Global Lynching and Collective Violence: Volume 1

Asia, Africa, and the Middle East

Michael J. Pfeifer

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780252082313
  9780252040801
• eBook ISBN:
  9780252099304
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: Social Sciences

Often considered peculiarly American, lynching in fact takes place around the world. In the first book of a two-volume study, Michael J. Pfeifer collects essays that look at lynching and related forms of collective violence in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Understanding lynching as a transnational phenomenon rooted in political and cultural flux, the writers probe important issues from Indonesia--where a long history of public violence now twines with the Internet--to South Africa, with its notorious history of necklacing. Other scholars examine lynching in medieval Nepal, the epidemic of summary executions in late Qing-era China, the merging of state-sponsored and local collective violence during the Nanking Massacre, and the ways public anger and lynching in India relate to identity, autonomy, and territory. Contributors: Laurens Bakker, Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, Nandana Dutta, Weiting Guo, Or Honig, Frank Jacob, Michael J. Pfeifer, Yogesh Raj, and Nicholas Rush Smith.

1Lynching, Public Violence, and the Internet in Indonesia

LAURENS BAKKER

In Indonesia, public violence is a means to intervene in society that is applied by state as well as non-state actors. It functions to further the interests of individuals, organizations, and groups, as a tool to establish or emphasize authority, and to substantiate claims to power. It is also a way to provide security and reestablish peace, and a source of fear that inspires submission or curbs resistance. The practice of lynching, by which I mean the public murdering or injuring of individuals without recourse to due process of law, is a regular occurrence in Indonesia. Varney (2008: 344) points out how the frequency of lynchings between 1994 and 2004 in four Indonesian provinces studied by Welsh (2008) make the frequency of lynchings in the American South between 1882 and 1930 pale by comparison.1 While these places and eras differ considerably, they both concerned regime changes that went beyond mere elite rotations as they also included new social norms, economic tensions, and struggles over authority. While in a Weberian idea of state-based order such capital punishment would be the monopoly of the state and be governed by the rule of law, such tensions see dominant groups use lynchings to suppress challengers and assert their power in social and economic affairs. In Indonesia, both state and non-state actors argue the legitimacy of their acts of public violence, if not through the law, then by custom, religion, or societal support. Lynching serves to punish, deter, and confirm authority. Yet while punishment can be meted out by an anonymous, faceless mob, lynching as proof of power requires for the lyncher and the lynching to be made known as widely as possible.

The role of violence in Indonesia is the subject of a considerable number of academic publications, many of which have addressed such diverse issues as historical continuation (e.g., Colombijn and Lindblad, 2002; Davidson, 2009); the role of government (see Hüsken and de Jonge, 2002; Van Klinken, 2007; Aragon, 2013); the influence of religion and ethnicity (Bertrand, 2004; Sidel, 2006; Wilson, 2008); and social and economic inequality (Barron et al., 2004; Tadjoeddin, 2014). While a comprehensive discussion of this literature is beyond my purposes in this chapter, we should note a number of its central elements in order to contextualize the events discussed below.

First among these is the realization that the usage of violence by the rulers in power to sustain a “regime of fear” has a long history in Indonesia (Schulte Nordholt, 2002) and remains an ongoing issue. Whereas state violence has decreased in the past decade, this practice is continued by non-state actors acting for patrons or furthering their own agenda (see Wilson, 2006; Bakker, 2015). Second is the decrease of violence by the government. The resignation in 1998 of President Suharto marked the end of over three decades of governance by his New Order regime, which made liberal use of state violence (police and the army) as well as of non-state violence (thugs and gangsters), depending on legitimacy and context of the action, to suppress discontent and opposition. While today’s government is far more law-abiding in its usage of violence, it also fails to control non-state organizations now applying the “regime of fear” strategy. The third issue pertains to the identity of those killed by the mob: they need to be placed outside of the local community and pose a threat to its security or well-being (see Bråten, 2002; Colombijn, 2002). As anonymous nonlocals, their status and human dignity are uncertain and fragile, making them much more susceptible to the exceptionally brutal violence that is applied to restore social order. A horrendous and humiliating public death is a punishment, but it also signifies the superiority of the community over the dangerous outsider who was overcome. Finally, the causes of such violence differ widely between cases. They might pertain to issues of security or be religious, ethnic, or social in nature, or to a lack of economic means and development perspectives (cf. Peluso, 2007; Tadjoeddin and Murshed, 2007).

In this chapter, I use these elements to explore the goals that the performance of public violence, and especially murders, serve in establishing and maintaining authority in the gray area between state and society. I begin by discussing the roles of state and non-state violence in Indonesia in order to identify the parameters of “normal” practice and go on to discuss the societal effects of three murders—one a low-profile street lynching and the other two high-profile killings that made the national and international media. I go on to consider the effect of popular digital media to generate attention for violence before offering some concluding thoughts on the function of public murder in Indonesian society today.

The State and Violence

Indonesia’s founding fathers declared independence from the Netherlands in 1945, after three years of Japanese occupation and with four years of fighting returning colonial forces ahead. National history emphasizes the participation in these battles of citizens who, often armed with bamboo spears only, organized to fight the colonial troops. Independence was attained through civilian mass violence, and such civilian violence remained of crucial assistance to the national army in dealing with rebels and separatists who threatened the unity of the nation. For civilians to take up arms or use violence when this is seen as “proper” or “just” is an inherent part of Indonesian national history and identity. While the army and government dispose of such authority as well, they have not replaced it—not in the least because both have been known to fail to defend citizens’ interests or even to act against them.

Indonesia has known protracted civil wars, regional wars, uprisings, and separatist movements. The PRRI/Permesta rebellion was fought in Sulawesi and Sumatra between 1956 and 1961, while the Darul Islam (Islamic State) movement was defeated by central government in 1962 after sustained fighting in Java, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, and Aceh. Each of these movements involved leaders who had risen to the fore in the war for Indonesian independence, thus requiring the nation’s population to accept that one-time co-fighters could become adversaries who rejected the hard-won nation. A major reconsideration of the nation’s community took place in 1965, when allegations of a failed coup attempt by the communist party caused the killing of perhaps half a million real or alleged members and supporters (Cribb, 2000: 181). The army, administration, and civilian militias closely collaborated in identifying and killing suspected communists, thus effectively ending the influence and existence of the largest communist party in Asia outside of China. It was ensured that the “communists’ betrayal” was widely known and that communities were aware of, and frequently assisted in, making local communists pay with their lives. At times, this involved the mutilation of victims before or after their execution (cf. Farid, 2005).

General Suharto, who had overseen the anticommunist purge, assumed presidential power in 1967. His New Order government brought a period of three decades of relative calm during which brutal and massive violence was occasionally applied by the regime against those going against New Order notions of what Indonesia and Indonesians should be like. A well-known example is the annexation of East Timor upon its independence from Portugal in 1975. The regime of terror maintained by the Indonesian military and civilian vigilante allies served to inspire fear and submission as much as to discourage support for the Timorese resistance (see Moore, 2001). In Java and Sumatra the killings of gangsters and criminals between 1982 and 1985, and of practitioners of black magic and traditional Islamic leaders in East Java in 1998, likewise inspired fear in the population. Dead, mutilated bodies would be found in the morning on the streets, in garbage dumps, or floating in the river, but certainly at places where they would eventually be discovered. The gangsters were killed by “mysterious shooters” (penembak misterius, hence the petrus killings); the magicians and religious leaders were rumored to be murdered by equally mysterious masked men in black who became known as ninja, although the killings were in fact frequently committed by local residents (Herriman, 2007). Even today, rumors of sightings of ninja or groups of mysterious men hiding near towns or villages cause fear and unrest, and locals have gone so far as to kill suspected ninjas (Herriman, 2010). During both killing campaigns it transpired that the mystery killers were affiliated with the army. This serves to illustrate the lawlessness with which the regime could choose to operate and terrorize: dead, mutilated bodies were left for the public to find and recognize as symbols of the power of a regime that could act with complete disregard of accountability and legal process.

Suharto’s abdication from the presidency in 1998 took place as a result of strong calls for democracy among demonstrations and violence in Jakarta. As his successor implemented new laws decentralizing considerable regional administrative and fiscal authorities to the lower levels of government, regional conflicts broke out in—among others—West and Central Kalimantan, the Moluccas, Central Sulawesi, Aceh, and Lombok. Images of destruction and displacement, of beatings, killings, and the bodies of murdered individuals came out of these conflicts and traveled the world through the internet. Some parties benefited from media attention. Ethnic Dayak in Kalimantan, for instance, referred to their past as head hunters to decapitate the corpses of ethnic Madurese and parade the heads through the streets or display them at public locations. Photographs were published by various newspapers and helped to spread the Dayak’s brutal image. Migrant Madurese left Kalimantan en masse. By contrast, the army and police—the forces of the state—were largely absent from these conflicts. Whereas New Order reactions would likely have been swift and brutal, the new government’s emphasis on ending authoritarianism and promoting democracy made commanders adopt passive stances. Both the application of violence and the maintenance of “order” were largely taken up by non-state actors who established themselves as authorities, fighters, and protectors of the population, thus displaying citizens’ continued capacities to establish control over society through nonstate violence. In Indonesian history, both state and non-state thus have been responsible for violence that served to protect, intimidate, or both. Violence is the prerogative of those with the power and authority to use it, rather than that of designated actors.

Violence by Society

Non-state, citizen violence in settling conflicts, meting out punishments for social infringements, and dealing with burglars and thieves is historically entrenched in the local community. Distrust of the judicial system, which would not recognize the acts committed as crimes or let the perpetrators off with light sentences, as well as of the police who might, as one respondent put it, require payment to arrest the perpetrators and then allow the arrestees to pay for being let off, are weighty reasons for not expecting these authorities to deal with cases properly. The punishments meted out by society, either by spontaneous mobs having caught a thief red-handed or by a group carrying out a planned punishment of an adulterer or black magician, are, however, often cruel and—from the perspective of modern law and human rights—out of proportion. Consider the following example of the punishment of a recidivist petty thief, related to me in the city of Tangerang in 2010 by a participant in the mob:

Yes, this happened in May, two months ago. We punished this thief, he had been stealing things for years. He lived with his uncle in the next village. His uncle is rich, he gave him work, but this guy would not work! He just sat around and refused the work people offered. He was a bit simple, but his uncle looked after him so he did not have to steal. He was caught stealing sandals at the mosque. People came, more and more, and they beat him up. They did not stop. Then he was tied behind a motorbike by one arm and one leg, and dragged up and down the street. Then he was dragged to the edge of town. People had phoned the police, but they would not come. Their station was too far away, and they said they would come if the thief was dead. People tore of his clothes and poured a jerrycan of gasoline over him, and burned him to death. Later the police came and took the body away, but the authorities were involved. The gasoline was provided by a guy from city government.

This killing appeared to be a case of a local community finally losing patience with a known ne’er-do-well, and doing away with him thoroughly and painfully. Colombijn (2002), discussing such lynchings (keroyokan) in Indonesia, points out that such acts are one possible outcome; he also refers to cases where thieves are handed over to the authorities but the spontaneity of the event and the well-known script cause matters to proceed almost automatically. The identification of the lynchee as a criminal, an outsider damaging the interests of the community, legitimizes dehumanization and provides participants with all the reason necessary to carry out the act. Welsh describes how the post–New Order power vacuum increased instances of local violence and suggests that, next to local communities dealing with criminals and dangerous outsiders, struggles over power and the settling of scores were likely part of this as well. She distinguishes between community justice and assault/murder as drivers of the violence and suggests that premeditation is likely in cases dealing with revenge, gang warfare, and ninja killings, as well as punishing such norm violators as witches and adulterers. To understand violence, then, cases should be considered individually and in their individual contexts.

The relation between the level of violence and its purpose thus becomes a central issue, even though I do not intend to argue that a clear and balanced line between the two has to exist. In a series of discussions on the subject with journalists in Jakarta, East Kalimantan, and North Sulawesi in the summer of 2014, my interlocutors frequently expressed their mystification about the brutal violence deployed. One person pointed out how he had assumed that the harsh dealings with criminals had to do with low levels of education, poverty, and perhaps sadism, until, a few months earlier, a burglar had been caught in his own upper-middle-class neighborhood. The neighbors had tied him up, phoned the police, and then proceeded to burn the flesh off the burglars’ feet. These people were educated, well-off, and known to him as friendly and caring. He could not explain their actions except as a combination of stress, anger, and fear.

Fear is also likely to be a major driver behind the large number of organized, semimilitary vigilante groups that have come into existence along ethnic or religious lines and provide local security and order in lieu of, or in assistance to, government. My journalist informants felt that the presence of these vigilantes had not resulted in an increase of violence (with some ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Lynching, Public Violence, and the Internet in Indonesia
• 2 A Different Kind of War: Summary Execution and the Politics of Men of Force in Late-Qing China, 1864–1911
• 3 Banzai! And the Others Die—Collective Violence in the Rape of Nanking
• 4 Making Sense of Lynching in Medieval Nepal
• 5 Public Anger, Violence, and the Legacy of Decolonization in India
• 6 New Situations Demand Old Magic: Necklacing in South Africa, Past and Present
• 7 Sitting on the Volcano: Mob Violence and Lynching in the Zionist-Palestinian Conflict
• Contributors
• Index