[Peace-discuss] The state of Indonesia today.

[Morton K. Brussel]

After the massacre 40 years ago…, promoted by the US administration.  
It's support continues.  --mkb

ZNet Commentary
40 Year After Indonesian Holocaust - Silence October 11, 2005
By Andre  Vltchek

Jakarta. They came to commemorate the 40th anniversary of one the  
most intensive massacres in human history. Not many, but at least  
some 50 or 60 people came. Of all places in Jakarta they gathered in  
the modest complex of German cultural centre - Goethe Haus. There was  
a poetry reading, theatre, talk show with the greatest Indonesian  
author Pramoedya Ananta Toer.

40 years ago - on the night of September 30th and October 1st -  
Indonesian military backed by the West grabbed power, sidelining  
progressive President Sukarno and unleashing campaign of terror in  
which between 500 thousand and 3 million people vanished.

Killing was performed by both military and ordinary citizens in all  
major cities of Indonesia as well as in the countryside. Victims were  
members of PKI (Indonesian Communist Party - 40 years ago the third  
largest in the world), members of Chinese minority, atheists, and  
Christians. "Military right-wing coup", say some; "Religious and  
ethnic cleansing on massive scale", say others.

During Suharto's dictatorship, all alternative views were banned and  
so were Chinese language and culture, atheism, and Marxism. Young  
generations were told that in 1965 Communists attempted to stage the  
coup and the heroic Indonesian military intervened and saved the nation.

40 years after that terrible event, Indonesians are suffering from  
political apathy and fear to look back. There are some reasons for  
it: almost no family in Java is blameless; each has its skeleton in  
the closet. Some have both victims and victimizers in their ranks. In  
the culture of obedience and fear almost nobody dares to revisit the  
past and search for the truth.

Mass media (local and foreign) refused to cover the anniversary. No  
politically motivated demonstrations are rocking the capital city.  
Today's Indonesia doesn't need government censorship - writers and  
thinkers censor themselves - too afraid of oppressive religious,  
family, and society structures which are silencing dissidents without  
almost any need for intervention from the state.

Majority of Indonesians see history as irrelevant. Unusually low  
level of education (even by the regional standards) and intensive  
religious indoctrination prevent the great majority of citizens from  
pursuing independent thoughts. To analyze differently from  
established norms is strongly discouraged and may lead to  
excommunication or something worse.

For many men and women of this country there is simply no time for  
history; present problems are too overwhelming. The country is  
basically collapsing - it has become a failed state.

Infrastructure is in total decay - there are no highways connecting  
major Indonesian cities except an insufficient and expensive 140km  
stretch between Jakarta and Bandung. Railways, ports, airports and  
telecommunications are an absolute disgrace, so are schools and  
hospitals.

Only 20 to 30 percent of urban dwellers have access to running water  
(lesser than in India) and its quality, after privatization,  
nosedived while prices went up. The country is a major exporters of  
child prostitutes. Beggars, as young as five, can be seen on all  
major intersections in Jakarta and elsewhere.

More than half of the population lives on less than 2 dollars a day;  
most of Indonesia's citizens lack basic sanitation. Cities, due to  
corruption and mismanagement, became unplanned nightmarish sprawls,  
Jakarta being the most polluted capital in Asia, after Dhaka. As  
there is almost no public transportation, many people in the capital  
have to commute up to 3 hours each way, breathing poisonous carbon- 
dioxide and other pollutants.

Corruption is omnipresent, on a level unknown anywhere else in this  
part of the world. Government officials are openly stealing money  
from meager projects intended to help the poor. Powerful and  
competing military and police are enjoying complete impunity. Just to  
illustrate the situation, police in Jakarta will not begin to  
investigate car theft, unless paid a bribe of 2.000 USD in the  
country where GDP per capita stands around 700 USD a year.

Intolerance is on the rise. While Indonesia reached limited agreement  
in Aceh, it is still implementing violence in Papua, basically  
occupied territory. The country had been formed along the geographic  
boundaries of Dutch colonial empire in Southeast Asia. Decision to  
form Indonesia had been taken in 1940s by the elites; there was no  
plebiscite.

Ryaas Rasyid, former Minister of Decentralization, claims that  
Indonesia is in such a miserable state that it may soon fall apart,  
splitting into at least 9 independent states, while plunging into a  
brutal civil war. "Java is acting like a colonial power", he  
explained. "If they would be allowed to do so, many islands,  
including Bali, would opt for independence."

The Muslim religion (80 to 85 percent of the population) is taking  
grip on the country. Hundreds of Catholic and Protestant churches are  
burned and vandalized every year; religious minorities are living in  
fear. Atheism is still banned - each citizen has to choose one of  
five "officially permitted religions." Religious indoctrination which  
allows no alternative views is on the rise.

That is the state of Indonesia 40 years after the coup. The most  
disheartening part is that there are no positive changes on the  
horizon. NGOs are disorganized, often commercially oriented; lacking  
unity and common goals. The fourth most populous nation on earth,  
Indonesia is not capable of giving birth to strong opposition  
leaders, writers, filmmakers, or thinkers. During our conversation in  
New York, Dan Simon - editor of the Seven Stories Press - declared  
that once Pramoedya Ananta Toer (the most important Indonesian  
novelist and former prisoner of conscience) dies, the last  
intellectual bridge between Indonesia and the rest of the world will  
collapse.

On October 1st, under pressure from foreign businesses, government  
raised dramatically prices of gasoline and cooking oil, promising  
meager compensations for the very poor (families whose members live  
on much lesser than 1USD a day). Exhausted Indonesian citizens  
managed to organize just a few limited demonstrations protesting the  
move which will further reduce their standard of living.

There was not one demonstration commemorating the coup; protesting  
against the loss and destruction of millions of human lives in 1965  
and in the following years. Needless to say - almost all roots of the  
current Indonesian nightmare can be traced to that event.

On the same day - October 1st - religious suicide bombers blew up 3  
restaurants in Bali, killing over 20 people in an attempt to scare  
off foreigners who, from the extreme religious point of view,  
represent unwelcome diversity in this country which is becoming  
increasingly locked in itself; intellectually castrated.

40th anniversary of the terrible slaughter and destruction of  
Indonesian nation went unmarked and unreported. The great majority of  
Indonesian citizens accepted official lies and propaganda. The elites  
pretended that they don't know and are hoping that past will  
eventually disappear, as those few survivors of torture and  
concentration camps are becoming too old to speak.

But the past never disappears; it forms foundations of present  
Indonesia; it is underneath almost everything that is now happening  
in this country; its immoral path which terrorizes minorities,  
despises the poor, and eliminates compassion. The only way forward  
would be to destroy the whole structure and begin anew; with an open  
mind and without fear.