lndonesia - The Presence of the Past A festschrift in honour of Ingrid Wessel Edited by Eva Streifeneder and Antje Missbach Adnan Buyung Nasution Antje Missbach Asvi Warman Adam Bernhard Dahm Bob Sugeng Hadiwinata Daniel S. Lev Doris Jedamski Eva Streifeneder Franz Magnis-Suseno SJ Frederik Holst Ingo wandelt Kees van Dijk Mary Somers Heidhues Nadja Jacubowski Robert Cribb Sri Kuhnt-Saptodewo Tilman Schiel Uta Gärtner Vedi R. Hadiz Vincent J. H. Houben Watch lndonesia! (Alex Flor, Marianne Klute, ....--.... Petra Stockmann) regioSPECTRA.___.... Indonesia — The Presence of the Past A festschrift in honour of Ingrid Wessel Edited by Eva Streifeneder and Antje Missbach Die Deutsche Bibliothek – CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Indonesia – The Presence of the Past. A festschrift in honour of Ingrid Wessel Eva Streifeneder and Antje Missbach (eds.) Berlin: regiospectra Verlag 2008 (2nd edition) ISBN 978-3-940-13202-4 Layout by regiospectra Cover design by Salomon Kronthaler Cover photograph by Florian Weiß Printed in Germany © regiospectra Verlag Berlin 2007 All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. For further information: http://www.regiospectra.com. Contents In Appreciation of Ingrid Wessel 9 Adnan Buyung Nasution Traces 11 Uta Gärtner Introduction 13 Antje Missbach and Eva Streifeneder Acknowledgements 17 Part I: Indonesia’s Exposure to its Past Representations of Indonesian History 21 A Critical Reassessment Vincent J. H. Houben In Search of a Complex Past 33 On the Collapse of the Parliamentary Order and the Rise of Guided Democracy in Indonesia Daniel S. Lev The 1965 Massacres in Indonesia 41 Issues still unresolved Robert Cribb The Long Road to Restorative Justice 51 On the 1965-66 victims’ struggle for reparations in Post-Suharto Indonesia Eva Streifeneder Die Verleumdung von Bung Karno 65 Asvi Warman Adam Part II: The State – its Supporters and Opponents Approaches to Analyse the State(s) in Southeast Asia 83 With Special Reference to Indonesia Tilman Schiel International Development Organisations and the Local Power 103 Vedi R. Hadiz Prabowo, Kopassus and East Timor 121 On the Hidden History of Modern Indonesian Unconventional Warfare Ingo Wandelt From Violence to Voting 149 Post-Conflict Settlement and Democratisation in Aceh Bob Sugeng Hadiwinata What Future for Papua? 175 Alex Flor, Marianne Klute & Petra Stockmann Part III: Current Tendencies in Indonesian Islam Radikalisierung des Islams in Indonesien 199 Bernhard Dahm Religiöser Extremismus auf dem Vormarsch? 219 Interpretation der derzeitigen Situation in Indonesien Franz Magnis-Suseno SJ Labelling Indonesian and Malaysian Islam 231 Kees van Dijk “Islam versus Muslims” 251 Qur’anic Hermeneutics and the Discourse on Gender Equality in Indonesia Nadja Jacubowski Part IV: Dance, Literature and Past Getanzte Geschichte 267 Tanz und Geschichte auf Java Sri Kuhnt-Saptodewo The ‘Renaissance’ of Sino-Malay Literature 287 Mary Somers Heidhues The Novel-Humming Ulama 303 Islamic Debates on Popular Literature in Late Colonial Indonesia Doris Jedamski Part V: Beyond Indonesia (Dis-)Connected History 327 The Indonesia-Malaysia Relationship Frederik Holst Managing Heterogeneity within a ‘Transnational Community of Co-Responsibility’ 341 Exploratory Snapshots of Acehnese Diasporic Life Experiences in Sydney Antje Missbach About the Authors 361 In Appreciation of Ingrid Wessel Adnan Buyung Nasution If someone wants to understand contemporary politics in Indonesia, he or she first has to look back and to develop a certain understanding of from where modern develop- ments actually derived. Only if someone is acquainted with Indonesia’s historical herit- age, can one really see and assess what is happening in this huge country that is charac- terised by its enormous diversity and even ambiguities. Not many scholars, nowadays, have such an all-round conception that enables them to observe and critically evaluate continuity and change. Since I have got to know Ingrid Wessel, I have always had the impression that she represents exactly this type of scholar who possesses a framework for analysing Indonesia. Beyond Ingrid Wessel’s academic contributions she has been actively involved in sup- porting the Indonesian human rights movement before and after the fall of Soeharto in 1998. Many critics from Indonesia visited the Humboldt-University in Berlin and were invited by her to present their ideas to a German audience. I am strongly convinced that Ingrid Wessel has made an important contribution to raising Germany’s political awareness of Indonesia. Traces Uta Gärtner The moment of retirement is an excellent opportunity for looking back, for taking stock of a person’s life. Whilst one stage of playing an active part in the world’s course is closing, the door to the next one is opening. Reviewing the times passed by one can see the traces that remain. This moment is like a crossroads between two different eras of one life, both creative in their own way. About 45 years ago Ingrid Wessel announced her decision to take up Indonesian stud- ies in Moscow, and she earned the sceptical admiration of her matriculation class mates with whom she had spent one year of practical work in a village near Halle/Saale. Would it work out for a girl to learn a language as foreign as this via another foreign language in a foreign place? It did. If there were hardships she overcame them in her own inherent way of never giving up, which has been characteristic of her to this day. Even when after her return family affairs demanded much of her energy she still man- aged to pursue her own academic career successfully. The time when she joined the then Department of Asian Studies was a period of considerable consolidation and ex- pansion of Southeast Asian studies at the Humboldt University. She contributed essen- tially to raising the profile not only of her own special subject, Indonesian studies, but of the department as a whole. One remarkable trait of Ingrid Wessel’s academic work has been her ability to create an all-encompassing link between her own research work and teaching students. From the very beginning, she devoted much of her time and energy to finding the best ways of conveying as much knowledge as possible to the students. Unlike other colleagues, teaching for her has never been an irksome task preventing the scholar from rewarding research but rather an integral part of her activities, a field where she applied scientific findings and gained fresh motivation for further research issues. This basic attitude is reflected in all facets of her work. A great number of articles bear witness to her own involvement with the modern his- tory of Indonesia, in particular with processes relating to state building and social devel- opment. Most telling, however, are the books she has written and edited, for instance, on the history of Indonesia (Geschichte Indonesiens: Vom Altertum bis zur Gegenwart), which was written in cooperation with Hans-Dieter Kubitscheck in 1981. Other publications attest to her extensive cooperation with scholars and academics from all over the world, who share similar academic interests and political concerns. Since the early 1990s, five conferences and workshops have been organised by Ingrid Wessel and her staff: Nationalism and ethnicity in Southeast Asia (1993), Indonesia at the end of 12 Uta Gärtner the 20th century (1995), 10th European Colloquium on Indonesian and Malay Studies (1996), the International Conference on Violence in Indonesia (2000) and finally the Workshop on Democrat- isation in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto (2004). Besides a heavy workload this involved providing young scholars with opportunities to acquire experience in presenting their own research results and in sharing academic knowledge with colleagues from other in- stitutions in Germany and abroad. The same positive attitudes apply to the publications Ingrid Wessel edited. The most recent ones have been Violence in Indonesia (2001, Ham- burg, Abera) and Democratisation in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto (2005, Berlin, Logos). Editing a book is often less valued although it may be more rewarding for the reader- ship. Moreover, the academic scene at the Department benefited from the monthly col- loquia Ingrid Wessel and others initiated, to which she invited guest speakers from all over the world, particularly from Indonesia. The visitors included not only academics, but also human rights advocates, political activists and dissidents. Surveying the traces of Ingrid Wessel work during the last several decades reveals three things: firstly, her broad knowledge and deep interest in social processes in Southeast Asia, secondly, her critical approach in dealing with historical discourses and contem- porary developments, and thirdly, the high standard of performance she set herself. Al- though a specialist in Indonesian history and appointed to teach this subject, in her lec- tures she has covered a broad range of themes and taught about topics such as demo- cratisation, decolonisation, and civil society throughout the whole region. In doing so she has responded to the need to assist her students to observe, assess and compare de- velopments in various countries of Southeast Asia. Last but not least, a good number of under-graduate and post-graduate students have benefited directly from the thorough guidance Ingrid Wessel has given and still gives to them while they compile their final theses. Rarely does a professor dedicate so much at- tention to improving their students’ skills to deal independently with scientific issues and to produce results of a high academic standard. This blending of research and in- struction within her own work has qualified Ingrid Wessel to be a highly effective uni- versity teacher. Moreover, besides these two facets of academic work she has been in- volved in the community affairs of the Institute for Asian and African Studies and the Department of Southeast Asian Studies. As the Head of the Institute’s budgetary com- mittee she managed to utilise the scarce financial resources in an unbiased way that be- nefited the Institute as a whole.