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Suharto’s Fall 55

funeral biers in marches and flying flags at half-mast. Finally, activists wrote essays
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that were tantamount to eulogies, mourning the passing of the magazine as if it were
a martyred leader.
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Daniel Dhakidae, a writer for Kompas , injected perhaps the most vivid language
of martyrdom into this discourse, calling the bans an “execution . . . a felony, the
murder of the right to speak, murder of the right to do business.” He condemned the
regime’s methods for seducing owners of banned publications “to sell their souls for
new permits.” Students urged the owners not to capitulate, and Dë TIK ’s and Tempo ’s
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refusal to compromise won them widespread recognition as heroes, inspiring songs
and poems, notably “The Ballad of Unchecked Arrogance” by Y. Soesilo—a somewhat
sardonic but ultimately upbeat tribute to Tempo .
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More broadly, a discourse of courage and principle evolved out of the court bat-
tles and prison sentences that protesters now faced. Young journalists in particular
were suddenly prepared to sacrifice their careers in order to, as Goenawan Mohamad
put it, “say ‘no’ to kissing the ass of Satan.” Students, a significant share of Tempo ’s
readership, embraced this discourse, summarized in the magazine’s manifesto Why
We are Filing Suit : “Freedom indeed carries expensive risks, but the choice is not
negotiable.”
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While casting Tempo as a murdered martyr was a key discursive element in the
resistance, more concrete was the stubborn perseverance of the renegade journalists’
association, AJI, in meeting, recruiting, and launching an underground press with its
newsletter Independen and, after Independen ’s ban, Suara Independen . Internet provid-
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ers made the online publication of Suara Independen and a half dozen other illicit news
bulletins possible through email lists such as Apakabar, reaching thousands of readers
and surprisingly difficult to censor. In mid-1996, police did arrest a university lecturer
for printing and xeroxing an emailed report, and the military assigned intelligence
agents “to search office by office, editor by editor” for the culpable internet-based
journalists. Nonetheless, this clandestine circulation continued, frustrating govern-
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ment intervention.
Former Tempo journalists also maintained resistance through above-ground pub-
lications. Without awaiting official clearance, in March 1996, one group launched
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a web publication named Tempo Interaktif , whose first edition broached the sensitive
subject of a privileged “national car” project run by Suharto’s son. Other Tempo
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alumni revived a defunct entertainment magazine, Detektif & Romantika ( D&R ), trans-
forming it into a hard-edged news weekly. Journalists blacklisted for their AJI affilia-

tion continued their careers by writing for D&R under pseudonyms. Although its chief
editor once insisted that “we did not design the magazine to oppose the government,”

the initials D&R came to stand not for Detektif & Romantika but rather for Demokrasi &
Reformasi —the catchwords of the anti-Suharto movement. Living up to its opposi-
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tion image, the magazine developed an increasingly adversarial stance yet escaped
government censure for nearly its entire run before Suharto’s fall.
Nongovernmental organizations—such as the Legal Aid Institute, the Indonesian
Forum for the Environment, and the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy—also
maintained their activist campaigns through this period. Though their programs had
clear political overtones, the state made few attempts to restrain them. One member
of the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy speculated that the regime’s toler-
ance reflected their minimal impact beyond Jakarta’s narrow political elite, amounting
to little more than “turbulence in a glass” that kept middle- and upper-class activists
occupied in harmless opposition activities.
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