Page 174 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

acknowledge gratefully the assistance of Ibu Bian Loho-Unsulangi, Broeder Corne, Sister
Josefa, and Sister Angela of the DSJ (Dina Santo Josef) in Manado, and, last but not least,
that of the journalists without whose time and patience this essay would not exist.
1. All foreign terms are derived from Bahasa Indonesia, the national language of the
Republic of Indonesia.
2. Lukas Suryanto Ispandriarno (2001) mentions that, for print media alone, for in-
stance, more than one thousand new newspapers and magazines have arisen in the two
years following Suharto’s downfall. For an assessment of the role of print media in the
“Moluccan disaster,” see the special issue of Pantau 9 (2000) on “Petaka Maluku.” Nu-
merous seminars and publications supported by local institutions and nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) as well as international organizations such as UNESCO, USAID,
and the British Council are currently devoted to journalistic practice and professionalism
as well as to speci¤c foci like peace journalism.
3. The Manado Pos is a subsidiary of the Surabaya daily, Jawa Pos, and, as such, is
part of the country’s largest press empire. Following Sen and Hill (2000, 58–59), the Jawa
Pos is, importantly, the only paper outside the capital Jakarta that has focused on the
development of provincial markets.
4. See Nanere 2000, 63–80, for a facsimile of the letter and discussion of the inci-
dent; see also Komkat KWI 2000, 75.
5. Alongside Christian-inclined state radio in Ambon, several illegal radio stations
operating in this capital of the province of Maluku have been seen as a source of provo-
cation in the con®ict. See “Maluku Leader Dies of Gunshot Wounds,” Jakarta Post,
March 22, 2001. In July 2001 I was told by several people that the Muslim extremist
Laskar Jihad Radio Station, the SMPP or Suara Perjuangan Muslimin Maluku, had man-
aged to control all the airwaves in Ambon for approximately the previous three months.
As it was explained to me, all radios in Ambon exclusively received the SPMM station
while even handy-talkies (HT) were in¤ltrated by the channel’s broadcasting. Elsewhere
the activities of radio stations in conditions of war have been in®ammatory, for instance,
during the genocide in Rwanda. See Saine 1998.
6. The issue of numbers, not surprisingly, is an extremely contentious and debated
subject in the context of the con®ict. Some activists I spoke to insisted that it is preferable
not to mention any ¤gures publicly. On the other hand, as Robert Cribb points out in a
sensitive piece on the problem of reporting the numbers of dead in massacres, numbers
are necessary to get a grasp on mass killing but, given the enormous problems involved
in putting numbers on political casualties, the utmost caution is advised in using them.
There are also, he writes, serious moral consequences in getting it wrong—“if we over-
state the number killed we commit blood libel on those we accuse, if we understate it we
deprive victims even of the recognition that they died.” See Cribb 2001, 94–95.
7. An acronym for Suku, Agama, Ras, Antar-golongan or ethnic group, religion, race,
and class.
8. For an excellent and now classic discussion of representing violence, see Pandey
1992.
9. On the notion of “runaway topographies,” see Spyer 2000, esp. 36–40.
10. The literature on violence in Indonesia is growing. A selection includes the in-
sightful piece on Indonesian modalities and ¤gurings of violence by Sidel (2001), Henk
Schulte Nordholt’s helpful historical genealogy of especially New Order violence (2001),
the collections of essays by Colombijn and Lindblad (2002), and Wessel and Wimhofer
(2001).

Media and Violence in an Age of Transparency 163