News- Indonesia

Flourishing in an Intemperate Climate

The Church is growing steadily in Indonesia, but the simultaneous growth of militant Islam has introduced new dangers.

For thirty years Indonesia has been a relatively quiet country, notable for its political stability, rarely attracting outside attention. But in 1996, internal tensions in the Asian nation burst out in a series of violent disturbances, leaving dozens of people dead. At the same time, the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to a pair of dissident leaders in East Timor--a community which Indonesia has ruled since 1975--drew international attention to a festering sore in the country's political life. For the first time in years, observers abroad began to wonder whether Indonesia's remarkable facade of political stability was beginning to crumble.

The Catholic Church represents only a small minority in Indonesia, a country with a large Muslim majority. But at least until recently the Church has been able to grow, year by year, in conditions of relative normalcy; each year the number of faithful has grown, while the practice of the faith has been unencumbered. In 1996, as they made their ad limina visits to the Vatican, the Indonesian bishops were forced to reflect on a rapidly changing situation.

Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous nation, placing behind only China, India, and the United States. The country's population, which is now approaching 200 million, is astonishing in its diversity: there are eight major ethnic groups, at least 250 distinct languages and dialects. Even the country itself is divided into more than 6,000 islands, scattered across an area of nearly 800,000 square miles between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The central island of Java, on which the capital city of Jakarta is located, is one of the world's most heavily populated lands. Yet many of the islands in the archipelago are barely inhabited, and in fact more than half of the area occupied by Indonesia is water; the land mass of the islands is only 300,000 square miles. The span of the country from east to west measures more than 3,000 miles, and Indonesia is a close neighbor of both Malaysia on its northwest extremity and Australia on the southeast.

It would be logical, in view of this remarkable diversity, to expect that Indonesia would be a land marked by ethnic conflict and movements for autonomy. To be sure, there are several small independence movements--in the region of Aceh, at the northern tip of the island of Sumatra, and on the western, Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea. But aside from the persistent conflict in East Timor, independence movements have not proved to be a major problem for Indonesia. To date, the country has been able to maintain its unity, under the guidance of a strong central government.

Colonized by Holland near the end of the 16th century, was occupied by Japan during World War II, and upon its liberation, began a fight for national independence. That struggle was finally won in 1949, when Holland withdrew, and a new government was set up under the rule of Achmed Sukarno. The Sukarno government held sway into the 1960s, forming alliances with Communist regimes. But in 1965 an attempted Communist coup was put down--to be followed by the bloody suppression of the Communist Party--and a new government was formed by the military leader Thojib Suharto. Suharto remains in power to this day, and in fact recently declared that he would run for re-election to the presidency in the next scheduled elections in 1998, when he will be 77 years old.

The political system in Indonesia might best be compared with that of Spain in the last years of Francisco Franco. Suharto can count on the support of a political system which was largely built according to his own design, as well as the explicit approval of the nation's powerful military. He enjoys an extraordinary degree of personal political power, and the economy has grown fairly steadily--especially in comparison with other Third World countries--during his tenure. Those factors have contributed both to his long stay in power and to the remarkable stability of the regime.

However, as Suharto himself has begun to show the effects of age, the country's political system too has begun to show symptoms of decay. First, there has been a distinct increase in the incidence of political protests, and although the military has had no difficulty in quelling the disturbances, they point to the unavoidable problems that imperil any regime which loses the support of its own people. Then there is the preliminary skirmishing for position as rival candidates begin their campaigns to succeed Suharto.

To date, all of the potential successors are military leaders, with the single exception of the president's own daughter Tutut. One other possible candidate, Benny Murdani, a Catholic who had been the country's defense minister, was shunted into the background in 1988, when he lost his position after a series of conflicts with Suharto's sons, who had set up their own powerful financial empires under their father's shadow.

The formal constitution defines Indonesia as a presidential republic. In practice it is an authoritarian regime, which could be classified somewhere closer to a dictatorship than a parliamentary democracy, although it retains elements of the latter. For official purposes it is a "guided democracy," with the president sharing some of his powers with a parliament, whose members are elected every five years.

Only three political parties are allowed to participate in the national elections; all others are banned by law. Suharto's party has always enjoyed a sizable advantage over its lesser rivals: the Unified Party for Development (PPP), a Muslim group, and the Democratic Party of Indonesia (PDI), an alliance of nationalists and Christians.

In the last elections, held in 1992, Suharto and his followers won 288 of the 425 seats in parliament selected by popular vote. (Another 75 seats are reserved for the military, which in effect means another 75 votes for Suharto.) However, despite its dominance, Suharto's party suffered a noteworthy setback; its vote total fell 5 percent short of its total from the previous round of elections. That sign of weakness, small as it may be in itself, is supported by the quiet but insistent pleas for a more democratic political system. Economic growth has led to the emergence of a large and growing middle class, which in turn has prompted calls for more sharing of both financial and political control.

However, the government shows no disposition to heed those calls for democracy. The Suharto regime is not likely to take the first steps down the road to democracy, by increasing the freedom of political parties, labor unions, or publishers. The regime, in short, shows no signs of flexibility. The aging of Suharto, and the uncertainties regarding his successor, furnish additional reasons to doubt that any real change is in the offing.

Last December 23, as he accepted the credentials of the new ambassador from Indonesia, Pope John Paul II used the occasion to signal his keen interest in the question of religious tolerance in the Asian country. The Pope expressed his alarm at the recent outbursts of violence, spurred by religious fanaticism, which has created a new climate of tension among the different religious groups in the country.

With the clear Muslim majority in the country, Suharto faces a real challenge in his efforts to build up a form of government which is not officially Islamic--a social arrangement respectful of that dominant religion, but also sensitive to the legitimate needs of religious minorities. The majority of Indonesian Muslims appear willing to accept just such a system, following the same logic that has helped to maintain social order in the country for years. But that preponderance of opinion is being sorely tried, in a campaign mounted by Islamic militants.

In the past, the Suharto regime was uncompromising in its efforts to counter the Islamic extremists. The government's campaign reached a peak of activity in 1984, with a series of battles against terrorists centered on the island of Java. However, many observers argue that the government's anti-terrorism efforts have slackened since the departure of Benny Murdani from the defense ministry in 1988.

Whatever the reasons behind the rise of Islamic militancy, the phenomenon cannot be denied. Since 1991, more than 300 Christian (more Protestant than Catholic) churches have been destroyed or damaged by mob violence. In 1993 a bomb exploded in a Catholic church in Davao, killing five people and injuring 119 others. More recently, arson struck a Catholic church in Surabaya in June, and another in Bekasi in September. The violence appears to be escalating dangerously; especially on the island of Java, the incidents are both more common and more frightening.

Last October 10, a court in Situbondo condemned the head of one extreme Islamic sect to a five-year prison sentence for slandering the Muslim leaders of the community. When the news of that sentence was made public, a mob of several thousand angry Muslims took to the streets demanding the death sentence for the convict. The mob set fire to the courthouse where the trial had occurred, as well as several surrounding buildings. When a rumor arose that the accused man had escaped and taken refuge in a church, there was another round of arson. Some 25 Christian churches and a Buddhist temple were burned to the ground; an Evangelical Protestant pastor and several of his flock died in the flames.

Late in December, another violent disturbance hit Tasikmalaya, about 120 miles southeast of Jakarta. A crowd of 5,000 Muslims set fire to fifteen churches (several of them Catholic), and another four people were killed. The ugly incident also showed another source of ethnic tensions; the mob burned dozens of shops owned by Indonesians of Chinese origin.

The rising tide of violence cannot be attributed solely to religious intolerance, although that is certainly a major factor. In the December incident in Tasikmalaya, for example, the mob had traveled from one predominantly Muslim village to another mostly Christian town after hearing reports that police in the latter town had detained and beaten three Muslim leaders. But if that was the case, why did so many Chinese businessmen bear the brunt of the crowd's wrath? The answer to that question can only be attributed to old racial prejudice, along with the unhappy coincidence that quite a few Chinese merchants lived in the area. The two forms of prejudice--against Christians and against Chinese--combined to create another ugly incident in January 1997, when Muslims attacked and burned a Chinese Christian church and several shops in the town of Rengasdengklok, in an angry reponse to a report that a Chinese Christian had complained about noisy services at the local mosque.

The violence could also be attributed to economic tensions. While Indonesia as a whole has enjoyed economic growth under Suharto, the regime has done very little to encourage the distribution of the new wealth, and resentment has grown among those who find themselves left behind by the new prosperity. And of course violence often begets violence in the form of reprisals for past offenses--a fact which has caused the Catholic hierarchy to issue several calls for calm, asking Christians to resist the temptation to seek revenge.

Apart from these bouts of mob violence, most of which have occurred on the island of Java, Indonesia as a whole remains firmly committed to religious tolerance--a principle which has been instrumental in the development of the country during the post-war years. After the outburst in Situbondo, for instance, a group of Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, and Hindu leaders quickly met to issue a blanket condemnation of such violence, and to set up an interfaith task force to help rebuild the damaged churches.

Abderramán Wahid is a prime example of the traditional Indonesian respect for religious diversity. Wahid is the head of Nahdatul Ulama, the largest single Muslim group in the world, with some 35 million members in Indonesia. He not only denounced the episodes of mob terror, but also took a dim view of the Muslim political party, the PPP, because of "its actions which are dangerous to national unity and the aspirations toward democracy."

Islam, Wahid told his followers, is a matter of behavior, not of law. "If a religious group takes over the government," he continued, "it causes a break in trust with the minorities and conflicts among the diverse Muslim factions." Wahid issued a public endorsement of the Nobel Peace Prize given to Bishop Ximenes Belo, and explained: "My adversaries accuse me of protecting Christians, but I believe that I am protecting pluralism."

In January, some observers were troubled by the announcement that Indonesia had signed a new economic pact with seven other countries, all of them predominantly Islamic: Iran, Turkey, Malaysia, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nigeria. But while the Muslim connections were obviously instrumental in setting up that pact, from the perspective of the Indonesian government it seems that the main motive in joining the new coalition was not ideological but pragmatic; the Suharto regime has shown a keen interest in nurturing international ties whenever and wherever it is possible.

Indeed, the official Pancasila ideology of the Indonesian government points clearly in the direction of religious tolerance. Pancasila affirms the society's "unity within diversity," based on five shared principles: belief in one supreme being, national unity, social justice for all citizens, a just civil order, and a democratic system guided by the security of its people. The Suharto regime has, during most of its long tenure, shown the political ability and flexibility necessary to uphold those principles of national unity.

The success of the regime in maintaining national unity drew a nod from Pope John Paul II, when he greeted the second group of Indonesian bishops to make their ad limina visit last year. The Pope urged the bishops to reinforce "the principles of Pancasila, the principles which favor national unity, religious tolerance, and justice among the different communities of your vast homeland." The words of the Holy Father took on special meaning in view of the timing: he delivered his address soon after a series of violent episodes which created new concerns about the future of the Church and the endurance of the religious tolerance which has characterized the country.

On July 27 of last year several serious political disturbances in Jakarta left a toll of five dead, 149 injured, and 74 missing. It was the first such violent incident in the capital city in thirty years. The government, after doing its best to hide the number of victims, blamed the disturbances on the PDI, the opposition political party, which has a heavy Catholic representation. But there were many analysts who pointed a finger back toward the machinations of the Suharto regime itself.

The simple facts related to the incidents were clear. The day began with a public demonstration in favor of Megawati Sukarno, the leader of the PDI, who is coincidentally the daughter of the country's first president. The younger Sukarno has been gaining political influence, gathering around herself both some of her father's most influential followers and other new recruits to the democracy movement. Leery of her growing popularity, the Suharto government had moved effectively to shunt her aside, arranging a special party congress controlled by the military, at which she was removed from her leadership position, and thereby deprived of what should have been the key role in the next national elections. Her supporters responded angrily to that move, and the results generated several clashes. The most serious were those of July 27, which began when a group supporting the newly installed party leadership raided the PDI headquarters, which were still occupied by loyalists of Megawati Sukarno.

On the Sunday following the violence, Cardinal Julius Darmaatmadja of Jakarta, who doubles as the head of the Indonesian bishops' conference, issued a statement to be read in all parish churches. The cardinal's statement expressed disquiet over the incidents, and carefully distanced the bishops from the Suharto government. In response, the Ministry for Religious Affairs prepared a message which was eventually sent to all of the Catholic bishops and heads of religious orders, as well as to Protestant leaders and to Abderramán Wahid, who had joined in the expression of horror over the violence.

The government set forth its position clearly. Emphasizing the doctrine of Pancasila, the Ministry called upon all religious leaders to support the cause of national unity. Toward that end, the government cautioned, the religious leaders should be careful not to be seduced by the siren calls of democracy, which were coming from the middle class, student groups, and--most significantly--the PDI. It was the growing activism of the PDI, "some of whose members belong to the old Catholic party, which gave rise to the tensions of the last few weeks," the government statement insisted.

The government's statement was dated September 13: the same day that Pope John Paul met with the second group of Indonesian bishops on their ad limina visit. The Holy Father, of course, had not seen the new government statement when he made his own remarks to the bishops. But the violence in Jakarta had certainly commanded his attention, and his talk--with its pointed reference to the expressed principles of Pancasila--could clearly be seen as an effort to underline the legitimate role which Catholics could play in helping to promote the peaceful and harmonious development of Indonesia's future.

The Pope's words appear to have been a message to Suharto: a call for the regime to live out its own principles, a caution against using the possible excesses of PDI activism as a pretext for new repression, and above all a caution against any reprisals against Catholics.

When the first group of Indonesian bishops visited the Vatican last year, Pope John Paul remarked that the Church in their country was still in her infancy. That statement is difficult to dispute. Catholics constitute only 3.5 percent of the population, although that translates to an impressive 5.5 million believers.

The distribution of the Catholic population is extremely uneven. On the island of Flores, where Portuguese missionaries enjoyed great success generations ago, Catholics make up more than 80 percent of the population; in Semarang, in the east of Java, the 475,000 Catholics are virtually lost among the 32 million inhabitants.

Historically, much of the evangelization carried out in Indonesia has been accomplished by missionary members of religious orders: Jesuits, Capuchins, and others. Even today, two-thirds of the country's priests are members of religious orders, as well as 29 of the 34 bishops.

Pope John Paul visited Indonesia in 1989, and won a cordial reception not only from the Catholic faithful, but even from the government. He met privately with President Suharto and with leaders of several other religious bodies, and in his public statements he emphasized the need for mutual respect across denominational lines. And during his stay, he had the opportunity to notice first-hand that while Catholics are few in number in Indonesia, the Church enjoys a level of prestige far higher than her numerical representation would suggest. Catholics are prominent in politics, in the world of finance, and in the press. Kompas, the nation's largest periodical with a daily press run of 500,000, is run by Catholic editors. The Church has produced millions of high-school and college graduates, and served millions more in hospitals and health clinics.

That influence, combined with the steady growth in the numbers of the faithful, gives the Church real hope for the future. There has been a noteworthy rise in priestly and religious vocations, with more than 2,000 young men currently studying for the priesthood--almost half of them in diocesan seminaries. More than 25,000 lay people have undertaken formal training as catechists.

Each year brings more than 150,000 baptisms, including both children and adults. The most spectacular successes have come among remote tribal groups rather than city dwellers. In one particularly striking example, in 1994 the bishop of Panang baptized 500 members of one tribe, former followers of an animist sect, who had undergone an eight-year process of evangelization and preparation for entry into the Catholic community.

When he met with the Indonesian bishops at the Vatican last year, Pope John Paul mentioned the need for ethnic and religious tolerance, the need for economic growth, and the importance of upholding the principles of Pancasila, above all he emphasized evangelization--the Christian education and spiritual formation of the people--as the single greatest challenge for the Indonesian Church.

[AUTHOR ID] José Ramón Pérez Arangüena serves on the editorial staff of Palabra, a Spanish monthly magazine with headquarters in Madrid. This article is translated, with permission, from a report which appeared in the February 1997 issue of that magazine.

[BOX #1]

Indonesia is a country of 195 million people, occupying an area of nearly 800,000 square miles. The great majority of the people--86.5 percent--are Muslim, and only 10 percent Christians, of whom 3.5 percent are Roman Catholic. (The remainder are divided among Buddhist, Hindu, and animist beliefs.)

The Catholic Church boasts 34 dioceses and 8 archdioceses, with more than 2,200 priests, of whom roughly two-thirds belong to religious orders. (In one harbinger of change, the population of 2,100 seminarians is almost evenly divided between religious orders and diocesan institutions.) The Catholic Church runs 11 institutions of higher education and more than 5,000 schools, as well as 600 hospitals and medical centers.

[SIDEBAR #2]

[PULLQUOTE for sidebar #2] Since the 1975 annexation, at least 200,000 Timorese have died in the effort to oust their new rulers.

[Head for Sidebar #2] East Timor: A Separate Case

For several months, East Timor has been constantly in the focus of the world's attention. For twenty years a simmering conflict has continued there without drawing much public attention--except in Portugal which once ruled East Timor as a colony, where interest in the region remains lively. But in 1996 the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to two Timorese activists helped to break the silence, and concentrate world opinion on the plight of the people living there.

In 1975, after the fall of the Salazar regime, Portugal abruptly abandoned its interest on the eastern section of the island of Timor, where it had maintained a colonial government since the 16th century. The United Nations was entrusted with the authority to organize a new independent government for the territory. But those plans were hastily shelved in December 1975, when the Indonesian army invaded East Timor. In July 1976, the government in Jakarta formally announced its annexation of the territory.

Since that annexation, at least 200,000 Timorese have died in the effort to oust their new rulers. Hunger and poverty have added to the misery caused by that relentless guerrilla campaign. The death toll has mounted inexorably, finally drawing the attention of major international organizations such as the Nobel Prize committee. Some experts suggest that nearly a third of the population has been wiped out, and although there is a wide variation among the casualty estimates, there is no doubt that the toll has been heavy, even after the bloody invasion of 1975.

The United Nations has never accepted Indonesia's claim to sovereignty in East Timor. Under pressure from the international body, Jakarta entered into a series of negotiations with Portugal, the old colonial power. Those talks have continued--the eighth round of discussions recently concluded in Geneva--without producing any notable results.

The Holy See, too, has refused to recognize Indonesia's right to rule East Timor. On December 23 of last year, as he met with the new Indonesian ambassador at the Vatican, Pope John Paul II underlined his desire to see a more fruitful dialogue, saying, "all those responsible for the future of East Timor ought to be convinced of the need to arrive at a just and peaceful solution as soon as possible."

Most of the people of East Timor are Catholics. Their unquestioned leader is Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, a 49-year-old Salesian, who in 1988 was named apostolic administrator for the open see of Dili, the capital of the territory. His outspoken leadership in a non-violent campaign for self-determination led eventually to his selection to share the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize with another activist, José Ramos Horta. (Horta represents a very different approach to the struggle for independence; he is the exiled spokesman for FRETILIN, the Front for the Liberation of East Timor.) To this day Bishop Belo remains the apostolic administrator of Dili; he has never formally been installed as the bishop of the see, in the face of opposition from the Indonesian government.

In order to accept the Nobel Prize in person, Bishop Belo needed clearance from the Indonesian government, which he obtained only after some delicate negotiations. So when he arrived in Europe, and received a number of invitations to address public audiences during a tour of the continent, he chose his words carefully, emphasizing that he was interested only in the welfare of his people. Especially in his formal speech at the awards ceremony, the bishop stressed that he was fighting not for any political cause, but for the cause of human dignity.

When he returned to Dili late in December, Bishop Belo received a hero's welcome, with thousands of people coming out to greet him. The excitement of his return led to some violent incidents; two soldiers were killed and several others wounded by armed bands. Two days later, in an apparent reprisal, Indonesian soldiers shot down two Timorese youngsters.

On October 15--just four days after the announcement of the Nobel Prize committee's decision--President Suharto himself traveled to East Timor for the dedication of an enormous statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. As an indication of the implacable conflict in the region, even that statue itself had been the focus of controversy among the people of East Timor, many of whom had come to regard the statue as a symbol of Indonesian repression.

It was the Jakarta government which had decided several years ago to build the statue, on a hillside overlooking Dili, as a good-will gesture toward the Catholics of East Timor. But even in that gesture, the Indonesian government could not refrain from gross political gestures pointing to its own territorial claims. Jakarta regards East Timor as the 27th province of Indonesia; the statue stands exactly 27 meters high, at the head of a flight of 27 approaching stairs. The budget for the construction of the statue was $17 million. In order to underwrite that cost--an unusually high figure for a Third World country--the government at first used its own revenues, then appealed to private foundations, and finally began deducting a portion of its workers' salaries, thereby intensifying hostility to the project.

For his part, Bishop Belo at first opposed the construction of the statue, sharply criticizing the enormous cost of the project. But in the end he participated in the official dedication ceremonies. It is true that, on the day of the government's dedication ceremonies, the bishop gently suggested that the site had not been well chosen. Yet a month later, when he formally blessed the statue in front of a crowd of 20,000 faithful on November 24, he announced that from that day forward, the statue be not a political bone of contention but simply a place of prayer.

On December 28, the Holy See created a new diocese in East Timor. The Diocese of Baucau, now separated from Dili, would be headed by Bishop Basilio do Nascimento Martins, who was ordained in Rome by the Pope early in January. Some observers detected political overtones in the move: a desire to accentuate the Catholic presence in East Timor, and to establish another leader to complement Bishop Belo. But the official Vatican announcement offered more prosaic reasons for the new diocese: the size of the Dili see, the difficulties in local communications, and the need for more effective efforts at evangelization.

After the division, Dili remains a diocese of 500,000 faithful, with Baucau adding another 220,000. Both dioceses work directly with the Holy See. The bishops do not belong to the Indonesia episcopal conference, although they are regularly invited, as a matter of courtesy, to attend its meetings.

In 1965, when Suharto took power in Indonesia, he set up a new regime founded on the principles of Pancasila. Under that system, all citizens are require to declare their affiliation with one of five recognized religious groups: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, or Hinduism. The official government statistics generated by this requirement show 86 percent of the population as Muslims.

The reality, however, is more complicated than the statistic. At least 35 percent of those who identify themselves as Muslims are in fact members of sects which mingle Islam with the traditional beliefs of Hinduism and/or the native religions of the island of Java. Another 15 percent claim to be Christian as well as Muslim, while perhaps 5 percent are members of animist cults. So a more accurate estimate would probably fix the number of Muslims who adhere strictly to the teachings of Islam at closer to 40 percent of the overall population.

That more complicated reality helps to explain why, in one survey taken in 1990, the prophet Mohammed took only eleventh place on a list of the historic personalities best known to the people of Indonesia. After the publication of that survey, however, the government withdrew permission for the publication of the Catholic weekly Monitor, in which the results had appeared. The government explained that the publication might have hurt the national unity which is a fundamental principle of Pancasila.

The Minister of Religious Affairs holds one of the most powerful posts in the Suharto government. Although he spends a certain amount of effort on the affairs of the other officially recognized religions, the greater portion of his time is dedicated to the promotion of Islam. Nourished by that official care, Islam maintains its own judicial system, and runs educational institutions from the primary level through university training.

In 1978, the government issued a ban on all religious propaganda aimed at obtaining conversions, and established a new policy under which no religious group could receive assistance from outside the country--either material help or missionary workers--without the approval of the Minister of Religious Affairs. (In practice, that official is always a Muslim.) The Ministry quickly hardened that policy with the announcement that no new foreign missionaries would be admitted into the country, from any denomination.

Ten years later, in 1988, the government pushed its exclusive policy further still, announcing that it would not renew the visas of the foreign missionaries then working in the country; those who wished to remain were required to surrender their passports and take up Indonesian citizenship. Roughly 400 Catholic priests--most of them originally from Holland, the old colonial power--chose to become citizens, but during the course of the next two years another 700 priests quit the country, along with most of the religious men and women stationed in the missions there.

In 1992, in a partial reversal of that policy, the government opened the door to missionary workers from some new Evangelical churches.