Yusuf Isak, the man of Jakarta, a missing link of 20th century history

For us westerners we rarely hear of Indonesia except for earthquakes, tsunamis, ferry sinkings and other disasters arising from natural as well as political origins.

Indonesia is something of a black hole in our memory, at best a vague image. But in reality Indonesia has a richness of humanity, an incredible beauty and extraordinary diversity. It has an history full of hopes and disappointments, and a set of cultures intertwined with each other ...
U.S. President Obama’s childhood sheds new light on this part of the world and Hilary Clinton’s first international mission there ushers in a new phase in the US-Indonesia relationship. But it’s a long story !

From colonialism to political empowerment

From Indonesia’s point of view, a decisive step in globalization was reached with the incursions, settlements and the coming of European immigrants.
From the 14th century, the islands offered a double challenge: strategy for controlling routes to Asia and economic exploitation of rural labor particularly in producing cloves - which in the 16th century was worth its weight in gold-, cinnamon, nutmeg and pepper.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans on the spot (Iberian globalization), they mastered the rhythms of wind and jealously guarded secret maps whose publication they prohibited.
But then corsairs and naval forces from Holland eventually ousted them in the early 17th century. The Dutch endlessly played on the divisions between sultanates. They installed not only trading centers but gradually a real colonial administration.

Eduard Douwes Dekker, a colonial official in 1860, describes in his novel "Max Havelaar" the abuse of power which lead to the diversion of farmers from their crops in order to the forced production of coffee, tea or a variety of spices that were popular in Europe. This rebellion - already hunger riots-contributes much later in the struggle for fair trade. It provides too a useful icon.

In the 20th century when the Dutch opened their training system to those whom they regarded as the best subjects among the indigenous people. As a result there came to Holland in the 1920’s, students from Java, Sumatra and Borneo. They quickly provided the theoretical foundations for the social or anti-colonial movements rumbling in the archipelago with “democracy” and “self-determination”, they were deprived.

But the major challenge was, how to unify the archipelago of the "Dutch East Indies, its 17,000 islands, its people speaking 500 different languages or dialects and practicing at least five major religions?

A Language ... to unite the archipelago

Nationalists - many of them Javanese and Sumatrans, who fought for independence against the Dutch - had made a strategic but daring choice. To better lead this great human diversity, to cut short the strategy of divide and conquer that the Dutch and also the British colonial government installed in Malaysia, the nationalists chose a "lingua franca" in northern Sumatra that had been carried by traders throughout the archipelago for hundreds of years.
At the time only a very small minority used the language, but by writing it in Latin characters (instead of Arab) it could now become the cement of the nation to be born.
Even today the language "Bahasa Indonesia" coexists along with many other languages or dialects in families among the Sudanese and Javanese in Java, the Balinese in Bali and many other islands. It is the “national” language, the one for administration, schools, politics and ... the media.

This language expands from year to year as the base language of all and indeed as the native language of that country for young people still in the demographic transition.
As the French linguist Claude Hagège remarked, language is at the root of the political project of Indonesia, as French is in the survival of Quebec. What would become of Quebec if the prime minister René Lévesque had not imposed Bill 101 in Quebec making French as an official language of Quebec in 1975? Would it be a 51st U.S. state, a New Orleans of the North, picturesque, marginalized and abandoned?

In 1928, the students and youth of the Dutch East Indies met in a national convention and proclaimed the “Youth Pledge (Sumpah Pemuda)” in which they adopted three ideals: a nation, the Indonesian nation, one language, the Indonesian language (Bahasa Indonesia), a homeland.

The Second World War of the 20th century, a so-called World war but mainly an extension of an inter-European war-, accelerated the movement. Then the Japanese invaded the Dutch East Indies, defeated the Dutch, prohibited the use of the Dutch language. Holland’s grip on Indonesia collapsed, and the hope of independence approached.

Independence

On 17 August 1945, Soekarno, in the midst of delirious enthusiasm proclaimed Independence in that Indonesian language, which at that time Yusuf Isak (age 17) did not yet understand like many Indonesians because their mother tongue was Javanese, Sumantran or even Dutch.
Hope is great but after only 4 years of unnecessary war the Dutch finally admit the sovereignty of the new state. The United States then favors Indonesian independence. Soekarno, the President is the embodiment of Indonesia’s hopes and aspirations for twenty years.
In 1955 Indonesia hosted the 1955 conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Bandung, a confluence of “third states” comprising the former colonized peoples of Africa and Asia: Twenty-nine African and Asian countries attended-including Japan-represented among others by Nehru ( India), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Zhou Enlai (China).

Yusuf Isak, worked as a journalist for the daily Merdeka ( "Independence"), and participated in this movement. In 1959 he was elected president of the Association of Indonesian journalists in Jakarta. In 1964 he became general secretary of the association of journalists in Africa and Asia.

In the young fledgling democracy, information was a crucial issue. But even as they gained political independence, the Indonesian quickly discover that they had no economic independence. The political and economic conflicts are increasing with the West, particularly with the United States, as the rising power. Soekarno refuses to obey the orders of the World Bank. He is under difficulties. Divisions increased, disorder developed and the army became restless with the rivals that had newly arisen. The U.S. military played a role as watchdog, protecting its interests in the midst of Southeast Asia’s populations.
This is the period that witnessed the rise of the powerful/powerless U.S. war machine in Vietnam. The domino theory of the Pentagon led the United States to support the enemies of democracy in Asia and South America as long as they declared a willingness to fight communism.

More than Franco and Pinochet together

In September 1965 the army, led by General Suharto takes control of the whole country after having denounced a clandestine Communist conspiracy. "The New Order” of General Suharto will be bloody and ruthless. This combination of Franco and Pinochet will be even more deadly than those two combined.

Suharto pretended to respect Soekarno as the father of independence who gave dignity to all Indonesians. He neutralized and forced him out of power. Meanwhile Suharto was able to decimate nationalists, Communists, Chinese, small farmers benefiting from land reform, intellectuals, trade unionists and the women involved.
It was a methodical eradication supported by the militias "para-military" revanchists owners, and a military-police cleansing supported by the United States.

Tens of thousands were imprisoned without trial, others left without life. 500 000 dead is the figure most commonly advanced, probably an underestimate. A double number is also often quoted. Suharto, his family, his army and his allies put the country under total control, building huge personal fortunes from 1965 to 1998.

In economic terms, Indonesia was one of the first fields of application for the ultra-liberal theories of Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys. The pro-Western dictatorship enables liberalism to be established unimpeded. Deregulation, uncontrolled openness to foreign investment ran rampant in an environment of limited public infrastructure.
Latin America will follow soon with South American dictatorships, Pinochet’s Chile first.
Then Reagan and Thatcher set in motion the same economic theories, with less police constraints but with more ideological attention given to "selling" the programs to voters in the U.S. and UK.

A generation of sacrifice

Yusuf Isak comes to know Salemba prison in Jakarta for a first time of 10 years without trial. Others are deported to the island of Buru, again without trial.

The destiny of Yusuf Isak is the one a whole generation of intellectuals experienced.
His friend Pramoedya Ananta Toer, the great Indonesian writer of the 20th century, saw in the events of 1965 soldiers and the mob invade his house, lay the books of his library on a pile and set them on fire.
Thus, at the prison in Buru, prohibited to use any time and paper, Pramoedya develops into the founder of Indonesia’s grand narrative style, the Buru Quartet’s "Legend of the Centuries" is tested and whispered to the other prisoners, first as a major oral history.
Some opponents manage to go into exile, as the journalist Umar Said who took refuge and worked in China, then in Paris.
Around him a handful of political refugees from Indonesia opened in 1982-with no means at their disposal but fortified with courage- an Indonesian restaurant cooperative, which is located in the Latin Quarter in Paris.
It was Umar Saîd who also created the Committee of Political Prisoners (Tapol) and information on East Timor.

Separated from their families, unable to return to the country, bearing economic hardship, under the threat of the Indonesian embassy in Paris and sometimes the condescension of the French, they manage to build together around Umar Saïd an original project. They keep their smile or dignity in front of all obstacles, though bitterness on their part could be justified.

The destiny of Yusuf Isak, with this generation was to move from the hope of independence to the nightmare of the endless reign of Suharto.
If he was released from prison in 1979 it was upon Jimmy Carter, then president of the United States, that he must pin his hopes,
The latter, less deaf to human rights that many of his predecessors, calls for a trial and an end to less arbitrary procedures for the arrest of so many political prisoners.
Carter agrees to deliver aircraft to Indonesia but requires that its envoy meets Yusuf Isak and ultimately secures his release and that of 12 000 prisoners including Pram and his journalist friend Hasyim Rachman.

The publishing house: Hasta Mitra "the hands of friends"

After his liberation Yusuf Isak reunites with Pramoedya and Hasyim Rachman. The three create in 1980 the publishing house Hasta Mitra "the hands of friends." Isak’s garage and a part of his house welcome former prisoners who are excluded from work. They find that this way provides them some livelihood and militant activity. It is a daily challenge with several returns to prison for Yusuf .
Twenty-five Pram books were published by Hasta Mitra in the "new" language of Indonesia. Many of them have been translated in English: The Fugitive (1950), Corruption (Korupsi) (1954), The King, the Witch, and the Priest (1957) and the major work, The Buru Quartet (This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps, House of Glass 1980-1988), and The Girl from the Coast (Gadis Pantai, 1982), A Mute’s Soliloquy (1995). Pramoedya was then nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature.
Hasta Mitra also published after the fall of the Suharto dictatorship, documents from the CIA on the massacres of 1965.

The Suharto regime’s nepotism continued for more than three decades but it cannot withstand the Asian economic crisis of 1997-1998. The student movement brought the dictator down in 1998 and was finaly abandoned by the Clinton administration.

Yet the darkness that befell Indonesia for more than thirty years is not yet closed. No “National Commission for Forced Disappearances” like in Argentina, no “National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture” like in Chile, no “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” like in South-Africa, no investigation about those responsible for massacres, no mass graves reopened like in Spain. A persistent silence continues while the witnesses are gradually disappearing.

Since then, elections that are more free (The Carter teams monitored the 2004 election) and the timid efforts of democratization move ahead in the 4th most populous country in the world (245 million). Indonesia is the largest Muslim country on the planet with 85% of its population adhering to Islam.
The option of an Islamic Republic advocated by a radical fringe was rebuked by Soekarno and the majority of the nationalist movement in 1945.
The second factor in the unification of the archipelago after the language was the "Pancasila".
The 1945 Constitution guarantees freedom of worship and grants the same rights for Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism and Buddhism.
Recently Confucianism was added to reflect the Chinese presence.

Today’s challenges for Indonesia

Indonesia has therefore been established in the midst of challenges. But the dream of independence remains to be achieved. Democracy is embryonic. Globalization and the rise of China have displaced it from its role as the assembly workshop for the West during the years of the Suharto dictatorship. As a result large companies have begun to relocate to other countries that are more controllable.
Regional tensions, Timor, Aceh, the Moluccas, have not all abated despite recent efforts at conflict resolution, such as the peace agreement in Aceh, facilitated by Finland’s Martti Ahtisaari, recipient of the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize. The crisis of the global economy is violent there. Poverty, less than $1 per day per person, afflicts 20% of the population.
To this, add the eruptions of 100 still-active volcanoes, the devastation of tsunamis and typhoons, and extreme overcrowding - in Java, 130 million inhabitants live in an area five times smaller than France and three times smaller than California.
The lack of infrastructure, fragile equipments, gross inequalities, high maternal mortality among the poor, and growing slums, reach more and more people, especially in the present “crisis”.
In this setting, the decision of a civil court to acquit on 10 February 2009, Tommy Suharto, son of former President Suharto is quite surprising. The son of former President Suharto was facing charges of corruption in a case of alleged embezzlement totaling $ 400 million of public funds. A sad demonstration of how corruption and intimidation are still very much alive.
Meanwhile, the original biodiversity of the archipelago is further threatened by massive deforestation and the invasion of mass tourism.

A belated recognition of an Inconvenient Truth

The never-ending battle of Yusuf Isak that he waged in his modest publishing house finally brought him the 2004 prize-Jeri Laber International Freedom to Publish. Honor for the book publisher who showed such courage in the face of political prosecution came from the Association of American writers and for the Australian PEN Keneally.

The New York Times marked the importance of its contribution and openness with the following title: "A Former Indonesian Dissident Makes His Peace With America". A trip to Europe and America in 2005 allows him to measure the support and esteem of his friends in the world.
Meanwhile in Paris, the association Pasar Malam continues to contribute to the publication by Yusuf Isak by producing a new book on the biography of President Soekarno.
In doing so we see that Pasar Malam made many initiatives provides much information and thus creating solidarity with Indonesia.
Finally in 2008, a tribute came from his own countrymen. His friends in Jakarta published the "Liber Amicorum / Books Friends" collective work gathering testimony and letters, including President Carter’s letter speaking of him.

For his 80th birthday in a Jakarta theater, friends and various celebrities paid tribute to a small and frail man still alive. The big weekly magazine, Tempo, published an 8-page article about Yusuf Isak.

In the collective awareness of the horrors of the 20th century between the genocides of Cambodia, Rwanda and the Holocaust, the death squads of South American dictatorships, the Gulag, the damage to major economic crises upon those who are the most exposed, there is a missing link in human history. That is the tragic uncovered and unfinished history of Indonesia. Indonesia lies in humanity’s history as well as Joesef Isak in Indonesia’s history.

"The unity in diversity” motto of this new and smiling country can only be achieved by repairing this omission and rehabilitating its identified or anonymous victims.
The witness of his people, so little listened to, the man of Jakarta, Yusuf Isak still has a lot of things to tell us.

This article is published in French as well in AgoraVox :
http://www.agoravox.fr/article.php3?id_article=51629