DOMESTICATING IMPERIALISM: THE FASHIONING OF POLITICAL IDENTITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

Extract

Upon arriving at Denpasar airport in June 2000, I was greeted by an Australian friend who had recently married a Balinese man. The latter, within moments of our meeting for the first time, challenged me about my having been a UN accredited observer of the independence plebiscite in East Timor some ten months earlier. His was an impassioned if, in my view, not terribly well informed view of the torturous relationship between the former Portuguese colony and the Jakarta-based Indonesian government. My interlocutor insisted that East Timor's future ought to have remained an entirely Indonesian matter and that foreign involvement simply demonstrated the determination of the international community to break up Indonesia. The discussion proceeded as we made our way across the airport car park, and became even more heated when I suggested that it was important not just to consider former President Habibie's motivations for offering a plebiscite but also the record of Suharto's government in laying the ground for an East Timorese departure. Perhaps rather tactlessly, I suggested to my new acquaintance that he reflect upon the dreadful human rights record of the Indonesian military in East Timor. If a response was what I was seeking, I certainly found one. Wayan flashed back at me that he knew with certainty tales of human rights abuses were a lie concocted by hostile countries because the East Timorese had made clear their wish to remain part of Indonesia. Upon further pressing, he argued that the fact East Timorese school children sang the same songs as children from all over the archipelago was evidence of their love for Indonesia and their desire to remain integrated. I was somewhat nonplussed with this turn in discussion and rather unsure as to how to proceed. Could he, I wondered, really believe something that seemed so palpably absurd?