The gulf of views between Aceh and Jakarta

The gulf of views between Aceh and Jakarta

Ati Nurbaiti, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A young East Timorese once inquired, "Do you people also
experience atrocities?" I said, "What? Of course not." Where did
she get such an idea? Youngsters in Indonesia's big cities were
not only free of "atrocities", they were out blissfully shopping
and loitering in malls, and moaning about the traffic.

A few years later, third president BJ Habibie led the
controversial move to allow East Timor's referendum, and we
teased our colleagues among the Dili press, asking, "So, what are
you going to vote for?" And they would just give their gentle,
mysterious smiles. East Timor became free; life was tough, but
they have never voiced regret.

My Timorese friends came to mind in the wake of the Aug. 15
signing of the historic peace agreement between the government
and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). I recalled that my Acehnese
colleagues would spell "Aceh" -- in their emails or text messages
-- as "Acheh" or "Atjeh", in accordance with the spelling of Aceh
used by GAM; a gesture I belatedly figured out was similar to the
Timorese.

From these friends' subtle expressions and evasions of
"sensitive" issues, it was as if they were saying, "I am indeed
your friend, but we may need to become separate from you one day
because of circumstances that you may not understand, and I'm not
telling you outright because I don't want to argue with you; it's
a long story, and we've found that you people never understand --
you cannot, or refuse, to see our point of view and you will make
me listen to the same lecture all over again."

This quiet attitude reflects the seeming impossibility for an
open dialog among fellow Indonesians between, for instance, those
from Aceh, or pre-independent East Timor, even when they're of
the same age group or profession, with those who grew up in the
"center" -- mainly Java or the capital -- who never seem to have
any doubt about the "truth."

Even if you dozed all through your history and civics classes,
being spoon-fed government-approved versions of the truth, you
grew up with either veteran elders and their heroic stories of
defending the red-and-white; or you grew up simply ignorant, with
no curiosity, on why any Indonesian could harbor a wish to
separate themselves from our republic.

The wider public has thus largely become convinced that the
Acehnese are not aware of their own history; that they are an
indisputable and integral part of the Indonesian republic. And
even if they were aware, any demand for independence and any
support for GAM could only be short-lived, even though these
people say they suffered atrocities at the hands of the
Indonesian military. After all, we think, these are just
necessary excesses that occur during wars in order to crush the
enemy.

Among those living outside Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, and
earlier, East Timor, we indeed knew that much information of
history and living conditions were hidden from the public eye for
a very long time. But amazingly, the basic views remained -- that
no part of Indonesia could separate itself because of our "holy
legacy" of the "unitary state", fought for with the blood and
tears of our forebears. Settling any wrongdoing by breaking away,
as in the East Timor case, was a stupid mistake and a betrayal of
the nation.

Rare has been the view that we might not deserve the land nor
its people who we keep neglecting, extorting and oppressing.

In 1998, the eyes of attendants in a Jakarta conference room
were moist when women from Aceh for the first time in public
recited experiences under the 10-year military rule, shortly
after it was declared to have ended that year.

A few years later, an Acehnese sociologist described how
virtually every male, 14 years upwards, had experienced being
slapped by Indonesian security forces, a contributing factor to
the recruitment of GAM apart from the fact that many youngsters
had been witness to violence against family members by police or
military personnel.

But knowing of such experiences in Acehnese life did not lead
to much reflection and public debate ahead of declaration of
martial law, which would include another phase of military
operations. Instead, "Crush GAM, uphold the unitary republic" was
the main message coming from phone-in calls to talk shows.

Some Acehnese had said they had wanted to make their differing
views known, they had tried to join the polls broadcast on
television, but somehow they couldn't get through. An Acehnese
scholar had said yes, military operations might be the way but
why all across the province? Such views were drowned out.

Media surveys such as those from the Institute of Studies on
Information Flow (ISAI) strongly suggested that the media shared
much of the blame for the absence of Acehnese voices in public
discourse; they showed that coverage in the mainstream media
became increasingly slanted to the needs of the military while
the disputing parties of the government and GAM went back and
forth on the earlier peace talks in Geneva, which eventually
collapsed.

Today the absence or drowning out of the "Acehnese
perspective" in public opinion persists -- resulting in a gulf of
views between the public inside and outside Aceh (and any other
area mulling ungrateful rebellious thoughts like Papua), a gulf
molded by both years of comfortable life under the New Order and
a mask over real life experiences in Aceh.

Such experiences have only been exposed as occasional dramatic
stories, too sporadic to make the wider public refrain from
judgment and lecturing, "all Indonesians stick together forever,
you've got all our sympathy, now we'll strive with you to make
things better; there's no point on relying on GAM anyway, they're
led by old men who've been away from Aceh for so long."

So we hector them about local political parties and all the
other "concessions" given to GAM: They've done nothing and yet
we're bribing them with all this land and amnesty, they get
direct access to foreign loans and get to set their own bank
rates! But look closer at the MOU, at the potential dangers in
the lack of explicit language on GAM dropping their demands for
independence.

It is indeed the business of experienced negotiators and
concerned patriotic citizens to be aware of all the flaws.

But Acehnese remind us that we haven't really looked at what
counts most; what do they want? In the "MOU controversy" we've
forgotten that the Acehnese are some hundred thousand short of
their original 4 million population figure; they're what's left
of the devastating tsunami.

An Acehnese said, "Why all the fuss over local political
parties? We might not even consider choosing them! Wasn't it a
breakthrough that GAM no longer demanded independence?" In other
words, we've forgotten the main actors behind the disputing
parties who want to get on with their lives as best as they can,
after surviving decades of war, and the pain of losing loved ones
to violence, and later the tsunamis.

Ironically it's taken an official to remind us, "Use your
conscience when criticizing the MOU; do we really want more of
our mothers to become widows, and more children to become
orphans, because of the violence?"

Justice minister and chief negotiator Hamid Awaluddin may
sound defensive, but millions of Acehnese may agree -- and they
might not be telling us.

The author is a staff writer for The Jakarta Post.