WHEN Krakatoa Island erupted in the Sunda Strait in 1873 it made the loudest bang in history. Never since, even when science triggered its most devastating nuclear weapon, has the world known the release of such power.
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WHEN Krakatoa Island erupted in the Sunda Strait in 1873 it made the loudest bang in history. Never since, even when science triggered its most devastating nuclear weapon, has the world known the release of such power.
Australians 2500 miles to the south heard the volcano as it blew a 1000-feet deep hole in the ocean floor; people on Rodriguez Island, 3000 miles away in the Indian Ocean, heard it. Shock waves raced east and west around the globe: they met, bounced off each other and returned to source. Twice more they did this before Krakatoa’s energy dispersed.
It was not the first time the green islands of the archipelago which was to become known as Indonesia, had displayed such frightening strength. Nor was it to be, nor will it be, the last.
The world’s fifth most populous nation and largest Islamic state is going through troubled times. Its leadership, not known for kid-glove tactics, is becoming increasingly repressive as successive development plans fail to provide a better deal for Indonesians at large. And danger signs are emergingthatthe foreign money which flowed in during the seventies for oil and as foreign investment could dry up.
Indonesians, through the centuries, have had to deal with wave after wave of trading, colonising and proselytising forces all of which have been absorbed and transformed in the process. Only Islam has come near to total conquest but even that has succeeded only by allowing its millions of converts to cling to the Hindu, Buddhist and animist practices they valued most.
The Dutch came and fought for 400 years. never really succeeding in imposing their will evenly and consistently through what became known as the Dutch East Indies. At times they may have thought they had the situation under control. But Indonesians have a subtle, introspective way of resisting unwanted overlords. And when that tactic has failed, a leader has always emerged to challenge the oppressor in physical conflict as Prince Diponegoro did in the 1820s. Though he was defeated, his rebellion on Java was enough to ensure that the Dutch held a new respect for their colonial subjects.
Japan’s victory over the Dutch in 1942 dispelled for ever the myth of white supremacy; Indonesians realised that national liberation was within their grasp. On August 17, 1945, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta hoisted the red and white flag and proclaimed the Republic of Indonesia. The Dutch oW jected. But four years later they had been fought to a standstill and independence became a fact in 1949.
Momentarily, Indonesia belonged to all Indonesians. But it was a nation of many different peoples, with many different languages and customs. And soon it was obvious that Indonesia was not, as its motto claims, finding ‘unity in diversity’. The reality was that a new form of colonialism had replaced the Dutch: Java, as the central and most populous island, was the new colonial power ruling over the outer islands. Resentment, and regional rebellion, soon became evident.
Just once, in 1956, Indonesians took part in a full and free general election. But regional, cultural, religious and political currents rendered the result inconclusive. No one group or coalition could be found to govern the country. President Sukarno the man who had led the fight for independence and was recognised as the founding father of the republic stepped in, abandoning his figurehead role.
Sukarno put in train a process of freewheeling popular political action that, on September 30, 1965. erupted in a way even more horrifying than the blast at Krakatoa when a mere 30.000 died. At least half a million Indonesians were killed in the months after that confusing night of September 30.
When news began to leak out about the holocaust the anti-populist military and Muslim death squads were inflicting upon the Indonesian people, it was almost as if the world didn’t want to know. The British ambassador to Indonesia, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, was quoted in late 1965 by the Jakarta newspaper SinarHarapan as saying that ~the present developments in Indonesia will lead to an improvement in the relations between Indonesia and Britain’.
The United States which had a Berkeley-trained group of Indonesian economists waiting in the wings to get the socialist
The cover lines, And, as the day takes form, our questions will become a forest’, are from W. S. Rendra’s 'Poem for a Students’ Meeting’, written in December orientated Indonesian economy back on to solid free-enterprise tracks felt very much the same.
What exactly happened on September 30, 1965. in Indonesia may never be fully known. It is accepted that a group of junior commissioned officers moved to arrest a number of generals. In 