Countdown to June 7
The best reason the Indonesian government offered for its repression of East Timor and other troubled regions was to contain a drive for independence that, if allowed to run its course, could dismantle the archipelago of 10,000 islands. If one island were allowed independence, or even autonomy, the rest could follow. The Sukarno and Suharto governments pushed that line for fifty years. But last year's overthrow of President Suharto, and the installation of his right-hand man, B.J. Habibie, promised new possibilities. Indeed, Habibie has recently been pushing for autonomy for the region, if for no other reason than to end the strife that has proven so costly, politically and otherwise.
However, recent outbreaks of violence in East Timor and other regions threaten not only the autonomy movement, but may threaten the integrity of Indonesia as a whole. It may turn out that Suharto was right all along: allow one region some freedom, and the rest will follow. What Suharto never addressed was the normative dimension to that question: is freedom such a bad thing for Indonesians? On June 7, 1999, Indonesians will be able to answer that question, for the first time in fifty years, as the country will hold its first full, free, fair, and open parliamentary election.
Last week, a massacre in East Timor by anti-independence militiamen backed by the Indonesian army left at least 25 people dead. (The government claims "only" five were killed.) According to a CNN report, Rafael dos Santos, a priest in Liquica, East Timor, said that the militia gangs fired tear gas into his church, where terrified villagers were gathered. "When they ran outside," the priest said, "they were chopped down by the militias with swords."
Xanana Gusmao, the East Timorese rebel leader currently in prison in Jakarta, had been speaking for a peacefully negotiated autonomy, until the latest killings. His efforts led to a government plan to hold a referendum in July on autonomy for East Timor. Now, Gusmao is now calling for insurrection, and guerilla attacks, saying that Indonesia was "deliberately undermining" attempts to find peace for East Timor. He said he was compelled to authorize "guerrillas to undertake all necessary action in defense of the population against the unprovoked and murderous attacks of armed civilian groups backed up by ABRI," referring to the acronym for the state military.
East Timor is not the only troubled region. A dozen killings in Borneo, and up to 300 killed in Ambon (an island in the far eastern Maluku province of Indonesia), highlight the ethnic tensions, economic crisis, and political uncertainty that grip the nation. In Borneo, armed mobs displayed the severed heads of their victims, drawing cheers from the crowds, and other parts, such as ears, scalps, and hearts were taken from the victims as souvenirs. The violence in Ambon, mostly between Muslims and Christians, has pitted gangs of each religion, roaming the streets looking for violence, wearing different colored headbands to distinguish them; Christians wearing red headbands, and Muslims with white. Some groups claim the military did not intervene quickly enough to quell the unrest; some claim the military intervened too quickly, and too severely.
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