Torture And Peacebuilding In Indonesia
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Torture and Peacebuilding in Indonesia
State-sponsored torture and peacebuilding encapsulate the essence of many of the current conflicts in Indonesia. Papua in particular provides a thought-provoking example of the intricacy and complexity of building peace amidst enduring conflict and violence. This book examines the complex power relations that have constructed the gruesome picture of the fifty-year practice of torture in Papua, as well as the ongoing Papuan peacebuilding movements that resist the domineering power of the Indonesian state over Papuans. Conceptualising ‘theatres of torture and peace’, the book argues that torture in Papua is performed in public by the Indonesian state in order to communicate its policy of terror towards Papuans - it is not meant for extracting information, gaining confessions or exacting punishment. A Torture Dataset is provided, codifying evidence from a broad range of cases, collected through sensitive interviews. In examining the data, the author crafts a new, more holistic framework for analyzing cases of torture and employs an interdisciplinary approach integrating three different theories: Foucault’s theory of governmentality and sovereignty, Kristeva’s theory of abjection and Metz’s theory of memoria passionis (the memory of suffering). The book successfully establishes a new understanding of torture as ‘public theatre’ and offers a new perspective of strengthening the existing Papuan peacebuilding framework of Papua Land of Peace. It will be of interest to academics working on Southeast Asian Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Transitional Justice, Peacebuilding, Human Rights and Anthropology of Violence.
From the Theatre of Torture to the Theatre of Peace
This thesis provides the first full-length of scholarly examination of the half century of the politics of torture and peacebuilding frameworks in Papua, Indonesia. It has assembled a data base of 431 reported torture cases for the period 1963-2010 as well as examined 214 testimonies of state actors, survivors and third parties from Indonesia, Australia, Papua New Guinea, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. While the current resurgence of scholarly interests on torture largely focuses on the utilitarian nature of torture as part of the war on terror, the findings of this study take a non-utilitarian turn. First, torture has been deployed strategically by the Indonesian state in Papua as a mode of governance. Second, torture constitutes a spectacle of the sovereign by which the sovereign communicates to a broader audience through the public display of the tortured body. Third, torture has constituted a crime against humanity punishable by both Indonesian and International Human Rights Law. Fourth, the five-decade practice of torture with almost complete impunity has constructed a theatre of torture in which the interactions of survivors, perpetrators, and spectators have produced and reproduced contesting narratives of suffering, domination and witnessing. Based on these four conclusions, peacebuilding in Papua can be reconceptualised as developing a theatre of peacebuilding to transform the theatre of torture. The theatre of peacebuilding model reveals that torture has not always entirely and permanently converted a subject into an 'abject'. Many survivors not only regain their subjectivity but also their agency. They are able to resist the domination of perpetrators and to take control over their own bodies and histories. In this process of regaining agency, memoria passionis (the memory of suffering) may be beginning to push Papua toward a tipping point that is transforming the theatre of torture to a theatre of peacebuilding. The possibility for this transformation is encapsulated in the idea of establishing a permanent Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Papua (TRCP). Memoria passionis has become a converging point that connects the triangulation of the narratives of suffering, domination and witnessing and inverts the triangulation into a new configuration of 'revolt, healing and solidarity.' The whole process of theorising peacebuilding based on the concept of memoria passionis as a remedy to the politics of torture in Papua contributes a novel and distinctively Papuan foundation to the theory and practice of peacebuilding in conflict situations like Papua.
The International People’s Tribunal for 1965 and the Indonesian Genocide
The International People’s Tribunal addressed the many forms of violence during the period of the massacres of 1965–1966 in Indonesia. It was held in The Hague, The Netherlands, in November 2015, to commemorate fifty years since the killings began. The Tribunal, as a people’s court, holds no jurisdiction and was an attempt to achieve symbolic justice for the crimes of 1965. This book offers new and previously unpublished insights into the types of crimes committed in the 1965 genocide and how these crimes were prosecuted at the International People’s Tribunal for 1965. Divided thematically, each chapter analyses a different crime – enslavement, sexual violence, torture – perpetrated during the Indonesian killings. The contributions consider either general patterns across Indonesia or a particular region of the archipelago. The book reflects on how crimes were charged at the International People’s Tribunal for 1965 and focuses on questions relating to the place of people’s tribunals in truth-seeking and justice claims, and the prospective for transitional justice in contemporary Indonesia. Positioning the events in Indonesia in 1965 within the broader scope of comparative genocide studies, the book is an original and timely contribution to knowledge about the dynamics of the Indonesian killings. It will be of interest to academics in the field of Asian studies, in particular Southeast Asia, Genocide Studies, Criminology and Criminal Justice and Transitional Justice Studies.