Indonesia: Archipelago of Fear

289 Pages·2012·2.78 MB·English

by  Andre Vltchek

Andre Vltchek is a powerfully-informed writer. He shows how Indonesia is a nearly
perfect specimen of the free market at its purest and dirtiest stage of devolution.
Vltchek captures the inhumanity of a class society that operates with no human
services or protections for the common people, a future toward which the
moneyed classes throughout the world seek to move.
MichAel pArenti, author of The Face of Imperialism (2011)
For a country whose population numbers nearly as many as the U.S., Indonesia
is almost hidden from consciousness in the U.S. Vltchek turns on a powerful
spotlight to redress our ignorance.
MichAel Albert, co-founder of Z Communications and author of
Parecon: Life After Capitalism (2003)
A comprehensive account of Indonesia and its internal socio-economic and political
dynamics, seen through the eyes of lay people from the colonial era till now. Vltchek
portrays and analyses what has been experienced by most Indonesian people today:
poverty, fear and the humiliations created by corrupt and greedy elites.
nursyAhbAni KAtjAsungKAnA, National Coordinator of Indonesian Legal Aid
Society for Women and former Indonesian MP
This book burns with indignation against injustice and untruth. Andre Vltchek is in
the great tradition of investigative journalists like John Pilger, Seymour Hersh and
Robert Fisk. A ArchipelAgo of feAr
Andrew beAtty, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, Brunel University, and
author of A Shadow Falls: In the Heart of Java (2009) n
d
Indonesia: Archipelago of Fear is a fascinating and at times unsettling journey
into the world’s most populous Muslim nation as it struggles to emerge from r
decades of dictatorship and the plunder of its natural resources.
e
Andre Vltchek charts the recent history of the country, from the fall of General
V
Suharto’s genocidal dictatorship in 1998 to the present day. He covers the full
breadth of the country from Islamic Aceh to mostly Catholic East Timor. Tracing l
Indonesia’s current problems back to Suharto’s coup and the genocide of 1965 – t
and the support given by the West to Suharto – Vltchek provides an intimate and
c
deeply humane insight into the hopes and fears of Indonesia’s people.
h
Andre VltcheK is a novelist, investigative journalist and filmmaker. He is
e
the author of a number of books including Oceania (2009) and Western Terror:
From Potosi to Baghdad (2006). k
Andre Vltchek
POLITICS / HISTORY
cover design: www.thisistransmission.com Foreword by noAm chomsky
cover photo: Chris Stowers, Panos Pictures
VLTCHEK T02505 CVR 14-06-12.indd 1 14/06/2012 14:49
IndonesIa
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Indonesia
archipelago of Fear
andre Vltchek
Foreword by noam Chomsky
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First published 2012 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin's Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Andre Vltchek 2012
The right of Andre Vltchek to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by
him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3200 0 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3199 7 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 84964 740 3 PDF
ISBN 978 1 84964 742 7 Kindle
ISBN 978 1 84964 741 0 ePub
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to
conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Curran Publishing Services, Norwich.
Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and
Edwards Bros in the United States of America

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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Foreword by Noam Chomsky xiii
1 Introduction 1
2 From colony to dictatorship 16
Colonialism 16
Independence 17
The sukarno era 20
elites in Indonesian history 26
The coup of 1965 28
Genocide 29
The new order 38
3 Extreme capitalism, Indonesian style 40
The illusion of economic success 42
The collapse of intellectual Indonesia 45
The aftermath of the asian financial crisis 47
a fog of statistics 53
Poverty in Indonesia 57
Bali 61
Jakarta 65
Living in Jakarta 70
4 Democracy and human rights 73
The democracy of generals 74
How much does their vote really matter? 78
after suharto stepped down 81
Giving in to the almighty 86
How information is manipulated via the media 90
The legal system 95
Prisons, torture and extra-judicial killings 99
Women’s rights 103
5 Jakarta bleeding the islands 110
Racism on the rise while there is no chance for
independence 110
v
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vi contents
a neocolonial empire 114
Chinese exile 115
Genocide in Papua 116
Timor-Leste 122
aceh 127
Kalimantan 132
6 Corruption kills 138
suharto – the father of Indonesian corruption 140
Mud lake – tip of the corruption iceberg? 144
some examples of corruption cases 148
If you are corrupt, go all the way 149
7 The environment, plundering of natural resources and
consequent natural disasters 152
Filth and pollution 155
The River Musi and Palembang, sumatra 156
north sumatra 161
aceh after the tsunami 164
Kalimantan 167
The norwegian initiative 168
8 Collapse of infrastructure 171
Ferries sink 172
airplanes crash 173
Terrible roads 174
Rotting trains 175
City transport problems 177
Inadequate services 178
9 Islam 182
Getting away with violence 187
Getting away with murder: the horror of Cikeusik 192
Temanggung 195
Pasuruan 197
The West, clerics and Indonesian Islam 197
10 Culture, education and intellectual life 202
education 205
The arts 211
artists and intellectuals 213
Remembering a lost culture 218
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contents vii
11 Indonesia’s position in Southeast Asia 219
a big but destitute bully 219
a regional victim and victimizer 221
The region is benefiting from the Indonesian collapse 222
The region benefits from Indonesian corruption 224
Run if you can, but send money home 225
Comparing apples and rotten apples 227
12 Conclusion 230
Notes 235
Index 247
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ACknowledgments
I would like to thank Pluto editors david Castle, Robert Webb, Will
Viney – in fact the entire Pluto crew – for their help, patience and
great professionalism.
I am grateful for the help and information I received from my
Indonesian friends and colleagues, particularly from the historians
Hilmar Farid and Baskara T. Wardaya, brave defenders of human
rights, Kontras Usman Hamid and Haris azhar, human rights
lawyer Hendardi from setara, Greenpeace campaigner Bustar
Maitar, and Hermayani Putra from WWF.
I am thankful to several Indonesian opposition politicians, eva
Kusuma sundari from the PdIP (Indonesian democratic Party
– struggle), nursyahbani Katjasungkana from the PKB (nation
awakening Party), and Ryaas Rasyid from the PdK (democratic
nationhood Party). They inspired me and opened new angles on
how to analyse the Indonesian present and the past, while discussing
topics that could still be defined as open wounds haunting the
Indonesian society.
I am thankful to many universities worldwide, including
Cambridge University, sydney University, auckland University,
Columbia University and Cornell University for inviting me to
speak on Indonesian history and the present. I am especially grateful
to Benedict anderson for offering his support and speaking side by
side with me at Columbia University. and heartfelt thanks to my
friend Professor Mark selden for editing and publishing my work
on Indonesia and the rest of asia in his excellent magazine Asia
Pacific Journal, formerly known as Japan Focus. Heartfelt thanks
to a brilliant British anthropologist, andrew Beatty from Brunel
University. We met at Cambridge and since then have corresponded
vividly, exchanging ideas on our mutual obsession – the Indonesian
archipelago.
I would like to thank noam Chomsky for writing a wonderful
Foreword for this book and for encouraging my work for many
long and turbulent years.
ix
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