Is human life that cheap in Indonesia?

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?"