Violence a living reality in Indonesia

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): For some time now we have been living in an atmosphere of violence. Even before the July 27 violence broke out, there had been ample evidence that physical violence was part of our daily life in Jakarta. Every day we have been reading news about criminal acts: robbery committed with rape and murder.

In addition to this "hard violence" there has also been evidence of "soft violence". We have been talking violence to each other. The language of law and civility has been replaced by the language of force and coercion. Threats of physical retaliations have been issued to warn those inclined to assault others verbally. The boundary between verbal violence and physical violence has become blurred.

One such violent act is accusing others of being communists. This is very violent behavior, in my opinion, because in this country such accusations can have lethal consequences. A friend of mine lost his wife and home after he was falsely accused of being a communist. In addition, he was prohibited to practice as a doctor for a number of years. Such is the damage that can be caused by verbal violence: accusing someone of being a communist.

The physical violence on July 27 and the subsequent verbal violence that ensued were triggered by a political dispute. The sad thing about this is that it is not the first time that physical violence has been used in this country to solve a political problem. In the past -- and not so distant a past at that -- similar crises resulted in the death and injury of a great number of people, the exact number of which will perhaps never be revealed.

I personally do not think that political problems can be effectively solved by violent means. I share the opinion of Pierre Buyoya who, according to Time magazine, said in a radio interview in Belgium a week before he seized power in Burundi: "Even though I am a soldier, I don't believe in a military solution."

How long are we going to cling to this "tradition" of solving political disputes by forceful means? Do we really believe, like Rasheeduddin Khan, that there is a causal linkage between politics, power, and violence? Or should we believe Neil Smelser, who maintains that violent behavior is pathological behavior that generates balancing forces to maintain the structural-functional equilibrium in society?

To me both views are equally unattractive. If you adhere to the first view, then you will always have to resort to violence to obtain or retain political power. On the other hand, if you accept the second view, you will have to be pathological before you can handle any situation characterized by disturbance of the structural-functional equilibrium of society.

According to Alain Joxe, there is a way to avoid the use of violence in politics. This can be done by exchanging the "traditional political power" system based on violence with a "new political power" system based on knowledge about the causes of violence.

This position rests on the theory that since violence is explicable, it is avoidable. Accordingly, it is possible to exchange a system of political power based on the motto "if you want peace, you must prepare for war" (si vis pacem, pare bellum) for a new system based on the principle that those who know the causes of violence can learn how to contain it. Those who use such knowledge will thus possess real political power.

The problem with this theory is that it presupposes open- mindedness and a willingness to accept all hard facts about violence, no matter how painful they may be. Do we have this capacity? I doubt it. We are inclined to be selective in absorbing information about politics. We tend to accept only those facts we like, and reject other facts that might hurt our political ego.

Pointing the finger at communists behind the recent riots is comforting, because it conforms to a long-held and cherished political doctrine. We persist in defending this view, no matter how flimsy the real evidence may be. On the other hand, we cannot accept the thesis that the widening gap between the rich and the poor is one of the real causes of the present social tensions, because this flies in the face of our view that we have succeeded in eradicating poverty.

What is the general theory about the origin of violence?

According to Sugata Dasgupta it is "maldevelopment" or the disequilibrium in development that results in tension, conflict, and violence. And at the base there are the appalling problems of poverty, inequality and lack of equal opportunity inherited from the feudal and colonial past. In this kind of situation whenever economic interests and disputes get politicized, the resulting tensions, conflicts, and violence are pursued by methods ranging from peaceful demonstrations and parliamentary battles to strikes, street fights and civil violence. Violence by the masses or "amateur violence" will then clash with "establishment violence" or institutional violence.

According to Ted Robert Gurr, violence by the masses can erupt into three kinds of politically deviant behavior, namely turmoil, conspiracy, and internal war. What do we have at this moment in Indonesia? In my opinion it is 'turmoil' which in Gurr's definition is "relatively spontaneous, disorganized political violence with substantial popular participation involving political strikes, riots, political clashes, demonstrations, and localized rebellions."

It is not yet a 'conspiracy', as some people think, which he defines as "highly organized political violence with limited participation, including organized political assassination, small-scale terrorism, small-scale guerrilla wars, mutinies, etc." And it is certainly not an 'internal war' which is defined as "highly organized political violence with widespread popular participation, designed to overthrow a regime or dissolve the state, accompanied by extensive violence, including large-scale terrorism, guerrilla wars and revolutions."

What is my point?

It is that as long as we are unwilling to recognize the hard facts about the origins of the recent turmoil, we will never come out wiser.

As long as we are unwilling to recognize that total disregard for the public sense of justice, continued insults to the public's intelligence in the form of continuous lies, and coercion in the management of public affairs may be what has disturbed the equilibrium of our society, we shall never achieve a political culture which emphasizes wisdom and deemphasizes violence.

We will forever be trapped in this vicious circle of politics, power, and violence.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.