In Indonesia during June and July, polemics raged between supporters and
opponents of the country's most famous and widely read novelist, Pramoedya
Ananta Toer. The polemic was sparked by the announcement that the
Philippines-based Magsaysay Foundation had decided to honour Pramoedya with an
award for literature and journalism.
This surprised many people, because the foundation has traditionally given
its awards to conservative writers. One Indonesian writer who received the award
in the 1950s, Mochtar Lubis, a prominent journalist, novelist and business
consultant, had been a strong campaigner against the Indonesian left during the
1950s and 1960s.
Soon after the foundation's announcement, Mochtar Lubis announced that he
would return his award if the Pramoedya award went ahead. He carried out this
threat in Manila two days before the official ceremony. Lubis also organised a
petition of 26 other writers, including the country's most famous poet and
dramatist, W.S. Rendra, who stated their strong concerns about Pramoedya
receiving the award.
In response, another petition was sent to Manila signed by 120 younger
writers and students defending Pramoedya's award and lamenting that he was
unable to defend himself in the Indonesian media. Among the signatories were an
increasingly popular poet and people's theatre director, Wiji Thukul, and the
essayist and alternative publisher Farid (Fay) Hilman.
At the core of the dispute was not the content or style of Pramoedya's
writings. His opponents generally avoided this issue. What really lies behind it
are events dating back 30 years, which culminated in one of the biggest
massacres of the 20th century.
The massacres began on October 1, 1965, and stretched right through 1966. At
least 1 million people were killed. In some areas, whole factory work forces
were killed, whole villages wiped out.
The Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI), other left-wing parties and most of
the country's active trade unions were closed down. The repression and killings
brought General Suharto to power and put people like Pramoedya Ananta Toer and
hundreds of other intellectuals and thousands of worker and farmer activists in
prison camps until 1979, and under town arrest and other restrictions since
then. Pramoedya still cannot write in the newspapers and magazines, his books
are always banned shortly after they are published, he must report to the
military regularly, and until recently his official ID card carried a code
indicating he was a former political prisoner.
In their attacks on Pramoedya, Lubis, Rendra and the others claimed that he
had acted undemocratically before 1965 -
a claim that he and others have rejected outright.
In the years leading up to October 1, 1965, the organised worker and peasant
movement, under the leadership of an alliance between the PKI and the left-wing
of the Indonesian National Party (PNI), campaigned for the redistribution of
land to landless peasants, the nationalisation of foreign companies, increased
welfare spending, opposition to US policy in Vietnam and support for national
liberation movements, such as those in Algeria.
Indonesia withdrew from the United Nations, and called for a conference of
" new emerging forces", based on the non-aligned countries of the
Third World. The Sukarno government opposed the British plan to force the small
British colonies of Sabah and Sarawak in Borneo into a federation with Malaya
and called for a referendum in those territories.
Ranged against the PKI-PNI-Sukarno alliance was an increasingly anxious army,
the most conservative sections of the Islamic business and land- owning
establishment, big sections of the bureaucracy and a coterie of right-wing
intellectuals and students.
Between 1960 and 1965, the PKI peasant organisations launched a series of
land seizures protesting against the blocking of new land reform laws, resulting
in increasing physical clashes between peasants and the police and army. Worker
actions increased in the big plantations and some state enterprises, nearly all
of which had been taken over by the army itself in the late 1950s.
Mass mobilisations increased at a phenomenal rate, including huge rallies in
Jakarta, demonstrations outside the embassies of western governments and a
massive number of smaller rallies in towns and villages as the PKI and the left
PNI established more and more active branches of their parties and their mass
organisations.
It is estimated that by 1965 at least 20 million people belonged to a mass
organisation affiliated with either the PKI or PNI. There were a large number of
smaller parties that were active as well. The conservative Islamic
organisations, the Nahdatul Ulama and its youth wing, Ansor Youth, and the
Islamic Students Association also became more active. These organisations were
also backed by the army.
Both the PKI and PNI had large organisations that took cultural activities
into the villages and small towns. They promoted the idea that literature and
the arts should directly contribute to the struggle to "complete the
Indonesian Revolution". They polemicised against writers and artists who
avoided these questions or who they thought concentrated too much on subjective,
individual issues.
Pramoedya was a member of a PKI cultural institute, LEKRA, but most of his
cultural work during this period was carried out through an independent
left-wing daily called Eastern Star. In it he polemicised against literature and
art that did not seek to explain the origins of the country's problems and
inspire people into action.
He wrote many essays on the history of the Indonesian struggle against
colonialism and began writing a novel about the fate of a village woman from a
small fishing village. Earlier he had written on the positive contributions of
the Chinese community to the nationalist struggle at a time when
Indonesian-Chinese relations were bad and spent a year in jail under Sukarno.
As the polemics between conservative and radical artists intensified, the
army became involved and helped organise a conference of conservative writers.
The army banned left-wing publications in a number of provinces, while Sukarno
ordered the arrest of a number of intellectuals who had joined anti-government
campaign organisations. Among these was Mochtar Lubis.
These tensions finally came to a head in the wake of a failed mutiny by a
group of left-oriented middle level army officers on the evening of September
30, 1965. The mutiny was apparently an attempt to pre-empt a coup by a Council
of Generals. The mutiny was bungled. Key generals
- including Suharto
- were not arrested, and
those who were arrested were later killed, inflaming the sentiments of most of
the officer corps.
The mutiny was carried out without the knowledge of the mass base of the
worker and peasant movements, who were taken completely by surprise, although it
is possible that some individual left wing leaders were aware of the plot.
There is evidence that Suharto himself may have been aware of what was
planned. In any case, Suharto seized the initiative, blamed the mutiny on the
PKI and the left, and launched the mass killings.
Within a few months, Suharto had won control of the government, and the
conservative writers and intellectuals had won control of the universities, the
newspapers and the country's cultural institutions. For 30 years, Indonesia's
official literary and cultural life has been dominated by these conservative
writers, who offered no real resistance to the mass killings or the jailing of
their cultural opponents on the left. They also monopolised all international
cultural relations.
This dominance was first publicly challenged by Pramoedya in 1981, when,
having been released from 14 years' imprisonment, he began publishing his prison
novels, starting with This Earth of Mankind. Since then he has published at
least 10 books, all of which have subsequently been banned. His publishers have
been harassed and his editor at one stage imprisoned for three months.
The struggle between left and right was not ended by the massacres in 1965
and indeed is reasserting itself with more and more vigour. The 120 younger
writers and intellectuals who supported Pramoedya in the recent controversy
represent the bearers of new radical perspectives who are not intimidated by old
taboos.
Lubis and Rendra have been critics of the Suharto dictatorship on many issues of democratic rights, but it seems the resurgence of the left is something they cannot tolerate. One positive sign, however, is that one of the key anti-left campaigners from before 1965, prominent writer and publisher Goenawan Mohammed, has defended Pramoedya's award and distanced himself from Mochtar Lubis' stand.
