By James Balowski
The Magsaysay Foundation in Manila on August 7 issued a statement strongly defending its decision to give its 1995 literary award for Pramoedya Ananta Toer, one of Indonesia's foremost authors. The award had been criticised by several prominent conservative Indonesian writers and literary figures.
The foundation said that it would "remain firm in its decision to recognise Pramoedya", adding that "the current attack on Pramoedya bore little moral weight in light of the penalties already imposed upon him".
The anti-Pramoedya protest was printed in the Semarang daily Suara Merdeka on August 3, then on the following day in the English language daily Jakarta Post. It was signed by 26 Indonesian writers and literary figures.
The statement, led by two previous Magsaysay award recipients, Mochtar Lubis and H.B. Jassin, expressed "surprise" at the foundation's decision and claimed that it must not be fully aware of the role Pramoedya played between 1959 and 1965 — when, they claimed, he led a "witch-hunt of his fellow writers" — while they had been "tireless fighters for freedom of expression and human rights" and among Pramoedya's primary targets.
A number of well-known Australian academics also issued a statement on August 10 which referred to Pramoedya as south-east Asia's most celebrated author and said that it was therefore regrettable that there are some "unable to share the glory that Pramoedya brings to his nation". It described the 26 protesters as representing an "increasingly anachronistic position, which is irrelevant to Indonesia's future in a global cultural community".
On August 11, Hasta Mitra, a publishing company managed by former political prisoners, released a statement which called the attack on the Magsaysay Foundation "an explosion of anger by narrow-minded people who cannot free themselves from envy over Pramoedya's victory". The accusations against Pramoedya were "filthy slander".
Conspicuously absent from the criticisms is any reference to Pramoedya's literary work. His numerous works have been translated into 20 foreign languages, and his name has been perpetually on the Nobel Prize nominations list. He has been awarded an honorary life membership by international writers organisation PEN.
Max Lane, translator of four of Pramoedya's banned novels, which were written while he was in prison and published after his release, told Green Left Weekly that he believed what was probably of greatest concern to Mochtar Lubis and his associates was the loss of their monopoly in representing Indonesian contemporary culture on the international scene, inherited as their booty after the 1965 seizure of power by the Suharto regime and the associated massacres.
"The award for Pram points instead to a healthy, more pluralistic recognition of the best in the Indonesian cultural tradition", said Lane. n