On Critical Thinking as Indonesian Diaspora

Much of Indonesian news is recently filled with controversies regarding Indonesian history, and critical thinking has become more important than ever before - especially for the Indonesian diaspora. From the Minister of Culture reducing formal reports and extensive evidence of human rights abuses to mere “allegations,” to the Minister of Human Rights hiding behind bureaucracy to avoid commenting on the recognition of a well-known human rights abuser as a “national hero,” the pattern is unmistakable. When the new, government-edited history books become the only ones available, critical thinking may be our only way to truly understand our past.

Numerous historical evidence of atrocities in Indonesia were written in foreign languages because they were deliberately destroyed within the country, erased from existence, and wiped from the memory of contemporaries. It is the Indonesian diaspora that can access these documents and return them to our people. Only by seeking and understanding the evidence can we then question the status quo: what is excluded from our current version of ‘history’ and who benefits from it?

As a diaspora, we are also constantly exposed to another way of thinking, a different set of cultural, religious and societal norms. This possibility of alternative perspectives allows us to challenge the current rules in Indonesia. Is listening to our conscience only for the privileged few, or can we do it even with the limitations of our status? Is silence and trauma whispered in hushed tones the only way to deal with intergenerational wounds? When does it become crucial that we determine our own moral compass? 

Questioning and challenging the status quo can help those who need it most: the minority, which we have also experienced being part of when we moved abroad. When we built our social network anew, it probably wasn’t false pretenses and empty words that made us feel like we belonged: it was the people who would speak up for us when we could not speak for ourselves. We still have people born in Indonesia who don't feel like they belong because their ethnicity made them targets of violence. How can we, with our experiences, let them go unheard even longer?

Our true heroes – a lot of them were once diaspora themselves – fought for our freedom from Dutch colonizers with their sacrifice. Are we using our distance to Indonesia as an excuse to give Indonesia up to the next crowd of colonizers – ones who were born on Indonesian soil and speak the Indonesian language, but with mouths that spoke lies and hearts remain shut to the tears of the oppressed? Or are we using our distance to see the facts objectively: a blatant attempt to whitewash the blood of half a million people and portray an oppressive authoritarian regime as a legacy to be proud of?

Author:

Evelyn Sutiono is a Chinese-Indonesian doctoral student at the University Medical Center Göttingen, where she researches gene therapy for congenital deafness.