Revisiting the Past

Buru Island in Maluku was once one of the most isolated places in the world, a perfect spot for the New Order government to exile alleged subversives far from prying eyes. Janet Steele visits the island to see what remains of the past.

I didn’t expect Buru Island to be so beautiful.  Maybe it was the warnings from friends – “be careful, Buru is not open to foreigners” -- or the stories I’d heard from Amarzan Loebis, who had been detained there for eight years, and who became my friend when I was writing about the history of Tempo magazine. 

Maybe it was the work of Buru’s most famous former resident, writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, but before I went to Buru I had the impression the island would be a sinister place – dark, swampy and malarial.  The Lonely Planet guide to Indonesia didn’t help; it contained only a few paragraphs on Buru Island, all of which emphasized how difficult it was to get there.

From the air, Buru looks like paradise: clear blue-green water lapping at white sandy beaches, and a fringe of coconut palms.  As we approached the small landing strip at Namlea, I could see dusty-green mountains and the rugged outcroppings typical of karst formations.

 I tried to get my bearings, and wished I had printed out the one map I had found when I Googled “Buru Island”. Getting out of the plane, I noticed how dry the air was.  Like Southern California, I thought – perfect for the eucalyptus trees that produce the oil for which the island is famous. 

We arrived on Buru on August 17.  I was traveling with Surya newspaper editor Dhimam Abror and young Surabayan businessman Imam Sulaiman. 

It’s not clear just how welcome foreigners really are at Buru Island.  I had no problems entering Buru, but then we were the guests of Jalil Latuconsina, the adopted son of “Ibu Ratu” Nafsiah Wael, the widow of one of Buru’s eight traditional kings. 

When we alighted from the small military plane that Pak Jalil had chartered, my passport was inspected and its contents carefully noted.  All of this seemed quite normal to me, but Pak Jalil later said that he had been embarrassed by it, as I was his guest.  

The airstrip, which the Japanese used during World War II, is on the outskirts of Namlea.  There is only one airport on the island, which at 11,117 square kilometers is a little larger than Bali.  We didn’t pass another vehicle on the road into town.  In fact, there wasn’t much to be seen on either side of the road other than the small eucalyptus trees, which seem to grow like weeds.  

We stayed at the Hotel Grand Sarah, which was built to accommodate President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during his recent visit.  A small stylish hotel, it is by far the best on the island.

Independence Day on Buru Island
I was eager to get to the Units, the local name for what is left of the "Rehabilitation Installation" at Waeapo, but after lunch our first stop was the office of the local regent where the Independence Day parade was in full swing.  In a staging area off to the side, about 20 "Putri Indonesia” in bright pink lipstick posed for the camera.  A group of teenaged "Freedom Fighters" watched the girls, and jostled one another as they waited their turn to march past the red-and-white-draped viewing stand.

 Taking all this in, I had to keep reminding myself that we were on Buru Island, a place where approximately 12,000 political prisoners had been detained without trial.  There was nothing to suggest that this place had been the site of one of the greatest and most systematic human rights abuses in Indonesia’s history. 

One of the regent’s VIP guests was Military District Commander Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad Taufik, who had spent 10 years stationed in East Timor.  Although he was friendly enough, he also made a point of explaining why it was that Goenawan Mohamad, Amarzan Loebis, two Tempo writers and an Australian documentary filmmaker had been questioned by the police when they came to Buru Island last year.  There’s no point in constantly stirring up reminders of the past, he said. 

By the time the last of the Freedom Fighters had marched by, it was too late in the day to go to the Units at Waeapo.  Back in the car, I asked where we were going.  To the regent’s residence, my friends said, for a courtesy call.  This might be Buru, I thought, but it was clearly Javanese standards of etiquette that prevailed.

His residence is situated on a bluff overlooking the deep blue sea, with nothing but

white-capped waves and coconut palms as far as the eye can see.  The view reminded me of Bali's Nusa Dua – or of how Nusa Dua might have looked before anyone thought of building five-star resorts there. 

Regent Husnie Hentihu is a large jovial man, and he seemed interested in the possibility of developing tourism on Buru.  At his suggestion, we took a drive to Jikumerasa, a long stretch of sandy white beach, broken by an inlet where a freshwater lake empties out into the sea.  Small pieces of coral and cowry shells were scattered along the white sand, and the water looked calm and inviting – perfect for swimming. 

As we walked along the beach, I idly wondered what my three companions would do if I peeled off my clothes and dove in.

But swimming was not on the agenda.  Instead the plan was that we would return to the hotel, and get ready for the Independence Day program scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. at the residence. 

By the time we arrived at 9:30 p.m., the event was well under way.  As we searched for seats in the crowded pendopo, the MC was announcing the winners of the school competitions over an enormous loudspeaker system. Cameras flashed and music blared as the young singers, painters and poetry readers collected their huge golden trophies.

How could I possibly reconcile this homey event – which reminded me of my nephew’s junior high school band concert in which “everybody gets a prize” -- with what I thought I knew about Buru? 

When the program was over, we made our way to the car.  With only headlights to guide the way across the windy field, I wished I hadn’t left my flashlight in my luggage.  Trying not to trip, I looked up at the dark sky and quickly searched for the Southern Cross.  But the clouds had rolled in, and only a few stars were visible in the inky blackness.  We would go to the Units first thing tomorrow, my friends promised.

The Units at Waeapo
Waeapo is a good 45-minute drive from Namlea, even on the new road. Without a map, it’s hard to get your bearings, especially once you lose sight of the sea.  As we drove, I thought of the detainees who had first made their way to Waeapo on foot. 

With only about 150,000 residents, Buru Island is sparsely populated, and the village of Savana Jaya comes up suddenly.  One of the first things you see is a large grassy field, with a long whitewashed building and small monument at one end.  The monument commemorates the dedication of the village in 1972.  The building is the Balai Kesenian, or the arts building.  An open-air shed with a dirt floor and a simple stage, it’s the only physical structure that remains of the Rehabilitation Installation.  

Although my friends had been using their mobile phones almost constantly since we’d landed, I sent my first SMS from Buru to Amarzan Loebis. 

“I’m at the Arts Building on Savana Jaya,” I wrote, “and I can’t stop thinking about you.”  As the text messages flew back and forth to Jakarta, I thought how strange it was that I was on Buru Island, with the ability to communicate instantaneously with my friend who had been detained here 30 years earlier -- at a time when it was one of the most isolated places in the world. 

Climbing back into the car, we drove down a side street and arrived at the small house of Koangit Iswani.  He is one of the 300 or so former detainees who decided to stay on in Buru. 

He is from East Java, where he had been active in a labor union.  He’s also a religious man, and was the head of the Kemiri Muhammadiyah.  As Dhimam asked Koangit about his children, jotting the answers down in a small spiral notebook, I studied the room.  Six framed graduation photographs were displayed near the front door.  On the back wall was a clock commemorating the 52^nd anniversary of the Indonesian Military Police, and what I later learned were the Arabic words for Allah and Muhammad. 

A strange assortment, I thought, and not at all what I would have expected in the home of a former political detainee.

Pak Koangit is in his seventies now, but still in good health with a ready laugh.  Although he’s missing some teeth, he volunteered that this was the result of a motorcycle accident rather than physical abuse during his detention.  As a prisoner, he ran a small theater group, and he still teaches theater to the local children. 

After about an hour, Pak Koangit’s daughter arrived at the house.  Like her father, she is an outspoken admirer of Indonesia’s first president Sukarno -- which, after 1965, was grounds for suspicion if not outright imprisonment.  Like her five brothers and sisters, Sugeng Hayati is a university graduate.  She is also a member of the local legislature, and a member of Megawati Soekarnoputri’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle. 

Her dream? That former detainees like her father can rehabilitate their good names. 

After leaving the house, we headed toward the village of “Mako” – short for Markas Komando -- passing hectare upon hectare of brilliant green rice fields.  Although nothing remains of the barracks that were built by the prisoners, the results of their forced labor are still evident in these fields, now farmed primarily by Javanese transmigrants. The detainees not only changed the landscape of Buru Island, they also changed the staple food.  Before the arrival of the detainees, the 40,000 residents of Buru had primarily eaten sagu, which is made from the sago palm. The prisoners built irrigated rice fields out of the forest – an especially astonishing feat given the most of the detainees were writers and intellectuals.

After a lunch of fried chicken at a small restaurant run by Javanese transmigrants, we stopped at the home of Pak Dasipin.  Although the furnishings in his house were spare, Dasipin quickly found six pink plastic chairs, and offered us tea and slices of sponge cake topped with sugary white icing.  A little boy peeked out shyly from behind the door to the living room. 

In the 1960s, Pak Dasipin had been a member of Pemuda Rakyat, the youth group of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).  At Buru he had married a local woman, and when the prisoners were released in 1979, he decided to stay on.  After several hours of trying to follow the heavily accented local Indonesian, I was happy to let Dhimam ask the questions. 

Just before we left, I asked Dasipin about something that had been on my mind since we’d first arrived in Buru. 

Although I had only interviewed Pramoedya Ananta Toer once, I said, at the time I had been struck by the clear, cold, consistency of his thinking -- and by his unwillingness either to forgive or forget.  But Pak Dasipin didn’t appear to be angry at all.  Why?  Dasipin’s answer was simple. 

“What’s the point in harboring revenge?” he said.  “The one thing in life that’s certain is that we’re all going to die.” 

Like Koangit, all he really wanted was the return of his good name.

History
By the time we left Dasipin’s house, it was already mid-afternoon.  Pak Jalil explained that we were headed to the harbor at Namlea, where the prisoners had first landed.  From there we would take a small boat to the village of Kayeli.  The boat was basically a fiberglass tube, with broken plexiglass windows (shut tight) and only one exit. 

As we took off, bouncing and slapping along at breakneck speed – the captain leaning out the window to look for floating logs that could break the propeller -- I tried to plan what I would do if the boat overturned.  Swim toward the back and out, I thought, as we slammed into the waves. 

After about 30 minutes, we pulled up on the shore of Kayeli village.  My heart was still pounding as we rolled up our pants and clambered over the side of the boat.  Walking up the dark sand beach, we headed down the straight path past the village to the remains of a fort. 

To the right was mangrove swamp.  To the left were wooden houses, looking much as they had in 1861 when they were described this way by the British naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace: 

The whole place was dreadfully damp and muddy, being built in a swamp with not a spot of ground raised a foot above it, and surrounded by swamps on every side.  The houses were mostly well built, of wooden framework filled in with gaba-gaba (leaf stems of the sago palm) but as they had no whitewash, and the floors were of bare black earth like the roads, and generally on the same level, they were extremely damp and gloomy.

After a few minutes, we had attracted a parade of our own; in fact by the time we arrived at the fort, it seemed that every child in Kayeli was with us.  According to local lore, the fort was built in 1718 by the VOC.  But I wondered about this, as the meticulously accurate Wallace had noted that “the little fort, in perfect order, surrounded by neat grassplots and straight walks…was originally built by the Portuguese themselves.”

The history of this fort -- like nearly everything else that I observed about Pulau Buru – was contested.  Was it Dutch-built or Portuguese?  Were most of the detainees there not because they were Communist Party members, but because of some mistake?  And if Buru was as bad as I had always heard, why had some of the detainees decided to stay?  

Back in Jakarta two days later, I asked Amarzan Loebis about this. 

He explained that in order to join the PKI, you needed to find two party members who would vouch for you and serve as witnesses during a swearing-in ceremony that was led by a party official. According to Amarzan, there was never any question as to who was and was not PKI.  Amarzan said that although he had never joined the PKI, he had been a journalist at Harian Rakyat.  Thus Amarzan’s imprisonment at Buru was not a case of mistaken identity.  In the logic of the New Order, he "deserved" to be there. 

Amarzan also explained that when the detainees were freed, they were given a choice.  If they stayed on, they would be given 2 hectares of land, 2 head of cattle and a house.  For those who had been farmers in Java – and who didn’t own any land -- the offer made sense. 

Amarzan said that he had promised himself that if he didn’t find work within six months, he would return to Buru and accept the government’s offer.  But he did find work – at Tempo magazine.

And what was Amarzan’s impression of Buru today?  “The destruction of the barracks and all other traces of the unit was an effort to erase history and memory.” Amarzan said. “They saved the arts hall only because the villagers were already using it.” But “like all places of exile,” he conceded, “Buru Island is beautiful.” 

Getting to Buru
It is extremely difficult to find information on getting to and from Buru.  There is ferry service from Ambon, a trip that takes about 8 hours.  The Pelni ship Lambelu serves Namlea twice a month, and there is also a fast ship that is said to take either three or four hours, depending on whom you ask. 

Some of the best and most updated information can be obtained from the very helpful owners of the Baguala Resort, which is a good place to stay in Ambon while you are trying to arrange for travel to Buru. 

Merpati Nusantara Airlines serves Buru twice weekly, but beware.  When we returned to Ambon on August 19, we took the 9:30 a.m. Merpati flight.  The C-212 plane holds 28 passengers.  On August 19, however, the plane took 35 passengers.  There were seven people on the waiting list, and all of them got on board.   Most of them sat on other passengers’ laps.

The Hotel Grand Sarah is located on Jl. A Yani.  Tel. (0913) 21301.

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