Is human life that cheap in Indonesia?

Foreign governments have said they respect Indonesia's territorial integrity. Political analyst J. Soedjati Djiwandono asks, is this something to be proud of?

JAKARTA (JP): To me, that was for a long time a nagging question. I admit, it had been a long process of learning before I started wondering and worrying about it. I felt frightened at the thought that I might be coming nearer to a definite affirmative answer. Yet I dared not face it. I did not want to hear it, for I continued to hope the answer would be negative.

Perhaps many Indonesians were like me then. In the months after the coup attempt allegedly staged by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in the so-called Gestapu affair in 1965, they did not feel morally disturbed right away at the thought of thousands and thousands of alleged members of the PKI or its affiliated mass organizations being massacred, heaven knows how, missing and many more detained for years and years without trial. In fact, they might well have thought that they deserved it. It served them right!

Why that was so can now be a subject of an endless academic debate. Indonesians like myself had been, perhaps, traumatized by the brutal murder of six Army generals and one captain, again allegedly by the communists. Many like myself were preoccupied with another possible equally dreadful threat, rightly or wrongly now by hindsight, that of the so-called "extreme rightists", however defined, the very antithesis of the extreme leftists, the communists.

Indeed, in the following years after the coup attempt, well into the 1970s and even the 1980s, a considerable amount of literature was published, among others by Amnesty International, on what amounted to gross violation of human rights in Indonesia. Still, all condemnations by the international community seemed to have had little impact on the thinking of many Indonesians, especially its leaders. Life went on, business as usual.

It seemed to have been part of the spirit of the Cold War, that in the eyes of those who claimed to be anticommunist, murdering, arresting and torturing communists, however understood, without trial or at best a show of trial, was right and proper. For communists, unlike other human beings, had no human rights. They were hardly human, after all.

The episodes of horror did not stop there. There then came the story of East Timor with numerous cases of no less inhuman brutalities over more than two decades, reaching their peak in the aftermath of the vote by an overwhelming majority for independence. Then the kidnapping of political activists and the murder of university students before, during, and after the resignation of president Soeharto; the killing of hundreds of people across the nation, not only in Jakarta riots but also in East Java, Ambon, West Kalimantan, and the kidnapping and murder of hundreds, probably thousands of people buried in mass graves and the rapes of so many women in Aceh, particularly during the years of military operations by the New Order regime, yet only recently revealed.

What has made all those cases of brutal violation of human rights even more tragic is the fact that most of them have been unaccountable. And abuses of human rights are not the sole responsibility of those in power, particularly the security apparatuses. They have been perpetrated also by many in Indonesian society against one another on racial, ethnic, and religious grounds. We as a nation haven't yet learned to recognize and respect human rights.

We should admit that in one way or another and to different degrees, we all share responsibility for much that has gone wrong in our country. Many members of my own generation and the slightly older generation used to support Soeharto, almost without reserve. Many of us also strongly and consistently supported the dual function of the military. And many of us, including the intellectuals, teachers and professors, took part in the indoctrination of our young children, making them docile, uncritical, blindly loyal and obedient parrots. And in so doing, for a long time we did not realize that we were helping in the making of a dictator, a monster that Soeharto came to be.

Have we learned the right lessons? A military spokesman recently made a remark that amounted to a threat of violence against Aceh in the event of possible rebellious acts by the Acehnese on Dec. 4 in commemoration of the Free Aceh Movement. I am deeply concerned over the real possibility of violence resulting in a further loss of lives.

As if to support this kind of action against Aceh, most probably accompanied by violence, by the central government in defense of the integrity of the unitary republic, our leaders, including the foreign minister, seem to take pride in the fact that our neighbors in the region, even the U.S. government, have expressed support and respect for Indonesia's integrity as a unitary state, recognizing Aceh as an integral part of Indonesia.

That, however, is no more than a misunderstanding by Indonesian leaders, a misapplication of a principle in international relations to the domestic affair of a state. Respect for territorial integrity is a principle in relations among nations, but not in the relations between the central government of a state and a local government and population of a province. Such a principle is expressed in the so-called Pancashil (five principles) agreement between China and India in 1954; in the Bandung principles of 1955; and in one of the three baskets of the Helsinki Accord of 1975.

The apparent support of foreign countries would easily turn to criticism and opposition in the event that the action of the central government should involve violence and serious violations of human rights. Remember Bosnia and Kosovo.

In criticism of the American policy during the Vietnam War, a Ceylonese leader once asked, "Is life so cheap in Asia?" The experiences of my own country have prompted me to ask, "Is life so cheap in Indonesia?"