13 * 15 DECEMBER 2000
LEIDEN, THE NETHERLANDS
'Violence in Indonesia'
The international workshop 'Violence in Indonesia: Its historical roots and its contemporary manifestations' took place in Leiden from 13 to 15 December 2000. The aim of the conveners, Kees van Dijk, Cees Fasseur, Thomas Lindblad, and Freek Colombijn, all from Leiden University, was not so much to collect the latest data about violence in Indonesia, as these sad facts quickly become outdated nowadays. Instead they had invited speakers who could shed light on the causes of the violence. In line with the theme of the workshop, many speakers had opted for an historical angle, because explanations that focus on the Reformasi Era only tend to be superficial. Twenty-one papers in total were presented by scholars from Indonesia, Australia, the USA, Germany, and the Netherlands.
* By FREEK COLOMBIJN
One public session attracted an audience of about one hundred. William Fredrick started with a lecture about cruel acts of violence by Indonesians against their fellow countrymen during the Indonesian Revolution (1945-1949); this violence could not be explained away as the acts of disaffected rogues, because the top revolutionary leaders were willing to make use of the extremely violent ones. Bob Elson then continued with an analysis of Soeharto's willingness to use violence, a willingness rooted in a fear for the Indonesian people. Excerpts from Eddy Pramono's documentary of a burning Solo in May 1998, kindly made available by the Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology, were screened during the tea break. Vincent Houben then gave an overview of recent developments, focusing on the violence against people who are perceived as outsiders and yet come from Indonesia: the 'Other from within'. Erwiza Erman, Bambang Purwanto, and Syarief Ibrahim Alqadrie gave critical commentary on the abovementioned three presentations.
In principle, the other sessions were closed, but usually a group of around ten people of changing composition attended the sessions in the back seats. Henk Schulte Nordholt presented his thesis of a genealogy of violence, going back to colonial times.1 Cees Fasseur argued that during one of the most exploitative periods, the era of the cultivation system, there was surprisingly little violence. David Henley countered Schulte Nordholt by pointing out that in North Sulawesi the Dutch actually reduced internecine village warfare through their role as arbitrators; to play this role that was much appreciated on the local level, they needed very little use of violence themselves. The idea of a genealogy of violence was further explored by Elsbeth Locher-Scholten and Margreet van Till, each with a paper about the colonial police, Freek Colombijn with a paper about mob justice, and Erwiza Erman with a paper about coolie violence in the state-run Ombilin coalmine. Budi Agustono also took up the last-mentioned theme with a paper about violence against coolies on the plantations of North Sumatra, as did Thomas Lindblad, who made a quantitative assessment of the extent of coolie violence.
Not surprisingly, a number of papers focused on army violence. Stef Scagliola presented Dutch ideas about the savage Asian fighter, based on oral history collected from former Dutch soldiers serving in Indonesia. Liem Soei Liong, the only representative of an NGO, gave an overview of army violence. In a paper called 'It's the military, stupid!' Robert Cribb addressed the question as to why the Indonesian army acted so brutally during the invasion of East Timor, contrary to their official ideology of acting as the people's defence. Geoffrey Robinson offerred revealing evidence for army involvement in the destruction caused by militias which surrounded the 1999 referendum in East Timor. Henk Maier analysed Putu Wijaya's work about violence, quoting extensively from the writer's novel Nyali; these quotations, perhaps more than any of the other, at times gruesome, papers, gave a sense of the terror of violence and left the participants sitting uneasily in the safety of their armchairs.
Focusing on the violence of the Reformasi, Jim Siegel presented an extensive paper about the killing of witches in East Java. Jacqueline Vel analysed, in anthropological fashion, the case of the often overlooked violence between Protestants and Roman Catholics on Sumba, which by itself adds nuances to explanations of violence between Moluccan villages in strictly religious terms. Kees van Dijk presented a long range of incidences of mob violence. Syarief Alqadrie had a paper about the conflicts between Dayak, Malays and Madurese in West Kalimantan.
A selection of papers is planned for publication in a year's time. As one may fear, by then the topic will still be as current as it is today. The workshop was made financially possible by the research School CNWS, Leids Universiteits Fonds, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, Council for Humanities and Council for Social Sciences). *
Note
1. See IIAS Newsletter 23 (October 2000) for excerpts of Henk Schulte Nordholt's IIAS Extraordinary Chair inaugural lecture, 'A State of Violence' accompanied by an interview with Marieke Brand.
Dr Freek Colombijn in an anthropologist and historian specializing in Indonesia. (See article pp.4-5 for more author i.d. details)
E-mail: f.colombijn@let.leidenuniv.nl