On lawlessness
On lawlessness
I am writing in response to an interview with Sofyan Wanandi
of July 17, in which he warned that continuing lawlessness
throughout the country would scare businesspeople away from
Indonesia. He referred to the seizure of land owned by developers
and other companies by people now claiming that the land had been
purchased at unfair prices. He is correct that lawlessness will
hurt Indonesia. But he seems to gloss over the fact that this
particular complaint may have a basis.
The past duress which some local groups are citing to justify
their present, albeit unlawful actions, often did characterize
the sale of lands to developers and business owners. A business
owner or land developer in collusion with government or military
officials often had the power to dictate unfair sale terms to
small landowners. When a developer offers several hundred or
thousand rupiah per hectare to farmers, then turns a profit of
hundreds of thousands of rupiah per hectare, is it any wonder
that the former owners later feel cheated?
If one wants to characterize this in terms of race, as Mr.
Wanandi has done, then this type of transaction is a textbook
case of collusion between Chinese business owners and indigenous
officials, cooperating with heavy-handedness for financial gain
at the expense of the small landowners. Other law enforcement
activities have also been perverted by collusion.
One cannot sympathize with looters who from venal motives
break into factories and warehouses and steal for private gain.
But what about workers who have been employed year after year at
marginal wages and in substandard conditions in factories and
warehouses? What about white-collar violations of law perpetrated
by factory and warehouse owners with the tacit approval of
officials. e.g. violations of minimum wage laws, child labor
laws, workplace safety laws, etc. Aren't these instances of
lawlessness, too?
Too often only physical violence arouses the community's
wrath. As long as no blood is shed we see no violations of
persons, of rights, of law. For 30 years the international
community praised Soeharto for maintaining peace and stability
throughout Indonesia, conveniently closing their eyes to his
government's corruption and other human right abuses. Was
Indonesia a law abiding society all those 30 years? Aren't
Indonesians now suffering the consequences of a very lawless
past, where money rather guns was the usual medium of force?
Chinese-Indonesians as a group have not resorted to physical
violence to get what they want. But they have used money
illegally to do this. This form of lawlessness also destroys the
social fabric and political stability, as we now can see.
Mr. Wanandi casts the Chinese business community as victims of
today's lawlessness, while seeming to ignore their past
participation in law-breaking by evasion of laws through payoffs.
This biased view will not do justice to either the Chinese
community as a whole or the indigenous community. Lawlessness has
not been one-sided, and amends are not the responsibility of only
one side. Unless Mr. Wanandi and his colleagues from the business
world will look calmly and honestly at the issue of adherence to
law, and acknowledge the role of the Chinese business community
in Indonesia's lawlessness, the problem they decry will elude
solution.
The national lawlessness cited by him was denounced even more
strongly in the same day's editorial. The point is correct, as
far as it goes. But compassion for those Chinese whose lives were
devastated in the May riots, and sympathy for the Chinese who
have suffered discrimination and legalized indignity from their
own government for generations, should not lead to a kind of
"political correctness" that stifles honest discourse and
collusive role that the largely Chinese business community has
had in creating Indonesia's inequitable, lawless socio-economic
system. If honesty yields to political correctness, interethnic
resentments will not be extinguished, only buried alive.
DONNA K. WOODWARD
Medan, North Sumatra