Papers (Part 1)

• Disengagement, Moderation and Resolution Among Radical Groups in Bima, Indonesia Muhammad Adlin Sila Religious Research and Development Agency, Ministry of Religious Affairs & State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah, Jakarta

  Studies on how members of radical extremist groups change their radical views on Islam and violence is still understudied. The significance of this study is therefore to provide a database of life stories of former members of radical extremist groups and how they changed their radical views and adopted peaceful ways. The agency’s efforts to deradicalize extremist cells remained effective until now. But, they were not optimal enough to ensure that former terrorists could return back to their groups and do not change their radical views. Through 12 months of ethnographic research (2018-2019), I found that patterns of assisting former members of radical groups to combat radical views on Islam and violence are diverse. The key point is to identify and understand why these people adopted radical views and joined the radical extremist group, and how to change their entire views on Islam and violence, as well as distance them again from extremist groups. Overall, this preliminary study asserts that some recruiters of radical extremist organizations have changed their entire views about Islam and violence to a more moderate interpretation. This study will help reformulate the government’s program on deradicalization by introducing a new way of combating radical extremism.

• From Gangsters to Social Workers? The Evolving Role of Preman Laurens Bakker University of Amsterdam

  Although Indonesia’s entry into the 21st century was marked by a number of preceding and following violent local conflicts, on the whole the country has been remarkably peaceful. ‘Remarkably’ given existing tensions among religious and ethnic groups as well as political and societal forces building on these. Among others these tensions resulted in the widespread formation of locally and grassroots based vigilante groups who, following the Pemuda Pancasila model, combined a potential for organized violence with a professed dedication to the provision of security and support to (elements of) the local population. These quickly – and often justly – drew criticism for criminal behavior and a disrespect for the law, but it also became clear that if they managed to generate and maintain societal support, they could be social forces to be reckoned with. Over time, many such groups disappeared again, yet others successfully established themselves as societal organizations who threaten violence in some circumstances yet provide assistance and aid in others. Both lines of actions have become structural, with groups establishing armed and trained ‘security wings’ as well as legal and social support divisions. While these allow for a diverse range of images to present to society at large, several essential issues stand out. First, most of these groups hardly collaborate with regular NGOs, even though their foci frequently and partly overlap in goals and methods. Second, more often than not, these groups emphatically continue to profess their capacity for violence but rather than making use of it, they seek to reach a peaceful agreement that is acceptable to parties. Third, in terms of appearance and public performance they are increasingly combining their established ‘militant’ repertoires with more general civilian and NGO-like modes of operation. While their visibility is crucial for publicity, its style has diversified with the methods applied.

  In this paper I look at the evolving modus operandi and performativity of these groups. Considering that the potential of violent societal conflict alone seems to be insufficient to warrant their continued existence, their role in peace-making and increasing social justice needs to be considered in the light of the three issues identified above. The paper will be based on extensive fieldwork with groups in North Sulawesi, East Kalimantan and – to a lesser extent – Jakarta.

• Love All Serve All: Teaching Human Rights to the Military Knut D. Asplund University of Oslo

  Fifteen years ago I had a meeting with two men in the café in the lobby of a 4-star Jakarta hotel. One of the men was a lieutenant colonel from the (this is where we tend to insert a somewhat derogative adjective of some kind like – “notorious”) Indonesian Army’s Special Forces Kopassus. The other was a human rights lawyer, a specialist in humanitarian law, or the law of armed conflict who had worked for the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross). They had come to know each other after the former had sabotaged the latter’s car during the still ongoing armed conflict in Aceh. This encounter was the beginning of a ten-year long project teaching humanitarian law and human rights to Indonesian military officers. Drawing on perspectives from political science, among it – peace and conflict studies; law; anthropology; even phenomenology – and not least, the testimonies of those suffering from the conflicts – how do you go about designing such a training programme? Could it be taken for granted that it would have a positive impact? Based on the work with the TNI, what could we assume about development in the past hotbeds of conflict around the country. Has there been any change in the way the TNI approaches them?

• Neutralizing Social Media and Non-Political Activism Ario Seto Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

  My paper details the struggle of an online community, Agus-Agus Bersaudara Indonesia (Agus Brotherhood Indonesia, AABI), to avoid political discussions among its members in their Facebook and Whatsapp groups in order maintain community stability while community leaders urge members to chat about philanthropy and charity activism. The struggle contrasts the practices at the dawn of online communication proliferation in Indonesia when netizen enlarged their activities to encompass online political expressions and activism. Exhausted by the current increasing tendency of online hate speech stemming from the 2014 and 2019 national election campaigns, AABI members agreed to ‘neutralize social media’ by censoring political conversations, jokes, and memes, in order to restore peaceful conversation and to maintain the online community as a non-political enclave.

  Such an endeavour is problematic across three levels. First, it denotes a bottom-up view among citizen that ‘politics’ and ‘peace’ occupy opposite poles. Peaceful online conversations and consequently peaceful communities, according to AABI members, could only emerge when members restrain their political opinions and ensurine a sanitized neutral space for heterogeneous members. Second, if communities are the element of public sphere, such self-censorship, then, signifies the withdrawal of the community from the latter and subsequently from the political sphere. Third, taken together, political avoidance indicates that Indonesian netizens face a problem that they could not solve: tolerance of political difference. In the age of the ‘the political’, such a non-political turn delivers a setback to civic capacity practices.

Papers (Part 2)

• Creative Resistance on Bali: A Thick Description of Zine Culture Sophie Anggawi Graduate Institute Geneva

  The tolak reklamasi movement has stirred the waters in and around Bali for some years now. Graffiti, Punk, performance art, workshops and many more artistic involvements have emerged around the contested reclamation project. This paper proposes a closer look at zine publishing on Bali, which lies at the intersection between the punk scene, NGO engagement, as well as young artists´ involvement on Bali.

  Self-publishing so called zines is a less well known form of creative protest which has materialized especially within the past years on Bali, but does not only focus on the reklamasi struggle. So far, it overlaps roughly with the punk scene of the island, known for its political involvement and engagement (see also Baulch 2007), but it is also closely tied to environmentally interested NGO work done by WALHI. Furthermore, young artists from around the island participate and contribute to the zines, using it as a platform to spread their art. This free form of self-publishing allows for different actors to get involved, publish and spread their work, thoughts, and discontent -- whether that is about social or political injustice or environmental degradation. Being a quite uninhibited medium, the zine allows for different contributions ranging from poetry, short stories, and street art photography to calls for actions or even movie analyses. Thus, the zine scene stretches far beyond the written word, and expands from paper to social media, from the online back into the offline world with exhibitions, workshops, festivals, and impromptu tattoo sessions. Zine publishing can thus provide inspiration for protest movements between the contemporary rush of social media and online presence, as well as the slower pace and longevity of the paper-printed medium.

  This paper will offer a thick description based on ethnographic fieldwork in 2018/2019 on Bali.

• Tradition as a Tool for Strengthening Social Inequalities: New Strategies and Spaces for Dialogue in Maluku, Indonesia Simona Sienkiewicz Jagiellonian University

  Many researchers mention Maluku – along with Kalimantan, Papua and East Timor – as one of the most bloody conflicts after the fall of Suharto. What made it particularly interesting was the way it ended. An interreligious, peaceful reconciliation in Maluku, based on the tradition of indigenous peoples, became an unique case in Indonesia. However, internal migrants from Sulawesi (BBM - Butonese, Bugis, Makassarese) and Java experienced exclusion from this process. Focusing on interreligious dialogue without creating a space for interethnic dialogue has led to social inequalities and further strengthening the position of indigenous peoples. A deep loyalty to local traditions has resulted in ignoring many symptoms of unequal treatment and injustice. Consequently, the internal migrants became dependent on the indigenous people for tradition, land ownership, leadership and economy.

  This presentation aims to identify the negative effects of exclusion of the internal migrants in the traditional societies of Ambon and West Seram. Favoring particular ethnic groups make the effects of the peace process, which has begun almost twenty years ago, less and less tangible. By presenting the point of view of BBM and Javanese, I would show how they perceive the unilateral support of the local government and why this is detrimental to the system developed during the reconciliation. I would identify other spaces and strategies for maintaining peaceful coexistence in Maluku, paying particular attention to religion and the visual aspects of local traditions.

• Youths in Post-Conflict Indonesia: The Emergence of Youth Peacebuilding Initiatives in Poso and Ambon Mohammad Zaki Arrobi Universitas Gajah Mada Muhammad Najib Azca Universitas Gajah Mada

  Youth has played a critical role both in provoking violence and promoting peace education in post-conflict eastern Indonesia, especially in Maluku and Poso. Large numbers of un(der)employed youth in urban areas of eastern Indonesia, such as Ambon and Poso, easily lead to the (new) eruption of collective violence, particularly in the post-conflict context. Yet local youth movements have also been playing a crucial role in promoting peace, such as the case of the “Peace Provocateur” movement in Ambon, Maluku and the “Rumah Katu” community in Poso, Central Sulawesi. This paper discusses these two local-based peace education initiatives pioneered by youth communities in the two cities of Ambon and Poso. “Peace provocateur” is a social movement emerged in Maluku since the September 2011 violence led by local religious community leaders from both Muslim and Christian groups. Twisting the term “provocateur,” which was previously commonly interpreted in a negative sense for causing conflict and violence, it promoted peace by conducting inter-group and peace activities provokingly in public areas, such as in the border zones of the religiously segregated city of Ambon. It also employed creative and cultural approaches such as using music, theatre, film, photography as a medium for promoting peace (Meinema, 2012). Meanwhile, in post-conflict Poso, a group of young people, mostly former combatants during the communal war, established a youth community named “Rumah Katu” to promote peace education. It has been actively organizing various forms of activities to enhance and accelerate peacebuilding at the local level, such as organizing the “Rumah Katu Festival” in 2016 to campaign for peace, ranging from music performance, traditional dance, photo exhibition, and film screening. Like “Peace provocateur” in Ambon, “Rumah Katu” has been dominated by young people who are actively promoting peace education initiatives in creative ways.

Abstract

Keywords

• Conflict
• Grassroots
• Indonesia
• Politics
• Social Movement