Project 365

… the most revered example of reconciling leadership is Nelson Mandela, who invited the men who guarded him in jail to his inauguration as president of South Africa, put leaders who had supported apartheid in his cabinet and set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to give people who had committed crimes during the apartheid era the chance to avoid imprisonment by confessing. Mandela decided that the only way he or the people of South Africa could be free to face the future was to let go of the past. Because of all that he had suffered, he had the credibility to do it.

— Bill Clinton in Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World

To be honest, I didn’t know much about Nelson Mandela, except that he was thrown into prison due to his anti-apartheid activities. So when I read this, I thought, “Wow!”. He’s indeed amazing! I should definitely read his autobiography.

… continuation from the previous post.

During our coffee time, I asked mbak Linda few things about the conflict in Maluku which occurred in 1999 between the Christian and Muslim groups. She told me that Christians and Muslims in Maluku were very peaceful and never had any problems. There were some provocateurs, which were allegedly done by our former dictator Soeharto, who forced these two groups to fight against each other. When the conflict ended, it was discovered that these people were forced to fight — if not, then these provocateurs would do something nasty, for example raping female relatives. So the Maluku people had no other choice than to cause terror against each other. Mbak Linda also told me that Maluku people were originally Muslims, until the Dutch made some of them to convert to Christian. She even told me that her great-grand mother was a Muslim and some of her far relatives were Muslims. During the conflict, her hometown in Ambon was totally burned, apparently by the Indonesian army. Yet another strange thing about this conflict!

Gosh, I loved to know about these things straight from the locals. They were the ones who knew the situation really well. They were first-hand witnesses or at least had relatives who experienced it. It fascinated me how these kind of details made a difference to how we view and judge others. It made us understand the whole situation better than just by relying on media which was apparently good in exaggerating stuff (and not to mention the censorship done by the government!). If we could build this kind of understanding and tolerance towards others, the world will be in a much better state.

… continuation from the previous post.

Mbak Linda told me about the Republic of the South Moluccas (RMS) which was a self-proclaimed republic in the South Moluccas. After the Indonesian independence day, the Maluku people who were part of KNIL demanded their island to be an independent country which turned to be unsuccessful. So most of them went to the Netherlands (which supposed to be temporarily) and were promised by the Dutch government that they would solve this matter. They set up a government-in-exile. Yet, years went by and the Dutch government hadn’t fulfilled their promise yet. So these Maluku people went rebellious, attacking two Indonesian embassies and hijacking train (this hijacking story didn’t get into Indonesia by the way!) to get the attention of the Dutch government. They were quite fanatic — even to these days, according to mbak Linda, they still celebrated the 25th of April (the day when the RMS was formed), put up their own RMS flag, and regarded themselves as Moluccans rather than Indonesians.

Honestly I had no idea about this until she told me!!! Wow! 😀 It was very interesting indeed!!!

*There was a movie about this hijacking thing. You can see its trailer here.

Link: Dutch East Indies

Found a very interesting site about the youth life of Elizabeth van Kampen living in Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), including during the occupation of Japan.

After living more than 1.5 years in the Netherlands and meeting many people who are of Indonesian heritage, I became interested in their stories back in the days when they were still in Indonesia.

Just something interesting to share about 🙂