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September 29,1998
The Republic of Indonesia consists of more than 17,000 tropical islands in an archipelago stretching 3,200 miles across the Pacific Ocean, south of Malaysia and the Philippines and north of Australia, and has the world's fourth biggest population, with more than 200 million. The island chain spans a distance longer than the continental United States; with an area of 736,000 square miles, Indonesia is about three times the state of Texas.
Only 1,000 of Indonesia's islands are permanently settled. The island of Java is one of the world's most densely populated areas, with more than 107 million people living in an area the size of the state of New York.
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Indonesia's larger islands consist of coastal plains with mountainous interiors. Its climate is equatorial, but is cooler in the highlands. Jakarta is the capital, with a population estimated at 8.8 million. Other major cities and their populations are Surabaya, 3 million; Medan, 2.5 million; and Bandung, 2.5 million.
Among its ethnic groups are the Javanese, who make up 45 percent of the population; Sundanese, 14 percent; Madurese, 7.5 percent; coastal Malays, 7.5 percent. Other ethnicities account for 26 percent.
Eighty-seven percent of the population is Islamic. Protestants account for six percent; Catholics, three percent; Hindus, two percent; Buddhists and other religions, one percent. Indonesia's constitution applies a guarantee of religious freedom to five state-recognized religions: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Animism is still practiced in some remote areas.
The official language is Indonesian. Of the various local languages, Javanese is the most important. Many Indonesians use only one name, as in the case of Sukarno and Suharto, the two former Indonesian presidents. Eighty-five percent of Indonesia's population can read. Indonesia has numerous distinct cultural and linguistic groups. Many of them are ethnically Malay. As the official language, Indonesian is used in all written communication in education, government, and business. English is the most widely spoken foreign language.
Among its work force of 71 million, some 50 percent work in agriculture; in trade and restaurants, 15 percent; in public services, 13.7 percent; and in manufacturing, 11.6 percent. Natural resources include oil and gas, bauxite, silver, tin, copper, gold, and coal. Agricultural products are timber, rubber, rice, palm oil, and coffee. The manufacturing sector turns out garments, footwear, electronic goods, furniture, and paper products.
An advanced civilization had already flourished for 1,000 years before the time of the European Renaissance. From the 7th to the 14th centuries, the Buddhist kingdom of Srivijaya thrived on Sumatra. At its height, the Srivijaya Empire ranged as far as West Java and the Malay Peninsula. By the 14th century, the Hindu Kingdom of Majapahit arose in eastern Java. Its legacies include a codification of law and an epic poem.
Islam came to Indonesia during the 12th century and by the 16th century had supplanted Hinduism in Java and Sumatra. Bali remains overwhelmingly Hindu. In the eastern archipelago, there are currently large Christian and Islamic communities, a result of proselytizing in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Beginning in 1602, the Dutch began exploiting the weakness of the small kingdoms that had replaced the Majapahit kingdom. During 300 years of Dutch rule, the Netherlands East Indies became one of the world's richest colonial possessions.
An Indonesian independence movement emerged during the first decade of this century and quickly gained broad support, especially between the two World Wars. Leaders came from a small group of young professionals and students, many of them Netherlands-educated. Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, was one of many such leaders imprisoned for political activities.
For three years during World War II, the Japanese occupied Indonesia. For their own purposes, they encouraged the nationalist movement. Many Indonesians were now able to occupy civil administration posts hitherto closed to them under the Dutch.
A mere three days after Japan surrendered to the Allies on August 17, l945, a small group of Indonesians proclaimed independence and established the Republic of Indonesia. This group was led by Sukarno, the nation's first genuinely national figure and first president (1945 to 1967).
The Dutch tried to regain full control of their colony but met fierce resistance. Four years of war ensued and in 1949 the Dutch yielded, and transferred sovereignty to a federal Indonesian Government. In 1950, Indonesia became the 60th member of the United Nations.
But the Dutch retained control over the western half of New Guinea, known as Irian Jaya. Negotiations went forward between the Dutch and Indonesia over incorporating West Irian into Indonesia. When the talks failed, armed clashes erupted between Indonesian and Dutch troops in 1961.
The two sides reached accord in August 1962, and Indonesia took over administrative responsibility for Irian Jaya on May 1, 1963. In 1969, an Act of Free Choice, held in Irian Jaya under UN supervision, confirmed the transfer of sovereignty to Indonesia.
Under the constitution Indonesia adopted after independence, a parliamentary system was created which elected the executive by parliamentary vote. But in 1956, President Sukarno imposed an authoritarian regime with himself as the strongman leader. During the next nine years, he moved Indonesia's foreign policy toward nonalignment, worked closely with Asian communist states, and inclined more and more toward the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in the domestic sphere.
On October 1, 1965, PKI elements within the military, including sympathizers within Sukarno's own palace guards, staged a coup. They took over key locations in Jakarta and kidnaped and murdered six senior generals. The coup was crushed within a few days, but violence and political instability swept the archipelago. Rightist gangs killed vast numbers of alleged communists in rural areas. The number of deaths is estimated between 160,000 and 500,000.
In the wake of the upheavals, Sukarno was unable to recover his political position and restore the country to its pre-1965 condition. In March 1966, he was forced to transfer important political and military powers to General Suharto, who had rallied the military in crushing the coup.
Suharto was named acting president in March 1967 by the People's Consultative Assembly. Sukarno passed from the political stage and died in 1970. Declaring a "New Order," Suharto swung Indonesia onto a dramatically different course from that set by Sukarno. Economic rehabilitation and development became primary goals.
Suharto's regime was dominated by the military, but sought advice from Western-educated economic experts. He was selected by parliament to a five-year term in 1968, and to subsequent five-year terms until his expulsion in May 1998.
East Timor was a Portuguese colony on the island of Timor from 1524 to 1975. It lies north of Australia's coast across the Timor Sea. Because of political events in Portugal, the Portuguese withdrew suddenly from Timor in 1975, which sparked the escalation of power struggles between several Timor political factions.
When an avowedly Marxist faction called "Fretilin" gained the upper hand in a region contiguous to Indonesian territory, the Indonesian government grew alarmed. Faced with appeals from some of Fretilin's Timorese rivals, Indonesian military forces intervened in East Timor in 1975 and by 1976 had vanquished Fretilin's regular forces. In the same year, Indonesia annexed East Timor as its 27th province. Small-scale guerrilla activity continues to the present.
Over time, Indonesia became one of the world's foremost economic success stories. By the early and mid-1990s, it was a star player in the global economy, with annual growth running at seven percent. Foreign investors eagerly moved their capital into Indonesian securities and real estate.
But in July 1997, a major economic crisis spreading through Asia reached Indonesia. The rupiah, Indonesia's national currency, tumbled headlong and soon lost 80 percent of its value. The economy collapsed: the stock exchange plummeted, banks and major firms failed, airlines went bankrupt, massive unemployment set in, and prices soared. Because the country was also in the throes of its worst drought in 50 years, hunger spread.
The World Bank said of the crisis in a 1998 report: "No country in recent history, let alone one the size of Indonesia, has ever suffered such a dramatic reversal of fortune." Indonesia sought and received a financial bailout worth billions of dollars in promised loans through the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The loans required that Indonesia make rigorous fiscal reforms.
The mounting economic strains led to calls for Suharto's ouster and in May 1998 gave way to widespread rioting that killed 1,200 people. Much of the violence was directed at the country's ethnic Chinese minority, which has long dominated commerce and has been a frequent scapegoat in Indonesian politics.
Bowing to domestic and international pressures, Suharto stepped down on May 21, 1998, ending 32 years of authoritarian rule. Power passed to his hand-picked successor, B.J. Habibie. Habibie has responded to public clamor with a series of democratic reforms, along with the economic reforms program mandated by the IMF.
Since Suharto's departure, Indonesian society has begun splintering along ethnic and religious lines. The domestic political situation has grown increasingly fractious. Charges of pervasive corruption and past human rights abuses continue. Tensions have mounted over independence movements on Irian Jaya and East Timor.
The economy remains devastated. Hungry Indonesians have rioted and looted in a desperate grab for food. To an alarmed Indonesian government and international community, the most urgent issue is how to avert mass starvation and violence.
The United Methodist Church in Indonesia is known as Gereja Methodist Indonesia (GMI), with headquarters in Medan on North Sumatra. It numbers 100,000 members and maintains gospel ministry and a range of social programs such as those that provide housing, clean water, and health care to fellow-Indonesians.
Public Domain Map from the Perry-Castaņed
a Library Map Collection
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