Jakarta – Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid on Tuesday visited Pramoedya Ananta Toer, the country's greatest modern writer whose works remain officially banned here.
Pramoedya described the meeting as "good" but said he did not ask Wahid to restore his name or grant him compensation for the work that was destroyed while he was in jail.
He was first imprisoned under under the regime of fouding president Sukarno and later spent over a decade in a forced labor camp during the reign of former president Suharto.
"I have no bad name. It was just mudslinging, so there is no need for my name to be restored. I'm clean," Pramoedya told journalists.
The 74-year-old author's works, including manuscripts destroyed by soldiers and jailers, consist of about 36 books, several of which are as yet unedited. Pramoedya presented two of his works to Wahid, who admitted to have been an avid reader of his writings since the 1950s.
The author said he still could not accept the idea of national reconciliation as promoted by Wahid, despite the president's reconcilatory gesture and his insistence on lifting a ban on communism. "Reconciliation is difficult for someone who has suffered a lot like me. I don't understand what it means," he said.
"What about my works, freedom, which were forcibly taken from me? What about 10 years and two months of forced labor?" Pramoedya said. "No one in this country can restore my destroyed works."
Commenting on Wahid's proposal to lift the ban on teaching communism, Pramoedya said: "I agree to everything which is good for the people. Why can't we respect other people's beliefs?" he asked.
Pramoedya said he had now stopped writing and would refuse to speak in public. "I'm old," he said.
The bans on Pramoedya's books has remained in place after the fall in 1998 of the Suharto regime which first imposed it, but the enforcement of the ruling has relaxed and some of his books can now be bought openly in bookstores.
Pram, as he is commonly known, was first nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986 and his name has regularly been mentioned since then.
It is easier to find his books in English overseas than here in Indonesia, notably those he wrote in the forced labour camp on Buru island – "The Glass House" and "This Earth of Mankind" which retrace the emergence and growth of Indonesian nationalism at the beginning of the century.
His complete works began to be republished last month by a small publishing house, Hasta Mitra, which has consistently supported Pramoedya during his difficult years.
Pramoedya, who has spent the past years as a semi-recluse in his residence in East Jakarta, did not gain full freedom of movement until 1998.
He has never denied that his sympathies lie solidly with communist theses and analysis, and he remains a scathing critic of the government of president Abdurrahman Wahid, whom he puts on the same plane as Suharto.
The award in 1995 of the prestigious Ramon Magsasay prize to Pramoedya revived the debate here over his role in the harsh repression, from 1960 to 1965 of "liberal bourgeois" authors. The government did not allow him to travel to Manila to receive the prize.
In 1999 he was allowed for the first time in 40 years to leave Indonesia for a trip to the United States with a stop-off in Europe. His spokesman said Pramoedya would visit Singapore on Thursday in connection with the publication of one of his works.