Is violence part of Indonesian culture these days?

Is violence part of Indonesian culture these days?

By Dewi Anggraeni

MELBOURNE, Australia (JP): In the aftermath of the Violence in
Asia Conference held in Melbourne earlier this month, The Jakarta
Post spoke to one of the participants, Kathryn Robinson. Dr.
Robinson, Head of the Department of Anthropology at the
Australian National University, Canberra, a fluent speaker of
Indonesian, has written many papers on Indonesia. She shares her
views about violence as a concept in general, and what is
occurring in Indonesia. Following is an excerpt of the interview.

Question: What is violence?

Answer: When we talk of violence, mostly what comes to mind is
physical violence. That is only one type of violence. We also
have to remember that there are more subtle forms of violence,
for example, in everyday speech and social practice, such as
denying people the right to the practice their customary ways of
behaving.

Take the situation in the United States where there is a lot
of racial tension, where they would not allow Black Americans to
sit in the same bar. Or in Australia in the 1960s when Aboriginal
Australians were not allowed to use the same swimming pool as
white Australians. That sort of thing.

Is it an inherent part of human nature?

Many people have tried to argue that aggression is innate in
human beings, especially in the 1970s when people tried to prove
that men were innately more violent and aggressive than women.

A lot of those studies were extrapolating from non-human
primates, such as baboons. But they were fairly selective, for
example the species that were less violent were not recorded, to
prove their hypotheses in an uncritical way. So it has never been
proven in a conclusive way that violence is an inherent part of
human nature.

Is it learned from conditioning?

Yes. It comes out in a particular social or political
situation.

Human beings learn whether to behave in a violent or non-
violent ways. It depends on what is regarded as good, what is
tolerated, and what is wrong and therefore punished, in their
community.

Let us look at Australia for instance, where some studies
revealed that parents who are violent towards their children,
were actually treated that way by their own parents. Because
their own upbringing has been distorted, they have distorted
ideas about what is normal and appropriate.

Is most violence then socially and politically driven?

Usually with individuals it is psychologically driven.
However if we look at the whole human population, such as why
people turn on their neighbors, we have to analyze this in terms
of social and political situations.

Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman who wrote Death of a Maiden,
depicts a chilling a scenario in post-Pinochet Chile. A woman who has
been blindfolded and tortured during the Pinochet regime, is home one
night, and a man comes to her door and asks for help. She is sure he is
the man who tortured her.

So a dilemma presents itself, how should she respond? What is
the appropriate response in this situation? I heard Dorfman
talking about it, and brought up very important questions: how
does one establish democracy, where individual rights are
respected and so on, in a society that has been previously based
on terror? How can there be democracy when there always is a
possibility that a tortured victim comes face to face with his or
her torturer? Society needs to heal those wounds before it can go
on with normal life.

Do you think there is a wound that is yet to heal in
Indonesia?

I remember seeing after the fall of Soeharto, scenes on SBS
News here in Australia, of people in East Java who were
displaying a mass grave. They had seen mass killings in 1966.

Until then it was never spoken about in public, which means
that they had to keep it within themselves -- all the terror that
they had experienced. Yet in their everyday life there must have
been frequent reminders that the atrocities had indeed happened.
At least now people have begun to talk about what had been
previously suppressed.

Do you think the Violence in Asia conference is a step toward
healing?

Yes, because I think we have to understand the social and
political roots, to understand why people behave the way they do.
Let me quote a passage from Dorfman's biography where he
describes how he was turned into a monster by the political
situation. (When he was in power he was advisor to Allende).
"I came to understand the dread our opponents must have been
through as they saw their world collapsed. But at that time I was
fanatical... I didn't care if they were scared. The truth is, we
came to enjoy their fear, and enjoy the power over them that only
destiny gave us..."

He was talking about it, coming to terms with his own
atrocious behavior when he was in power, not caring about the
suffering he caused.

It is very important for both the torturer and the tortured to
come to terms with their behavior, because without it when
destiny turns its table the tortured might do exactly the same to
their opponents. And the cycle would never be broken.

Why does violence seem more prominent in some communities?

That probably has something to do with their social
institutions. How strong are the institutions in countering
violence? Not just institutions in the sense of how strong the
police are in countering violence, but more in an abstract sense.
Remember Pauline Hanson? You saw this person stand up inside the
national parliament, uttering hateful and racist language that
one normally didn't hear. Then because the government didn't come
down on her like a ton of bricks, saying that what she did was
completely out of order, things began to happen which normally
wouldn't happen. We then heard of harassment against Asians.

The institutions, in this case the government at the time,
symbolically legitimized the hateful behavior by not challenging
Hanson's utterances. Australia has institutionalized protection
such as Anti Discrimination Laws, so people don't usually feel
they can harass other people.

So you think it is very important to have an institutionalized
model for a community?

Yes. That is why I think it is very important that Indonesia
now has a president who is an intellectual who participates
actively in democratic practices.

Is violence often manipulated by the authorities, or by agent
provocateurs?

In Indonesia? Certainly during the initial period of reform it
was apparent that there were many people who had a lot to lose.
So they had vested interest in the return to the old system or
seeing the new system fail.

These provocateurs then manipulated people's disillusion with
the new system by encouraging violent activities to reach their
objectives. In the United States we have seen how the Ku Klux
Klan manipulated those who were ignorant and dissatisfied with
the authorities by mobilizing them to vent their anger at
minority groups.

Does it usually happen when there is a vacuum in law and
order?

Yes. If you have very strong political institutions that are
capable of maintaining law and order in a way that has strong
legitimacy with the people, then people will look to them to
administer fair treatment.

Take the Kupang riots, where the local leaders brought the
situation under control very quickly. And when people have faith
in their law and order institutions you see also situations for
example where the Muslims are guarding the churches and the
Christians guarding the mosques. They have such trust in the law
and order institutions that they are willing to take the risk,
thereby alienating the rioting groups.

In some parts of the world, inter-ethnic or inter-group
violence occurs after a long period of a semblance of peaceful
living, Yugoslavia for example. What actually happens?

The kind of memories that people are carrying, from conflicts
in World War II, play an important role there. Then there was a
strong state that managed to keep those memories below the
surface. It can be compared with Indonesia, where there was also
a strong state that used violence to prop up its own strength.

This strong state also forbade people to express their
cultural differences, under the guise of SARA.

At the same time the state banned Indonesians of Chinese
descent from using Chinese characters or language, celebrating
Chinese New Year and all that.

In the transition of power, where suppression is no
longer in place, and at the same time, there are other types of
resentment, such as from people of a particular ethnic group who
were in power but have now fallen out, towards those of another
ethnic group who are now in power, violence can easily be
ignited. Things that were not given any legitimacy are now given
license to be expressed. Fiji is another example.

Is it common to regard certain communities as having a violent
culture?

That is popular, but I don't think it gets you very far. It is
like saying, well, ethnic differences are the cause. But we have
to see how those differences interplay. What would be the litmus
test of a violent culture?

Can we say that America has a violent culture because of their
high homicide rate? Even if you say that about America, it
doesn't get you very far in terms of what you do next. The anti-
gun lobby for example, would say that guns are the main cause of
violence. No, I don't believe there is such a thing a violent
culture.

How does a community stop a chain of violence from continuing?

I think the most important step is addressing those practical
questions about where people are getting arms, like what the
government is doing now, stopping shipments of arms getting into
Ambon, though with limited success. Then allow grievances to be
expressed. Gerry van Klinken suggested in his paper at the
conference that institutions can be used to negotiate
reconciliation.

In Indonesia, religious leaders have important parts to play.
It is crucial to nurture the respect that people have for moral
authority of the religious leaders whose legitimacy hasn't been
compromised by an involvement in violence.

There are a lot of religious leaders from both Christian and
Muslim sides in Maluku who have remained outside of the violence
circle. These people should lead the way for reconciliation. You
can bring in outsiders who have particular skills to create
situations where people will bring out their grievances and help
them deal with them in an appropriate way. But unless you had
strong support from the recognized, respected local leaders, it
would be very difficult to get anywhere.