Woyla, Tanjung Priok, Lampung, Aceh, Majalengka. These are all
names that most people in the Muslim world know nothing about. But these are names of
places that are dreaded by the powers that be in Indonesia, particularly in the upper
echelons of the Indonesian armed forces (ABRI) of the post-Suharto regime. For these were
the places where the forces of ABRI were locked in mortal combat with the resurgent forces
of Islam in Indonesia.
Since the 1970s, the armed forces, working at the behest of the Suharto regime, its
business cronies and its foreign mentors and sponsors, have been waging a bloody war of
attrition against countless social movements that have been calling for the introduction
of Islamic norms and laws in what is, after all, the single biggest Muslim country in the
world.
For this reason alone it ranks at the top on the roster of the western intelligence
agencies that will not tolerate the emergence of Islam as a political factor and
mobilising force in any part of the world. But these agencies and governments do not work
on their own; they have always managed to find local agents and protégés to do their own
dirty work on the ground.
During the ill-fated coup attempt of 1965, it was the CIA that helped bring about the
total elimination of the Communist PKI threat in Indonesia. While doing so it also brought
to power General Suharto, who became Indonesia's undisputed strongman for more than 30
years. The Suharto rule was characterised by a combination of factors that made the
country loved by the dominant western liberal-capitalist powers, that is until he began to
reconcile with Muslims in the early 1990s.
ABRI played its role as the dogs of war for Suharto and foreign patrons.
Like Suharto' s Berkeley-trained secular technocrats (known as the 'Berkeley Mafia'), the
military officers were mostly US-trained, and taught that next to the evil forces of
Communism, Islam was the greatest threat to peace and stability in the world. ABRI was
also dominated by non-Muslim and pseudo-Muslim officers corp who had been brought up to
hate and fear Islam in Indonesia as a political force for change as well as the religion
of the poor and oppressed workers and peasants.
This prejudice was duly put to use as the motivating factor in ABRI's undeclared war
against Islam and Muslims throughout the country. Over the first quarter century of
Suharto rule, it was ABRI that was at the forefront of 'containing' the forces of Islam
that were calling for reform, change and, in some cases - especially in the deeply Islamic
province of Aceh in the North of Sumatra.
Now that Suharto has fallen, the army has a lot of skeletons in its closet that it wants
to keep hidden. Unfortunately for them, the skeletons have come to light as dozens of mass
graves have been uncovered during the past few months in Aceh and other places in Sumatra.
It is a mute testimony to the brutal campaign of eradication carried out since the 1970s
by ABRI there. As hundreds of skeletons of innocent civilians - men, women and children
-are brought to light, the ruling powers including the presidency of the reformist-minded
BJ Habibie are under pressure to start an investigation and to tell the truth at last. But
for that to happen, heads will have to roll in ABRI.
The most difficult thing to have to admit will be that the army took matters into its own
hands in carrying out Jakarta's policies of containment and control with the same inhuman
efficiency that was shown in Timor and Irian Jaya. Here, the victims were not 'foreigners'
who had to be assimilated into Indonesian culture, but rather Acehuese, Lampungs, Minangs
and other indigenous Indonesians, people who have lived in the Malay-Muslim archipelago
for centuries.
The kingdom of Aceh was one of the greatest powers in the archipelago for half a
millennium. After the fall of Melacca to the Portuguese in 1511, it was Aceh that carried
the mantle of Malay-Muslim power fighting against the Portuguese, Dutch, English and
others until the 20th century. (Sultan Muhammad Daud surrendered to the Dutch in 1903.)
Their experience has engendered in the people of Aceh a strong sense of national pride and
confidence, coupled with a strong commitment to Islam which has become a politicised
symbol of their identity.
Since the failure of representative government in the 1950s, the Indonesian government has
always had a problem with regions outside Java; Aceh eventually became the biggest thorn
in their side. After several secessionist uprisings in the outer islands in the 1950s and
1960s, the central government at Jakarta, comprised of its Javanese feudal elite in both
government and ABRI, took a much stronger line against such elements that they regarded as
'unpatriotic' who did not subscribe to the same vision of national unity as envisaged by
the powers that be in Java. It now appears that over the course of several years, the ABRI
way of dealing with such 'provocations' and 'insurgency' has been the time-honoured method
of overkill and abuse it has grown used to.
However, Indonesia will now have to adjust to radically new circumstances where the
people, and the Islamic movements in particular, are calling for more transparency and
openness in government and less military intervention in politics. The Muslim students and
organisations that stormed the Indonesian parliament in May were calling for enquiries
into the case of reported killings, torture, arrests and disappearances that have taken
place over the past three decades.
The Habibie government, if it wants to maintain some credibility in the eyes of the Muslim
masses, would do well to heed these calls for reform and accountability. But for that to
happen, it will have to take on its own praetorian guard, the ruling elite of Indonesia's
armed forces.
They are called TAPOL in Indonesia: the term stands for tahanan
politik - political detainees. In post-Suharto Indonesia, thousands of them are being
set free, at the behest of western aid agencies, fund sources, western governments and
human rights NGOs. The one group excluded are Muslim activists in detention - the ones
struggling in the cause of Islam.
Hundreds of ex-unionists, students, activists and politicians being set free is a
phenomenon in itself. Such an event has hardly occurred in recent Indonesian history. The
reasons for the releases not being universal and clear cut are pretty obvious to those who
understand Indonesian politics; it is another case of the famous Indonesian wayang
(shadow-puppet play) at work, where one group is set upon another.
However, recent events in the country leading to the overthrow of Suharto have shown to
the world that the Indonesian masses can be mobilised after all, and the primary factor
for mobilisation is Islam. It was the activity of Muslim groups like Muhammadiyyah and
Muslim activists like Amien Rais that gave the movement its momentum in May 1998. It was
the overwhelming tide of Muslim political activism that eventually swayed GOLKAR, the
ruling elite group, and cowed ABRI, the Indonesian armed forces, into co-operating with
the reformers.
After their victory, the government, now in the hands of President B J Habibie, conceded
to the needs of the protesters. Hundreds of detainees were released as a sign of goodwill,
and the country had changed for the better.
But locked in prisons are thousands of Indonesian Muslim activists, like Nur Hidayat, who
have been living in fear and detention for decades. They have suffered brutally. After the
upheavals at Tanjung Priok (1984), for example, those who were detained were kept in
inhuman conditions that defy the imagination. Prisoners with bleeding and open wounds were
left in cells without medical care. Some were made to wait for their 'trials' so long that
their wounds festered and gangrene set in.
The Indonesian magazine Ummat aptly summed up the government's attitude towards
the Muslim TAPOL: 'The Muslim political detainees are like the orphans of the nation's
political community. In the country the government and the army are wary of them.
Internationally, the Western governments and NGO community are not happy with their
political agenda. They are much happier with the leftist groups such as the unionists and
social-democrats. As such, they receive little sympathy or attention from anyone, save
some that is only cosmetic in nature.'
The editorial of Ummat asked: 'How much longer will the Muslims of Aceh, Lampung,
Tanjong Priok and others have to suffer before the rest of the world raises a whimper of
protest? How much more do they have to cry before the heart-strings of the world will be
pulled? How much more will they have to suffer before the world recognises that their
suffering is not merely the suffering of Muslims'.
Farish A. Noor.
© Copyright 1999 News and Media Ltd., UK.
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