More than two months after the 26th December 2004 disaster, adding more words to the tsunami and its 200 000 dead in Southeast Asia could seem pathetic, as the subject has given rise to a plethora of writing and photos. We know now that an unrivalled solidarity has resulted in promises of aid of 8 to 9 billion dollars to the affected regions, from Thailand to Somalia. Some NGO heads claim that the tsunami may have changed the way people think, particularly in Europe. Would it have brought changes also elsewhere?
For researchers posted in Asia, the last few months have enabled a vast number of observations on the reactions of those societies affected, both near and far, by the disaster, in their lives sometimes, but also in their perception of the world, death, life, God or nothingness. Be it in India, Thailand, Africa or Indonesia, the families have experienced a similar tragedy, but each society has lived through the ordeal differently.
For Indonesia, this tragedy happened in a period of great questioning, six years after the fall of Suharto and the protracted economic crisis that accompanied it, followed by democratic reform and decentralization with consequences even more uncertain. Indonesia held its first democratic elections, in July then in October, since the establishment of the new political system. The presidential elections saw Megawati, Soekarno’s daughter and the standard-bearer of democratic change since the beginning of the 1990s, ousted in favour of a « democratic » general, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. In December, Indonesia was therefore rather confident, closely watching the first steps of its new idol Susilo, also called SBY, whose supporters had ignored the candidates of well-established political parties with a surprising audacity. The press, impatient to finally see the « real reformer» at work, had given Susilo hundred days to prove that the people (rakyat, the banner adopted by its coalition, kerakyatan) had been right to place confidence in him. On 26th December, these hundred days had not yet passed.
During this difficult time, the almost exuberant confidence of the general population (rakyat) had curiously cohabited with an increasing fear within the highest echelons of power. On 16 December, President Susilo invited 70 persons for four-hour long special prayers at the palace mosque, under the direction of a renowned Imam of Arab origin, Abdul Rachman Al-Habsyi. Divine protection had been requested. Some of his collaborators were suggesting that Susilo was suffering from troubled nights. Ever since he had moved into the palace in October, bad omens had multiplied: a Lion Air aircraft had crashed at the end October in Solo (23 dead), the President’s car and convoy had caused six deaths and tens of injured people by blocking the traffic on the highway, two military helicopters had crashed (19 dead) and an earthquake had seriously shaken Papua New Guinea.
In an Indonesia tracing an identity for herself after 32 years of the Suharto regime, where the religious and political factors have been inextricably linked since the 1990s, the tsunami could hardly be perceived as a natural disaster. Minds were troubled well beyond the devastated lands, and intellectuals on all sides questioned themselves in the press and Internet: what message did God (Tuhan, Allah) want to send us with this tsunami sweeping through Aceh, the « veranda of Mecca» (serambi Mekka), one of the oldest lands to be islamized, this Sultanate which was most tenacious in resisting the Dutch colonizer, ancient starting point of the pilgrims towards the Arabian peninsula?
From the big Banda Aceh mosque, in a sermon that he gave one Friday in January, the Secretary General of the Board of Ulama, Din Syamsuddin, declared: « Maybe this disaster happened because we have forgotten Allah and his teachings and we have failed to apply Islamic Law (charia) ». Din Syamsuddin’s « maybe» became a peremptory assertion at the Board of the Mujahiddins of Indonesia, directed by Abu Bakar Ba’asyir (still in prison), whose spokesperson declared that it was sin (kemaksiatan, vice) that was the source of all disasters, « the frightening sin rampant in the country, like the refusal to apply the sharia in the government, that leads to generalized corruption, murders, rapes, drug consumption, prostitution, gambling, alcohol consumption, apostasy, terrorism and anarchy». Aceh, however, had just passed laws still unique in Indonesia: the qanun voted by the local parliament of Aceh in 2002 in favour of regional autonomy makes compulsory that men perform the Friday prayer in the mosque and that women wear the veil. These extreme opinions on the sins committed by the people of Aceh and Indonesia generally remained a minority one; they in fact startled quite a lot of intellectuals who in return appealed for reason.
A young liberal Muslim intellectual come to present me his latest book had fun guessing the interpretations that people would continue to give of the event: is the tsunami due to bad implementation of the sharia or else, quite the reverse, due to this very decision of applying the sharia there? The audacity of his own question, asked in a half amused tone, had frightened him a little.
The idea of a punishment for lack of devotion was less commonly held than the one I heard on the evening of 31st December in Javanese at an old dalang’s place [puppeteer] in Yogyakarta. The puppet Semar, half-man half-god in the Javanese shadow theatre, an old wise man looking like a clown, proclaimed that night that the people of Aceh had been punished for some other mistake: They had for too long put off listening to the voice of reason – the need for the unity of the country -- and persisted in separatism. With the deep voice of a wise man, Semar explained, on the white screen lit in the night, that Megawati had sent her troops, then Susilo, but as nothing came of it,, God had lost patience.
In the plane that took me to Yogyakarta, a Sumatran Muslim businessman, an educated and particularly dynamic Batak man of about fifty years, told me that, according to the dailies, a giant python had come out of the waters just in time to save a woman and her child. God exists « maybe after all»: he slipped in, hesitating a little before making such facile proclamations -- but not so shocking in a country where the supernatural belongs to everyday speech. It was above all the grand mosque’s resisting the tidal wave that reassured the believers, who were hardly inclined to listen to the rational explanations of architects who pointed to the big open arches specific to these constructions that made all the difference.
Haidar Bagir, a very influential Muslim intellectual, head of the biggest Islamic publishing house, Mizan, proposed an explanation for the tsunami in the biggest daily Kompas in the form of a syllogism: 1. God exists 2. God is good. 3. God is all-powerful 4. God is therefore omniscient 5. The world is filled with wickedness and evil. The new magazine Syir’ah, close to liberal Islam, published the answer of a young ulama of a rather moderate reputation, Saïd Agil Siraj, according to whom the tsunami was undoubtedly Allah’s will, but it was not for us to judge if it had been a good or a bad thing.
The question of God’s responsibility and man’s sin will probably continue to cause a lot of ink to flow. Can the debate strengthen the weight of the conservatives who are trying to include more and more elements of Islamic law in the positive law elsewhere in Indonesia? Would the Islamic militia whom we have seen at work during the Ramadan months, breaking into a few cafés and billiard halls in the evenings in Jakarta, find a message of divine encouragement in it? What is certain is that the Board of the ulama has proved to be an unmatched authority until now, opposing incineration of the bodies against the opinion of ex-President Wahid, a man still venerated as a living saint (wali hidup) in the EastJava countryside.
Every Indonesian was glued to the television for months. In less than a week, the television channel Metro TV had hooked a huge audience by broadcasting its shock-pictures and by trying to bring the families together: the ever dramatic reunions were relayed live. Reunions, tears, prayers, songs composed for the victims and no censure for the children. In front of her parents after strong pictures, a young four-year neighbour locked the TV room and kept the key in her pocket, accusing her parents of sin (dosa) for looking too much at human suffering.
But Indonesia has also rediscovered Aceh, this most northern province of Sumatra, closer to Malaysia than Jakarta, a region hardly known by 220 millions Indonesians, except the army (the negotiations with the GAM, the secessionist movement, resumed after the tsunami). A big movement of solidarity emerged, young volunteers left from Java for Sumatra -- by car, by lorry -- with provisions, traversing more than 2000 km of difficult roads.
The provisions collected started to putrefy during the first week until the arrival – rather quick − of the American helicopters (then French) which brought smiles, tears of gratitude and images of old women of Aceh in the arms of the soldiers but which was already giving rise to signs of a renewed xenophobia, latent since the loss of East Timor in 1999, fuelled by the fear of « Christianization » since the 1920s. Suspicion quickly emerged, something unthinkable for most of the 2000 foreigners there. The arrival of some American protestant missionaries, especially those from Wordhelp announcing with candour a takeover project of 300 orphans (later abandoned), could only promote the paranoia that has nourished the Islamist press since 1998.
The tsunami has thus become a theme of philosophical and religious debate particularly disturbing as new players -- some of whom unknown hardly five years ago -- partly and silently replaced the old religious authorities. An old ulama of 80 years who lived in the farthest depths of East Java, one of the oldest students of the famous Coranic school of Tebuireng, having become a friend during the last fifteen years, told me by mobile: « It is certain that God wanted to tell us something, but we don’t know what. Those who affirm knowledge substitute themselves to God, in some way, since they speak in his name. It has in fact become their speciality ».
Islamism, one must say, concerns a minority that is not representative of Indonesian public opinion. Another question that thus worries more and more Indonesians and the foreigners put together is the fate of national and international help that floods into the province, partly directly into the office of the Vice-Governor. The Governor in title, A. Puteh, was examined (and found guilty) for corruption, one of the « actions of hundred days» of the reformer President. The administration was decimated by the tsunami. Hence the question of whether those who remain will be able to face such an exceptional situation and comply with the demand for transparency that comes, now also from foreign donors. |
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30/12/14
from 01/04/12 to 31/03/13
