Suharto's Fall

Chapter Three Suharto’s Fall Because we are silenced and you never shut up . Because we are threatened and you impose your will by force . therefore we say NO to you. Because we are not allowed to choose and you can do what you like . Because we wear only sandals and you use your rifl es freely . Because we have to be polite and you have the prisons . therefore NO and NO to you. Because we are like a fl owing river and you are a stone without a heart the water will wear away the stone. —W. S. Rendra, “Water Will Wear Away the Stone,” delivered at Trisakti University, in response to the shooting of four students on May 12, 1998 With the ban of newsweeklies Tempo , Editor , and Dë TIK in June 1994, Indonesia’s brief political opening came to an abrupt close, and constraints on civil society tight- ened. The country had begun to change, but there was little evidence in the public sphere. Throughout his reign, President Suharto’s legitimacy had rested on providing order, stability, and economic development. As long as he appeared to deliver on these grounds, opposition forces had difficulty questioning his authority. But in 1997, the Asian economic crisis hit Indonesia with devastating force, undermining his regime’s claim to all three accomplishments and creating an opportunity for a student-led reform movement to challenge his continued rule. This chapter tells the story of this challenge and Suharto’s subsequent fall from power. But it also looks critically at the complex and often contradictory nature of the media’s relationship to the student movement. Complicating its reciprocal nature was a division between mainstream outlets, which remained cautious to the end, relying upon the sacrifices of student demonstrators to win them greater freedom of expression, and more critical publications forced underground by the bans, such as Tempo , whose martyrdom and continued resistance set a standard for students as well as fel- low journalists. This dissident movement, led by media activists, further influenced students via collaboration with nongovernmental organizations that themselves recruited from campuses. 1 By branching out into new terrain, such as poll watching, 54 Chapter 3 the movement also made fair elections a primary focus for students and other reform leaders. Through these relationships, both freedom of expression and transparent electoral contests became key objectives for the emerging reformasi movement—clear priorities that carried over into the postauthoritarian period and had a significant impact on the trajectory of the transition. Movement Before the Movement In the early 1990s, national debate over the media’s proper role in a specifi cally Indonesian democracy regained prominence; it was then silenced in the crackdown following the 1994 bans. With the approach of the 1997 parliamentary elections, repression escalated to include raids on public gatherings, particularly those related to election monitoring, human rights, and the opposition leader and daughter of Presi- dent Sukarno, Megawati Sukarnoputri.2 A pro-Megawati speech at one demonstration, for example, brought a member of parliament nine months in prison for “insulting the President, armed forces and other public institutions.”3 Such prosecutions were also noteworthy for reviving the draconian antisubversion law banning “any activity which directly or indirectly can infl uence state policy and its implementation.”4 In this climate, the most visible mediators of public discourse—the news outlets that had survived the bans—became cautious to the point of a painful self-censorship. Following the bans, Tempo ’s editor in chief, Goenawan Mohamad, had foreseen a process of “forgetting”—that is, widespread acceptance of a corrupt bargain that would “make the victims lose their will to say ‘no’ to the injustice” of the government’s actions. “High wages, job security, opportunities to advance—along with fear—can indeed mesmer- ize,” he said, “until the victims themselves lose their perspective as victims, until what’s fair and unfair get mixed up in their heads, until they themselves become irritated at being reminded of how important self-worth, solidarity and freedom are for humanity.” 5 Indeed, the bans quashed the critical reporting fostered by the regime’s earlier opening, and much of the media continued on as if nothing had changed. But beneath this surface of compliance, journalistic resistance continued in ways both symbolic and concrete to shape future events. In concrete terms, such dissent enlarged the activist community who first articulated the civil rights discourse that would be critical to the later transition. The defiant stance of this community had symbolic import that valorized individual sacrifice and risk-taking in the name of a greater cause—freedom of speech—and elevated that cause to become a defining issue of the emerging, student-led refor masi movement. Much of this valorization came through ascent of a rhetoric of political martyrdom introduced by victims of the media bans and later picked up by students and mainstream media. First voiced in street protests, this discourse grew in reach and force during Tempo ’s protracted legal battle to reverse revocation of its license. Ultimately, through language and symbolic action, Tempo ’s advocates transformed an impersonal institution, a suppressed newsweekly, into a still-warm body that represented the hope of greater democracy.6 In effect, they transmuted a banned magazine into a national martyr. With ritual and rhetoric, the press community mourned Tempo as an anthropo- morphized icon of media freedom. The journalist Ahmad Taufik, for example, called the ban “murder” and convened funeral rites for the newly embodied victim, using the Islamic prayer Salat al-Janazah in a public ceremony.7 Media activists, students, and artists also incorporated rituals of mourning into protest activities, such as carrying Suharto’s Fall 55 funeral biers in marches and flying flags at half-mast.8 Finally, activists wrote essays that were tantamount to eulogies, mourning the passing of the magazine as if it were a martyred leader. 9 Daniel Dhakidae, a writer for Kompas , injected perhaps the most vivid language of martyrdom into this discourse, calling the bans an “execution . a felony, the murder of the right to speak, murder of the right to do business.” He condemned the regime’s methods for seducing owners of banned publications “to sell their souls for new permits.”10 Students urged the owners not to capitulate, and Dë TIK ’s and Tempo ’s refusal to compromise won them widespread recognition as heroes, inspiring songs and poems, notably “The Ballad of Unchecked Arrogance” by Y. Soesilo—a somewhat sardonic but ultimately upbeat tribute to Tempo .11 More broadly, a discourse of courage and principle evolved out of the court bat- tles and prison sentences that protesters now faced. Young journalists in particular were suddenly prepared to sacrifice their careers in order to, as Goenawan Mohamad put it, “say ‘no’ to kissing the ass of Satan.” Students, a significant share of Tempo ’s readership, embraced this discourse, summarized in the magazine’s manifesto Why We are Filing Suit : “Freedom indeed carries expensive risks, but the choice is not negotiable.” 12 While casting Tempo as a murdered martyr was a key discursive element in the resistance, more concrete was the stubborn perseverance of the renegade journalists’ association, AJI, in meeting, recruiting, and launching an underground press with its newsletter Independen and, after Independen ’s ban, Suara Independen .13 Internet provid- ers made the online publication of Suara Independen and a half dozen other illicit news bulletins possible through email lists such as Apakabar, reaching thousands of readers and surprisingly difficult to censor. In mid-1996, police did arrest a university lecturer for printing and xeroxing an emailed report, and the military assigned intelligence agents “to search office by office, editor by editor” for the culpable internet-based journalists.14 Nonetheless, this clandestine circulation continued, frustrating government intervention. Former Tempo journalists also maintained resistance through above-ground publications. 15 Without awaiting official clearance, in March 1996, one group launched a web publication named Tempo Interaktif , whose first edition broached the sensitive subject of a privileged “national car” project run by Suharto’s son.16 Other Tempo alumni revived a defunct entertainment magazine, Detektif & Romantika ( D&R ), trans- forming it into a hard-edged news weekly. Journalists blacklisted for their AJI affilia- tion continued their careers by writing for D&R under pseudonyms. Although its chief editor once insisted that “we did not design the magazine to oppose the government,” the initials D&R came to stand not for Detektif & Romantika but rather for Demokrasi & Reformasi —the catchwords of the anti-Suharto movement.17 Living up to its opposition image, the magazine developed an increasingly adversarial stance yet escaped government censure for nearly its entire run before Suharto’s fall. Nongovernmental organizations—such as the Legal Aid Institute, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, and the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy—also maintained their activist campaigns through this period. Though their programs had clear political overtones, the state made few attempts to restrain them. One member of the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy speculated that the regime’s toler- ance reflected their minimal impact beyond Jakarta’s narrow political elite, amounting to little more than “turbulence in a glass” that kept middle- and upper-class activists occupied in harmless opposition activities.18 56 Chapter 3 Simultaneously, the media’s contribution to the reform movement was weakened by the regime’s repression, which split their community in the wake of the bans. Above-ground, mainstream news outlets complied with Suharto’s dictates, muting their criticism and miming the regime’s rhetoric. In the expanding underground media, however, resistance deepened, spreading a spirit of defiance adopted by student demonstrators, and ultimately many mainstream journalists, just three years later.

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