Visit to a volcano with side trip to democracy’s eruption

A holiday trip to Indonesia in 1998 was interrupted by widespread looting, burning and rioting that erupted in Jakarta and other cities after four student protesters were killed.

An demonstrator holds a huge Indonesian flag in fire and smoke to rally his colleagues during violent clashes in May 1998. Picture: AFP

“All hail the convocation of women”, proclaimed huge banners in Beijing, as the Chinese capital braced for the arrival of thousands of officials, politicians and journalists for a historic UN conference on women’s rights.

But the official at Sydney’s Chinese consulate had only one message for me. “Come back tomorrow!” she chanted as my partner and I turned up day after day, hoping our visas had been approved, only to be turned away. I already had official approval to cover the conference, but for others in the communist superpower’s opaque bureaucracy there was only one thing worse than a capitalist running dog – and that was a capitalist running dog who was a member of the free press.

Fast forward three years. It was 1998 and my partner (now husband) and I planned to go on holiday to newly trendy Vietnam. Vietnam was a communist country and we were still working journos so, anticipating visa hassles, we set out for Java, Indonesia’s most populous island, instead.

We knew Indonesia had been shaken by economic upheaval and student protests against the corrupt and authoritarian Suharto regime, but we’d been to Java several times before and felt we knew our way around. Still, when we landed at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta airport, we were perplexed to see so many grim-faced foreigners in the departure queues.

Were we the only tourists arriving in this vast, restive metropolis? Our destination was a remote volcano, Anak Krakatoa, in western Java. We decided to travel by bus and minibus amid the usual chaos of live chickens, on-board buskers and kretek smokers so we’d look less like well-off foreigners.

In western Java we stayed at a simple guesthouse rather than the ominously empty up-market resort across the road. No tourist boats were operating, so we negotiated with local fisherman to take us to Anak Krakatoa (child of Krakatoa), 45km from the Javanese coast.

When we arrived at the volcanic island, the fishermen pointed to signs stating it was unsafe for tourists to land and we all nodded sagely. Five minutes later we were deposited on said island – which was black and hot underfoot – and a beaming fisherman pointed to my disposable camera (remember those?). I was more worried about my trainers melting than documenting our probably illegal landing, so we didn’t stay long.

During the journey back to shore, the placid, tropical waters of the Sunda Strait turned choppy and our fishing boat started to take on water.

I clocked the fishermen’s furrowed brows as they used buckets to bail water from their flimsy vessel. I looked around for the non-existent life jackets and wondered why we hadn’t persevered and visited Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay in an airconditioned tourist boat.

We eventually made it back to the beach, where the tourist drought made us the sole target for local sellers.

I agreed to two women giving me a massage but drew the line when a third woman cried, “Bertiga missus!” – three at once. A young souvenir seller laden with suspiciously expensive (possibly looted) goods invited me to bargain with him. “I am not a supermarket missus!” he declared.

Four days after we left Sydney, we sat with stunned villagers at a local warung (restaurant) watching the communal television set. Garish Indonesian soaps had been replaced by news reports of widespread looting, burning and rioting that erupted in Jakarta and other cities after four student protesters were killed. These reports filled two bulletins.

We decided it was time to head for Jakarta’s airport and home. But 6km down the road we discovered the Suharto government had cancelled all intercity transport. We returned to our guesthouse, where the kind-hearted locals reassured us we were aman, or safe.

But were we? One afternoon, we returned from a swim to find an imposing iron gate had been pulled across the front entrance and driveway of the guesthouse. An Indonesian woman, Epi, and her Canadian boyfriend who were staying at our hotel had been attacked by a mob in a neighbouring village. The mob presumably was enraged that a local woman was dating a foreigner. “Saya takut (frightened),” Epi said.

A column of thick black smoke rose menacingly nearby – someone had set a petrol station alight. Security guards at the empty beachfront resort across the road armed themselves with large knives and batons while convoys of motorbikes overloaded with excitable young men roared up and down the road outside. From reception I rang the Australian embassy and, predictably, got a recorded message. That night I lay awake, consumed with dread.

In the end the rioting didn’t reach our quiet corner of western Java, although there were reports 1000 people had died in the Jakarta violence, including scores of looters and other victims trapped in shopping malls that were set alight. There were also horrific reports of women and girls from the persecuted Chinese-Indonesian minority being raped. Later, on a minibus, we sat alongside nervous Chinese-Indonesian girls being transported to family homes in the countryside, out of harm’s way.

Three days after the riots, we were on the road again. Our bus was diverted through Jakarta and I will never forget the appalled silence that came over our packed vehicle as we saw burnt-out Chinese shophouses, a shopping mall from which bodies reportedly were being removed, and soldiers sitting on tanks. Crude homemade “Milik pribumi” signs – signifying that a business was not owned by Chinese-Indonesians – sat cheek by jowl with firebombed businesses.

It was a wayang puppet maker who told us the astounding news that president Suharto – who had held an iron grip on power for 32 years – had resigned in the wake of the students protests and riots. Suddenly, everyone from becak (rickshaw) drivers to shopkeepers and students was venting about korupsi (corruption) and Suharto’s repressive New Order. Just weeks before, such open criticism would have been unthinkable.

Our sliding-doors travel decision could have turned out badly, but as we travelled around Java after the riots subsided we realised foreigners were not the target of Indonesians’ pent-up rage about political corruption, repression and an economy in free fall. It was deeply disturbing to see evidence of the scapegoating of the Chinese minority, some of whom were among Suharto’s business cronies. (I kept a diary of that trip that eventually would be published in the anthology The Last Days of President Suharto.)

Indonesians were glad to see the old dictator go but were anxious about their economic future. In Yogya, the usually buzzing, now deserted, cultural heart of Java, we again seemed to be the only Western tourists in town. We could not raise a smile from hotel worker Budi, with whom I had practised my stumbling Indonesian on paper napkins on a previous trip. He and many others in his tourist town – suddenly emptied of tourists – were worried sick about their livelihoods.

If you had told me then that we were seeing a revolution playing out at street level – one that would lead to lasting democracy in the world’s most populous Muslim country – I would not have believed you.

I am delighted to have been proved wrong. The fact Indonesian democracy, despite its partially ugly beginnings, endures 25 years on is one of the under-reported, good news stories of our time.