POLITICS-INDONESIA: Book Burning Used for Political Ends

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kanis Dursin

JAKARTA, May 11 2001 (IPS) - Indonesian writers and scholars are furious over the burning by overzealous Muslim groups of books that they say contain communist teachings, incidents that some analysts say underscore the volatile political divisions plaguing the country.

Over the past week, groups that say they want to fight the emergence of “communism” have raided bookstores and burned books they find offensive, including those by noted novelist and former dissident Pramoedya Ananta Toer.

Already, Indonesia’s biggest bookstore Gramedia has withdrawn all books in its stores that are perceived to contain the teachings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin and other similar books. It has so far withdrawn some 20 titles from its shelves.

“This (series of attacks) is clearly a setback. The burning of books has vaulted Indonesia 50 years backward in terms of intellectual and social development,” said Hermawan Sulistyo, a political researcher associated with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).

Sulistyo’s work titled, ‘Palu Arit di Ladang Tebu’ (‘Hammer and Dagger in Sugarcane Farm) is one of the books confiscated and burned by Muslim groups that have declared themselves to be anti-communist.

“The burning of books should be considered as an attack to Indonesia’s democracy movement,” said philosophy lecturer Franz Magnis Suseno. Suseno’s book, ‘Pemikiran Karl Marx: Dari Sosialisme Utopis ke Perselisihan Revisionisme’ (Karl Marx’s Thoughts: From Utopian Socialism to Revisionism Conflict) was burned at the headquarters of the Islamic Youth Movement (GPI) in Central Jakarta on May 2.

“The burning of books written by Franz Magnis Suseno is symbolic. Later on, all communist books have to be destroyed because they poison the young generation’s minds,” argued the movement’s chair, Suaib Didu.

“I myself have read just half of Suseno’s books. Some of my friends have studied it thoroughly,”said Didu, adding that his group’s anti-communism drive is part of “law enforcement” as a 1966 government decree banned communist teachings in the country.

Since May 2, a new group of 33 Muslim organisations called the Anti-Communism Alliance, known by its Indonesian acronym AAK, has also embarked on a campaign to get rid of “communist” books.

This so-called “anti-communist” campaign comes at a time of deep political strife in this country of 220 million people, between the supporters of President Abdurrahman Wahid and critics in the legislature who want him ousted on charges of corruption and incompetence.

Indeed, the impetus behind the book-burning campaign comes from politics, analysts say. In the last three months, critics of Wahid have accused his supporters of being influenced by communists – a label that has been a long-time bogey in a country where the Suharto government had been wary of them, imprisoned people suspected to have communist leanings, and banned leftist books.

For instance, following an abortive coup blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in 1965, after which Suharto came to power, members of the People’s Consultative Assembly, the highest legislative body, issued a ruling disbanding the communist party and banning the spreading of teachings of Marx and Lenin in Indonesia.

It also banned books containing communist teachings. This ruling has yet to be revoked today, although ‘leftist’ books and literary and scholarly works banned by the Suharto regime, such as Pramoedya’s, have been sold freely in since Suharto’s fall in May 1998.

Today, there are suspicions that anti-Wahid forces are using the anti-communist campaign to try to whittle down support for Wahid, who has rejected two censure memorandums issued by Parliament and says he will not step down.

Rizal Panggabean, a researcher at the Centre for Security and Peace Studies of the Yogyakarta-based University of Gadjah Mada, finds the anti-communism movement typical of the ‘New Order’ regime of Suharto and sees a link between this and former Suharto allies who are using an old tactic.

“I am suspicious that pro-New Order forces have used the communist issue and burning of books as a mechanism to divide and rule the people in order to advance their political ambitions,” Panggabean said.

So far, Wahid supporters have accused his critics, who include former Suharto supporters, of trying to unseat him. In turn, anti-Wahid forces say allies of the president are communists.

The issue of communism resurfaced in February, after Wahid’s loyal supporters reacted angrily to the first censure memorandum by the House of Representatives. After the censure, hundreds of thousands of Wahid supporters in East Java province took to the streets in protest.

They demanded that the dissolution of the Golkar Party, the party formerly led by Suharto and whose leaders now want Wahid out, and set fire to its local offices.

East Java province is a stronghold of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the country’s biggest Muslim organisation with some 30 million members and which Wahid headed before he became president in October 1999. East Java was also as a bastion of the communist movement before the abortive coup blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party in 1965 – a fact not lost on Wahid’s critics.

Nikolas Simandjuntak, a law lecturer at Atma Jaya Catholic University here, says it is the Golkar Party – whose leader Akhbar Tanjung is House speaker and a leading foe of Wahid — sponsored the move in order to force Wahid to stop pursuing corruption cases against the party’s high- ranking officers.

“The so-called anti-communism movement is part of Golkar’s defense mechanism to force Wahid not to pursue cases against the party,” Simandjutak said.

In one of Golkar’s meetings in Jakarta recently, Golkar chair Tanjung said anti-Golkar elements were against the state ideology of ‘Pancasila’, developed under the Suharto erea, since Golkar was the one that pushed it.

“What Golkar is trying to tell Wahid supporters is that they are communists and that they are the country’s enemies,” Simandjuntak said.

But regardless of the political motives behind the anti- communism campaign, writers and intellectuals say they are worried by its effects and have criticised security officers for failing to prevent members of groups like Anti-Communist Alliance from confiscating and burning books.

“Whatever it is, the alliance’s members have clearly taken the law into their own hands, and that is wrong,” historian Anhar Gonggong said in a television discussion.

Some writers say the attacks by the so-called anti-communist groups defy logic. Catholic priest writer and philosophy lecturer Suseno says his book ‘Karl Marx’s Thoughts: From Utopian Socialism to Revisionism Conflict, which was among those burned recently, actually criticises Marx and challenges his ideas.

“Communism is very dangerous because in it makes people oppressed and hungry. That is why we have to know it and oppose it,” Suseno said.

The AAK, whose members are Muslim groups, has also burned books written by writer Hermawan Sulistyo and noted public figures Imam Prakoso and Indra Piliang.

AAK says it plans a massive nationwide hunt for communist- leftist books on May 20, National Awakening Day in Indonesia. “After sweeping communist books until May 20, AAK will also sweep communist people,” its secretary-general Nofal Dunggi said.