Page 71 - SCANDAL AND DEMOCRACY

56 Chapter 3

Simultaneously, the media’s contribution to the reform movement was weakened
by the regime’s repression, which split their community in the wake of the bans.
Above-ground, mainstream news outlets complied with Suharto’s dictates, muting
their criticism and miming the regime’s rhetoric. In the expanding underground
media, however, resistance deepened, spreading a spirit of defiance adopted by stu-
dent demonstrators, and ultimately many mainstream journalists, just three years
later.
These underground networks formed through efforts by Goenawan Mohamad to
“channel money” from sympathetic funders and “spread the struggle,” thereby gener-
ating projects that both employed blacklisted journalists and united them with other
activists. Out of this convergence came the Institute for the Studies on Free Flow of
Information in early 1995. Inside a few unassuming buildings behind a small café
in South Jakarta grew a community, known as Komunitas Utan Kayu, that served as
cover for the institute’s operations. Mohamad set up an artists’ gallery next to the café
and eventually a small theater behind, all part of the ‘“subterfuge” that obscured this
group’s main activity: the digital dissemination of information blocked by the regime.
In back rooms, from a server secured via encryption funded by the Asia Foundation,
the Utan Kayu community distributed online newsletters, strengthening opposition
networks at home and abroad. Behind the café’s modest facade there was, moreover,
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a latter-day salon that strengthened the intellectual core of the opposition movement.
At the café’s tables, journalists and activists met in clouds of clove cigarette smoke for
conversation and debate.
From a realpolitik perspective, the underground news bulletins, D&R ’s provoca-
tive reporting, and even AJI’s ongoing defiance arguably were just so much “turbu-
lence in a glass” and would have remained so had it not been for the 1997 economic
crisis. Yet apart from increasing the flow of information, these activities also strength-
ened inter-activist connections, knitting together a wider movement as media reform-
ers collaborated with emerging nongovernmental organizations. Together, these
groups supported presidential candidates to replace Suharto, organizing “free speech
forums” specifically for the exercise of pro-opposition speech. They also served key
rhetorical functions that kept the community united and focused, modeling continued
resistance in the face of defeats and intimidation. Finally, though few in number and
operating deep underground, these activists repeatedly performed the courage that
others—journalists and nonjournalists alike—sought in themselves. “It’s very sym-
bolic just to say that we will never succumb,” explained Goenawan Mohamad, adding,
“Courage, like fear, is contagious.”
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It is impossible to know how far such contagion in Indonesia would have spread
without the 1997 economic crisis. It was decidedly slow in reaching the majority of
media professionals, even on the eve of Suharto’s fall. But there is little question that
courage did sweep through the nation’s universities in the mid-1990s as students took
the lead in the reform movement. The economic crisis may have emboldened them,
but their courage was also influenced by Tempo ’s earlier fight against the regime’s
media bans and the rhetoric of political martyrdom this struggle inspired.

Consequences of a Stifled Press
For nearly four years, 1994 to 1997, a confluence of factors—fear of another crack-

down, crony ownership of media outlets, and government control over the only legal
journalists’ association—stifled editorial criticism and discouraged reporting on the