Contending with a climate of fear

The international community recognizes four fundamental freedoms: Freedom of speech, of religion, from fear and from want. In Indonesia, all four are guaranteed by the 1945 Constitution. As this nation is still in a feverish festive mood, celebrating the country's 50th anniversary and the long list of its achievements, The Jakarta Post looks at the issue in the following story and five others on Page 5.

By Johannes Simbolon

JAKARTA (JP): Fear is inseparable from our daily lives. There is the fear of being mugged, fear of fire, fear of losing our job or loved ones. There is also fear of the unknown, such as ghosts or even death.

The latter also includes what philosopher Franz von Magnis Suseno describes as government-related fear, that is, when the government and its apparatus, the protector of the people, become the source of fear itself.

Indonesians once lived under such fear during the Dutch and Japanese occupations. There was the fear of forced labor, forced prostitution and arbitrary imprisonment. People lived an uncertain and anxious life because civil rights were not fully recognized.

Sukarno, then a young man of 29, best described this latter category of fear in his defense statements during his trial at Bandung's colonial court in 1930.

"... Are there rights here, where the penal code has a chapter on hate mongering, which provides the government unlimited power to annihilate any movement and imprison anyone it doesn't like? Are there rights here where critiques launched in front of the public easily incur rebuke and stoppage; where each meeting is filled with intelligences; where each leader is tailed by detectives wherever they go; where meeting prohibition is easily issued; where the secret of correspondences are often violated, as we witness by ourselves? Are there rights here, where only tips from spies or anonymous letters are considered as enough reason to stage raids everywhere, lock up tens of leaders in jails, send leaders into exiles?..." he said in his fiery, famous speech entitled Indonesia Accuses.

The question now: Is the fear our founding fathers had towards the tyrannical colonial governments in the past already buried in history?

With the country's 50-year-long independence, many kinds of fear have unmistakably disappeared. There are no longer any cases of forced labor or prostitution. Many countries are being torn by wars, but here people live peacefully despite its cultural diversity, thanks to well-maintained stability. Fear of crimes is still there, but within tolerable limits. More and more women, for example, are seen working until late at night and if there are crimes against them, the number is still thought of as acceptable.

Such are the country's achievements, which strive to provide a peaceful and prosperous life for its people.

It is not baseless at all if the government often proudly says Indonesia is one of the most secure countries in the world.

Magnis noted that as far as the freedom from government- related fear is concerned, Indonesia has also made considerable achievements. There is no all-encompassing fear as in police states. The public in general does not feel afraid of the police. None are afraid that their conversations are being monitored, or their telephones being bugged by the police. Some of the telephones may be bugged, Magnis said, but none seem afraid that their conversations will be stealthily overheard.

"In the (former communist) East Germany, people in restaurants always first looked to their right and left before they talked, afraid of the secret police. Here people never talk in restaurants in fear," he said.

However, there are still incidents which indicate, strongly, that fear, notably government-related fear, still reigns in certain areas of the lives of Indonesians.

First, there is the fear of being ill-treated in police custody, despite innocence or guilt. As many cases have shown, people suffer police beatings although they are later proved innocent. This fear is especially felt by the common people, who have no money or connections to guarantee their safety in the hands of the police, Magnis said.

Second, Magnis said, is the fear of being expropriated, which is mostly felt by common people. Many people in towns and rural areas live in fear of the prospect that arrival of certain projects in their area will mean the loss of their residences and livelihood.

Third, is the fear related to democratic freedom, that is the freedom of speech and organization. People are afraid to talk critically, gather in groups of larger than five without a permit, or set up new organizations, he added.

Fourth, is the fear that the government apparatus may kill people if they demonstrate. This belief originates from such past events -- the Tanjung Priok, Dili, Haur Koneng, Nipah, Lampung incidents -- where the government apparatus ended up killing protesters just because they could not professionally handle the demonstrations, according to Magnis.

"This wrongly implies that the country is not yet stable. In fact, after 50 years of independence and 30 years of successful development, such measures are not needed any longer," he said.

Loekman Soetrisno of Gadjah Mada University shares Magnis' views. In a recent discussion in Jakarta, he said that after independence Indonesians have enjoyed a brief egalitarian life.

Now, under the New Order administration, time seems to be returning to the "colonial" era. The fruits of independence are only enjoyed by a small elite group of society, while the majority of the people, the "common" people, remain powerless, neglected, anxious before a super-strong state.

As development becomes the ideology, the common people are required to make sacrifices, often forcibly, such as giving up their property for the sake of development. In most cases, Loekman said they cannot fight for their rights because the government feels "it can do no wrong", a principle exacerbated by legal uncertainties. As a result, people fear being accused of anti-development or anti-stability.

Despite many critiques, the New Order administration still believes in its stability-cum-development-centered policy as a means toward national prosperity.

"As a means, national stability is an approach in our endeavor to realize the national goal, that is, a secure and peaceful nation," Armed Forces Chief Gen. Feisal Tanjung once said.

To add to this, Lt. Gen. Moetojib, governor of the National Resilience Institute once said: "Some truths are best left unsaid if revealing them could cause unrest and disrupt national stability."

But men like Loekman believe that unless the government takes the necessary measures to reverse the current situation, large- scale disturbances will take place, as has happened in the former communist bloc, also known as super-strong states.

"Russia and ex-communist bloc countries were super-strong states to their peoples. But once the peoples were angered, because the states never acknowledged their rights, Russia and East Germany fell in the blink of an eye," Loekman said.

Indonesia's history itself clearly shows how the fearful authority of the Dutch brought birth to the angry generation of Sukarno in the past -- and, not long after that, the Dutch colonial regime fell.