Ratna targets a political stigma that lives on
Ratna targets a political stigma that lives on
Emmy Fitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Anak-anak Kegelapan (Children of Darkness)
(from the original stage play)
Satu Merah Panggung, Pustaka Pencerahan and Yayasan TIFA
September 2004
169 pp
History repeats itself: It is the message playwright Ratna
Sarumpaet wants to convey in her six-scene play Anak-anak
Kegelapan (Children of the Darkness) -- now published in book
form -- for the new leadership in the country.
For wise people have long cautioned that if we fail to
reconcile with past wrongdoing, then we will most likely repeat
it.
What did we, as individuals and as a country, do wrong in the
past? The answers would be too many and the other message is that
we cannot easily discern it from what's happening now around us.
Staged by Ratna's Teater Satu Panggung Merah Putih, the tragi-
romance Anak-anak Kegelapan focuses on the social fallout from
the Sept. 30, 1965, coup attempt (G30S).
The truth about the incident and the ensuing killings,
committed in the name of purging the country of a communist
"threat", remain murky until today. The official history written
in textbooks was made to ensure the military and the New Order
government of Soeharto came off looking squeaky clean.
After the purges -- estimates of those butchered range from
300,000 to almost a million -- the oppression continued.
Relatives of those once accused of being communists (even if the
charge was untrue and only made to settle a personal score) were
barred from the civil service, military and carried the stigma in
their personal lives.
Anak-Anak Kegelapan portrays members of once such family as
they face discrimination and are alienated from society, even as
the mother tries to ignore the facts.
It's also about the failed relationship between a girl of the
darkness and the son of a powerful military general, the
mastermind of the annihilation of accused communists.
Ratna believes that the stigmatization of yesteryear can still
be seen today.
"I get goosebumps when I hear how the stigmatizing culture
imposed by the New Order regime in discriminating and
discrediting dozens of millions victims of the G30S is being used
again," she said.
"On behalf of curbing separatism, the government formally put
all Acehnese people in fear of identifying themselves as
Acehnese. They asked all people to keep an eye on any Acehnese
here (in Jakarta).
"It will also be applied to staunch Muslims, for they will be
an easy target for (being branded) terrorists."
Restless, outspoken Ratna has produced a number of
"depressing" stage plays in portraying sociopolitical upheaval
here, including a play on the humanitarian tragedy in Aceh Alia,
Luka Serambi Mekah (Alia, the Wound on the Threshold of Mecca),
on slain labor rights Marsinah in Nyanyian Dari Bawah Tanah (A
Song from Underground) and Marsinah Menggugat (Marsinah Accuses,
1997), Terpasung (Chained, 1996) and Pesta Terakhir (The Last
Party, 1996).
Yet Ratna's latest work is a cry from the heart. Her father,
Saladin Sarumpaet, was an activist for the separatist movement
PRRI-Permesta of North Sulawesi and was placed under house arrest
in Kaliurang, Yogyakarta, in 1962.
Composing a play on victims of G30S has long been her dream.
Lack of reliable data and her intense observation of the
atrocities has been emotionally taxing, and she stopped several
times in writing the play.
She made it, though. "I write once I get the strength and
cannot stop until it's finished."
Anak-Anak Kegelapan, as a published play, is, of course,
easier for readers to catch the ambience that Ratna wants to
emphasize, for those really interested in the subject.
Ratna is straightforward in the objects of criticism in her
work, a tirade against the Indonesian military and the
authorities here, done in clever, poetic dialog.
But she could have come up with a conclusion or solution for
the issues, and her ending is unsatisfactory.
Fortunately, historian Asvi Warman Adam provides the
introduction to the play, giving contextual historical background
about the PKI phenomenon in 1965. Agus Sarjono also helps to put
in perspective why Ratna chose the theme and its relevancy to
today.
Whatever the work's shortcomings, Ratna gives her own
political statement. She is no politician nor bureaucrat, but she
has done her part in telling the story of those who were silenced
and those left behind to suffer.