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Let’s learn from Korea’s peace process
At the end of June, I attended the 2018 Jeju Forum for Peace and Prosperity
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t the end of June, I attended the 2018 Jeju Forum for Peace and Prosperity. Jeju is the popular island south of the Korean mainland and has been the site of this high-level event since 2001, when the one-year anniversary of the first inter-Korean summit was commemorated. Over 5,000 participants attended the sessions with topics ranging from the threat of trade wars to state violence against women.
Among world leaders who had attended the forum were former Indonesian presidents Megawati Soekarnoputri and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. This time the forum took place two weeks after the meeting between United States President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Many speakers praised the pivotal role of South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in in bringing the belligerent US and North Korean leaders to a face-to-face encounter. In the West, skepticism abounds over the talks, but in Jeju it became clear how much hope for peace this discussion yielded, as well as how strong the wish for reconciliation was in the heart of South Koreans.
Nobody ignored the obstacles ahead nor the bitter human rights record of the successive North Korean leaders. As Ban Ki Moon stated, human rights are universal and should be adhered to. These words of the former UN secretary-general are also relevant for Indonesia, where right-wing leaders occasionally say human rights are just a Western invention.
Apart from the hope for reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula, the location of the event is worth considering. For South Korea not only battled its North Korean neighbor, it also has a history of internal warfare, as Indonesia has around the 1965-1966 mass killings. Why is the forum held on Jeju? When in 1945 Korea was liberated from Japanese occupation, the country was not immediately unified and made independent.
Rivalry between the Russians in the north and the Americans in the south resulted in the Korean War, sealing the division between the two parts.
In the shadow of this global conflict and in the early stages of the Cold War, Jeju became the stage of a massacre. Nationalist and socialist youth who wanted full independence for a unified Korea were framed as communists. When they rose up on April 3, 1948 approximately 30,000 people were extra-judicially killed in what became known as the Jeju 4.3 massacre.
The US occupation forces, Korean police and right-wing youth groups were responsible for the crimes against humanity committed between 1948 and 1954.
The parallels with the Indonesian situation are obvious. Both countries experienced power struggles after Japan’s surrender. In 1947, then-US president Harry S. Truman announced his doctrine to counter the geopolitical influence of Soviet Russia.
... from an ‘island of death’, Jeju has been transformed into an ‘island of peace’.
In Korea, US forces could directly intervene when they detected a possible threat; in Indonesia they tried to influence then-vice president Mohammad Hatta and like-minded generals, one of the factors leading to the 1948 clashes in Madiun, East Java.
America’s complicity is also evident in the mass killings and other mass crimes against humanity in Indonesia after the murder of six generals by lower ranking officers in 1965.
The judges of the 2015 International People’s Tribunal on the 1965 crimes against humanity found sufficient evidence to conclude that the mass killings amounted to genocide. This is because although victims were not of a particular faith, racial or ethnic group, the widespread and systematic crimes against humanity by the army and the militias trained by them intended to destroy in whole or in part a national group — members and sympathizers of the now defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and Sukarno loyalists.
Another parallel is the use by right-wing youth groups, spurred on by regular units, to help implement the killings. Similarly victims and survivors have long been stigmatized, family members have been discriminated, considered “guilty by association”. For decades, the massacre in Jeju was kept silent, as state power was controlled by those with ties to the massacre.
All this sounds very familiar to Indonesian ears. Yet from an “island of death”, Jeju has been transformed into an “island of peace”. A first major step was set by president Kim Dae-jung, who in 1998 ordered an official research into the massacre.
He signed a Special Law for Fact Finding and Reputation Recovery. Following the release of the government report, then- president Roh Moo-hyun apologized for the massacres in 2003.
Indonesia has not taken this step. President Roh’s apology led to the establishment of the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park, the Peace Memorial Museum, the Peace Forum and the Jeju 4.3 Research Institute.
Since 2014, the massacre has been annually commemorated, with programs to educate the youth on peace and research projects. All over the island memorials have been erected in which the victims are named, their deaths recorded. On some sites, human remains have been excavated and given proper rites.
What a difference from Indonesia. I know of only one case — Plumbon near Semarang, Central Java — where a mass grave is marked and the victims’ names openly recorded. Surviving victims and their descendants still live with stigma, their meetings regularly disbanded by right-wing militia. Due to the climate of impunity for perpetrators, similar crimes against humanity persist, as a recent Amnesty International report recorded for Papua. Even though the National Commission on Human Rights has documented the human rights violations of 1965-1966, the state has not taken further action.
Instigating reconciliation and acknowledging state responsibility for violence committed under the national armed forces is not for the weak. It requires courage and vision to apologize to survivors and victims’ descendants and to take the first steps toward reconciliation.
Overcoming seemingly irreconcilable differences such as those between a communist North Korea and a capitalist-oriented South Korea also demands uncommon negotiation skills.
What a welcome surprise it would be if Indonesia’s leaders would also prove to possess the qualities demonstrated in both reconciliation efforts in Korea — that of the Jeju massacre, and that between the two states on the Korean Peninsula.
Indonesia will occupy a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council in 2019. What better occasion for President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to apologize for the mass killings and other crimes against humanity committed under state responsibility? This might mean the beginning of a serious process of reconciliation while Indonesia’s leaders could proudly and confidently occupy their place in the world community.
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The writer chairs the Foundation IPT 65, an organizer of the International People’s Tribunal on the 1965 crimes against humanity, held in The Hague, the Netherlands, in November 2015.
