Even in worst of times they turn nation ideals into effect
Even in worst of times they turn nation ideals into effect
By Jeffrey A. Winters
CHICAGO, Illinois (JP): "Everywhere today one finds a feeling
of dissatisfaction," observed Mohammad Hatta in 1956, a week
before he resigned as Sukarno's vice president. "The just
Indonesia we are all waiting for is still far away."
Although Hatta's assessment came as Indonesia's brief
experiment with democracy was ending, it echoes with surprising
relevance even as democracy is emerging again.
"When one looks at recent developments in our country and
society," he said, "one gets the impression that after the
independence of Indonesia had been achieved, with no small
sacrifice, our idealistic leaders and freedom fighters were
pushed back."
And in their place, "political-economic profiteers came to the
foreground."
"They have used the national movement and its slogans for
their ends," Hatta wrote bitterly, "and have ridden on the backs
of the political parties for these same private ends."
"This has inevitably resulted in political and economic
anarchy, followed in its wake by a reign of corruption and
demoralization," the vice president observed.
In despair, Hatta reflected on those who had sacrificed so
much for such a disappointing outcome: "It is clear that it was
not this kind of a Free Indonesia that was visualized by our
freedom fighters of early days."
How much greater Hatta's anguish would have been had he known
that almost a million innocent Indonesians would die horrible
deaths because of one of the 20th century's most ruthless
dictators.
What would he have said if he knew that democracy would be
subverted for four decades while a power-elite stole the
country's riches and piled up its debts?
Despite passionate words like these, Hatta is remembered by
most Indonesians as a dry intellectual and not as a man of the
people.
It takes an activist voice much closer to the Indonesian soul
to capture fully the exhilaration and anguish of the nation's
struggle for justice and freedom.
A hundred years ago, on the northern coast of Java, a young
woman named Kartini wrote these words:
"This is a story of three brown girls from a tropical country
in the East. They were born with eyes that were blind but had
their eyes opened; pressed to observe, to relish, and to admire
things of beauty and value in life."
"And now, after having grown accustomed to the light and the
beauty, after having grown to love the sun, to love the
surrounding world that had been illuminated around them, a
blindfold has been pulled over their eyes again. They have been
cast back into the world of darkness from which they had come,
from which all people and every ancestor had always lived."
Read one way, Kartini's three girls remind us that struggles
in life are never a simple straight line. After victories there
are sometimes defeats, and after light there can be periods of
darkness.
But Kartini has a much more subtle message as well. In the
end, the three girls returned to darkness. But unlike their
ancestors, who lived their whole lives without sight or light,
the girls had had a chance to see.
And even when blindfolded and in darkness again, what they had
seen and felt could not be erased or taken from them.
It is much harder to repress a slave who has struggled
successfully for her freedom, and then is enslaved again, than it
is to repress one who has lived her whole life in the darkness of
bondage.
The words of Hatta and Kartini are important at this juncture
in Indonesia's history. Through great pain and sacrifice,
Indonesians recently overthrew yet another long period of
oppression. They broke through Kartini's veil of darkness into
light.
The excitement many feel is genuine and justified. And so too
is the disgust and despair. Kartini and Hatta call our attention
to different aspects of the same basic struggle of the human
spirit. We are reminded that breaking through to the light does
not just happen automatically. Real people struggle and make real
sacrifices.
And the black clouds that block the light, or the forces
trying to cast the country back into darkness, also represent
real people and social forces as well -- those Hatta criticized
as "political-economic profiteers."
Every country and every era has its share of opportunists.
Like the Dutch before, the Soeharto-military regime bought and
intimidated many people into betraying the nation's founding
ideals expressed so eloquently in the 1945 Constitution:
equality, justice, prosperity, and the rule of law.
No matter how many thousands or millions join in the betrayal,
no dictator or regime ever succeeds in getting everyone to join
the opportunists. There are those who never surrender, no matter
how sweet the temptation or dangerous the threat. These are
Indonesia's greatest sons and daughters.
Thanks to movies, we imagine these people as being tall,
strong, fearless, beautiful, or handsome. We imagine that a
special light shines on their heads and that they are geniuses.
Indonesians often fantasize that these figures have special
powers, that they are stronger than bullets and bombs, or have
mystical visions in their dreams.
But the truth is even more surprising and amazing than this.
The truth is that these people are ordinary human beings like you
and me, except in one important respect: they believe deeply in
the basic principles of humanity, and they apply them with
remarkable determination in their daily lives.
Other than that, they are made of ordinary flesh and blood.
The telephone threats against them and their families always
cause them genuine terror. The beatings and electric shocks of
torturers still cause them terrible pain. Rapes still degrade
them and cause them life-long trauma. And bullets fired by
snipers still cause their hearts to stop beating forever.
These individuals are never perfect, nor are they always
completely consistent. They make errors in judgment both for
themselves and for others. They are not angels. They are simply
remarkable human beings.
Whatever their strengths or weaknesses, they have certain
things in common. They do not sell out, nor do they give up
easily in the face of adversity. They constantly seek new
knowledge and new allies in their struggle for justice and basic
human dignity.
In 1956 Hatta was right that justice in Indonesia was still
far away. But today as in the past, there are people working
against great odds to bring it closer. Although most of them are
not even aware of it, they are part of an historic process in
Indonesia that reaches back hundreds of years before Kartini's
struggles on behalf of women and the nation.
There are two reasons to write about these people now. One is
to remind those living through this difficult moment in
Indonesia's history that despite the daily barrage of depressing
news, there are many committed Indonesians from the very young to
the very old who are doing honorable and important work.
As they stubbornly refuse to become cynics, they give everyone
else a reason to keep hoping and expecting that conditions will
improve.
The second reason is that history shows that the real grunt-
work of progress for any country is always done by these special
people, not by the big political names on the front pages of
newspapers. The big players follow behind and take all the glory
after the risks and dangers have already been faced by the
relatively humble and unknown activists working at the grassroots
level. In short, what these special Indonesians do matters far
more than most people realize.
Thus far I have been talking in the abstract about these great
Indonesians. This is dangerous because there is a tendency for
powerful people who do not deserve recognition to imagine that we
are talking about them.
To avoid this problem, let me be specific about where we will
not find these extraordinary Indonesians.
We will not find them in the highest positions in the
government. Indonesia has a small number of very good leaders in
office now -- though they are greatly outnumbered by thousands of
mediocrities, fakers, crooks, thugs, opportunists, and even cold-
blooded killers. Unfortunately, thus far not one of Indonesia's
good leaders has shown evidence of greatness or excellence.
We will not find Indonesia's greatest sons and daughters among
the leaders of the military. There may be some truly visionary
and principled officers below the rank of brigadier general. But
all of the top officers made their careers as aggressive climbers
in Soeharto's New Order.
A small minority in the military went along reluctantly,
trying to avoid the regime's bloodshed and brutality. However,
the great majority, without conscience and humanity, participated
with varying degrees of enthusiasm in the atrocities of the
regime.
What all the officers had in common was their willingness to
betray the most important principles of the nation in pursuit of
their own ambitions of power and wealth, while they helped
Soeharto and his cronies to pursue theirs.
No matter how many ribbons and medals they have on their
chests, and no matter where they are buried, these officers will
never be heroes in the eyes of the people.
Nor, finally, will we find a single great Indonesian among the
country's top judges and bureaucrats. They sold their principles
decades ago. They have been involved in injustice and corruption
for so long that they no longer have any idea what these concepts
even mean.
These people will remain as obstacles to progress as long as
Indonesians allow them to maintain their grip on their rotten
offices.
So who are the country's greatest citizens and where can we
find them? I cannot mention all of them. And for each one
mentioned here, there are a hundred more like them whom I have
never met and whose contributions I have not seen or heard about.
Although they are invisible, these great people exist at every
level of society -- in the villages and urban neighborhoods, in
the schools and universities, in the hospitals and orphanages,
and in the mosques, temples, and churches.
I begin by mentioning some of the ones who did not just take
risks and make sacrifices, but who made the ultimate sacrifice by
giving their lives in the pursuit of freedom and justice.
The first is Marsinah, the young woman from East Java who lost
her life in 1993 for daring to demand that laborers should be
treated like human beings. She acted peacefully and nonviolently.
The same cannot be said for those who raped her, beat her, and
left her bleeding in a ditch to die.
Marsinah's killers wanted to send a message to millions of
Indonesians in factories across the country that they could be
safe only if they would be silent.
Marsinah will live on for Indonesians as a symbol of bravery
at a time when standing up for fairness and justice was very
dangerous. Her death marked the beginning of the growing outrage
that finally reached its peak in May of 1998.
Fuad Muhammad Syafruddin, known to his friends simply as Udin,
is another important figure who gave his life fighting for
principles Indonesians hold dear. A journalist who courageously
investigated and wrote about corruption at the highest levels in
the Bantul regency, Udin was beaten in the head with a pipe and
left to die at his home near Yogyakarta in 1996.
Through Udin's sacrifice, reporters and the press have become
stronger. People in the media understand that until Udin's
attackers are brought to justice, the struggle for genuine
freedom of the press will be unfinished.
Yap Yun Hap died in September of 1999, together with six
others (one was a nine-year old boy), from military bullets as he
sat quietly along the curb in front of Atmajaya University in
Jakarta.
An engineering student from the University of Indonesia, Yap
Yun Hap symbolizes the importance of simply being there and being
a part of a movement. While other students remained at home or
sat in foodstalls chatting with their friends, this young man
stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the students who rejected the
military's push for a tough new Security Law that would block the
progress of democratization.
President Habibie and the generals thought they could pass the
security law quietly while no one was looking. Thanks to the
determination and sacrifice of people like Yap and the others who
died that September day, the government has been blocked from
implementing the Security Law (PKB Act).
Jafar Siddiq Hamzah must be counted as an extraordinary
Indonesian, even though he was a permanent resident of the United
States. Like all the others mentioned here, he believed deeply in
struggles for justice based on democracy and nonviolence.
Jafar's commitment to peace proved too great a threat to those
committed to violence in Aceh. Sidney Jones, the widely respected
head of Human Rights Watch Asia, said Jafar was "one of the most
dedicated human rights defenders I've ever known."
Through his International Forum for Aceh, Jafar sought to
inform the international community and Indonesians about the
truth in Aceh -- particularly how the people there had been
brutalized for years by the Indonesian military.
In August of 2000, the soft-spoken Jafar was abducted,
tortured over a period of a month while President Wahid's
government did nothing to locate him, and finally dumped in a
ravine with three others. His face had been smashed and his naked
body was wrapped in barbed wire.
There are also those I call "The Eighteen." They are the
Indonesian sons and daughters who died at Trisakti University and
the Semanggi overpass in May and November of 1998. Four students
at the university, plus six students and eight more demonstrators
at the overpass.
These young men and women were shot by high-powered military
rifles. Several were struck by snipers in the head.
Who were these people and what did they do for their country?
Why were they there, even though their families sometimes urged
them to stay home for safety?
Surely they did not go to the demonstrations intending to die.
They all knew there was a risk, but none believed the military
would shoot unarmed civilians demonstrating nonviolently.
They joined the demonstration because they knew change could
not come if no one stepped forward and acted. They understood
that rights and freedoms are never gained through passivity.
And for every Indonesian reporter today who writes critical
news without fear, for every editor who publishes without
wondering if the presses will be shut down, for every citizen who
talks openly instead of whispers, for every teacher who teaches
the truth instead of the lies of the regime, and for every
legislator who now stands up to the executive branch and the
military -- a debt of gratitude is owed to these people who
suffered unspeakable agony and gave their final heartbeat.
When people like Marsinah, Udin, or Jafar die, or when
hundreds of thousands perish in East Timor, or when a million
souls are exterminated in a matter of weeks in 1965, justice gets
established through the process of demanding accountability.
Who did it, how, why? Discovering the answers to these
questions is just as important as punishing those responsible.
Indonesia's greatest citizens are not just those who die in
the name of justice and democracy, but also those who carry on in
the same spirit. They span several generations from the very
young to the very old. And yet they share a common bond in the
objectives they struggle for.
Let me begin by mentioning two who are old in body but strong
in spirit. The first is Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Indonesians will
never understand their history or themselves until they read and
understand the writings of Pram.
He can be thanked for his consistency of vision and his
unwillingness to accept the empty apologies offered by today's
elites for the wrongs of the past.
Pram understands something leaders like President Wahid and
his colleagues never will: If rule of law cannot be applied to
those with so much blood on their hands starting now, there is no
reason to have confidence that it will be applied to those who
break the laws tomorrow and the day after.
Justice comes into existence the moment it is applied. The
clock starts with the first real investigations, prosecutions,
and sentences. Until then, it is only empty talk, usually by
those who fear justice the most.
It sounds deeply pessimistic when Pram says he does not
believe the current and older generation will bring meaningful
change for Indonesia. But in fact it is Pram's way of saying to
the younger generation that they are the only true hope for the
country. He is as brilliantly subversive as he is inspiring.
Instead of bringing in advisors like the autocrat Lee Kuan Yew
or the hideous Henry Kissinger, President Wahid, Megawati, and
the commander of the armed forces would do much better if they
held weekly advisory sessions with Pram.
Sulami is another great Indonesian from Pram's generation, and
she shares with him the honor of being a prisoner of conscience
for two decades under Soeharto.
No matter how long she was forced to sit in a cell, her
commitment to truth and justice could not be broken. She recently
founded an organization dedicated to one basic task --
documenting, village by village, what happened during the
massacre of 1965.
To her fellow citizens she poses two simple but powerful
questions. First, why do you continue to believe the lies of a
regime overflowing with liars, corruptors, and killers? And
second, do you dare confront the truth about Indonesia's past?
Indonesia has many remarkable freedom fighters in the younger
generations as well. There is Hendardi, a lawyer and defender of
justice who, like T. Mulya Lubis, is vastly more qualified to
head Indonesia's Supreme Court than the corrupt left-overs of the
Soeharto regime favored by the House of Representatives.
There is Wardah Hafidz, the head of the Urban Poor Consortium,
who works tirelessly at the grassroots level to give basic
dignity to the poorest of the poor.
Equally courageous is Father Sandyawan, who is best known for
his advocacy of the ethnic Chinese women raped in 1998.
And there are also figures like Budiman Sudjatmiko. How
quickly Indonesia's legal system moved when it falsely convicted
Budiman and members of the PRD (People's Democratic Party) for
the riots in July 1996 after the regime's attack on the PDI
headquarters. And how slowly it moves now as the real masterminds
in the military are being investigated for the same crimes.
History will remember Budiman and his colleagues for the fact
that long before Megawati and the PDI (Indonesian Democratic
Party) raised their voices, and long before people
like Amien Rais, Habibie, and even Harmoko became advocates of
reform, the young activists in the PRD criticized the Soeharto
regime for its corruption, called for the dictator to step down,
demanded an end to the dual function of the military, and called
for justice in East Timor and the other oppressed regions in the
archipelago.
A final person to be mentioned is Munir. He is surely the
greatest individual ever to emerge from HMI (Muslim Students
Association) and one of the most exemplary Indonesians living
today.
The justice and democracy for Indonesia that Hatta said was
still far away could be reached in just a few short years if
Munir could be cloned a thousands times and distributed around
the archipelago to start organizing the people for change.
Officially, Munir is known as one of the founders of the
Commission on Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras).
Through this organization he does important work. But his
significance for Indonesia is much greater than this.
For every cruel or ignorant statement made by Indonesia's
leaders, Munir offers a brilliant and inspiring counter-
statement. For every state or police or military action
subverting justice and democracy, Munir stands bravely against
it.
Consider some of the things he has done. At a time when
President Wahid has welcomed Prabowo back to Jakarta and Megawati
has praised Kopassus, Munir has kept up the pressure on Kopassus
for kidnapping and torturing nine democracy activists, and
"disappearing" fifteen others.
His message is easy to comprehend. First comes responsibility
and justice, and then comes forgiveness, praise, new boots and
weapons.
Munir and his organization released data in 2000 proving that
the fight to end abuses by the military is a struggle of the
present not the past. Abuses like killings and torture actually
increased since President Wahid became president.
When Wiranto released his album, Munir rightly called it sick
and grotesque. When Minister Yusril tried recently to use Munir's
name to gain support for the dreaded Security Law, Munir
immediately responded he would not take part and that the law was
anathema to justice and democracy.
Such clarity of thought and consistency of principles is rare
in any country around the world, but it is particularly lacking
among Indonesia's elite classes.
The most important aspect of Munir's philosophy and
contribution is his awareness that in order to build a solid
foundation for peace, justice, and democracy in Indonesia, one
must work from the grassroots level upward.
In receiving this year's Right Livelihood Award, Munir said
that the most important task of Kontras is "to build a network
between ordinary individuals to change people's minds after years
of totalitarianism."
"Human Rights is not only about law suits," he said, "it's a
mass movement."
And for all of this, a bomb has exploded at his office and a
police truck rode past strafing the building with automatic
weapons fire.
In an interview, Munir remarked that he feels embarrassed when
people consider him a hero. "I'm not," he said. He just hopes he
has "done something good, useful." To this we can only respond,
he is and he has.
People like Pram, Munir, and Sulami appreciate what Kartini
meant when she wrote of eyes being opened. The first prison is
one of perception, in the mind. The second is in daring to act
upon that which you can finally see clearly.
Every day tens of millions of Indonesians sing the national
anthem, "Indonesia the Great." The refrain, "Rise in Spirit,
Rise in Body," echoes a similar call for an awakening of
consciousness followed by meaningful action.
It is the remarkable Indonesians mentioned here, and the many
more that could not be mentioned, who keep these words and their
meaning alive today.
(Jeffrey Winters is professor of political economy at
Northwestern University in Chicago, the United States).