early three decades ago, the name of celebrated writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesia’s only Nobel Prize nominee for literature, was spoken only in hushed tones.
The writer's most renowned works, such as the Buru Quartet and his magnum opus Nyanyi Sunyi Seorang Bisu (The Mute's Soliloquy: A Memoir), were banned by Soeharto’s authoritarian regime, which also arrested and handed down lengthy jail terms to those who clandestinely distributed them.
Students, political activists and artists read Pramoedya's books and essays in secret. A running joke among student activists in the late 1990s was that Soeharto’s New Order had inscribed the writer's home telephone number under “Tour and Travel”, a play on his family name, to block his access to the world.
The regime’s reasoning was simple: Pramoedya was affiliated with Lembaga Kebudajaan Rakjat (Lekra), or the People’s Cultural Institution, a sociocultural organization under the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), and his literary works were a propaganda tool for Marxism and Leninism.
So it came as a surprise that a yearlong festival to mark the writer's birth centennial kicked off last week in his hometown of Blora, Central Java, with an event organized by Blora Regent Arief Rahman of the National Awakening Party (PKB) and officiated by Culture Minister Fadli Zon of President Prabowo Subianto's Gerindra Party.Â
For three days until Feb. 8, hundreds of human rights activists, bibliophiles and casual readers descended on the sleepy coastal town to celebrate the life and work of Pramoedya, who was born on Feb. 6, 1925.
Despite the democratic atmosphere of present-day Indonesia, politics reared its ugly head on the first day of the celebration, when the festival committee had to cancel a plan to name a stretch of road in downtown Blora after the writer.
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