VIOLENT INDONESIA EXPOSED

A troubling tour through a pained land                                         

Visiting outlying islands in this sprawling archipelago reveals the unease felt about Java, ‘the denominator of Indonesia’.  From Aceh to West Papua live citizens who see the nation’s largest ethnic group as oppressive colonialists.

First President Soekarno used a common language, universal education and the non-denominational Pancasila philosophy to create the ‘unitary state’.

When these haven’t worked persuasion has turned to force.  Human rights activist Andreas Harsono’s new book Race, Islam and Power shows the damage caused to ‘wonderful Indonesia’ by violence.

This was never meant to be a jolly travelogue; the author quotes West Sumatran poet Leon Agusta (1938-2015): ‘They’re the two most dangerous words in Indonesia: Islam and Java’.  To which Harsono adds: ‘Muslim majority and Javanese dominance’.

Despite the best efforts of people like the author, in this year’s election campaign human rights issues were largely a yawn.

Perhaps some electors voted against Prabowo Subianto because questions haunt the former general about his actions in the army. Others might have rejected Joko Widodo, reasoning he’s dodged confronting the post-1965 pogroms, despite earlier promising to open debate.

 Little has happened to reconcile the state with the survivors and the families of the real or imagined Communist victims who were never charged under the law.  The guilty still control.

(Dealing with unresolved shame isn’t an exclusive Indonesian problem.  Australians are grappling with a new understanding of their nation’s past as historians reveal massacres of Aborigines right into last century.)

Consider the continuing cruelties: In Aceh men who love each other and unmarried women who love men get whipped in medieval public rituals, smartphoned for kicks.  People who’ve made mild comments about faith are behind bars for blasphemy.

Across the country hate fermented against gays is brewed by religious leaders. Ahmadiyah sectarians get persecuted, as do followers of minority mainstream faiths.

Indonesians love the outsider-imposed label of tolerance, but this fine quality is continually threatened; robust analysis mainly comes from without - foreign academics, safe on campuses far away.

At last a critic with credibility from within. As a local Harsono risks confrontations. In pre-independence East Timor a soldier demanded: ‘Are you red and white?’ (A nationalist). Harsono said he was an impartial journalist.  Fortunately only his visit was terminated.

Born in 1965 he was given the Chinese curse / journalist’s blessing: ‘May you be born in interesting times.’ During Soeharto’s authoritarian New Order government this Indonesian with ethnic Chinese heritage would have understood discrimination is pervasive.

In Salatiga’s Satya Wacana Christian University (Central Java) he followed lectures by the late George Aditjondro.  The sociologist and author was such a powerful critic of Soeharto (he likened the president to an octopus) that he fled to Australia to avoid arrest.

His teachings and writings pricked questions about Indonesia’s governance and the nature of Benedict Anderson’s ‘imagined community’. The late US scholar also quashed the view that only Westerners can be colonialists.  Harsono has become torchbearer for the freedoms they championed.

Although he enrolled in electronic engineering, writing for student unions revealed a talent for journalism.  After a year with this newspaper he became Jakarta correspondent for Bangkok’s The Nation English language daily.

He also won a prestigious Nieman Fellowship to study journalism at Harvard.

Through reporting he’s seen far more of his country than most; along the way he realized daily reporting was inadequate for the world to understand Indonesia. 

The result is this ‘political travelogue’ subtitled Ethnic and Religious Violence in post-Soeharto Indonesia. The title is clumsy, the cover drab.  There’s no index, but a handy list of sources. The prose is excellent.

This is a discomforting read for anyone who cares for the moral development of this nation. It’s also a counterweight to the glossy mags promoting Indonesia as a land fit for hedonists.

This is sweaty and edgy journalism. It can also be dangerous. In 2004 activist Munir Said Thalib was assassinated on a Garuda flight to Europe.  The case remains unsolved.

For 15 years Harsono has been where the pain is raw, where the wee folk live, work, travel and get jailed, hearing their authentic stories of discrimination and repression, their anger and puzzlement: Was this the land our heroes promised in 1945?

 ‘What they learned at school was totally different from what they saw in their real life,’ he writes. ‘I hear this over and over throughout Indonesia.’

Race, Islam and Power has been published in Australia in English, the language Harsono used, ‘trying to speak to an international audience about violence in Indonesia …especially policy makers, academics, opinion leaders.’ 

No local press would handle the typescript proving the author’s point about fear of confronting the past; yet society’s betterment depends on its citizenry knowing their state’s real history.

Harsono’s work aims to build a better nation by exposing truths.  Those cheering George W Bush’s snarl ‘you’re either with us or against us’ might rank the author a traitor; yet critics can be finer patriots than jingoists – and more effective.  

Harsono has been a Jakarta-based researcher since 2008 with the international NGO Human Rights Watch and often its spokesman.  His statements are measured and fact based – as they are in this book.

This is important because villainy thrives when far from public view.  When atrocities are revealed, doubt dampens outrage if accusations are shrill and facts vague.  Could these gentle friendly folk really be so brutal – and if so, why?

Sadly, tragically, yes.  There’s been slaughter and dispossession from Sabang to Merauke, the route Harsono has traveled and meticulously recorded.  Much has been contrived for base reasons.

Democracy is ‘people power’ though not for losing politicians trying to force their interests through street protests.  They tread a dangerous track.

Likewise those howling religious hate.  This book shows these roads will never lead to the respected nation the founders imagined and the people desire.

Race, Islam and Power by Andreas Harsono.                                                                                                Monash University Press, 2019.                                                                                          (First published in The Jakarta Post 5 May 2019)