Dissident writing in Indonesia

The Economist, July 18, 1998: 76

Change, when it comes, is always too late for some. So it is with Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesia's most celebrated writer. Jubilation, or at least quiet satisfaction, might be expected from a man who spent 14 [sic] years in a remote, malarial island prison under Indonesia's President Suharto. But Mr Suharto's resignation in May brought the writer little joy. The student movement which helped overthrow the old leader was courageous, he agrees, but "only a start". Mr Suharto's people are still in power, his army still has the final say and Mr Pramoedya's books are still banned.

Since his release from prison in 1979, Mr Pramoedya has lived in a modest suburban house in Jakarta. At 73, he is physically robust and conversationally combative, but receives visitors with gentle Javanese courtesy. One hand holds an Indonesian clove cigarette, the other is cupped behind his left ear. His hearing never recovered after policemen clubbed him with rifles on arresting him in 1965. Now he is very deaf, and very angry.

Like 1.3m other former "politicals" in Indonesia, he and his family suffered continued restrictions even after his release from jail. He was not allowed to leave Jakarta, and the house he lived in was often watched. A car acquired in 1996 offered precious freedom of movement. But soon after getting it, he crashed into a roadside stall and gave up driving.

Mr Pramoedya sees himself as the product of a "failed generation", a self-judgment which seems harsh, if understandable. His novels--in particular those known, after Indonesia's prison island, as the "Buru Quartet"--are widely admired abroad, and, despite being forbidden there, in his own country as well. His name often comes up when Nobel prize time comes around. But Mr Pramoedya has different yardsticks. The preoccupation of his life, which he made the theme of his Buru novels, has been Indonesia's effort to create a national identity, by freeing itself first from Dutch colonialism and then from occupation, as he sees it, by the army.

He was first in jail at the hands of the Dutch, during the anti-colonial struggle of 1945-49. They were "better than Suharto", he claims, and he taught himself English from books they provided. On Buru, he "wrote" his own first books without paper or pencil, speaking them aloud as stories for his fellow prisoners. His second visit to prison came in 1960, when the government of President Sukarno banned his history of Chinese people in Indonesia and had him locked up for ten months.

So why do many of his fellow writers now treat Mr Pramoedya as less then a literary martyr? The fact is that in the violent ups and downs of Indonesian politics he was not always a victim. In the early 1960s, Mr Sukarno turned to communist support, and for Mr Pramoedya, a communist sympathiser, this was a moment in the sun. As a key member of the Institute for People's Culture, he wrote polemics against other writers. Though he insists that he had little say, authors he criticised fell out of favour and their books were banned.

That was never forgotten. Years later in 1995, when Mr Pramoedya won the Magsaysay prize, a kind of Asian Nobel, and the government stopped him from going to Manila to receive it, 26 writers and artists signed a letter of protest--not about the travel ban but about rewarding any writer who had once led a "witchhunt".

Yet Mr Pramoedya's reign of influence was brief. In 1965- 66, he was lucky to escaped with his life when Mr Suharto took power. More than 500,000 Indonesians--Mr Pramoedya insists it was 2m--died in the slaughter. The new regime banned the Buru novels, which feature a character based on Tirto Adhisurjo, a turn-of-the-century journalist and Indonesian nationalist. Mr Suharto treated his people as unready for freedom, claiming that "Asian values" did not include individual liberties, even though nationalists of Tirto's generation cared for them passionately.

After three decades as a non-person, Mr Pramoedya did, this month, attend a televised seminar. But he is fighting disillusion. Since Buru, he has written one novella only, and now suffers badly from writer's bloc. Instead, he spends five hours a day clipping newspapers and has "too many ideas" to start a new book. The one hope for the future, he believes, lies in a new generation, whose "hands are not bloody, and whose mouths have not been soiled by the government's cakes". Everybody over 30 is corrupted, he glumly concludes. The politician he most respects is a young leftist, Budiman Sudjatmiko. He is in jail.