Murder in Maumere
A few shops in the largely Catholic city of Maumere sell religious icons. Some include mottos like Jesus Engkau Andalanku (Jesus is my mainstay.)
Perhaps the faithful in the East Flores
city find comfort with the phrase.
Though not in February 1966 when their religion’s earthly
representatives betrayed that trust.
Five months earlier in Jakarta
1,700 kilometers to the west, a failed coup against the government of first
president Soekarno had been followed by an army-organized bloodletting; an
estimated 500,000 real or imagined Communists were slaughtered by militias.
The genocide had just about petered out in Java and Bali when
orders came to Maumere from the army in Jakarta
listing locals to be arrested. Almost
all were Catholic.
Instead of demanding their congregations be protected and
given fair trials, the clergy helped the army.
Apart from administering last rites to some of the 800 or more victims,
the priests stayed silent.
This little-known story of the Church failing to shield its
flock, and often siding with the gunmen, can now be widely told through the
scholarship of Dutch anthropologist Dr Gerry van Klinken. In Australia he used to edit the
prestigious Inside Indonesia magazine.
His latest book was to be called Murder in Maumere. Strangely
that selling title was scrapped for the prosaic but academically acceptable Postcolonial Citizenship in Provincial
Indonesia, guaranteed to frighten away casual browsers.
Wrong. Knowing this
history should help ensure no repetition. It’s tragic, brutal, shaming, and a
damnation of the Catholic Church. It’s
also a powerful argument for revising the government narrative of citizens’ spontaneous
and unstoppable rage which still dominates, the only version allowed in
classrooms.
One of van Klinken’s sources was Egenius Pacelly (EP) da
Gomez, 79, and living just outside Maumere where he writes histories and studies
politics.
In 1966 he was a Catholic Party activist and present at a meeting
of Komop (Komando Operasi) and local
officials.
They were told the Jakarta
‘instructions’ were to ‘secure’ all Communists and their sympathizers, and that
political parties had quotas to fill. There
were then about 2,000 people in Maumere and maybe ten times more in Sikka
Regency villages; most citizens knew each other as neighbors, through
intermarriage, or casually.
A report of the meeting and some of what followed was
written eight years later by Anon and titled Menjaring Angin (To Reap the Whirlwind). Van Klinken identifies the author as da
Gomez, though the Indonesian says it was later edited by others.
The report concerns ‘human beings, society and their
relations with the Creator ... a search for something that if seen clearly,
might be best called meaning.’
But how to find meaning in slaughter at the hands of fellow parishioners
with nods from those wearing cassocks?
Van Klinken tries to answer that devilish question through
the mind of a Western educated social scientist. His endeavors are not alone: In 2015 Dr John Prior, a British-born priest who
came to Eastern Indonesia in 1973 and is now
in Maumere, co-edited an essay collection titled Berani, Berhenti, Berbohong (Dare to stop lying) with philosopher
Dr Otto Madung.
Da Gomez has read the book and rejects explanations for the 1966
violence such as rising nationalism, lay criticism of the Church, hostility
towards traditional regal rule, factional politics, old hates and supernatural
fear. Boiled together at a time of
national uncertainty they created an environment where some locals took revenge
for past wrongs.
Instead da Gomez will only say (to this reviewer) that the sole
cause was the ‘instruction’ from Jakarta.
One who rejected state orders was Father Fredrik de Lopez
who demanded his people be released. So the
army contacted his bishop and de Lopez was moved to a seminary. Although his protest failed he didn’t die for
his defiance.
This showed the cowardice of his colleagues who used the
defence of ‘we’ll be killed if we don’t cooperate’. None sought sainthood.
They’d also been indoctrinated through strident Catholic
teachings, largely driven by foreign priests, into believing that Communism was
satanic. They didn’t differentiate between the ideology, open to challenge
through better ideas, and those who liked party policies such as land reform,
but weren’t card-carrying members.
After the killings van Klinken writes of da Gomez: ‘The
bloodshed had not left him cold’. On a visit to Jakarta the Indonesian was verbally attacked
by Florinese students and accused of complicity. This led him to join a group wanting to ventilate
the atrocities and name the main killers.
For this action he was jailed and today is still reluctant
to speak out, referring questioners to chapters in Berani, Berhenti, Berbohong, including one by van Klinken in
Indonesian.
“I never took part in the killings, or saw them, or the
bodies,” da Gomez said. One of many
unmarked mass graves is 300 meters behind his house, but he says he never visits.
The first section in van Klinken’s book tells the story
‘forensically’ largely through the life and death in prison of Jan Djong ‘the
district’s republican rebel’.
It then locates the events within a set of theories about
former colonized societies adjusting to self rule when old structures fall and
there’s much jostling to fill the vacuum.
This is interesting but tends to dampen the hot horror of
what happened in Flores. The text will find a snug place in university
libraries overseas, when it’s most wanted scorching desks of local students seeking
their nation’s real history.
“We need Gerry’s book in Indonesian and we need
reconciliation,” said da Gomez. “The initiative
should come from the Church.” Van
Klinken said a translation is being considered by an Indonesian publisher.
Postcolonial
Citizenship in Provincial Indonesia,
by Gerry van Klinken
Palgrave Macmillan, London,
2019
152 pages.
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First published in The Jakarta Post 24 January 2019
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