Remembering Wiji Thukul, Indonesia's Murdered Poet-activist

ABSTRACT

Modern Indonesia has been shaped by human rights abuses, with the military regime of Major-General Suharto (1966 −1998) standing at the fulcrum of this history. Over twenty-five years since its fall, survivors and their families continue to struggle with this legacy. This paper focuses on the case of Wiji Thukul, a disappeared poet-activist whose life and work continue to inspire progressive Indonesians decades after he played an important role in the movement that helped topple Suharto’s dictatorship. It translates for a non-Indonesian audience his life, which was characterised by a creative practice that gave voice to working-class people like himself. It asserts that remembering Thukul has helped energise and galvanise efforts to advance Indonesia’s conflicted and fragile democratic project. In doing this, it also charts how, in the first two decades of the millennium, he came to be an underground icon of activism and public discourse on unresolved human rights abuses and democratic reform, notably through the ‘refusing to forget’ movement. This has been significant in resistance to the return of authoritarianism. Beyond this, it examines how his memory has been translated for a new generation that never experienced the regime and argues for his significance in an international context.

KEYWORDS:

• Indonesia
• poetry
• Wiji Thukul
• public memory
• resistance
• Suharto
• reformasi
• democraticisation

Introduction

Remembering the disappeared poet Wiji Thukul has been important to galvanising Indonesia’s fragile progressive politics and bolstering the nation’s democratic project. This is evident in the continuing reverence in public discourse for Thukul’s outspoken and larrikinish resistance to the authoritarian politics of Major General Suharto’s ‘New Order’ regime (1965–1998). Thukul has become the subject of films, documentaries, talk shows, music videos, exhibitions, murals, t-shirts, and much more.

This continuing popularity results from several factors. Firstly, his status as an artist and the character of his creative practice sets him apart. Secondly, NGOs and his family have played crucial roles in the process of him becoming an icon in the campaign for justice for those who were ‘disappeared’ in the last days of the regime and for broader human rights campaigns. Finally, the artistic work of his two children has contributed to creating continued interest in his story and his poetry. As a result of these factors, Thukul’s status as an icon did not simply last but has even grown in the twenty-five years since his disappearance. During this time his memory has been translated and revitalised for new generations who had little or no direct experience of Suharto’s regime.

We will begin our essay by outlining an account of Thukul’s life, activism, and art, before then discussing the process and politics of the public remembering Thukul since 1998. We will explore aspects of the broad political dynamics of the Suharto era and of Thukul’s life and work that have influenced this process of public memory. Finally, we argue for Thukul’s international relevance for progressive politics and call for further study of this important and compelling artist-activist.

Thukul’s life and creative practice

Since the late 1980s, Wiji Thukul (‘the seed sprouts’) has occupied a significant place in the public imagination, at least for Indonesians with progressive or liberal political leanings. His image and poetry have continued to appear in a wide range of settings, from T-shirts to murals and posters. He has been the subject of two films – one biopic and one documentary – and of many segments on popular national talk shows such as Kick Andy! And Mata Najwa. Indonesia’s most important news magazine, Tempo, has published a special edition on him, which was later published as a book. However, little has been published about him in English. Consequently, he is virtually unknown outside of Indonesia.¹ For this reason, we will begin with an outline of Thukul’s life and work.

Thukul lived almost his entire life within the bounds of the Suharto regime. He was born in 1963 in a poor inner-city community in Solo (Surakarta), Central Java, just two years before the regime was established amid the political genocide of 1965–1966.² His home region was one of the areas of Indonesia most severely affected by the new regime’s violence – Solo had been a communist party stronghold and the surrounding regions had almost all had strong communist party presences.³ Hundreds of thousands were murdered, imprisoned and tortured, all in a matter of months. This ‘anti-communist’ pogrom established the power of the regime under Suharto and terrorised the population. Any inclination towards communism (as the regime discerned it) was taboo and could be dealt with using extreme violence.⁴ Thirty-two years after this brutal watershed in Indonesian and international history – and just one month before the New Order’s collapse in May 1998 – Thukul, along with twelve other young democracy activists, disappeared after being pursued by security forces.⁵

Thukul’s life was inextricably linked to the New Order’s authoritarian state. This was manifested in a series of personal and socio-political interactions, especially around local-national events, such as Independence Day Celebrations, Armed Forces Days, Clean Communities Days, and the New Order’s five-yearly pseudo-elections. Thukul recounted one particularly formative interaction when, as a teenager, he was invited to read a poem at his neighbourhood Independence Day Celebrations:

In August 1982, I was invited to read poetry in Solo at [a local] Independence Day celebration. The poem I read I created on the spot. I had no idea it would cause such a commotion in the community. It was short and simple. But rather mischievous. The title was, ‘Independence in 1982’. The lines were: ‘/Independence is like rice/ it turns to shit when you eat it /’. Just that. Very brief. But what happened? The next morning, the whole organising committee was called in to face the neighbourhood authorities.⁶

This was a revelation for Thukul. He witnessed the response to his ‘misbehaviour’ (kekurangajaran): unfettered delight from ordinary folk in the audience; and defensive censure from those in authority. For Thukul the experience was ‘beautiful’; a combination of feeling at one with the ‘little people’ (wong cilik, in Thukul’s first language, Javanese) in the community and showing ‘awesome power of words’.⁷

By his mid-twenties, Thukul had honed his creative practice on the streets performing his poetry as a busker. Busking gave Thukul direct, grass-roots responses from ordinary people going about their lives. Like most buskers, Thukul encountered substantial rejection. But he also related to his audience in a direct and human way that did not produce the same divide between ‘performance’ and ‘normal life’ as is the case with staged declamation.⁸

Thukul recounted an experience busking house to house that began with a resident ignoring him. The homeowner tried to drown out Thukul’s voice by turning up the volume on his cassette player. Thukul said, ‘I was forced to read my poetry out louder than the tape’. Eventually, he gave up and invited Thukul out to dinner and to stay overnight since it was already late. However, Thukul did not get any sleep because they then went to an all-night vigil at a neighbour’s house, where a family member had just died.⁹ In this way, busking performances allowed Thukul to connect with ordinary people and move easily back and forth between artistic performance and the everyday human activities of kampung life (in this case, attending a vigil after a death).

In his 1991 poem ‘stage boundary’ (batas panggung), Thukul explicitly brought attention to the boundary between performer and audience and how this reflects wider power relationships in society:

to the players

this is our zone of authority

do not cross this boundary

do not interfere with what happens up here

because you are spectators

you are outsiders

do not change the story we have prepared

do not adjust the plot we have planned

because you are spectators

you have to be silent

this broad stage is not for you

it’s ours

what happens here

don’t try to dispute it

this broad stage is for us

not you

do not try to introduce dangerous questions

into this performance

this broad stage is only for us

you have to pay us

for what we do up here

let us do what is in our authority

you just watch

your place is down there¹⁰

Thukul’s sense of community and creativity also went beyond poetry performances to include the ways he and his neighbours dealt with the problems that arose from their poverty. In 2017, Thukul’s younger brother, Wahyu, told an illustrative story to the prominent journalist Najwa Shihab on her high-rating Metro TV talk show Mata Najwa (Najwa’s Eye):

One of our neighbours, Mardi, was treated in hospital for about three weeks. Although he’d recovered, he wasn’t allowed to leave because he couldn’t pay for his treatment. Effectively he was being held hostage by the hospital. So, Thukul gathered his friends together to hatch a plan to ‘kidnap’ him from the hospital. That is, someone would take his place lying in the hospital bed. Mardi changed into similar clothes, including a hat that his visiting friend was wearing, then snuck out of the hospital while his friend took his place on the bed. Later, the friend went to the toilet and changed back into another set of clothes and left the hospital himself. After the hospital found the bed empty, staff from the hospital came to the neighbourhood a couple of days later to try to forcibly collect Mardi’s debt, but they were stopped by young men from the neighbourhood. That’s Thukul’s type of creative mischief¹¹

By the time that Thukul began his first steps as a public poet, the New Order was already struggling with the end of the 1970s oil boom and the subsequent onset of the oil glut of the early 1980s.¹² The regime had already faced some political challenges, especially from students, who organised substantial demonstrations. Since the mass organisations of the 1950s and 1960s – including, but not limited to, the communist party (PKI) and the left-wing unions of SOBSI (the All-Indonesian Federation of Workers’ Organisations) – had been crushed in 1965–1966, these movements were easily quashed.¹³

Nevertheless, a new generation of dissident public intellectuals and artists emerged, some of whom had been aligned with the military as anti-communists in the 1960s but began to oppose New Order authoritarianism in the first decade of its rule. However, this opposition remained largely ineffectual throughout most of the 1980s.¹⁴

By the mid to late 1980s, the regime itself had settled on the oligarchic neo-liberal, foreign direct investment (FDI) based strategy that was carried forward until its demise. Absolutely central to attracting this foreign investment was maintaining a large supply of low-cost and disposable labour. While a corrupt elite manoeuvred amongst themselves for profit as gatekeepers for FDI, this ‘trickle down’ economics often proved more disadvantageous than beneficial for the likes of Thukul and his community.¹⁵ Through satirical accounts of local lived experiences, Thukul’s poetry affirmed the vibrancy, dignity and quick wit of ordinary folk, while also critiquing the causes of their precarious vulnerability: their insecure and unjust working and living conditions; the economic inaccessibility of many basic goods, such as decent schooling and health services; chronic indebtedness; and resulting social degradation:

that night we got together and talked

nothing grand came from our mouths

each of us talked about things we wanted

simple and straight-forward things

someone had wanted to build a kitchen

in his rented house

and someone reminded the others

that they still didn’t have a pot, a stove

drinking glasses or a frying pan

they remembered that they had wanted

to buy those things

only to see their desire buried

under weariness

our wages had quickly been converted

into toothpaste-shampoo-rent money

and paying off our tabs at food stalls

in the end we asked

why it was difficult for workers to buy a can of paint

when every day they worked eight hours or more

why it was difficult for workers

to get their kids educated

when every day they produced

tonnes of things

then someone got up

looked at us one by one and asked

‘is there anything that you use

that wasn’t made by workers?

that made us look about

at the things around us

the light bulb, the television, the radio, the clothes, the books … 

since then we feel like

we’re confronting a strange puzzle

and that puzzle always comes up

when we talk about pots-stoves

drinking glasses-frying pans

when we add up our wages

which are quickly converted

into toothpaste-shampoo-rent money

and paying off tabs at food stalls

we are amazed and ask each other

what kind of force has robbed us

of our energies and the products

of our labour?¹⁶

Thukul was an auto-didact whose schooling was cut short by poverty. He learned as he developed his art. From the early 1980s on, Thukul joined a progressive local theatre group in Solo, Teater Jagad (World Theatre), run by Lawu Warta (a protégé of the dissident poet and dramatist W.S. Rendra),¹⁷ and began to participate in discussion forums facilitated by other mentors, including the tireless cultural broker Halim HD, the critical academics Arief Budiman and Ariel Heryanto, and the Catholic priest, writer and advocate for the poor, Romo Mangunwijaya. Thukul was also an insatiable reader – mainly of critical leftist literature, usually borrowed from the libraries of friends such as Halim HD.¹⁸ Much of this literature was prohibited by the regime, including Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s historical fiction¹⁹, and the works of Karl Marx, as well as those of the Italian revolutionary, Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937).

The work of Gramsci, a theorist who considered the role of ‘culture’ (in the sense of the production, circulation, and consumption of artistic work) in social change, was an obvious fit for an activist like Thukul, for whom creative practice was closely integrated with his progressive political activism. Thukul personifies Gramsci’s concept of the ‘organic intellectual’. In the elliptical language of the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci wrote:

The mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer consist of eloquence, which is an exterior and momentary mover of feelings and passions, but in active participation in practical life, as constructor [and] organizer, as ‘permanent persuader’, not just simple orator … ²⁰

Gramsci seems to be alluding to a classical activist-agitator, but elsewhere he makes it clear that his concept is much broader, identifying intellectuals as ‘organizers of culture’ and explicitly discussing artists. Gramsci also makes a distinction between ‘traditional intellectuals’ and ‘organic intellectuals’. The latter are intellectuals whose identity, ideas, and practice are directly and explicitly entwined with a social class, its struggles and interests, especially when this class is subaltern.²¹ Traditional intellectuals, on the other hand, see themselves as, to a lesser or greater extent, independent of these interests and struggles and standing for some kind of universality (for example, ‘truth’, ‘freedom’, or ‘democracy’). Precisely the sort of figure that was often the target of barbs in Thukul’s poetry.

Friends and associates of Thukul treasured memories of him as a bookworm, teaching himself to read in English, failing to return borrowed books, and taking reading material everywhere in his satchel. But he was not simply bookish. His learning was grounded in communal activity. In the late 1980s he began running an alternative educational workshop for children unable to continue their formal schooling in his home neighbourhood of Kalangan in Solo. The Flood-Prone Workshop (Sanggar Suka Banjir) conducted its activities daily in his tiny family home, with the help of his new wife, Sipon, and activist volunteers. The children were shown how to recognise and critique the social, economic, political and environmental forces that were negatively impacting their lives, as well as how to articulate their feelings and experiences through artistic expression, such as through woodcut printing, theatrical skits, and creative writing.²² This also included songs, like this satirical theme song for the children:

I’m a Kalangan kid

when it’s flooding

there’s commotion everywhere

people looking for dry ground

Indonesia is rich

so why do I suffer?²³

still, I’m happy

coz Indonesia is free²⁴

The group produced a children’s magazine, Suara Kalangan (‘Voice of Kalangan’, also known as Suara Kampung). One constant theme was pollution in the local creek caused by a nearby textile factory. During the wet season the river would swell, engulfing their homes, and chemical pollutants would cause rashes, especially for the children, who naturally played in the water.²⁵

By the early 1990s, Thukul’s sphere of activity and network had expanded well beyond his local community and region. He attended poetry conventions in Solo, other regional cities, and the national capital, Jakarta, often gate-crashing because organising committees were too conservative or afraid to invite him. During his impromptu performances at such events, to the shocked delight of his audience, Thukul would subvert reverential conventions given to poets. At a prestigious poet’s convention, Thukul turned up the lights, destroying the pretentious sombre mood and encouraging the audience, including the neighbourhood children he brought with him, to chant along. Then, when he was finished (as he warned at the beginning of the performance), he walked through the audience with a hat busking for money. During this performance he also gave a ‘shout-out’ to the army intelligence officers in the audience.²⁶

In such arenas, a mark of Thukul’s work was that middle-class urban intellectuals (with tendencies towards Gramsci’s ‘traditional intellectuals’) were not spared Thukul’s scorn. They may have been poet-panellists, journalists, academics, audience members, and NGO or cultural workers. He saw through their timidity, hypocrisy and complicities in maintaining a culture of silence, and their comfort in the status quo. He satirised their innocuous, veiled or oblique criticisms of New Order injustice and oppression, as well as their patronising and often opportunistic empathy towards the working-class poor:

root out the clever people

I root out

the clever people

inside my head

I’m not intimidated anymore

by the words of clever people,

who speak with such passion

their chatter doesn’t change the world

all those speakers at seminars

whose pronouncements are published

in the pages of newspapers –

maybe their readers are in awe

but the world doesn’t change

when the newspaper is folded and put away.

Despite such scepticism, Thukul continued to form loose alliances with committed student, cultural, social and political activists. Key amongst these were still those who shared similar views to his own: among others, he collaborated with the visual artists Semsar Siahaan, Yayak Kencrit, Moelyono, as well as labour and political activists Daniel Indrakusuma and Bambang Harri in advocacy, consciousness-raising and empowerment for the urban and rural working class and other marginalised poor people. In Central and West Java, he was involved in various activities, including protests against the forced acquisition of farming land for the World Bank-funded Kedung Ombo dam project. The campaign against this project produced a now infamous calendar²⁷ that featured Thukul’s poem ‘about a movement’:

I used to say

I need a home

but that quickly changed

into the demand

everyone needs land

remember: everyone!

I’m thinking

about a movement

but how will it happen

if I make my demands alone

I’m not a holy person

who can live on a handful of rice

and a jug of water

I need pants and a shirt

to cover my private parts

I’m thinking

about a movement

but how can it happen

if I stay quiet?²⁸

By the mid-1990s Thukul was increasingly politically active. He helped organise one of the biggest worker protests of the period at the Sritex textile factory on the outskirts of Solo, a place where many of his neighbours worked. The 15,000 strikers demanded fair working conditions, including the implementation of legally sanctioned maternity and menstruation leave entitlements. Sritex shares were owned by Suharto’s daughter, Tutut, and the minister for information, Harmoko, so Special Forces (Kopasus) – rather than the usual regular army units or the police Mobile Brigade (Brimob) – were used to brutally break up the protest.²⁹ Thukul’s face was smashed onto a military jeep during this crackdown, leading to a serious injury requiring surgery to save his eye. First-hand experience of state violence only made Thukul more defiant:

alive and well

I’m not a newsworthy celebrity

but I’m still bad news

for those in power

my poems are not poetic

they have dark words – sweating

and jostling for a way out

even if an eye is lost

they will never die

even if I have to leave my home

they will never die

even if I must pay what they ask

my years, my energy, my wounds

they will never die

words always ask for payment

and always say to me, you are still alive

and yes, I am alive and well

and my words have not been destroyed!³⁰

From around 1993 on Thukul became a key instigator in the establishment of Jaringan Kerja Kebudayaan Rakyat (Jakker, the People’s Cultural Work Network), and founded the outspoken left-wing cultural journal Ajang Jakker (Forum of the People’s Cultural Work Network) in 1995, as its organ. In Jakker Thukul was involved with other left-wing artists and cultural workers, such as Semsar Siahaan, Moelyono and the writer Linda Christanty. At the same time, he became aligned with the left-wing Democratic People’s Union (Persatuan Rakyat Demokratik, PRD), which was proclaimed a party in April 1996.³¹ This was a significant provocation of the Suharto regime, since the establishment of new parties was not allowed. With Jakker as its cultural wing and Thukul as the formal leader of Jakker, Thukul became a key leader of the PRD.

The key political campaign of the period immediately following the formation of the PRD was one supporting Megawati Sukarnoputri’s leadership of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI), one of the two opposition parties allowed to sit as symbolic opposition in the Suharto regime’s engineered pseudo-parliament. Despite the lack of any real authority attached to the leadership of the PDI, the regime feared Megawati because she was the daughter of the still popular first president of Indonesia, Sukarno, who was deposed by Suharto in the mid-1960s. The regime saw her leadership as creating a pole of opposition and orchestrated her removal, a measure opposed by large numbers of people inside and outside the party. Supporters massed at the PDI headquarters in Jakarta, where a stand-off ensued for just over a month before the military violently attacked the building. Thousands of protesters poured out of the area around the PDI offices on Diponegoro Road and riots followed. Soon after, the PRD was scapegoated over the riots and labelled communist. Its leaders and other activists were hunted down, kidnapped and tortured. Thukul became a fugitive, hiding in safehouses in Jakarta, Java, and Kalimantan.³²

During this time Thukul continued to be active within the labour movement in Jakarta and elsewhere. He also wrote poetry and essays using pseudonyms. These were published in underground magazines, until he was last seen alive in April 1998. For example, when he found out the military had ransacked his house, Thukul sarcastically thanked the regime for teaching his children a valuable lesson about state oppression:

untitled

I got word from neighbours

that you came and ransacked my house

and rifled through my books

I’m just writing to thank you so very much

for introducing yourselves

to my children

and for teaching them

at their tender ages

the meaning of oppression

a word that isn’t taught in schools

but which you have introduced

to all of us

every day and everywhere

waving your weapons around

your cruelty

is a concrete lesson

that isn’t in the textbooks³³

The emergence of an icon: remembering Thukul, 1998–2009

As the regime entered its last months, demonstrations, occupations, and riots spread across the country. Between one and five thousand people died in the riots immediately preceding Suharto’s resignation alone. By 1998, however, it was apparent that Suharto had lost the support of Indonesia’s political elite. With a guarantee of protection from the army, Suharto finally stepped down on May 21, 1998, amid continuing demonstrations and an upsurge of democratic energy.³⁴

Left-wing activists occupied themselves with working to move social and political change in a progressive direction. The demands of the intense political activity of the time and the relatively chaotic situation around the fall of the regime meant that Thukul’s absence was not initially considered particularly noteworthy. However, as time went on, it was increasingly felt. This spurred concerned acquaintances of Thukul to write articles in the Indonesian and international media asking, ‘Where is Wiji Thukul’?³⁵

After his disappearance, Thukul’s family, initially led by his wife Sipon, lobbied for action and answers regarding Thukul’s fate. They were supported by NGOs, especially the Indonesian Association of Families of Victims of Disappearance (IKOHI) and the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS).³⁶ Both organisations were established in 1998 to advocate for and support the families of those who ‘disappeared’ before the fall of Suharto. As someone with a relatively high degree of prominence before his disappearance, Thukul came to function as their ‘poster boy’. PRD activists kidnapped and released by the military were integral members of these organisations, including Mugiyanto, the leader of IKOHI. The public spotlight on Thukul has been maintained by the sustained campaigning of organisations such as IKOHI and KontraS, as well as that of other activists, cultural workers and intellectuals, all of whom have both supported and harnessed Thukul’s grieving family’s search for answers.³⁷

Together, all these elements, with his family at the forefront, have directly generated or helped to inspire an array of published audio-visual and printed artefacts related to Thukul’s life and work. These include: the first comprehensive anthology of Thukul’s poems, Aku ingin jadi peluru (‘I want to be a bullet’) compiled by poet Dorothea Rosa Herliany;³⁸ a 2002 video documentary³⁹ exploring Thukul’s life and work through the eyes of his wife, friends and theatre workers who worked with him; and a 2003 article, ‘Wiji Thukul: People’s Poet’, by Tinuk Yampolsky, which was accompanied by English translations of 10 poems by Richard Curtis.⁴⁰ Other artefacts directly produced by IKOHI and/or KontraS include: Mereka yang hilang dan mereka yang dihilangkan (‘Those who disappeared and those who were disappeared’) with individual case studies of those disappeared, including one written by Linda Christanty;⁴¹ and the video documentary Batas panggung (‘Stage Boundary’),⁴² which used the title of one of Thukul’s poems (see above), portrays state violence during the last period of the Suharto regime and used interviews with families of those disappeared, including that of Thukul. In 2002, the Yap Thiam Hien Award for Human Rights had also been posthumously awarded to him.⁴³

Thukul’s status as an icon for human rights and progressive politics was well established by the late 2000s. In 2007, the Kebenaran akan terus hidup (‘Truth will live on’), edited by ex-PRD activist Wilson was launched as part of a week of commemorations. It included a series of essays and testimonies written by cultural and political activist associates of Thukul.⁴⁴ At around the same time, remembering Thukul increasingly entered mainstream popular culture. In one episode of the popular television talk show Kick Andy!, entitled ‘Kembalikan mereka’! (Bring them home!), the host talked with families of the disappeared, including Thukul’s wife and two children. At the end of the show Thukul’s daughter, Fitri Nganthi Wani, read her own poem about the family’s distress resulting from constant rumour and innuendo concerning Thukul’s whereabouts.⁴⁵

Wani and Thukul’s son, Fajar Merah, have both been significant contributors to the process of creating discussion of Thukul’s life and work. From the age of ten, Wani has written poems as a therapeutic means of getting to sleep at night, coping with the terror and trauma her family was subjected to when Thukul was being hunted by the military, and processing the grief and anger at the loss of her father.⁴⁶ We now turn to the impact of their work and the way it and the memory of Thukul, more generally, have been taken up by their contemporaries and a new generation of Indonesians, whose experience is completely (or almost completely) post-New Order.

Recasting Thukul for a new generation: remembering Thukul, 2009–2019

In 2009, a book launching of Wani’s collected poems, After my father disappeared/Selepas bapakku hilang,⁴⁷ maintained and also politicised the public remembering of Thukul. The one thousand invited guests included writers, journalists, celebrities and politicians.⁴⁸ The climax of the event was a heartfelt rendition by Indonesian rock legend Iwan Fals of a poem written by Wani when she was eleven years old: Pulanglah pak (‘Come home, papa’).⁴⁹

This was followed by widespread coverage of Thukul’s story, including: a 2013 special feature in Tempo magazine, ‘Wiji Thukul: The Puzzle of a Disappeared Person’⁵⁰, which was accompanied by a bonus collection of his poems entitled ‘The generals are furious’⁵¹; another comprehensive collection of Thukul’s poetry, Nyanyian Akar Rumput (‘Grassroots Ballads’), published in 2014 by Indonesia’s foremost publisher Gramedia⁵²; a 2014 documentary on the national news and current affairs channel, MetroTV (‘Wiji Thukul, the Poet Demonstrator’);⁵³ and another exposé by the critical online news tabloid DetikNews.⁵⁴

Extensive media coverage reflected both the political nature of Wani’s book launch and a growing interest in Thukul. The televised book launch and the MetroTV documentary appear to have marked something of a turning point or transition. Prior to this time, there was close collaboration with the solidarity organisations led mainly by former PRD activists (IKOHI and KontraS). From around 2014, there seems to have been more collaboration between Thukul’s family, especially his two adult children, and the mass media, particularly with MetroTV. Not only this, the commodification of Thukul’s image seems to have intensified.

Thukul’s children, Wani and Fajar, have become more independent and entrepreneurial in their individual and collaborative creation of cultural discourse and products linked to their father. Recent initiatives include the promotion and sale via the internet of Wiji Thukul T-shirts, such as those with the lyrics of Thukul’s busking chant from the poem ‘di bawah selimut kedamaian palsu’ (‘under the cover of a false peace’): ‘what’s the use of studying/if it’s studying to lie/what’s the use of reading lots/if you keep your mouth shut the whole time’.⁵⁵ Fajar, now an accomplished musician with his band, Merah bercerita (‘Red tells tales’), has produced new renditions of Thukul’s poetry in new contexts for new audiences.⁵⁶ One of Fajar’s renditions of Thukul’s poem ‘Bunga dan tembok’ (‘The flowers and the wall’) has had more than 2.5 million views. The band’s official version of the sung poem is accompanied by psychedelic graphics, supporting the poem’s theme of protesting the ubiquitous issue of developmentalist land grabbing at the expense of ordinary people and the environment.⁵⁷

In 2018 Wani published a second collection of poems, Kau berhasil jadi peluru (‘You succeeded in becoming a bullet’). The title poem, like several others in the book, is a creative response to the form and content of Thukul’s poems, articulating the emotional impact of his disappearance on the individual lives of and relations between Wani, her mother and her younger brother.⁵⁸ Many consumers of Wani and Fajar’s cultural products are their peers or immediate juniors: a younger generation discovering Wiji Thukul with little or no direct experience or memory of the New Order period.

The internet, television, and more recently, film, have become important media for disseminating, representing and reinterpreting memories of Thukul. One of two nationally and internationally acclaimed films⁵⁹ remembering Thukul is the 2016 feature film, ‘Solo, Solitude (Istirahatlah kata-kata)’, a sombre portrayal of Thukul’s last months in hiding. It received mixed reviews from critics, especially from some contemporaries of Thukul, who found the melancholic representation of such a charismatic and engaging artist to be jarring. Nevertheless, powerful grass-roots distribution (in the face of sometimes physical opposition from conservative groups), alongside effective use of social media, meant that the film did reach a large and geographically dispersed young audience.⁶⁰

A second documentary film, ‘Grassroots Ballads’ was released in 2018.⁶¹ Like Wani’s second poetry anthology, but through Fajar’s perspective and renditioning of Wiji Thukul’s poems, the film expresses the impact on the family’s lives of Thukul’s disappearance and the lack of answers concerning his fate. In the lead-up to the 2019 presidential elections, it also had broader political meaning. The film articulates the family’s disappointment with Joko Widodo (‘Jokowi’), the incumbent president, for not honouring his public promises during the 2014 campaign to investigate what happened to Thukul and other activists.⁶²

The situation for family and friends of those who disappeared has not improved since this time. With Widodo’s second term ending in 2024, it seems unlikely this situation will change. From this point of view, his government seems a simple continuation of his predecessors. This is so even in the case of the KontraS lawyer, Munir, who was assassinated in 2004 on a flight to Amsterdam of the state-owned airline Garuda, well after democracy and human rights had supposedly been re-established following the fall of Suharto. Those who gave the orders have never been brought to account.⁶³

Remembering Wiji Thukul in an age of ‘Democratic Degeneration

In the previous section we outlined how Thukul has come to be prominent in Indonesian public memory, especially among progressive Indonesians concerned about historical human rights abuses and their on-going legacies. In this section we will consider how this remembering engages with the broader context of Indonesia’s democracy, which in its current incarnation (Indonesia was also a relatively free electoral democracy in the 1950s) has now survived over a quarter of a century, despite strong illiberal tendencies. We will then consider what significance his story may, or even should, have beyond Indonesia's borders.

Thukul was part of a mass movement that played a significant role in opposing and bringing about the downfall of Suharto’s authoritarian regime, which ruled Indonesia from 1965–1998. This history began with what Farid calls ‘Indonesia’s original sin’:⁶⁴ the violence of 1965–1966. While Thukul’s exact fate is unknown, it is most likely he was among the last victims of this history.

After Suharto stepped down, many had high hopes for democracy and human rights in Indonesia. In the early years of the post-Suharto many democratic reforms were enacted and Indonesia was rated favourably by organisations seeking to monitor human rights and democratic freedoms. For example, Freedom House categorised Indonesia as ‘free’ in its annual report in 2006. From the late 2000s onwards, however, many scholars and observers began to be more critical of the development of human rights in Indonesia. By 2013, Freedom House had changed its ranking of Indonesia to ‘partly free’ and scholars discussed Indonesia’s continuing illiberalism and began to write of ‘democratic recession’ or even ‘democratic degeneration’. There were continuing human rights abuses, such as the assissination of Human rights lawyer, Munir Said Thalib (mentioned above), and key areas of rights. The human rights abuses of the Suharto era remained largely unaddressed, while figures associated with the old regime, most notably 2019 (and probably 2024) presidential candidate and current Defence Minister, Prabowo Subianto, remained powerful members of the political elite.⁶⁵

It is in this situation of democratic fragility that Thukul has become a progressive icon. In a context of slow progress, marginalisation, and even democratic degeneration, Thukul’s principled and uncompromising creative and political practice, as well as his status as a martyr, has provided inspiration and solace.

Thukul: the view from outside Indonesia

While Thukul’s profile developed in Indonesia from the 2000s on, the already small and fragmentary discussion outside of Indonesia diminished still further. We argue that this is unfortunate and that Thukul’s life and work deserve more discussion. The very fact that he has such iconic status in Indonesia, but has been close to invisible outside of Indonesia, even in academic circles, is reason to pay more attention to his work and the way he has been remembered since his disappearance.

Indonesia’s status as the world’s third-largest democracy and largest Muslim-majority country (and therefore largest Muslim-majority democracy) is reason enough to bring our attention to Thukul – if he has prominence in such an important country, we should pay some attention to him outside of Indonesia. But he also deserves consideration as one of many progressive activists and artists who have ‘disappeared’ or been assassinated, such as the Chilean folksinger, Victor Jara, or the environmental and indigenous rights activist, Berta Cáceres, in Latin America. As examples, both of these figures feature far more prominently Wiji Thukul or any other figure martyred in Indonesia (such as Munir Said Thalib).

Nevertheless, discussion of Thukul’s life, work, and legacy remains rare outside of Indonesia and scholarly work is fragmentary, at best, and can omit Thukul, even where this would seem to be of obvious significance. For example, despite explicitly setting out to document New Order period poets for an international audience, even an acclaimed anthology edited by the well-regarded Indonesian literature expert, Harry Aveling, failed to include a single poem by Thukul, the leading critical poet of the late New Order period. Ironically, one stated intention of this anthology was to include those poets who challenged the dominant culture and state ideology that suppressed critical and alternative voices.⁶⁶ Curtis’ 1997 PhD thesis includes important discussions of Thukul’s work, as do the monographs of Febriansyah and von der Borch,⁶⁷ but discussion of his legacy since the 2010s, when his public memory was reinvigorated for a new generation and his work gained its greatest prominence to this point, is almost non-existent.

Conclusion

Wiji Thukul was perhaps the vanguard artist of his generation: brave, idiosyncratic, and compelling. He came from a working-class background and stayed working-class as he developed a creative and political practice that inspired and energised thousands of people during his lifetime. His life and work have continued to inspire in the more than twenty-five years after his disappearance. He was the epitome of Gramsci’s idea of the ‘organic intellectual’ – his work and practice were at one with the working-class and student movements that played key roles in bringing more than three decades of authoritarian rule to an end.

Since his death, his status as an icon of the struggle for greater democracy and social justice in Indonesia has grown in a way that sets him apart from other leaders from the late Suharto period. There seem to be several reasons for this. Firstly, he was an artist as well as an activist, and his work presents itself ready for reinterpretation for new struggles as they emerge. Secondly, his working-class character sets him apart from many late New Order intellectuals, as does his principled and stubborn unwillingness to compromise or leave his community. Thirdly, his positioning by human rights NGOs and others as the icon for those hunted, abducted, tortured, and murdered by the military made him a key representative of the incomplete struggle for human rights, democracy, and social justice after 1998. Finally, the role of his family, and the fact that both of his children are themselves artists who have produced creative responses to the grief and anger of losing their father, has kept his image and work in popular consciousness and presented it to a new generation who never (or barely) knew the New Order regime.

However, the process of Thukul becoming and continuing to be iconic has not been smooth or consistent. At one stage, during the early reformasi period, he was merely absent. Then his family (especially his wife, Sipon) and key NGOs worked to make sure that his fate, and the fate of other activists, was not forgotten.

In the last fifteen years several factors have come together to ensure that the public memory of Thukul has not only not faded but has been regenerated for new generations of Indonesians. Key turning points over this time have been: the release of Thukul’s daughter, Wani’s, first collection of poems in 2009, which focussed on the senses of grief, loss, anger, and frustration that surrounded her experience of her father’s disappearance; the 2014 presidential election campaign in which Thukul’s memory featured prominently and where the winning candidate, Joko Widodo, suggested he would pursue the case of Thukul’s murder, as well as those of other activists; and finally the period since around 2016, during which a number of next-generation artists and intellectuals have produced work with the memory of Thukul as a key theme.

The process whereby Thukul’s memory has been taken up and recast for a new generation has marked Thukul’s transformation into iconic status and makes it possible that he may continue to be remembered and reinterpreted for some time to come.

However, outside of Indonesia, he was little known during his lifetime and continues to be largely unknown, even in scholarly circles. But the life and work of this courageous and remarkable artist and activist deserve further attention from an international audience. The authors and other writers and artists are working to make this a reality.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See the discussion/references below.

2 The Indonesian Genocide of 1965: Causes, Dynamics and Legacies, Ed. Katharine E. McGregor, Jess Melvin, and Annie Pohlman, Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Jess Melvin, The Army and the Indonesian Genocide: Mechanics of Mass Murder, Rethinking Southeast Asia, 15 (Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2018); Geoffrey B. Robinson, The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965–1966 (Princeton University Press, 2018); The International People’s Tribunal for 1965 and the Indonesian Genocide, Ed. Saskia E. Wieringa, Jess Melvin, and Annie Pohlman (Routledge, 2019).

3 Solo’s prominent part in the history of the PKI goes back to the emergence of socialism in Indonesia in the 1910s and the foundation of the party as Asia’s first communist party outside the Soviet Union in 1920. See Takashi Shiraishi, An Age in Motion: Popular Radicalism in Java, 1912–1926 (Cornell University Press, 1990); Ruth T. McVey, The Rise of Indonesian Communism (Cornell University Press, 1965); Donald Hindley, The Communist Party of Indonesia, 1951–1963 (University of California Press, 1966).

4 R. Goodfellow, Api Dalam Sekam: The New Order and the Ideology of Anti-Communism, Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies Working Papers (Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1995).

5 TEMPO, Wiji Thukul: A Conspiracy of Silence (Tempo Publishing, 2014).

6 Wiji Thukul, Suara Independen, 1.5 (1995).

7 ‘Wiji Thukul’, Suara Independen, November 1995.

8 Richard Curtis, People, Poets, Puppets: Popular Performance and the Wong Cilik in Contemporary Java. PhD Dissertation (Curtin University of Technology, 1997).

9 ‘Keliling Kampung Baca Sajak Dan Mendongeng’, Minggu Ini, 8 December 1985.

10 Wiji Thukul, Nyanyian Akar Rumput: Kumpulan Lengkap Puisi. Ed. Bustomi Arman Dhani (Gramedia Pustaka Utama, 2014), 34. Translation by Stephen Miller.

11 Mata Najwa: Catatan Perlawan. MetroTV, 29 Mar. 2017. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLu2P-Uj4I6dBfbUBOw4mVQeMUO6z-_AEe ‘Catatan Perlawanan (3)’, timestamp 6:20.

12 Max Lane, Unfinished Nation: Indonesia Before and After Suharto (Verso).

13 See the references to the political genocide of 1965 above.

14 Lane; Tod Jones, Culture, Power, and Authoritarianism in the Indonesian State, Brill; Stephen Miller, The Communist Imagination: A Study of the Cultural Pages of Harian Rakjat in the Early 1950s, PhD Dissertation (University of New South Wales, 2015).

15 Lane; Richard Robison, Indonesia, the Rise of Capital (Allen & Unwin, 1986); Jeffrey Winters, Power in Motion : Capital Mobility and the Indonesian State (Cornell University Press, 1996).

16 ‘a strange puzzle’ (teka-teki yang ganjil), in Thukul, 2014. Translation by Stephen Miller and Richard Curtis.

17 Marc Perlman, “The Traditional Javanese Performing Arts in the Twilight of the New Order: Two Letters from Solo,” Indonesia 68 (1999): 1–37.

18 Ristia Nurmalita, Widji Thukul: Aku Masih Utuh dan Kata-kata Belum Binasa (Jakarta: Anak Hebat Indonesia, 2017).

19 Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925–2006) was the premier novelist of the Indonesian Revolution and the early post-independence period. He was also a pioneering historian of Indonesian literature and language. A radical left nationalist, he was imprisoned in 1965 and held without charge or trial as a communist (despite never having been a party member) until December 1979. He remained under various forms of arrest (e.g., house and city arrest) until the fall of the regime in 1998. During his incarceration on the concentration camp island of Buru, he managed to produce a series of literary and historical works, including the renowned This Earth of Mankind (Bumi Manusia) tetralogy. Despite being banned and the threat of imprisonment for circulating these works, they were popular and Pramoedya became an icon for an emerging generation of pro-democracy activists. Lane; Max Lane, Indonesia Out of Exile: How Pramoedya’s Buru Quartet Killed a Dictatorship (Penguin, 2023).

20 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (International Publishers, 1971), 9–10.

21 Many works discuss Gramsci’s concept of the organic intellectual. For example, see J. Schwarzmantel, The Routledge Guidebook to Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (Taylor & Francis, 2014); R. Simon, Gramsci’s Political Thought: An Introduction (Lawrence & Wishart, 2015); and P. D. Thomas, The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism (Brill, 2009). All have useful sections on Gramsci’s ideas on this front.

22 Richard Curtis, People, Poets, Puppets: Popular Performance and the Wong Cilik in Contemporary Java. PhD Dissertation (Curtin University of Technology, 1997).

23 These two lines are taken from a popular oppositional song of the period, which was often used by buskers on public transport and on the street. The composer, Yayak Yatmaka/Yayak Kencrit (Bambang Adyatmaka), was also the caricaturist for the famous ‘Tanah untuk Rakyat’ calendar (1991), which featured Thukul’s poem ‘about a movement’ (tentang sebuah gerakan). Although the song was popular, Yayak resisted commercialisation, but encouraged adaptation to local conditions (which is exactly what the Sanggar Suka Banjir members did).

24 Translation by Richard Curtis, with adjustments by Stephen Miller. The ‘free’ here (merdeka) means both ‘free’ and ‘independent’. The use here is clearly ironic.

25 See for instance, Suara Kampung no 3.

26 Curtis.

27 The calendar is discussed in Goodfellow, as well as Anton Lucas, “Land Disputes in Indonesia: Some Current Perspectives,” Indonesia 53 (1992): 79–92.

28 Thukul 152.

29 Wahyu Adiningtyas, The Assemblage of Power: The Role of The State in Minimum Wage Policy in Indonesia. PhD Dissertation (Victoria University of Wellington, 2018).

30 Thukul 196.

31 Lane.

32 Detailed accounts of this period are given in the English and Indonesian booklets published by Tempo that were cited above. See also Lane, 2008 and Edward Aspinall, Opposing Suharto: Compromise, Resistance, and Regime Change in Indonesia (Stanford University Press, 2005).

33 Thukul 171.

34 Aspinall; Lane.

35 Richard Curtis, “Where is Wiji Thukul?” Inside Indonesia 02 Jul. 2000: 63; TEMPO, Wiji Thukul.

36 Ikatan Keluarga Korban Orang Hilang Indonesia (http://ikohi.org) and Komisi untuk Orang Hilang dan Korban Tindak Kekerasan (http://kontras.org/).

37 Wilson (ed.), Kebenaran Akan Terus Hidup: Catatan-Catatan Tentang Wiji Thukul (Ikohi, 2007).

38 Wiji Thukul, Aku Ingin Jadi Peluru : Sajak-Sajak (Indonesia Tera, 2000). This was later updated as a pocketbook edition: Thukul, Wiji. Aku Ingin Jadi Peluru – kumpulan puisi. Cet. 2. Indonesia Tera. 2004.

39 Tinuk Yampolsky, “Wiji Thukul: People’s Poet.” Menagerie 5, Ed. Lontar Laora Arkeman, (2003), 147–54.

40 Tinuk.

41 Mugiyanto, and Ikatan Keluarga Orang Hilang Indonesia (eds.), Mereka Yang Hilang Dan Mereka Yang Ditinggalkan. IKOHI, 2004.

42 Batas Panggung. 2004. This film was produced by KontraS and Offstream.

43 ‘Penghargaan’, Tempo 08/12/2002.

44 Wilson.

45 “Kembalikan Mereka.” Kick Andy, Metro TV, 9 Mar. 2011. This is the programme title as it appears on the Kick Andy website. It also appears under the title ‘Mereka yang hilang dan belum kembali’ (Those who disappeared and have not returned). See http:// http://www.kickandy.com/. The programme is available on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/@ikohifederasi/videos.

46 Richard Arthur Curtis, “Introduction.” After My Father Disappeared, Ed. Richard A. Curtis (Pusat Sejarah dan Etika Politik, Universitas Sanata Dharma Yogyakarta, 2009).

47 Fitri Nganthi Wani, After My Father Disappeared: A Collection of Poems, 1999–2007. Pusat Sejarah dan Etika Politik, Universitas Sanata Dharma Yogyakarta, 2009.

48 In attendance also were Munir’s widow, Suciwati, and their nine-year-old son, Allende. See ‘Anak Widji Thukul Mengenang Lewat Puisi’, Kompas 17/06/2009).

49 During the new Order period, Iwan Fals’ attracted a massive following from urban youth because his song lyrics often critiqued social inequity and corruption, targeting. Concerts and songs were banned. Two of his songs, ‘Bento’ and ‘Bongkar’, pilloried the corporate greed and cronyism at the heart of the Suharto regime’s developmentalist politics and were particularly popular. M. Y. Darmawan, “Iwan Fals, Music, and the Voice of Resistance,” I-Pop: International Journal of Indonesian Popular Culture and Communication 1, no. 1 (Feb. 2020): 41–62.

50 ‘Wiji Thukul: Teka-teki Orang Hilang’, Tempo, 12 Mei 2013. Tempo is something of an Indonesian equivalent to Time magazine, although perhaps a little less conservative and more intellectual than its American counterpart. This special feature was later published as a book: TEMPO. Wiji Thukul: Teka-Teki Orang Hilang. Cetakan pertama, Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, 2013. By 2019, the book had gone through three printings, and was also available in a pocketbook version. Tempo also released an English language version: TEMPO, Wiji Thukul: A Conspiracy of Silence (Tempo Publishing, 2014).

51 Wiji Thukul (2013, 12 Mei). Para Jenderal marah-marah. Tempo.

52 Wiji Thukul (2013, 12 Mei). Para Jenderal marah-marah. Tempo.

53 ‘Wiji Thukul Penyair Demonstran’ (2014). MetroTV appropriated the activist catch cry Melawan Lupa (‘Resist Forgetting’) as the title for a series of historical documentaries and something of a channel slogan.

54 “Puisi Wiji Thukul yang ‘Menyengat’ Orde Baru [Wiji Thukul’s poetry which ‘stung’ the new Order].” DetikNews 01 Jul. 2014.

55 ‘apa guna punya ilmu/kalau hanya untuk mengibuli/apa guna banyak baca buku/kalau mulut kau bungkam melulu’.

56 Examples of collaborative work: the Punk/mad max style music drama :2014 Youtube clip ‘Sajak Suara’ by Melanie Subono feat Fajar Merah (4K)’ (‘Penghargaan’, 2002). ‘Sajak Suara’ (In 2013 Fajar Merah and Wani also collaborated in a concert with popular Bali band, ‘Superman is Dead’, see Jadilah Legenda – Superman Is Dead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RPrb2xAr-Y

57 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IZ_jF2UHe0. There are several other sites that include footage of other performances of the song, with hundreds of thousands of views (for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtCz0UuzIH8 with over 650,000 views as of November, 2023).

58 Fitri Nganthi Wani, After my Father Disappeared: A Collection of Poems, 1999–2007. Yogyakarta: Pusat Sejarah dan Etika Politik, Universitas Sanata Dharma, 2009. The front cover of this book uses imagery from Thukul’s poem ‘Bunga dan Tembok’ (‘The Flowers and the Wall’) mentioned above.

59 This film won an award for Best Independent Film from the Indonesian Ministry of Education and was included in selections for a number of international film festivals (including the Festival del Film Locarno, the Pacific Meridian International Film Festival of Asia Pacific Countries, and the QCinema International Film Festival).

60 Clarence Tsui, “‘Solo, Solitude’ (‘Istirahatlah Kata Kata’): Film Review.”, The Hollywood Reporter, 18 Jan. 2017, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/solo-solitude-istirahatlah-kata-kata-film-review-964839/. Okky Madasari, “Wiji Thukul: A Film Alone Won’t Be Enough.”, The Jakarta Post, 31 Jan. 2017, https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2017/01/31/wiji-thukul-a-film-alone-wont-be-enough.html.

61 Nyanyian Akar Rumput (2018) won the prestigious Piala Citra (Indonesia’s Oscars) as the best full-length documentary. It has also been shown internationally, for example at the 2018 Busan Film Festival in South Korea. ‘Nyanyian Akar Rumput', Sukses Raih Piala Citra, Diapresiasi di Korea. (2018, December 17). Kompas, available at https://entertainment.kompas.com/read/2018/12/17/172138310/nyanyian-akar-rumput-sukses-raih-piala-citra-diapresiasi-di-korea

62 A 2014 Youtube clip shows Jokowi promising he will find out what happened for Thukul’s family, who he considers his ‘good friends’: ‘Apa Jawaban Jokowi, Saat Ditanya Soal Wiji Thukul’? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbxLzZWGDpI&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0ZBbsRo57bvOkMzJ8Ait_2NSIRfdcArnKmswa9DqR7o4GcrW-g4G_joZc

63 Matt Easton, We have Tired of Violence: A True Story of Murder, Memory, and the Fight for Justice in Indonesia (The New Press, 2022). Easton gives a detailed account of Munir’s case.

64 Hilmar Farid, “Indonesia’s Original Sin: Mass Killings and Capitalist Expansion, 1965–1966,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6, no. 1, 3–16.

65 Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2006: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2013: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013); Thomas Power and Eve Warburton, “The Decline of Indonesian Democracy.” in Democracy in Indonesia : From Stagnation to Regression, Ed. Thomas Power and Eve Warburton. (ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, 2020); Ken Setiawan, “Vulnerable but Resilient: Indonesia in an Age of Democratic Decline,” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 58, no. 3, 273–95.

66 Harry Aveling, Secrets Need Words: Indonesian Poetry, 1966–1998 (Ohio University Press, 2001). This was only partially rectified by including poetry by Thukul in the revised Indonesian edition, possibly because the publisher, IndonesiaTera, had also earlier published the first comprehensive anthology of Thukul’s poems. Harry Aveling. Rumah sastra Indonesia (IndonesiaTera, 2002); Michael H. Bodden, “Secrets need words: Indonesian Poetry, 1966–1998,” The Journal of Asian Studies 62, no. 1 (2003): 329–31.

67 Curtis; Rosslyn von der Borch, Art and Activism: Some Examples from Contemporary Central Java (Flinders University of South Australia, 1988). Muhammad Febriansyah, Performing Arts and Politics in New Order Indonesia: Compromise and Resistance, Südostasien working papers (Department of Southeast Asian Studies, Humboldt-University, 2009).