Fighting for intellectual freedom in Indonesia

Tan Malaka, a deceased former leader of the Indonesian Communist Party, was declared a national hero in 1963. But an uproar last month in Semarang, a city on the north coast of Java, shows that he is still controversial.

The Semarang Community of History Makers and Grobak Hysteria art gallery organised a discussion of a recent biography, Tan Malaka, the Left and the Indonesian Revolution, penned by Harry Poeze.

The event was to take place at Grobak’s office in the south-west of the city, but security concerns forced a change of venue to Diponegoro University, about 10 kilometres away on the city’s southern outskirts.

The arrival of police to guard every entrance at Grobak’s raised tensions. Police informed us that conditions were “not conducive” to the book discussion; hostile forces were threatening a demonstration. By this time, we had heard that local and national television were on the way.

The tensions over our book seminar began days earlier, when we heard from the police that two organisations had registered objections. These were Pancasila Youth, an organisation close to the former Suharto regime, and the Islamic Defenders’ Front, the most prominent fundamentalist group.

I had confronted the two groups, a daunting experience, and convinced them to withdraw their complaints. But the police now told me that each time a group withdrew complaints, some other group would lodge its own.

The tensions were heightened by the fact that alleged ex-communists now out of jail were to join the discussion. Sure enough, the demonstration occurred. It involved dozens of people. We looked them over; they seemed to be street people, and may have been paid to demonstrate.

There was a unique sort of discussion. The demonstrators claimed to acknowledge Tan Malaka as a national hero. But they rejected his communist stance, which they associated with the uprising in Madiun and the 1965 coup.

The discussion was pointless, their leader said, because we could read the same comments on the internet. Harry Poeze, meanwhile, was caught in a traffic jam en route to Semarang.

Despite desperately short notice, an astonishing 400 people came to the rescheduled discussion, including leading members of local government and national TV.

Harry Poeze made it on time also.

[Yunantyo Adi is a journalist in Semarang, Indonesia. Article translated and abridged by Tom O'Lincoln.]