Tom Pepinsky

Category: Indonesia

  • Irjabar

    The other day I was watching MetroTV, one of the main Indonesian TV stations.  They had a campaign advertisement for an upcoming gubernatorial election in Irian Jaya Barat (a.k.a. Irjabar), a new province that was carved out of the Indonesian province of Papua in 2003.  If you click on that link, you can read a bit about the history of West Papua, the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea.  Suffice it to say, it is not unreasonable to view Indonesia’s presence on that island as an occupation, much like its former occupation of East Timor. 

    Irjabar, like many other new provinces in Indonesia, is the product of a phenomenon called pemekaran daerah, or “regional splitting,” that is common since the fall of Soeharto and the adoption of political decentralization.  Simply put, if you get yourself a new province, or a new regency (the level below the province), you get steady access to government funds targeted more directly towards you.  Well off parts of provinces split off in order not to have to fund poor parts of their former, larger province.  I would guess that the demand for the creation of Irjabar came from some local political entrepreneur tired of having to share his budget with the rest of this desparately poor province.

    So anyway, the election commercial.  It was, quite simply, racist.  They first had a wild-looking man wearing nothing but a koteka (link is not safe for work) and some bird feathers, with a face painted white, saying “I’m a native, and I support candidate X.”  Then they had a prim Javanese woman, in modern western clothes, saying “I’m an immigrant, and I also support candidate X.”  Finally, they had a laborer in work clothes, saying “I’m mixed, and I too support candidate X.”  Then, all three of them together said “Let’s all support candidate X.”

    I realized after a couple double-takes that all of the actors were Javanese or otherwise Western Indonesians.  The “native” was a Javanese guy literally painted black from head to toe, and the “mixed” was a Javanese guy literally painted brown.  Quite terrible.  My view of anti-Papuan racism was reinforced during a conversation with a security guard an interviewee’s office.  The security guard and I were chatting about the different languages he can understand (Indonesian, Javanese, Sundanese, and Minang).  I asked half-jokingly about languages in Papua.  He shook his head.  “No, not them.  Too savage.”  I pressed him a bit on what he meant.  “Those ones with the black skin, they are wild (liar).  If you have problem, they don’t talk or argue, just stab.”  OK, riiiiight, a simple “no, their languages are seldom spoken here” would have sufficed.

  • Abdurrahman Wahid

    Today I met with Indonesia’s fourth President, Abdurrahman Wahid.  Indonesia’s first democratically elected president since Sukarno, "Gus Dur" was elected in 1999 and held office until he was forced out on June 23, 2001.

    Gus Dur is a fascinating character for a number of reasons, not least because he is a devout Muslim cleric and also very liberal.  His Muslim credentials are impeccable, including education at al-Azhar University in Cairo, the traditional hotbed of orthodox Islam.  He is the former head of Nahdlatul Ulama (The Revival of the Ulema), a traditionalist Muslim organization that is the largest mass organization in Indonesia.  Gus Dur’s father Wahid Hasyim was a Minister of Religion under Sukarno (and incidentally, our hotel is on Wahid Hasyim Street). 

    Our discussion involved many interesting topics, not least of them what is wrong with Indonesia now and how to make it better.  I kept finding it fascinating how tolerant and pro-diversity he is, and just how seriously he projects this image.  Our translator (whom we did not need, ha!) was the head of the Indonesian Council of Pastors.  I asked him about Pancasila, Indonesia’s old multiculturalist ideology, and he said that while the name of that ideology has been discredited by Soeharto, the spirit lives on.  Gus Dur took a huge step in improving ethnic relations in 1999 when he
    acknowedged publicly that he had some Chinese ancestry, which was
    considered a big deal at the time.  Like everyone else, Gus Dur thinks that the biggest problem facing Indonesia right now is corruption, but he thinks that morality and personal responsibility, coupled with "bravery" from the leadership, is the way to fix this.  In other words, he doesn’t think that laws and regulations alone can fix things.  He also thinks that anti-Chinese prejudice in Indonesia remains quite strong, and that its simple solution is ridding the country of economic inequality.

    These topics had little directly to do with my research, but we did talk about some other things that were useful.  Our conversation helped me to confirm some of the assumptions about ethnic relations under Soeharto and the role of political Islam in Indonesia’s democratic movement.  So in addition to being interesting, our meeting was professionally helpful.