Democratic contraction in Southeast Asia | New Mandala

Democratic contraction in Southeast Asia | New Mandala
Bridget Welsh,  5 JANUARY 2016

2015 was the year authoritarian governments struck back against democratic pressures.

The story of 2015 in Southeast Asia was Myanmar’s November election. In giving the National League for Democracy and its leader Aung San Suu Kyi a landslide, Myanmar citizens signaled their strong support for democratic change and better governance.

These calls have been loud in recent years — in Malaysia’s 2008 and 2013 elections, in Thailand’s repeated electoral victories for a non-military aligned government, in Cambodia’s 2013 and Singapore’s 2011 polls as well as strong electoral support for democracy in the Philippines and Indonesia. Democratic pressures on Southeast Asian governments have been increasing, and are not likely to recede in the near future.

2015 was the year authoritarian governments in the region struck back. Behind the Myanmar headlines there is a worrying trend of a significant democratic contraction taking place. The use of the authoritarian arsenal by Southeast Asian governments are not new, but in the course of the year regional governments expanded their use of incumbency and control of institutions to shore up their positions.

The most obvious trend has been the increased use of repression, especially targeted toward opposition politicians and critics. In Malaysia, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was jailed in February. In Thailand, a trial began against ousted PM Yingluck Shinawarta as she was denied the right to travel. In Cambodia, opposition politicians were physically attacked. The leader of the opposition Sam Rainsy has delayed his return to Cambodia from November as a result of jail threat. Malaysia has the highest number of opposition politicians facing various charges from sedition to violations of banking finance regulations.

The threats opposition members across the region face in calling for change extend from being physically attacked on the campaign trial (as occurred for Myanmar’s Naing Ngan Lin NLD candidate who was slashed by a machete) to potential bankruptcy.

The use of the law for political ends moves beyond opposition members. Journalists and bloggers remain targeted. Radio reporter Jose Bernardo was shot dead at a restaurant in Manila in November. He joins the other 77 journalists who have been killed in the Philippines since 1992, making this country one of the most dangerous places for media professionals in the world.

Myanmar tops the region’s list with the most number of journalists jailed, pipping Vietnam this year who released some of its bloggers. Notably, blogger Ta Phong Tan was released after 10 years in jail. The situation for bloggers in Vietnam remains serious, with a number of incidents where bloggers and associates were beaten up in mysterious circumstances rather than jailed. In Singapore, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong won his defamation case against a blogger critic Roy Ngerng, who was asked to pay PM Lee S $150,000. Lee joins Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak as the second current leader in the region who filed charges for public criticism.

The crackdowns on freedom of expression extend to ordinary citizens, from artists and academics to taxi drivers.

Young Chaw Sandi Tun was sentenced to six months jail for insulting Myanmar’s army in her Facebook post noting the similarity in color between the Tatmadaw’s uniform and the opposition leader’s clothing. In Thailand, the cases involving lese majeste have extended the boundaries to include insults to the king’s dog. Thanakorn faces up to 15 years in jail for this reference, and joins a long list of cases that have involved jailing of university students for a play, taxi cab conversations, novelists and more.

A mother of two was sentenced to 28 years for her Facebook comments, while a hotel employee received 56 years for his posts in August as part of the lese majeste unending prosecutions. Cartoonist Zunar in Malaysia faces up to 43 years for his satirical art work. These developments have had chilling effects on public discourse. Even in more open Indonesia, discussion of the 1965 attacks on communists were shut down.

As power has been used to quiet alternative voices, the rule of law itself has faced erosion. In some cases the law is not being implemented. In July, the co-Investigating International judge Mark Harmon of the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia resigned his position after the tribunal declined to arrest two former Khmer Rouge leaders for whom the court had issued warrants.

Despite having the technology to find the daughter separated from her mother Indira Gandhi for seven years by a husband who is abusing religion in a personal vendetta against his ex-wife, the Malaysian police have proven to be unwilling to use its tools to follow the court order to return the daughter to the mother.

In other cases, constitutional frameworks protecting rights have been by-passed through the introduction of military courts – as has been the case in Thailand and called for in Malaysia – and new measures that empower leaders to declare ‘security areas’ without checks on their authority, as occurred with the hurried passage of the National Security Council law in Malaysia. This law is being seen as a measure that will allow unpopular Prime Minister Najib to stay in office if he loses an election. In Myanmar, there are potential laws being considered that may give military impunity for alleged past crimes.

The area where the laws are under real scrutiny continues to be corruption. 2015 showcased some shocking scandals.

In Malaysia the 1MDB $700 million ‘donation’ into Najib’s personal accounts remains inadequately explained, as the rule of law has not been properly applied to the premier and impunity appears to have allowed the premier to hold onto office even with his personal reputation in shatters. Efforts to undermine Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and the recent demands for payments from Freeport to politicians to conduct business have showcased that persistent problem of bribery, lack of transparency and abuse of position.

From corruption concerns tied to the Aquino administration in the Philippines to persistent effects of corruption trails associated with Vietnam’s elite, there lacks effective leadership in tackling the region’s most serious governance problem. The end effect is that leaders at the top are seen to engage in graft, reinforcing a system where office is used for personal wealth rather than public service.

Control over resources and alliances with cronies remains a dominant feature of Southeast Asia’s political economy. Four countries in the region – Malaysia (3), Singapore (5), Philippines (6), Indonesia (10) – were in The Economist’s crony capitalist list, which measures the favoritism of wealth toward tycoons and politically-affiliated business interests.

Measures to enhance this favoritism expanded in 2015 through the introduction of consumption taxes in Malaysia and Myanmar, regulations that facilitated more burning rather than less in the haze-affected region in Indonesia and service fees in areas such as tolls to crony-companies. The region’s most vulnerable populations are feeling the economic pain, with depreciating currencies and a slowdown in growth in the region as a whole. These conditions have contributed to conditions where the use of state resources through populist policies have boosted incumbent governments, a factor that contributed to the People’s Action Party’s September 2015 electoral victory.

Those on the margins are being particularly impacted, with serious implications for rights. Southeast Asia was not immune from the global refugee crisis affecting over 60 million people worldwide. Conditions affecting the livelihoods of the Rohingyas in Myanmar remain severe, with conditions in camps across the region not much better. The shocking findings of death camps in Thailand and Malaysia involving torture, rape and human and organ trafficking in May have yet to be properly accounted for.

One reason for this lack of accountability lies with the upgrade the Obama administration gave Malaysia on its human trafficking assessment in the wake of the discovery of the gruesome murders. The Obama administration’s sell out of human rights principles was especially acute in 2015, where interests associated with the Trans-Pacific Partnership overrode other concerns.

From questions tied to the trial of Burmese migrant workers in killing British backpackers Thailand to the persistent practice of ‘sea slaves’ with citizens hauled onto fishing boats, those that are vulnerable remain so at the end of the year, which limited measures to point to strengthening protections.

Vulnerability in 2015 extended to religious and ethnic minorities as well. Bogor was labeled Indonesia’s most intolerant city when it declared a ban of the Shia faith in the city. Hate speech toward Muslims persists in Myanmar, in spite of the electoral victory signaling greater inclusiveness. Churches were burned in Aceh. Christmas celebrations were banned in Brunei. Rights of religious minorities were curbed in Malaysia in cases involving child custody and worship.

Measures to forge peace with minorities fell apart, as the Philippines’ Bansamoro Basic Law did not pass the legislatures. In other places such as Myanmar, Protection Race and Religion Bills denying rights to marriage and religious freedom were introduced, as protections for rights were in fact eroded.

There were nevertheless bright spots in greater freedom across the region – a gender rights bill in Thailand, the end of the persecution of a book seller and academic by religious authorities in Malaysia, the reinstatement of direct local elections in Indonesia and the subsequent peaceful elections in December, to name but a few.

Southeast Asians continue to fight for their freedoms valiantly, over cyberspace, in courtrooms and in communities. The climate however has not been conducive to greater freedoms as those in office continue to use their offices to hold on to power.

As we look ahead, with a slowing economy and persistent insecurities by incumbents, the prospects for expanding rights does not appear promising in 2016. Last year has shown us however that we can expect the unexpected, with the military’s acceptance of the Myanmar’s electoral results as an example.

As ASEAN formally announced its community on 31 December 2015, many hold only to potentially a different ‘imagined community,’ where the ideas of brilliant scholar Benedict Anderson of shared belonging, human dignity and decency live on.

Bridget Welsh is Professor of Political Science at Ipek University, Senior Research Associate at the Center for East Asian Democratic Studies of National Taiwan University, Senior Associate Fellow of The Habibie Center, and University Fellow of Charles Darwin University.

The gold farmers in West Kalimantan, Indonesia | New Mandala

The gold farmers in West Kalimantan, Indonesia | New Mandala

NANCY LEE PELUSO, 

17 JULY 2015

ABOVE: The photo essay accompanying this article is hosted on YouTube. We recommend viewing in enlarged or full-screen mode.

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Small-scale illegal mining in West Kalimantan is dangerous to human and environmental health.  It’s also a shot at economic independence for marginalised rural people.

“We are the petani kecil (small farmers),” Bang Adam said as we stood talking on top of a flow of dry tailings in a gold mining pit in western Kalimantan. It was only 9 am, but an excruciatingly hot equatorial sun shone down on us. The gnashing sound of dredges sucking up mud and sand in other parts of the pit caused him to talk more loudly than usual.

Bang Adam (not his real name) is a self-made man—not rich, but a small businessman who is proud that small-scale gold mining allowed him to escape poverty. He was orphaned at age nine. His mother died of cancer and his father left Adam and his eight brothers and sisters for another wife and family.

Today, Bang Adam has worked his way up from labouring in others’ mining pits to the status of ‘mine boss’. He runs three dredge sets, each with a nine-man crew of gold workers, all related to him. Over the past 10 years, he has provided work and training in the art of small-scale gold mining to many of his younger siblings and nephews. Having started from nothing, he was today contributing substantial income to the 27 families attached to those men. He regards the mining site as where he works, not as his home. His village, on the other hand, does not offer much remunerative work, though he and his family have access to several hectares of farm land. Moreover, the village in which he lives managed to keep oil palm companies from buying up their land. The costs of everyday living are just too high without off-farm work.

The crews’ three-month verbal contracts were almost up. They had found little gold this time, like most of the other crews in this sprawling mining complex some 600km from their home villages. Like other bosses this contract period, Bang Adam would forgive the advances loaned to workers’ families before the miners left for the mine site and absorb the costs of feeding the crews and running the operation. He was resigned to the losses but was optimistic that they would find more gold soon. He felt this 200 km² site, mined intensively over the last 20 years, had not yet given up all that it contained.

An economic opportunity
Smallholder gold mining has exploded across Indonesia over the last 20 years. Each site has its own history and manners of working; each pit or shaft within the broader mining sites experiences trajectories of boom and bust. Both the mining activities and the gold produced in these sites compete with those from the gigantic corporate miners known around the world: Freeport, Newmont, and Aurora. Though ‘small-scale’—in the sense that crews work at the direction of a mining boss/small businessman who runs the operations with his or her own money or others’ investments—its effects generate as much shock and awe to the uninitiated observer as do those of their corporate counterparts.

Yet despite the size, depth, and impacts of the behemoths, small-scale mining touches on many more Indonesian lives, environments, and livelihoods. Miners in the sites pictured in the photo essay above hail from nearby villages, or migrate from other parts of West Kalimantan or Java. Through the labour of small-scale miners and mine workers, gold mining provides a major source of income to rural families. This income is particularly important as rural families suffer from the declines in agricultural commodity prices. Most miners we spoke to described the organisation of work and the sharing of the finds as more acceptable and profitable than offered by plantation work or other labouring opportunities in their home areas.

Three main economic reasons—the decline in agroforestry commodity prices, the high potential returns from participation in gold mining, and the organisation of work among small-scale mining crews—are what keep interest in mining alive even when gold sources seem to be running thin.

No easy work
Most mining takes place in pits carved out in swamp or drier lowlands. After an initial hole in the ground is opened by inserting high-powered hoses into the ground, the miners spray water against the walls to make it deeper. Some pits give up gold at depths as shallow as 2 or 3 metres. Many run more dangerously deep—to 18 or 20 metres. Mine pits at that depth cannot be worked by the usual dredge sets (popularly called dompeng, after a brand name of a dredge imported from China). The smaller, 20-30 horsepower dredges can’t boost the gold-bearing mud out of such a deep mine pit; four to six cylinder automobile engines (mesin auto) are deployed for this task. Whether medium-sized dompeng or larger mesin auto, the engines send the mud up through long flexible hoses onto and over a wooden sluice structure.

In the morning, mine crews lay out carpet pieces on the downward sloping surface of the sluice to catch the heavier-than-mud gold flakes and (they hope!) gold chunks as the water propels them down it. A cone-shaped pile of tailings forms at the bottom edge of sluice. Someone may choose to rework these tailings at a later date, as they are likely to contain several grams of gold that were not captured on the first filtering. At the end of the day, miners remove the carpets from the sluice and shake the dust they contain into homemade panning pools of blue tarpaulin. The crew boss who works for the mining boss is entrusted with panning in that pool for the gold. Pools are not shared with other mining crews.

Mercury is used to consolidate the flakes in the pan and detergent is added to rid the gold flakes of the mud and sand that have stuck to them. A ball of gold, appearing encased in silvery mercury, is produced at the end of the panning exercise. The mercury is then burned off using small torches and home made ‘ovens’.  This is one of the most dangerous parts of the process—vaporised mercury is more available to be taken up by both human bodies and the environment. Moreover, clouds of mercury are thought to remain over a site for many days, increasing the time of exposure to humans in the area.

Shaft mining involves different labour processes. Shafts are dug into a hillside by hand, members of a mining crew taking turns with the hoe (cangkul), seeking an underground vein of gold-inflected rocks. Every man in the crew is required to take part in the digging, descending into the pit to pull up rocks, and cooking. The gold comes out embedded in rocks, not as swamp mud, and is generally found in conjunction with pyrite or what is known in American and Australian mines as ‘fool’s gold’. There is no ‘boss’; the gold, and money, are divided equally among the crew members after 10 per cent is given to the tuan tanah or land claimant, and either a percentage or a flat fee is paid to the gelondong, the owner of the gold mill.

The main shafts may be dug as deep as 30 metres. No canaries in these mines: diggers wear compressors (air tanks) to enable them to breathe at that depth. Many more perch air blowers on the shaft’s edges to literally blow air into its depths, sometimes directing the air through hoses or pipes. If they find a vein, they dig horizontally, following the vein as far as the available air will take them.

Deadly mistakes
This is not work for the squeamish or the timid.  Small-scale gold mining, like large scale gold mining, entails serious risks.  Miners know they are putting their lives on the line to do the work; they justify the risk by chalking it up to ‘luck’ and ‘fate’. In pits, the threat of landslides and burial alive is ever present. Indeed, when or whether a wall might collapse is partially a matter of chance—and carelessness.

One boss within the last year was distracted by the work in the pit when he walked up to an unstable edge thereof. It collapsed under him, and the sandy particles comprising the soil moved so fast that he could not claw his way back up to avoid burial. Four miners in the pit were buried with him. In other cases of pit mining, inexperienced miners can endanger their entire crew by spraying too far into the base of the wall, literally undermining it and causing it to collapse. Hillside shafts are also liable to collapse inward if miners do not bolster the walls with boards.

Some mining goes on under rivers, lakes, or in very wet swamps. In these liminal spaces where land and water mix unstably, miners dive, using compressors to provide their oxygen while they dig tunnels through the swampy soils under the river or lake. The danger in these environments is unknowingly digging into an old tunnel or breaking through the upper wall of soil that tenuously separates miners from the water body.  Rupturing the wall takes away their buffer, leading to the water rushing into the tunnel and causing many to drown. The uncertainties in all these risk scenarios are, again, regarded as fate. They are well known among miners— as are the specific cases in which five, eight, 10, 18 and more deaths have occurred in mere instants.

Part of the landscape
Why does this activity persist despite its criminalisation and the severe risks entailed in participation? Many miners we interviewed are not interested in the slow and low returns of smallholder agriculture, and are even less attracted by the low pay, conflicts, and poor conditions of labouring on the expanding plantations taking over West Kalimantan’s landscapes.  At all levels of work—as diggers, crew bosses, or mine bosses—many have come to regard themselves as professional miners. Those who stopped school after ninth, sixth, or even third grade explained that participation in gold mining is perhaps their only chance to work for more than a subsistence wage. These labour opportunities provided by the sector for the masses are not recognised or appreciated by the government. “Where else”, as one man said to us, “do people put their lives on the line for a job?” They are not forced to stay. They can opt to work in less risky, if lower- paying, locations.

Small-scale mining was made illegal by the Mining Law of 2009, requiring a formal permit from Jakarta’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM). But Jakarta is a long way from these mining sites. Moreover, the numerous police, military, and other government officials using the informal power of their office/positions to extort miners, shopkeepers, and other business people serving the mining community have effectively created underground governing and taxation structures that illegally benefit them. Regulation and formal taxation would  benefit the government if small scale mining were decriminalised.  As individuals, however, these government actors are not interested in seeing this happen. As a result of these complex relationships, mining sites and miners such as those depicted here are likely to remain part of Indonesia’s rural landscapes.

Though they ‘busted’ in this last contract period, Bang Adam was optimistic that in the next contract period or sooner they would find more gold–before encroaching oil palm companies fill in the massive swamp pits with their industrial-scale ‘excavator’ shovels. They have already begun doing so, putting piles of tailings back into the pits and hiding these 20 years of gold mining under thousands of oil palm trees. The trees thrive, but it is unclear whether the palm fruits will absorb mercury, diesel oil, and gasoline from the soils that now support them. No one, in any case, is asking.

Five years from now, your favourite bananas fried in palm oil might be glowing more brightly.

Nancy Lee Peluso is the Henry J Vaux Distinguished Professor of Forest Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. This article and accompanying photo essay (in the player above) are part of a current book project focusing on agrarian transformations and small scale gold mining in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province. 

She will give the keynote speech at the Australian National University’s 2015 Indonesia Update Conference, Land and Development in Indonesia: Searching for the People’s Sovereignty.

“Children of the revolution” to revolutionary grandchildren? | New Mandala

“Children of the revolution” to revolutionary grandchildren? | New Mandala

RUEDIGER KORFF, 

22 APRIL 2015

An old Chinese proverb says that wealth does not pass three generations. The first generation works hard to establish the family fortune the second, still has a knowledge of hard times, but has learned the skills will  maintain it, and the third, often made up by kids spoiled by the wealth they grew up in, will waste it. A study by Merill Lynch endorses this view. The study “found that, in two out of three cases, family wealth did not outlive the generation following the one that created it. In 90 per cent of cases, it was exhausted by the end of the third generation.” Besides kids being spoiled by their wealthy parents, the decline can as well be due to the larger number of persons to inherit the wealth and often conflicts between them. In Southeast Asia most of the large enterprises and tycoons are family based. Family relations do play a role in politics as well, and often political families are connected to tycoon families based on intermarriage. Thus, does this curse apply for Southeast Asian elites as well?

A generation is commonly estimated between 30 to 36 years. It depends on live expectancy, age of marriage and birth of children as well as when people reach their working life and retire. Instead of a chronological view of generations, Mannheim (1928) speaks of experiences shared by a generation. Generation is a loose assembly of persons in a similar age cohort. They share similar perspectives based on similar experiences. However, crucial is not only the experience as such, but its interpretation in common frames.

Generations in Southeast Asia

Taking the chronological approach as starting point, and using the present as initial period of the third generation, the first generation would cover the time form the 1940th to the 1970th, the second the period roughly from the 1970 to around 2000. Are there any important transformation of society, politics and the economy and cultural interpretations of these that might be interpreted as “generational experiences”?

The first generation or the formation of a post-colonial elite

Certainly the most important experience of this generation was the second world war, the struggle for independence and the creation of the new countries. In Thailand instead of the independence struggle, the end of the absolute monarchy can be taken. This period was characterized by far reaching transformations and shifts of elites. The colonial masters dominating the bureaucracy left which allowed for the rise of new groups entering into these positions. As the main framework of integration of the countries was changed, different groups started to compete to set up a new framework and to establish themselves as dominant. Typically in such a situation of loose integration of society (including politics and economy) charismatic authority becomes most relevant. In fact, when we look at Southeast Asia for this periode, we have charismatic leaders like Sukarno, Ho Chih Minh and Giap. Pridi Panomyong and Phibul Songkran, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Aung San, U Nu and Ne Win.

A crucial factor in the competition between multiple different groups and persons to gain dominance and form the newly rising elite, was the ability to organize and set up working networks. In this the military and state bureaucracy was favoured, as both implicitly require a high level of organisational integration. In the economic field to achieve such an organisational level was more difficult. A way out was to ally and develop closer relations to the bureaucratic/military leaders. A special case are communist parties, grown from the resistance against the Japanese occupation and the struggle for independence.  Not the least due to their military experiences these were well organized too.

In Indonesia during the Sukarno period we have a competition and fight between the communist party (PKI) and the military, which was ended with the victory of the military in 1965 by Soeharto. In Myanmar we have well organized separatist and communist movements that were pushed back when the military took over under Ne Win in 1962. In Malaysia we have a combination of the emergency, confrontasi, Singapore being part of Malaysia and leaving Malaysia, and quite strong leftist parties. There the state bureaucracy maintained its power and organisational strength, and the political dominance of the sultans remained undisputed. However, competition related to ethnicity gained in importance. Existing ethnic based organisations became relevant like the parties, networks etc. This culminated in the race riots of 1969 that lead to the end of the government of Tunku Abdul Rahman. In Thailand we have the competition between the civilian and military faction of the revolutionary group and the aristocracy. After the failed Bovoradej revolt, the junior military faction with Phibul Sonmgkran became strong. After the second world war, the military lost its power, while the civilian faction in combination with the aristocracy gained in strength. Finally, with the coup of 1957 and 1958 Sarit and the military established themselves as dominant power.

An interesting aspect of changes during this first generation is the shift from charismatic leaders to bureaucratic or in the case of Malaysia political leaders roughly during the sixtieth, starting with the substitution of Phibul by Sarit in 1958, the turmoil in Indonesia in 1965, the substitution of Ho Chi Minh and Giap by Le Duan and Le Duc Tho in 1965, the coup of Ne Win in 1962, the race riots in 1969 and the coup of Lon Nol against Sihanoug in 1970.

The period up to the sixtieth is characterized by competition, and instability due to a low level of social integration. In the competition between the different groups, individual success be it in terms of which faction within the military becomes dominant or what business gets stronger, personal relations combing economy (business) administration/military were crucial for success. After the sixtieth stabilization set in when the new post-colonial elite as a combination of Tycoon business, high ranking bureaucrats and military established itself.

This transformation is accompanied by an interesting ideological shift. The main ideology after independence (or the end of absolutist monarchy) was modernization, and modernization basically meant to become like the west, with proper nation states, industries, social welfare systems etc. Unfortunately, the policies of modernization did not fulfil the promises, but lead in Indonesia, Thailand and Burma to economic and political crisis. The end of the charismatic leaders required a new ideology of the post-colonial elites. This was the construction of a pre-colonial culture and traditions. A better future should be achieved by a re-vitalization of these traditions. Such a shift of ideology required intellectuals as interpretators of culture to define what the genuine culture was, before alienation from colonialism and western influences set in. In Thailand Kurkit Pramote can be cited as example. These intellectuals soon associated and became part of the new elite. In short, the ideology of modernization for a better future was substituted by forms of neo-feudal ideologies.

The second generation or the economic miracle (with a focus on Thailand and Malaysia)

The first generation depended on personal ties and links between business and bureaucracy/military. The bureaucracy provided licences and monopolies as basis for economic success, while business provided the resources necessary to finance clientelist networks within the bureaucracy. The main problem was that any change like f.e. through a coup meant that new relations had to be established. This arbitrariness was dysfunctional for business as well as for bureaucratic efficiency and lasting political stability. But, economic growth was necessary to satisfy increasing demands. Furthermore, the first generation was getting older and the world was changing. In addition, the ideologies were quite in contrast to political processes.

In Thailand the dominance of the military faction around Kirttikachorn (after the death of Sarit) lead to dissatisfaction by other military groups. The power of the military and its involvement in the economy was a problem for business, and the attempts of the middle classes for advancement were frustrated. These formed part of the background for the student protests (basically a middle class protest movement) in 1973. Malaysia followed an open economic policy to attract investment for further economic growth. Burma is a different case, with its policy of isolation. The new policies required new skills for business and administration.

The second generation, or the “children of the revolution” n the double sense that they were the children of those who had made the revolution, and they themselves pushed forward a form of radical change through protest etc. In difference to many of the first generation, the children had a good education. Especially the children of the elites studied abroad and became professionals. In general, after a period of instability, we have strong technocratic, professional developments. In Thailand the generational change was longer and accompanied by instability until the coup of Kriangsak 1977 and in particular the start of the governments of Prem Tinsulanond. In Malaysia since 1969 we have quite a few elections and changing prime ministers, until Mahathir. The governments of Mahathir (1981 – 2003) and Prem (1980 – 1988) were based on a technocratic, professional approach. The success of these policies became obvious especially in the ninetieth and the Southeast Asian economic miracle.

For the second generation the personal ties that were the base for success of the first generation were still of relevance, but the common technocratic, professional orientation among those now in business and the administration provided a far more sustainable form of articulation and integration as an elite. Again we have a shift of ideology. The pre-colonial traditions were maintained as “Asian values”, which were interpreted as the base for economic success and Asian modernization. Economic growth in turn allowed for social mobility and consumerism  as values for the middle classes. (the study of Kanokrat of the “Octobrists” dealing with a quite large segment of the “children of the revolution” is very interesting in this context)

In terms of generational experience and generational culture, for the second generation the “revolution” that is studying and protesting in the seventieth were crucial. These were part of academic studies to gain professional knowledge and technocratic competence.

The third generation or from the Asia-crisis to a system crisis

The elites survived the Asia-crisis surprisingly well. Although in Indonesia Soeharto had to resign, his children and the Tycoons could maintain their property. In Malaysia Anwar tried to use the crisis for a shift from Mahathir to him as real (not only as acting) prime minister. This however would have meant that his cronies gain. However, Mahathir won the struggle and Anwar went to jail. In Thailand Chavalit had to resign and Chuan Leekpai faced the task to handle the crisis in such a way that the elite could survive it with limited losses, and to keep the farmers etc. at bay. The ability of the second generation elite to survive the crisis is an indicator of their success and strength. However, parts of the ideology were now challenged, not the least because the future perspectives of the rising middle classes got frustrated. F.e. Asian values were hardly mentioned anymore. Instead, cultural traits (Thainess or Islam) became prominent.

There is an important difference between politics and the elite in Thailand and Malaysia. In Malaysia, politicians are representatives of the elite and thus elite decisions are formulated as decisions of politicians. In short, in Malaysia political decisions concerning the future of the country are made by politicians. In Thailand, in contrast, politicians hardly make political decisions. Throujgh the military, economic power, bureaucrats and courts, as well as intellectuals important political decisions are made by the elite. If any important political decision is planned by politicians in parliament, we hear about the military contemplating a coup, the courts making it clear that such a decision is against the law and the intellectuals noting that it is in contrast to Thai culture, and finally the administrations showing it unwillingness to implement it.

In Malaysia the conflict centred on who will be prime minister and what parties form the government. Although Mahathir could, based on his long experience,  manage to maintain the power of the elite, the elections indicated that their power is declining. The opposition, although quite a motley crue reaching from PAS to DAP, was able to attract surprising high numbers of voters. In terms of ideology the cultural campaigns, not mainly centred around Islam as indicator of Malayness were boosted, but the result is ambiguous, as many regard the governing parties (Barisan Nasional) not as genuine upholders of religion.

In Thailand the tensions are most strongly expressed. Chuan was facing strong opposition and demands from middle classes as well as peoples groups like the forum of the poor. Thaksin, as representative of the successful secondary elite of new business men, was regarded as a better choice to provide stability. Thaksin was successful. With his popular policies to help the poor and the farmers, not the least influenced by the second generation, he received their support. The middle classes were happy as he tried to solve problems like drugs etc. in a CEO-manner. As a result he was re-elected with a 60% majority in 2005. After this success, Thaksin tried to change the system in the sense that now political decisions should be made by politicians, which for him meant basically by himself. This was, of course, a problem for the elites. They faced though a problem: If they try to compete with Thaksin through elections with f.e. the Democrat Party, they implicitly endorse the political power of politicians, which is against their inherent interests. Thus, the only way out was a coup. This happened in 2006 and 2014. However, even though the current powers can hardly be challenged, it was accompanied by a big loss of legitimacy.

The current problem is that the countries are facing a generational change. The second generation of the elite, the modern technocrats who could manage quite well, even during the crisis, has to, sooner or later, hand over to their children. Do they have the necessary skills, and can they compete with rising new challengers?

Ruediger Korff works at the Department for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Passau

A Spanish lesson for Indonesia’s 1965 | New Mandala

A Spanish lesson for Indonesia’s 1965 | New Mandala

 

ABOEPRIJADI SANTOSO, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR, 

 8 DECEMBER 2014

Two years ago the Indonesian National Human Rights Commission published report on the bloody events of 1965, the first publication by a state agency on the pogrom of the left for decades. Joshua Oppenheimer’s landmark documentary film The Act of Killingas well as his The Look of Silence, and Indonesia’s weekly Tempo’s special report on the perpetrators’ perspective, have likewise sparked public attention. They all provoked growing public interest in Indonesia on the1965 massacre and its aftermath. The interest and fear surrounding the issue reflect the very depth of its roots and impact.

Indonesia has gone through painful experience as a result of deep seated conflicts in the 1960s — much like Spain after the 1930s. Unlike Spain, however, Indonesia has not been able to make meaningful steps toward healing the trauma and overcoming the nation’s tragedy.

Spain was fractured for decades as a result o fCivil War (1936-1939). A revolt launched by General Franco caused about a half million deaths, disappearances, baby kidnappings and hunting of exiles. Two ‘patriots’ illustrate the tragedy. Angel Salamanca, a supporter of Franco, helped Hitler’s army to crush the Soviet Union and Luis Royo, an anti-fascist leader, ran to France to join the struggle against the Nazis.Three decades after the death of Franco in 1975 they became symbols of a broken nation in a new democracy. Yet when they were selected for a parade of national reconciliation in 2004, it turned into a great fiasco.The liberals and the leftists saw Salamanca as “great humiliation” of their struggle against fascism just as the conservatives considered Royo a “traitor”.

Unlike Spain, there can’t be any Indonesian ‘Salamanca’ and ‘Royo’. For the state would presumably not acknowledge their equivalents as symbols of the nation’s divide nor would the society be ready to do so. But Spanish experience could teach some lessons.

Seven decades after the Civil War, Spain, despite the 2004 fiasco, produced the remarkable Memoria Historia (Historical Memory, 2007) — the laws that enable the state, in tandem with political parties and the civil society, to review key aspects such as General Franco’s role, Franco-related monuments and Church support, the communities to dig up mass graves, war victims to demand reparations, the families to search their lost children, the exiles to return home safely, the historians to rewrite history, and the school children to learn new historical aspects etc.

Spain’s memory politics and obsession with the nation’s self-image should inspire Indonesia as the nation will commemorate the half-century anniversary of the massacre next year. After all, Suharto was a Franco-like fascist. And, like in Spain, a number of human rights organizations in Indonesia, too, have since 2000 attempted to reverse the process of amnesia and impunity. However, even in post-ReformasiIndonesia, the society is not prepared to review the role of our Salamanca’s nor to tolerate the Royo’s. Indeed there have been attempts to hold seminars and conciliatory public meetings to find lessons learned by inviting various past-protagonists’ relatives such as children of the 1965-killed generals, of the Darul Islam– and of the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) leaders. They were not exactly equivalents, though, of Salamanca and Royo.

Former political prisoners, families and relatives of 1965-victims, once stigmatized for decades, now live more peaceful life since the late 1990s but not all of their civil rights, notably concerning their former properties, are restored and respected. Many, including leftist exiles, have published their memoirs at home. Hundreds of exiles chose to remain abroad for lack of both political and social security. Efforts to find and dig up mass graves were initiated by human rights activists, the Gusdurian communities (supporters of late President Abdurrachman ‘Gus Dur’ Wahid) and survivor associations. Mass media now widely reported 1965-related issues with less precautions. Films related to the 1965 events have been screened locally. The most remarkable attempt to reflect the past tragedy and hail the trauma has perhaps been the Tarekat community training program organized by Muslim woman activists in Central Java in the early 2000s when a new generation of activists and survivors met in face-to-face dialogue with former perpetrators.

None of these efforts, however, were organized on a national scale or involved state administration — agencies or parliament — with a remarkable exception of the Palu mayor of Central Sulawesi, who was involved in the 1960s backlash and recently reviewed the events and initiated a reconciliation. Elsewhere, fragmented attempts to dig up mass graves, exhume victim remains, survivors meetings and critical publications reviewing the period, frequently meet fierce local resistance, though they may also stimulate local awareness of the issue.

Such were Indonesia’s various mini versions of the Spanish model of reflection and reconciliation. They are either mere symbolism with little substance or only locally meaningful. Meanwhile academic researchers have started to map out graves sites in Central and East Java, Aceh and Eastern Indonesia.

What happened in the two countries since 2000 has been beyond imagining for decades. Their experiences may differ much on the context and nature, but the contrasting attempts at reflection and reconciliation may be instructive. Neither Spain in the 1930s nor Indonesia on 1965 attempted to proceed (in the case of Spain) or has been successful (in Indonesia’s case) with implementing transitional justice.

In both cases, the post-authoritarian transformation to rebuild the existing structures into a democratic state did not allow much space for contemplation on historical crimes. The establishment’s political interests and ideological legacy of the military and conservative religious institutions are sustained by old power structures that remain. Those responsible for crimes — Francoist officers and Indonesia’s New Order generals — were respectively given full amnesty and enjoying silent impunity.

Hence, it takes decades to revisit the historical crimes. In 2000 new interest in archives triggered the genesis of Spain’s Historical Memory movement. It was the courageous move of intellectuals, artists, human rights activists and a few political parties which were crucial in Spain, but significantly lacking in Indonesian case.

Without society’s pressure and state initiatives, reconciliation attempts will remain insignificant as long as the organizers and participants are lacking the political will to find the truth in the quest for justice. In Indonesia, state initiatives have been non-existence while much of the civil society’s actions were fragmented. The lesson one could learn from Spain, notwithstanding the conservative resistance in both cases, is that society, or some sectors of it, needs to take courageous initiatives and the state must end impunity.

On occupied East Timor, now independent Timor Leste, however, Indonesia has succeeded to get rid of its human wrongs precisely because the 2008 Joint Timor Leste-Indonesia Commission on Truth and Friendship (CTF), an agreement not sanctioned by the United Nations, allows both to maintain impunity for those responsible for crimes against humanity. With the CTF, though, Indonesia has for the first time explicitly acknowledged that the state — and specifically the military — is responsible for the crimes against humanity.

Now on the greater tragedy of 1965, dubbed ‘the Never Ending Year’, Indonesia alone has to resolve it. Former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a retired general who grew politically mature under the Suharto regime, has in 2012 confessed before rights activists that he would not raise the 1965 issue “out of fear for my seniors”. The new president Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, a man without any link to Suharto’s New Order, has promised to resolve “the remaining human rights issues” but insisted that it will not be its first priority. Not surprising given the current problems amid possibly obstructive opposition by the coalition led by the defeated presidential candidate, the disgraced ex-general Prabowo Subianto.

Plans from among society to commemorate the 50th anniversary ofthe  tragedy next year, which include an International People”s Tribunal for the 1965 massacre and its impact, will prove how far the country has come in the attempt to come to terms with her own past.

Aboeprijadi Santoso has worked for Radio Netherlands Worldwide for the last two decades, including as Jakarta-based correspondent.

Jokowi: hope for Papua? | New Mandala

Jokowi: hope for Papua? | New Mandala

 

HIPOLITUS YOLISANDRY RINGGI WANGGE, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR, 

24 NOVEMBER 2014

One of Jokowi’s ‘trademarks’, dialogue, offers the best chance of giving disaffected Papua what it needs and wants, writes Hipolitus Yolisandry Ringgi Wangge.

During his presidential campaign, Joko Widodo, widely known as “Jokowi,” visited the Indonesia’s most eastern province, Papua, three times.

He made one key promise to Papuans—giving it more attention.

This attention includes promoting welfare instead of security , building more infrastructure, and providing more access to education and medical services. All of these seem relatively similar to former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s (SBY) promises when he came to office in 2004.

Whether Jokowi’s government can keep his promises to the Papuan people, rest on three factors; affirmative action, welfare policy, and the military . And all of these have to factor in Jakarta’s decision-making elites. In this regard, it’s useful to look at what previous governments did in Papua.

Since the downfall of Suharto in 1998, Papua has been one of Indonesia’s three trouble spots, haunting every regime. Of the other two East Timor attained its independence in 1999, and Aceh received its special privileges under the 2005 Helsinki Agreement. Even though, the Papuan rebellion movement is categorised as a small-scale armed struggle, there is no comprehensive policy that can suppress its aspiration to detach from Indonesia.

Former presidents BJ Habibie and Abdurahman “Gus Dur” Wahid undertook affirmative action in Papua. They knew that as the Papuan people are a minority group which has been excluded and underrepresented historically, measures had to be taken to raise participation at various level of society. Habibie invited 100 Papuan representatives to hold a discussion in Jakarta in 1999 and promised to initiate an equal dialogue between Jakarta and Papua.

Yet the dialogue never happened. Gus Dur proposed more progressive measures by allowing the Papuans to hold the First Papua National Assembly in June 2000, crafting a space for Papua to reclaim its names as “Papua,” not “Irian,” and permitting the Papuan flag to be raised alongside the Indonesian flag. He also included Freddy Numberi, the first Papuan after the downfall of Suharto, to become a cabinet member. However, both presidents firmly rejected the idea of West Papuan independence.

Megawati, the daughter of Indonesia’s founding father Sukarno, amplified the military approach to Pa[ua rather than taking more comprehensive affirmative actions. She launched the Special Autonomy Law (Otsus) in 2001 as a way to uplift Papuans’ lives, yet she also issued a presidential decree (Inpres No.1/2003) to divide Papua into three new provinces, thus contradicting the spirit of the autonomy law. Moreover, Megawati’s feeblest policy allowed the military to tightening its grip over Papua, an action it had long favored. The 2001 killing of charismatic Papuan leader Theis Elluay, by the Indonesian Special Forces (Kopassus), occurred under her tenure.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who took over government in 2004 and left office in October 2014, combined affirmative action and welfare policies without thoroughly reviewing the military’s presence in Papua. During his 10-year tenure, SBY included three Papuans in his government. In 2010, he initiated the mega investment project, the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), at the expense of customary rights over land that belongs to Papuans. In 2012, he proposed an ad-hoc agency, the Unit for the Acceleration of Development in Papua and West Papua (UP4PB) which has had no impact whatsoever.

Additionally, SBY failed to review security policies that have been in place since this province was forcefully integrated into Indonesia in 1969. Human rights abuses by the military still frequently occur.. Ironically, the military reform initiated during SBY’s first term has had no impact in Papua.  Antonius Made argues that military reform failed at the domestic level, particularly in conflicted regions. Three indicators of the failure are the military deployment and its relation to the rise of human rights violations, the military involvement in local politics, and its close ties to business in Papua.

When it comes to Jokowi, many Papuans believe that he will overhaul current conditions in the province. And yet it seems his government will continue what has been done so far. Shortly after he was inaugurated, he appointed Yohana Susana Yembise, the first female Papuan minister, in an act of affirmative action. However, there is no policy yet directly addressing the Papuan issue.

There is also the question of how Jokowi will deal with development in Papua. This concern is related to the investment-oriented agenda he presented in front of business leaders at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in China a couple of weeks ago. Whether or not there will be another project like MIFEE is still a big question.

In terms of welfare reforms, Jokowi’s government has moved forward by providing three cards; the prosperous family card, the health card, and the smart card. All of these cards are related to the welfare program he promised during the presidential campaign. However, these cards seem unlikely to deal with current conditions in Papua. The basic prerequisite of this program is infrastructure readiness and its stakeholders.  In Papua, as Bobby Anderson argues in Inside Indonesia (Jul-Sep 2013), it is about not only hospitals or schools, but also who will be serving as a doctor, nurse, or teacher. In this regard, the central government has to review all welfare programs in Papua before promoting other programs.

Another crucial policy that will be launching in coming months is the transmigration policy. The new transmigration minister, Marwan Jafar, proposed a transmigration program for people from outside islands, primarily from Java, to go to Papua. Shortly after the announcement, many Papuans raised their concerns and firmly rejected the policy. This concern is highly understandable.

According to the Justice and Peace Secretariat of the Jayapura Bishopic Mission huge numbers of people transmigrating has negatively affected the indigenous population by subordinating Papuans in cultural, political, and economic spheres.  This shift in population leads to never-ending conflicts between the settlers from the outside islands and the indigenous people.

Furthermore, the transmigration policy will exaggerate the current Papuan demographic structure and also the relation between the central government and Papuans.  The decline of the indigenous population is obvious. According to Anderson (quoted in The Jakarta Globe), migrants from other islands now compose almost half the population of Papua province. In addition, while the ratio of indigenous people and non-indigenous people, was 52-48 in 2010, Anderson predicts there may be 60 migrants to every 40 Papuans in 2014.

In the security arena, there will not be any significant change under Jokowi, particularly the huge number of military troops in Papua. This tendency can be seen by the appointment of one of the most controversial and conservative generals, Ryamizard Ryacudu, as the Indonesian defense minister. Papuans still remember him as a general who praised as heroes the Kopassuss soldiers who killed Theys Elluay.

In addition, Jokowi has appointed Andhika Perkasa as commander of the presidential security detail. According to the Jakarta Post, Andhika was allegedly involved in the killing of Theis Elluay when he was a Koppasus officer back in 2002. Other former generals with bad human rights records, such as Hendropriyono, Wiranto, and Sutiyoso also have been in Jokowi’s inner circle. All of these figures will maintain the military conservative value of defending the unity of the country by wiping out all rebellion groups, even at the expense of civilians–as it has over the years.

All the policies and actions proposed so far clearly describe the ‘elitist’, Jakarta-centric way of thinking on the Papuan issue.  For example, Marfan Jafar is a former politician from the National Awakening Party (PKB) that has supported Jokowi. As a politician without sufficient background on the Papuan issue, Jafar clearly has been initiating an ill-constructed policy.  He thinks by sending many migrants to Papua, the problem of poverty in some densely populated islands, will partly be handled without looking at the real condition of the Papuan people.

Accordingly, one can argue that Jokowi lacks ministers who can absorb his vision deeply. Because he has to compromise with those elites, oligarchs, and former generals, he has to sacrifice the people’s hope. This is an irony of democracy. Jokowi has been elected constitutionally, but he cannot fully exercise his right to govern because he has to deal with those shadowy figures, which have no constitution rights whatsoever.

Beyond these challenges, Jokowi has to execute a long-awaited dialogue with the Papuans. This is the prominent solution to deal with all problems in Papua. Consultations are the only way to know deeply and thoroughly what Papuans need. In turn, the central government can form policy that positively affects Papuans. The Papua Peace Network (JDP) formed by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) has been conducting preliminary consultations that can be used as a gateway to create a more intensive and comprehensive dialogue with the Papuans.

A network of various political actors in Papua has been set up through the consultations.It would be constructive if the central government gradually held discussions with various actors, such as local activists, student activists, religious figures, armed groups, and particularly those who are living and struggling for Papuan independence from abroad.

Dialogue was one of Jokowi’s “trademarks” (beside the impromptu visit), when he was mayor of Solo, and governor of Jakarta. This is a real opportunity for Jokowi to execute the dialogue with the Papuan people. By supporting consultation with the people, the government can send a strong signal about building trust and eliminating suspicions regarding Papua.

Hipolitus Yolisandry Ringgi Wangge, is an Arryman Scholar and a visiting scholar at the Buffet Center for International and Comparative Studies (BCICS), Northwestern University.  

Why Indonesia banned ISIS | New Mandala

Why Indonesia banned ISIS | New Mandala

 

DOMINIC BERGER, 

 1 OCTOBER 2014

Like in all democracies, the proscription of terrorist groups in Indonesia is a politically delicate and legally ambiguous process. It requires the government to articulate convincing justifications for a ban, as well as provide adequate legal mechanisms for its implementation. An examination of both suggests that when Indonesia banned ISIS in August 2014, it did so for much more complex reasons than fear of violent terrorism.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE. A poster warning of the dangers of ISIS ideology hanging on the front door of a sub-district police station in central Jakarta, September 2014. Photo: Dominic Berger

When ISIS captured large swathes of territory in Syria and northern Iraq and images of shocking violence made news around the world, the Indonesian public, and the government, remained largely pre-occupied with its most fiercely contested presidential election campaign in a decade. Despite signs throughout the first half of 2014 that Indonesia would eventually be forced to address the ISIS threat, the government and the public remained relatively uninterested. Back in March, even a public demonstration by ISIS supporters at the Hotel Indonesia roundabout in central Jakarta drew neither the media’s nor the government’s attention. It took the appearance of a video on Youtube, titled ‘Join the Ranks’, in which an Indonesian ISIS fighter in Syria urged fellow Indonesians to join ISIS, to sharply focus the government’s attention on the growing ISIS-threat to Indonesia.

A screenshot from the video featuring an Indonesian ISIS fighter, which triggered Indonesia’s swift response towards increasing expressions of support for the group in Indonesia.

On the face of it, the video should not have been a shock to officials or the public. It had been widely known that some elements of Indonesia’s Islamist community supported the various factions engaged in the anti-Assad insurgency that had been raging in Syria for years, and that at least 50 Indonesians had traveled to the region to take up arms. Jamaah Islamiyyah (JI), the group responsible for the Bali bombings, has in recent years renounced violence in Indonesia, but the closely allied organisation HASI have since 2012 channeled humanitarian volunteers and financial aid to the region.  When ISIS split officially from the Al-Qaida aligned Jabat Al-Nusra (JN) in February 2014, Indonesian Islamists were similarly divided, breaking into pro-JN and pro-ISIS camps.  While JI largely supported JN, JI’s former spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Ba’asyir made headlines from prison with a pledge of allegiance to ISIS. His two sons, meanwhile, split with their father as did many in Ba’asyir’s organisation Jamaah Ansarut Tauhidand, and joined a new rival organisation, Jamaah Ansharasy Syariat. Many other organisations, such as Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (MMI) vehemently reject ISIS.

Despite remaining indifferent for months to these increasingly complex – and dangerous – links between the conflict in Syria and Iraq and Indonesia’s Islamist community, within days of the video making headlines, pressure mounted on Minister for Communication and Information Tifatul Sembiring to block the video, and on the government to take firm action against the apparent growth of ISIS support in Indonesia. On 4 August the government’s most senior officials fronted the media and announced that henceforward ISIS is “banned” in Indonesia.

In early August a senior line-up of ministers announces that ISIS is “banned” in Indonesia. Photo: Jakarta Globe

There are two important points to note about the announced ban. First, while local and international media reports of the announcement framed it as an unequivocal “ban”, it has become clear over subsequent weeks that it amounted to little more than a political statement. While the seniority of the ministers present at the announcement – the line-up included including Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, Djoko Suyanto, Head of the Military, General Moeldoko, National Police Chief General Sutarman, Chief of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) Marciano Norman, and Minister of Religious Affairs, Lukman Hakim Syaifuddin – succeeded in placating the Indonesian public as well as Western observers, the lack of a clear legal framework for law enforcement agencies and the judiciary means than in practice, uncertainty remained over what legal sanctions Indonesian supporters of ISIS would face.

Second, Indonesia arguably has more experience with the threat posed by the return of its nationals from foreign wars than most other countries. During the 1990s, Indonesians who returned from Afghanistan after joining the fight against the Soviet Union, were instrumental in providing the ideological inspiration and organisational know-how for a generation of jihadists in Southeast Asia, culminating in a series of mass-casualty terrorist attacks in Indonesia, including the Bali bombings. The threat that Indonesians with battlefield experience in Syria and Iraq would pose upon their return to Indonesia was clear to experts.  But instead of justifying the ISIS-ban based on the threat posed by returning fighters, such as those that had appeared in the video, statements during the announcement emphasised ISIS’s ideological incompatibility with Indonesia’s national ideology of Pancasila. For example, Djoko Suyanto stated that ‘the government rejects and bans the teachings of ISIS [...] ISIS is not in line with state ideology’.  The most in-depth analysis of ISIS in Indonesia, a September 2014 report by IPAC, concluded that

it was not that IS was more violent or more of a security risk than earlier movements, although both may well be true; it was that it constituted a direct challenge to national loyalty that so alarmed officials.  

But focusing on the threat posed by ISIS’s ideology, rather than its advocacy of violence, seems contradictive. After all, the government hasn’t banned any of the dozens of Islamist organisation that reject violence, but adhere to broadly similar ideological doctrines and goals as ISIS. One such organisation is the transnational Islamist organisation Hizbut Tahrir. In early June, month before ISIS declared the caliphate, Hizbut Tahrir’s Syria chapter was raving about the imminent declaration of the Caliphate:

Note that we in Hizbut Tahrir have been preparing for this moment a long time ago, and are competent, with Allah’s support to rally support for the new growing Khilafah state from all the countries of the Muslim world, in many different forms and shapes… Muslims are watching eagerly Ash-Sham [Syria], the abode of Islam, waiting for this final decisive moment that will change the world’s history, and are ready to sacrifice all to reach the great victory.

A prominent 2013 publication by a Solo-based publisher associated with JI, entitledStrategi Dua Lengan (The Two-Arm Strategy), was widely discussed amongstIndonesian jihadi’s  and makes brief reference to the relationship between non-violent groups like Hizbut Tahrir and violent groups like ISIS. In laying out a roadmap to establishing a Caliphate in Syria and Yemen through violent means, its author notes the ‘important legacy left by the intellectuals of Hizbut Tahrir […] around the idea of the Caliphate’. But despite Hizbut Tahrir’s enthusiasm for the imminent declaration of a caliphate, only weeks later, when ISIS leader al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate on 29 June, Hizbut Tahrir distanced itself from ISIS, claiming that it fails to fulfill certain conditions, such as total control over the territory, and the provision of security to the population living under it.

CLICK TO ENLARGE. The September issue of MediaUmat, a Hizbut Tahrir publication, focused on explaining the difference between the ‘ISIS Caliphate’ and the ‘Genuine Caliphate’. Photo: Dominic Berger

Hizbut Tahrir’s Indonesia (HTI) branch is registered as a legal organisation at Indonesia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, and holds public seminars, which are sometimes attended by Indonesian politicians or police officials, in which it promotes the need for the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate. But despite the group’s close ideological and organisational guidance from its Middle Eastern branches, Indonesian officials have not characterised Hizbut Tahrir’s vision of an Islamic Caliphate as an ideological threat. Evidently, unlike ISIS, the group is seen as an organisation, rather than a state-like entity that competes for the loyalty of Indonesia’s citizens. In addition, ISIS’s lack of an organisational structure or community support means that the firm government response against it carried few political costs for the government. In contrast, groups like Hizbut Tahrir have effectively leveraged their elite political connections and organisational networks in the wider community to avoid state-repression.

Ironically, while Hizbut Tahrir has downplayed ISIS’s claim to statehood, the Indonesian government appears to take the claim much more seriously. On 25 August, at a seminar attended by several Western ambassadors and diplomats, Indonesian deputy Foreign Minister Dino Patti Djalal carefully explained that ‘diplomatically, Indonesia would not recognise ISIS’. At the same seminar, Ansyaad Mbai, head of Indonesia’s Counter-Terrorism Body BNPT argued that Indonesian’s who pledge allegiance to ISIS could be charged with makar (rebellion). On a different occasion, Minister of Religion, Lukman Hakim Saifuddin, in referring to the act ofbaiat, the Islamic act of pledging loyalty to a Caliph, which several Indonesian Islamists had publicly done, suggested that ‘taking an oath and pledging loyalty to a foreign state or part of a foreign state can lead to the loss of Indonesian citizenship’. Such statements suggest that officials assessed the threat from ISIS as stemming from its claim to statehood, rather than its call to violent jihad.

At a seminar held on 25 August at Jakarta’s Borobudur Hotel, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Dino Patti Djalal and head of Anti-Terrorism Body BNPT Anshyaad Mbai explain to foreign diplomats how Indonesia views the “ISIS threat”. Photo: Dominic Berger

That the threat from ISIS is defined as stemming from its ideology, rather than its violence, is already evident in the kinds of initiatives taken against ISIS. The first major trend in Indonesia’s response to ISIS, as already mentioned, has been the vigorous reaffirmation of the orthodox state-ideology of Pancasila. For example, on 9 August, Commander of the Armed Forces, General Moeldoko, announced he would visit schools and pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) to provide ‘guidance’ – presumably meaning the dissemination of Pancasila material. A second trend has been the excessive pursuit and attempted criminalization of symbolic expressions of support for ISIS, such as the arrests of Indonesians in possession of ISIS flags.

ISIS separatists? An image shared on twitter depicts large parts of Sulawesi taken over by the pro-ISIS group Mujahidin Indonesia Timur(MIT). Images such as this are sure to feed into the governments perception that ISIS a threat to the NKRI.

In Depok, ice-cream seller Firman Hidayat was arrested for hanging an ISIS flag on his balcony. After determining that Firman is merely a ‘fan’ who ‘idolises’ ISIS, police released him, but continued to monitor and ‘guide’ him. Near Surabaya police arrested Egy Darwanto, a fisherman who flew an IS flag on his boat. At his house, police found hundreds of books about terrorism. Egy was released, with a police official stating that ‘we haven’t found any criminal violations or violations under the terrorism law, so he is just forced to report regularly’.

But the pattern by which the Indonesian government responded to the ISIS threat is not new, nor inexplicable. In fact, the language Indonesian officials use to explain the threat posed by ISIS, and some of the responses on the ground, follow a very particular script. The language mirrors narratives officials frequently apply to several obscure, and indeed frivolous, “rebellions”, such as isolated groups of separatists in Maluku who express loyalty to the Republic of South Maluku (RMS)  and obscure factions of the Islamic State of Indonesia (Negara Islam Indonesia, NII) in West Java – both remnants of long-defeated 1950s rebellions. Both movements, which in reality consist of little more than handfuls of isolated, unarmed and poor individuals, are routinely described by officials as a “state-within-a-state”, and hence rebellious. In recent years, dozens of RMS and NII members have been charged with makar(rebellion) – the same law some officials have recently suggested should be applied to ISIS supporters. In court proceedings, state prosecutors routinely point to the possession of RMS and NII flags and other paraphernalia as evidence for the crime of rebellion. Despite their lack of organisational capacity, community support or intent to commit violence, security officials and political elites consistently characterise these tiny groups as dangerous threats to the national ideology and the “NKRI” (Negara Kesatuan Republic Indonesia, The Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia).

NO ISIS! – a neighbourhood in Bandung expresses its opposition to ISIS.  Photo: Dominic Berger

That government officials have described ISIS in much the same terms as those used to describe worn-out anti-state rebellions suggest that officials similarly perceive ISIS as a threat against the NKRI. The alarming difference is, of course, that unlike the RMS sympathisers in Maluku and obscure NII factions in West Java, ISIS presents a real threat. The spectre of violence committed by returning Indonesian ISIS fighters is surely of concern to many officials. But some seem to be more concerned that returning fighters will re-enter Indonesia not as members of a terrorist organisation bent on committing mass murder, but as representatives of a foreign state.

……………..

Dominic Berger (dominic.berger@anu.edu.au) is a PhD candidate at the Department of Political and Social Change at the Australian National University.