Pramoedya speaks out about Buru Island (fwd)

["M.G.G. Pillai" <pillai@mgg.pc.my>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 05 Mar 2000 03:41:26
From: tapol@gn.apc.org
Reply-To: "Conference act.indonesia" <indonesia-act@igc.org>
To: Recipients of indonesia-act <indonesia-act@igc.org>
Subject: Pramoedya speaks out about Buru Island

From: TAPOL <tapol@gn.apc.org>
Subject: Pramoedya speaks out about Buru Island

Received from Joyo Indonesian News

Jakarta Post
March 05, 2000 
 
Pramoedya speaks out about Buru Island 

The Mute's Soliloquy; By Pramoedya Ananta Toer; Translated by Willem Samuels; 
Published by Hasta Mitra in cooperation with The Lontar Foundation, Jakarta, 
1999; 375 pages; Rp 150,000. 

JAKARTA (JP): It's August 1966, and somewhere in the Banda Sea the Adri XV is 
bound for the island of Buru. Eight hundred men, many severely malnourished, 
are stuffed into its cargo hold. 

One of them is Pramoedya Ananta Toer, already an acclaimed writer and 
destined to be Indonesia's finest. Having been imprisoned twice without trial 
and leaving behind a family with no means of support, he looks around and 
wonders in despair what would happen if his voice were taken from him. 

The years that follow make up the bulk of the recently published English 
translation of his memoirs, The Mute's Soliloquy. A collection of notes, 
letters and essays, all written on Buru island's penal colony, taken together 
they are a testament to Pramoedya's spirit and the suffering he and his 
countrymen endured. And they are proof, that, through it all, he retained his 
voice. 

His tale, one of capture, imprisonment and eventual release, is by itself a 
gripping one. Around and about it, however, the author weaves intensely 
personal threads, spiritual and political musings and passages of lyrical 
description in a way that belies his confession in the foreword that there is 
no "grand plan" to the book. 

The suspected communist sympathizers and ordinary criminals who landed on 
Buru had been told by New Order officials they were going to start a "new 
life". It was initially at least, a life of hard labor on empty stomachs. 
What little food they were given was supplemented by what they could forage 
and what they could eventually grow on the arid soil the island provided. 

When not stealing the fruits of their labor, the guards assigned to them 
regularly tortured and humiliated them. After a night of beating, Pramoedya 
describes the scene as the sun comes up. "The bodies of those men who could 
stand were wet with dew, but many more were unable to get up; they were 
either dead, unconscious, or had no strength left to stand. A sour smell of 
blood and human waste clung to the air." 

Amid this brutality, Pramoedya records a visit made by officials, writers and 
academics to the island who arrive for "dialogs" with selected prisoners, 
which would be absurd if it were not so serious. 

The questions asked and the statements made sound today how they must have 
when Pramoedya was called in from the fields to sit through them: Banal, 
sneaky when referring to the authors alleged involvement in the 1965 abortive 
communist coup and, often times, startlingly thoughtless. It climaxes with a 
letter from Soeharto, delivered by a military official who first tells 
Pramoedya how honored he should be to receive it. 

"The president is constantly busy with the job of governing the nation, yet 
he still takes the time to write a letter to you," the author remembers. 

The second section of the book, Fragments of My Life, focuses on the writer's 
early years, his memories of his parents and the years spent as a struggling 
writer leading up to his imprisonment. It was a small-town childhood in the 
Javanese town of Blora, and one inseparable from the backdrop of the 
independence struggle against the Dutch and their sudden replacement by the 
Japanese. His father is remembered as a distant figure whose involvement in 
politics was total. 

Pramoedya vowed to be a better father than his own as a consequence, 
something that makes reading the letters he wrote to his children, but knew 
the prison authorities would not allow him to send, a poignant experience. 
They contain fatherly advice ranging from the commonplace, advice on career 
options and marriage, to the spiritual, warnings of the dangers of spending 
too long listening to hell-fire religious preachers and tips on meditation. 
The notes that make up The Mute's Soliloquy were written quickly under what 
the writer calls adverse conditions. He was eventually allowed to write, 
though much of what he produced, which in the Indonesian edition stretches to 
two volumes, was destroyed, either by the authorities or by the author 
himself. That the book is assembled into such a satisfying whole is thanks to 
a professional editing job. Its readability is also helped bya fine 
translation, with no footnotes clogging up the page or glossary that demands 
constant reference. It is pleasantly free of the "by academics for academics" 
feel that other translations of Indonesian literature are burdened with. 

The book ends with an incomplete list, stretching to 17 pages, of some of the 
men, women and children who died on Buru, complete with their manner of death 
and last-known addresses. It is a lasting and damning indictment of the 
abuses committed by those in power in the early days of the New Order. Until 
some form of truth and reconciliation committee is set up, it goes part of 
the way to fulfilling Pramoedya's wish that they become engraved in the 
national memory. 

The book, which was published last year in America to universal acclaim, is 
currently available in Indonesia. Those who are having trouble finding it, 
however, are advised that it is also obtainable direct from the Lontar 
Foundation. Tel: (021) 574-6880. 

 
 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign
111 Northwood Road, Thornton Heath,
Surrey CR7 8HW, UK
Phone: 0181 771-2904   Fax: 0181 653-0322
email: tapol@gn.apc.org
Internet: www.gn.apc.org/tapol
Campaigning to expose human rights violations in
Indonesia, East Timor, West Papua and Aceh

26 years - and still going strong 
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