---------------------------------------------------------- Live and work in the USA legally: Register for the GREEN CARD LOTTERY! Visit http://www.us-immigration.org -0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0 Indonesia Daily News Online http://www.indo-news.com/ Free Email @KotakPos.com visit: http://my.kotakpos.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------- Kolom IBRAHIM ISA --------------------------- 21 September 2000 �Dalil� PROF. DR SHIRAISHI TENTANG DASAR MORAL NEGARA INDONESIA --Suatu Tantangan Bagi Para Pakar Indonesia -- Kemarin, 20 september 2000, <De Dr, L. De Jong-Lezing>, dengan mengambil tempat di Koningklijke Nederlandse Akademie voor Wetenschappen, Amsterdam, telah mengundang Prof. Dr. Takashi Shiraishi dari Center for Southeast Asian Studies dari Kyoto University, Jepang, untuk mengadakan �lezing�, ceramah, dengan bertema seperti judul diatas. Menurut kata-kata Dr. Blom dari Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, Amsterdam, moderator dari temu wicara hari itu, yang hadir dalam pertemuan adalah berkwalitas. Memang, diantara para pakar Belanda tampak juga Prof. Dr. L. De Jong, pakar sejarah Belanda yang a.l. telah menulis buku sejarah � HET KONINKRIJK der NEDERLANDEN IN DE TWEEDE WERELDOORLOG,� Kerajaan Belanda Selama Perang Dunia Kedua (14 jilid), termasuk didalamnya dua jilid mengenai �Hindia Belanda� (sampai dengan masa sekitar dan sesudah Perundingan Meja Bundar dengan Republik Indonesia). Prof Shiraishi mengajukan suatu pandangan yang amat pesimis mengenai negara Indonesia. Ia memprediksi (dalam diskusi yang berlangsung kemudian) bahwa keadaan Indonesia yang sedang dalam masa peralihan dari kediktaturan ke demokrasi adalah mengkahawatirkan. Keadaan ini belum akan stabil dalam jangka waktu 5 -10 tahun mendatang. Namun ia tidak berpendapat bahwa Indonesia akan mengalami nasib disintegrasi. Keadaan mengkhawatirkan itu, menurut Shiraisi, sebab terpenting, ialah karena mayoritas rakyat Indonesia akhirnya sudah tiba pada kesimpulan bahwa sudah tidak ada harapan lagi akan memperoleh keadilan dalam negara Indonesia. Dalam pengertian ini mereka sudah tidak punya harapan terhadap projek nasiolistik yang dalam waktu panjang merupakan dasar moral dari negara Indonesia. Shiraishi menunjuk pada serentetan peristiwa dimana �orang Indonesia membunuh orang Indonesia�, khususnya yang terjadi sesudah jatuhnya Suharto, yang menunjukkan bahwa pembunuhan-pembunuhan dilakukan karena tidak adanya lagi kepercayaan pada alat negara yang bertugas untuk memelihara keamanan dan ketertiban. Beberapa pakar Belanda, mmberikan reaksi keras pada pandangan Prof. Shiraishi yang pesimis mengenai situasi negara Indonesia. Ada pakar yang heran mengapa Prof Shiraishi dalam ceramahnya itu sama sekali tidak menyebut peranan (moral) gerakan mahasiswa dalam pembentukan dan perkembangan negara Indonesia. Juga ada yang menunjukkan arti penting semangat gotong-royong dakan masyrakat Indonesia, sebagai salah satu pilar dari berdirinya negara Indonesia. Dalam diskusi yang berlangsung cukup hangat, saya juga mengajukan arti yang amat penting dari Sumpah Pemuda (1928) yang dengan tegas telah menegakkan pandangan dasar gerakan rakyat Indonesia untuk mencapai kemerdekaan, yaitu tentang kesatuan dan persatuan bangsa Indonesia. Selain itu masih ada kekuatan besar pada bangsa Indonesia yang punya cita-cita kebangsaan yang kuat dan bersedia memperjuangkannya. Halmana merupakan dasar yang amat kokoh, yang juga merupakan dasar moral, bagi terbentuk dan diperkuatnya negara Republik Indonesia. Saya juga mengajak hadirin untuk melihat pada perkembangan negara-negera di negeri lain, termasuk di Eropah dan Amerika, yang memerlukan waktu cukup lama dan melalui lika-liku yang gawat, untuk sampai pada terkonsolidasinya negara yang dicita-citakan. Ceramah Prof. Dr Takeshi Shiraishi adalah pandangan yang seyogianya membikin para pakar kita lebih bergairah lagi dalam riset dan studi mengenai negara Indonesia. Pada penutup ceramahnya Prof. Dr Siraishi mengajukan seruan sbb: MAKA, SAYA ME-NYOALKAN APAKAH SUDAH BUKAN WAKTUNYA KITA TIDAK TERLALU TERPANCANG PADA DRAMA DEMOKRATISASI DI JAKARTA DENGAN GUS DUR DAN MEGA DIPUSAT PANGGUNG, DAN LEBIH TERARAH LAGI MEMANDANG PADA DAERAH, DIMANA SEBAGIAN BESAR RAKYAT INDONESIA HIDUP, DAN DIMANA RATUSAN DAN BARANGKALI, BAHKAN RIBUAN SUHARTO DENGAN DIAM-DIAM SEDANG BANGKIT ATAS NAMA MASYRAKAT DAN MEMBUNUH KRIMINIL. Suatu seruan yang sungguh perlu diperhatikan! Untuk jelasnya pandangan Prof. Dr Siraishi maka dibawah ini dilampirkan teks lengkap pembicaraannya yang diucapkannya dalam bahasa Inggris <Sayang, saya belum sempat untuk menterjemahkannya.> **** Pembicaraan Prof. Dr TAKASHI SHIRAISHI <Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, University of KYOTO, Japan.>. pada De Tweede dr L. De Jong-lezing. Temu-wicara tsb diselenggarakan pada hari Rabu, 20 September, 2000, di Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam. RETHINKING THE MORAL FOUNDATION OF THE INDONESIAN STATE ------------- Prof. dr Takashi Shiraishi Let me start with a confession. When I was asked a few months ago what whould be the topic of my talk for de Jong lecture today, I gave this title as announced, rethinking the moral foundation of the Indonesian state, although - and this is my confession- I was not really sure whetther this title rightly capture what I would like to get at. So, let me explain at the outset what question I am asking. As we all know, Indonesia has undergone an enourmous transforamtion in the past three years. This change normally understood as the transformation from Suharto�s long long dictatorship to the present democratic system and, I would also add, as the ongoing shift from the centralized system to a decentralized system of government. At a glance, there seems nothing wrong with this understanding. The liberalization and democratization of the political system started right after B.J. Habibie succeeded Suharto in May 1998. Freedom of Press was restored Political prisoners were released. Laws on political parties, elections, and local and national assemblies were revised. Then reasonably free and fair elections were held in June last year. The presidential election was held in October, and the new government under President Abdurrahman Wahid came into power with a broad-based popular mandate. And finally the military strongman, Gen. Wwiranto, was ousted from the position of coordinating minister for security and politics in February this year, a clear sign that civilian forces are now on the center stage of Indonesian politics and the civilian supremacy over the military was finally established. So, it is to say that the democratic transition took place, and if you look at the Indonesian politics in this perpspective, the central question you should be asking is whether this new democratic system stays and what needs to be done for democratic consolidation. No doubt this is an important question. But today I would like to dwell more on something else, the kind of things that have been taking place in Indonesia but not anywhere else in Southeast Asia. To see what I am getting at, you can perhaps recall what happened in Southeast Asia in the crisis and its aftermath. The crisis started in Thailand in July 1977 and spread to other countries in Asia, above all Indonesia, South Korea and Malaysia. Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea went to IMF for assistance. There was a constitutional change in Thailand, and a government change both in Thailand and South Korea. There was also a political crisis in Malaysia -or perhaps I should say there has been a political crisis in Malaysia since 1998, because the crisis remain even now, though things look quite normal on the surface. But nowhere except in Indonesia, the economic crisis led to the break-down of the social and political order, which manifested itself in many different and disturbing forms such as massive anti-Chinese riots, lootings, increase in crimes, street fights, gang warfare, ethnic and religious conflicts in the Moluccas, Kalimantan, and Poso, insurgencies and counter-insurgencies in Aceh, and so on, an so forth in which thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people lost their lives in the past three years. The question is why this breakdown in the social and political order- how to explain it. Three explanation, it seems, have been offered One is the conspiracy theory of one kind or another - basically arguing that dark forces are out there to sabotage the democratization process. Thugs and rogue elements are blamed for provoking those incidents, and army officers and/or Suharto�s kids and cronies are suggested to be behind the scene. For instance, it is widely believed - and in this case rifhtly so to some extent - anti-Chinese riots in Medan, Solo, and Jakarta in May 1998 were centrally planned and provoked to create a situation which would justify the proclamation of marshal law for Suharto�s revival. And in the same way, incidents such as the killings in East Java in late 1998, the ethnic conflicts in Sambas, Kalimantan, the start of the �religious� conflicts in Ambon in early 1999, and so on were blamed on thugs and rogue military elements deployed by those who had a lot to lose in the passing of the old regime. In this theory, therefore, it is understood that the real battle is being fought in Jakarta, even though people were being killed in provinces that establishing a democratic government with a popular mandate will go a long way to meet this status quoist challenge to the democratic transition and eventually to restore social and political stability. In other words, if you follow this theory, democratization of the political system is the way to go, or to put it in a different way, it is the political system that needs to be civilized. The second explanation often offered is primordialism. Nursholis Madjid, a leading Islamic intelectual who has emerged as a kind of wise man in the past few years, argues, for instance, that what is needed now is nation-building , that is, creating Indonesias out of peoples with many different religious and ethnic loyalties. In this theorizing, therefore, what needs to be civilized is society, and the nationalist dream of creating Indonesia for Indonesians is seen as the way out of the present mess. And finally the third explanation is sought in the Indonesian state. Under Suharto�s dictatorship, the law was identical with the will of the government and its ruling elite. People have therefore lost whatever trust they had in the law system of justice. So, people warn of the danger of social revolution and anarchy, and argue that the rule of law needs to be re-established, justice should be done to those who violated human rights, and the system of justice needs to be revampted to restore popular public trust in the Indonesian state. In this theorizing, it is the state which needs to be civilized. I would not say all these explanation are wrong. There is some truth in each explanation - and I would say that the third explanation, that it is public distrust of the state what is at the root of the current mess, offers a powerful argument. For instance, the question of justice is central in Aceh,. You can almost argue that the Acehnese demand independence, a new independent Achenese state, because they want justice to be done to those who killed, tortured, and raped their family members and stole their wealth, and in light of their experiences in the past ten years or more - they no longer believe that justice can be upheld under the Indonesian state. And in fact, to tell the truth, I was thinking about Aceh when I gave Dr. Blom this title, rethinking the moral foundation of the Indonesian state. And I still believe this is a crucial question. The present government under Abdurrahman Wahid enjoys popular mandate and it still has narrow window opportunity - though I must say the window is fast closing now - to restore public trust in the state. But the government can restore public trust in the state only if the government shows the will to rectify past human right abuses and administers justice and succeeds in persuading people that the government does indeed uphold justice and therefore can be trusted -- and I would also say that the nation-building in Nurcholis Majid�s sensse, that is creating Indonesians out of peoples with many different primordial loyalties and end sentiments is do-able, only if the state enoys public trust, that is the state has become a nation state in the true sense of the word. But there I would like to look at this question of justice and the state in a slightly different way. Let me first give you an example, a case which in fact led me to think about this question of the moral foundation of the state, the question of justice in the first place. As you can perhaps remember, there was a massive two day riot in Lombok, which is located east of Bali, in January this year, when religious conflicts flared up again in the Moluccas and there was a call for jihad, sacred war in the cause of Islam, in Jakarta as well as elsewhere. In this incident, tens of thousands of Sasak muslims - and Sasaks are one of the two main ethnic groups in Lombok - were mobilized in East and Central Lombok and they attacked and burnt Christian churches and destroyed business centres in Mataram and Ampenan, two major centres in Lombok. According to a report by a Princeton University graduate student, who happened to be there, doing field research in Lombok since 1998, this whole incident was very well organized. In another words it was not a spontaneous riot. It was Pam Swakarsa, crime control groups or vigilane groups originally organized to wage a war against crime and to hunt down criminals that mobilized their members to attack churches and destroy business centers in Mataram and Ampenan. As you may recall, the Indonesian economy was in boom in late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. The boom came to Lombok in the early 1990s; people went abroad to work in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and so on, returned with cash and bought motocycles, TV sets, and other expensive consumer durables. Then, crime rings which used to confine their activities to the theft of livestock started to expand their activities and the theft of motorcyles and TV sets increased. Local population did not trust the police - because police and army complicity in the circulation of durgs and stolen goods was well known. But things such as motorcycles and TV sets are expensive, and people naturally wanted to take those things back and thieves to be punished. To meet this demand, a group of youth, including ex-criminals, organized a crime control and stolen goods retrieval services in the early 1990s, around 1993. This group guaranteed safety from crime and if goods were stolen, they would get the stolen goods back for a fee. Stickers were on their clients� residences and they patrolled the area to keep it free from crime, and if criminals were caught in the act, they killed them up and then handed them over to the police. So, you can say, this was local mafia, policing the area under their control, guaranteeing safety from crime for a fee for the local population, in competition and in collusion with the police- and naturally when it exceeded its usefulness, it was disbanded by the police in 1995. Then, in late 1997, there was a dramatic increase in the crime because of the economi crisis - and this crime control group re-appeared with kids in their late teens and early 20s and thugs - called preman - as its members. This time, however, there emerged another group, under the leadership of religious teachers. You pay one time entrance fee of 120.000 rupiah, 15 US dollars at the current exchange rate and you become a member. Then you will be protected from crimes, and you do not need to pay additional fee even if you get back your stolen goods with their help. This group also policed the area under their control- each patrol group was 30 man strong, with a walkie talkie in hand, and therefore allowing close cooperation between members and quick mobilization against criminals. And if a criminal does not surrender, they killed them and often beheaded them. And thanks to the increase in crime, the membership of these vigilante groups expanded enormously, 60.000 by the general election in June last year, 120,000 by August last year, and 220,000 by January this year. And since the Lombok population is something like 2 million, you can say almost all Sasak Muslim youth have joined those vigilante groups. As you can easily imagine, the police and local government were helpless with them and in fact they were forced to comply and support these vigilante groups, and hundreds of criminals, both real and purpoted, were reportedly killed in the past 2 to 3 years. You can naturally ask whether this is something that is unique in Lombok because if it is unique in Lombok, you can dismiss its significance, saying that Lombok is not Indonesia, just like you say Indonesia is not about to disintegrate because Aceh is not Indonesia or Ambon is not Indonesia. But my own research in Solo, Jakarta, and Asahan in North Sumatra, makes me think this is not something unique in Lombok, but something quite common in many places in Indonesia. In Solo, Central Java, night watch groups are a permanent feature of neighborhood communituy, and you can say that their sense of community is based on the common fear of criminals. In many neighbourhoods in Solo those night watch groups constituted the social bassis for Megawati�s PDI-Perjuangan, and they built Posko -- Comand Post painted red and white with pictures of Megawati and Sukarno prominantly in display -- with �donations� from Chinese neighbours as the center of their acitivities and they gathereds there every night for night watch. Preman - thugs who used to be orgaized into Pemuda Pancasila, a national organization of ex-criminals, also joined Megawati�s PDI-Perjuangan and provided men for its satgas, task force or shock troops under the command of ex-marine non-commissioned officers. So, by the general elections in June last year, Solo was practically under the control of Megawati�s party with night watch groups and its task force - and at night, the police disappeared even from the main streets, except in the neighbourhood of the police stations, while PDI-Perjuangan men in uniform were everywhere - and there was even a rumor in May last year when I was there that one day an army non-commissioned officer in his territorial duty got his motorcycle stolen, then he went straight to the party headquarters to ask for their help to get his motorcycle back and did not bother to go to the police station. I do not know whether Solonese night watch groups and party shock troops killed thieves as vigilante groups did in Lombok, but I would not be surprized even if they did. And in any event, killing criminals, real or purported, takes place often and in many places these days. For instance, Kompas, a Jakarta daily says, that it alone reported 46 cases of killings in 18 months from December 1998 to May 2000, on average two and a half cases a month, in which mobs beat and sometimes burnt to death 56 men in Jakarta alone. Victims include not only criminals caught in the act but also those who tried to protect criminals from mob violence. There were also cases in which criminal suspects sought protection in police stations and then mobs attacked the stations, took them out into their own hands and beat them to death. Beating up a thief caught in the act is not new. It is common. And it is to make the criminal kapok, make him body-learn the lesson. But it is new to kill a thief intentionally. Beating up a thief, pouring gasoline over the thief, and burning him to death- this is new. And though Kompas says people justify the act of mob-killing thieves with the notion of kapok (body-learn the lesson), the dead obviously can not body-learn any lesson. What then do we learn from these cases? One thing , I bellieve, is clear. People have no faith, no trust in the state apparatus and the system of justice. Kompas for example, tells us that a man who witnessed the killing of a criminal in Jakarta said �if they were given over to the police, they would be out after a while and return to the extortion business.� Here it is important to note what he meant but did not say, which is that they should be killed, I mean criminals should be killed and that it is right that they were killed. This reminds us how deeply entrenched the anti-criminality ideology is in Indonesia. Suharto�s regime once built its legitimacy in part on its ability to kill criminals and maintain security and order. That was the reason that Suharto openly admitted in his autobiography that he ordered the killing of criminals in the 1980s and indeed thousands of criminals were killed in the 1980s. But in this post-Suharto Indonesia, where the state is no longer in a position to kill criminals and keep people in awe, it is people who are doing what the state use to do, which is to kill criminals. In the history of Indonesia this is of course not the first time when Indonesians kill Indonesians in the public space with the sense of reighteousness and legitimacy. In the time of revolution Indonesians killed Indonesians who were accused of being NICA spies in the name of revolution. In the months of transition from Sukarno�s Guided Democracy to Suharto�s New Order in 1965 and 1966, Indonesians killed Indonesians, hundres of thousands of Indonesians because they were �communists.� And now in this post-Suharto area, Indonesians are killing Indonesians, hundreds, perhaps thousands of Indonesians in the name of a community. As I said earlier, upholding the rule of law and rebuilding (or perhaps I should say building-) the system of justice will go a along way to restore public trust in the state and to schieve social peace. But it is also important to remember that the Indonesian state has never really upheld justice in its fifty-five year history and that the great mayority of Indonesians have never trusted the state and its system of justice, whether they were under the Dutch or the Japanese or the Indonesians. What we are witnessing now is not that they have finally come to realize that the Indonesian state is no good. It is rather that they have finally come to the conclusion that there is no longer hope for justice under the Indonesian state and in that sense they lost hope in the nationalist project that has long provided the moral foundation for the Indonesian state. It is there, in this absence of future hope and the collpase of the moral foundation of the state, where anti-criminality ideology finds its fertile soil for growth and where political entrepreneurs, whether Islamic teachers, party politicians, local toughs, or ex-military officers flourish. Democratization and decentralization have offered opportunities for those local politicians to rally popular support on the cause of anti-criminality and to capture part of the state appara tus as leaders of vigilante groups, party politicians, local parliamentary members and even mayors and district chiefs. Then, I wonder whether it is now time the we should not be too fixated to the democratization drama in Jakarta with Gus Dur and Mega on center stage and look more closely at localities where the great majority of Indonesians live and where hundreds, perhaps thousands of Suhartos are quietly in the making in the name of a community and killing criminals. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Didistribusikan tgl. 22 Sep 2000 jam 05:25:41 GMT+1 oleh: Indonesia Daily News Online <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.Indo-News.com/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
