Promoting freedom in reform era

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

French writer Albert Camus once said from a podium in Belgium in 1957, "Freedom is a long-distance race", urging those who championed of freedom to strive unceasingly for the cause.

The owner of Hasta Mitra publishing house, Joesoef Isak, not only firmly believes in Camus' statement, he is also living proof that such a struggle is hard won.

Ignoring the ban from the authoritarian regime of president Soeharto against disseminating leftist materials, Joesoef published the works of dissident writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, the most famous being Bumi Manusia (This Earth of Mankind) in the early 1980s, a period considered to be the apex of the regime's repressive rule.

"Hasta Mitra was founded while Soeharto was at the height of his power and we published the books in a very repressive situation," Joesoef told The Jakarta Post recently from his Hasta Mitra office, once a bathroom at the back of his modest house in South Jakarta.

"Yet we refused to cower because we were consciously engaged in an effort to promote democracy; freedom of speech is an integral part of that."

His courage to look the authoritarian regime straight in the eye won him run-ins with the law and financially ruined his fragile publishing house.

In the first five years of operations, every publication was banned by the government.

"How could we properly manage the company if our products was met with ban after ban? Hasta Mitra may have an international reputation, but as a company it remained small in the early days," he said.

Unlike large publishing houses, which manage to publish 10 books a month, Hasta Mitra did well if it released 10 books a year, he said.

Following the ban, Joesoef was also repeatedly summoned by state prosecutors who demanded confessions that the books he published conveyed Marxist-Leninist teachings. All such teachings were banned following an aborted national coup in 1965 attributed to the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

Although the ban and the subsequent legal proceedings failed to land him in jail, to Joesoef they were a bitter reminder of what he had experienced earlier.

Considered to be a staunch supporter of the communist movement, Joesoef was put in jail by the New Order regime without trial from 1965 to 1977.

According to the New Order's classification of detainees that were implicated with the coup, Joesoef was category `A', meaning that he was an important figure in the movement and hard evidence was available to corroborate his involvement. While a trial had been scheduled for him, no hearing ever took place.

Joesoef said to survive an authoritarian regime like Soeharto's, one should never show fear, grow tired nor give up.

He said that as a human being he was cowed by the regime's harsh measures. "However, we opted not to show (our fear) to the government," he said.

However, the increased democracy in the country since the fall of Soeharto, has not led to any complacency on his part.

The new freedoms were never granted, they were fought for, and much work needed to be done before the people gained real power, he said.

"The fall of the New Order regime was not followed by a substantial change; the ban on Marxism-Leninism is still intact and never lifted. The current regime could reinstate it at any time," he said.

He said that the only reason present-day governments allowed the unbridled publication of leftist books was because the government was fully aware of people power. "The current regime has no option but to accept the new conditions," he said.

With little fanfare, Hasta Mitra recently published the Indonesian translation of Karl Marx's Das Kapital, a book considered to be the Bible of the communist movement, ignoring the ban that was never officially lifted by the government.

Joesoef's unrelenting struggle for freedom through literary works has won him international recognition. Early last year, he won an award from the International Freedom to Publish Committee (IFTPC), which was conferred in the United States during the annual gala of the World Association of Writers (PEN).

On March 31, he received the Australian PEN-Keneally Award.

Born in Jakarta 77 years ago, Joesoef was educated in the Dutch school system and did not even speak Indonesian during the country's formative years.

He joined a couple of Indonesian language newspapers before working at the Merdeka daily, where he later became editor-in- chief.

"The owner of Merdeka, B.M. Diah, once told me that then president Sukarno wanted someone who was progressive and revolutionary enough to lead the paper and I was considered the right man," he said.

During his stint at the daily, Joesoef was elected secretary- general of the Asia-Africa Journalists Association (AAJA), a job that enabled him to travel to most parts of the nonaligned world.

Joesoef lost his job in Merdeka in 1963 due to political differences with Diah. He was accused of taking the daily too far to the left.

He held his position at the AAJA until the coup attempt, a turn of events that brought his journalistic career to a bitter end.

Upon his release from jail, the government barred him from engaging in any journalism, a blow that prompted him to set up Hasta Mitra as a vehicle that could serve as a mouthpiece for his restless mind.

"Although I had no media outlet of my own, deep in my heart I was still a journalist. I still wanted to express my views about current affairs. Old journalists never die," he said while stubbing out a cigarette.