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.