Democracy not the cure-all for what ails society: Brennan

Father Frank Brennan SJ AO is director of Uniya, a social justice research and action center based in Sydney, Australia, which focuses on justice for marginalized groups as well as for refugee rights, the bill of rights and human rights in Australia and East Asia.

A noted Australian lawyer as well as a Jesuit priest, Brennan visited Indonesia recently at the invitation of the Australian Studies Center, University of Indonesia. He was a speaker at a conference, jointly organized by the center and the Australia Indonesia Institute, in Jakarta on Jan. 28.

He was on a panel with noted Muslim intellectual Nurcholish Madjid, the rector of Paramadina University. The following is an excerpt from an interview with Brennan which covered a wide range of issues, including human rights, interfaith relations, East Timor as well as the conflict in Maluku.

Question: Indonesia has been ravaged by a prolonged series of riots and conflicts, including religious ones. How do you view these disturbances?

Answer: In a society as complex as Indonesia, wherever you have groups who identify themselves differently and identify each other differently, then if there are causes which could be causing tension, inevitably there will be an element of that tension which is then identified with the differences, which might be religious or ethnic as well.

In this case, what you need is a way of ensuring that the interests and the world view and the aspirations of the different groups have been accommodated.

For a long time there was the idea that the dwifungsi (sociopolitical role) of the military would help to provide a wall of protection between different groups, and that sometimes minority groups would see themselves being protected from the majority by the intervention of the military.

But obviously military and police activity is not the best way to be able to effect social reconciliation.

What's going on in Indonesia now is that you are moving toward a new democracy where there is a concern for the rule of law, or for insurance that the rights and the interests and the aspirations of the different groups are given equal protection.

The riots and the clashes attest that we don't have that as yet.

You are just moving toward that, and so you have to be depend very strongly on the charismatic reputation and the charismatic power of your President Gus Dur (Abdurrahman Wahid), who when it comes to religious matters people can say, here is a man who as leader has a proven record of being inclusive and of being equally respectful of the rights of different groups, including, for example, the Christian minority.

You said the military "dual function" in a way protects the minority.

It does, but I mean, for example, I have met some Catholics in Indonesia, particularly some Chinese-Indonesian businesspeople, who would say that when you have a strong military, then that provides the guarantee that even the minority can be engaged freely in their business enterprises and their property can be protected.

While conceding that, I would say that the dwifungsi of the military is a poor second option, offered against ultimately developing the proper operation of the rule of law in a democracy.

You mean in the absence of the rule of law the military was ...

From what I have heard from people in Indonesia, one of the benefits of the New Order was very rapid economic development. And maybe that economic development could not have occurred so rapidly if there had been a full-blown democracy with the protection of the rule of law.

But there comes a stage in the development of society, where there has been rapid economic development and then also some increasing education of the society generally, where there will be demands for proper protection of the liberty of everyone.

And there also will be the demand for some equitable distribution of the benefits of that economic development. Now I think what happened in Indonesia at one and the same time was, particularly with the currency crisis, was heightened concern that the benefits of economic development were being unfairly and at times corruptly distributed. But, secondly, that there was very inadequate protection of the liberties of persons, particularly from minority groups.

How would you describe Indonesia in this transition period?

As a foreigner and a Christian, I can say without causing offense that Indonesia does not yet have a fully developed democracy with the rule of law, with a fully independent judiciary which is able to give full protection to all groups, including unpopular minorities.

But that is to be expected because with the level of economic development for a country with 200 million people, that (democracy) can only come very slowly.

Nurcholish Madjid said at the conference that Indonesia's democracy is still only a year old.

I also think free discussion here is only one year old. When I was here last year doing the language course in Yogyakarta, I remember speaking with one of my students and she said to me that Australia is a federation ...

Now she thought federation was a bad thing because she identified it with the Dutch period. But for me as a constitutional lawyer, I know that the advantage of a federation is that it gives the possibility for different groups in different areas to be more self-governing while being part of a united nation. That is the whole theory of the federation.

In your conference paper, you said the greatest religious challenge will be the relationship between Muslims and Christians, something that Indonesia is facing right now.

One of the things that we saw at the conference was that there was respectful complementary dialog between myself as an Australian Christian and Prof. Madjid as an Indonesian Muslim.

And as I said, yes, I think if he and I had come together 50 years ago, then each of us would have doubted the possibility that the other one could be saved, and we would have been very righteous about our own salvation.

But coming together today, what we do in terms of our religious dialog is that we are very happy to conceive that the other person can be saved.

I as a Christian can say in good faith to the person who is Muslim that, of course, we believe in God and we believe in the same God, and so I think what is essential for this sort of dialog is a humility for each of us before God and before each other.

And as Indonesia is moving toward the adoption of many of the international human rights instruments, there will be insights which people who are Muslims and Indonesians can bring those instruments which would be different from the insights that I have as a Westerner and as a Christian. But the insights can be equally valid.

But there are Muslim hard-liners who detest Madjid.

Yes, and I am sure that those Muslims who detest him would have no time for me and would not want to have this sort of discussion.

But our role as religious people in a public forum in civil society is to create a greater space, and a respectful space, for the dialog between people like myself and Dr. Madjid to occur.

For other people, who may not have tolerance, may be able see that this tolerance is something which is not only socially useful, but it is also true.

Of course, there are also people who are intolerant Christians who would say 'we want nothing to do with people who are Muslim'.

I think we have to admit that the answer is not to be found by simply comparing those who are the least tolerant in each community, neither in the dialog with those who are the most tolerant.

In your paper you referred to a conversation with an Eritrean Catholic priest who said "whenever Christians and Muslims are found in equal numbers, there is trouble because people who are not truly Christian nor Muslim are able to exploit religious and tribal differences".

In any social situation, if there is some difference which is being made worse because of the situation, like poverty or lack of economic opportunity, that difference will come into play.

For example, if I am a Christian, as a member of a minority group in a local community where the majority is Muslim, I would think that most of the jobs or most of the money is going to the Muslims. Then what starts as a conflict and misunderstanding about the inequitable distribution of opportunity becomes a conflict about religion.

And then those within the different groups are able to use the label of religion in order to make the conflict worse. What all of us who are religious have to admit is that it is the wrong exploitation of our religious identification because all of the great religions teach about the need to respect the other, the dignity of the other and the equal worth of the other.

An interesting twist concerning religious identification was when people said that perhaps one of the reasons Australia was so involved or concerned with East Timor was that the people in East Timor were Catholic.

Over 25 years, many East Timorese moved to Australia. Within the Catholic community in Australia there were many personal relationship established between East Timorese and Australians, and I think that definitely contributed in the democratic process in Australians being concerned about the situation in East Timor.

But it is a mistake for Indonesians to think that because the East Timorese are Catholics, then the Australian government wanted to commit troops in order to protect these Catholics.

I don't think the religion of the East Timorese has anything to do with this in that sense. Rather, it is a community of the people who were close neighbors of Australia. And one very strong emotional factor in Australia has always been that during World War II the East Timorese had hoped to defend the Australian soldiers against the Japanese.

What fueled the spirit of the Australian people about this was exactly the same as the spirit of the Australian people in supporting Indonesian independence from 1945 to 1950.

The whole idea in Australia is about what we called the fair go and sticking up for what we call the underdog, the smaller person. I think that is a more accurate description of the East Timor situation.

But Aceh did not get as much attention from Australia.

The situation in Aceh is very different because that is more as an internal Indonesian affair. Aceh has always been part of the Republic of Indonesia.

There may be moves in places like Aceh for greater autonomy or greater protection of human rights, and I have sympathy with those things, but they are more internal Indonesian matters.

East Timor was never just an internal Indonesian matter, but we had a government in Australia who wanted to treat it as an internal Indonesian matter. And that's the way it remained until president Habibie said he would allow the people of East Timor to have a plebiscite.

Well, in a sense, that was like breaking open the dam wall and then allowing the will of the Australian people that has been there for 20 years to say, right we have to make sure that the voice of the people of East Timor is heard.

Could we say that Australians think in a more legalistic way than Indonesians?

For some it would be legalistic, but for others it would not be legalistic. It would instead be the simple proposition that Aceh was always part of Indonesia. Many of the East Timorese have always said that they don't want to be part of Indonesia.

As the coauthor of the book Finding Common Ground and Reconciling Our Differences, which addresses the issue of reconciliation between the Aboriginal people and whites in Australia, you could perhaps shed some light on a similar issue at our end, say the Maluku conflict.

I have to say to myself it is obviously very complex; I cannot pretend to understand it. I can spell out some principles which I think should be followed, but the application of those principles has to be done by the people who are experts, that is those in the local situation.

In Australia we have not had that sort of complexity about religion, but we have had that sort of complexity about our relationship with our Aboriginal people. And so that is where the issue of reconciliation has been focused in Australia, where for 200 years since the arrival of the Europeans there has been a situation of a radical lack of reconciliation.

Why?

In part because there was no recognition either of rights of the Aboriginal people to their lands and to sustain themselves as self-determining communities, so we have wrestled with it and it has been very difficult. This is particularly with the Howard government, which has been less sympathetic to the Aborigines than was the previous Labor government. Then there have been two things to be done.

The Aboriginal people have always said reconciliation can be likened to what we might say in religious terms is "cheap grace" -- just trying to paper over the differences and saying forget about your just claims, let's just pretend everything is now over, let's just pretend we now have a level playing field and we will forget about the history, forget about your claims.

The Aboriginal people have said you need three things for reconciliation: respect, recognition and justice. The only thing that can ever work is if we are at the table. The only outcome which is worthwhile is one which follows from a process where we are equal participants. So reconciliation does not work if the government from above says, 'this is the answer, this is what you will do'.

What other lessons could be learned from the Aboriginal issue in Australia?

The lesson to learn is that when people do have legal rights, then there is far greater capacity for reaching a compromise that people can own together. And that's what reconciliation is about.

Some say the Maluku conflict is in a way a legacy from 16th century Western colonial powers, when they forcibly converted Muslims to Christianity. What do you think?

It is not unlike what also used to go on in Europe at that time, where the people's religion would depend on the religion of the king.

What we can say nowadays as we look back was that was very untheological, that it was ridiculous and no one now would suggest, for example, that I would be a Christian because John Howard is a Christian.

Religion is an intensely personal thing, but with this history what we have is the name of religion, of religiosity being placed upon individuals and groups who then are engaged in political and military combat. But in a sense the labels of Christian and Muslims were often simply that, labels.

In the 16th century that was people's world view, but it's definitely not our world view now.

In any historical situation, we can always look back and say we blame history or the colonial power, but in the end for any human society it is about saying that we now have to take the responsibility of the situation, including our historical inheritance.

We are taking responsibility for it, we then have to shape it. Now maybe if out of that historical situation there has been an entrenched historical conflict between groups, the net then is where the idea of reconciliation becomes critical, where the two groups come to the table and say it is a complex history, we can not revisit it.

But now we must draw the line together so we own our past. We can come together in the present so that we can shape a future together which is better than the past.

So it has much to do with the locals today as the ones who experienced the history themselves?

Reconciliation must always have to come from the local situation. And for those who are not really in the local situation, the only thing we can contribute is a more dispassionate step of the principle in the hope that those who are then embroiled in the conflict can embrace those principles more readily and come to a reconciliation themselves.

Of course, when you had that sort of conflict the only two outside forces which could be productive are the independent, dispassionate articulation of the principles and, secondly, the charismatic leadership of someone like Gus Dur who can be a catalyst. Without that catalyst, there would not be the prospect of bringing the people together.

In Uniya's leaflet, it is said the most important voices in political debates are those who suffer discrimination, injustice and prejudice. How do you make those voices heard? Perhaps in liberal Australia these voices could be easily aired.

Oh no, it is very difficult. My work at Uniya has something to do with the rights of the Aboriginal people, but also the rights of refugees and asylum seekers, the boat people that turned up.

Very strict laws are being made in Australia about boat people, and there are Australians like myself who are very concerned about situations of three-year-old and four-year-old children who may be from refugee families being held in custody in remote places.

Some of them may be put there for a long time. We are very concerned about these people, and we often don't get a good hearing from the major political parties or from the government. They think we are very soft, romantic liberals, they don't realize there should be better recognition of the human rights of these people. They say that we would have boats turning up all the time in Australia.

So even in a liberal democratic country, it is still very difficult to defend the underdog?

Oh yes, always. And this is why democracy is always hard work, and democracy can never be simply 50 percent plus one wins the day, because if you say 50 percent plus one wins the day, then 49 percent can miss out.

In democracy majoritarianism, 50 percent plus one is very good for protecting the rights of those who are in the majority, but as well as a democratic election, you also need a strong system of the rule of law, with an independent judiciary and the strong legal system which can protect the rights of the minority.

So that the majority has to say that, even if we have strong majority support for crushing the rights of this minority group because we don't like them, 'no you cannot do that'.

Life in a democracy is about ensuring that even those in the unpopular minorities have their rights as well protected as those who are in the majority. So that is part of the work of our organization.

If it is difficult for a liberal country, it will be even more difficult for an emerging democracy like Indonesia. What did you do in overcoming these challenges?

The good thing about democracy is that you have the opportunity to participate and it is through that participation that you make a difference.

But in a country like Australia, you still have to accept that on many issues money talks, and if you are there trying to represent the poor or the marginalized then it can be very difficult to get a hearing.

I have always been very strongly of the view that you work on two fronts. One is chipping away at the government and the courts, getting the rights, and the other is educating the public to accept and to understand and to embrace the need for these special laws for the benefit of the Aboriginal people.

The goal you want to achieve is not just like the improvement of the situation of the Aboriginal people. You want improvement of the situation of the Aboriginal people with public acceptance because, particularly like the Aboriginal people who live in small country towns, they have to live side by side with whites. So what you want is a situation of good relations as well as the protection of their rights.

So democracy is definitely not a panacea?

I don't want to sound depressing for those who are reforming in Indonesia, but let's make no mistake -- once you have a democratic system of government, it does not mean that heaven has arrived on earth.

It just means that you have a better system of trying to work and live together in the community. (hbk/anr)