A fighting editor: Jogjakarta (Canberra Times, 3 April 1967)

The Canberra Times (1967-04-03) - A fighting editor JOGJAKARTA Source: Trove, National Library of Australia - https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article131647295 Date retrieved: 2026-10-17 OCR text (uncorrected) follows. 03 Apr 1967 - A fighting editor Canberra Times (ACT: 1926 - 1995), Monday 3 April 1967, page 2 AFrom CREIGHTON BURNS, our South-east Asia CorrespondentJOGJAKARTAjpOR the first time inmore than threemonths, the 36-yearold editor of Pelopor Jogja, Centra] Java's most remorselessly anti-Sukarnoist newspaper, is sleeping without a gun under his pillow. His personal bodyguard —. three tough, youngparacommandos in plain clothes — have gone back to theirunits.He is Jussac Margo Rahardjo Wirosoehroto, who, for four years between 1959 and 1963, was a traoslatovannouncer wilh the Indonesian section of Radio Australia,in Melbourne.Jussac (he was known in Melbourne as Rahardjo) is a slight, tightly sprung man, father of six young children, who lives like a political commando but talks like an intellectual, despite his comparative lack of formal education. He is one — perhaps the most impressive —- of the new generation of political leaders in Central Java. But he is a reluctant politician, in a country where politics is the traditional path to the pantheon.Like many of his generation, he began in student politics;first in the student army in the revolution against the Dutch; later in the Indonesian Students' Movement, when, as a young journalist, he began practising as a lawyer in Jogjakarta while still only halfway through a part-time lawcourse.His real political life began in 1952, when he broke with the Communist leadership of the Indonesian Students' Movement.: Five years later, the issue was forced.He had published, in 1957, a romantic-moralistic short story in a popular monthly magazine called Bikini. It wasthe account of a deserted Moslem wife who had been forced into prostitution to support her child. Jussac, himself a good Moslem, had meant it as an attack on the double standards of Moslem sexual morality.Gerwani, the Communist women's organisation, which then controlled the Federation of Women's Associations in Jogjakarta, used it as the lever to force the local authorities into prosecuting Jussac on a charge of writing pornography. He defended himself through seven sessions in the local courts,?nd eventually won a suspended sentence."Even then I'd had enough of journalism", Jussac says. He applied for an advertised p o s i t i o d as translatorannouncer with Radio Australia, passed the test, and leftthe next year for Melbourne with his wife and their five children.In Melbourne, he and two Indonesian colleagues founded the non-governmental Indonesian information team, to provide interested Australians with better information about Indonesia. Today in Indonesia, he is an unashamed propagandist for Australia.He returned to Indonesia in August 1963, when the political tide was beginning to run strongly for the Indonesian Communist party."When ( got off the ship in Djakarta, I met an old friend from the days of the student movement", Jussac recalls."He asked me if I stillthought of myself as a revolutionary. I told him I did." 'Well, if you're still a revolutionary, shut your eyes, shut your cars, and keep your big mouth shut. Don't write a word', my friend said."I did just that. Until the middle of 1965 I hardly wrote a word. I stayed at home and supported my family largely on the money I had saved from my years in Australia".Then, in the middle of 1965, he was pushed back into political activity and back into journalism, now a dangerous game for Indonesians opposed to Communism and President Sukarno.His father, an old-time member of the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI) urgedhim to join the party, if only for self-preservation."In this sort of situation, it isn't healthy to be alone. You need friends around you. Join the party", his father advisedhim.Jussac did. In less than nine months he was chairman of the North Jogjakarta branch of the PNI, controlling a membership of 85,000.In the meantime, the coup of October, 1965, inspired, if not led by the Communist Party, had been launched and had failed. The Nationalist party was now making desperate efforts to cleanse itself.In January, 1966, Jussac had founded Pelopor Jogja, running a moderate Nationalist but strongly anti-Communist editorial line.In the middle of 1966, as chairman of his Nationalist Party branch, he was trying to put into operation the instructions of the party's national committee to purge the party of former Communists, and anyone who had been associated with the Communist rebellion at Madiun, in 1948, and the unsuccessful coup in 1965. He was constantly opposed and frustrated by a small group of senior members of the party, and decided to get out and fightfrom the outside.He resigned from the PNI in October, 1966, using his editorship of Pelopor Jogja asan excuse. It was then that thegame began to get hot. For a start, he was not trusted by many of the moderate nationalists, and by the militant student and action front leaders. At the same time, the left wing of the Nationalist Party turned savagely against him. So, of course, did the remnant of the PKI.There were anonymous letters, threatening his life. At least one serious attempt was made to ambush him on his way home.As late as February 22, friends in the army gave him last-minute warning of a plan to beat him up on the train to Djakarta.All that, Jussac now thinks, is over; though sometimes he sounded unconvincing when I talked to him in his pleasant cottage and in my hotel room, in Jogjakarta (his week. The strain of it all is still on him, and the laughter is often alittle forced.He had hoped to take two weeks' leave. But already he is deeply involved in a new propaganda campaign to articulate the policies of the new regime and to publicise the political crimes of Sukarno and those who supported him, particularly since the coup."I wouldn't be doing it, if I had my own way", he said.Why — because it's unpleasant work opening up oldwounds?"No, not that. It's too dangerous. This morning my wife asked me when I would startthinking about her and th6 family again. I told her it was a good question".