After the attacks in Bali, can we still live with our modern Myths?
After the attacks in Bali, can we still live with our modern Myths?
Farish A. Noor, Berlin
Writing against the current of popular opinion these days is
an unceasing struggle against the current of stale cliches and
platitudes. Immediately after the recent bombings on the
Indonesian island of Bali the familiar refrains were heard:
"destruction of the paradise island", "loss of a tourist haven",
etc, etc. While it is true that Bali has indeed been seen (and
sold) as a tourists' paradise, we forget that the island has a
darker side to its history.
Bali, like the rest of Southeast Asia, inherits at best a
troubled past. The 1950s and 1960s witnessed some of the
bloodiest conflict ever seen in Southeast Asia. The Vietnam war
led to the deaths of millions, and contributed to the
destabilization of the region as a whole.
Indonesia was one country where the battle for the hearts and
minds of the people was fought in earnest. Following a failed
coup by the Indonesian communists in 1965, the right-wing
nationalists of the country, with the active support of the
Indonesian Army, began a nation-wide purge that led to
the massacre of hundreds of thousands.
Bali, the island paradise was not spared. Across the island
right-wing mobs, with the support of the army and local
officials, went hunting for leftists to maim and murder.
Bali was later sold as a tourist paradise; an idyllic retreat
that was a sanctuary from the troubles of the world, like some
modern-day consumerist Shangri-La of infinite promise. But the
myth of Bali rings hollow when contrasted to the realities of
Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia.
Which brings us to the present. And life in present-day
Indonesia is depressingly hard for many.
Should it be proven that religious militants were indeed
responsible for last week's attack on Bali, it would certainly
not come as news to the Indonesians themselves. Indonesia's brush
with religiously inspired militants goes all the way back to the
1960s. During the anti-Communist purge of 1965, right-wing
religious movements -- including Muslim, Christian and even Hindu
ones -- were allowed to destroy the offices and homes of leftist
sympathizers.
The mobs that burned down the offices of the Indonesian
Communist party, and who killed suspected Communists all over the
country, were given a free hand by the security forces who
conveniently looked the other way. No-one raised questions about
the potential danger of politicized religion then.
In the late 1970s a mysterious group calling itself the
Komando Jihad appeared. The Komando Jihad was the first group of
its kind. Its members were from the disaffected youth of the big
cities, notably Jakarta. In 1981 it staged the country's first
ever hijacking of a plane when it took control of a Garuda
Airlines DC-9. The hijackers were caught and many of them killed
by the Indonesian security forces, but word soon got out that the
very same group had been under the control of maverick elements
within the Indonesian Army itself.
Two decades on, the specter of clandestine militant groups
still haunts the country. In the late 1990s groups like Laskar
Jihad emerged, making the headlines when they sent their hot-
headed members to fight a holy war against the Christians in
Ambon in the Moluccan islands. Following Washington's declaration
of the global "war on terror" the Indonesian government felt
compelled to come down hard on groups like Laskar Jihad.
So Indonesians can be forgiven if they seem less than
convinced about the stories they hear and read about the Jamaah
Islamiyah and the Bali bombings. For a nation brought low by the
East Asian economic crisis of 1997, the Bali bombing of 2002, the
Jakarta bombings of 2003 and 2004, and the tsunami of last year;
there are other bread-and-butter issues to consider.
The violence we see in Indonesia today is the culmination of a
grand experiment that has gone disastrously wrong. For nearly
three decades the dictators of Southeast Asia were supported by
their Western allies as long as they remained on the right side:
The Western bloc. Tarted up as she was, Bali was and remained a
painted mask for many. For carefree foreign tourists with money
and time to spend, a trip to Indonesia meant a holiday in Bali,
with perhaps a few hours of waiting in the Jakarta airport lobby
along the way.
The blasts in Bali have torn off that mask and laid bare the
realities of this country of two hundred and forty million souls.
Indonesia remains a country in search of its destiny and its
struggle towards democracy remains a difficult and painful one.
The myth of Bali was a distraction that averted our eyes from the
complexities and painful realities of the country itself, and for
too long it served as a convenient diversion for those who
preferred to entertain the polite fiction that life is a bed of
roses.
Can we, living in the turbulent world we live in today, still
entertain the myth of a tropical paradise that is removed from
the rest of the world? If we have grown wise enough to know that
"free trade" is never free; that "holy causes" have been used to
justify the unholiest of crimes; and that fantasies are just a
form of escapism; then perhaps we should all grow up and see
through the mask of Bali, to realize that behind the smile of the
Balinese waiter is the simple desire to live a dignified life,
without remaining forever on his knees to serve the whims of rich
tourists.
If the myth of Bali has been irreparably shattered, then whose
myth was it in the first place? No, there are no safe havens in
this world of ours, and perhaps the human race is not entitled to
a little piece of paradise on earth after all.
The writer is an Academic Researcher, Centre for Modern
Orient Studies (ZMO), Berlin.