East Timorese need time to adapt

The remarks attributed to East Timor's Bishop Belo which appeared in a Jakarta magazine recently have drawn reactions from various parties. Scholar Franz Magnis-Suseno SJ takes a close look into the issue.

JAKARTA (JP): The last two weeks have seen a growing debate over a statement purportedly given by Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo of Dili to the magazine Gatra. That magazine reported that he suggested making East Timor a Catholic special region.

Bishop Belo, who happens to be in Rome on a visit to the Holy See, has since indicated that this was not what he was trying to convey in the interview.

I do not want to enter into what it was exactly that Bishop Belo said in this commentary, nor how the questionable sentence got into the Gatra text. Regardless of what Bishop Belo may actually have said, perhaps this question deserves discussion: What about the idea of a Catholic special region itself?

The answer is obvious. Closing down a region like East Timor to all non-Catholics -- either by denying them right of worship, or by making membership in the Catholic Church the condition for a residence permit -- would not only be incompatible with our Pancasila philosophy, it would run counter to internationally agreed standards of human rights.

It would also be without precedent in this century (the last, and in fact the only time something like this happened was in 16th century Spain and Portugal when, after the Reconquista, all Jews and Moslems were expelled -- a shameful thing to do even by late Middle Age standards, and one of the greatest human and cultural tragedies in Europe's history).

There is, in this century, not a single instance, even in countries with an almost 100 percent Catholic population, of a Catholic bishop having suggested such a thing. It would be clearly against Catholic teaching on religious freedom and on the relationship between Church and state, as formulated at the Second Vatican Council.

Even if East Timor was an independent state, such as Fiji, or Trinidad and Tobago, any demand to close it to non-Catholics should, as a matter of course, be resolutely rejected.

I may add that playing with such ideas gives Indonesian Catholics a chilling feeling up the spine. As our Indonesian Moslem brothers have not failed to point out during the past weeks: What if they suggested the same thing in regions where Moslems have a more that 90 percent majority (as in West, Middle and East Java or in most provinces of Sumatra)?

What Bishop Belo has suggested on several occasions is something quite different: If one wants to have peace in East Timor, if one wants violent resistance to integration with Indonesia to die down, then don't shock the East Timorese by flooding them with people from outside, with different religions, customs and attitudes. Wait at least, until integration has also reached the hearts of the East Timorese.

Bishop Belo's suggestion makes good sense, especially if we put it into the context of the recent rioting in East Timor, caused among other things by the remarks of a non-East Timorese official which caused Catholic to feel insulted. For the record: The steeply rising number of such incidents, some of sacrilegious character in eastern Indonesia during the last three years has become a matter of serious concern.

These riots are extremely regrettable. As a consequence, hundreds of Moslem, some of them having lived for 10 years or more in East Timor, have fled that province with their families. But, as the government has clearly seen, these riots were primarily not religiously motivated. They were an explosion of anti-newcomer resentment.

In other parts of Indonesia, too, such situations are sensitive. In the province of Aceh, for example, 50 years after independence, only two parishes exist for the many Catholics, people from the Batak regions, Chinese, Javanese employees and the people of Flores looking for jobs. One is in Banda Aceh and another at Lawe Desky.

In East Timor, the Non-Catholic population has multiplied within a few years from about one thousand to something like 60,000. They are seeping in day after day. They may be teachers, civil servants, or military men. Many of the bigger markets have been taken over by newcomers. They also have built, as is their right, their often acoustically high profile places of worship.

For the East Timorese this huge influx of outsiders into a region not used to cultural diversity and still in the grips of fear can only be a shocking intrusion into their way of life. They feel that their cultural identity is threatened. They also are afraid that they will lose out to the better skilled newcomers, afraid of losing their land, of becoming a minority in their own country. And when emotions boil over, these places of worship -- being the most obvious symbols of newcomers -- naturally become the object of their wrath.

What the East Timorese need is time. It will take time for them to learn to maintain, and at the same time develop, their cultural identity within the framework of multi-cultural and multi-religious Indonesia. The last 20 years, marred by civil and guerrilla welfare, the heavy presence of security forces and a general atmosphere of fear have done nothing to help them on the way.

Thus Bishop Belo was not preaching a kind of Catholic fundamentalism which not even the most conservative prelate would consider. On the country, we should listen to him carefully -- precisely if we want the political integration of East Timor to become a social and cultural one too.

In conclusion, allow me to venture to make a suggestion to Bishop Belo: Please, if you give Gatra (or Radio Australia for that matter) an interview again, do insist that any article based on the contents of that interview not be published without your explicit written placet, and, please, have somebody who knows the Indonesian (or the English) language really well -- both linguistically and politically -- go over it with a fine-toothed comb, so that the statements attributed to you actually do express what you really want to say.

Dr. Franz Magnis-Suseno SJ teaches social philosophy at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy in Jakarta.