ASSIGNMENT: INDONESIA

December 29, 1999
		Indira Lakshmanan, Asia Bureau Chief for the Boston Globe, talks with Terence Smith about Indonesia.

Online NewsHour Special Report: Indonesia Nov. 12, 1999: An update on dissention in the Indonesian island of Aceh Nov. 12, 1999: Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid visits Washington. Oct. 21, 1999: A profile of Megawati Sukarnoputri Oct. 20, 1999: A discussion on the Indonesian elections. Oct. 20, 1999: Wahid selected as Indonesia's president July 8, 1999: A discussion on Indonesia's election process. June 2, 1998: Indonesia attempts to form a democratic government. May 22, 1998: A discussion on changes in the Indonesian government. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Asia.     U.S. Embassy in Jakarta Indonesian Department of Foreign Affairs	TERENCE SMITH: And tonight that correspondent is Indira Lakshmanan. She's the Asia bureau chief for the Boston Globe. Welcome. INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Thank you. TERENCE SMITH: It's been a tumultuous year in Indonesia, the huge, complex country. Where do things stand now?
	Rebuilding Indonesia: A huge challenge
	INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Well, as you say, I mean, it's not just the year but the last 18 months to two years that have been incredible in Indonesia in terms of change, first from the fall of the rupiah to the fall of Suharto to the construction this year essentially of a democracy. At this point Indonesia can fairly call itself the world's third largest democracy after India and the United States. And that's a huge shift after 32 years of essentially a dictatorship. Indonesia is now at a point where it has to -- its currency has stabilized, but it's not down to the levels that it was before the economic -- Asian economic crisis in the end of '97, beginning of '98, so it needs to take care of its economy. And I think there's a lot of rebuilding that needs to go on in Indonesia, not just from an economic point of view but also from the point of view of trust and national reconciliation, and really people's ability to trust their leaders, and this newly elected leader, Abdurrahman Wahid, is really going to be the pivot, the key to all of this -- the ability to bring people together in Indonesia, the ability to get them to trust him. He certainly is not an economist, but if we look at, you know, the coup that he assembled around himself and his ability to solve the larger problems that Indonesia is facing in terms of ethic, religious, separatist violence, I mean, I think the real challenges lie ahead of Indonesia. TERENCE SMITH: The challenge is huge. And here is a gentleman who, I understand, is very respected, but he is infirm, he is legally blind. Is he up to the job? INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Well, it's hard to say. I interviewed Abdurrahman Wahid or Gus Dur, as he's better known, which means Brother Dur -- the week of the elections in Indonesia this year. And he's a very unusual man. He's the head of what is Indonesia's largest Muslim organization and, in fact, the world's largest religious Muslim organization. And he's never held political office before. He's really been known as a peacemaker, something of an eccentric, a man whose banner and rallying cry has always been religious togetherness, even though he's a very devout Muslim and a cleric himself. He's always supported harmony between religions, and that's a really positive point. When I interviewed him, I found him to be -- I have to use the word a little bit eccentric. But, on the other hand, in a way, if he is cheerful, and if he is someone who's taking an unusual approach to politics, that's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as he's able to bring people together. So a lot of Indonesians, I think, have looked to him as something of a figurehead and, again, a peacemaker, someone who can bring people together.
	Ethnic and religious strife throughout islands
	TERENCE SMITH: Well, he certainly has a challenge, because the religious and separatist violence goes on literally from one end of that huge country to another. INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: That's right. A lot of people don't realize that Indonesia is actually an archipelago of some 13,000 islands that stretch for several thousand miles. And there are hundreds of ethnic and religious groups in Indonesia. And to travel from one island to another, it's like traveling from one country to another. It's absolutely fascinating, but it also creates a lot of problems that in all these three decades under General Suharto, the former leader, were really kept under by a basically a forced ethnic and religious harmony. It wasn't real. And when the economic crisis sort of stripped that bare, people had all sorts of problems suddenly with the pocketbook, and they weren't willing to sort of let ethnic and religious tensions lie. And now they've brought them to the surface in many parts of the archipelago. TERENCE SMITH: Given all that, can it hold together? INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Well, a lot of people have talked about the balkanization of Indonesia. I myself wrote a story early this year asking the question about whether Indonesia's going to be the next Yugoslavia. And, you know, if you think about it, it's 100 times bigger in population than Yugoslavia. TERENCE SMITH: Two hundred and ten million people, something like that. INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: That's right, 210 million people. And it would be just an unbelievable bloody mess if that were to happen. I don't think that's what people in Indonesia for the most part want. They don't want to see their country splinter apart. We already saw a piece of that happen this year with independence for East Timor, but there are several other provinces now that have had problems, either ethnic problems or resource-related problems, that have made them want to break off. We have Aceh, Irian Jaya, various parts of Indonesia which are really clamoring for their own breakaway -- I don't want to say "breakaway republics," but that's been in a way the touch word for this year throughout the world. But it's a real problem that he's going to have to deal with.
	Explaining Indonesia through others' eyes
	TERENCE SMITH: How do you explain -- as a U.S. journalist -- how do you explain a country as diverse and distant as this to an American audience that is not very familiar with it? INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Well, I think that's the challenge. And one of the greatest things about covering Indonesia is that it's so colorful, and, you know, it provides opportunity for so many anecdotes. And again, because each religious and ethnic group is different, each place is different, there are so many stories to be told. Personally for me, I cover all of Asia, and I think Jakarta is probably my favorite city in all of Asia. It's really pulsating, it's alive, it's edgy, it's happening. It's a place that you really feel is still becoming what it wants to be, and that's really interesting. So I think what I tend to do is I find individual people or trends and I pick up on those and try to make them come alive for my readers. TERENCE SMITH: In fact, you did that when you told the story of East Timor through the experience of a 21-year-old college student. INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Yes. TERENCE SMITH: Tell us just a little about him and his experience. INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: He's a fascinating young man and someone who I will never forget. His name is Jose Gutierrez. He's a young man whom I met in East Timor when I was camped out in a convent after all the -- after all the problems that had happened there after the referendum, many of us journalists went back in when troops went back in, the U.N.-sponsored troops went back in. Jose is a young man who I basically met on the street in front of the convent where I was camped out. And in a lot of ways, he was emblematic to me of the problems that the people of East Timor were going through in trying to reconstruct their lives. Jose had fled into the hills in a place called Dare, above Dili, and had hidden there, basically surviving on roots and berries and tree bark, you know, for a couple of weeks; had come back down to Dili once he heard that Australian-led U.N. troops were there, but had lost his entire family. And he was kind enough to let me accompany him basically through a week in his life, and watch what happened. He was camped out in a stadium that was being guarded by Australian troops. He had to be in every day at 5:00 p.m. And, you know, we went to his home, which had been literally burnt to the ground. And it was heartbreaking to arrive with him at that moment and to watch him look at his life, which literally was reduced to a charred mess. You know, his bed was gone, his books were gone. It was interesting to me that the one item that he was most concerned about was his dictionary. He had an English dictionary, and he couldn't find it anywhere. And he was desperate. He wanted me to send him one as soon as I got out to an English-speaking country. Much more important than that is, of course, that he had lost his family. And his mother, uncle, aunt and cousins had all been basically scooped up and forced to West Timor by militias. And we went through the whole process of going to the Red Cross together, registering them as missing persons, and trying to track them down. And that was an absolutely incredible story. And while I was with him, he was actually able to track his mother to a church in West Timor, where she was taking shelter. And I understand after I left East Timor that he got his mother back. He was able to arrange her transport back, and he found his brothers and sisters in Bacau. They had been hiding out at the bishop's house. So everything came together in the end, but they're literally going to have to rebuild their lives from scratch -- from, you know, rebuilding a home, rebuilding a livelihood for all of them. He has no ability to go back to college now because he was attending college on another Indonesian island. That's not possible anymore. TERENCE SMITH: It sounds as though in a way he's still emblematic of what East Timor has to go through to be rebuilt, even with international assistance. INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: That's exactly right. I mean, that's a challenge not just for East Timor, but for the international community. I mean, we've seen all sorts of international efforts from Haiti to Bosnia, you know, rebuilding efforts around the world, and we've seen the ways in which they've floundered. And I think that East Timor presents us really with an opportunity to finally do it right, to say, "Let's look at all of our mistakes, and how can we make it come together this time?" I'm not exactly sure if that's going to happen, but we can hope. I mean, with East Timor, they need $200 million, the estimates say, for immediate humanitarian aid, but another $300 million for sort of medium-term rebuilding. It was extraordinary to arrive in Dili on the day that the first Australian troops came back in; you know, the first of us journalists who came back in, because I had just been in Dili less than 10 days before, you know, when this whole rampage of violence had really come to a head. And when I came back, the city was literally burnt to the ground. There was almost nothing left. And it was quite heartbreaking to see what had become a ghost town. By the time I left, you know, there was more life; people were trying to start up markets, you know, selling whatever they could on the streets. But it went from being what was essentially a refugee camp along the beach with some 5,000 people camped on the beach, 60,000 people like Jose in the hills above the city -- no one living in their homes. And I mean that's such a graphic reminder of the complete destruction that took place and the rebuilding that needs to come now. TERENCE SMITH: And the rebuilding will go on. We'll keep reading. Indira, thanks very much. INDIRA LAKSHMANAN: Thanks for having me.