Silence on 1965 haunts Bali literary festival

A broad range of participants criticise ban on marking massacre anniversary.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo inspects a newly-built canal to prevent peatland fires in Pulang Pisau, east of Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan October 31, 2015. President Widodo this week cut short an official trip to the United States due to a haze crisis caused by raging peat fires in the Southeast Asian country. The fires, often deliberately set by plantation companies and smallholders, have been burning for weeks in the forests and carbon-rich peat lands of Sumatra and Kalimantan islands. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside

The paradox of Indonesia, the authoritarian-minded third largest democracy in the world, was writ large at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali, which concluded yesterday in an environment of uncertainty.

The banning of planned events related to the October 1965 anti-communist purges, in which about 500,000 people were killed, in one respect only drew attention to the subject, particularly in the international media.

The heavy-handed censorship also encouraged broader discussion of Indonesia’s free speech and human rights credentials, and of the leadership of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, elected 12 months ago.

“I have become more and more disillusioned with Jokowi lately,’’ prominent human rights lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis, who supported the President’s campaign, told the audience at a packed panel discussion on Jokowi’s first year. “I still think he is a good man with a good heart and he would like to do something for the people … but is he in command? Yes and no.’’

Jokowi’s first anniversary in the job coincided with savage forest fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra, caused by farmers burning off their land. With the death toll from the smoke haze hitting 19, the President cut short an official visit to Washington to return home. The photographs in TheJakarta Post told the story: on Wednesday he was shown with Barack Obama; on Friday, visiting a hospital in South Sumatra.

The Ubud controversy, meanwhile, intensified concerns that Jokowi would fail to deliver on campaign promises regarding human rights and freedom of speech. The execution of Bali Nine drug smugglers was cited as a low point of his tenure so far. “He is a wooden figure who we don’t have confidence in any more,’’ says Indonesian writer and photographer Rio Helmi.

The cancellations at South-East Asia’s largest literary gathering came about because organisers must obtain police permission for the more than 200 events over the five-day festival. Police officials told festival director Janet De­Neefe to call off three panel discussions on the 1965 massacres and also a planned screening of Joshua Oppenheimer’s film The Look of Silence, which explores the aftermath of the atrocities.

Melbourne-born DeNeefe, who established the festival as a “healing project” in the wake of the 2002 Bali bombings, says police threatened to intervene to shut down the sessions if she refused to co-operate, and also made it clear the entire event would be in jeopardy next year.

DeNeefe reluctantly agreed to the police demands, deciding it was more important the festival went ahead. But like writer after writer in the days that followed, she did not give in quietly, describing the censorship as a “cowardly” refusal to confront a dark moment in the nation’s past.

Indeed, the broadsides started from the very first session on Thursday morning, a keynote address by TheJakarta Post’s senior editor Endy Bayuni, who warned of the slippery slope of censorship.

“Once we allow or tolerate censorship, we will never see the end of it,’’ he warned.

“History shows … that once they get away with banning one event, let’s say a public discussion on a particular issue, they will ban the next one.’’

A second keynote address was delivered by Mpho Tutu, priest, author and daughter of Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. She reminded the large crowd — and any officials listening — that “forgiveness is the seed that nourishes the dove of peace ... without forgiveness peace cannot fly’’.

It was not only the 1965 killings, a historical event omitted from Indonesian school textbooks, that raised the censors’ ire. Late in the week there was the forced cancellation of a session on a controversial development project in Bali’s Benoa Bay, with police insisting the festival was registered as an arts and cultural event, not one “discussing politics’’.

This decision led to some criticism of the festival, with the Balinese musician and activist known as JRX writing on his Facebook page: “Unfortunately the organiser has no guts.’’

Overall the festival proceeded without incident. Indeed, the main challenge for police seemed to be controlling the traffic outside the venues, as audience numbers were strong. Police officers were clearly present in the audiences at some events featuring local writers, with local police chief Farman telling AAP the festival was “running without obstacles … and we are proud of the event’’.

He also explained his decision: “In Indonesia there are sensitive things, there are things that should not be discussed.’’

DeNeefe acknowledges the censorship had the perverse effect of increasing interest in the festival, a point amplified by an emphatic editorial in The Jakarta Post: “While we condemn the censors, we should also thank them, not only for reminding the world about the festival, but most importantly for reminding us that there are evil forces out there who will never be content with people enjoying their freedom of expression.’’

The banned sessions went ahead in symbolic fashion, with empty chairs and unused microphones draped in black cloth. But elsewhere, writers used their time on stage to condemn the intervention. “Indonesia, a place without history,’’ Nigerian-American novelist and photographer Teju Cole said to applause from the crowd at his first event.

He went on: “The fear shown by the authorities here about discussing 1965 is something we cannot co-operate with. We have to push back against the abolition of history.’’

Cole was one of more than 250 writers who signed a PEN International letter deploring the censorship. Other high-profile Ubud participants to put their names to the letter included Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon and his writer wife Ayelet Waldman, Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid and Australian writers Drusilla Modjeska, Graeme Simsion, Sofie Laguna and Anna Krien.

PEN International has said in a statement that literary festivals are among forums “where difficult conversations are meant to take place, and by preventing these conversations, local authorities have undermined freedom of ­expression and kept old wounds buried’’. It added, in what appears to be a criticism of the festival organisers, that the move “also weakens the central premise of the Ubud ­festival”.

However, not everyone agreed with the PEN position, with some letter writers to The Jakarta Post dismissing the complaints of Western “cappuccino sippers”. “Get over it,’’ wrote Malik Muafa of Jakarta. “What is the Western obsession with picking at Indonesia’s wounds?”

And while the censorship row dominated talk at the festival, the main ambition of the event, for local and international writers and other artists to meet and discuss their work, can be judged a success.

A highlight was a session featuring the elusive Vietnamese-born Australian writer Nam Le, who won several awards for his 2008 debut short story collection, The Boat, but has yet to publish a second book.

Le, who is known as a perfectionist and has in recent years been a professional poker player on the US circuit, offered a fascinating insight into his struggle with the creative process.

When asked to read from The Boat, he chose the opening story about a young man at a writers workshop in the US only, it seemed, so he could criticise its ­author.

“It is embarrassing to me to think that a person was writing that stuff — a writer writing about a writer, shockingly embarrassing, but there it is.’’

Le described the “weird tension” of writing fiction. “You are trying to be generous in your depiction of other people, other lives, and yet you are doing that with an incredible vanity.

“You can never shake the question, ‘What are people going to think about me?’ ’’