial or ethnic riot because its targets were, among others, the ethnic Chineseowned shopping complexes in the Glodok area and West Jakarta, and a portion of those murdered and sexually assaulted were ethnic Chinese.7 However, the facts about the victims provide another picture. Most of the 1,140 victims who burned to death came from the families of petty civil servants, casual labourers, clothes washers and domestic servants. In short, they were from the most impoverished segments of society. According to information from a number of eyewitnesses who survived the fires, these people entered the shops to take items they would never in their lives have had the opportunity to own. One eyewitness related the fate of a twelveyear-old boy: He [the child] had been just watching. Because people were going into the shop, he also went in. His mother, who was standing with him

274 Hilmar Farid outside, forbade him from entering, but the boy went in anyway. Not long after he returned carrying a housedress for his mother, ‘Mum, all your house dresses are so worn out. I’ve taken a new one.’ His mother said nothing, and the child continued; ‘Now I’m going to go in again and get shoes for my graduation tomorrow. The teacher says that we should all wear black shoes.’ Before his mother had a chance to say anything, the boy ran back inside. She waited a while and he didn’t emerge, then suddenly there was the sound of an explosion and flames were seen. There was uproar in the crowd and everyone became hysterical. The fire brigade didn’t turn up and the building burned down. The child never returned.8 Almost all the victims of this arson were buried in a mass grave on the outskirts of the city of Jakarta, partly because some of the corpses could not be identified, but also because their relatives did not have the money to pay for individual graves. A number of the families of the victims did not attend the burial for fear of being associated with the looting. Only a few hours after the event, the government issued an order to shoot on sight any ‘looters’ or ‘rioters’. The military accused inhabitants living in the vicinity of the shopping complexes of being looters, and targeted them for investigation and intimidation. They and the families of the victims were powerless when the Governor of Jakarta ordered the military to search their houses. In a number of cases, the military took newly-purchased items because they believed them to be the spoils of looting. The mass violence in Jakarta in May 1998 was much more than a case of racial or ethnic violence. There was a significant class dimension that cannot be overlooked. The growing class divisions within the population under the New Order and the 1997 economic crisis help to explain why the shops were looted in the first place. As for the burning of the buildings, it is not clear that the looters themselves started the fires. After all, they had little motive to do it; they wanted the goods and they wanted to live. On the basis of eyewitness testimony, one can conclude that members of the military and police may have set fire to the buildings. The military and police wage a war every day against the urban poor, and the arson may have been one method to punish and terrorize them. In almost all incidents of communal or horizontal violence, those who incite the violence are middle- to upper-class men, who have enough money and political support among government officials to continue living normally in a time of crisis. The victims and the refugees tend to be the poor. After over thirty years of the New Order, Indonesia remains polarized, with a political elite at one pole and a mass of desperate, displaced people at the other, some of whom can be rather easily mobilized by money. This class differentiation needs to be recognized in formulating a solution to the crisis. A solution that leaves the power of the political elite intact and relies on a new kind of power-sharing deal among the

Political economy of violence and victims 275 elites is actually a non-solution: it will only perpetuate the same conditions that produced the earlier violence. For areas where there has been mass displacement, as in Maluku, Kalimantan or Aceh, an essential element of any solution is the empowerment of the urban and rural populations over the control of their sources of income and food. As noted, the fractious political elite consists of men. There is a clear gender dimension to the present violence. Over the last few years in Indonesia there has indeed been greater attention paid to the issue of rape and sexual harassment that often occurs in violent events, and which had been previously regarded as a ‘non-issue’. However there are still many forms of sexual violence that are not spoken about or are still regarded as ‘non-issues’, such as the phenomenon of ‘contract marriages’ that has begun to be widespread in Maluku between the military and the women in the region. The ‘contract marriage’ is used so that relationships between men and women do not violate religious rules. The marriage automatically ends when the military official concerned returns to his original military posting and leaves the woman with the burden of looking after the children that have resulted from the relationship, as well as the social stigma of being ‘used goods’. In some cases, members of the community and even the family of the woman concerned condone the marriages because they wish to gain closer links to the military. In a number of refugee camps for refugees from East Timor, the prointegration militia have forced women to become their servants, to wash their clothes, cook, and oblige them in their sexual desires. From the story of one woman who is now free from this coercion it is possible to say that their situation is worse than that of the ‘comfort women’ of the wartime Japanese military. Conflict, war – and also resistance – are seen as ‘men’s business’, whereas women are only the ‘incidental victims’ (korban ikutan) who suffer because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Women are only seen to suffer if they are direct victims. The other forms of their victimization are not taken into account – such as the increased burden of housework in finding food, fuel and water. The important decisions involving the family and the community still remain in men’s hands. As a result of a conflict situation and the extended tensions, women have become even more oppressed and can do little more than obey their men’s decisions, which are often wrong. The restrictions on women and the refusal to allow women to be involved in peacemaking must be considered as one of the causes of the prolonged violence. Through looking at the class and gender dimensions of the present violence, we can avoid seeing it as a series of ‘cases’ or ‘incidents’ that happen by accident, or as the consequence of the breakdown of law and order that can be stopped once the police and military apprehend the perpetrators and masterminds. A deeper insight into these various dimensions is necessary to see the relationship between one violent event and

276 Hilmar Farid another, and to see the interconnecting events as a whole. It is necessary to take into account the psychological problems of victims, and the mass displacement, in order to recognize that what has occurred in Indonesia over the last three years is not just a collection of sporadic outbursts but a process of very serious social collapse. This perspective allows us to recognize that there is something rotten at the very core of Indonesia’s economic and political systems. A state of permanent emergency The physical destruction over the past few years is enormous, and perhaps only exceeded by the conditions during the Japanese occupation and the war of independence. A number of cities, such as Ambon and Poso, together with hundreds of villages in Aceh, Papua and East Timor, have been completely destroyed. The head of the organization Real Estate Indonesia, Agusman Effendi, says that the reconstruction in these places will take at least five years and that in the present economic crisis there is no prospect of reconstruction in the immediate future.9 There have been serious disruptions in the production and distribution of food, the provision of health care and the maintenance of sanitation systems. The supply of clean water and electricity is very limited, and the supply of fuel and other goods is frequently interrupted. Military operations often result in the destruction of houses and gardens owned by the people, and the population is forced to move to another area. In the operation to free the hostages in Mapnduma in West Papua in May 1996, for example, the Indonesian military forces occupied the nearby villages around the area where the hostages were held and chased out the inhabitants, who were still holding out in the area. One victim described the attack on his village as follows: Before they descended, members of the armed forces bombed our church and the houses we lived in and burned all our belongings and our livestock. On that occasion all the gardens were destroyed and a number of our livestock, namely ten pigs, together with one of our children who was five years old, also died in the incident. As a result we have lost our livelihood, which means we will suffer starvation and death as a result of the cruelty of the Indonesian military (ELSHAM 1999: 72) This destruction of the infrastructure, combined with the IMF’s austerity programme and the displacements that separate people from their means of production and subsistence, together with the incapacity of the government to take any action to remedy the problems, are the conditions that millions of Indonesians currently face. The suffering of material deprivation, emotional stress and political oppression has become endemic in

Political economy of violence and victims 277 places such as Ambon, Papua and Aceh, which are now in a state of permanent emergency. It is such suffering that allows hatred and rage to spread, and supplies the conditions in which unemployed youths can be easily mobilized for acts of violence. The fixed categories of ‘perpetrator’ and ‘victim’ must be reconsidered if we look at the reality. In the May 1998 tragedy in Jakarta, many of the ‘rioters’ and ‘looters’ quickly became ‘victims’ when they were burned to death. In East Timor, hundreds of pro-integration militiamen funded and directed by the Indonesian military have been abandoned in camps in West Timor because the military no longer needs them; now they are impoverished refugees, having lost their houses, families and worldly possessions. Some of them have been murdered because they were considered ‘double agents’ or accomplices who might expose the military’s control over the militias to the United Nations and international press. In Maluku, the ‘perpetrators’ and ‘victims’ change places constantly and the boundary between the two categories is unclear. In situations of war, it is usually the poor who are thrust into a conflict they did not initiate and are then forced to participate in the violence. Meanwhile, the organizers of the violence, the political elite, manage to avoid victimization and often gain some political and economic benefits from the ongoing conflict. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the present violence, whether vertical, horizontal or, as is usual, some mixture of the two, could be called a war against the poor, since it systematically destroys their livelihood and sometimes forces them to fight against one another to make ends meet.10

Assisting the victims and building a future: the role of international aid groups and local communities The Indonesian government acknowledges that it is unable to handle the problems of the victims, in particular the refugees, because it has allocated so little of the state budget to health care and welfare (Kompas 1999b). The government has given an unwritten invitation to dozens of international institutions, including the United Nations, to provide humanitarian relief in various conflict regions over the past two years. Some international institutions are, in cooperation with Indonesian nongovernmental organizations, conducting programmes of ‘strengthening civil society’ and conflict resolution. The total destruction of some parts of Indonesia has become a new frontier for the aid industry, which has already ‘completed its task’ in Africa, Cambodia and Eastern Europe. The activities of these international institutions should be examined closely to understand their real or potential role in finding solutions to the violence. Food relief is the primary programme of the international institutions. In Maluku, for example, UN institutions have reported that US$5.8 million, or 41 per cent of its entire aid budget, is for food aid (United

278 Hilmar Farid Nations 2000).11 In a conflict situation access to food is indeed a major problem, but food handouts are not the only way to overcome the problem. Indeed, food handouts can aggravate the conflict because they wind up in the hands of the quarrelling parties, who use the food either to feed their followers or to make money, by selling it. Again, in Maluku almost all of the armed groups live off food handouts, while many people in refugee centres are starving. In certain regions food aid must be channelled through armed groups or the military, and this food only serves to strengthen their position in the community. In a sense, the international agencies can unintentionally be involved in ‘feeding violence’. Also, the distribution of food aid can become a source of a new conflict because one party feels that it has been excluded from the programme or is not receiving its fair share. As has long been noted in the literature critical of international relief efforts, there is a danger of food aid leading to a decline in the local production of food and a dependence of the local population on the free food. The introduction of large quantities of imported free food can lead to a decline in the price of food and thereby inhibit its local production (Zwi and Macrae 1994). A problem that has become noticeable in Indonesia is the effort of the international agencies to try to isolate themselves from the local population and remove decision-making over the aid from local input. Usually this is done to avoid precisely the problems mentioned above, such as the danger of providing food only to one group that will then use the aid to its political advantage. However, it is impossible to distribute the food without some local collaboration. In East Timor, after the Indonesian army’s ‘scorched-earth operation’ there was serious tension between the international aid agencies and many East Timorese organizations because the agencies acted as if they could distribute the aid on their own. They continually spoke of East Timor as a blank slate, a nothingness into which they were entering with complete freedom to do whatever they wished. They thereby ignored the vast existing network of people who had unselfishly fought in the resistance to the Indonesian army’s occupation, simply considering them as a ‘faction’. The fact that the food aid programmes do not empower the poor and routinely treat them as passive objects, like cattle standing in stalls, means that these programmes cannot provide the basis for a resolution to the problems that poor people face (Yayasan HAK 2000b). In East Timor, one can see the aid agencies working hand-in-hand with the IMF and World Bank – the very institutions that have been destroying the economies of many countries in the world through their neo-liberal programmes. The IMF and World Bank are not trying to help East Timor develop an economy oriented towards meeting the needs of the citizens, but instead the needs of multinational corporations. Aid agencies are designing projects that are completely at odds with the goals of the East

Political economy of violence and victims 279 Timorese resistance movement that fought against the army occupation. If these agencies and the IMF and World Bank have their way, East Timor will be stuck in an enclave, with an export-oriented economy (centred around oil, coffee, tourism and gambling), mired in debt and flooded with poor villagers whose subsistence needs are not being met (World Bank 1998: 40–8). This is the type of development strategy that produces a violent society. Building an alternative in the middle of the destruction When we see the physical destruction, the mass migration of people from their homes and lands, it is difficult to imagine how the victims can manage to survive without outside help. But from behind the suffering can emerge a movement of the victims to organize and provide for themselves, and even address the factors that are causing their suffering. We can see examples of this occurring in East Timor. When tens of thousands of people fled their homes in late 1998 and early 1999 as the attacks of the army-led pro-integration militias increased, the refugees, with almost no international assistance and in the face of constant danger from the army, organized themselves. In Suai and Liquiça, some people sheltered in churches while others fled into the remote mountainous interior.12 In the refugee shelters and camps some people took the initiative to keep registers of the names of the refugees, together with their ages, the illnesses that they suffered and an explanation of their needs for rice and other assistance. The youths and the designated leaders went to other areas to seek help, while others organized the food, looked after livestock and searched for fuel. Local Catholic Church officials and East Timorese NGOs provided what aid they could. In dry areas, they organized the channelling of water from a nearby stream and simultaneously set up a system for distributing water to the refugees. The biggest problem was usually security, because the Indonesian military and the pro-integration militia sometimes inspected the places where the refugees gathered, looking for FALINTIL guerrilla fighters, or people who were suspected of being involved in pro-independence activities. In a number of places, such as Atabae, the leaders of the refugee settlements were able to negotiate with these groups so that the refugees would not be disturbed.13 Such solidarity has not only arisen among the victims of military oppression, but also amongst the victims of communal violence.14 In Ambon, for example, some aid-distribution centres have been established that are staffed and organized by both Christians and Muslims, and supply aid to both communities. A few Christian doctors give free medicine to the Muslim community and, likewise, humanitarian activists from Muslim groups distribute medicine and other aid to the Christians. In the areas of Kudamati, Batu Gantung, Galela and Nusaniwe, in the sub-district of Sirimau, Muslims were forced by the segregation policy imposed by the

280 Hilmar Farid military to vacate their houses since they lived in Christian areas. Their houses were protected and guarded by the people in that area, to make sure that they were not burned or vandalized. The boundary between the two segregated communities became the place where people still gather to meet. A number of shops owned by Christians in Muslim areas such as Batu Merah and Pasar Amplas are now run by their Muslim employees. Every month, the income of the shops is brought to the boundary to be given to the owners of the shops who were forced to migrate. After paying the wages or dividing the profits, they exchange information about the latest events before returning to their own areas. Similarly, many payroll officers go to the boundary area to pay the salaries of employees who are of the other religion. An activist in Aceh notes that in the state of intense chaos everything has to be reconsidered, including the ‘normal’ life that they led before, and there have been discussions about building a different life and further ensuring health and peace.15 A number of discussions have developed into action, both in the places where there are refugees as well as in the places they left behind. In East Timor activists have developed ‘rumah rakyat’ (people’s houses), which have become places where the community can develop reconstruction activities at a basic level. Communities tend to prefer such centres because it is possible to formulate programmes together and decide what they themselves need without having to follow the often ill-conceived programmes of the international aid agencies. In areas shattered by warfare, international aid agencies perceive nothing but helpless victims, but in fact the collapse of the old society forces the victims to think about creating a new society and becoming agents of that transformation. Refugees, perhaps the most helpless of all, have the capacity to organize themselves to take care of some of their basic needs for survival and, in the process, create a more democratic and less patriarchal community. At this point in time there is still no party or political organization – including the progressive groups that have arisen as an alternative to electoral politics – that has a clear programme to address the current state of emergency. The parties who won the election are busy struggling for positions in the bureaucracy, parliament and corporations, while many organizations are seeking new affiliations to replace the regime that had protected them. In progressive activist circles, the problems of dealing with the victims of violence and the refugees are all seen as apolitical ‘red cross’ activities. They argue that all these problems can only be overcome by a ‘total reform’ that would change the social structure through ‘political’ struggle – that is, mass actions against the government and the other institutions that have caused the suffering. However, as violence and warfare consume region after region the workers and peasants who they hope will drive this ‘total reform’ are quickly becoming the very refugees

Political economy of violence and victims 281 that they have consigned to the political wasteland. The victims themselves cannot wait for ‘political’ action to bring about ‘total reform’, much less wait for the political elite to pay them some attention. It is time for the socalled political activists to recognize the efforts of the victims to survive and, in the process, to rebuild a society better than the one that victimized them. Counteracting political amnesia Since the fall of Suharto in May 1998 there have been a number of investigations into human rights violations during the New Order period. Some examples include the trial of army officers involved in mass murder in Aceh, the establishment of a commission by the legislature (DPR) to look into the killings at Trisakti University in May 1998, and the inquiry by the National Human Rights Commission into the post-ballot violence in East Timor in 1999. The government is also planning to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This flurry of activity in dealing with past human rights violations does not necessarily indicate that the desires of the victims for justice are being addressed. Nothing the government has done so far can be separated from the various short-term, sectarian interests of the political parties. Each party chooses cases for which it wants ‘justice’ and also chooses cases it wishes to ignore. Each party judges each case according to whether or not it will allow it to score points over its enemy – whichever enemy that happens to be for the moment. No party is interested in investigating the mass murders and imprisonments of 1965–1966, though that episode clearly involved the largest number of victims and had the most profound and long-lasting consequences, such as laws that discriminated against the employment of the victims, and their children and grandchildren. With no political backing, nothing official is being done about this case and there is no movement to remove the discriminatory laws. Nearly all the parties with seats in parliament follow the New Order perspective on the 1965–1966 violence – that is, that the victims were ‘justly’ victimized. Some politicians are still waging a war on ‘communists’ and attributing any disturbance or riot to the work of communists. Similarly, the mass murders and systematic destruction that occurred in East Timor after 1975 appear to have little chance of being investigated since there is no political capital to be gained from it and quite a lot to be lost, given the vociferous reaction from army veterans and the pro-integration militiamen. For the victims of violence in Indonesia, the judiciary is a complete failure. At the time of writing ( June 2000) there has not been a single case of perpetrators being tried in an open court. The plan to establish a human rights court has not yet come to fruition;16 in the meantime, the court system is inadequate to handle cases of serious human rights abuses such as in Aceh or East Timor or much less complex social conflicts such

282 Hilmar Farid as in Ambon or West Kalimantan. In Aceh, ‘interconnecting courts’ (pengadilan koneksitas) have been formed that allow for military personnel to be tried on the basis of testimonies given in civil courts, but this has only turned into a mechanism to protect the military because these courts are unable to investigate the crime further up the chain of command and go after the high-level officers who gave the orders. This judicial stagnation is partly caused by the persistence of the old New Order officialdom in positions of power. The current government of Abdurrahman Wahid has inherited Suharto’s bureaucracy and military. Moreover, some officials who should be facing court trials for their involvement in human rights abuses have been incorporated into the new government and been given positions of power within the ‘reform’ political parties. The victims are fully aware of this. One father of a student who was shot during demonstrations said: To public figures of reformation, who called clearly for reformation and now have taken their place in public office, I ask that you will still display the same spirit for reformation, and not forget the students’ and the people’s work and suffering, in the form of labour, thinking, physical and spiritual. So that you don’t forget, you should meet and talk with the students. There has been a change in government, from the government of the new New Order to the National Government. The composition of the cabinet now has as many colours as a rainbow. The composition of the cabinet is now able to accommodate a number of different interests. We feel uncomfortable when we see the composition of a cabinet, which contains anyone who is soiled with blood, who should in fact be held responsible for a number of bloody riots, but who is still holding a Ministerial position.17 The lack of commitment to human rights among the political parties is at times unfathomable. The party of Megawati Soekarnoputri, who was the very symbol of reform because of her having been victimized by the Suharto regime, has shown little interest in investigating the murderous attack on her party headquarters on 27 July 1996. Even when the victims are the party’s own passionate supporters, the party leaders prefer to make backroom deals with the military and civilian elites and avoid a clear, thorough, public investigation. Indeed, those Megawati supporters who were attacked in 1996 and who re-occupied the party headquarters in 1998, after Suharto’s fall, are now being driven out of the headquarters by the party leaders.18 The political elite is presently hoping to find cheap, quick ways of dispensing with the victims’ demands for justice. Currently there are proposals for ‘dialogues’, meetings for mutual forgiveness, and media campaigns on reconciliation and conflict resolution. On the one hand, the political elite is worried that if the demands for justice are not

Political economy of violence and victims 283 addressed there is a greater potential for further conflict. On the other hand, the elite does not want public procedures that would expose the crimes of military officers and civilian politicians during the New Order. What the elite wants is political amnesia and the defusing of any demands for profound changes in the political system. Opposition to political amnesia has spread widely after Suharto’s fall. Victims of the murders and detentions of 1965, of the Tanjung Priok massacre, of the Aceh and Papua wars, have formed organizations and investigative teams. They have presented their reports to the public. The victims have begun to recreate their history based on their own testimonies, and have rejected the official history written by the Suharto regime. Finding no hope in the formal courts, they are appealing to what may be called the ‘court of public opinion’. Meetings have taken place between the victims of violence from a number of different areas and incidents. For instance, a human rights organization arranged a special meeting for a wide variety of victims of violence to discuss the concept of ‘reconciliation’ that had been proposed by the government. The discussion went on to address militarism in Indonesia, the widespread suffering as a result of the economic crisis, and the violence of the IMF and World Bank policies, which demand the cutting of subsidies to basic commodities. A consciousness began to form that efforts to build truth and justice were closely tied to a wider struggle. At a peaceful demonstration, on 14 May 1999 in Jakarta, the mother of a victim spoke of the meaning of the lives of those who had been shot and killed in demonstrations: You died, you sacrificed your bodies and souls, not to protect the perpetuity of tyrannical violence, but you died for truth and justice. You died in the defence of your people, particularly the common people, who have been oppressed for a long time. You died defending the common people who had been living in misery for so long, while the officials lived luxurious lifestyles, throwing money around that they had obtained through corruption. You died in the fight to regain the nation’s morals from the grip of authorities, which no longer recognized, in fact had lost their sense of, reason, conscience, and capacity for love. Now, after you have departed forever, there has been no meaningful change in the fate of your people and your country. The country’s debt is increasing and the misuse of the state’s finances continues. The state’s debt, which must be paid by the next generation, is still a massive fortune, and is fought over for personal or group interests. The violence that took your lives is still continuing from one town to another, without ever stopping. Who knows when our people and our nation will be able to live together side by side, in peace, order and security, without any conflicts between us?

284 Hilmar Farid

Notes 1 A prominent Islamic intellectual, Nurcholish Madjid, claims that the recent wave of violence shows that the Indonesian people are still primitive ( Jawa Post, 22 June 1999). The few serious analytical studies about the violence have tended to focus on the question of the dalang. 2 This theory is currently popular in student and activist circles and was also expressed by the former Minister of Defence, Juwono Sudarsono, in the Sydney Morning Herald, 15 June 2000. 3 The chain of murders occurred when the government, following pressure by the Acehnese, conducted an investigation into human rights abuses during the time Aceh was under the status of a Special Military Zone (DOM) between 1989 and 1998. 4 After the May event a number of middle-class Jakarta residents evacuated to hotels on Kepulauan Seribu, escorted by military officers. This also shows an important class dimension one must recognize to understand the consequences of violent events and the difference between ‘residents’ and ‘people’ (see Suara Pembaruan 1998a). 5 At the beginning of this year, the US Committee for Refugees estimated that at that point there were 440,000 people with refugee status or ‘internally displaced persons (IDPs)’, most of whom had come from Maluku, West Kalimantan or East Timor. 6 Recently there have been efforts to collect oral-history testimonies that can help us to understand some often overlooked dimensions to social conflict (see Sukanta 1999b). 7 See, for example, the website www.huaren.org and FICA-Net. My arguments here on the May 1998 riots in Jakarta are based on information from the activists of Tim Relawan Kemanusiaan, who investigated the violence and assisted the families of the victims. 8 Account by a witness of the burning of Yogya Plaza, East Jakarta, 15 May 1998. 9 Kompas, 12 June 2000. In this interview, Effendi only mentioned shopping complexes and homes and did not appear to include schools, places of worship, government offices and other public buildings. 10 Some East Timorese soldiers who had been recently recruited into the Indonesian army acknowledged that they were only ‘doing their job’ when ordered to attack their fellow East Timorese in 1999. The soldiers, whose pay was very low, were usually from poor families and saw military service as a way out of poverty. They were concerned about their own safety if they did not follow orders. Interview, Aileu, 24 July 1996. 11 This was also the case in the emergency aid programme and reconstruction in East Timor after the destruction. 12 This description has been based on field reports during the months of March and August 1999. 13 The army was, however, savage and determined to terrorize the East Timorese. Many of the refugees sheltering in the Liquiça church compound were massacred on 6 April 1999. 14 The following description is based on the reports of humanitarian activists working in Ambon from September 1999 to May 2000 (see also TRuK 1998e, 2000). 15 Personal communication, 9 May 2000. 16 Since this was written, the parliament (DPR) has passed a Human Rights Courts Act, on 6 November 2000, but its implementation has been slow. The Act provides that ‘gross violations’ of human rights occurring prior to the coming into force of this Act shall be heard and ruled on by an ad hoc human

Political economy of violence and victims 285 rights court. However, such ad hoc human rights courts can only be formed by Presidential decree upon the recommendation of the DPR. On 21 March 2001, the Indonesian parliament formally approved special courts to prosecute human rights crimes committed in East Timor in 1999 and Tanjung Priok in 1984. At the time of writing (late March 2001) the government had not yet established the courts, let alone brought any cases before it. 17 Speech from a meeting in Jakarta, 17 November 1999. 18 Personal communication, 21 June 2000.

Glossary

abangan Javanese Muslim who incorporates elements of mysticism and respect for local spirits in his/her religious belief. adat istiadat, kebiasaan traditional customs and practices. adu domba to play people off against each other. anak buah underlings. anasir-anasir disintegrasi elements of disintegration. antar-golongan intergroup. aparat pemerintah government apparatus. asli originally from, native of. aspal asli tapi palsu (original but false). azas keluargaan family principle. bakso soup with meatballs. bambu runcing bamboo spear (a revolutionary song). bayang-bayang shadows. BBM Bugis, Buton, Makasar (migrants from these areas of Sulawesi to Maluku). beambtenstaat bureaucratic state. bebaskan to release or to free. bekking backing by an arm of the state. beradab civilized. biadab barbaric. bukti evidence. bunuh kill. bupati district head, regent. buta huruf illiterate. cecunguk traitor (lit. cockroach). dalang puppeteer, mastermind. darah blood. dekking backing by an arm of the state. desa village. dukun santet, tukang santet mystic, sorcerer, practitioner of black magic. dwi fungsi dual function. eks-tapol ex-political prisoner.

Glossary 287 fakta fact. fakta kebenaran factual truths. gadis unmarried woman. gali gabungan anak liar (groups of wild youths, a New Order euphemism for criminal gangs). guru ngaji teacher of the Koran. halal permissible. huaren ethnic Chinese living outside China. Idul Fitri celebrations marking the end of Ramadan (the Islamic fasting month). ilmu gaib black magic. ilmu kebal invulnerability. Intel intelligence agency. iri-iri slaves. istana palace, court. jago gangster (lit. fighting cock). jaksa prosecutor. japrem jatah preman (illegal rents). Jawa Java. jawara thug, heavy (slang). jeda damai peace pause. jeda kemanusiaan humanitarian pause. jilbab headscarf worn by Muslim women. juristenrecht lawyers’ law. jurnalisme omongan talking journalism. kabar bohong falsehoods. kabupaten district, regency. kafiran infidel. kambing hitam scapegoats. kampung, kampong small village. kawasan territory. kebenaran semu false truths. kecamatan governmental district. kekeluargaan family principle. kekerasan violence. kerusuhan riot. kesaktian supernatural abilities, sacredness. ketua adat traditional chief. kewiraan patriotism, heroism, manliness. kiai Islamic teacher and community leader. KKN korupsi, kolusi, nepotisme (corruption, collusion, nepotism). korban ikutan incidental victim. krismon krisis moneter (1997–1998 monetary crisis). ksatria warrior. ladang non-irrigated plots.

288 Glossary lasykar, laskar militias or irregular forces. lembaga organization, institute. libas smash. machtstaat state based on force. mandau bush knives used by Dayaks. mangkok merah red bowl. marga Batak clan. masjid, mesjid mosque. massa masses, crowds. Mbak, Mbok term of address for an unmarried woman. mel-mel rich people. membongkar rahasia negara to reveal state secrets. menetes to drip. mengalir to flow. menyudutkan pejabat tinggi to corner high officials. merdeka freedom. meresahkan to disrupt or disturb. mikrolet public minivan. milik owned by. moradores militia. mushala small mosque, place of prayer. musyawarah consensual consultation. nagari Minangkabau form of local self-government. nasrani Christian. negara state. ngpos to keep guard at the post. oknum shadowy figure responsible for instability. operasi sapu bersih clean sweep operation. OPSUS Operasi Khusus (special operations). orang kaya rich people. organisasi tanpa bentuk formless organizations. padi rice. pahlawan hero. pak Ogah illegal traffic wardens. pamong praja ‘servants’ or ‘nurturers’ of the realm (term used under the Republic to refer to the Javanese bureaucracy). Pancasila Five basic principles of the Indonesian state (state philosophy). pasukan adat traditional troops. patroli to patrol. pedagang self-employed traders. pegawai government employee. pela gandong customary practices of consultation and collaboration between Christian and Muslim communities in Ambon. pemancing di air keruh profiteers (lit. fishers in a muddy river). pembangunan development.

Glossary 289 pembantaian slaughter. pemerataan levelling out of inequalities: a basic policy of the Sixth Repelita (1994–1998). pengadilan koneksitas interconnecting courts that try military personnel on basis of evidence given in civil courts. penyisiran searching (lit. combing). perang war. perigi well, spring. perkosaan rape. perut besar enlarged stomach. pesantren Islamic boarding school. Politeknik Technical College. posko pos komando (coordinating, communication post). preman thug, heavy. premanisme gangsterism. pribumi indigenous Indonesian. provokasi provocation(s). provokator provocateur. raja negeri title referring to village heads (lit. king). rakyat the people. rampok bandits. rechtsgeschichte legal history. rechtsstaat state based on law. reformasi reform movement. ren-ren commoners. Repelita rencana pembangunan lima tahun (Five year development plan). Romo Javanese term of address for Catholic priest. rumah rakyat houses of the people. sadis sadist, sadistic. sakera Madurese preman. sandiwara theatre, play. santri devout Muslim, students of Islam. SARA Suku, Agama, Ras, Antar Golongan (Ethnicity, Religion, Race, Intergroup relations). selamatan Javanese ritual meal. setoran rental fee, deposit. SISKAMLING Sistem Keamanan Lingkungan (local security system). suku bangsa ethnic group. susu untuk bayi milk for babies. tapol tahanan politik (political prisoner). tariu war cry. tegal, tegalan dry rice farming. terlatih trained. terlibat involved. ummat Islamic community.

290 Glossary upeti ‘tribute’ or rent. volksgeist Germanic romantic notion of the state as the spiritual manifestation of the people, as a quasi-religious emanation of their racial and ethnic essence. volksrecht people’s law. wiraswasta self-employed business people, entrepreneurs. WNA Warga Negara Asing (foreigner, alien). WNI Warga Negara Indonesia (Indonesian citizen). wong person (Javanese).

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Index

abangan 20, 91 abductions see disappearances ABRI (Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia) 62, 78, 196, 259–60; see also military; TNI Aceh 163–73, 258–68; martial law 10, 12, 18; natural resources 166, 222, 258–9; referendum demand 163, 165–6, 168, 171, 266; special autonomy for 9, 187; violence in 12, 23, 163–72, 219, 222, 238, 258–68, 272, 281; see also DOM; GAM Aceh Women’s Congress 166, 168, 267; see also Flower Aceh Act of Free Choice 1969 see Papua Ad Hoc Court 284–5n16; see also East Timor adat 22, 133, 138, 142, 183, 267 aid 12, 55, 156, 163, 166, 168, 231, 235, 238; negative effects of 277–80 Aidit, Dipa Nusantara 244, 257n5, n11 Al-Chaidar 210–11 Alatas, Ali 49, 238 Alawiyah, Tuti 44, 233, 235 Ambon (Maluku) 131, 134, 146, 201, 212–13, 272 Amnesty International xvi amok see violence, culture of Arismunandar, Wiranto 232 Arivia, Gadis 231 army see military arson 10, 13, 33, 42, 62, 68, 74–8, 87, 111–13, 118, 131–2, 136, 170–1, 190, 197, 229, 232, 260–1, 264–6, 273–4, 276–7, 280 autonomy citizens’ 222–3; regional and local 144–5, 149, 157, 160, 164, 223; special see Aceh; East Timor; Papua

Bachtiar, Maj. Gen. (Police) Da’i 44 Bakomubin (Badan Koordinasi Mubalig Indonesia) 44–5 Bali 3, 229; 2002 Kuta bombing 17–18; violence 1965–1966 xv, 13 Banser NU 195, 204n4; see also militias; Nahdlatul Ulama BBM (Bugis, Buton, Makasar) 7, 147, 212–13; see also Maluku Belo, Bishop Carlos 65, 176–7 Bimantoro, Gen. 188 bin Laden, Osama 17 black magic (ilmu gaib) see dukun santet books, banning of 25, 208 Bourdieu, Pierre 51–2 Brass, Paul 14–15, 72, 87 BRIMOB (police mobile brigade) 76, 115, 261; see also police Budi Mulyono 81 Chandrakirana, Kamala (Nana) 235, 237, 241n24 Chinese diaspora 58–63, 66–71 Chinese Indonesians citizenship 123; discrimination 79, 83–4, 87; economic position 80–2, 87, 114, 123; violence against xv, 5, 11, 13, 15, 41, 58–71, 72–88, 106, 107, 198–200, 232–3, 235 Christian gangsters 134, 146 churches 7, 74, 80, 130–1, 136, 146, 174–8, 184–5, 189, 199, 276, 279 civil society organizations 41–8, 112, 137, 168, 209, 219, 225–6, 234 CNRT (National Council of Timorese Resistance) 175, 178; see also East Timor; FALINTIL communism, banning of 16, 115 communists: persecution of 120–1, 123,

Index 317 198, 219, 242–56; violence against see coup attempt 1965; mass killings 1965–1966; PKI community justice see violence, community justice conflict: as behaviour 218–9; efforts to end 266–7; land disputes 117, 148–50, 184, 219; may be constructive 220–1; as a problem 222–3; resolution of 217–228; understanding of 221–2, 275–6 conspiracy theories 14, 33–4, 40, 50–1, 54, 56, 90, 100–2, 166–7, 186, 270; see also dalang; masterminds; provocateurs Constitution: of 1945 21–4, 27, 30, 34, 153–6, 161; of 1949 35; of 1950 35 Coomaraswamy, Radhika 46, 237–8 corruption 4–5, 20, 27–35, 135, 139–140, 153, 223, 283 coup attempt, 1965 12, 19, 25, 208, 242–4, 249 Covalima (East Timor) 7, 174–6 crimes against humanity see East Timor; Ad Hoc Court criminals and criminality see preman; protection rackets D & R 42, 49, 231 dalang (puppeteer) 6, 14, 33, 39, 54, 78. 83, 269; see also conspiracy theories; masterminds; provocateurs Damiri, Adam 8, 18 Darul Islam see Islamic State Day, Clive 4 Dayaks 7, 13, 106–27, 149–153; see also West Kalimantan decentralization see autonomy, regional and local democratization 8, 142, 157, 160, 186, 195, 225; see also Reformasi demonstrations see students development projects 117, 126–7, 149, 184, 270 Dewanto, Fr. Tarcisius 175, 178 Diah, Herawati 237, 241n23 Diarsi, Myra 237, 239n8 Dili (East Timor) 19–20, 175–7 disappearances 20, 22, 26–7, 29, 120, 165, 224, 252, 259–62 disintegration of Indonesia 8, 145, 164, 171–2, 218 DOM (Military Operational Zone) period 1989–1998 10, 165–9, 259–60, 263, 265, 267; see also Aceh

Don, Tengku 172n13 dukun santet (sorcerers), violence against Banyuwangi (East Java) 6, 91, 102, 272; South Malang (East Java) 5–6, 14, 20, 90–105, 159, 272 Dutch East India Company (VOC) 3–4 East Timor 158–9, 278–9; 1999 ballot 20, 32, 164, 176, 196, 224, 272; Ad Hoc Court 7–8, 17–18; independence struggle 7–8, 175; Indonesian invasion of 19, 174; special autonomy for 7–8, 159, 173–5; violence in 17, 19, 64, 69, 174–9, 238, 272, 281; see also CNRT; FALINTIL Ecip, S. Sinansari 210, 212–13 economic crisis, Asian 1997 xvii, 4, 13, 30, 62, 80–2, 135, 145, 147, 186, 230–1, 270, 274, 276, 283 education effects of violence 214; peace and conflict resolution studies 11, 223–4, 227 elections 4; 1999 general election 91, 101, 140–1, 165, 223–4, 280 elite see political elites Eluay, Theys 8, 9, 188–9 ethnic stereotyping 61, 109–10, 123–5, 127, 217 ETISC (East Timor International Support Centre) 64, 65 FALINTIL (Armed Forces of National Liberation of East Timor) 175, 279; see also CNRT; East Timor ‘false truths’ 196–7 Flower Aceh 16, 264–6 G-30-S, Gestapu see coup attempt, 1965 gali see Petrus killings GAM (Free Aceh Movement) 9–10, 20, 163–72, 224–5, 260–4, 266–8; see also Aceh; DOM gangsters 5, 29, 62, 160; see also preman; protection rackets Gatra 198, 205n10 genocide xv, 3 Giay, Benny 184 Golkar 17, 133, 140–1, 154, 225 governance 108, 180–2, 187, 219, 222, 270 graffiti 169, 198 Guided Democracy regime 1959–1966 xv, 25, 170, 181–2

318 Index Gus Dur see Wahid, Abdurrahman Gusmão, Xanana 174 Habibie, Bacharuddin Jusuf, President 8, 10–11, 35, 41, 43–5, 53, 68, 70, 86, 137, 157, 164, 185–6, 190, 200, 223–4, 229, 232–6 Halmahera (North Maluku) 132–3, 159; see also North Maluku Handoko 80–1 Hartato, Hartini 237, 240n21 Hartono, Gen. 34, 232 Haryono Soeyono 235 Hasan, Mohammad Bob 232 Hatta, Mohammad 154 headhunters: the ‘Borneo Headhunter’ 7, 13, 109–10, 118–19, 120–2, 124–6, 128; in East Timor 177; in West Kalimantan 106, 116–17, 120, 122 Henri Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue 10, 225 Huaren 58, 66–71 human rights abuses 10, 12, 164–5, 169–72, 196, 258–60, 266, 281–2 Human Rights Watch xvi, 41, 43, 212, 216n13 Humanitarian Pause 2000 9, 163–72, 260, 267, 272; see also Aceh humanitarian relief see aid ICG (International Crisis Group) xvi, 17–18 ICMI (Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals Association) 139 IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) 12, 112–13, 117, 128n11, 130, 132, 148, 161, 175, 212, 258–68, 271, 273, 275 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 4, 13, 270, 276, 278–9 independence struggle, Indonesian 21, 180–1 integralism 21–2, 24, 26, 30, 34, 149, 154–6, 158, 161 Internet 15, 49, 58–71, 85 interrogation 168, 170, 198, 244–9, 251; see also torture Irian, Irian Jaya see Papua Irsan, Police Gen. (ret.) Koesparmono 237, 241n22 ISAI (Institute for the Free Flow of Information) 11, 206, 208–10 Islam see abangan; kiai; radical Islamic organizations; radical Muslims Islamic State, struggle for 3, 19, 24–5

Jaiz, H. Hartono Ahmad 210–14 Jayapura (Papua) 187–90; see also Papua Jemaah Islamiyah 18 Joint Fact-Finding Team (TGPF) 6, 11–12, 15, 44, 48, 50–1, 75–7, 85–6, 170, 233, 236–7 journalists covering violence 44–5, 55, 124–5, 170, 195–204, 212, 214–15, 233 judiciary see corruption; legal system Kao (North Maluku) 132–3; see also North Maluku Karma, Filip 186 Katjasungkana, Nursyahbani 237, 240n14 Ketapang (Jakarta) incident 1998 130, 145–6, 212–3 kiai 94, 98, 102 Kirihio, Fritz 180 KISDI (Komite Indonesia untuk Solidaritas Dunia Islam) see radical Islamic organizations Koalisi NGO HAM 272 Kolibonso, Rita 237, 239n9 Komnas HAM (National Commission for Human Rights) xvi, 42–4, 146–7, 234, 236, 238 Komnas Perempuan (National Commission on Violence Against Women) 6, 11, 16, 229–39 Kompas 78, 124–5, 200–2 Konfrontasi (Indonesian confrontation of Malaysia) 112, 115–16, 120 Kopassus 9, 14, 76, 159; see also BRIMOB; RPKAD Krisnawaty, Tati 237, 240n10 Kupang (West Timor), violence in 131, 212–13 labour unionists, violence against xvii, 24, 28–9 Laksaur 174, 178–9; see also militias Laskar Jihad 134, 146; see also militias; radical Islamic organizations Latuconsina, Akib 140 Latuconsina, Saleh 139 Latumahina, Freddy 139–40 Latutumahina, G. J. 139 law see legal system law, traditional see adat laws 1870 Agrarian Act 123; 1967 Foreign Investment Act 126; 1967 Forestry Act 126

Index 319 LBH (Legal Aid Institute) 100–1 legal system 20–1, 27–8, 46; civil dispute resolution 23; ‘interconnecting courts’ 281–2; judiciary 20, 281–2 Leksono-Supelli, Karlina 231, 239n5 Liquiça (East Timor) 279, 284n13 logging 117, 158 looting 62, 74–7, 200, 229, 232, 274 Madeira, Fr. Hilario 175–8 Madurese 123–4; 1996–1997 violence against 7, 13, 106, 107, 110–13, 116–18, 121–2, 150–3 Mahidi 174, 178; see also militias Mailoa-Marantika, Lies 237, 240n17 Makarim, Zacky 34 Makasar (South Sulawesi) 7, 14, 147, 212 Makian (North Maluku) 132; see also North Maluku Malang (East Java) 6, 14, 90–105 Malang Post 91, 102 Malifut (North Maluku) 132; see also North Maluku Maluku 2000 civil emergency 133, 146; violence in 6–7. 10–11, 14, 129–43, 144–61, 200–3, 210–15; see also North Maluku Manokwari (Papua) 181, 187; see also Papua Marriott Hotel bombing, Jakarta 2003 18 Marsinah 19, 24, 28–9 mass killings 1965–1966 xv, 3, 13, 16, 18, 183, 208, 270, 281 masterminds 6, 14, 33–4, 41–2, 50, 54, 78, 101, 170, 172, 243–4, 269, 275; see also conspiracy theories; dalang; provocateurs Matuanakota, Milton 146 May 1998 rioting in Jakarta 5–6, 13–15, 20, 24, 35, 39–57, 58–71, 72–3, 87, 170, 198–200, 233–4, 238, 272–4; in Solo (Central Java) 6, 72–88, 198 Medan (North Sumatra) 34, 148, 198, 208 media state control over 195, 204n2 Megawati Soekarnoputri, President 9, 140, 154, 195, 197, 208, 272, 282 Merajut Harkat (Knitting [Human] Dignity) 242–56 military dual function of 154, 169; operations 19, 259–60, 266, 276; see also ABRI; TNI; violence, statesponsored

Military Honour Board 20, 35 militias 7–8, 20, 29, 32, 35, 59, 137, 143, 145, 158–160, 173–8, 188, 190–1, 271–2, 275, 277, 279, 281 mining 29, 114, 132 Mohamad, Goenawan 16 Moluccas see Maluku; North Maluku mosques 94, 111, 131, 133, 136, 146, 260–2 Mujiono 79 Murniati, Nunuk 237, 240n18 Nadia, Ita Fatia 199, 237, 240n11 Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) 16, 100, 159, 195, 272; see also Banser NU National Awakening Party (PKB) 226 national identity and reputation 49, 54–5, 145 National Mandate Party (PAN) 226 New Order regime 1966–1998 25, 119, 126, 148–50, 153–6, 161, 183–5, 200, 209, 217–20, 270, 282 New York Agreement, 1962 180, 182 NGOs (non-government organizations) see civil society organizations ninja killings 93–4, 102, 159; see also dukun santet North Maluku, violence in 129–43 Nurfaizi 215n6 Nuriyah Rahman, Sinta 236–7, 240n12 Oeray, Oevang 113 ombudsman and press council 196, 224 Operasi Jaring Merah 259; see also Aceh, violence in Operasi Nanggala 259; see also Aceh, violence in OPM (Free Papua Organization) 8, 181; see also Papua Pakoe Boewono XII 78 Pam Swakarsa 32, 159; see also militias Pancasila 142, 153–6, 183, 196–7, 220, 226, 255; P4 indoctrination 183, 227 Pancasila Democracy 4; see also New Order regime Pandjaitan, Sintong 235 Papua 11, 18, 180–91, 238; 1969 Act of Free Choice 180, 182, 184–5; ‘Morning Star’ flag 8, 187–90; natural resources 186; special autonomy for 8–9, 164, 187, 191; violence in 19, 187, 190, 191n4, 219, 222

320 Index Papuan Congress 186–7 paramilitary bodies see militias PBB (Crescent and Star Party) 140–1 PDI (Indonesian Democratic Party), PDI-P (Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle) 140–1, 154, 195, 208, 272 PDI headquarters sacking, July 1996 24, 197–8, 208, 230, 271, 282 peace and non-violence 201; educating for 223–8 Pemuda Pancasila (Pancasila Youth) 32, 88n7, 146, 162n2; see also militias People’s Democratic Party (PRD) 197–8 Petrus killings 1983–1985 19, 26–7, 29, 32, 170, 269 PGRS (Sarawak People’s Guerrilla Force) 113–14, 120–2; see also West Kalimantan photographs see violence, photographs of Pieters, Ongky 146 Pita Merah, Pita Putih 214–215, 216n14; see also Maluku; militias PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia) 16, 101, 243–4, 249, 255, 270; see also communism; communists; mass killings police 7, 18, 33, 44, 75–6, 91, 92, 93–4, 95, see also BRIMOB; violence, statesponsored political amnesia see violence rewriting history of political elites Indonesian 50, 78, 164, 171, 195, 206, 232, 237, 270, 277, 281–3; local 78–81, 83, 86, 98, 131–2, 137–8, 140–2, 147, 184, 186, 191, 270, 274–5 political prisoners 12, 16, 18, 242–56; see also communists, persecution of POLRI (Polisi Republik Indonesia) see police; military Pontianak (West Kalimantan) 106, 111–12, 114, 123, 148, 151 Poso (Central Sulawesi) 7, 271, 276 PPP (United Development Party) 140–1, 154 preman 5, 29–34, 80, 93, 100–1, 134, 157–60, 174; see also gangsters, militias; protection rackets prostitution 97–8, 168 protection rackets 29–34, 84; see also gangsters; militias preman

provocateurs 6–7, 14, 32–3, 41–2, 50–1, 74–6, 78–9, 81–3, 86, 100–2, 120, 133, 138, 145, 149, 151, 153, 157–60, 163–72, 211, 219, 271–2; see also conspiracy theories; dalang; masterminds PRRI/Permesta rebellion 19, 24–5 Putera, Hutomo Mandala 33–4, 76 radical Islamic organizations 7, 44, 54 radical Muslims 5, 34, 133, 142; see also Islamic State, struggle for Rais, M. Amien 14, 78, 83 rape 5–6, 11–12, 15, 20, 24, 26, 39–57, 58–71, 84–5, 199–200, 229, 232–6, 238, 259, 262–3, 273 Raweyai, Yorrys 146 Reconciliation 7, 12, 15, 145, 176–9, 207–9, 283; see Truth and Reconciliation Commission red bowl 110–11, 113, 121–2, 152; see also violence, rituals of Reformasi 4–6, 8, 10, 34–5, 41, 73–4, 77, 90, 99–100, 102, 182, 184, 190, 195, 225, 230–2, 258 refugees see IDPs religion see violence, religion and Rengasdengklok (West Java) 230 Repelita (Five Year Development Plan) 148, 156 Republika 68, 200, 202 rioting, understanding 14–15, 72–88, 223, 229, 232, 274 RMS (Republic of South Moluccas) 134, 142, 181; see also Maluku Roesmanhadi, Let. Gen. 49 RPKAD (Paracommando Regiment) 115; see also Kopassus Rukmana, Siti ‘Tutut’ Hardiyanti 34, 146, 232 Rumainum, Rev. 184–5 rumours 42, 51–6, 77, 80, 85, 120, 151, 167, 197, 199 Sabili 200, 210–11 Sadli, Saparinah 234–7 Said, Ali 25 Salyo, Suwarni 237, 240n13 Sambas (West Kalimantan) 106, 110–12, 117, 149 Samil, Ratna Suprapti 237, 240n15 Samsidar, Ir. 237, 240n19 Sangaji, Ongen 146

Index 321 Sanggau (West Kalimantan) 106, 112, 114 SARA (Ethnicity, Religion, Race, Intergroup conflict) 10, 144, 198, 200, 203 Sarawak, border with West Kalimantan 114–16 scapegoats (kambing hitam) 20, 35, 47, 170 security organizations 30, 32, 34, 156; see also military Semanggi incidents, Jakarta 1998 and 1999 271 Setiawan, Boen 237, 240n16 sexual assault see rape Siegel, James 20, 25–6, 53–4 Silaen, Timbul 18 Singkawang (West Kalimantan) 111, 113, 117, 123 Soares, Fr. Francisco 175 Solopos 77, 79–80, 82 Soeharto, Siti Hartinah 76, 149 Soepomo, Raden 19, 21, 22–4, 30, 34–5, 154–5 Solossa, Jacobus 185 sorcerers, violence against see dukun santet Sriyanto, Col. 78 students, demonstrations by 32, 73–4, 77–8, 232, 271 Suai (East Timor) 7, 174–9, 279 Suara Ibu Peduli 231 Suara Pembaruan 200–2 Subianto, Prabowo 3, 14, 19–20, 23–4, 26–7, 29, 33–5, 50–1, 54 Sudomo, Admiral 25 Suharto, Ibu Tien see Soeharto, Siti Hartinah Suharto, President 4–5, 7–8, 10, 19–20, 25–7, 29–30, 32–4, 55, 62, 70, 76, 99–100, 102, 112, 114–15, 119, 126, 129, 133, 137–40, 144, 146–7, 149, 153–5, 157–8, 161, 163–5, 169–70, 182–4, 186–7, 195–7, 208–10, 216–19, 222–6, 230, 232, 242–3, 255, 269–70, 281–3; May 1998 resignation of 4, 14, 30, 165, 169, 182, 184, 186, 209, 224, 281 Suharto, ‘Tommy’ see Putera, Hutomo Mandala Suharto, ‘Tutut’ see Rukmana, Siti Hardiyanti Sukanta, Putu Oka 242, 256n3; see also Merajut Harkat

Sukarno, President 20, 34, 112, 114–15, 141, 150, 154–5, 180–2, 207, 242, 244 Sulami Djowoprawiro 18 Sumardi, Fr. I. Sandyawan 42, 199, 205n10, 233 Sumargono, Ahmad 199 Sumhadi, Mrs 234, 239n6 Supardjo, Lt. Col. 257n5 Surabaya (East Java) 101, 198 Sutiyoso 199 sweeping operations (identity card checks) 171, 260n1, 268n6; see also military Syafi’l, Abdullah 267 Syarwan Hamid, Lt. Gen. 34, 198, 205n11 Tanjung, Akbar 34, 51 Tanjung, Feisal 34, 205n11, 235 Tanjung Priok (Jakarta), 1984 killings 19, 24, 283 tapols see political prisoners Tasikmalaya (West Java) 230, 271 Tempo 50, 187 Ternate, sultan of 132–2 terror and terrorism 10, 17, 20, 27, 43, 72, 102, 108–10, 113–14, 118, 124, 158–9, 164, 166–7, 199, 211, 246, 248, 255, 259, 274 TGPF (Tim Gabungan Pencari Fakta) see Joint Fact-Finding Team thugs see preman Tidore, sultan of 132–2 Timor see East Timor Tiro, Hasan 165, 168, 259 TNI (Indonesian Armed Forces) 9, 11, 23, 150, 159, 163, 167–8, 171, 206, 215, 264, 266–8; see also ABRI; military; TNI; violence, statesponsored Tobelo (North Maluku) 132–3; see also North Maluku Toer, Pramoedya Ananta 16, 18, 25 torture 12, 170, 190, 242–56, 259, 263 trade unionists see labour unionists traitor 249–52, 255 transmigrants 117–18, 132, 139, 147–9, 153, 156; violence against 133, 161 tribes 108–9 Trihatmodjo, Bambang 146 Trisakti incident, Jakarta 1998 41, 53, 62, 74, 229, 232, 271, 281 TRuK (Volunteers Team for Humanity) 6, 11, 16, 42–55, 62, 84, 199–200, 233–5, 237

322 Index Truth and Reconciliation Commission xvii, 16, 18, 281; see also reconciliation Udin 19, 29 UNAMET 175 unemployment 135, 140, 277 Untung, Lt. Col. 257n5 urban poor 271, 273–4, 277 victims of violence, self-help 279–81 vigilantes xvii, 7, 20, 30, 102, 111, 145–6 violence against criminals see Petrus killings; class and 270–1; classification of xvii, 271; colonial 3; community justice and 96–100, 112; cost of 276; culture of 3, 13–14, 81, 100, 172, 197, 220, 222, 269; domestic xvii; effects on children; 93–4, 113, 133, 178, 207, 214, 231, 239, 249–50, 259–66, 271, 275–6, 281; explanations for 94–7, 129; gender and 12, 62–3, 67–9, 229–39, 258–68, 275–6, see also rape; historical context of 81–3, 85–6, 90–1, 118–19, 121–2, 125–7, 136–7, 147, 174, 177, 180–4, 207, 230–2; horizontal conflict 7, 271; impunity of perpetrators 17–18, 20, 35, 172, 183; in Indonesia, conferences on xvi; inter-ethnic 14, 106–27, 151, 188, 209, 225–6, 270–1; photographs of 15, 49, 58–72; racialized 63, 72; religion and 129–43, 151, 202–3, 209–15, 225–6, 270–1; representations of 15, 58–71, 72–88, 195–204, 206–15; rewriting history of 18, 47–8, 87, 283; rituals of 110, 119, 152, 177, see also red bowl;

silence about 47–8, 55–6, 62–3, 87; state-sponsored 5, 12, 19–20, 26–9, 106, 109, 114, 133–4, 164, 169, 219, 224, 242–56, 269–70; truth and 40–56, 199, 242; victims of 12–13, 15–16, 18, 26, 40–5, 63, 80, 82, 168–9, 207, 213–14, 242–56, 262, 269–83 VOC see Dutch East India Company Volunteers Team for Humanity see TRuK Wahid, Abdurrahman, President 8–9, 11, 16, 21, 34, 100–1, 148, 163, 168, 186–8, 190, 195, 209, 224, 233, 258, 267, 284 Wamena (Papua) 188, 190; see also Papua war 110–11, 116–18, 121, 126 Wenas, Brig. Gen. S. Y. 188 West Kalimantan border with Sarawak 114–16; violence in 6–7, 13, 106–27, 144–161, 230 West Papua see Papua Wibisono, Christianto 55 Winindyati, Lt. Yenni Setyo 199–200 Wiranto 17, 34, 49–50, 56n5, 165, 235, 259 witness protection 20, 42–4, 46, 48, 50, 199, 237–8, 262 women’s rights see Komnas Perempuan World Bank 13, 270, 278–9, 283 World Trade Centre, September 2001 attack 17 Yeblo, Yusan 237, 240n20 Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang 34, 189 Yunus, Muhammad 56n5

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