East Timor's wounded psyche told<\/p>\n
Guns and ballot boxes; East Timor's vote for independence;
\nEdited by Damien Kingsbury; Monash Asia Institute 2000;
\nPaperback 201 pages.<\/p>\n
MELBOURNE (JP): For an Indonesian, even one who is conscious
\nof the nation's faults and shortcomings, Damien Kingsbury's Guns
\nand ballot boxes is not an easy book to read. It is emotionally
\nwearing, to say the least.<\/p>\n
You keep hoping that what you are reading is not true, and
\nthat if you turn another page it will tell you just that, but you
\nknow very well there will be no such let up. So you keep reading
\nuntil the disbelief, frustration and anger are so all-consuming
\nthat you have to stop and throw the book down. And throw it down
\nhard. And the next day you pick it up again, still hoping for a
\nglimmer of relief.<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, the chapters that stand out as courageously
\nhopeful are those written by Xanana Gusmao and Bishop Carlos
\nBelo, two East Timorese leaders with the unenviable task of
\ncleaning up the awful mess and rebuilding the nation from
\nscratch.<\/p>\n
The book focuses on the events and issues surrounding the East
\nTimor poll of Aug. 30, last year, the subsequent results of which
\nwere that 78.5 percent of East Timorese voters chose independence
\nfrom Indonesia.<\/p>\n
Six chapters of the book are first-hand accounts of people who
\nwere in East Timor during voter registration, the poll itself,
\nvote counting, and the violence and atrocities that devastated
\nthe territory afterwards. These are given a wider context by
\nother contributors, who place the East Timor tragedy in a global
\npicture.<\/p>\n
Reading the accounts of Anthony Smith, Helene van Klinken,
\nPeter Bartu, Hidajat Djajamihardja, Annemarie Devereux and Damien
\nKingsbury, even with an eye ever vigilant to detect any bias on
\nthe part of the writers, it is difficult to avoid accepting the
\nfacts.<\/p>\n
Individually and collectively, the accounts reveal that
\nIndonesia did not fulfill its obligations as specified in the
\ntripartite agreement signed on May 5, 1999, in New York. In the
\nagreement, the Indonesian police guarantee security for both the
\npro-integrationists as well as the pro-independence groups. Yet
\nvarious eye-witnesses told the increasingly and alarmingly
\nfamiliar story of the police standing by while the pro-
\nintegrationist militia bullied, terrorized even murdered those
\nsuspected or known to be pro-independence.<\/p>\n
It would be easy to dismiss the writers' reports as anti-
\nIndonesian bias. However, doing so leads to one of the baser
\nmoral crimes of denying other people's sufferings to avoid one's
\nown responsibility for those sufferings. It is not only an insult
\nto those who suffer, but also a blow to one's own integrity.<\/p>\n
One of the best and most sobering chapters was written by
\nHidajat Djajamihardja, a senior Radio Australia journalist, who
\nwent to East Timor to cover events surrounding the poll. Hidajat
\nnot only relates his experiences, on more than one occasion being
\nheavily persuaded by military authorities not to put them in a
\nbad light, even physically assaulted, but also provides a
\ncomprehensive overview of the media in Indonesia during the New
\nOrder era.<\/p>\n
In doing so, Hidajat modestly conveys the message that he was
\nnot carrying out a particularly heroic act in the context of what
\nIndonesian journalists have for decades had to go through in
\ntheir day-to-day work.<\/p>\n
For that reason the fact that nothing has been written about
\nthe Indonesian journalists who were terrorized, even shot at,
\nwhile covering the same events, is a yawning and to a certain
\nextent hurtful gap.<\/p>\n
If, in this era of germinating democracy, there is also a
\nreawakening of nationalism, it is only natural. However, to
\nachieve mature nationalism, the fervor does not necessarily have
\nto be accompanied by a denial of the more unflattering parts of
\nhistory.<\/p>\n
Guns and ballot boxes after all, tells of only one corner of
\nIndonesia's wounded psyche. Now for the healing.<\/p>\n
-- Dewi Anggraeni<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/east-timors-wounded-psyche-told-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }