Contending with a climate of fear

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.