Cultural freedom
The opera house inaugurated by President Soeharto in Jakarta on Monday is said to be world-class. According to the construction company, the theater, which is located at Taman Mini in East Jakarta, is no less sophisticated than other outstanding venues like L'Opera in Paris, the Royal Opera House in London and the Sydney Opera House in Australia.
The inauguration should be welcomed and should also instill a sense of pride because Jakarta, and Indonesia, is very much in need of a modern theater. Both the 176-year-old Gedung Kesenian (Jakarta Play House), located near Pasar Baru, and the Taman Ismail Marzuki theater in Central Jakarta, lack sophisticated equipment and facilities.
The inauguration of the opera house should mark the beginning of efforts to develop culture in the nation, which, along with education, politics and law, has been neglected as a consequence of overzealous development of the economy.
That choice has caused us to fall behind other Asian countries in terms of cultural development. During the same period, Singapore successfully turned itself into the cultural hub for Southeast Asia without much fanfare. Its Kalang theater has staged many shows, including Les Miserables, by Cameron Mackintosh and The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber, both of which are world famous musicals. Furthermore, the auction house Christie's frequently holds sales of objet d'arts in the island city.
Cultural development, especially in developing countries, is impossible without the involvement of the government. Cultural activities in Jakarta reached their peak in the 1970s under the generous patronage of governor Ali Sadikin.
Since that short-lived blossoming, this nation has been left with a sense of backwardness because of the lack of cultural development, and has suffered in pain as it watched wonderful artistic creations die at the hands of trigger-happy security authorities at frequent intervals over the last three decades.
The list of victims of cultural oppression in the arts world alone is very long. Even some works by the country's most noted poet, W. S. Rendra, have been banned. The author has been the frequent recipient of severe intimidation and has been terrorized by unknown parties whom the authorities have refused to investigate.
Among some of the more recent victims of the censor's knife have been Suksesi by the popular Teater Koma, Sam Pek Eng Tay by the same group, and Pak Kanjeng, a play written by the well-known author Emha Ainun Najib. However, this list would not be complete if it did not include Marsinah Menggugat (Marsinah Accuses), written by playwright and actress Ratna Sarumpaet, and performed by her Satu Merah Panggung theater group. The play is a monolog tribute to Marsinah, a female labor activist who was brutally murdered in East Java in 1993.
Performance of all of these productions was banned for "security reasons", an illogical move if the authorities' claims that the nation is stable and secure are true.
With this somber backdrop the government needs to elaborate its policies and programs to encourage cultural development. It must treat culture as an intellectual activity, and shun the bland and meaningless pop art for which the ruling elite have recently shown a penchant. Artists must also be told if police will continue to view them as people infected with a subversive virus, or if they will finally be granted their artistic license?
If one wants to develop culture and the arts, of greatest importance is freedom of expression. Without this, the fruits of the new opera house will be nothing more than an elaborate propaganda trick played by an uncultured regime, and this nation will never be able to stem the onslaught, and block the negative impacts, of western culture.