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View point: Censorship in Ubud: Raising the red peril and the 'Streisand effect'
Who doesnât know Barbra Streisand, the super talented singer, songwriter, actress, filmmaker and icon, one of the best-selling artists of all time, known for her songs like Hello Dolly, Send in the Clowns, The Way We Were and many others
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ho doesn't know Barbra Streisand, the super talented singer, songwriter, actress, filmmaker and icon, one of the best-selling artists of all time, known for her songs like Hello Dolly, Send in the Clowns, The Way We Were and many others.
But did you know she also gave rise to the term 'the Streisand effect'? In 2003 Streisand attempted to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, which inadvertently drew further public attention to it.
Since then, 'the Streisand effect' refers to the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide something, remove or censor it, has the unintended effect of publicizing the phenomenon even more. In these days of the internet, something can easily go viral within a very short time.
Even before it was named 'the Streisand effect', the phenomenon often occurred in Indonesia, especially during the New Order (1966-1998) when the censor-happy government routinely suppressed information and quashed dissent.
Recently the Streisand effect reappeared in Bali, at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF), with the forced cancellation of sessions related to events that occurred in 1965.
Known as the G30S Movement, it was triggered by the kidnapping of seven Army officers by a unit of the presidential guard on the night of Sept. 30, 1965, an event that the military blamed on the now defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).
This incident led to one of the biggest massacres since the Holocaust, resulting in the deaths of between 500,000 to 1 million people.
This year marks 50 years since 1965. At the recent Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) held between Oct. 14-18, where Indonesia was guest of honor, 1965 was a prominent theme.
In some ways, this year's 12th UWRF was an echo of the Frankfurt fair. As an act of solidarity with Indonesia's theme in Frankfurt, the Ubud organizers adopted the same '17,000 islands of imagination' theme.
They also featured sessions on 1965: three panel discussions, a book launch, an art exhibition and a screening of Joshua Oppenheimer's documentary film The Look of Silence.
As the biggest literary festival in Southeast Asia, the UWRF had no difficulty bringing in more than 165 authors, artists and performers from some 30 countries this year.
Even after the New Order officially ended in 1998, there are still elements of the power elite who are unhappy with the way some Indonesians have commemorated the killings of 50 years ago last October.
A critical flaw of the Reform Movement in 1998 was that it retained many figures of the New Order, who are still alive and in power to today. The New Order's state version of the events of 1965 provided the rationale for their rule, and was the basis for their security and law-and-order approach. Obviously a re-examination and questioning of these events ' even today ' threaten the status quo and the still deeply entrenched belief within the general public of the New Order version of 1965.
If the FBF was out of reach ' and out of the jurisdiction of the Gianyar Police ' Ubud, a well-known center for art and tourism in the regency of Gianyar, was not.
They pressured the organizing committee to cancel events in the UWRF related to 1965.
There was no letter issued by the police instructing the festival organizers to cancel these events, therefore it's not surprising that the organizers were criticized for capitulating too quickly.
With the festival just about to kick off and under the threat of not being given a permit for the following year's festival, the organizers took the path of least resistance: they gave in to police pressure.
Witnessing the police slowly but surely dismantling the power of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in the past few years, what chance does a literary festival have? Perhaps this was what the Ubud organizers thought, forgetting that they have access to lawyers who could possibly have sorted things out, as the police had no legal injunction anyway.
It's difficult to judge: it's simply a moral and political decision that the UWRF organizers had to make on the spot, as they felt too much was at stake.
Where does the Streisand effect come in? Not from 'bringing in the clowns' (the police), or 'the way we were' (how the remaining New Order people want to be).
I would say there are two ways the Streisand effect works. One is that by raising the red peril and the specter of communism, it brings the issue to the fore, exposing it more to public scrutiny.
But what is even more important, is the issue of censorship. Besides the sessions on 1965, the police also demanded that a session protesting land reclamation in Benoa Bay be cancelled. Clearly, what the authorities really want to do is to suppress public dissent in general.
After 17 years of the Reform Era, and a year of President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo's people politics in which they have slowly but steadily lost control, the remaining elements of the New Order as well as the power elite in general, are fighting tooth and nail to maintain their power and resorting to raising the specter of the red peril .
Freedom of expression is one of the bastions of democracy. The increasingly sharpened polarization between the pro-democracy forces and the anti-democracy forces in Indonesia today is being played out in many arenas.
The URWF was just one such arena. It should raise our awareness of the peril of New Order style censorship and the clamping down of freedom of expression in Indonesia, which we've fought so hard for.
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The writer is the author of Julia's Jihad.
