Truth and power
Truth and power
The writing of history, and the news, depends on who has the
power -- how they remember, what they forget, how they devise
standards of truth -- threatening us all with the same patterns
of remembering and forgetting. Dissident cultures have been
silenced in brutal ways and histories have been edited,
constructed and manufactured according to the memory of those in
power.
A good example of this is The Jakarta Post's coverage in Belo
and Horta receive Nobel Peace Prize which continues to adhere to
the dominant pro-integration version of East Timorese history. In
the past I always read The Jakarta Post's articles on East Timor
with a grain of salt, keeping in mind the pressure of government
censorship on this topic. What is deeply regrettable is that on
this historic day, when the Nobel Committee and the rest of the
world decided to honor the courage and the "sustained and self-
sacrificing contributions of the East Timorese to World Peace,
the Indonesian media can only express antipathy to its
recipients, soliciting only the responses of government officials
who certainly have nothing positive to say about Belo and Horta
except for hostile remarks. This is a disappointing
inconsistency, especially when one sees how much space and
support The Jakarta Post gives to the political struggle of
another Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar.
Ironically, those whom F.X. Lopes da Cruz, Vice Governor of
East Timor, considers "trouble makers," are those the
international community have chosen to honor as exemplary
"heroes." "Troublesome" groups and individuals who have been
awarded the Nobel or who have been nominated for it include
Amnesty International, an organization banned from conducting
research in Indonesia and Pramoedya Ananta Toer who has been
nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature and the 1995
recipient of the prestigious Magsaysay Award, whose writings and
ideas are banned in his own country.
Another example is Fernando de Araujo, the former leader of
Renetil, an East Timorese student organization, who was labeled a
"GPK" terrorist by the New Order and sentenced to nine years in
Cipinang prison, but was awarded the Outstanding International
Human Rights Worker Award by Reebok for his struggle against
Indonesian government injustice in 1993. A profoundly
contradictory clash of values and a telling comment on the
meaning of "justice" in Indonesia.
How much longer will the propaganda against "trouble makers"
continue to be legitimate and justifiable while the international
community rejects its version of truth? The Nobel Prize for the
East Timorese is a gift of hope, hope that small, insignificant
people can win in their fight against big, arrogant bullies.
Let's hope that this momentous occasion of the Nobel Peace Prize
for East Timor will work towards an open discussion about
decolonization and an end to violence not only in East Timor but
in all of Indonesia.
JACQUELINE SIAPNO
Medan, North Sumatra