Beyond Nationalism: Youth Struggle for the Independence of East Timor and Democracy for Indonesia

Beyond Nationalism: Youth Struggle for the Independence of East Timor and Democracy for Indonesia Takahiro Kamisuna (bio) On July 12, 1998, Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was occupied by fifteen hundred youths. The “national” flag they carried—with its black, red, and yellow stars—was different from the Indonesian one and fluttered with the clamor, as they shouted “Referendum, Yes, Integrasi, No!”1 This symbolic protest toward the Referendum of East Timor was organized by East Timorese youths visiting Indonesia, along with Indonesian activists, who had gathered from Surabaya, Malang, Yogyakarta, and Jakarta.2 Organizing the National Front of East Timorese Youth (Front Nasional Pemuda Timor-Leste, FRONPETIL) as a movement to proclaim the right to self-determination, the young people occupied the ministry for the first time in its history. The symbolic protest demanding East Timor’s independence did not, however, merely result from the End Page 73 struggle of East Timorese youngsters. There was also a political space in Indonesia that enabled the East Timorese to proclaim their independence. Two months before the East Timorese’s protest at the Foreign Affairs office, another dynamic demonstration, which symbolized the triumph of Indonesian youths against Suharto’s dictatorship, occurred in the form of a joint action involving Indonesian and East Timorese youths on May 19, 1998, in which thousands of university students gathered and occupied the People’s Representative Council (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat, DPR) for two days. It was the most extensive student demonstration during the thirty years of Suharto’s authoritarian rule3 and his regime unexpectedly ended the following day, May 21, 1998. The involvement in this demonstration of approximately twenty East Timorese students from the East Timorese youth resistance group Renetil (Resistência Nacional dos Estudantes de Timor-Leste, East Timorese Students National Resistance) has received little attention because their roles within either (or both) the East Timorese or the Indonesian struggle have been ambiguous due to their having been born East Timorese, but educated as Indonesians. Nevertheless, these youths created a coherent social movement for independence and democracy by proclaiming demokrasi Indonesia dan kemerdekaan Timor-Leste (democracy for Indonesia and independence for East Timor) with the Indonesian radical front for democracy, the People’s Democratic Union (Partai Rakyat Demokratik, PRD).4 A personal story provides more details about this movement. An East Timorese youngster, Carlito Caminha, who was supposed to join the May 19 demonstration at DPR, asked an Indonesian activist whether East Timorese should join as Indonesian students or as East Timorese. The Indonesian activist replied, “that’s up to you.” The following day, East Timorese youngsters participated in the demonstration as East Timorese. On the second day, they again joined the demonstration but on this occasion it was as Indonesian students.5 Apparently, we can observe a common political sphere between East Timorese and Indonesian youths from this series of political events.6 This common sphere, however, deviates from the usual explanation involving modern nationalism, since the joint movements did not intend to create a single nation.7 By “Indonesianizing” the East Timorese struggle, the East Timorese and Indonesian youths created a common political sphere for referendum and demokrasi despite the fact that the East Timorese independence End Page 74 movement and the Indonesian pro-democracy movement have been described as different political movements. While the creation of political common ground in the service of “nationalism” was a Southeast Asian phenomenon,8 why and how was this phenomenon able to go beyond nationalism? This series of joint movements has been infrequently described in scholarship on Indonesia or East Timor. Instead, most Indonesianists have focused on orthodox pro-democracy movements in Indonesia,9 while East Timor scholars, for their part, have devoted research efforts toward delineating the history of the independence struggle initiated by the pre-1975 generation.10 A few historians and anthropologists have recently begun to focus on the role played by East Timorese youth.11 Their analyses, however, fail to delineate the dynamism of the nationalist movement of East Timorese youths, which is inseparable from pro-democracy movements in Indonesia. The scope of analysis has still been confined within the analysis of East Timor as a single nation. This paper attempts...