From Primordialism to Peace Journalism: Lessons from Reporting Transitional Violence in Indonesia from the Late New Order to Early Reformasi Author Sharp, Stephen Published 2011 Thesis Type Thesis (PhD Doctorate) School School of Humanities DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/273 Copyright Statement The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/367313 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au School of Humanities, Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, Griffith University PhD Candidate: Steve Sharp B.Ec(Syd) MA(Journ)(UTS) Thesis Title: From Primordialism to Peace Journalism: lessons from reporting transitional violence in Indonesia from the late New Order to early Reformasi September 2010 Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. _______________________ Date: 1 Abstract Since the fall of Communism, ethno-religious violence and ‘ethnic cleansing’ have become mainstay of news media reporting. Self-critical journalists increasingly question their professional role in exacerbating violent disintegration and ask how they can do journalism to assist the peaceful resolution of conflict. Due to its own difficult journey to nationhood, fear of a disintegrating state has been central to Indonesia’s political development and something of a national pathology. This was particularly apparent during the political crisis in the late 1990s when the historical repression and manipulation of ethnic and religious difference returned to haunt the state at its moment of weakness. The communal bloodletting was most intense in its eastern periphery where the politically marginal, economically neglected province of Maluku exploded in religious hatred and war. Communal enmity was poorly explained by the national print media centred in Jakarta. Focusing on the underlying political dynamics that triggered and prolonged group violence was mostly avoided. So the story of the Maluku conflagration became either an anodyne description of official views, without immediacy, depth, complexity and human context; or newspapers funnelled ‘primordialist’ war rhetoric from militants to their national audiences. The disquiet Indonesian journalists felt at being professional chroniclers of their homeland’s violent disintegration or unwitting facilitators of its collapse has led to a re-thinking of professional responsibility and an ethical movement known as ‘peace journalism’. This thesis explores the political origins and production of ‘primordialism’ in media narratives on Maluku to understand the opportunities for and most effective trajectories of peace journalism in Indonesia. 2 This thesis begins with an overview of recent theoretical developments exploring communication as culture, particularly in the context of communications as a key part of the emerging global cultural economy that is having significant impact on media industries and markets in transitional societies. This discussion leads to consideration of issues around the communication of conflict, its cultural dimensions, the workings of media diplomacy and image politics, the portrayal of order and collapse and the cultural politics of conflict reporting. Next the thesis seeks to understand news reporting of the events in Maluku by investigating the journalistic culture of post-New Order Indonesia in the context of the long road to relative media freedom in the country. It is instructive to see how the battles for free speech of the anti-colonial Perjuangan Press were integral to the nationalist cause and while the first post-colonial constitution guaranteed freedom of expression, the prerogatives of the state gradually came to dominate what became known as the Pancasila Press – a professional culture tied to state interests and largely subservient to Suharto’s New Order regime. While the constraining principles of developmental journalism fitted with the regime’s preferences, by the 1990s Indonesian journalists were developing a professional identity based in democratic ideology that provided opportunities to pursue greater media freedom. The thesis goes on to explore the politics of violence, culture and national disintegration in Indonesia within centre-periphery power configurations. Attempts to manage and control peripheral regions from the political centre served to reproduce in Indonesia a cultural politics that sharpened opposing ethno-religious identities. Between ethno-religious and political violence emerges the complex dynamics of specific stages of escalation – in Maluku and elsewhere – that make them turn violent. 3 In the Maluku case study, the thesis maps the province’s geometry of violence as one of a number of outbreaks that constituted a period of ‘transitional violence’. The political crisis at its centre empowered ethnic and religious elites in the province to assemble their various foot-soldiers in pursuit of the elites’ interests. As these localised contests intensified during the transition, long-practised techniques of state violence were transformed by the strategic logic of communal war, dictated by ethnic and religious polarisation and the localising of global discourses on ‘holy war’. Close analysis of stories about Maluku in Jakarta dailies Kompas and Republika reveals popular discourses of distant suffering that fell back on unilinear narratives based on ethno-religious enmity. Religious enmity was presented as natural, inevitable and without end - a kind of primordialism-by- default that lacked explanatory power. The failure of media discourses to address shifting power relations between political elites in Jakarta and Maluku was a spectacular failure of journalism that did nothing to mobilise national opposition to the war nor national opinion in favour of a negotiated peace. On the contrary, it contributed to its significant escalation after May 2000. Despite their different origins and orientations, for long periods both newspapers analysed in this study produced storylines that reinforced the rhetorical logic of warmaking. Finally, the issue that remains for professional journalists is how they can use communication networks to mobilise cultural resources (identity politics) towards development, democracy and peace. What are the principles of peace journalism that can guide communicators to make the best use of available resources, particularly in small-scale communities remote from the centre and vulnerable to civil strife? 4 These principles too may prove useful when applied to any transitional context where societies are seeking to break free of coercive political structures with new institutional arrangements still in flux. Peace journalism offers a framework for dealing with professional dilemmas confronted by all media workers. Government policymakers might also consider these same principles when recommending communication infrastructure for peaceful development. Accordingly, given appropriate infrastructure and communication tools, communities are likely to benefit from establishing their own media outlets to protect themselves from disintegrative tendencies. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 9 i) Journalism and violence ii) Methodological issues iii) Chapter outline iv) From primordialism to peace journalism CHAPTER 2 COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE 26 i) Communication-as-culture ii) Globalism and media development Communications & the global cultural economy media industries and markets in transitional societies iii) Communicating conflict cultural dimensions of conflict media diplomacy & image politics order and collapse in media discourse cultural politics & conflict reporting CHAPTER 3 MEDIA FREEDOM & JOURNALISTIC CULTURE IN POST-NEW ORDER INDONESIA 61 i) The legacy of the Pancasila Press in Indonesia From Supomo to Prabowo From Perjuangan Press to Pancasila Press 6 ii) Democratic ideology among Indonesia journalists Developmentalism and democracy Development journalism Professional identity and democratic ideology iii) Culture and freedom in the newsroom CHAPTER 4 VIOLENCE, CULTURE & NATIONAL DISINTEGRATION IN INDONESIA 128 i) Political violence and the discourse of national disintegration Barbarism, sovereign violence and modernity War and the construction of ethnic identities ii) Centre-periphery cultural politics in Indonesia 1998-2000 Ethno-religious identities in the unitary state Religious identity in the regions Between ethno-religious and political violence CHAPTER 5 CULTURE WARS AND REPORTING TABOOS IN INDONESIA: MALUKU 195 i) The Maluku Wars’ geometry of violence ii) Faith and politics in the Maluku firestorm iii) Localising global discourses on ‘holy war’ 7 CHAPTER 6 FRAMING RELIGIOUS CONFLICT: PRIMORDIALISM WRIT LARGE 256 i) The unnaming of combatants ii) Reporting distant violence iii) Security personnel and their media masks iv) National news media and paramilitary mobilisation CHAPTER 7 WAR AND PEACE JOURNALISM 288 i) War, identity, economy ii) The underground press surfaces iii) Pancasila Press goes ‘communal’ iv) Transitional media ethics v) Reviving development communication vi) Summary of conclusions *** APPENDICES Appendix I 339 Appendix II 346 BIBLIOGRAPHY 401 8 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION If it were religion, up till now we wouldn’t