Sondang, Abandoned by Nation

Another jointly written article.

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Sondang, Abandoned by Nation
Yohanes Sulaiman & Phillip Turnbull | December 14, 2011

Sondang Hutagalung, who set himself on fire in front of the Presidential Palace a week ago and died of his burns on Saturday, was pictured in May 2011 rallying in Jakarta to commemorate the Trisakti University shootings of May 1998. (AFP Photo/Fanny Octavianus)

Days after the death of Sondang Hutagalung, the nation is seeking to answer the question of what drove the student human rights activist to commit an act of self-immolation in front of the Presidential Palace last week.

Most see it as a form of protest against the government and what might be called the social status quo in graft-ridden Indonesia. At the very least, we can say that the young man saw life as not worth living under such circumstances. Perhaps he also saw his act as a sacrifice to point out that the country was itself engaged in a slow-moving act of self-immolation.

Reactions to the tragedy have been mixed. While some praised Sondang’s action as heroic, some public figures criticized it as short-sighted and cowardly. Cabinet Secretary Dipo Alam, for instance, declared that “a young fighter is supposed to be brave in facing life,” and that it would have been much better to keep fighting under any circumstances.

Regardless of whether one agrees with the act as a valid form of protest, such a suicide signals a much deeper problem within society. Self-immolation is exceedingly uncommon and throughout the world is only seen in the most desperate times and situations. It is a reaction to the intolerable.

Consider previous acts of self-immolation. In 1963, a Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death in Saigon in a protest against the persecution of Buddhists by the authoritarian South Vietnamese government. While the act of self-immolation wasn’t the first in Vietnamese history, it resonated among a population in desperate times. Today many recall the event as the beginning of the end of Ngo Dinh Diem’s authoritarian regime.

More recently, the Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi committed an act of self-immolation that sparked the Arab Spring uprisings and the subsequent toppling of several dictators in succession. His action was also driven by desperation — as a young man, there was no opportunity in Tunisia. The authoritarian regime of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali had strangled the economic growth with its massive corruption and a dysfunctional justice system that provided no relief from social injustices.

Such acts of self-immolation occur due to feelings of utter helplessness in the face of uncaring governments. When people resort to this kind of public act of suicide, it is not because they do not have the will to fight, but because they see no other possible way to reform a dysfunctional government.

One can make a strong case that Sondang’s action differed from those of Duc and Bouazizi. The latter were living in authoritarian states, while Indonesia is a democracy. Yet it cannot be denied that the quality of Indonesia’s democracy is still low, bogged down by corruption and nepotism as well as an entrenched political elite that is resistant to reform.

The recent revelation of massive corruption among young civil servants is a case in point. When a junior employee is rich, a great many other people in his office are also guilty, because there’s no way a subordinate can gain such money without the acquiescence of superiors.

As Sondang’s death is discussed and analyzed there is a danger that various interests groups will try to hijack its meaning as a rallying point for their own purposes. Already former President Megawati Sukarnoputri is on record as saying Sondang’s act showed there was something wrong with how the country was being run. Is she condemning herself here or pointing the finger?

And according to presidential spokesman Daniel Sparingga, there were thousands of messages in Sondang’s death, and people should take from it what they need. But are we so self-absorbed that we need someone’s death to teach us a lesson?

The palace’s comment could likewise be interpreted as an attempt to diffuse the impact of this dramatic protest. For any protest to be successful it must have a clear cause and a clear voice, not a thousand voices and a thousand interpretations. To suggest that each one of us should take from Sondong’s death whatever message we need, for whatever purposes, suggests a supermarket approach, a pick-and-chose attitude, and would indicate that the tyranny of relativism is finding its way into the consciousness of Indonesians. And that is probably the case. Ask anyone involved in corruption and you will find that the act is “relative.” What’s right and truthful and ethical for one will be different for someone else. And justifiable because of that. This is a way of thinking that ultimately leads to national moral, economic, political and social suicide.

The image of Sondang haltingly making his way toward the palace gates aflame was a singularly potent image of isolation. A solitary death surrounded by a crowd. Solitary thoughts in an anguished mind. In itself that is a symbol of the breakdown of inter-dependency in Indonesia. Sondong died alone because he had been abandoned by his country. He died alone because he had been cast away from the body of his nation. And because he could find no reason for the suffering inflicted by that abandonment he took his own life.

Of course, there are other abandoned Indonesians, and Sondang’s solitary act may well serve as a symbol for them. By continuously showing by its actions that it has little sense of accountability to the people, the government has abandoned many citizens. And its tactics of divide and rule are summed up in the palace’s unfortunate statement that Sondong’s death can be interpreted in a thousand ways. It can’t. His death said only one thing: Indonesia is not taking care of itself as a nation. We are all in this together and Sondong clearly saw that the government refused to see it. The economy may be booming yet the nation is dying by its own hand.

 

trueblue

2:44pm Dec 15, 2011

Y&T
Something is missing in this piece. You have given us ample background information to understand this extreme form of of protest, but I fail to see that you have provided a better answer than the one thousand potential interpretations. I reject that there is an analogy with the self-immolation of Duc in South Vietnam in 1963. Indonesia today is not an authoritarian state of the ilk of South Vietnam facing a communist full on insurgency from the North. There is absolutely no comparison. With respect to the pic headlining this piece, once again I would advocate a different perspective. The shooting of four students on May 12, 1998, was just one of many incidents of students participating in the downfall of Suharto. That incident was not the seminal act that set in place the dominoes. The picture of Sodong with a red ? mark on his torso demonstrating, is obviously one of a young man with a political conscience. That however cannot lead us to a conclusion of an achievement. RIP.

Yohanes-Sulaiman

3:43pm Dec 15, 2011

First, I don't think that we are making the claim that self-immolation is some sort of achievement. You are right that the case of Duc is vastly different in term of background from Sondang. What we claim here is that this case reflects an utter desperation, that he believed that there would be no way to reform the country -- except through shock (I suspect he was heavily influenced by the Tunisian case that led to the outbreak of the Arab Spring).

All three cases basically showed the ultimate form of protest, that because the government is completely tone-deaf to the demands from people to reform, probably it is a good idea to shock the political discourse, to make people to start talking about reform, or getting aroused to fight the bureaucratic stonewalling.

padt

7:52am Dec 16, 2011

Trueblue, the point of the article was to suggest that Sondang's death indicated and was a protest, born of frustration, against 'the breakdown of inter-dependency in Indonesia'.
To complete one of the lines: "We are all in this (the business of living) together AND WE OWE EACH OTHER A TERRIBLE LOYALTY."
Such a thing cannot be said in present day Indonesia where the government, by its actions, shows little real and genuine concern for the people. The government shows little dependency or loyalty to the nation - to the people. It is too self-serving. The benefits of the economic boom are not being felt by the people who are most in need and who should most benefit from it because the government and allied agencies are corrupt. Any sense of inter-dependency and mutual repsonsibility and the building up of the common good is quickly being eroded by the venality and lack of political integrity by those who are abusinging their positions of power and influence. National suicide!