2021 Indonesia Study Group
1 December. Wijayanto (LP3ES & Universitas Diponegoro) & Ismail Fahmi (Media Kernels). Cyber troops, social media propaganda and the future of Indonesian democracy
Chair: Ross Tapsell (ANU)
This presentation examined the practice of cyber troops for manufacturing public consent through social media propaganda in Indonesia from the end of 2019 to 2021. The study employs social media analysis and digital and classical ethnography. We will present some preliminary findings, including the pattern of social media propaganda, the actors and their motivations, the languages they use, and their organisational structure and funding. The research also found that creating chaos, spreading hoaxes, fake news and misinformation, and cyberbullying the civil society activists have been the modus operandi of these cyber troops. We will then discuss the impact of this propaganda on the future of Indonesian democracy.
6 October. Scott Merrilees. Book discussion: Faces of Indonesia, 500 postcards, 1900-1945
Moderator: Marcus Mietzner (ANU)
Based on my new book "Faces of Indonesia, 500 postcards, 1900-1945", the presentation highlighted the extraordinary diversity of the people of Indonesia prior to independence. I argued that on the one hand, the decreasing visibility of this diversity today (in clothing, for instance) is an indication of successful nation-building. On the other hand, however, it also points to an erosion of valuable cultural resources possessed by the various groups. I also contended that picture postcards, although often being dismissed as second-tier sources, are important objects of historical research. Finally, I reflected on how the identity of the publishers and photographers shaped their work and eventual products. Picture postcard publishers and photographers in colonial Indonesia were predominantly European (and to a lesser extent Chinese), and also often commercial in their objectives. Thus, photographers often focused on what was felt to be "exotic" for their mainly European customers. While this needs to be considered when analyzing the ways the various groups presented themselves (or were presented), it should not distract from the power of the postcards in delivering a compelling portrait of pre-1945 Indonesia.
Scott Merrillees (1962) was born in Melbourne, Australia, and graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Melbourne in 1984, with majors in accounting and Indonesian studies. He learned the Indonesian language at high school and university in Australia (1975-1983) and at Satya Wacana University in Salatiga, Central Java, Indonesia (1981-1982). He worked in Jakarta for twenty-two years from 1989-2006 and from 2008-2013, mainly in banking, capital markets and equity research. In addition to the book discussed in this event, he has published three much-praised books on the evolution of Jakarta’s physical landscape: JAKARTA: Portraits of a Capital 1950-1980; BATAVIA in Nineteenth Century Photographs; and Greetings from JAKARTA: Postcards of a Capital 1900-1950.
8 September. Hon Gareth Evans AC QC & David Jenkins. Book launch. David Jenkins' Young Soeharto: The making of a soldier, 1921-1945
Moderator: Marcus Mietzner (ANU)
When a reluctant President Sukarno gave Lt Gen Soeharto full executive authority in March 1966, Indonesia was a deeply divided nation, fractured along ideological, class, religious and ethnic lines. Soeharto took a country in chaos, the largest in Southeast Asia, and transformed it into one of the “Asian miracle” economies—only to leave it back on the brink of ruin when he was forced from office thirty-two years later.
Drawing on his astonishing range of interviews with leading Indonesian generals, former Imperial Japanese Army officers and men who served in the Dutch colonial army, as well as years of patient research in Dutch, Japanese, British, Indonesian and US archives, David Jenkins brings vividly to life the story of how a socially reticent but exceptionally determined young man from rural Java began his rise to power—an ascent which would be capped by thirty years (1968–98) as President of Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation on earth. Soeharto was one of Asia’s most brutal, most durable, most avaricious and most successful dictators. In the course of examining those aspects of his character, this book provides an accessible, highly readable introduction to the complex, but dramatic and utterly absorbing, social, political, religious, economic and military factors
The book was launched by the Hon Gareth Evans AC QC, followed by remarks by David Jenkins and a Q&A session. The event was moderated by ANU’s Marcus Mietzner. This launch was initially intended as an on-campus event, but given the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, it was decided to proceed with an online launch.
The Hon Gareth Evans AC QC is Australia's former Foreign Minister (1988-1996), President of the International Crisis Group (2000-2009) and Cancellor of the ANU (2010-2020).
David Jenkins is a journalist and author. He was based in Jakarta from 1969 to 1970 and 1976 to 1980. His first book on Suharto was "Suharto and his Generals, 1975-1983", published in 1984.
21 July. Rini Astuti (NUS & ANU). Science in the Court: Expert knowledge and forest fires in Indonesia’s plantations
In Indonesia, forest fires inside plantation concession areas often become highly-charged and politically-contested events. In the aftermath of major fires, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry typically commissions expert witnesses to collect evidence, in order to bring companies into court and hold them accountable. On the other hand, companies assemble their own expert teams, to counter the government’s allegations. Expert witnesses’ expertise, views, and practices are important in informing the courts’ decisions. However, there has been a gap in the literature examining the role and works of these expert witnesses. Drawing on the literature on knowledge politics, this research finds that expert witnesses arrange and interpret scientific evidence in ways that will advance their respective clients’ interests, despite making claims that are often contrary to widely accepted scientific arguments. In doing so, industry- affiliated experts have succeeded in swaying some key judicial proceedings in their favour. This raises significant questions about the politics of expert knowledge, and the high-level influence of pro-industry experts in legitimizing the poor land and fire management practices in the commercial plantations sector. The effect of these legal contests is to undermine the industry’s accountability for their significant socio-ecological impacts in Indonesia’s forest zone. The situation also highlights challenges within Indonesia’s judicial court system, and their ability to provide sound and impartial rulings on complex issues in forest fire science.
Rini Astuti is a Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore, and a Visiting Fellow at the Crawford School for Public Policy, Australian National University. Her research has investigated resource governance and multi-layered socio-environmental conflicts in Indonesia, tracing local community relationships with other actors at different scales.
14 July. George Quinn (ANU). Back from the dead: The surprising revival of creative writing in Javanese
Over the last one hundred years a meme has developed asserting that Javanese literature is dead, or on its last legs. Conservative observers have blamed the supposed death of Javanese literature on the decline of court culture, disappearance of the Indic hanacaraka script, displacement of verse by prose, and loss of fluency in high (krama) Javanese. The rise of a national literature expressed in Bahasa Indonesia has impacted destructively on literary innovation in Indonesia’s regional languages. The highly centralised, authoritarian, and sometimes capricious policies of the New Order government (1967-1998) also had an inhibiting effect. Since 2000, and especially in the last five years, an extraordinary revival of creative writing in Javanese has emerged. The main triggering factors have been the decentralisation of government authority, the spread of affordable digital technology, and an increase in disposable income especially among school teachers. This has made possible the flourishing of hybrid publishing and the distribution of books through online networks of writers and readers. But the long history of constraints imposed on creativity in Javanese continues to leave its mark on the thematic preoccupations of Javanese writers.
19 May. Elly Kent (ANU). Entanglement: Art, society and participatory practice in Indonesia
Participatory art practice—where artists involve people directly in the form of their artwork—has recently dominated the global contemporary art scene, yet relatively little attention has been paid to this practice in Asia. I look at the work of Indonesian artists, who often make solo studio work and participatory art projects. Social engagement, often politically motivated or aligned, consistently featured alongside individuality in the practices and philosophies of early modernist Indonesian artists. The field was further influenced by the student movement in the 1970s, development discourses in the 1980s, and international educational and environmental movements in the 1990s. Utilising a theoretical framework that is heavily indebted to the Indonesian art critic Sanento Yuliman’s (1941-1992) concept of a continuous “artistic ideology”, I presented case studies addressing the work of Arahmaiani Feisal, Made “Bayak” Muliana, I Wayan “Suklu” Sujana, Tisna Sanjaya, Fajar Abadi, and Elia Nurvista to show how contemporary artists have extended this continuum, perpetuating and critiquing historical influences. In this seminar I discussed how these particular contexts and networks of production have continued to engage with early modernist concepts, as well as local and global discourses, to create conditions which effectively mandate socially-engaged art practice for many artists.
28 April. Greg Fealy (ANU). Banning the Islamic Defenders' Front (FPI)
The Jokowi Government’s recent banning of the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI) is the most sweeping anti-Islamist action since the fall of Soeharto’s New Order regime in 1998. In late December 2020, the government unexpectedly announced FPI’s disbandment and shortly after arrested FPI’s spiritual leader Habib Rizieq Syihab and multiple other Front leaders following a shoot-out between police and FPI guards which left six of the latter dead. FPI’s bank accounts and social media sites have been closed, its ownership of land in Bogor challenged, and police want to charge its six dead guards. This seminar described and analysed the sequence of events leading to FPI’s banning. It argued that these actions represent a significant broadening of the government’s campaign to roll back Islamism. Previous targets of the campaign were regarded as ‘transnational Islamists’, whose origins were deemed primarily foreign, whereas FPI is a traditionalist organisation whose members practice a mainstream and ‘Indonesianised’ form of Islam. In this regard, FPI’s disbandment is more political than ideological. It also demonstrates the government’s determination to more tightly control and restrict civil spaces for dissent and opposition to its policies, thereby further eroding the quality of Indonesia’s democracy. While successful in marginalising Islamist groups in the short term, this broader anti-Islamist policy complicates the dynamics of religious polarisation that have heavily influenced politics since 2014 and risks a longer-term sectarian backlash.
21 April. Ben Hegarty (University of Melbourne). Twenty-five years of HIV/AIDS responses in Indonesia
This project drew on material from a National Library of Australia Asia Study Grant-funded project on community memory and epidemiological histories of HIV. It addressed the period from the first official health responses to early cases identified in the 1990s to the present day, when an estimated 640,000 people are living with HIV. It drew on Indonesian-language policy documents, activist accounts, medical surveys, media sources and development archives into conversation with ongoing research on community memories of HIV/AIDS in Indonesia. In particular, I elaborated the political entanglement between HIV/AIDS and political organising among some of the gender and sexual minorities most affected by the epidemic. I argued that the history of HIV/AIDS offers an important lens on broader processes of a discourse of transparency that permeates the era of democratic reform since 1998. In particular, it helped to track the emergence of discourses of morality and their transformation into surveillance from the end of the New Order. Perhaps more importantly, the history of HIV/AIDS in Indonesia – as is the case in other parts of the world – highlighted impressive forms of community/government/expert engagement mobilised at the intersection of a concern for public health and human rights.
14 April. Marcus Mietzner (ANU). Coerced powersharing? Jokowi, Partai Demokrat and the shrinking of Indonesia’s opposition
In much of the literature on broad multi-party coalitions in presidential systems, it is assumed that parties naturally seek alignment with presidents in order to gain access to state resources. Indeed, a sub-stream of that literature has been the cartelisation school, which views party cartels as dominant actors that control and use presidents as their entry points to share power and budgets. But Indonesian president Jokowi has defied this model in important ways: in two cases in 2015 and 2016, he used his power as president to turn opposition parties into pro-government parties, allowing him to transform from a minority president into one holding a supermajority. But apparently controlling 82 percent of parliamentary seats has not been enough for Jokowi: in March 2021, Jokowi’s chief of staff claimed to have taken over the leadership of Partai Demokrat, one of only two remaining opposition parties. Should this take-over succeed, Jokowi would control 91 percent of seats in the legislature. This seminar explained the mechanisms through which Jokowi has exercised his coercive power to ‘flip’ Indonesian opposition parties and speculates what his ultimate goal might be.
20 January. Della Temenggung (Prospera), Deasy Pane (BAPPENAS), Adhi Saputro (Prospera), Rullan Rinaldi (Prospera). Survey of recent developments. Managing recovery and seizing reform opportunities
This seminar previewed the authors’ forthcoming article in the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies.
Like many other economies, Indonesia has gone through the worst. Yet, the same thing cannot be said for the health crisis. An ‘endless first wave’ is likely the most accurate description of the pandemic in Indonesia as the daily new case keeps increasing. Later last year, the president reshuffled his cabinet and appointed a seasoned technocrat to lead the Indonesian health department. The government seems to slowly realise that the economy might not recover as fast as initially thought and that this endless first wave weakens the already scarred economy. Nonetheless, the government intends to take the crisis as an opportunity to reboot the economy. The controversial omnibus law on employment creation passed by the parliament last year is the start. The government sees the combination of vaccine and the new omnibus law as the panacea to boost the recovery. The survey discussed whether the prescription is strong enough to help the recovery and what remaining therapies are needed.