Learning peace journalism from Manado

If there is one group of people in Indonesia whose lives have changed most dramatically since the fall of the New Order government four years ago, it must be journalists. News crews played an important part in the process of change by bringing us pictures of demonstrations against the regime, for the first time on television, in November 1998; since then, images and experiences of conflict have been seared into the minds of many reporters from many areas, as our recent training workshops made clear.

One correspondent, from Kalimantan, told how a Dayak gang forced him to eat the heart of one of their victims; another had made good his escape from a rampaging mob in Ambon only by posing as a member of the state intelligence service.

With so many conflict zones to choose from, why did we end up in Manado for a field trip in peace journalism? Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi, is known as one of the safest places in Indonesia. To European eyes, it resembles nothing so much as a hotter version of Switzerland -- sweeping mountainsides, dense forests and deep blue waters. In place of fairy-tale castles, the landscape is dotted with Manado's fantastical white churches, glistening in the tropical sun.

In fact, Manado offers important lessons about both conflict and peace. Yes, like Switzerland, North Sulawesi has managed to avoid the violence engulfing its neighbors. In North Maluku and Ambon to the East, and Poso to the South, Muslims and Christians ended up at each other's throats -- but not here. Just across the Sulawesi Sea lies the troubled Philippine province of Mindanao, wracked by what the outside world sees as a "Muslim separatist" struggle.

What's at stake for such a community is not the absence of conflict but the capacity to respond with non-violent means. The word "conflict" is often used, in news reports, as a synonym for fighting or violence. Understanding the difference is crucial to peace journalism. In an analytical sense, conflict simply means two or more parties pursuing incompatible goals. In the words of Johan Galtung, the globe-trotting professor who coined the peace journalism concept, conflict is "a ubiquitous phenomenon in human and social reality".

The "peace journalists" descended on Manado to try to find out how this beautiful city has managed to live with conflict, within and without -- and yet avoided lapsing into the violence afflicting surrounding areas across a radius of hundreds of miles.

Peace, in Manado, is something many people are actively working at, all the time. They include religious leaders, coming together to give messages of tolerance and mutual understanding to their followers.

Relief agencies have worked to prevent the trauma brought here, in the minds of refugees from North Maluku, from festering, and potentially inflaming religious sensibilities in Manado itself. The journalists filed some great stories based on interviews with Christian children, singing Christian songs in a refugee camp, led by a Muslim teacher wearing a jilbab (veil).

There was no shortage of "hard news" either. This was the time of the Bali bomb, and Manado had its own explosion on the same night. Its location -- outside the Philippines consulate -- seemed to portend infiltration by outsiders, intent on drawing Manado into political struggles which have taken on a religious overtone.

The incident drew a show of strength from the city's militia groups; prominent among them, Brigade Manguni, the "Night Owls" of North Sulawesi. Their rampage through the streets, hundreds clinging to open-topped vehicles, wearing black t-shirts and shouting at the top of their voices, looked both spectacular and slightly sinister.

Listen carefully to these people, though, and they project a sort of muscular communitarianism, which may not be as threatening as their appearance suggests. What would they do, if, for instance, any of their members discovered "outsiders" in Manado? Why, hand them over to the authorities. If they keep their word -- and the signs are that, so far, broadly speaking, they have -- then that would at least represent a step forward from the situation in other, more troubled parts, where a lack of trust in the police has led to people taking the law into their own hands.

In Manado, police were just beginning to carry out sweeps for ID cards, something the militias have been calling for, but there were fears that this could prove divisive. Word on the street was that, if you wanted accreditation, you had to pay considerably more than the official going rate of Rp 5,000, or face an interminable wait. Those without papers were likely to be the marginalized poor, like refugees who now cling to one of the lowest rungs of the economic ladder as street vendors.

So conflict issues are a fact of everyday life. But journalists are not the only ones now taking an interest in cities like Manado where such issues seem to be successfully defused before they lead to violence. The United Nations has seized on a new book, Ethnic conflict and civic life, by Ashutosh Varshney, an Indian political scientist based at the University of Michigan.

The book offers a sociological profile of Peaceful Cities in India, which identifies several common characteristics. One is that members of different sections of the community mingle freely in civic society. Whilst in Manado, we watched a game in the local volleyball league. Some players were Christian, some Muslim; the match took place in the shadow of a beautiful church, with a local ulema among the spectators.

Journalists were making their own contribution. In Ambon, notoriously, the giant Jawa Pos group runs both a Christian and a Muslim newspaper, each of which has often adopted a strident sectarian stance. Here, there is just one Jawa Pos group newspaper, the Manado Post, and every day it has a double-page spread called Teropong -- "Lens" -- devoted to cross-cutting religious issues. A Muslim and a Christian journalist form the dynamic two-person team responsible for it.

The theory of Peaceful Cities tells us how they are helping; anyone -- including journalists -- could do something practical for peace at any time. Satish Mishra, head of the UN Support Facility for Indonesian Recovery, told the New York Times: "We thought this method could apply to the dynamics of Indonesia; Varshney's findings raise the possibilities of future peace."

Now that would be a story worth telling.

Opinion - Jake Lynch, Reporting the World, London, jakemlynch@aol.com
The Jakarta Post, November 21, 2002


The writer recently led a training program in peace journalism for the British Council in Jakarta. The above is a shortened version of an article prepared for the Inside Indonesia magazine.