Indonesia THE PURSUIT OF PUBLIC ORDER
Bodyguards of the Sultan of Yogyakarta, ca. 1902
Courtesy Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
To fully understand the role of the armed forces in
contemporary Indonesian society, one must understand the
absolute
priority the government and the military leadership has
placed,
from the beginning of the New Order, on the importance of
internal security to the achievement of national
stability. The
New Order government, whose military leaders played an
important
role in 1965 in crushing what is officially described as a
communist coup attempt when they were young officers in
their
first years of military service, has always believed that
threats
to internal stability were the greatest threats to
national
security. Having experienced two attempted coups,
supposedly
communist-inspired, a number of regional separatist
struggles,
and instability created by radical religious movements,
the
government had little tolerance for public disorder.
The effort to forge a united and coherent nation that
could
accommodate the natural diversity of peoples in the
Indonesian
archipelago has always been a central theme in the
country's
history. The Suharto government, in firm control and
without
serious challenge since the late 1960s, had achieved this
goal,
giving the country an unprecedented degree of political
stability. In light of the nation's early experiences with
regional rebellions and with attempted communist-labelled
coups
in 1948 and 1965, however, the leadership historically
remained
alert to real or potential subversive threats. It has held
that
unresolved social issues and intemperate criticism of
official
policies could be used by subversives to create unrest or
even
social anarchy, while also disrupting the course of
national
development, to which Suharto's regime is committed. The
government has therefore maintained surveillance and
sometimes
control over the activities and programs of a wide range
of
groups and institutions. The largest of these groups
included
those who were suspected of communist sympathies, jailed
in the
aftermath of the 1965 attempted coup, and later released
during
the late 1970s and early 1980s. Another such group, the
authors
of the Petition of Fifty, included fifty retired generals,
politicans, academicians, students, and others who in 1980
advocated, among other things, that Suharto step down, and
who
encouraged a more effective and prominent role for the
House of
People's Representatives (DPR) in the national
policy-making
arena
(see Legislative Bodies
, ch. 4).
The government has contended, moreover, that political
activity should properly be expressed in a harmonious and
consensual manner through a government-structured
framework that
in the early 1990s included two traditional political
parties and
a state-supported third non-party political organization,
a
federation of functional groups called
Golkar (see Glossary). The
government has been acutely sensitive to any signs of
political
opposition to its policies. What constituted acceptable
criticism
or dissent was not always clear, however, and some
government
critics, including the press, students, ex-military
officers, and
even some opposition party members of the DPR crossed the
line,
apparently without intending to do so. The press,
political
commentators, and social reformers continued to seek the
"acceptable" level for criticizing the government and its
leadership. In general, the government seemed to label as
subversive anything not supportive of the national
ideology, the
Pancasila
(see Glossary; see
Pancasila: The State Ideology
, ch. 4).
Nevertheless, by the late 1980s a call for more
openness in
government and society as a whole began to be seen as
acceptable
political activity, and keterbukaan (openness) had
become
the acceptable term to describe an increased level of
political
commentary and criticism across the spectrum of national
politics.
The Suharto government consistently identified the
potential
for insurgency and subversion by numerous groups as the
most
dangerous threats to national security. Most often
mentioned in
this context were the remnants of the outlawed Indonesian
Communist Party (PKI), against which repeated calls for
national
vigilance were issued
(see Political Parties
, ch. 4). Law
enforcement officials have claimed that former PKI members
were
sometimes behind apparently ordinary crimes and that the
communist ideology presented a special danger to young
people who
had not lived through the national distress of the 1960s.
The
government monitored closely the more than 30,000
prisoners taken
after the 1965 coup attempt and released in the late
1970s,
maintaining that they might be used to resurrect communism
in the
nation. The mission of monitoring ex-PKI members fell to
both the
police and the military
(see The Coup and Its Aftermath
, ch. 1).
Insurgency, however, appeared to present no serious
threat to
the national security in the early 1990s. The PKI had not
mounted
any major operations for almost twenty years and,
according to
security officials, only a few PKI members were still
active.
Other very small, armed insurgent movements caused
considerable
concern in the early 1990s, however. The government as a
matter
of policy referred to an instance of such activity as a
Security
Disturbance Movement (GPK). Two of these movements, the
Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor
(Fretilin--see Glossary)
in Timor Timur Province and the Free Papua
Movement
(OPM) in Irian Jaya Province, had been reduced to minimal
strengths by 1992 and were confined to fairly isolated
geographic
regions. They had very little in common with any other
groups and
were unlikely ever to take united action. Nevertheless,
political
agitation by these groups and their sympathizers continued
sporadically.
Groups advocating the establishment of an Islamic
state,
either over the whole national territory or over discrete
areas,
claimed to be behind certain violent incidents in the late
1970s
and early 1980s. The government took firm action against
these
movements, taking the position that their goals were
contrary to
the principles of the Pancasila, which were intended to
act as
the basis for unifying the nation's various ethnic and
religious
groups. By the early 1990s, the Islamic separatist groups
that
had seriously threatened the national unity in the early
independence period, such as the Darul Islam movement,
were
defunct
(see Independence: The First Phases, 1950-65
, ch.
1).
Separatists who sought to establish an independent
Islamic
state in the Special Region of Aceh in northern Sumatra
and
combined their religious and nationalist appeal with
exploitation
of social and economic pressures and discontent, continued
to
cause unrest in portions of the region. Many Acehnese
perceived
themselves as disadvantaged in Aceh's major industrial
development projects because income flowed out of the
region to
the center, and outsiders--especially from Java--were
perceived
as receiving better employment opportunities and the
economic
benefits of industrialization than did the resident
Acehnese. A
criminal element involved in cannabis cultivation and
trafficking
and other illicit activities was also involved in the
unrest. The
government treated the drug trafficking as a third GPK to
minimize the nationalist appeal of one of the independence
movement's better-known advocates, Hasan di Tiro. However,
the
occasionally heavy-handed military response was blamed for
adding
to the problem; the army and police were accused of
indiscriminate violence by both domestic and international
human
rights activists.
The government attributed various acts of terrorism
committed
during the period from 1975 to 1983 to the Komando Jihad
(Holy
War Command), which it said was composed of terrorists
seeking to
establish a new state based on Islamic principles. The
group was
held responsible for the bombings of churches and theaters
in
1976 and 1977, for attacks on police stations in 1980 and
1981,
and for the 1981 hijacking to Bangkok of a Garuda
Indonesian
Airways domestic flight. In the Garuda case, members of an
Indonesian antiterrorist squad freed all hostages and
killed the
hijackers in a successful special forces operation at
Bangkok's
Don Muang Airport. Some Indonesian Muslim leaders
contended that
several disparate groups were responsible for these acts
and that
the name Komando Jihad was coined by national security
authorities and implied a considerable exaggeration of the
strength and unity of forces on the Islamic extreme right.
However, the past role of radical Islam in destabilizing
activities led to intense government scrutiny of any
religious
movement that gave indications of moving beyond accepted
religious tenets.
In 1992, senior armed forces leaders believed that
Indonesia's most serious security threat came not from
subversion
or armed insurgency, but from domestic unrest brought on
by
social changes inherent in the rapid development of the
national
economy. These changes, including improved educational
opportunities, rising levels of expectations,
industrialization,
unemployment, and crowded cities, were blamed for
provoking
public unrest in the form of urban crime, student and
political
activism, and labor strikes. The government considered
that all
such activity posed a potential threat to national
security
because it could destabilize the nation or could endanger
the
progress of foreign investment and national development.
Governmental concern reached a peak in the early 1980s,
when an
alarming rise in violent crime in Jakarta prompted the
notorious
undercover "Petrus" (penembakan
mysterius--mysterious
shootings) campaign in which known criminals were killed
by
handpicked army execution squads and their bodies dumped
in
public places as warnings.
Lack of reliable data made it difficult to determine
the
extent of crime or labor unrest in the nation, but
demonstrations
by students and others, especially in conjunction with
elections
held in the period from 1977 to 1978 and in 1982,
sometimes
necessitated the deployment of military units to restore
order
and led to numerous arrests. Similar deployments became a
conventional means of preventive action for major
political
events. However, the 1992 general election campaign was
quiet and
without major incidents despite the atmosphere of
increased
political openness
(see Elections
, ch. 4).
Violent disputes between ethnic groups have subsided
since
several serious incidents in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Those
outbursts against Indonesians of Chinese descent occurred
in
Semarang, Yogyakarta, and Ujungpandang. The nation's
ethnic
Chinese minority, estimated at 4 million or more in the
early
1990s, has evoked popular resentment since the colonial
era when
Chinese individuals served as intermediaries between the
Dutch
elite and the majority of the population
(see Ethnic Minorities
, ch. 2). In the modern period, resentment has continued
over
Chinese Indonesian wealth and domination of the economy,
including the role Chinese individuals as intermediaries
for
foreign investors and as advisers and silent partners for
senior
armed forces personnel and civilian government leaders
active in
business.
The government has long believed that China played a
major
part in encouraging and providing both ideological
guidance and
financial and logistics support for the 1965 attempted
coup by
the PKI. For many years, the government refused to
normalize
relations with China, frozen in 1967, in part because of
fears
that Chinese Indonesians might provide a conduit for China
to
again spread communist ideology
(see Relations with East Asia
, ch. 4). Normalization of diplomatic and economic relations
and
the reopening of embassies in Beijing and Jakarta in 1990
reflected reduced political and internal ethnic tensions
as well
as the political and economic realities of the time.
However,
government efforts to promote non-Chinese enterprises were
not
completely effective in reducing anti-Chinese sentiments
in the
general population. Moreover, even though anti-Chinese
riots had
not recurred in over a decade, Suharto's call in 1990 for
increased assistance to non-Chinese Indonesians
(pribumi-- see Glossary)
business efforts resulted in some transfer
of
Chinese capital to the non-Chinese business sector, and
served to
remind Chinese Indonesian business leaders that they had
an
implied obligation to assist the government in its
economic
reform efforts
(see The Politics of Economic Reform
, ch.
3).
Many of the thousands of refugees, or "boat people,"
who fled
Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos since the mid-1970s were
ethnic
Chinese. Citing one of the five tenets of the national
ideology,
Pancasila, (just and civilized humanitarianism), Indonesia
has
maintained one of the largest Indochina refugee processing
centers in Asia and accepted more than 100,000 refugees in
the
1975-91 period, including those "pushed off" from regional
neighbors, pending their resettlement in third countries.
Refugees and asylum-seekers were housed in a
well-maintained camp
under United Nations (UN) auspices on Galang Island in the
Riau
Archipelago near Singapore. As of the early 1990s, none
had been
accepted for permanent settlement in Indonesia.
In its concern for maintaining public order, the
government
paid great attention to providing acceptable channels for
political participation and expression and to controlling
public
assemblies and speeches. In exerting its influence over
the
national press, the government encouraged self-censorship,
closed
down newspapers and magazines it considered offensive, and
set
restrictions on news coverage of some events. Such
activity
became less frequent as the government began to tolerate a
greater degree of press freedom and criticism
(see The Media
, ch.
4). The new keterbukaan of the early 1990s allowed
the
press to print articles critical of government policies
and,
notably, about the business activities of prominent
business
personalities close to the president, including his own
family,
to an extent not possible as recently as the mid-1980s.
Travel
within the nation was open and travel restrictions on
movement to
and within East Timor were lifted in 1988. In 1992, exit
visas
requirements were simplified and liberalized, but the
government
admitted the existence of a "blacklist" of several
thousand
persons who were not permitted to leave the country for
one
reason or another. The 1992 law also allowed the
government to
refuse to readmit Indonesian citizens living abroad for a
variety
of acts deemed contrary to the national interest.
Data as of November 1992
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