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.