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.