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