Who is a target in Indonesia

The chaos of Jakarta is epic. Driving in the city is fight for survival with cars edging into and out of lanes, touching fenders and banging steel. Buses overstuffed with people, belching blue smoke, are the biggest animals in this concrete jungle and they doggedly push their way through the mess. Black market business is done under overpasses, with makeshift markets set up, barbers cutting hair and young Bob Marley wanna-be's strumming cheap guitars. Barefoot children beg between cars; others hawk newspapers, snacks and cold drinks. Freelance traffic coordinators stand at anarchic intersections and facilitate the flow of traffic for spare change. „Car Jockeys“ line the roads, flagging down cars seeking respite from the traffic in the slightly less crowded carpool lanes. Making about 4000 Rupiah for a short dash down the highway, there is no shortage of people willing to do this work with unemployment hovering around 40%. Many women carry babies to up the number of heads in the car; some rent their child out on a day off.

Driving around Jakarta you start to wonder whether there is any government at work at all. The country is adrift with corruption eating it away from the inside and mismanaged outer provinces agitating for independence tearing at the seams of the country from the outside. President Megawati Sukarnoputri's qualifications to run the country are being the daughter of Sukarno, the founder of Indonesia-that's it. She never went to college and has professed that her sole desire in life before getting into politics was to be a „housewife“. Her reputation is for reticence and peculiar behavior such as offering visiting dignitaries sweets as they speak to her about matters like terrorism and economics. Megawati's husband, Tuafik Kiemas, is widely seen as the power behind the President, and his politicking and unsavory business connections have raised many eyebrows. Most consider Megawati's apathetic rule a slight upgrade from her predecessor, President Abdurahim Wahid, a nearly blind and incontinent cleric who would fall asleep at cabinet meetings and was widely derided for his incompetence.

During my last visit to Jakarta, President Wahid, known as Gus Dur to most, was supposed to answer his second censure from Parliament for incompetence. The city was at a boiling point as Gus Dur's fanatical supporters threatened to blow themselves up lest the President be impeached, as he would later be upon ignoring Parliament's reprobation. That seething anger wasn't quite as evident during this most recent visit; the city has changed due to several recent high profile terrorist attacks, most notably the Bali bombing and the attack on the JW Marriot last year. Security was much tighter all over Jakarta with security agents stopping every car entering major business complexes or hotels to check the trunk and under the car for bombs.

Indonesia is a country struggling to find its legs after the devastating effect of decades of dictatorship, a massive financial crisis in 1997, and it's recent governmental mismanagement and rising fundamentalism. In response to this fundamentalism, Ulil Absar Abdalla founded the Liberal Islamic Network in 2001. It has since worked to promote a liberal interpretation of Islam via its network of columnists writing in newspapers all around the archipelago, as well as promoting speakers on campuses and community centers, producing radio programs and publishing books and newsletters. I met Ulil, a young bespectacled man, in a community center in an alley off a busy thoroughfare. His organization seeks to „emphasize individual liberty to interpret Islam; to respect free thinking“. Ulil and his colleagues have faced „strong resistance from radical and conservative“ elements of the Islamic community. After Ulil wrote a column in Kompas, the leading Indonesian daily, about „the necessity of refreshing interpretations of Islam and the need to distinguish between Islam and Arab Islam“ he had a fatwa placed upon him by a fundamentalist group called Forum Ulama Umit Islam, which still stands. He carries out his work but fears for his life, noting „it is open for anyone who believes in the fatwa to carry it out“. These often dangerous growing pains of a developing nation that is the world's fourth most populous country and its largest Muslim nation were also evident in the journalistic community. I spent time with Bambang Harymurti, the Chief Editor of the Tempo Group, which publishes Koran Tempo, a leading daily, and Tempo, an influential newsweekly that is published in Indonesian and English. Widely noted for its aggressive investigative journalism, its practices have landed it in court as several businessmen have sued the group for millions of dollars for defamation of character. Among the dozens of lawsuits against the Tempo Group, a few have been dismissed and one, for one million dollars, has been won against the Tempo Group, though it is currently being appealed. One of the businessmen suing the Tempo Group, Tomy Winata, sent thugs over to the newspaper's offices after a report was published in Tempo accusing him of financing gambling dens and alluding to a shady fire at a market that Mr. Winata supposedly coveted for development. These thugs beat up Bambang and one of his best known journalists, Ahmad Taufik. Facing physical and financial pressure, Bambang's spirits were nevertheless upbeat and his has been loudly pleading his case, both in Indonesia and internationally, and is trying to enlist the help of international organizations like the Open Society Institute to help cover his legal costs and bring a spotlight and on what he calls a press freedom issue.

The Chief Editor of Sinar Harapan, one of Indonesia's oldest daily newspapers, Aristides Katoppo, expresses support for the case against the Tempo Group but raises an eyebrow at some of their practices. He points out that Tempo accused the Tomy of being of „base“ character and says many questions have been raised about the integrity of Tempo's reporting as well as its sense of responsibility in making such sensational charges with very little corroborating evidence. He sees the situation of the Tempo Group, in part, as a backlash against journalism because the media has not listened to the opinions of its readership and has done much of its reporting in a vacuum. „Of course we sympathize with Tempo“ he said but warned that „bad journalism can drive out good journalism“. I met Mr. Katoppo one of my last afternoons in Jakarta, somewhat downcast from driving hours around the city in mind-numbing traffic and pollution, amidst scenes of extreme poverty below gleaming skyscrapers. I had just seen Mr. Abdalla, a brave man working hard to promote a responsible dialogue concerning questions about Islam and who has to fear for his life because of that work. But Mr. Katoppo reminded me of how people can survive and even triumph over some of the worst circumstances. Mr. Katoppo was the Editor of Sinar Harapan in 1973 when the newspaper published a series of hard-hitting reports on corruption in the oil and logging industries. Outraged government officials hauled Mr. Katoppo in for questioning and senior security officials, who he would later learn were sympathetic to him and knew that he would most likely be killed if he stayed in the country, suggested he go into exile. When interrogators alluded to Mr. Katoppo that they knew what time his children went to school and where they crossed the street he decided it was time to leave Indonesia. After a few years spent at Berkeley and Harvard he was given some signals that he could safely return in 1975 as long as he didn't interfere with the editorial agenda of Sinar Harapan. But he did maintain some influence in the editorial process keeping the newspaper on the cutting edge of what the Soeharto government would allow. His chief contribution at this time was revolutionizing Indonesian publishing by working out a process whereby newspapers could expand from a measly four pages to eight, then sixteen and later twenty four. Advertising rose with the expanded pages and some newspapers became more confident in their editorial posture. But the government again slapped down the press in the early 80's with a ban on newspapers publishing more than twelve pages, which suddenly reduced revenue at many newspapers by 40% and produced a „chilling effect“ in the publishing world. Sinar Harapan continued to push the envelope of what was allowed and was again banned in 1986. Mr. Katoppo worked quietly but persistently as a dissident academic in Indonesia, pushing for the fall for Soeharto and speaking on campuses about „a new paradigm“. When Soeharto fell during the tumult of the Asian financial crisis Sinar Harapan breathed life again. A wily old man with silver hair and a small pot belly, Mr. Katoppo survived the tyranny of his former enemies and could now sit behind a desk and opine about questions of the responsibility of a free press and at least know that his life would not be put in danger from his efforts to tell the truth. His life story and egoless confidence assured me that Indonesia just might make it through its chaos to a „new paradigm“ that Mr. Katoppo still talks about.