Christine T. Tjandraningsih, Jakarta – Despite offers of reconciliation from Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer, who spent 14 years in prison under the repressive Suharto regime for "communist activities," said Tuesday reconciliation is impossible.
"I don't know what kind of reconciliation it could be, because everyone [accused as communist] in 1965 was slaughtered," Pramoedya said. "How do you reconcile with already-slaughtered people?" he asked.
The writer made the remarks during a press conference to mark the launch of his book "Tales from Djakarta," a collection of 13 short stories he wrote between 1948 and 1956.
"For those, who were not murdered, like me, [the government] took away our rights of freedom," Pramoedya said. "All of my belongings – my manuscripts, my books, my works – were taken from me and have never been returned. Even, the ban on my books has never been revoked by the three last presidents."
Pramoedya's books were banned by Suharto, whose regime believed him to be involved with the People's Cultural Institution (Lekra), a pro-communist group of writers and literary critics who launched a campaign in the 1960s against those whose views did not conform with theirs.
According to Pramoedya, based on the historical process he has pursued, the authorities have never changed, spreading rot throughout the country. "The source of that is bureaucracy ... that is clearly described in my book," he said.
Pramoedya said people continue to ask him why the short stories he wrote all have a minor tone. "When I was writing those stories, I didn't realize [my pessimism], but now history tells me why," he said.
"During the national revolution [in the early 1940s], nobody thought to put social life back into order. It leaves the power continually in the hands of aristocratic families who are the products of a marriage between colonialism and feudalism," he said.
Ordinary people, he added, remain under the exploitation of the aristocratic families who were created by the Dutch colonialists and as has been going on for so long it is difficult to end it.
During the press conference, Pramoedya also said he has decided to stop writing because of health problems. "My memory is getting weak and there is no medicine for these problems ... maybe because I've become very old," the 75-year-old novelist said.
But when asked if he will keep his leftist ideology, he answered, "I was educated by a leftist family, meaning a family that is on the side of little people. It is a matter of politics, not a matter of ideology, but of education."
Pramoedya was arrested in 1965 and held at the Salemba detention center in Central Jakarta and interned at a penal camp on Buru Island in eastern Indonesia for 10 years following an abortive coup blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party the same year.
The recipient of the Grand Prize at the 11th Fukuoka Asian Culture Prizes 2000 was released in 1979, but many of his works were banned in Indonesia because of what the government saw as a tolerance of communism and Marxism.
Indonesians have only been able to read them since B.J. Habibie took over from Suharto in May 1998. The books have become available even though Habibie did not officially revoke the ban.
The eldest of nine children of a teacher in Blora, a town on the northern coast of Central Java, Pramoedya fled for Jakarta when Japanese troops marched into the town in World War II.
When the nationalists declared independence in 1945, he joined the People's Militia to fight the Dutch but was caught in a police sweep and spent most of the next two years in Bukit Duri, a Dutch prison camp in East Jakarta.
It was during this first prison stint that he wrote his early novel "Perburuan" (The Fugitive), the story of 24 hours in the life of a guerrilla fighting the Japanese.
His other books include "Keluarga Gerilya" (Guerrilla Family), "Gadis Pantai" (The Girl from the Coast) and "Bumi Manusia"(This Earth of Mankind).
"Tales from Djakarta" was first published in 1963 in Indonesian and in 1999 as a scholarly journal by Cornell University. The Tuesday launch is the first time the stories are made generally available in English.