Eulogize an Indonesian democrat

...The young Soedjatmoko argued against this view, saying that it was a betrayal of the Asian revolution, but the nationalist leaders were not persuaded...

...Soedjatmoko himself was not among those jailed in January 1974, but a short time later he was refused a passport to go to the United States in response to an invitation to testify (along with Roy Medvedev and others) at congressional hearings on human rights...

...It is much more difficult to feel attracted to the insecurity of freedom than to the historical inevitability of a perfect world order from which comfort and strength can be drawn...

...Soedjatmoko's experiences have been instructive...

...Soedjatmoko himself, who had been ambassador to the United States in the early years of the Suharto government (1968-71), was subjected to humiliating interrogations in mid-1974 by agencies of the government...

...As Indonesia's leading intellectual, his involvement in international matters began very early, and his later influence extended far beyond the boundaries of his own country...

...Also banned at that time were several other newspapers, including the daily Harian Kami, published by a student group that had been important in the overthrow of President Sukarno...

...His Socialist party had been banned under Sukarno in 1961 and remained illegal under the "New Order" government...

...Things got worse for the Socialist party after 1958, when President Sukarno, backed by the communists and the army, put an end to Indonesia's constitutional democracy and introduced what he called "Guided Democracy...

...Because Sukarno liked him personally, Koko could still enjoy some degree of freedom, at least in the early days of "Guided Democracy...

...Soedjatmoko summarized some of his convictions: The jump from the a-historical Weltanschauung of traditional agrarian society, with its chiliastic yearnings for the perfect society, to the closed and self-contained system of thought and the vision of the perfect state of Marxism is apparently a smaller one than the jump to the concept of an open future and the acceptance of the Imperfect State as part of the human condition...

...The letter was never answered...

...In 1961 Koko discussed its merits from an Indonesian perspective...

...His dissident stance, based on democratic socialism and an emphasis on free expression, was ultimately disliked by both of these regimes, perhaps indicating a degree of continuity between them that is not generally recognized...

...Koko saw this great challenge in complex global terms and, especially in his later years when he was no longer being heard by people in power at home, he turned increasingly to a global audience...

...This trend was briefly—and unsuccessfully— challenged in 1963 by a group of Indonesian writers, many of whom were Koko's friends...

...In the last conversations we had with Koko, we shared our excitement about the opening up of many closed societies...

...For some readers of Siasat, this review was a milestone in their intellectual development...

...He was, at different times, a nationalist revolutionary, a journalist, a publisher, a scholar, a diplomat, an educator—a man who knew a lot and did a lot about many different things...

...These writers signed a manifesto, called "Manifesto on Culture," stating their opposition to communist attempts to enforce the doctrine of "socialist realism" in Indonesian literature...

...In retrospect, Soedjatmoko believed the Indonesian leaders made the correct decision, but at the time he was deeply disappointed...

...Pedoman [Compass], the daily newspaper that Soedjatmoko founded in the 1950s, was banned by Sukarno in 1961 and revived under Suharto but then banned permanently in 1974...

...Questions of freedom are no clearer in Indonesia today...

...Did the refusal of the Indonesian leadership mean that Ho Chi Minh's declaration was never sent elsewhere...

...Moreover, the communists played an important role in the Indochinese independence movement, which was not the case among Indonesian nationalists, and they felt that this was likely to create serious problems later on...

...The PSI was "too westernized," they would say, because it did not succumb to the nationalistic ideologies and revolutionary rhetoric of the time...

...The novel, Koko wrote, "reminds us that besides life-in-history, besides life-in-politics, there is another way of life, based on the search for truth, filled and covered by a love for life itself...

...Did it reach Indian leaders...

...In an accompanying document, Ho proposed the text of a "Common Declaration by Viet Nam and Indonesia" that began as follows: "We the peoples of Indonesia and Viet Nam proclaim to the world our complete solidarity in our common struggle for our common cause: liberation and independence from foreign domination...

...And in a world where "socialism" is often used as a dirty word, Soedjatmoko was not afraid to act as a democratic socialist, even though his party (the Indonesian Socialist party, PSI) had been banned since 1961, under two regimes with very different political views...

...The declaration argued that "the actions of Great Britain on the battlefronts of Indochina and Indonesia and...

...But what makes it especially important is that it was published as an explicit statement of dissent during a time of pervasive politicization of Indonesian cultural life...

...But these articles also carry current significance for the government of President Suharto, in power since the mid-1960s, even if everything is said in the carefully modulated Indonesian style...

...The implications of this correspondence reach well beyond Indonesia...

...He stressed the need to preserve the spiritual assets of the people even in a revolutionary time when everything was to be sacrificed for a new society...

...Historians may have the answer to that question: if not, they might want to explore the issue further...

...His 1967 Dyason Memorial Lectures in Australia (the Australian Outlook, December 1967) are probably the best short exposition of Indonesian history up to that time...

...Siasat, the magazine that he co-edited, continued to reach a small segment of the Indonesian public...

...Sukarno appointed himself the "Great Leader," hunting down "counterrevolutionaries" and curtailing channels of dissent...

...Koko's continuous engagement with free ideas had been an inspiration to many writers who often found their expression trampled by either left-wing revolutionaries or right-wing military censorship...

...He had laid the groundwork for this work during a period of scholarly research in the 1960s, most notably in his edited volume, An Introduction to Indonesian Historiography (Cornell, 1965) and his essays on An Approach to Indonesian History: Towards an Open Future and Cultural Motivations to Progress: The "Exterior" and "Interior" Views...

...For much of Indonesia's independent history, forces on the left and on the right have sharply limited and sometimes crushed freedom of expression...

...His death caused an outpouring of highly political personal stories about the man and his ideas in the Indonesian press, indicating the country's nostalgia for a time when freedom of expression was legitimate and ideas were a matter of great importance...

...Here are a few vignettes, drawn from our personal observations, that make this dilemma clear...

...If so, what was their reaction...

...The PSI was also anathema to Indonesian politicians and military officers who were wary of intellectuals...

...At a time when many people in the West believe that being a Muslim means being an extremist, Soedjatmoko had combined his deep religious beliefs in Islam with his convictions about democracy and human rights to achieve what he called a "dual cultural consciousness...

...According to Soedjatmoko's memory, the Indonesian nationalist leaders felt that such a move would weaken their chances to attain independence quickly...

...Small wonder that the citation for his 1978 Magsaysay Award—Asia's equivalent of the Nobel Prize—praised him for not letting "concern for himself" inhibit "forthright expression" in order "to meet one of the greatest challenges of our time, how to make life more decent and satisfying for the poorest forty percent...

...Soedjatmoko was a uniquely Asian counterpart of those dissident European intellectuals who are the voices of reason—of the Enlightenment—in a world that too seldom has listened to such voices...

...This statement was very close to the credo by which our friend Koko lived...

...Many found themselves unable to write for publication after signing the manifesto...

...The PSI and other parties were denounced as illegal, their leaders jailed, their papers banned...

...In 1945, the young Soedjatmoko was witness to an extraordinary but little-known debate in the Indonesian nationalist leadership...

...Because the book was banned in the Soviet Union, the then powerful Indonesian Communist party (PKI) viciously attacked its publication in Indonesia...

...The "New Order" government of President Suharto, established after massive rioting and killings in the mid-1960s and the fall of President Sukarno, was often no more receptive to independent views than its predecessor government...

...Nonetheless, the manifesto was quickly banned and the signatories accused of being agents of the PSI...

...The late Harold Isaacs (then a Newsweek correspondent covering the nationalist revolutions in Asia) had brought a letter from Ho Chi Minh to the nationalist leadership in Indonesia...

...In the letter dated Hanoi, November 17, 1945, Ho asked the Indonesians to join forces to rid the area of the colonial powers and carry out an Asian revolution...

...The PSI, to which Koko belonged, failed to gain mass support after the 1955 election, becoming a minority party led by intellectuals who were not up to the demanding job...

...To be a democratic socialist was not a comfortable position in Indonesia, especially after the late 1950s...

...In January 1974, following student demonstrations against a visiting Japanese prime minister that had "gotten out of hand," possibly because of people who had infiltrated the demonstrations— the "Malari" events—some former members of the PSI were falsely accused of having helped prepare the student demonstrations...

...They felt that the Indonesian revolution was based on nationalism and would soon overcome the Dutch, who were a weak colonial power, while the French, very strong, would hang on to Indochina for a long time...

...q WINTER • 1991 • 35...

...Most important to him was the sense that the ideas of democratic socialism were being rediscovered and might have a new chance...

...some lost their jobs...

...the silence of all the other Great Powers in the face of the efforts of France and Holland to re-establish their empires by force [show] that we must depend on ourselves and ourselves alone to win our freedom...

...The publishing house Pembangunan, where he was one of the executives, even succeeded in printing a translation of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago...

...We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of all our actions, if they are to be moral, is responsibility— responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my company, my success...

...For the first time in the Indonesian Republic, intellectuals had come face to 34 • DISSENT Reports from Abroad face with a powerful mode of state control— something that continues today...

...Koko himself was not asked to sign the cultural manifesto, even though he was in complete sympathy, because the writers felt that open endorsement by a member of the PSI would doom their effort...

...Soedjatmoko (1922-89)—"Koko" to all who knew him—had been rector of the United Nations University and Indonesian ambassador to the United States...

...He became part of a worldwide network of people who developed research and policy agendas on many international issues, ranging from economic and political relations among nations (the Brandt Commission, the Palme Commission, Williamsburg) to the ecological future of the planet (United Nations University), to Third World poverty (WIDER, the World Institute for Development Economic Research), and to the development of Islamic architecture (Aga Khan Foundation), but freedom of expression and higher education were always at the top of the list...

...Many of the stories about Koko in the Indonesian WINTER • 1991 • 33 Reports from Abroad press also carried a message as exemplified in his life: the dilemma of the rational democratic socialist who wants radical change without violence but is also faced by the need to sustain popular commitment to his cause...

...Soedjatmoko faced this dilemma, perhaps for the first time, as a student activist in the Indonesian nationalist revolution of the 1940s...

...Many younger people, who had never been PSI members, were given jail terms...

...Soedjatmoko would have agreed with Vaclav Havel when he stated on February 21, 1990: "We still don't know how to put morality ahead of politics, science, and economy...