'Indonesian nationalism' vs. Islam (Part 3)

There is still more proof of the counterfeit nature of Indonesian nationalism: the atrocities committed by the Indonesian "National" Army against fellow Indonesians. Mass murders and massacres have been the order of the day from the issuance of "the bulletin", i.e. the declaration of independence, of Javanese Indonesia, in August 1945.

To date, approximately 5 million people have met their death through the State's inflicted wounds all over the "Indonesian" archipelago. 2 million were recorded in the six month period at the end of 1964 and the beginning of 1965 when the Javanese military seized power.

Before and after that, over a much longer period of time, the victims were less carefully tabulated. There was, for example, the massacre of Putot Tjot Djeumpa in Aceh in 1956, where the Indonesia National Army lined up 200 men, women and children as well as the elderly, and machine-gunned them to death. This was not a rare occurrence in Javanese Indonesia.

After decades of atrocities, the Javanese dominated Indonesian military is viewed with contempt by the Acehnese.

Indonesian security forces return from Aceh in body bags

Other such massacres took place in Kalimantan, Sulawesi, the Moluccas, West Papua and East Timor. Atrocities and tortures of the most bestial kinds are perpetrated daily by the Indonesian National Army against fellow "Indonesians". Any human being imbued with the most rudimentary sentiments of 'national' feeling would not be capable of behaving thus against his own kind. This indicates that a true Indonesian national consciousness does not exist.

The sociologist Franz Oppenheimer probably put his finger on the problem when he stated that, "we must not conclude the existence of a national consciousness from the existence of a nation, but on the contrary, the existence of a nation from the existence of a national consciousness."

Although the Indonesian army is called Tentera "Nasional" Indonesia, most of its rank and file are Javanese gunmen who look down upon the non-Javanese peoples as foreign and so subject to the Javanese "masters".

The army is also organized according to ethnic categories for more effective use in suppressing ethnic rebellions that have become the real reason for its existence. Thus, if the Moluccan people were rebelling, then the Javanese regime would send non-Moluccans, say Sundanese troops, to suppress them. If the Acehnese were rebelling, then the Moluccan troops would be sent to suppress it. And so on, following the old familiar practice of the Habsburg empire of sending Czech batallions to crush Slovak rebellions, or Hungarian regiments to suppress Croatian uprisings, to make sure that no emotional ties exist between the people to be crushed and the troops.

In the short run, this policy will ensure the effectiveness of the repression; in the long run, it serves the policy of divide and rule, by enhancing antagonisms among the ethnic groups and thus guaranteeing the perpetuation of the authority of the central regime.

During the Habsburg empire, this policy ensured the perpetual power of Vienna, in today's Indonesia it guarantees Jakarta's control of the outlying colonies, called "provinces". In such a situation, it is ludicrous to imply the existence of an "Indonesian nationalism", just as it would have been naive to imagine the existence of an Austro-Hungarian "nationalism" under the Habsburgs.

Another proof the non-existence of a true "Indonesian nationalism" was provided by the experimentation with the party system before the emergence of the Javanese military colonial State. The last fairly free elections held in Indonesia were in 1955 and 1957. The results elections showed that the PNI (Partai Nasionalis Indonesia), i.e. the "Nationalist" Party of Indonesia) got the bulk of its votes only in Central and East Java, the homeland of the Javanese ethnic group. The party got either few or no votes at all in non-Javanese territories, except from Javanese immigrants called "transmigrants" there.

By contrast, the Muslim party (Mashumi), although winning very few votes in Javanese ethnic territories, received most of the votes cast outside Java. The Muslim party was the only "nationwide" party. Clearly these results demonstrate the widespread appeal of Islam to the population of Indonesia, irrespective of their national origins in contrast to the limited, sectional, almost local appeal of "Indonesian nationalism" to the Javanese ethnic areas, where secularism and nationalism have been propagated.

Javanese Nationalism and Imperialism

Under the cloak of an impossible "Indonesian nationalism" a Javanese nationalism has been given an opportunity to emerge triumphant. Although "Indonesian nationalism" is itself a fake, it has become an effective mask for a real Javanese nationalism and its will to project its exclusive special and sectional interest as the "national" one over the heads of the non-Javanese peoples and their homelands, while mediating with foreign powers for recognition of Javanese primacy and hegemony over this vast region (which constitutes approximately 80 per cent of the territory of Southeast Asia).

This Javanese primacy and hegemony, however, can never be maintained without the tacit approval of neighbouring States. This is the strategic vulnerability inherited by Javanese Indonesia from the Dutch East Indies because even the Dutch colonial empire could never have existed for even a single day without British diplomatic and even (at times) military support and protection. This is so, primarily because Indonesia is not a natural geopolitical entity.

The Dutch East Indies existed by courtesy of the British when the British lost patience with the Dutch, as they did during the Napoleonic Wars. Stamford Raffles moved easily from Singapore to Java, and sent the Dutch packing. The fact that the British decided to give the East Indies back to the Dutch is yet another demonstration that the then Dutch East Indies - like the now Javanese Indonesia - existed only by courtesy of the neighbouring States singly, as was the case with the British then, or collectively, as is the case with ASEAN now.

If another proof is needed, then here it is. During World War II, the Dutch empire of the East Indies, already called Indonesia, collapsed simply by the mere presence of the Japanese army in Singapore! Today, the existence of Javanese Indonesia depends on the courtesy of Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Brunei, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Australia, and, by extension, the United States and the Soviet Union. This is advisedly said, because even the superpowers cannot protect Javanese Indonesia from its tiniest neighbour. That is why Indonesia needs ASEAN as no one else does.

Javanese Indonesia is a State that cannot antagonize any State. It cannot confront any other State because any confrontation with anyone means the end of Javanese Indonesia as we know it today. Last time they were lucky to have ended the confrontation with Malaysia just in time. Otherwise there would be no Javanese Indonesia today. Consequently, Javanese Indonesia cannot have a foreign policy unless it be that of getting along with everybody.

Java, like Holland before it, has unreasonably tried to hold on to so vast a territory that it is absolutely impossible for it to do so let alone defend it. No country the size of either Holland or Java - especially Java without any industrial base and among the most backward of the backward countries - can defend an empire with coastlines in excess of 25,000 kilometres with a hostile population.

The much bragged about Javanese defence plan for "territorial war" (perang wilajah) by waging a guerrilla war against any invader was just that: braggadocio!

You cannot wage a guerrilla war when the local peoples are against you. This situation has obviously escaped the observation of the powers that are now so busy arming the Javanese Indonesian army, or else they are just interested in relieving the Javanese of his ill-gotten cash while they can and while he still has it.

James Soudon, the cautious Dutch Minister of Colonial Affairs, wrote the following words at the time of the mounting Dutch conflict with Aceh, reflecting his worries about the consequences of acquiring more territory: "I see each further spreading of our authority in the East Indian Archipelago as a step further toward our overthrow, and the more so as we are already now grown far above our own strength."

When a few years later, on March 26, 1873, the Dutch attacked Aceh and were roundly defeated at the Battle of Bandar Aceh, a member of the Dutch parliament in The Hague stated that, "the repulse in Aceh and the enterprise taken altogether, will prove the last blow to the authority of Holland in the Eastern World." This was no exaggeration, as history has subsequently shown.

"Great empires die of indigestion", Napoleon observed. That had been the fate of the Roman Empire and of the Dutch East Indies. It is also the inevitable fate of Javanese Indonesia, although it survives for the time being by the courtesy of its neighbouring States.

Javanese Indonesia, which is held up in the west as a paragon of "stability", is in reality the sick man of Southeast Asia.

[Hasan Di Tiro is the president of National Liberation Front of Acheh, now exiled in Sweden]