Aceh Institute
Thursday, 10 April, 2008

Tsunami Museum

BY Jonathan Zilberg, Ph.D

Introduction

There is a brewing conflict in Aceh over the government’s plan to build a tsunami museum. This paper lays out the basic contours of the emerging debate in civil society though as of yet there has been little or no local opposition to the plan. I begin with the controversy as it surfaced in the local and international media last year, and then provide some critical local reflection as well as one government functionary’s view. Finally, I provide some personal reflection on the larger moral and political issues at hand which have significant ramifications for development and governance, never mind due diligence in planning, constructing and managing a large scale infrastructure project - in this instance a memorial museum. Each of these issues has intense relevance to the emergence of an open civil society and specifically to the democratic participation required in the link between institution building and good governance. In addition, on a larger level, there are fundamentally important inter-twined religious, philosophical and historical concerns at stake in such a project though I will not explore those in this initial draft.

The topic has relevance to this conference on “Museum Ethnography at Home” here in the UK in that for all ostensible purposes Indonesia is my home. Moreover, as trite as it might sound, I developed an immediate affinity with Banda Aceh as the hilltops and the trees reached up towards the plane on first descent, a strangely profound sense of being very much at home in Aceh, indeed, an emotional attachment which has systematically deepened over the last two years. Though such personal reflections on the happenstance and constructivist nature of the notion of “home” are not the focus of this paper, and otentially perhaps of dubious analytic value or professional contribution outside of a self-reflexive post-modernism, it is nevertheless an important issue for myself for many reasons. Two of the most important of these are: What right do I have to make this an international issue by bringing it to academic attention in this context? And two, why am I so personally invested in following this controversy? To tell the truth, it is of so little concern to virtually every Indonesian or professional working in Indonesia that I know as to be wholly inconsequential. And yet, I do believe that ultimately it is altogether likely that the creation of The Tsunami Museum will in the decades to come provide a textbook case of the perils of blithely ignoring every fundamental principle of community development and memorial construction.

To be brief with the reflections on “home” and death, it all began because of my interest in the Jewish cemetery in Banda Aceh, the photographic record of the Acehnese suffering and the colonial conquest on the second floor of The Aceh Museum built in 1915, the centuries old royal graves in front of The Aceh Museum, the fascinating cosmopolitan history of Aceh especially the relations with the Ottoman Empire and no less the power Achenese women rulers wielded in the past. It all began in fact because on visiting Banda Aceh, my first compulsion was to find my brethren in the Jewish cemetery in the expansive and well preserved colonial graveyard and more specifically because of my second compulsion, being a museum ethnographer, which was to visit the perfectly intact Aceh Museum adjoining the Governor’s Palace. Now you may ask, what do some 19th century Dutch Jewish graves have to do with a brewing controversy over The Tsunami Museum and the answer of-course is rather obvious. Even more obvious should be the answer to another question: Why do we need a new museum when there is already such a splendid museum already there?

It is all about memorials in history and about collecting and displaying the past, whether it be the sacred realm of a grave or that famously moving and traumatic photograph of the Dutch capture of the last resistance figure - Cut Meudin. It is about one’s final resting place, the final home, and the markers and spaces which the living create and visit in order to remember the dead. Cemeteries, spaces of death, and museums as monuments of and for the past and future are critical institutions in their own rights. Creating and managing such memorials is not something to be taken lightly. Moreover in this day and age in the museum community, the fact that such a museum, or any museum, could be proposed, conceptualized and created without community participation is I imagine for this audience surely remarkable. In addition, when one considers the sheer scale of death and destruction, and the fact that a memorial museum could have been planned without any civic participation and open intellectual reflection is astounding. As I understand it this tells us more about politics and power, collusion and other issues than anything else - but I will let the few Acehnese voices that I have recorded so far to speak to this themselves.

Local Voices

Perhaps the most powerful articulation of the rejection of the planned tsunami museum has come from Komunitas Tikar Pandan Aceh, a non-governmental organization working in the sphere of arts and culture. The following quotes are taken from an official statement prepared by Tikar Pandan which I had no part in to be sure. And as this paper is in its earliest formulation, I will quote from the statement liberally.

It begins: “Museums are important, particularly for those in power to institutionalize the memory of their political creations . . . . [But] public space to celebrate historical interpretation is owned by no one. It belongs to an era.” Later, the statement states Tikar Pandan’s case in a potent fashion conveying a sense of amazement that so much money could be spent in such a misguided way. As the text reads:

What Aceh needs now is not a museum which is newly built driven by the spirit of disaster capitalism and the politics of donations – despite the fact that it will be designed according to the world’s latest contemporary art development . . . . What an exuberant, arrogant, and cunning way to institutionalize Aceh’s [recent tragic] past . . . . Trying to copy New York’s WTC memorial? Oh my.

Simply put, if local Acehnese such as those members of Tikar Pandan had been consulted about a tsunami memorial, as I understand it from my discussions with other locals, the following views would have been I believe stereotypical though not so eloquently expressed.

What Aceh needs if the museum really has to be built and there is no longer any room to negotiate, is a restoration of spaces left behind by the grand wave. Like the power plant, the Meuraksa Hospital in Ulee Lheue, or the mass grave in Lambaro. Make these places beautiful and strong – against rust and against time. Use all those international contractors with their international standards, and take your time doing it without robbing the funds from the tsunami victims. Because those tsunami victims are in fact the living museum and monuments of that majestic event and they should be prioritized in the post-tsunami reconstruction process.

Even the perhaps most important local supporter of The Tsunami Museum, none other than the Director of The Aceh Museum, Dr. Nurdin, concurred in the following excerpts from an interview by Rizky Alfi Syahril on March 27, 2008. There Dr. Nurdin related that after a meeting in which the Deputy Governor first announced the idea to build a memorial museum, he said the following to the Deputy Governor:

. . . what was left by the tsunami should serve as monuments. Do not do anything to it. Do not move them. But then some soldiers from Germany and Australia came and cleaned everything up. All that was left behind was gone. Subsequently, being a government functionary, he naturally came to support the plans for the museum and argued that the protestors have misunderstood the central issue that they are criticizing the BRR, Bureau for Reconstruction and Rehabilitation for.

As Dr. Nurdin said: “They [the protestors] thought it was money that should have been for reconstruction.” Rizky, somewhat incredulous replied: “So it’s not BRR money?” to which the director replied: “It is BRR’s, but from the Mining and Energy Unit. The tsunami has to do with geology and that falls within the jurisdiction of the Mining and Energy Unit.” He went on to argue that The Tsunami Museum will be important as a tourist attraction and for economic development. Pressed further on how aware he was of the opposition to the planned museum, he re-iterated that “. . . what we have to understand is that we can use the tsunami as a context for developing the local economy.” Adding to this he explained that the museum would foster collective memory of the event such that if it ever happened again people would know what to do to survive. And after being asked about how optimistic he was that people would go to such a museum knowing that Indonesians “are not keen on going to these places”, he replied that The Tsunami Museum “. . . is a tourist attraction for the world . . . . That’s the way we ought to think about it.”

Though all manner of critical issues and questions can be explored from these excerpts of the interview, it is important I believe to focus on two particular issues. First, we need to understand the structure of BRR’s constituent units and by what logic $7.5 million of BRR funds even if they are targeted for mining and energy can be justified for a museum assuming that for instance funds for electricity should have, one would assume, go towards providing electrification for homes, hospitals and schools and not a “geology” museum. Second, one needs to question the perverse logic of creating a tourist site to stimulate development through some form of global witness. As the director argues: “If we see it only for the Acehnese, the museum is too expensive. But it it’s for the people the world over, then it’s cheap.” In any event, even if the most optimistic figures for tourist arrivals to Banda Aceh were multiplied by orders of exponential magnitude, they would be assumedly so low as to undermine any potential for economic development. More importantly, the fact that a memorial to the victims for the sake of the locals can be envisioned as a tourist site and motor for development is simply perverse. In this, the essential critique by concerned Acehnese remains the same, BRR’s mission is to “reconstruct” and “rehabilitate” and that in their views such use of funds represents a fundamentally immoral misuse of foreign charity.

Before providing an extended discussion of this issue further below by Wira, a scholar currently in residence in Washington, D.C., I first highlight one Indonesian’s justification for such a use of these funds and an Acehnese intellectuals’ rejection of any such justification. The anonymous source working in the development industry in Aceh counters the criticism by arguing that if one understands The Tsunami Museum as a means of healing historical trauma associated with the event, it can certainly be construed as a fair use of “rehabilitation” funds. To the contrary, local activists and intellectuals decry such arguable prevarication noting that even if this were the case, this is not a culturally appropriate form of dealing with psychological trauma - never mind memorialization – that is what prayer and mosques are for. Secondly, Dr. Mukhlis A. Hamid, a lecturer in the Department of Literature and the Humanities at Syiah Kuala University in Banda Aceh summarized the objections very succinctly. He argued that such a museum “will waste billions of rupiah from rehabilitation and reconstruction funds and that the only way to justify such a museum would be if one met the following five criteria.

Dr. Hamid’s criteria are: 1. the core principle of the museum should be that it provide a center of learning for future generations; 2. that it require far less funding; 3. that it not be used for generating economic activities of any sort; 4. that it has a clearly defined mission for what the contents will consist of and how they will be used and lastly, 5. that it only be built after all the tsunami victims are again living in permanent homes, might one add with water, sewage and electricity. To briefly comment upon one of these points before getting to …’s all important critique, it is important to simply stress for the record, the Director of The Aceh Museum’s discussion about content.

When Risky Syahril, the interviewer, asked Dr. Nurdin what the plans were relating to the museum’s content, Dr. Nurdin replied with this:

The content has not been discussed. That’s the biggest question. We should have thought about what will go into the museum from the outset. But everyone thought, including some people in our team, that first the museum should be built, that at least the building would serve as a monument and that then they could think about what could go inside. For example, maybe a completely wrecked car, some boats or other destroyed ethnographic items – all to show the power of the earthquake and the tsunami.

The director of The Aceh Museum concluded by noting: “there will be pictures to show the devastation, a diorama.” Indeed, according to his account: “This is why it will be very expensive.” Lastly, contrary to Dr. Mukhlis Hamid’s notion that there should be no profit earned from suffering, and speaking to the anonymous commentator about its role in psychological healing, Nurdin added: “This is not like small trading which focuses on getting profit the next day. The huge cost will not break even in three months, or longer. The impact will be seen in 5 to 10 years down the road and it will serve beyond the economic sphere, that is, in terms of peoples’ psychology and memory.”

No doubt no one would argue against the important issue of grief and trauma but I personally, though I am not Achenese, would not hesitate to argue that professional social and psychological services and above all prayer is the locally appropriate medium for dealing with such pain. Moreover, I maintain that such an excessive sum of money spent in this way is an obscene misuse of international charity when one considers that in Islamic cultures, one accepts such suffering through prayer for the dead and through gratitude to still be amongst the living. I am quite certain that a memorial museum such as this is so culturally inappropriate as not only to be offensive to local values if one seriously reflects upon the issues raised in this paper but that The Tsunami Museum will ultimately prove to be the most expensive white elephant in Indonesian history.

Though some cautionary critics of this project have argued that I have no right to make such judgments, I believe that as an American citizen I very much do. In fact, it is essential to remember that when these funds were given to the Indonesian government, Bill Clinton specifically said that world would hold Indonesia accountable for how these funds would be spent and that this in turn would affect all future charity of this magnitude. Now that the heady moment has passed and the media has turned its attention elsewhere, such funds are in this case being used without any oversight or due diligence even though this project is being managed in part under the auspices of none other than the eminent historian Tony Reid, former Director of The Asian Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. Leaving that association aside for the moment, one might naturally wonder whether Bill Clinton and the individual donors would be embarrassed or angered at this use of the funds if they knew abut all this. But that is for the future. Back to Aceh.

In an email to me, Wira articulated his negative view of the planned museum in this down to earth way. As he said: “I am not an expert in this area. I am just expressing what occurs to me to be common sense based on my limited understanding of this project.” He provided me with not only a perfectly reasonable objection to the tsunami museum but profoundly sensible alternatives which show that even those individuals who are not involved in the museum world have a perfectly adequate general sense of what is appropriate, what can be achieved and how even in term of the rejuvenation of local museums through international collaborations involving professional development and the repatriation of original local materials or copies.

In fact, Wira has provided here a profoundly simple and strategic plan, precisely the type of consideration which is supposed to be solicited from local communities during the planning of “museums of the aggrieved” as they are known in the most recent compendium Museum Frictions (2006). Though I have modified it for grammatical purposes, the original meaning is unchanged. Here is his view which recapitulates many of the issues raised by the other commentators given above and adds considerably to:

As for the Aceh Tsunami Museum Project, I don't agree with the way in which the BRR has gone about conceptualizing this museum. If they want to build a museum for Rp.70 billion just for commemorating the tsunami victims and the overwhelming death toll, it is just not productive. One may as well just have swept the money away!

One wonders what they are going to use as a collection? Pictures, dioramas, the number of deaths? Such things can simply be covered in depth in special feature in a magazine. Or, it will be just a big building with a tiny collection inside? What a waste?

Yet I agree that there is a need to find the right medium to commemorate the tsunami, but not by spending such an enormous sum of money. In any event, I still don't have a comprehensive report about they planned museum, even though I have a general idea of what it is about.

The alternatives he explores below are precisely the type of inputs that should have been solicited by the Asian Research Institute at the National University of Singapore and the Indonesian Government and its local advisors had they been following basic established protocols of due diligence for such cultural development projects. At the most basic level, these well known principles involve first informing the communities of the plans so as to all civil society to engage and participate in such projects through not only coming to understand what is being proposed but also to voice their objections to such projects and provide alternative scenarios.

As Wira reflects:

I believe that the productive thing to do would be to create a Tsunami Study Centre, which develops the human resources required for training people in tsunami mitigation skills. It could simply include a room which records the events of the 26th of December where people could study about the event in depth. This would be a more applied approach than just constructing an incredibly expensive building.

If the money has to be spent on a museum, any kind of museum, I would choose to build a historical and cultural museum which would be run in a professional manner by increasing the capacity of the current staff in the existing institution. This should be done through establishing co-operation with museums in LeidenLeiden, or at least providing copies of the documents and cultural artifacts. This would be both more beneficial and more feasible. and looking forward the possibilities of either repatriating the Acehnese collections in As Azhari and other activists relate, and a view I wholeheartedly share, The Aceh Museum is perfectly adequate as it is. If one percent of the $7.5 million dollars had been budgeted instead for increasing the capacity of the staff, for museum education programs and for collections creation and management and international collaborations including traveling exhibitions, never mind a small center and appropriate memorial on the site for the victims of the tsunami museum it could have achieved these ends to great effect.

However true to top down development planning and state control inherited from the Soehartoe era in which transparency and civic participation, due diligence and good governance was not part of such processes, the Aceh Tsunami Museum Project has proceeded as if nothing has changed. The decision to build it with these funds was only released in the vaguest dimensions through the press. If there is a plan, no-one outside of the Government of Indonesia, the Asian Research Institute at the National University of Singapore or some architects at the Bandung Institute of Technology knows about it. Worse still, as far as I have been able to ascertain in my research no professional Indonesians working in development nor non-Indonesians working in the development community have the slightest interest in becoming involved in demanding transparency and due diligence.

This is in the final analysis the conundrum for myself as an anthropologist interested in museums and the role of the United States government in working with the Indonesian Government and other developing nations to foster good governance and accountability through transparency and civic participation. It is however possible, that once the museum is built, the scandal will become a serious issue – perhaps for a day. And after that, the only enduring value the $7.5 million dollars will have will be as an obscure cautionary tale in the anthropological literature on museums, and of-course for leakage which for the sake of propriety we shall not discuss here.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is a given at this point that The Tsunami Museum will be built as planned and that the public will have no say in the matter despite Dr. Mukhlis Hamid’s critical observations that none of the fundamental requirements for planning such a museum have been met. Dr. Hamid believes instead that what would have been better, and which would have cost nothing, would have been for the Acehnese to memorialize the tsunami through oral and written traditions, that is through poetry, song and literature.

Wira, on the other hand believes that one of the reasons why Indonesians so easily forget their history and fail to learn from their past is because they either lack good museums or do not use them effectively. As he related for instance, there is a great need for a good museum in Aceh because: “if you want to learn about Aceh through its historical artifacts, documents and other aspects of its cultural heritage you will have to go to Leiden.” And the final word should go to Azhari whose poetry is all the testament we need knowing that the survivors lovingly remember and pray for their beloved deceased five times a day either in their homes or in the mosques. As he writes in the Tikar Pandan to recapitulate as closure:

What Aceh needs . . . is a restoration of spaces left behind by the grand wave . . . . Make these places beautiful and strong – against rust and time . . . And as he realistically concludes knowing that resistance is futile:

And after it is built, forget not about how much it will take to keep and run properly, in a customer-friendly way. What good is it to build a museum of death that will be spooky and empty – not as an “early warning site” for people who easily forget . . . . soon after it is inaugurated it will not be important. [At least do not build it] Until all the houses and primary needs of the victims are fulfilled so that the trauma and the wounds on top of old wounds will not be worse when the victims visit all the memorablia in the 70 billion ruppiah museum.