David T. Hill AM

The violent lurch in 1965-66 from Sukarno’s Guided Democracy and to Suharto’s New Order was a dramatic and unparalleled turning point in Indonesia’s domestic politics and international relations. Coming at the height of the Cold War, it triggered a major international realignment for Indonesia as the state froze relations with former allies like China and the Soviet bloc, to embrace the West warmly, including Australia. Among the victims of this seismic diplomatic shift were the many hundreds, if not thousands, of Indonesian leftists trapped abroad who, if they chose to return to their homeland, would face the imprisonment or death that had been suffered by their political comrades. In their search for political refuge they scattered across states in Asia and Europe, relocating as host states’ international alignments shifted in the Cold War’s thaw. Yet for decades these exiles lobbied, wrote and published a wide range of material, including about their experiences in exile and their analyses of Indonesian politics. This paper will tentatively broach a collective silence, or at least an apparent lack of academic study, about Indonesian political exiles. It is not its proposition to compare experiences of these exiles with the victims in Indonesia killed and imprisoned for years without trial. Instead, it poses the curious question of why so little attention was directed at exilic communities (and why so few academic connections were fostered) when their existence was relatively common knowledge – or at least a matter of rumour or occasional note – amongst Australian Indonesianists. Instead, Indonesian exiles and Australian academics maintained very separate perspectives, while both ‘knowing Indonesia’ from afar.

In addition to looking into the socio-political milieu of the production and interpretation of Indonesian literature, as well as the historic interaction between some Indonesian and Malay writers, this article also attempts to discuss changes in the meaning of ‘Malay’ identity and “Malayness’ and the application of certain interpretations of such an identity in both the contemporary and historic perspectives. The discussion depends largely on Joel Kahn’s anthropological analysis of ‘nationalism and cosmopolitanism in modem Malay world.’ A comparison with the meaning and application of ‘Indonesian’ identity will then be made. Some conclusions that can be drawn are, among others, that the ‘malayness? indonesianess’ of a writer is not relevant since literature as a text is not based on the ethnic category to which the writer belongs, but on its language or its milieu of production. However, it is also realized that this analysis may be too simplistic as it does not take into account the many exceptions that exist. Finally, this article does not aim to offer any solution to the indeterminacy surrounding the ‘Malay’ or ‘Indonesian’ identity in this global era, and at best, it can only bring up a set of questions for our contemplation.

This paper examines Internet practices in Indonesian political life in the period since the fall of Soeharto. In particular, it looks at the ways in which the Internet was used by political parties for campaigning and organizing, and the state, the media and the public to scrutinize Indonesia's first democratic elections since 1955. The 7 June 1999 general elections in Indonesia were not conducted online; voters did not register their ballot directly onto the Internet. It was, however, significantly the first occasion when Indonesian voters were able to witness online, through a publicly accessible official Internet site, the calculation of the poll ­statistics, from 300,000 individual polling stations, through all strata of government from district level to the final centralized national tally. It was, in that sense, an election whose credibility and transparency relied significantly upon individual ­citizens' ability to monitor the electoral process and the entire tabulation of the count. Given the relatively restricted distribution of the technology in Indonesia, the Internet was not a tool for party propaganda, but it was an effective, and particularly significant, means of scrutinizing the fledgling democratic processes of Indonesia's political transition.

Student protestors inside the occupied national Parliament compound reporting online to the world from laptop computers epitomized the extent to which forces opposing President Suharto mobilized the internet in the dying phase of his rule. So too, under Suharto’s successors, is the Internet proving a new medium for separatist and minority ethnic groups within the archipelago seeking self-determination or international recognition for their aspirations. “The most important factor in gaining independence is communication with international powers,” claimed one Acehnese separatist leader, who added, “The internet is the only way we can achieve this.” They are staking their claim on the internet, with several sites like “Achehnese tears” providing “Information on breaches of human fights in Aceh,” complete with graphic photographs of military brutality. Moluccan groups, too, both in Indonesia and abroad, have taken to the internet to argue their position on the recent conflict there. This paper examines how one particular marginalized regional Independence movement has exploited the potential of the Internet in its struggle. East Timor provides a striking example of how a protracted Independence struggle adjusted to the new strategic possibilities of the internet, how these new technological possibilities could exert international political leverage, and how they can be applied by a nation on the path to Independence.