When a History Seminar Becomes Toxic: A Reading of the Attack on LBH Jakarta in September 2017

In a seminar on 16 and 17 September 2017 organised at LBH Jakarta by human rights activists and victims of the post-1965 genocide, a group of researchers wanted to discuss the background to this affair, which remains controversial. They were prevented from holding this discussion by a radical Muslim militia. The next day a cultural festival on free speech was held in the same venue as a pacific response, but it was attacked by a large crowd which surrounded the LBH’s office for hours before the police intervened. In this article I discuss the background to these events and argue that human rights defenders are singled out for attack in the power play between competing political factions. In this context, the spectre of communism remains a convenient bogeyman for some groups.À l’occasion d’un séminaire organisé les 16 et 17 septembre 2017 au Bureau d’aide juridique par des activistes des droits de l’Homme et des victimes du génocide qui a suivi les événements de 1965, un groupe de chercheurs voulait discuter du contexte de cette affaire, qui reste controversé. Une milice islamiste radicale les a empêché de tenir cette discussion. Le lendemain, un festival culturel dédié à la liberté d’expression s’est tenu au même endroit en guise de réponse pacifique mais il a été attaqué par une foule importante massée pendant des heures devant le Bureau d’aide juridique avant l’intervention de la police. Je discute dans cet article du contexte de ces événements et suggère que les défenseurs des droits de l’Homme sont visés pour des attaques dans le cadre d’un jeu de pouvoir entre des factions politiques concurrentes. Dans ce contexte, le spectre du communisme reste un épouvantail commode pour certains groupes

The Birth of the New Order State in Indonesia

In this paper I argue that ex-president Soeharto’s New Order state, which lasted from 1966 till 1998, legitimated itself not only by its destruction of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI, Partai Komunis Indonesia), as other scholars have suggested previously (Mortimer 1969 for example). I suggest that the sexual politics underlying this process of legitimation have so far been largely ignored. I focus on the military’s orchestrated campaign of slander and sexual innuendo against the PKI’s women’s organization Gerwani (Gerakan Wanita Indonesia, Indonesian Women’s Movement). This campaign was pursued for more than 30 years since the 1 October 1965 putsch in Indonesia which eventually brought Soeharto to power. It embodied a powerful supportive logic by which Soeharto’s rule was sustained until mid-1998, creating a particular form of national, militarized identity. Another consequence of the sexual accusations falsely hurled at Gerwani was the destruction of what was at the time one of the most powerful women’s movements in the world. Not only was Gerwani banned and destroyed, the remaining women’s organizations were brought under strict government control. The state even set up its own mass women’s organizations, under the umbrella of Dharma Wanita (Women’s Duty) which were intended to re-subordinate women, rather than to emancipate them. The feminist organizations in Indonesia which came up in the mid 1980s had to manoeuvre very carefully to avoid being called "Gerwani baru", "new Gerwani"

Empowerment Beyond Numbers: Substantiating Women’s Political Participation

From our households and into our communities, from independent States to international governing bodies, gender operates as a construct of evolving aspects of women’s identities and is a medium through which expectations are prescribed, social norms are formed and power relations are negotiated. Gender constructs that impede women’s access to the public spheres of society diminish the possibility for equitable and empowering life conditions. Of particular emphasis in this paper, facilitating women’s entry into political bodies across the world is also compromised by persistent obstacles in women’s opportunities in both political and private spheres of life. Our research engages female and male panchayat members in rural Gujarat, India. We aim to understand how being a woman affects access to political office, experiences therein, negotiation procedures and decisions taken. It is theorized that facilitating female representation in local governmental structures (a panchayat) through a quota represents one of many routes toward empowerment and one potential means of improving health and household welfare. When empowerment is analyzed within India’s panchayat quota, dimensions such as gender and corresponding perceptions, norms and conditions evidence the centrality of gender as a persistent fault-line in number-based initiatives. The panchayat thus mirrors gendered social realities, demonstrating how complex the processes of substantial democratic political participation and women’s empowerment are, in India and elsewhere

Poder y empoderamiento de las mujeres

El empoderamiento representa un desafío a las relaciones de poder existentes y busca obtener mayor control sobre las fuentes de poder. Conduce a lograr autonomía individual, a estimular la resistencia, la organización colectiva y la protesta mediante la movilización. En suma, los procesos de empoderamiento son, para las mujeres, un desafío a la ideología patriarcal con miras a transformar las estructuras que refuerzan la discriminación de género y la desigualdad social. El empoderamiento, por lo tanto, se entiende como un proceso de superación de la desigualdad de género. El empoderamiento no un es proceso lineal con un inicio y un fin definidos de manera igual para las diferentes mujeres o grupos de mujeres. El empoderamiento es diferente para cada individuo o grupo según su vida, contexto e historia y según la localización de la subordinación en lo personal, familiar comunitario, nacional, regional y global. En este libro se privilegia el uso de los términos empoderamiento y empoderar, porque ellos señalan la acción, y porque empoderamiento implica que el sujeto se convierte en agente activo como resultado de un accionar, que varía de acuerdo con cada situación concreta