Institute makes cultural points outside Aceh

Institute makes cultural points outside Aceh

Endy M. Bayuni, The Jakarta Post, Oslo

For months now, Hasballah M. Saad has warned Jakarta about the
need to pay attention to cultural aspects when rebuilding Aceh
after the untold destruction caused by the Dec. 26 tsunami.

While he found sympathetic ears from government planners, the
appeal went largely unheeded on the ground as the Reconstruction
and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) for Aceh and Nias rushed around
with its projects to build homes for the half-million displaced
people.

This week, the former minister of human rights tried to hammer
home his point once again, but not in Jakarta or in Banda Aceh,
but thousands of kilometers away: in Oslo, Norway, the capital
city of one of the most generous donors for the rebuilding of
Aceh.

The official blueprint, he told a seminar on Thursday, is
widely perceived to be physically-oriented. It talks about target
numbers like how many houses it must build, how many school
buildings and how many teachers are needed, but it doesn't say
anything about the type of houses and the school curriculum Aceh
needs today.

"This is caused by a very poor understanding of local wisdom,
values, character and culture," Hasballah said at the Forum on
Indonesia 2005 jointly organized by the Indonesian Embassy in
Norway and the Norwegian Human Rights Center.

Hasballah called for more development that put character-
building at its core.

The end of the conflict between the Indonesian government and
the Free Aceh Movement with the signing of the peace agreement in
Helsinki in August provided a window of opportunity to improve on
the blueprint and incorporate cultural considerations into the
reconstruction projects, he said.

The seminars are only half of the forum. Other speakers
included Aceh linguistic expert Bukhari Daud and Maj. Gen.
Bambang Darmono, the Indonesian representative to the Aceh
Monitoring Mission. who has had stints in war- and peace-time
Aceh.

The other half was the cultural evening later on Thursday. Two
pieces were performed by the Nurul Alam dance troupe flown in
from Banda Aceh and one other by children of embassy staff at the
Oslo Konserthus concert hall.

There was also an exhibition of nine color drawings by Aceh
children vividly depicting their impressions of the tsunami and
its impact on their lives.

Following the tsunami, Hasballah and several like-minded
friends established the Aceh Cultural Institute specifically to
ensure that the cultural needs of the people of Aceh were being
met as they rebuilt communities traumatized by the natural
disaster and nearly three-decades of conflict.

The inspiration for the institute came when the organizers
learned that thousands of books and manuscripts stored at the
Aceh Center for Documentation and Information had been washed
away. Today, one of its missions is to try to restore the library
with plans to expand it later as cultural learning center. They
are already talking about possible collaboration with the
National University of Singapore to bring either original or
copied materials from the Netherlands, France, Australia and
other international sources.

Hasballah said the reconstruction of Aceh needed a new
paradigm and perspectives and presently there seemed to be no
vision for the way forward.

Trying to restore the situation to some pre-tsunami state was
not the "desired picture of Aceh", he said, because before the
tsunami Aceh was still at war.

"The goal of development should be to push people to be more
civilized, to respect fellow human beings, to move to a more
modern lifestyle, but one based on their traditional roots and
their cultural values.

"Character-building is more important than physical
reconstruction and development," Hasballah said.