X-URL: http://www.thejakartapost.com:8890/iscp_render?menu_name=hitlist_details&id=2572837
Atambua tragedy may not be the last
Editorial and Opinion - September 27, 2000
By Aboeprijadi Santoso
AMSTERDAM (JP): Disarming the militias without breaking up their
masters' local networks may be too little and too late. Xenophobic
nationalism in response to the international condemnation of the
Atambua killings reveals a syndrome common after a painful
decolonization.
The issue is no longer to free East Timor from Indonesia, but to free
Indonesia from East Timor.
One year on, the Army backed militias remain active, attempting to
keep control of thousands of "refugees" they forced to East Nusa
Tenggara.
The killing of United Nations workers in Atambua was a direct
consequence of last year's violence in East Timor. It was a
continuation of New Order type actions, which President Abdurrahman
Wahid's administration should urgently reform.
The militias could have been disbanded much earlier if Army commanders
had had the political will to do so.
Any colonial occupation army has to rely on parts of the local
society. In East Timor, the Indonesian Army relied on the traditional
landlords or chiefs (liurai) and rallied support by sponsoring
pro-Indonesia political parties.
But once UDT, the party of Mestizos deportados, came into bloody
conflict with the popular, nationalist, left wing, Fretilin group in
the mid-1970s, the civil war was instrumental to control the
territory.
The mobilization efforts, however, failed to sustain political
strength as the two other land owning classes -- the deportado and the
Church -- were increasingly alienated to Indonesian rule.
As the old social structure was virtually destroyed in the course of
war and occupation up to the early 1980s, some deportado became allies
and were placed as governors and bureaucrats, while others turned to
the resistance. As a result, the civil war lost its real base and
changed into an opposition against foreign oppression. Despite this
changing reality, the myth of "civil war" was maintained to justify
Jakarta's rule and resist a referendum.
It was this ongoing failure that provided the need for the
"pro-Indonesia militias".
By the late 1970s, the Army started to recruit local youths as civil
defense members, carrying munitions to the jungles and mountains. They
witnessed persecution, massacre and starvation of their compatriots,
including their own families, in operations in the Matebian area.
Many survivors went to study in Java, joined the underground
resistance, protesting at embassies in Jakarta from 1994 to 1997.
Others ended up in Europe and some returned home and have become
leaders of the new nation.
Indonesia, in a very short time, turned a whole generation of
Indonesian educated East Timorese into independence fighters.
Since the economic boom of the mid-1980s, former president Soeharto's
military in East Timor had plenty of time and resources to mobilize
recruits.
Other recruits were trapped in patron-client relationships with
wealthy generals, who -- like Javanese aristocrats, Chinese warlords
or mafia bosses before them -- tended to aggrandize their might and
prestige by maintaining followers.
By the mid-1980s, as neither side could win the war, political efforts
were intensified. With networks of clandestine resistance growing, the
need to penetrate local society and to Timorize local Army units was
recognized, so the fiction of "civil war" could be maintained.
Gen. Prabowo Subianto, previous commander of the Army's special
forces, built the Gardapaksi militia and there were reports of "ninja"
units operating at night.
Maintaining the militia was no longer simply to keep power, but a part
of the state terror operations. But it was not until late 1998, as the
autonomy proposal was negotiated, that former pro-integration militias
were revived.
The liurai families with landed interests of chief Joao Tavarez, the
Army's old allies of the 1970s, resumed their role as warlord gangs,
which included younger thugs like Eurico Guterres.
Except for these specific groups, there seems to be few significant
links between the Army and the militiamen.
The greater part of the present-day militias was created only last
year and, in contrast to the youths who later joined the resistance,
they were mostly little educated, unemployed and drunken men.
"We just want to live in peace and enjoy gambling," Guterres told this
writer last year. So they easily became a tool of their masters.
Next, president B.J. Habibie's much hated "second option" was soon
followed by Tavarez's inauguration in Batugade as commander of a new
front covering all militia units.
With counterfeit money made available, the next step was to train and
arm a few hundred new militiamen in all 13 districts.
By some calculation, it was thought possible to ensure a small victory
at the voting. So optimism grew that East Timor would stay with
Indonesia.
In July, a public show welcoming Megawati Soekarnoputri in Dili was
impressive. By mid-August the Red-White flag was visible all across
East Timor as if the people enthusiastically joined the celebration of
Indonesia's Independence Day.
But the reality was exactly the reverse. Deception en masse on the
part of the East Timorese, as this writer witnessed, was massive.
Presumably, it became necessary as it was feared since the attack in
Liquisa in April, that Army elements and the militias wanted to ensure
victory by intensifying the violence.
Indeed, one expert on Indonesia, Ben Anderson, recently argued in the
Portuguese journal Politica Internacional that the resistance might
have instructed the public to participate in Indonesia's general
election in June, to convince some generals in Jakarta that the East
Timorese were loyal, so as to secure the self-determination vote in
August.
The disappointment was great as the East Timorese cast their vote for
independence. "The (East Timorese language) Tetum vocabulary does not
have words for 'thank you' and 'sorry'," one Jakarta TV station
commented with regret, reflecting the incomprehension among the
political elite.
It sounded like the Dutch colonial ideology, blaming the colonized
natives as ondankbaar (disgraceful).
But most hurt were the militias and their masters. It must have been
very painful for Army intelligence officers to have been humiliated,
Anderson argues, explaining the anger and the destruction in September
1999.
The decolonization of East Timor created shame and bad losers as the
masters of the militias felt their honor had been besmirched. Never
had the Army been humiliated, its interests threatened and its esprit
de corps injured as when foreign troops in the name of the United
Nations arrived.
Thus began the post-colonial pain for Indonesia -- manifested in the
Atambua attack and xenophobic nationalism. Last year, jingoism
targeted Australia, now the UN. One minister, not a Timor war veteran,
even dreams of East Timor returning to Indonesia.
Unfortunately, war veterans usually carry their trauma for too long.
In the Netherlands, debates on the painful decolonization of Indonesia
have gone for years as former colonial soldiers denied any war crimes;
traumatic as they are, they still refuse to recognize Aug. 17 as
Indonesia's Independence Day and to welcome J."Poncke" Princen, a
former Dutch soldier who turned into Indonesia's independence hero.
Many American Vietnam war veterans went through social dramas,
inspiring Hollywood Rambo films.
Problems of post-war trauma can be resolved through lobbies and
political parties -- not by revenge on humanitarian workers.
As East Timor has never been part of Indonesian nationalism and is now
free, the Indonesian Army needs to free itself from its decolonization
crisis, which apparently has gone beyond control.
Hence, the Atambua tragedy may not be the last. It highlights the
necessity for an international tribunal to prosecute those guilty of
war crimes and crimes against humanity in East Timor back to 1975.
The writer is a journalist, based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
--- Email all postings in plain text (ascii) to apakabar@radix.net INDONESIA-L - <http://www.indopubs.com/archives> INDONESIA-NEWS - <http://www.indopubs.com/parchives> INDONESIA-VIEWS - <http://www.indopubs.com/varchives> INDONESIA-POLICY - <http://www.indopubs.com/tarchives> INDONESIA-DOCS - <http://www.indopubs.com/darchives> SEARCH CURRENT POSTINGS - <http://www.indopubs.com/search.html> SEARCH YEAR 2000 POSTINGS - <http://basisdata.esosoft.net> SEARCH 1990-1999 POSTINGS - <http://basisdata.esosoft.net/search-all.html> RETURN TO Mailing List & Database Center - <http://www.indopubs.com> ---