U.S. not perfect, but willing to improve

U.S. not perfect, but willing to improve

Ralph L. Boyce, Ambassador, U.S. Embassy to Indonesia, Jakarta

We live in an increasingly interconnected world with more and
more barriers between people falling each day. These new contacts
open opportunities for trade, cultural exchange, and improved
understanding. However, jarring new contacts as well as long
simmering old animosities can flare up into violence and conflict
more quickly as the barriers and filters that once separated
different racial, ethnic, tribal and national groups melt away.

This is true between nations but it is also true within
nations. This is globalization, as my friend Tom Friedman says,
it is "The One Big Thing people should focus on." This will
require us to come up with new and better ways of dealing with
each other both internationally and within Indonesia --
especially with the lifting of many of the old constraints of
Soeharto era.

Indonesia, like the United States, has always been a richly
diverse country; that diversity coupled with its abundant natural
resources ensures Indonesia's bright future. The people of
Indonesia have a largely embraced pluralism, seeking contact and
trade with others, showing tolerance and respect for differences
in belief. Long before the first Portuguese or Dutch trader
arrived on the shores of Java, coastal principalities and inland
sultanates had begun a lucrative trade in spice, cloth, grain,
and gold between Maluku, Sulawesi, Java, and Sumatra. From ports
of these islands, traders sent goods to China, India, and
southern Arabia half a world away.

During this period of remarkable growth, Buddhism, Hinduism,
and Islam came to Sumatra and Java, further enriching an
archipelago already characterized by perhaps as many as 500
distinct ethnic and linguistic groups. At a few times and in a
few places in the pre-colonial period, Nusantara's rulers applied
harsh and absolute rule forcing religious minorities to convert
to Islam. In Java, the Malay Peninsula, and southern Sulawesi, as
noted scholar Robert Hefner writes, "the law was applied with a
gentler pluralistic hand." Similarly, Sir Thomas Raffles remarked
that Java's legal administration in 1817 was "a prerogative
liberally exercised" and diversity of belief respected.

Nevertheless, as the archipelago fell under ever-tighter
colonial rule, most native residents of the Dutch East Indies
suffered rough justice that pit one group against another to
prevent unified opposition.

In the United States the framers of our constitution took
pains to ensure that the tyranny of the majority would not
trample the rights of the minority. Most of the amendments to the
U.S. constitution deal with protecting the rights of individuals
either from the government or from the majority. Similarly, in
Indonesia at the time of independence, Sukarno, Mohammed Hatta,
Sutan Sjahrir, and Mohammed Yamin worked hard to bind together a
diverse nation and protect the rights of all of Indonesia's
citizens.

"Even in family," Hatta said, "the members still must have the
right to express their feelings in order to take care of the
collectivity." Hatta knew that what makes pluralism work,
prevents conflicts, and keeps economies growing are strong
institutions, a clear legal framework, and impartial justice.

That framework ensures that when one member of society
violates the rights of another those institutions will resolve
the problem fairly and conflicts will not escalate from the level
of individuals to the level of communities.

Unfortunately, Hatta's spirit of unity, along with the rule of
law, suffered soon after independence. Numerous groups felt
aggrieved by what they considered the broken promises of the
independence struggle, separatist fighting ensued, and the break
down the political system opened the door to Sukarno's "guided
democracy." Exploitation of political, religious, and ethnic
differences followed and worsened further during the Soeharto
era. Ethnic and religious groups were increasingly pitted against
each other and "the law" served the interests of only a
privileged few.

In 1998, the vice-grip of the Asian financial crisis and long
pent-up demands for reform and democracy squeezed the New Order
out of power. In the absence of a functioning, transparent
justice system, the cynical exploitation of inter-group conflicts
resulted in repeated eruptions of violence in Jakarta against
ethnic Chinese, in the Moluccas and Central Sulawesi between
Muslims and Christians, and in Kalimantan between indigenous
Dyaks and ethnic Madurese.

It is no coincidence that billions of dollars of corruption
came to light at the same time these conflicts ignited. The
absence of the rule of law deepened both the economic and the
social crises that struck Indonesia.

Indonesia is not the only country to have faced these
challenges. In the United States, early in our history our
forefathers hotly debated the question of religious freedom and
role of religion in government. In the 1600s in New York and
Massachusetts, efforts by the Dutch Reformed Church and
Congregationalists, respectively, to institute an official
religion led to lawsuits and civil disobedience. By the time of
our independence, the view that people should be entitled to
their own beliefs had won the day. Nevertheless, the role of
religion in our society is still a matter of debate.

During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, racial and ethnic conflict
and recognition of the need to respect the rights of minorities
drove a series of landmark civil-rights legislation and changes
in popular attitudes that transformed the United States. American
Nobel laureate Martin Luther King, Jr. put it best when he said
in 1963 that "we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is
bankrupt...now is the time to make real the promises of
democracy."

Ethnic or religious violence still occurs from time to time
today in the United States, but the government investigates and
prosecutes it vigorously. This certainty dissuades those who
would try to inflame group conflicts and reassures those who may
be harmed that they need not, and should not, take the law into
their own hands.

Today, America is wrestling with billion dollar corporate
scandals and the challenge of cleaning up enormous financial mess
that those scandals have left. As we did with our own savings and
loan crisis almost 20 years ago, the United States government is
investigating these cases carefully, prosecuting those who have
committed crimes. In fact, our Congress has already passed new
legislation to prevent it from happening again. President Bush
recently signed tough new legislation regarding accounting
transparency and prosecutors arrested officials of Worldcom and
several other companies for securities fraud.

This paper was presented during the Castle Asia Conference on
Pluralism, Intergroup Conflict, and National Economic Recovery in
Jakarta on Aug. 7.