Free migration across SE Asia

Free migration across SE Asia

Farish A. Noor, Berlin

Despite the improvement in government-to-government relations
between Malaysia and Indonesia, it would appear as if our
societies are further apart than ever before. Prejudice,
misapprehension and the tendency to resort to caricatural
stereotypes have clouded our vision of a common shared humanity
and collective destiny, for the peoples of ASEAN as a whole.

In Malaysia the punishment for illegal migrants include not
only fines and detention, but also whipping -- a mode of
punishment that can only be described as medieval, brutal and
dehumanising.

Malaysians also forget that if there are any "unwanted
Indonesians" in Malaysia, there is also a certain "unwanted
Malaysian" in Indonesia today: The fanatical bomber Azahari,
whose role in the numerous bombing campaigns in Indonesia has
done so much damage to the image and well-being of the Indonesian
people. Have Malaysians considered apologising for this unwanted
visitor lurking in Indonesia?

The most appalling aspect of the present media-orchestrated
scare about illegal migrants in Malaysia is the unstated
prejudice that at times accompanies the campaign. Never mind the
fact that Malaysia actually needs these foreign workers; or the
fact that in many cases their illegal entry was facilitated by
corrupt Malaysian companies and businessmen themselves.

It is astounding, to say the least, that the citizens of
present-day Malaysia and Indonesia seem to demonstrate no
knowledge of history whatsoever. The official narrative of
postcolonial Malaysia and Indonesia is a modern myth that
presents the state as a fait accompli, regardless of the fact
that Malaysia and Indonesia -- like all the other states of the
ASEAN region -- are artificial modern constructs whose borders
were set not by the peoples of ASEAN themselves but rather by our
former colonial masters.

Today Malaysians and Indonesians view each other through the
narrow perspective of the modern nation-state, whose boundaries
(be they political, cultural or historic) seem eternally fixed.
Yet this begs the obvious question that is invariably asked by
the scholar: What about the centuries of cross-cultural contact,
migration and fluid inter-penetration?

Lest we forget, the most important and renown Malay kingdom --
Malacca -- was founded by Paramesvara (later Sultan Megat
Iskandar Shah), who was himself from Palembang, Sumatra. In the
postcolonial era the memory of Malacca has been used time and
again by countless Malaysian politicians and ideologues as proof
of the greatness of the people of Malaysia -- except we often
forget that Malacca would never have existed had it not been for
the labours of a prince from Sumatra!

The same is true for many of the other great kingdoms and
empires of Southeast Asia, from Angkor to Ayudhaya, Majapahit to
Mataram, Aceh to Patani: They were all created by the collective
efforts of Southeast Asians who migrated from one part of the
region to another.

This was the era before the arrival of the modern idea of the
nation-state, on e that was not configured by the dislocating and
disruptive effects of colonial intervention.

Sadly today this sense of a common, abstract, collective
identity has passed. It is a supreme irony that Malaysians today
regard Indonesians as "foreigners", and vice-versa; when the
reality is that for hundreds of years the two nations (in reality
a multiplicity of nations) have been in constant contact with
each other. It is also ironic that the Malays of Malaysia regard
their Indonesian counterparts as being as "foreign" as any
tourist from Europe or Japan, considering the obvious links of
language, culture and religion they share together. (One could go
further and make the claim that many, if not most, Malays in
Malaysia today have some common blood-ties to Indonesia, as in
the case of this writer as well.)

The "othering" of our Indonesian brethren as "outsiders" and
"foreigners" would not have happened has it not been for the
vicissitudes of politics.

Prior to the creation of a separate Malaysia and Indonesia,
scores of Malaysians were directly involved in the independence
struggle of the Indonesian nation, which they regarded as an
extension of their own habitus. The early Malay nationalists of
Burhanuddin al-Helmy and Ibrahim Yaakob's generation took active
part in the formation of Sukarno's nationalist movement, and
during the anti-colonial war against the Dutch a number of
Malaysians crossed the Straits of Malacca to lend a hand in the
fighting that took place in Sumatra and Java.

It was, however, the Konfrontasi (confrontation) between
Indonesia and Malaysia in the early 1960s that led to the fatal
rupture that effectively sealed the fate of both countries.
Hundreds of Malaysian Muslim students who were studying in the
traditional madrasahs and pesantren of Indonesia were recalled by
the Malaysian government and then redirected to more conservative
institutions in the Arab states. (An ironic twist indeed, for it
also foreclosed for the Malaysians the possibility of developing
of a more tolerant, pluralist and dynamic Islamist
intellectualism as we find in Indonesia today.)

As Malaysians and Indonesians were taught to think of each
other as different and alien, the sense of common identity and
the sharing of a common past became impossible. Centuries of
cross-cultural borrowing and migration had been summarily brought
to an untimely end by the most unnatural of political
developments.

That is why we, the people of ASEAN, desperately need a
collective subaltern history of ASEAN written from the
perspective of the people, rather than the governments, of the
region.

Should this condition continue unchallenged, we might as well
forget the dream of creating a ASEAN for and by the people of
ASEAN themselves. The solipsistic logic of the modern nation-
state does not sit comfortably with non-governable elements and
phenomena such as the transcultural transfer of ideas, values and
peoples: Yet it is precisely this fluid dynamics of interaction
and exchange that holds the key to the development of dynamic
civilisations and cultures.

Recognition of this historical legacy would require the effort
of overcoming the "otherness" of our neighbours. This is the
truth that we, the nations of ASEAN, need to remind ourselves
time and again: We are not "strangers" to each other!

Farish A. Noor is a Malaysian political scientist and human
rights activist and can be reached at farishactivist@yahoo.co.uk