Threats Drive Books Underground

Threats by a nationalist and Islamic alliance to stage vigilante raids and book-burnings have prompted bookstores across the country to pull dozens of leftist titles from their shelves.

In the central Java city of Yogyakarta, police have even staged a precautionary sweep and taken books into “protective custody” to prevent raids threatened by a group that calls itself the Anti-Communist Alliance.

“We took preemptive action with the intention of preventing them from carrying out book raids, because if they did it would become anarchy,” Yogyakarta Police Chief Saleh Saaf said Friday. “They would burn the books.”

In a country where free speech has been permitted only since the Suharto dictatorship ended three years ago, bookstores have been quick to cave in to the threats. Some shops pulled controversial volumes from their shelves merely upon hearing that other stores had been threatened.

Violence can be quick to flare up in Indonesia, and police seldom act to stop it. In recent months, Islamic fundamentalist groups have staged raids on bars and nightclubs and assaulted guests to protest the serving of alcohol, which contradicts strict Muslim practice.

The Anti-Communist Alliance is a new coalition of Islamic fundamentalists, Suharto allies and Indonesian nationalists who opposed the secession of East Timor from Indonesia in 1999.

One alliance leader is militia chief Eurico Guterres, who is accused of responsibility for massacres in East Timor and is under house arrest in Jakarta after being convicted on a weapons charge.

The goal of the Anti-Communist Alliance appears to be to push radical Islam and Indonesian nationalism while undermining the already unstable government of President Abdurrahman Wahid, a moderate Muslim cleric.

By ostensibly attacking communism, the Alliance has picked a target that few people support. The Communists have had little organized political presence in Indonesia since the mid-1960s, when Suharto slaughtered an estimated 500,000 people under the guise of stamping out a Communist rebellion.

The Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission charges that the alliance has powerful backing and aims to wipe out progressive, democratically oriented organizations in the guise of fighting communism.

The rights group contends that the Anti-Communist Alliance is backed, if not organized by, elements of the military and supporters of Suharto. The alliance also has threatened to destroy offices of several activist organizations, the group said.

“Indonesia’s new democracy is facing its greatest threat to date,” the commission said in a statement issued May 6. “Organizations that are being targeted include progressive trade unions, political parties, nongovernmental organizations and student movements.”

Among the stores, a main target appears to be Gramedia, the country’s largest bookstore chain, with 42 outlets. Included in the 20 or so titles it pulled from its shelves were all works by prominent Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer.

Pramoedya, who said he has never been a Communist, is familiar with censorship: All his books were banned during the Suharto era and have only recently become available in Indonesia. He was imprisoned by Suharto for 14 years and then kept under house arrest for more than a decade.

Pramoedya, now 76, says that the methods used by the Anti-Communist Alliance are similar to those of the Suharto era.

“In 1965, all my papers were burned, including my childhood pictures,” he said. “At that time, the army did the burning. All of my belongings were confiscated, and even now they have not been returned. It was a robbery of someone’s life.”

Richard Oh, the owner of QB World Books, said that his store received no direct threats but that his workers removed controversial volumes anyway for fear of an attack. In the last few days, they have quietly put them back on the shelves.

“This movement is basically driven by illiterate people,” Oh said. “As a bookseller, I think we are defenseless. Who else is going to protect you but your government? But the government is not strong enough to stand up and fight.”

Among titles that stores have removed are “Karl Marx’s Thoughts;” “Socialism, Indonesian Style;” “Shadow of PKI” (the Indonesian Communist Party); and “Lenin, His Thoughts, Actions and Words.”

Pramoedya, who remains largely unread in his native land, is less concerned about his books being taken off the shelves than he is about his country’s constant turmoil.

“I was raised and educated about an Indonesia that would someday be democratic and modern and independent,” he said. “But let alone modern, it’s becoming more primitive. Every problem is solved by gunshots. Democracy is not working yet.”

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Sari Sudarsono of The Times’ Jakarta bureau contributed to this report.