Dear all A report from TIME Magazine (May 31, 99) just one example how Indonesia is perceived by the world. Some time we have to sit and think deeply, what's happening to this equatorial emerald's country and where all the leaders are taking us to. And the military regime (and dressing in the civil costume) really ruinning this country for the benefit of their reign ONLY, using the frame "we are protecting this country from disintegration". Ismail Ramli [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- INDONESIA'S CHOICE MAY 31, 1999 VOL. 153 NO. 21 Identity Crisis On the brink of a historic election, Indonesia ponders its future. With its center in tatters, can the fractious archipelago hold itself together? BY TERRY MCCARTHY/JAKARTA Yarmen Dinamika, wordsmith, is lost for words. Asked the simplest of questions, the deputy editor of the weekly newspaper Kontras in Banda Aceh frowns in concentration. It is time for Friday's midday prayers, but he is determined to find an answer. "On my ID card I am Indonesian," he finally says. "In my heart I still feel Indonesian. But that feeling is empty." It is the same every time--the one question Indonesians can't answer with any satisfaction, the question they choke on. Some just smile and hold up their hands in a gesture of surrender. Others talk at length before conceding they don't know. A few even say there is no answer. For two weeks, as Indonesians prepared for the June 7 vote, their first free election in 44 years, TIME correspondents crisscrossed the archipelago of 13,000 islands, with more than 200 million people, 300 languages and hundreds of ethnic groups, asking, "What does it mean to be Indonesian?" The answers came in multi-hued ambivalence. Half a century after Sukarno--President for Life, Mouthpiece of the Indonesian People--rose to power with a vision of a unified, pluralistic country, Indonesia is facing an identity crisis. Separatist sentiments are strong in Aceh, where six more people were shot dead last week, as well as in East Timor and Irian Jaya. Talk of secession has spread to Riau, Kalimantan, Ambon and even Bali. The very viability of Indonesia as an economic and political entity is now being challenged across the vast country. And while all this goes on, at the center is a political vacuum. In Jakarta the candidates are busy making coalition deals and secret pacts to win votes, unencumbered by any serious debate. The business community is drunk on a stock market boom that is far up the risk curve. And the public has been swept away in the colorful--and so far relatively peaceful--campaign festivities, a carnival of flags, revved-up motorbikes and tribal preening that's a welcome distraction from the hardships of a still contracting economy. In the outlying provinces there is no such complacency. Communal violence is a constant threat. At the same time there is a growing determination to renegotiate the revenue-sharing system under which Jakarta has essentially looted natural resources from the islands. Riau, for example, produces more than 70% of the nation's oil and gas. In 1997 this was worth about $6.5 billion, and yet the government's expenditure on the province that year was just $120 million. Underlying almost all the ethnic conflicts in Indonesia are economic imbalances--and righting that equation will be the single biggest challenge for the next government. New laws decentralizing some powers and increasing funding to outlying provinces were passed last month, but they will take two years to implement, so centralized has control been up to now. The task is immense: no less than inventing a new model for Indonesia--and redefining what it means to be Indonesian. Only at the extremes is there clarity. Abdullah Syafie, a rebel commander of the Free Aceh Movement in Pidie district in northern Aceh, refuses even to speak Bahasa Indonesia--the language that more than anything binds the country together--and a young aide translates his words from Acehnese. "We don't want to take part in the elections," he says. "We won't even accept federalism. We have to have freedom." Surrounded by a dozen armed men in a secret location in the mountains, Syafie says he is prepared to die for his cause: "We are here to protect the local people. Many were killed or tortured by the military." >From 1989 to '98 Aceh was a Military Operations Area, subjected to the army's brutal counter-insurgency campaign. The rebellion was founded in demands for a greater share of revenue from the oil and gas that Aceh produces: instead of negotiating, Suharto came down hard. How hard is only now being revealed, as outsiders can for the first time in a decade travel around the province without restriction. In the village of Teupin Raya in Sigli district, Abdurrahman Ali, a 70-year-old farmer, tells how he was arrested by the military in May last year and accused of having a gun. First he was stripped and tortured with electric shocks, then he was buried in a shallow grave with only his nose left above the soil. "They did this three times," he says. "I just kept repeating, 'There is one God. There is one God.'" Asked about Indonesia, Ali raises his fist and shouts, "Aceh Merdeka!" (Aceh Independence!). But in Banda Aceh, where military oppression was less severe, confusion creeps back in. Outside the town's big Baiturrahman Mosque, Faisal Jamil, 23, a history student, says that in the fight against Dutch colonialism, "Aceh's heroes saw themselves as Indonesian. I could be proud of being Indonesian if all the bad things stopped. But deep down, I probably don't want to be Indonesian any more." Otto Syamsuddin Ishak, a sociologist in Banda Aceh, says people "are trapped within two identities" and don't know how to get out. "To me the issue is not about being Acehnese or Indonesian. It is about humanity." The simple claims of humanity have all too often fallen through the cracks of the great Indonesian ambivalence. In the village of Salatiga Mandor two hours north of Pontianak in West Kalimantan, Johannes Sone, a Dayak, talks with bracing frankness about the brutal ethnic cleansing of Madurese immigrants from his area. "It's true we killed Madurese--and ate them," says the 49-year-old schoolteacher. "But we regarded them as animals." Madurese have been driven out of Dayak areas in West Kalimantan in increasing numbers since the end of 1997--not coincidentally since the onset of the economic crisis. Sone grins as he recites his personalized litany of prejudice: "The Madurese are bad. They are thieves, killers, cheats. They take your coconuts, steal your chickens. It is impossible to live together with Madurese." Some says the "unity in diversity" concept that underpins Indonesia's national coherence is "rubbish if the Madurese don't respect our customs." Customs that extend, apparently, to the eating of their flesh. "Of course it is inhuman, and it is beyond my understanding," says Marsaid, 40, a Madurese farmer from Sambas who was forced to flee with his wife and six children to a refugee camp in Pontianak two months ago when the ethnic cleansing reached its height. He was shot in the hip while helping to evacuate some women; one 17-year-old relative was beheaded. Marsaid worries about his children's future--and the future of Indonesia, which he likens to a broken-down car. "It feels like we small people are all pushing the car. But if the engine starts again, it will drive off and leave us behind." The real grievance of the Dayaks is that the Madurese are more economically aggressive, monopolizing the minibus transport business, expanding their farming onto disputed land and managing to make more money than others. "The cultural differences were a cover for disputes over ownership of land and business," says Syarif Ibrahim Alqadrie, dean of social and political science at the University of Tanjungpura in Pontianak. The economic downturn has affected everything, he says, and as a result "the autonomy debate is growing stronger all over Indonesia." Pessimists say that with about half the population now below the poverty line, many are prepared to exploit economic hardship for political ends. In East Timor, where Maros Tilmau of the pro-independence Conselho Nacional de Resistencia Timorense estimates that "85% to 90% of the economy is controlled by Javanese or armed forces-related interests," the military has openly armed militias to fight the independence movement, playing on fears that those with ties to Jakarta would lose their livelihoods if East Timor became independent. Here the "social unraveling" has turned lethal. Provocateurs are also widely reported to have stirred up communal violence between Christians and Muslims earlier this year in Ambon, where more than 200 people have been killed. In Ambon the two communities have lapsed into an uneasy apartheid. After the main indoor market, Pasar Lama, was burned to the ground during rioting four months ago, locals now shop at pasar kaget, or temporary markets, segregated by religion. "This way we are together and can at least watch over and protect each other," says Je Tomahu, 42, a Christian woman selling beans, chilies and cassava. "It is better to be separated. Who wants to die a silly death over religion?" This is far from Indonesia's founders' dream of uniting people of all religions and ethnic groups under the red and white flag. The "empty feeling" of being Indonesian is spreading ominously, as the very idea of nationalism comes into question. Donald Emmerson, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, believes Indonesian nationalism has been a negative impulse for too long--founded on anti-Dutch resistance and stoked by Sukarno's tirades against the West and his 1950s konfrontasi with Malaysia. Suharto made economic development the center of his nationalist credentials, but the economic collapse of 1997 has removed this positive nationalistic aspect--and Indonesians are again looking for enemies: international currency traders, ethnic Chinese businessmen, people of a different faith. For the outlying provinces it also means "the center." Says Golkar's Darusman: "People outside Java openly resent being ruled by Javanese. There's a sense of identity politics." In Irian Jaya, this resentment begins with the very name of the province: Irian is an acronym for Ikut Republik Indonesia Anti-Nederland (To Follow the Anti-Netherlands Republic of Indonesia). Locals prefer to call themselves Papuans. "Look at me, how can I be Indonesian?" says Abram Kuruwaip, deputy chairman of the local parliament, who has the island's characteristically dark Melanesian features. "I don't even look Indonesian." After a meeting in February with 100 representatives of the province, President B.J. Habibie promised some measure of autonomy for the mineral-rich province. But as was evident from an independence rally of 3,000 people last Monday in Pirime, 250 km southwest of the capital Jayapura, the Irianese have little faith in promises from the center. "It is true the armed forces are not as violent as they used to be, but it is too little too late," says Sadrach Wamebu, a lawyer in Jayapura. "Like a turtle hiding under its shell when it feels threatened, no coaxing with the best chocolate cake will persuade it to stick its head out." One of the first questions Indonesians ask strangers is Orang apa? (Who are your people?) or Dari mana? (Where are you from?). Normally an inoffensive query, in the current climate it has become pointed--even in places like Bali, the mostly Hindu island east of Java long known for its openness. Last month tensions between Balinese and Javanese street vendors boiled over, and a mob of stick-wielding locals evicted many of the Javanese vendors from Kuta beach. "I hope the Kuta case will influence others," says Luh Ketut Suryani, a psychiatry professor at Denpasar's Udayana University. "If we stay united we can keep our culture." Suryani speaks for many in Bali who feel they are no longer partners in Indonesia, but rather a minority. "I remember all the people who died to create a multi-ethnic Indonesia. But when Suharto became President, he changed it to one culture: Javanese. Now we send everything to Jakarta and wait for handouts from the President. That is not fair." Balinese have for years been resentful that the island's big tourist hotels and resorts are owned by Jakarta companies. But intimidation by the military prevented any protest--until the current era of reformasi. "People in Aceh had a clear idea of what the military did," says Mohammad Sonny Qodri, a human rights lawyer in Denpasar. "But in Bali, because it was subtle, people didn't realize what the military was doing." Qodri says the military owns video shops and karaoke parlors across the island, protects street vendors and has stakes in hotels. He says, "they are like the Mafia," using violence to evict people from sites targeted for development. "We still want one country," says Putu Suasta, a sociologist active in the autonomy debate. "It is a beautiful country--but we need to change a lot." Suasta says he and other residents gave the central government a 100-page report recently calling for "political accountability and more equitable revenue sharing." He thinks 60% of the island's revenue should stay in Bali; 40% should be sent to Jakarta. By some calculations, Bali today retains only about 1% of tourism profits generated on the island. Suasta is also involved in "Dialog Multimedia," a program that uses a local radio station, a daily newspaper and the Internet to solicit citizens' reactions on a wide range of political and economic topics. "Things are changing every second," he says. After three decades on ice, the political and national identity struggles of the 1960s are resurfacing. With the center's control loosened, the country is returning to old fault lines--religious, ethnic, tribal and, above all, economic. The country risks becoming dysfunctional even if it does not break up. "There could be a redrawing of the political map," says Darusman, "with the western part of Indonesia being pulled into the sphere of mainland Asia, while the eastern part is drawn into an Australian-dominated development area." Unless a more equitable system of distributing wealth is devised, tensions between the outlying regions and Jakarta will continue to intensify--and the concept of being an Indonesian will become ever more tenuous. "It is very difficult to argue cultural affinity as a ground for national unity," says Hilman Adil, a researcher for the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. He sees the elections as an opportunity to start over. "At the most basic level, this is a referendum on the Suharto era." The judicial, bureaucratic and military structures of Suharto's New Order, partly inherited from the Dutch, were designed to control a potentially hostile population. Today there is widespread reaction against the repressive hand of the status quo--Golkar, the ruling party under Suharto, barely dares to hold rallies for fear of being stoned by other campaigners. But few political leaders have proposed any new ideas to replace the discredited Suharto regime. Overcoming difference will be the key to Indonesia's future, both in the immediate aftermath of the elections and also in the longer term. After 50 years of nationhood, two strongmen presidents and two periods of violent change once they were toppled, the country still has not found an answer to the old question: What does it mean to be Indonesian? --WITH REPORTING BY DAVID LIEBHOLD/BANGKOK, ZAMIRA LOEBIS/BANDA ACEH AND JASON TEDJASUKMANA/AMBON
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