RI poets in exile: On the outside looking in

Lie Hua, Contributor, Jakarta

Di Negeri Orang -- Puisi Penyair Indonesia Eksil; (On Foreign Shores -- Poems by Exiled Indonesian Poets); Published by Amanah Lontar, Jakarta, in cooperation with Yayasan Sejarah Budaya Indonesia, Amsterdam, 2002; xiv + 253 pp; Rp 60,000

The Sept. 30 (G30S) incident, which the New Order regime blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) as an attempt to wrest power from the then president, Sukarno, is still a black spot in this country's history.

It claimed many lives -- estimates vary from 500,000 to 2 million, most of them innocent people who were killed in the witch-hunt against communists and their sympathizers. It left untold suffering as innumerable families were left incomplete or separated from their loved ones.

The stigma of even "alleged" involvement in the abortive coup has been passed on to the victims' children and grandchildren, causing the latter to be socially ostracized, the proverbial outcasts in their own country.

Many left-wing writers, generally associated with the Literature Institute (Lestra) attached to the Institute of Peo ple's Culture (Lekra), tasted life behind bars and banishment to distant Buru Island in Maluku. Names like Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Sitor Situmorang, S. Anantaguna, Putu Oka Sukanta and Martin Aleida are just a few of those who experienced incarceration under the merciless military and authoritarian New Order regime of Soeharto.

But life under sheer repression led to greater esthetic creativity, not least because by channeling their creative and esthetic feelings into literary creations, they could survive and hope for a better tomorrow. Thus we are now acquainted with Pram's epic tetralogy of the Earth of Mankind and a dozen other titles which he conceived during his years on Buru. We have also gotten to know the Sound of Prison Walls and Kecapi of Iron Bars, a collection of poems about his prison years by S. Anantaguna, one of Lekra's foremost poets in the 1960s.

Other voices from behind bars are found in the collections of poems by Putu Oka Sukanta and Sitor Situmorang, the latter being one of the most important lyricists in the history of modern Indonesian poetry.

The works created or conceived during their harsh prison life helped these writers to survive. Perhaps, their poetic and literary creations could serve as a purgatory that purifies the soul and prepare it even for the worst in life.

While many left-wing writers were in strict confinement in Indonesia, many other were roaming foreign lands because they were unable to return home. Their attachment with Lekra made them stateless people who had to rely on the charity of foreign governments.

Some of them resided in China, Vietnam or the then Soviet Union, but later they moved to France and the Netherlands and became their citizens. Surf the Internet, and names like Sobron Aidit, the younger brother of PKI chairman DN Aidit, and Hersri Setiawan are easy to find. They regularly write about their past and present experiences either in poems and essays.

As Mawie Ananta Jonie said in an e-mail interview, these left- wing writers who live on foreign shores have to work in order to survive. Many of them write poems and explore other literary genres as the manifestation of their resistance against the Soeharto regime.

Mawie added that they write about their experiences in exile. They are free, not like those incarcerated back home, but they have left all their loved ones in their home country and, worst of all, they cannot come home. Yet, in spirit, they were long united in a shared goal all the resistance forces back home: to fight against Soeharto's New Order regime.

Now a collection of their poems has been published in a book called Di Negeri Orang (On Foreign Shores). As many as 15 Indone sian poets in exile contributed their poems to this collection as a testament of their deep longing for their homeland.

Poets of great stature during Lekra's heyday in the 1960s -- A. Kohar Ibrahim, Kuslan Budiman, Agam Wispi, Sobron Aidit and Hersri (formerly known as Setiawan Hs) -- express in this book their experiences while living as exiles abroad.

If you read these poems carefully, they mirror all the longing, desperation and hope of these exiled poets. They are yearning to get home, come what may. It is also clear from these poems how the writers keep their hope aflame and in their own way continued to resist Soeharto's regime.

Alone in a foreign land, these exiled Indonesian poets keep nurturing their hope that their own land back home will again be a peaceful land free from the rein of a tyrant. It's a strong conviction as expressed in the lines, "although this wind is only softly blowing/my land needs a storm and a typhoon/they are sure to come" (News by A. Kembara).

There is also an ability to be soul-searching; as one poet says, "trembling, I feel the walls/my belonging is only a piece of broken mirror (Mirror on the Wall by Soepriadi T). Although Soeharto is now gone, at least from center stage, the lines they have written and collected in this book speak as a lasting reminder of the innocent victims of history.