Stewed Pieces of Slippers and Shards of Broken Glass

Political Activist Remembers the Soeharto Era

 

Jakarta, Indonesia--At first glance, the painting on the wall showed the feet of what must be a sick man, covered by a blanket, beside a small basket of corn grains, next to what could be a bowl of soup. ButTedjabayu Sudjojono, 70, son of Indonesia’s renowned painter, shook his head and said this was not what the painting is all about.

The man whose feet were shown sticking out of the striped blanket was not just any other sick man. He was a political prisoner, jailed for his political beliefs under the Soeharto regime.  He was probably ill but the bowl of soup next to his feet did not contain nourishment to eat.

Sudjojono, who spent 14 years of his life in prison under the regime of former Indonesian president Soeharto, said the painting depicted a political prisoner imprisoned on Buru island, a large prison camp used to house 12,000 political prisoners after Soeharto came to power. Beside the prisoner’s feet, the small basket contained 120 pieces of boiled corn grains, the only food the prisoners were made to eat the entire day, every day during their stay in prison.

Instead of a delicious soup, the bowl contained stewed pieces of slippers and shards of broken glass that the prisoners were made to eat or sip. 

He said they had to endure this ration day after day, throughout their stay, so bad many of their friends died and only a few of them survived.
Of course, he said by way of explaining it, who would sip or drink the water that had pieces of dirty slipper parts and shards of glass floating in it? But after long hours staying handcuffed and all, they became so thirsty that they began sorting and taking out the shards of glass from the water in their desperation to drink--and that was how slowly, they began to die.

Tedjabayu, who took us to his house in the outskirts of Jakarta two days after the April 9 general elections, said a former political detainee gave the painting to him as a gift on the day of his son’s circumcision in Java, long after they were released from prison. “About 2,000 of them came, I was so surprised,” he said.

The painting reminded them of theordeal they once shared: how, in their hunger, they had to sort out and take away the shards of glass and the slippers, hoping to drink from a bowl of soup. “We used to joke about it, because without the joke, we only had death and the grave,” he said.

An estimated 1 million people died, most of them suspected Communists and their sympathizers, when Soeharto assumed power in 1965, overthrowing the Soekarno regime.

Still a student activist when he was picked up and brought to prison, Tedjabayu had endured Buru island for four months before he was moved on to Nusa Kambangan, a maximum security prison off the southern coast of Java island and then, on to a series of other prisons and finally to the military prison camp called Ambarawa until his release in 1979.

As Indonesians trooped to the polls on April 9 this year for the general elections, the outcome of which would determine Indonesia’s presidential polls in July, Tedjabayu expressed concern over the prospect that personalities associated with the old Soeharto regime would usher in the military’s return to power.

At least two of the top three contending parties in Indonesia are fielding personalities with links to the previous regime; namely: Soeharto’s former political party Golkar; and its breakaway, the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), which will be fielding PrabowoSubianto, a former special forces commander and former son-in-law of Soeharto, as its political bet for president in the July elections.

Indonesia’s election law only allows political parties which win 25 per cent of the votes in the national elections, or 20 per cent of the total seats in the House of Representatives (HR), to field their presidential candidates for the presidential elections.

“This election is important for us,” said Tedjabayu, who admitted he did not vote in Indonesia’s previous three elections, disappointed by the failure of the reformasi to usher meaningful change to the lives of Indonesian people. “I did not vote because in doing so, I would only support a government that is not pro-democracy and leaders whose commitment to the people was not clear,” he said.

But this time, he said, not to vote would be a sin.

“This election will decide the future of Indonesia. We don’t want to give the presidency back to the military and to the corrupt generation,” he said.

A popular uprising may have ended Soeharto’s 30-year-old rule in 1998, propping up a popular presidency that ushered in Indonesia’s reformasi, or the era of openness and reform.

But the failure of the reformasi era to institute meaningful change to the lives of average Indonesians, and allegations of corruption that followed the succeeding regimes, eroded people’s confidence and estranged them from taking part actively in the country’s elections.

In Indonesia, the people’s disillusionment has given rise to the phenomenon known as “golput,” short for “golonganputih (white group),” a group of Indonesian voters who refused to vote, as a way to keep themselves clean from the stain of politics they already perceived as dirty.

Reports by the civil monitoring election network JRRP, a multi sectoral interfaith nongovernment organization, showed an increasing percentage of Indonesia’s voting population have stopped participating in the polls. “We want everyone to participate in the elections,” says Afif, the group’s national coordinator, as he urged citizens to take active part in the polls. “This is our challenge because in the last three elections, we’ve been having a decreasing participation rate.”

While voters’ turnout registered a high of 92 per cent in the elections of 1999, or the year after Soeharto’s overthrow, the numbers plummeted to 84 per cent in 2004 and plunged further to 71 per cent in the 2009 elections.

Reports said voters’ turnout was back again to 75 per cent during the April 9 polls this year, thanks to the campaign to encourage people to vote. “Many people are discouraged, because of the bad image and reports of corruption,” Afif said, “This is a challenge.”

But among those who refused to vote, journalist AneguraPerkasah,who covers the business and human rights beat for the Indonesian paper Bisnis Indonesia, said he is disappointed by the energy policy of the government, which allowed big business to set up coal mines in his hometown in Kalimantan, displacing people from their land, polluting the air and water, and depriving people of their livelihood and access to drinking water. “I do it as a form of protest,” saysPerkasah, raising both his hands to show fingers untainted by indelible ink, on the day of the April 9 general elections.

But he was equally aghast at the people’s failure to remember the past.

Although Jakarta Governor JokoWidodo, the presidential bet of the Megawati Sukarno-led opposition party PDIP, continues to lead popularity surveys, following behind him is PrabowoSubianto, the commander of the special commando force under Soeharto.

Prabowo has beenlinked to the abduction of student activists in the time of Indonesian riots in 1998, 13 of those activists remained missing up to this day, their family members holding silent protests every Thursday in front of Indonesia’s state palace, asking for justice for their missing kin.“It seems that people easily forget,” said Perkasah, referring to the relative popularity of Prabowo in the polls.

But Tedjabayu still remembers, and his memories even go three decades further back, when Soeharto just assumed power. He recalls having to bury four of his friends at one time, he had trouble carrying them, one in front, two at his side and another one at his back. 

“The first time we heard our friend died, we stood and bowed our head, as a sign of respect,” he said, “Then, the following day, another news of another friend came, and we could no longer stand up. We were so weak and in pain.”

“There was a time the death all around us have made us so numb, we could no longer feel anything.”

Tedjabayu divided the history of Indonesia into three eras: The first era belonged to the generation of his father, the 1945 generation who fought the Dutch and freed Indonesia from foreign power; the second era, his generation,persecuted bySoeharto’s new order; and the next generation, whom he said, will be the future of Indonesia. “If I’m not going to vote it will be a sin for the future,”he said, “I will vote to save the new generation, to ensure that the next president will not come either from the military or from the corrupt politicians.”

As if recalling the taste of stewed slippers and shards of broken glass, he says he knows exactly how it feels for the country to lose its freedom.This year’s election should be no time for golput, he says. Indonesians should vote to say never again to military rule.   

GermelinaLacorte is a journalist fellow of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (Seapa) sent to observe Indonesia’s general elections on April 9, 2014.

The man who happens to see Franz Kafka

The media advisory that reached us from the Eastern Mindanao Command early in May said the mining activist who claimed to be Romeo Rivera was actually Felix Armodia, a ranking member of the Communist New People's Army operating in Davao del Sur and surrounding areas. The Eastmincom said Rivera was but an alias of Armodia. I did not immediately brush aside this claim by the military until I had the chance to go to where the prisoner was detained and had the chance to ask him. "Who are you?" I asked, staring at his face. "What is your name? Are you Felix Armodia?" "No," he said. "I am Romeo Rivera. I have a father and a son, who are both my namesake. I am Romeo Rivera, Jr.," he said again, "I have a father whose name is Romeo Rivera Sr., he is confined in a hospital in Tagum city, you can check that out," he said, "Please check that out. I have a son whose name is Romeo Rivera III; he works in a call center in Manila; I am Romeo Rivera Jr., how can I have any other name?" I walked away as shaken and horrified as he was.

Why?

Now, I'm seriously wondering why she quit that office. Was it only only because she had such a lucrative offer she can't refuse? Or was it because the things they made her do there had already grown so outrageously and unbearably, overwhelmingly sickening, she had to get out of there or else she would die? Was she on the verge of killing herself? Or was it only her imagination? Was she bothered by a bad conscience? Or mounting debts? Or laundry piling up? Or her son's failing grades? Was she harassed by a stalker? A lover? A motocycle-riding madman? A police? A priest? Or a rebel? Why did she leave? Wasn't she happy with her life? Was she happy with her lovelife? Who should I ask now that she's gone?

Thinking of something else

Old houses have stories to tell

And I really want to discover them.

Dealing with Data

This was last Saturday, (figure out the date, it's Thursday today, although it already feels like a century ago) when I joined the Data Journalism Training given by Vera Files editor Yvonne Chua, sponsored by Mindanews, and held inside the Journalism Lab on the fifth floor of the Ateneo de Davao University (What building? I could no longer remember, but I can find that out). This was the same JournLab where I used to hold classes in the previous semester with third year AB Mass Comm students, three of them also joined the training. The one raising his hand here below is Walter, I don't know why he was raising his hand. I just happened to snap the shutter exactly at the time he did it, so, I think, he was really very smart to do that, but I'm smarter because I was the one who took this picture. (Guffaw). I learned a lot from the training but the most important thing that I learned was that I was dumb. One thing that really struck me from this training: that I'm really grateful for all the Maths I learned. Ms Yvonne simply remind me of my former Math teacher, the way she speaks and the way she loves Math. I also remember Maritess Villamor, my first editor, the one who really taught me how to write a business story, how to deal with sources, and everything that you need to know as a reporter. She charted my beginnings. Now I'm learning new things.

What did I do last summer?

I’ve been looking for a folder full of articles, probably marked May 2013, to see what I was  doing at about this time last year, only to find out that I never had such a folder. Instead, I found another folder, marked May Elections 2013, which yielded pictures taken at the height of the political campaign, because May 2013, I remember now, was an election year; and so, it was a month of my allergies and boils and probably hard coughs, as my body strained and struggled to catch up with impossible deadlines. I know you understand the feeling: the racing heartbeat, the choking and then the sinking sensation in your gut as you realize that no matter what you do, the work you’re doing won’t amount to anything. Last summer, I was too busy even to open a new folder to mark the passage of time. 

Music and Memories

I told Karl and Sean I don't have a memory of sounds. No matter how I like a particular music, no matter how I want to listen to it over and over again for days and weeks, I know that once that music stops, I would remember nothing of it, except for three notes. Three notes! They shake their heads in disbelief. Once, I told this to Tu Nguyen Ngoc, who stared at me, not knowing what to say, until I told her I used to listen to Yanni and the Classics until I forgot all about music because the house chores had a way of stealing my life. It's only now that I discover my memory is disintegrating because of the absence of music in my kitchen. I never had a chance to know Tu for long because my music is broken and I'm really trying very hard to fix it, hoping that doing so would allow me to recover memories I have lost through the years.

Journal of Journals

Once, I was amused when I discovered in Miguel Syjuco’s, “Ilustrado,” [[thanx to Mick!]] a character who had so many diaries: a poetry diary, where all her poems were written; a dream diary, where she recorded all her dreams, and a diary diary.
For years, I have taken to writing journals. Ja used to ask, "What?! You're writing a journal?" As if it's the most degrading thing to do.  "What are you going to do with that journal?" he asked. "What are you going to eat?" But I continued doing it anyway and it went on and on and on through the years. There are so many things I learned from writing journals. First, it can be a writing classroom, where I learn to write my sentence. If I know how to organize it and how to write it well, it can be a valuable reference point which can help me locate myself at certain moments of my life. Sometimes, it can be a window to new story ideas. What am I going to eat? I will learn to eat paper.

When the book is made flesh

Simply for the love of horses

They were not mistaken when they asked me to cover the country's longest running horse show and competition at the Riverfront Stables in Maa, which opened today and will run in the next three days. By acting just like an ordinary journalist, I get to ask questions and know more about these most magnificent and fascinating of creatures. For a long time now, I have secretly nourished this love for horses.

An important piece of women's writing in Indonesia

The book first revealed itself to me in the midst of a conversation at ISAI (Institute for the Studies on the Free Flow of Information). It was lying on the table, in the midst of all the other books in a room full of books--shelves after shelves of them behind us as we talked--and so, I took shots of it, just as a matter of course. The conversation was hard and heavy, Yan Naing's questions about radio broadcasting in Jakarta were heavy ones, I had a hard time grappling with radio frequency terminology; and so were Ryan's questions, freight with the weight of the Bangsamoro identity, but I found myself scribbling on my notes, "Who was Sudjojono dan Aku?" The answer suddenly came three days later, when Indonesian political activist Pak Tedjabayu Sudjojono suddenly showed us another version of the same book, telling us the writer was his mother; and Sudjojono was his father, the renowned Indonesian artist who was not content with painting beautiful scenes in Indonesia, he painted scenes depicting the Indonesian people's struggle. The book's title actually meant, Sudjojono and me, referring to Sudjojono, the artist, who left her. But the son, it seemed, had forgiven him. "Despite the fact that he left my mother, he was still a good artist for his people," Pak Tedja said. His mother, I perceived from our conversation, was also an equally, perhaps, even more than an extraordinary woman. I sense that what she had written here, and in that other book, "From camp to camp," depicting her life as a political detainee in Soeharto's Indonesia, should be an important piece of women's writing in Indonesia. I would like to read it one day and right now, it is still available in Bahasa. [I was also surprised to know that this very extraordinary woman, whom Pak Tedja said oftentimes think in Dutch, actually translated Dr. Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo in Bahasa when he was still a 12-year-old child.] Pak Tedja read its English version at 15.

Departures and Arrivals

Sleepless in Jakarta

But this was four or five nights ago, already too long and far behind me now, I'm already back in Davao, survived the sudden onset of malady and weakness that sent me in panic while I was on transit, have taken a long rest and have at least finished my story, which I just sent to Seapa, and am now preparing myself to go back to my normal routine, going back to the office, checking my emails, etc.

Dreaming of eggs sunny side up

Craving for the tastes of home, I went to the nearest McDo, don't blame me, where else will I go? At least, they have eggs, in their most basic form; though they only serve them scrambled, with salt in sachets. I love them sunny side up, you know that, with the yellow already a bit cooked but not too cooked as to lose their lovely orangey color; but still, I don't mind the scrambled ones for a while, with the Teh Tarik, so hot and glorious! It's election day in Indonesia, so, that must be why most tables are taken, they've lots of polling places in the Thamrin area, one or two of them only one or two blocks away. I took my tray upstairs and headed straight to the veranda, where smokers lounged, bodies reclining, a foot or two on a chair, naked knees and tattered jeans at the table, puffing cigarettes, sipping coffee, giving the whole place a leisurely air. Even with the news of the storm approaching the Philippines (I hope it weakens), it's a hot Wednesday morning here! I can actually order eggs, cooked in any which way I like, back at the hotel, but they really charge in dollars. I'd rather stop whining and start writing.

Dawnbreak in Jakarta

Awake at 4:23 am, trying hard but simply unable to write, staying by my window, looking out to the lightening sky as BBC talks about the slow-moving storm approaching the Philippines, expected to bring about heavy rains in the central parts. Oh, never again, please. I hope Karl took note of what I've been warning him about; would stay away from his boarding house in case the water gets too high. If he won't, if he forgot, please tell him again. He will listen to you. Whisper to him, even as he sleeps. The dark sky turns so blue so fast. My lids feel very heavy. I promise I will be writing here the whole day. I'll stop running around, looking for stories, when the stories are only right in my body. I won't gorge myself with too much information I can't digest. I look forward to the whole day of writing, locked up inside this room, moping, calculating. I can hear the calls for prayer from some distant mosque.

View from an Office Window

Patterns on the Wall

The old house used to be full of patterns: repeated lines and shadows that the sun paints in the morning on the wooden walls facing the wooden jalousie windows; and later, in the afternoon, as it descends upon the coconut fronds in the backyard, and gets swallowed behind the mountainous horizon. The pattern reveals itself to me as I lie in bed in the morning of Christmas Eve, turning my gaze away from the disintegrating plywood on the ceiling and the embarrassingly misshapen state of some of the walls. Just then, I chance upon the curving patterns on the blue mosquito netting, as the sun casts its harsh morning rays upon the windowsill. I shake Karl and Sean awake. I wish Eve and AiAi would discover it and amuse themselves with it, even as we grapple with the reality of the disintegrating state of the old house, where we grew up and spent our childhood. I wanted them to discover the patterns on the walls, the illusion and magic that such moments create in our drab, very ordinary lives.

Prayer to the Father

Oh. If you only knew how I’ve been longing to go home to that place where people grew up in order to escape, perhaps, you might want to listen, even for just a split second, to my soul’s rumblings, before everything in this world could turn upside down. Why can’t you show any mercy? Why can’t you just show a sign—a sparkle in your mocking eye, a twitch of that wrinkled, old mouth, and I’d drop everything—the breaking news, the ratlife on Palosapis street, the daily press conferences, the days like this when we are running out of rice because I bought books from my rice budget, the lots of elbowing around with stupid, by-line hungry wannabes — and I’d follow you underneath the coconut groves, you no longer had to bother loading the tired back of that old, beloved horse of yours to carry basket loads of coconuts to the awaiting pugon. I would gladly take its place. I’d manually haul the huge baskets and carry them straight to the oven, where they’d be cooked into copra—if only to prove to you what I can do as a woman who wants to have a writing life of her own. What’s that incredulous look on your face? Think! Show mercy! Take, for instance, my expanding waistline—do you think they’re the pleasant remnants of leisure and happy life? They’re my unhappiness stored through the years, of serving the whims and caprices of machines and cold-hearted institutions; of being powerless and out of control; of having no money and no life of my own. Why can’t you just hear me above the mad hissing of coconut fronds, swaying to the breeze of a sunny Sunday morning? Why can’t you see the image of what I am trying to say? Why can’t you just say something?

A Room of Ones Own

I’m still trying to organize my very cluttered life so I know I won't be writing here for quite a very long time. I just realized, however, that after years of hankering after it, I finally found a room of my own, the sort that Virginia Woolf once said the women need to write fiction. This used to be the room I shared with Karl and Sean; until Karl chose to be independent two years ago and had been doing very well in it, so far; and Sean and I had frequented the part of the house that we shared with Ja, so, that the room had been left totally to itself, with all the things that are strictly mine and should be kept strictly away from Ja's reach. [Ja's order had always brought about total disorder and chaos to my mind, so he must have understood perfectly well why he had been barred from the room, although he still kept arranging things, which caused our friction, once in a while]. But it dawned on me these days that I have not been visiting the room quite as often as I wanted to. It had its twin windows and door directly facing a neighborhood mansion, two or three houses away; and in the mornings, I open this door very wide to enjoy the sudden burst of sunlight, the kind that is so magical for reading, and ideal for my failing eyesight. On lazy Saturdays and Sundays, I enjoy the sun and solitude of this room, with a book before me; and on harried weekdays, I pass this room with a pitcher, full of dripping water, to water my beloved herbs outside. I often stop and gaze at the mansion outside, and the mansion's windows would gaze back at me, with a look of sympathy (I guess) and commiseration over my inability to write (fiction). But the sun and the books are a luxury and a balm.