David T. Hill AM

This article examines the first two Indonesians to live in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) after the Korean War (1950–53), using their experiences (including as political exiles after 1965) to explore Indonesia’s bilateral relations with this most secretive of states. Their lives reveal much of the untold story of Indonesia’s unfolding relationship with the Kims’ dynastic state from Sukarno’s initial attraction until the return to democracy after his successor’s fall. Despite recent interest in the fate of Indonesian political exiles in Western Europe, USSR and China after 1965, relatively little critical analysis has appeared regarding those exiles in republics across the former Eastern Bloc (such as Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia), or elsewhere in Asia. Similarly, there is little attention given in Indonesia’s scholarly literature to bilateral relations with North Korea. This article attempts to address these lacunae by focusing on Indonesian political exiles in North Korea, analysing the factors which determined the options available to them during, and following, the Cold War, and their place in the bilateral relationship. In the nature of biographical studies, the article relies heavily on material provided by the individuals concerned and privileges their perspectives.

Several thousand Indonesians were in China on 1 October 1965, when six senior military officers were killed in Jakarta by the Thirtieth of September Movement (G30S) in a putsch blamed upon the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). The event changed the lives of Indonesians—in China and in their homeland—irrevocably. This article examines the impact of bilateral state relations upon the fate of those Indonesian political exiles in China and assesses the role of the Beijing-based leadership of the PKI (known as the Delegation of the Central Committee) as it attempted to manage the party in exile. Oral and written accounts by individual exiles are drawn upon to illustrate the broader community experience and trauma of exile, which was particularly harsh during the Cultural Revolution. The fate of the Indonesian exiles during this tempestuous period of Chinese politics was exacerbated by the failure of the delegation and, ultimately, by the exiles’ eventual rejection by the Chinese state.

Since Joseph Nye introduced the concept of “Soft power” in his 1991 book, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, analysts have discussed states' efforts to exercise their influence by attracting and co-opting rather than coercing or using force. This paper will examine enrolments trends in Indonesian language in Australian universities, in the context of Indonesia's public diplomacy and Australian government educational policy. Enrolment data and trend analysis updates the 2012 National Report on Indonesian in Australian Universities: Strategies for a stronger future. Then, using statistics provided by a recent Newspoll commissioned by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the article explores Australian attitudes to Indonesia in the context of Indonesia's limited linguistic “soft power”. It concludes that the fluctuations in Indonesian language learning in Australia and Australian attitudes to Indonesia generally appear more influenced by Australian government policy than any conscious efforts by Indonesia to exercise “soft power”. It concludes that it is to the advantage of both countries that Indonesian language learning be better promoted and supported.

The theme for this collection of articles is drawn front a March 2009 workshop on the broader topic of ‘Southeast Asian exiles: crossing cultural, political and religious borders’. From the dozen or so papers that ranged across the countries of southeast Asia, a selection of those focused on Indonesia are gathered together here. The workshop brought together established and emerging scholars from Australia, Southeast Asia and Europe to analyse the production and articulation of cultural, political and religious networks formed by exiles from Southeast Asia The aim was threefold to explore the cultural, political and intellectual histories of exiles within and outside the Southeast Asia region; to examine how exiles engage in and maintain trans-national networks, based on cultural, political and religious affiliations within Southeast Asia and worldwide; and to explore how these networks have the potential to establish affiliations that figure as alternatives to the legal and cultural belonging to the nation state.

This article explores the circumstances which led to the formation of these communities of Indonesian political exiles, and their changing relationships with both host and hostile governments and within the diverse communities in exile, as they struggled to survive the Cold War’s thaw. It attempts, firstly, to put Indonesia’s relations with the eastern bloc generally into the geo-political context of the Cold War, then to explore Indonesia’s specific relationship with key Communist countries, before focussing finally on how the Indonesian exiles in those countries fared with the rise of the New Order in Jakarta after 1965 and within the changing dynamics of the Sino-Soviet split and the end of the Cold War.

The change in Indonesian politics in 1965–6 trapped many hundreds, if not thousands, of Indonesian leftists abroad. Moving around as international alignments shifted, these exiles lobbied, wrote and published a wide range of material. This paper tentatively broaches a collective silence about Indonesian political exiles. It poses the curious question of why so little attention was directed at exilic communities when their existence was relatively common knowledge amongst Australian Indonesianists. Instead, Indonesian exiles and Australian academics maintained very separate perspectives, while both ‘knowing Indonesia’ from afar.

Friends and colleagues responded oyerwhelmingly to the death of Daniel S Lev on 29 July 2006 with tributes and fond recollections. Dan had spent his entire academic life, since his first trip there in 1959, dedicated to the study of Indonesia, and nearly three decades teaching politics at the University of Washington. His eclecticism and intellectual breadth had been a hallmark of his long teaching career. For most who recalled his life it was his expertise in comparative politics and legal systems, his commitment to human rights, and his support for legal activists in Indonesia that were the mark of the man. His knowledge of Indonesia was encyclopaedic and his skills as a political analyst and legal expert won him universal respect. Yet for me personally, it will be as a biographer and observer of others' lives that I remember him best.

One of the most visible changes to Indonesian public culture since the fall of President Suharto and his New Order in May 1998 has been the florescence of the nation's media. This article is an initial attempt to examine these changes at the local level in the perimeter province of North Sulawesi, about 2,000 kilometres from the political epicentre of Jakarta. Prior to 1998, with only rare exceptions, studies of the Indonesian media - by both Indonesian and foreign scholars - concentrated on the national media. However, since the post-Suharto deregulation of the media and the dismantling of the repressive Department of Information, which had controlled the media centrally, the most dramatic transformation has been driven not from Jakarta but from local media enterprises. At its broadest, this current study of media in North Sulawesi questions whether the collapse of an authoritarian regime and abandonment of media controls axiomatically produce a pluralist democratic media; or whether, equally as likely, they involve the capture of the media by particular political interests, for whom media influence - if not control - is a valuable asset in influencing public opinion and electoral outcomes.