New President, Old Problems in Indonesia

By John Gee

After months of threats and brinkmanship, Indonesia’s People’s Assembly (MPR) dismissed President AbdurrahmanWahid. The violence in the streets that had been feared did not take place. A few thousand Wahid supporters demonstrated their continuing loyalty to him, and he briefly appeared before them, the daughter who has faithfully supported him in all his work still at his side. He looked as if all the strain of the last few months had suddenly caught up with him at that very hour, and he went quietly. Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri was installed as his replacement on July 23.

The post was one that Sukarnoputri, as leader of the largest party in parliament, should have attained in October 1999. She was blocked, however, by a “Stop Megawati!” coalition of old guard political forces and Muslim parties who rallied behind Wahid. She now has reached the highest office in the land with a much weaker governing base than she would have had if her bid two years ago had been successful.

Despite the fact that Wahid, or Gus Dur, as he is popularly known, was the target of impeachment proceedings, he was a president voted into office by the MPR after nationwide democratic elections. Megawati is bound to be seen as having less legitimacy as president because she has succeeded Gus Dur as a result of his being forced from power. The months of crisis leading up to his displacement exacerbated divisions within Indonesia and, crucially, within Java, the country’s most populous island, and the ex-president’s powerbase.

Most ominously, Megawati attained the presidency indebted to the military. When Gus Dur told leading generals that he wanted to introduce a state of emergency, they told him they would not support it. Constitutionally, the president has the right to take that measure and to order the army to enforce it, but Gus Dur clearly felt that he was in no position to insist. When, as president, he announced the dismissal of the national police chief—who had made it known that he intended to detain supporters of Gus Dur, supposedly on security grounds—Police General Bimantoro refused to accept the decision. Jakarta’s police chief, Gen. Sofyan Yacub, organized a support rally for Bimantoro near the presidential palace by police and military units, who brought tanks and armored personnel carriers with them. A series of defiant acts by the army and police in support of Bimantoro followed, which served to demonstrate the impotence of the president and the determination of the army leadership to assert its own position. When the crunch finally came for Gus Dur, the army threw its weight fully behind Megawati.

The new president therefore is in an extremely difficult position. Gus Dur did strike a few effective blows for reform in his first months in office, but the forces that had helped sustain former dictator Suharto in office for over 30 years were able to claw back some of the power they had lost as Gus Dur’s own strength waned. Legal actions that were proposed against officers accused of human rights abuses and corrupt individuals who had feathered their nests under Suharto’s protection generally were not initiated or were dropped part way through; most of those who did face punishment were small-fry. Leaders of the MPR’s main parties had said they would eliminate the 38 seats reserved for military nominees by 2004. Subsequently, however, they backtracked, agreeing to allow the army to keep them until 2009. Old guard political figures took an increasing proportion of governmental positions.

Although Megawati showed courage in standing up to Suharto, she has displayed few of the qualities of statesmanship that will be needed to tackle Indonesia’s problems. Her failure to secure the presidency two years ago was due not only to the machinations of those opposed to her reform agenda, but also to her own lack of effort in seeking to build alliances. She must have realized since the beginning of the year that she was likely to succeed Gus Dur as president some time during 2001, so one might have thought she would have been preparing for that eventuality by formulating a series of measures to introduce at the very outset of her presidency, when she could count on the support of most of those backing her elevation to the presidency. The first signs were not reassuring, however: Megawati’s first weeks in office were notable only for their lack of new initiatives. Unless she acts with more vigor and displays more imagination than she has so far, Indonesia’s economic, social and regional crises will continue, while the brutal and corrupt forces that damaged the country in the past secure their fiefdoms and their status, confident in their immunity from prosecution and democratic control.

Indonesian Instability Fuels Pirate Menace

Mention the word “pirates” to most people, and what comes to their minds is a villainous-looking crew of seamen armed with pistols and cutlasses who sail the oceans under a skull and crossbones flag in search of plunder. While those pirates were swept from the seas long ago by the navies of the great trading powers, in recent years piracy has undergone something of a revival in certain parts of the world. The International Maritime Board (IMB) recorded 469 pirate attacks worldwide in 2000, up 56 percent from 1999, and first-quarter figures for 2001 suggested that this year will see a further exacerbation of the problem.

The worst-affected region is Southeast Asia. The waters around Indonesia accounted for over 40 percent of attacks recorded last year (the IMB estimates that half of all attacks go unreported). Within this area, the problem was at its worst in the Straits of Malacca.

Poor people whose incomes had fallen or vanished began to find piracy tempting.

The straits are one of the world’s most important sea lanes, with 300 ships passing through them every day. They separate the Indonesian island of Sumatra from Western Malaysia. At their extreme southern end lies Singapore. They are 805 kilometers long and 50 kilometers wide at their narrowest point. Large ocean-going vessels need to keep to their central channel, as there are islands, mudbanks and shallows for considerable distances out to sea from the opposing shores. The ships’ confinement within a fairly restricted stretch of water makes it simpler for pirates to carry out their attacks, and they are able to make use of the area’s numerous islands in preparing to attack and in making their getaway. Nevertheless, such favorable factors do not, in themselves, explain why piracy is now so prevalent in this area.

As recently as 1997, there were no pirate attacks in the Malacca Straits, and very few elsewhere off Indonesia. Only one attack was reported in the straits in 1998. The upsurge in piracy in the region can be directly ascribed to the unresolved crisis in Indonesia, which began with the turmoil surrounding the collapse of the Suharto regime.

Indonesia’s armed forces—under criticism for their role in creating and sustaining the old order, and resentful of the “loss” of East Timor, which they had shed much blood (including some of their own) to retain—suffered a decline in morale and operational efficiency, and became less motivated to act to counter internal disorders or piracy. The police force, underfunded, ill-paid and riddled with corruption, was likewise unprepared to act against pirates.

As central government control over Indonesia’s provinces weakened, policies agreed to by national leaders often went unimplemented at the local level—including, frequently, measures against destruction of the forests and against piracy. Most important of all was the “push factor”: poor people whose incomes had fallen or vanished (a staggering 40 million Indonesians are unemployed) since the regional economic crisis broke out in 1997 began to find piracy tempting.

Reports of individual attacks are suggestive of exactly who is responsible for most acts of piracy and why. The majority are carried out from small fishing boats. The pirates can take on a freighter by cooperating with each other. Two boats will stretch a rope between them and place themselves in the freighter’s path. When the ship strikes the rope, its forward motion swings the boats against its sides and the pirates then use grappling irons to climb on board. Normally, they tie up crew members and do not injure them. They ransack the ship of whatever goods they can easily use or sell: money, watches, radio equipment and even mooring ropes.

At first, the pirates kept the proceeds of these raids for themselves. The IMB report for 2000, however, indicated that they soon saw an advantage in sharing some of their gains with other villagers in their home areas. This has given the latter a strong motivation to protect them from any police action.

There is an historic background to local piracy. Before Europeans first came to the region, Arab and Chinese vessels sometimes encountered pirates in this area, and Portugese, Dutch and British merchant ships came under attack in their turn once they began to trade there. The British East India Company thought that many local villagers on the coast moved easily from fishing to piracy, depending upon which was more advantageous at a particular time. Singapore was believed to have been one base for pirate activities. Munshi Abdullah, a Muslim historian from Malaya who worked with the British after they took possession of the island, mentions a beach at the mouth of the Singapore River on which were strewn hundreds of human skulls, which local people said were those of victims of pirates.

Today’s pirates are usually less brutal, but there are exceptions. In May, Talima Manau, the captain of an Indonesian trawler, was slashed, shot and dumped into his ship’s freezer to die when he resisted pirates who boarded his ship.

Crews have most to worry about if they fall victim to pirates whose aim is not to steal valuables from their ship, but to hijack the vessel itself. These men have links with larger international criminal networks which help them to dispose of the cargos and ships they seize. The cargo normally ends up being sold as though it was the result of legitimate trading. The ship is repainted and given a new name. Sometimes it is sold, but it can also end up as a “phantom ship,” with an identity created on paper, used to move stolen goods around the region. The chief center for this “laundering” process is southern China, where criminals work hand in glove with corrupt local officials, but poor Indonesians sometimes are recruited to serve as crews.

The hapless crews of hijacked ships may be forced to take the pirates part of the way to their ultimate destination. Sooner or later, however, the crew members are dumped, often in a small boat or on an island. Occasionally their fate is worse and they are murdered, in an effort by the hijackers to cover their tracks completely. In June, Thai police arrested Viroj Buasuwan, who had earned the nickname “Roj 100 Corpses.” He was known to force the crews of ships he seized to jump overboard into the sea, where they usually drowned. The worst recent incident involving the murder of a crew was that of the hijacking of the Cheung Son. In 1998, pirates operating from China seized the vessel. Their captain then made each of his followers shoot dead members of the Cheung Son’s crew, as he thought that their shared guilt in the murders would discourage them from ever informing the police of what had happened. The stratagem failed and he, along with 12 accomplices, ended up paying for their brutality before a Chinese firing squad.

The losses of lives, cargoes and ships, and the damage done to trade by pirate attacks, have aroused growing disquiet both inside and outside the region. In June in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the IMB sponsored an international closed-door meeting on the problem of piracy. This was the latest in a series of meetings and initiatives aimed at dealing with the issue. So far, they have produced few concrete results.

In the Malacca Straits and their environs, all pirate attacks are carried out by Indonesians. Malaysian and Singaporean police feel that they are doing a good job of policing their own coastlines, but they complain about the lack of effort from the Indonesian authorities. In March, Arthur Browning, director of the Hong Kong Shipowners Association, went so far as to call for sanctions to be imposed upon Indonesia to force it to cooperate fully with its neighbors and with Japan in taking action to bring a swift halt to pirate attacks off its shores.

For their part, Indonesian officials protest that their law enforcement agencies lack the money and resources to go after the pirates. But the chief problems are the lack of real determination to tackle the problem and the failure of successive Indonesian governments to deal with the economic conditions that gave rise to it. Until those who are responsible for carrying out most of the pirate attacks have the ability to earn a living by legitimate means, the problem is unlikely to be solved.

Top Level Meeting for Palestinians in China

“The Palestinian issue is the core of the Middle East issue, and only after the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people have been restored can the Middle East issue be resolved,” Chinese President Jiang Zemin said to a visiting Palestinian delegation on July 6. Jiang said that all these matters needed to be tackled through “earnest and practical negotiations” between all the parties concerned, with help and support from the international community.

The Palestinian delegation was led by Salem Zanoun, chairman of the Palestine National Council. The day before it met with Jiang, the group held talks with Li Peng, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, which had extended an invitation to the PNC to send a delegation to China. After expressing appreciation for past Chinese support, Zanoun, according to the official Chinese news agency report, “noted that the Middle East issue has been under pressure of power politics, and the Palestinians expect the international community to show more support to their just struggle to restore their legitimate national rights, and China to continue to play an important role in this respect.” “Power politics” can be read as a coded reference to Washington’s use of U.S. power and influence in support of Israel.

Jiang’s remarks the following day were a reaffirmation of China’s established position on the Palestine question, but lend added weight to Palestinian efforts to secure increased international involvement in the search for peace in the Middle East. Since the Oslo agreement, China has not wanted to be seen as rocking the boat while U.S.-brokered negotiations for a peace settlement were in progress—especially as both the Palestinian and Israeli leaderships officially welcomed the U.S. role. Beijing remained skeptical, however, about the extent to which the U.S. would be able to help promote a peace built on firm foundations when it had for decades maintained a consistent stance of strong and largely uncritical support for Israel. China undoubtedly would back any Palestinian call for a stepped-up role for the international community as a whole, through the United Nations, in efforts to achieve a peace settlement in the Middle East.

John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: Israel and the Palestinians, available from the AET Book Club.