Ethnic and religious violence in Indonesia: a review essay

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The figures here and in the next paragraph are derived from van Klinken, p. 4, who in turns draws on a United Nations Support Facility for Indonesian Recovery (UNSFIR) report (Varshney, Panggabean and Tadjoeddin 2004 Varshney , Ashutosh , Rizal Panggabean and Mohammad Zulfan Tadjoeddin M. Z. , 2004 . Patterns of collective violence in Indonesia (1990–2003) ( Jakarta : United Nations Support Facility for Indonesian Recovery – UNSFIR ). [Google Scholar]) and my own estimate of deaths in Aceh. The figures are likely to be a serious underestimate: the UNSFIR report is based on a survey of newspaper reports; while my own estimate of 7,200 deaths in Aceh is based on official and newspaper tallies (which often under-reported deaths). 2. Bertrand himself tried to answer this question by providing close case studies of each violent episode. 3. The volume by Jacques Bertrand, the first overview, has already been mentioned. In addition to a large number of edited volumes, there are also several single author studies of particular sites of conflict. They include Drexler 2008 Drexler, Elizabeth F. 2008. Aceh, Indonesia: Securing the Insecure State, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. [Google Scholar] and my own forthcoming (2009) volume, both on Aceh, Wilson (2008 Wilson, Chris. 2008. Ethno-Religious Violence in Indonesia: From Soil to God, London and New York: Routledge. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), on North Maluku, Purdey (2006 Purdey, Jemma. 2006. Anti-Chinese Violence in Indonesia, 1996–1999, Singapore: Singapore University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) on anti-Chinese violence and Siegel (2006) on the killings of alleged sorcerers in East Java in 1998. More publications – some of them based on already completed Ph.D. dissertations – are in the works. 4. For an excellent example of writing in this genre see Parry 2006 Parry, Richard Lloyd. 2006. In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos, London: Vintage. 2nd edition. [Google Scholar]: 17–84. One student in my class on ethnic conflict suggested that this book should have been subtitled ‘on the hunt for headhunting in Borneo’. It must be said, however, that Parry captures the horror of Kalimantan's ethnic violence with a vividness and immediacy which none of the scholarly authors reviewed in this article achieve. 5. He is here referring to West Kalimantan but he could equally be writing about any of the other cases in his book. Elsewhere (p. 143) he seems to absolve from moral responsibility non-elite participants in violence: ‘In each case ordinary people felt moved to action by the politics of fear, while local elites made their calculations on the basis of the politics of opportunity.’