INDONESIA IS SPREAD IN a vast archipelago across three thousand miles of the southern seas. Its population, creeping towards two hundred million, is uniquely diverse in its composition of three hundred ethnic groups speaking some two hundred and fifty languages; each inhabited island possessing a different history and culture from the next. Eisenhower first conferred imperial status upon this island agglomeration when speaking of what he called ‘the rich empire of Indonesia’. He demanded that nothing should be allowed to interfere with its unification process, for ‘a strong Indonesia would provide the essential barrier to the spread of communism in the East’. Whether they liked it or not, the components of what had been until 1949 the Dutch East Indies were to be surrendered to Javanese rule. West Papua, promised self-determination, became Irian Jaya under the Indonesian flag. As late as 1975 the United States and Australia joined forces in the manoeuvres following which East Timor, a Portuguese colony, was invaded and occupied.
Both these takeovers have encountered local resistance protracted over many years, while an unending struggle conducted by the central power against the separatists in Aceh (Sumatra) has added to the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in insurgencies. While the absorption of West Papua into the empire was accepted by the world as a fait accompli, the United Nations has protested on numerous occasions against the illegal occupation of East Timor. In February 1983 a UN Commission on Human Rights expressed ‘deep concern over continuing human rights violations in the territory of East Timor’ and in the same month Amnesty International found that extra-judicial executions and disappearances have become a central part of the Indonesian government’s repertoire. The capture of the rebel leader Xanana Gusmao led in 1993 to his trial and sentence to life imprisonment. With that the Indonesian government declared that the eighteen-year resistance was at an end. Yet almost simultaneously British Aerospace announced a deal signed secretly for the supply of twenty-four Hawk combat jets to Indonesia — aircraft described in promotional literature as well suited to ground attack. The Independent’s headline on 11 June 1993 concluded that these ‘may be used on Timor rebels’.
Little of these unhappy events is likely to impinge in any way upon the experiences of the average Western visitor to the country. Indonesia aims to present itself above all as a democracy of the kind we understand, and at five-yearly intervals the nation goes into a paroxysm of excitement over elections which infallibly return Golkar, the President’s party, to power. Innovations in the electoral process have included Golkar’s advance notice of the overall majority it expects to get, which is always correct, and its choice of the leaders of the parties — destined to a crushing defeat — which will oppose it. Sometimes enthusiasm for President Suharto’s cause is carried to extreme lengths. Thus, in the 1987 election, called by the President the country’s ‘festival of democracy’, the island of Kalimantan is reported as having scored a possible world record turnout of 508% of the registered voters. ‘Once again,’ Suharto is said to have commented, ‘the nation has applauded the success of our policies.’
Despite the cultural attractions of Java and its bustling modern cities at the heart of the empire, many Western travellers will wander away in search of the graciousness of the East Indies of old. This in its gentle decline is most likely to be found in the outer islands where sheer distance has preserved it from our times. There are few places anywhere with reserves of human warmth and generosity to equal those of these island people of slender means and little ambition, although too often labelled by the government suka terasing (isolated and backward).
In all probability Indonesia can still offer the greatest variety of primitive scenes and entertainments of any country on earth. Upon these the State casts a cold entrepreneurial eye. The real test of acceptability is whether or not these lighthearted affairs can be detached from the life of the people and converted to marketable folklore for the benefit of the nascent tourist business. Tourism is seen as a major industry of the future but there is a lack of realism about the forms it is likely to assume. A few hundred square miles of the incomparable rainforest of Sumatra used to house more rare animals than all the zoos put together, and was surely the most precious of national assets. But the trees among which the animals hide are going even faster than those of Brazil, and soon there will be no trees and no animals.
‘So what comes next?’ I asked a man who had just turned a half-million acres of a forest in Aceh into cement sacks.
‘Personally I’ve nothing to worry about,’ he said. ‘The big money’s in tourism these days. From now on it’s golf courses. This is going to be the paradise of Japanese golfers.’
But can there really be enough golfers in Japan — or even the whole world — to fill this terrible gap?