No more than six hours after his release from the Indonesian prison in Jakarta on September 7, 1999, the leader of the National Resistance Council for an Independent East Timor (CNRT), Xanana Gusmao, made a statement at British Embassy in Jakarta, saying that the Emergency Call in East Timor was an obvious indicator that Indonesian government was in no position to guarantee security in East Timor. Therefore, he concluded, international support in whatever form was badly needed by the East Timorese who were suffering from unbridled violence which no body apparently felt responsible for.

The statement contains a short conclusion of a long and continuous observation of what has been occurring in Indonesian politics ever since the former President Soeharto stepped down from his presidential office on May 21, 1998. Right before and after the political transition from Soeharto's regime to that of Habibie, one political fact was unmistakebly obvious. That is that inter-communal conflicts have emerged in many parts of the country, and have escalated into increasing violence and killing which the Indonesian government turned out unable (or unwilling?) to overcome. From Aceh to Ambon, from Jakarta to Kupang, and from Banyuwangi to Sambas, the communities stand up to assert their existence and their rights, which in the recent past were ignored at best and violated at worst. For the time being Aceh, Ambon, and East Timor become, as it were, the hot spots where the the civilian life is being put into fire and tends to be destroyed, by both the the increasing distrust among communities as well as the inability of the Indonesian security apparatus to handle the situation.

The inability of Indonesian Army to restore the security is easy to understand in this context. As a result of the 1998 Political Reform, there is a rising demand from the people in Indonesia to put an end to the Double Function of Indonesian Army, meaning that there should be a total retreat of the military from Indonesian politics and state bureaucracy. To certain extent the demand has resulted in the reduction of the number of military members of the National Parliament, from 100 members to the remaining 75 members for the time being, this number, however, being still to be reduced to only 38 in the next Parliament. However, the cautious appearance of the military in the face of the increasing violence looks like a gamble with a double stake. On the one hand this is a political gesture to demonstrate the sensitivity of the army towards to the public demand. On the other hand, by keeping aloof from the burning house the military wants to show that people do need a fire brigade. This reasoning makes sense if it is given that the fire originates in some accident and is therefore entirely unintended and unexpected. In contrast to that, the situation becomes complicated if it turns out that the fire is set intentionally by some unknown people, who are not identified, whose interest, however, is very clear.

The declaration and the implementation of a state of military emergency in East Timor was made, ironically, on the day Xanana Gusmao was released. According to the official statement of General Wiranto, the emergency call was made necessary by the fact that the civil war was still going on and there was no prospect for quick solution of that conflict. It could only be handled by means of a state of military emergency. The big question is: how can the people believe in this policy considering the fact that the military for quite a long time was fairly unable to settle the conflict? Why are the Indonesian military so ignorant of the hard fact that the militias are well equipped with very modern weapons? If the Indonesian army was unable to stop the people from burning houses and buildings or shooting their fellow countrymen and -women before the emergency call, how can they manage to do it in a state of military emergency?

In Jakarta, some NGO activists are thinking to take the initiative to prevent the spillover of this policy. The concern they have in mind is: how to localize emergency call in East Timor in such a way that it will not become a precedent for the implementation of the same policy in other parts of the country where violence still becomes the order of the day. Strange as it may be, the logic behind is easy to understand though impossible to justify: if the military is not able to settle the conflict, a state of military emergency should be put into force in order to give the military all possibilities to eliminate whatever they think unnecessary, and to commit whatever they think worth doing.

Here we all are faced with a big concern: what are the criteria to judge upon the necessity of an emergency action? Is there still a possibility to make it accountable? Of course the final goal of the enforcement of the state of military emergency is to restore peace and order. However, all sorts of human right violation which were committed during the New Order have been done in the name of peace and order, or to use Soeharto's parlance, in the name of political stability.

Besides that, the privileges of the military in a state of military emergency are beyond the limits of civil law, whereby power is vested in the local military command and the local commander in chief can take all measures he finds necessary in carrying out his job. The local military is accordingly entitled with many extraordinary rights in various sectors.

• In defense and security the local military can close down buildings, meeting halls, places of entertainment, garages, shops and factories; they can also regulate or restrict the use of open fields, ban the possession of firearms and explosives, regulate geographical mobility of people by barring them from remaining in a region, expelling them, or ordering them to stay; they can arrest and detain people for 20 days, extendible to 50 days, though they are obliged to investigate them within 10 days after issuing warrants for the arrest.
• In public utilities, the local military can order the militarization of facilities.
• In communication they can confiscate and censor all mail and cables, take over the post office, telecommunications and radio broadcasting facilities, regulate, restrict or halt the operation of land-, sea-, and air transportation facilities.
• In cultural sector the military privileges relate to restricting performances, printing, publication, announcement, as well as the dissemination, storage, circulation, trading and display of writing in any form, paintings, slides and pictures.
• In economic sector the local military is entitled to regulate, restrict or stop the flow of goods into the territory and outflow from the territory, as well as the distribution of goods within the territory. During the state of military emergency the governor and the police become subordinates of the military chief.

Needless to say, the declaration and the implementation of the state of military emergency reminds the people in Indonesia of the long enduring emergency politics of the New Order. In hindsight we can safely say that as a political regime the New Order was born out of political emergency in 1965. Indonesian economy was in a big crisis due to the lack of basic needs. It was hit by a fantastic inflation rate amounting to 650% and was shaken by political instability resulting from the mysterious of killing of the six generals of Indonesian Army. At the same time the dualism of political leadership of Soekarno and Soeharto made the people increasingly disoriented. The political situation was still aggravated by the rising demand of the people to the government to ban the Communist Party, and by the students demonstrations which uncompromisingly demanded the cabinet to lower the prices or the ministers be dismissed.

As a result Soeharto was provided with many privileges both by Soekarno and the Indonesian people in order that he could take any necessary action to restore peace and political stability and to push for the improvement of the desperate economic situation. To enable him to do so, the students and the military, as well the Indonesian people at large should tolerate and accept many limitations of their political rights. Being aware of feeling of emergency among the people Soeharto smartly played the issue of political stability for any purpose. Of course he was clever enough to play with timing. This means, as long as he was still in need for the support of the students and the press, they were provided with freedom of expression.

Therefore the freedom of the press up until January 1974 was not the product of liberalization brought about by the New Order, but rather a phenomenon of the still unstable condition of Soeharto's government. The relationship between Soeharto and the Indonesian students started to be uneasy after the students waged a demonstration to protest the plan of Mrs. Tien Soeharto in early 70-s to build a cultural center called Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (TMII). The students did not reject the plan as such, but argued that the timing was not appropriate. In comparison to the economic problems and the lack of basic needs, the building of a costly cultural center at that time would look like superfluous luxury.

The TMII project was the time when students said farewell to Soeharto and went their own way. The Malary affair in January 1974 became the moment of definite split between Soeharto and the students, as well between Soeharto and the Indonesian press. Metaphorically speaking this was the period of time when Soeharto said good bye to the students as well to the press who initially became his comrades in arms. The difficult relationship between Soeharto and the students became even worse owing to the wide demonstrations in 1978 spearheaded by the Bandung students. As a result seven press publications were banned temporarily. Ever since then the Indonesian press was under tight control of the government both by requiring from the press certain concessions and by means of direct interventions through telephone call or letters of warning.

As for the people at large, the limitation of their political rights became definite after the passing of the five laws on politics in 1985. The five laws gave shape to the political parties, the People's Consultative Body (MPR) and Parliament, the social organizations, general election and referendum. As for political parties there was no party allowed to assume the role of political opposition. MPR and Parliament was put under the control of the executive by means of recalling the members of Parliament who was not in line with government's policy, by giving 100 seats to the military in the Parliament as well as by introducing the floating mass policy. At the same time social organizations were not to take political actions and were made dependent on government's whim and favor.

The point is: some elements of emergency were intentionally maintained by the government in order to justify policies which were difficult to justify by legal or political consideration, as well as to excuse many violations of the basic rights of people, comprising political, economic and social rights. The emergency theory aimed to convince the people of critical nature of critical nature of political condition due to the following factors:

• The possible come back of leftist forces in the form of communist party
• The ever unstable civilian politics which resulted in the inability of political parties to compromise
• The need for a concerted effort to push for economic growth which was a basic precondition for national development
• The complicated nature of modern development which did not allow for every intervention of the people in politics which should better be left to those with corresponding expertise

Those considerations led to the claim and justification of extra-power for the government, and made the executive entitled to do the following:

• The implementation of security approach in dealing with political conflicts to anticipate any possible revolt of the supposedly latent communist forces
• The involvement of the military in politics and bureaucracy through the double function of the military
• The limitation of people's political participation as well the control of their political rights to circumscribe unnecessary political interventions
• The prohibition of social conflicts through the SARA doctrine whereby any kind of interethnic and inter-religious conflicts were repressed and denied permission to be discussed publicly and solved politically
• The introduction of the so-called campus normalization program whereby no student organization was allowed to be directly engaged politically. Student political activities could be done on their own personal behalf.

The emergency theory of the New Order turned out to succeed in extending the political emergency and in making the government of Soeharto not only required and needed, but even quasi indispensable for a very long time. In a sense, Indonesia underwent a state of political emergency during no less than 32 years.

In other words, the social construction of emergency was successfully worked out by Soeharto and his regime so much so that only a few people in those days were still aware that it was nothing but a sheer construction.

• In cultural sector, the emergency was made more intense through the ban of books which were supposed to contain Marxist or Leninist ideas, without any substantial argumentation about the content.
• In social sector the people were driven to the sense of emergency by the doctrine of SARA whereby every public discussion or broadcasting program about interethnic or inter-religious conflict was officially forbidden.
• In economic sector, the success of economic development was rendered critically important so that people who felt deprived of their land, houses, or other properties, should give what was required by the state without being able to demand a fair and proper compensation. On the other hand, the belief that economic growth would solve everything brought the government to the implementation of monopoly capitalism in which no fair competition was allowed.

In that context one can easily understand that a state and a government born out of emergency could only endure as long as it could extend the state of emergency, in which security approach became the most important method to solve political conflict. In order to implement the security approach reasonably the conflict of political opinions and political interest should be transposed into political crimes. Cultural differences were treated as dangerous things heavily laden with conflict potential, while political conflict was treated as a threat for the security of the state and should therefore be solved with military actions. In so doing, security approach and state violence can be justified, whereas the rule of law which treated the ruler and the rule as equal before the law was commuted into a rule by law. The law became an instrument of the power holders to legally justify political measures taken by the state while the people were deprived of any opportunity to use the same law to defend their existence and their rights.

Learning from the past the Indonesian people should never forget that in the implementation of the state of military or other kinds of emergency, the power holders were more inclined to extend than to terminate it. The inevitability of emergency, if at all, was usually short, but its implementation tended to be very long because the power holders could capitalize on it. What we can do now is to create a condition in which the accountability of the state of emergency becomes necessary, urgent and inevitable for the president who is the only person responsible for the implementation or termination of the state of emergency.

2. Communal Sentiments and Horizontal Conflicts

After Habibie took over the power from Soeharto, the old truth that has been covered up by Soeharto was very soon disclosed: many communities were full of conflict potential. The demise of the New Order became the beginning of the end of state violence. Repression was decreasing. However, the diminishing of the state repression gave way to the awakening of communal awareness and sentiments.

It is worth mentioning that the promotion of political peace in the form of political stability during the New Order was done at the expense of both freedom and social justice. People were not in the position to maintain their private ownership in the face of the demand of the state. They were also deprived of their basic freedom to bring up their ideas and objections as to why they had to sacrifice so many things so dear to them.

Therefore three things do deserve priority in Indonesia today. Those are peace, freedom and justice. People in Aceh are still demanding justice for their parents, children or relatives which haven been murdered without any reasonable explanation of the government as to why they should die, whereas those who have committed the killing were not brought to court for a fair and free trial. Only some weeks ago the offer of President Habibie in the form of a huge sum of money for rehabilitation purposes, was strongly rejected by the people in Aceh. They keep demanding the Jakarta government to meet their requirements even if this can only be done at the expense of peace in their own region.

The case of Sambas had more to do with the problem of freedom. The Dayaks used to feel increasingly marginalized not only in terms of their livelihood but also in terms of their cultural freedom. Not only are they deprived of their land and forest, but they have to lose many places to conduct their religious rituals and to meet their spiritual needs. The case of Ambon is more complicated.

There are only very few studies about the background of the present violence. However, what has happened so far can demonstrate how people who struggle to regain their freedom may run the risk of losing peace for themselves and committing injustice to other people. Over the weeks the word "provokator" (provocateur) has become an important word in Indonesian politics, which refers to the conspiracy theory. The use of this theory gives some benefits. First, it needs no empirical verification, because until now there are no provocateurs arrested despite government's confidence in their existence and involvement. Second, this theory orients people to the causes from outside the communities, making them ignorant or forgetful of the conflict potential within their own communities. However, one cannot gloss over the possibility that there might be some people from outside the communities who have come there with the single purpose to bring the local people to disorientation, confusion and violence.

In the case of Ambon, the three situations (disorientation, confusion and violence) have overwhelmed the people so much so that there are hardly clear patterns of hostility and murder. Everybody stands up against anybody, and no body knows the reason why. The local people of Ambon have come to a desperate conclusion that it is no more possible to stop murder and violence. People do not think anymore to ask other people to stop killing, since this would be in vain. The only request and hope they still have is to ask their fellow-Ambonese not to kill in a too terrible way.

The case of East Timor, no doubt, is the most obvious evidence that no people are willing to exchange their freedom just for economic benefits. Rather they are well prepared to lose everything they have in order to regain and to retain their own freedom. For more than two decades the Indonesian government sticks to the belief that as long as you can provide the people with enough food, housing, streets and education, they will be loyal to you and will not bother themselves too much about their political rights. East Timor is an evidence that preferential option for independence is still stronger than that for wide-ranging autonomy. The armed conflict between the pro-independence East Timorese who have won the referendum and pro-autonomy East Timorese who are not willing to accept the result tends to become unbridled, this leading to the killing of many people only in a few days.

In Indonesian context the awakening of local communities in many parts of the country is very ambivalent in its political impact. I, for one, was initially very concerned about the strengthening of communal sentiments, because I thought this might become an impediment for the development of civil society. My argument was that it is too much for the civil society in Indonesia to struggle in a double front against both the state which was increasingly disoriented and the communities which were decreasingly tolerant. After looking at what has happened in Ambon, Aceh and Timtim I think, we better have to sympathize with those communities who are struggling to regain their identity and self-esteem. For a very long time the communal life within communities became a non-identity for the New Order government. As far as the state power was concerned, those communities were to serve as a mere hiding place of the government in the face of political criticism. A generalizing official answer to political criticism was that had the social critics been more knowledgeable about the noble legacy of Indonesian cultures they would not have been so easily enchanted by unnecessary critical ideas, liberal or otherwise.

In so doing the New Order intentionally or unwittingly attained two aims, while domesticating two adversaries . On the one hand it could control the movement of civil society by means of blaming it while on the other hand it did repress the communal life of communities by means of glorifying it. The divide-and-rule strategy was applied in a much more sophisticated manner than did Dutch administration during the colonial time.

Now I should improve my argument: we should be more careful in looking at what the awakening of communal life is trying to drive at. Unfortunately in the attempt to regain their identity and self-esteem the people in the communities have to go through many kinds of trial and error, some of which amount even to the loss of life of their fellow human beings. However, it is not the communities which are to be blamed in the first place. It is rather the state which should be responsible for many tragedies within communities for the simple reason that the state has made the political learning process impossible for them, by keeping them far away from political engagement, let alone, from political participation.

In that connection we need to figure out a new relationship between communities and civil society in order that such a relationship can lead to the strengthening of both in the face of overpowering domination as well as overvalued hegemony of the state.

According to my understanding one cannot do away with communities simply because identity is produced within communities. The weakening of communities will jeopardize the cultural process in which a group of people are integrated into a set of cultural values and a cultural system of meaning. In contrast to that civil society is not based on cultural values but on civil law. This is important because in modern life the so-called public sphere is a conditio sine qua non. Public sectors such as trade, transportation, telecommunication, banking, sports --- just to name some examples --- cannot be regulated according to the respective cultural value system of each cultural group. What is now occurring in Ambon is obviously the fall back of civil society to communal life whereby there is no street as such but there is Moslem street and Christian street or there is Moslem market place and Christian market place. If public sphere is lacking the state loses a solid ground to stand on, because there is no common language, common reference and no common interest any more.

On the other hand, it is very difficult for civil society to grow and to develop if it is not nourished by the values originating in communities. One of the main problems of Indonesian politics has a lot to do with the role of communities. During the Old Order Indonesia had to grapple with identity politics, whereby the political constituency was not based on common interest and common political platform, but was based on common cultural values.

The weakness of this politics has been known. It gives a cultural satisfaction to those involved in such a politics, whose cultural rights are acknowledged and even promoted at the cost of the capacity for political compromise. The result of identity has also been widely known: its tendency towards divisiveness is much greater than its capacity to produce political integration. A stable government was always in danger because the loyalty to a cultural group is stronger than the capability of each cultural group to dissociate itself from the bondage of its cultural values in order that it is free enough to enter into a new political integration.

What is happening now is more serious than identity politics during the regime of Soekarno. Identity politics has something to do with the relationship between cultural groups and political parties, but communal politics has all to do with the relationship between cultural communities and the state. If the failure of identity politics has resulted in the collapse of party politics, the failure of communal politics will result in the collapse of the nation-state itself.

At this juncture civil society is faced with a limited choice. First, it can try to safeguard the existence of the nation-state both by controlling the state power as well as by transposing the cultural values into common civic values. This can be done by bringing the substance of certain values into the public sphere after taking off their cultural particularities both in terms of labels and references. I would argue that the high esteem for life and non-violence within Buddhist communities can exemplify the non-violence principle for any democratic politics if the specific labels of Buddhism and its references have been taken off. This must not be detrimental to the Buddhist communities, since they can carry on cultivating those values according their communal references. Needless to say, in order to be able to do so the people in civil society must be very clear about whether or not nation-state as such is still the only way of getting together socio-politically.

Second, if ethnic nationalism and communitarian option seem to be a better choice for the next millenium, the civil society has to give way to the communal awakening at the cost of nation-state. A big question will be haunting us until many things can become more clear: will the loss of nation-state bring us back to the absence of common language, common goal and common interest? And will the absence of common interest bring us back to the bellum omnium contra omnes, where every body stands agains everybody else, whose symptoms are easy to recognize in the current politics of Indonesia.

In that sense the violence in Aceh, Ambon and East Timor is not simply a matter of political failure but it rather signifies what the next millenium will bring for all of us.

Jakarta, in September 1999