The chants came at dawn and again at dusk, floating like
ghosts across the valley of Sinar Galih. Wirid and syahadat—Islamic
prayers, but something about them wasn’t quite right, like hearing a familiar
tune played in a minor key. The locals would pause in their work, cocking their
heads to listen as those sounds echoed off the slopes of Mount Ceremai. Then
they’d exchange looks, the kind that said: Those people ain’t right.
You know the kind I mean. Every town has its outsiders. The
ones who don’t fit. The ones who make the hair on your forearms stand up when
they walk by.
In this case, those outsiders lived in four bamboo huts that
squatted at the mountain’s base like toads waiting for flies. Twenty souls,
give or take. Not many folks, but enough to send ripples through the quiet
subdistrict of Lemah Sugih, Majalengka. The place wasn’t even a compound, not
really—more like hermitages, places where a man might go to find God or lose
himself, depending on which direction his soul was headed.
Those huts burned down after what the papers called “a
police action.” That sounds neat and tidy, doesn’t it? Like someone just filed
some paperwork. But nothing about what happened there was neat or tidy. Blood
soaked into the West Java soil that day, and screams replaced prayers.
(You’ll notice I’m talking about this like I was there. I
wasn’t. But I’ve seen enough small communities turn on their outsiders to know
how it goes. The story is always the same; only the names change.)
By August 7, 1993, yellow police tape fluttered around what
was left of the hermitage. Cops stood around with that particular stance they
get when they’re both bored and jumpy. The green rice fields nearby were
already going yellow, the cassava withering. A fish pond lay still as a grave.
When people leave suddenly, nature reclaims things quick. Almost like it’s glad
to see us go.
According to a fellow named Ajat Sudrajat—the kind of local
who’s always ready to talk to reporters after something bad happens—the land
belonged to Abdul Manan. Just twenty-seven years old, but already a leader with
followers. That’s a dangerous combination in any town, in any country.
They called his group “Haur Koneng”—Yellow Bamboo. Not a
name they chose for themselves, but one pinned on them by locals who noticed
how Manan’s followers carried staves of yellow bamboo wherever they went.
Magical protection, they believed. Makes you wonder what they thought needed
protecting against.
The thing about fear is, it usually works both ways.
A Dutch reporter described these folks like something out of
an old Western—long hair, wild beards, standoffish. They were the kind who didn’t
cotton to government interference. No taxes. No schools for their kids. No
acknowledgment of any authority beyond their own walls. In small-town America,
we’d call such folks survivalists or militia-types. In rural Indonesia, they
were something else, something that didn’t quite have a name, but still raised
hackles on the back of local necks.
Nobody just joins a group like that. There’s a courtship,
slow and quiet—like the way cancer spreads before you know it’s there. They
networked in the interior of West Java, finding the disillusioned, the angry,
the lost. You know the type—every town’s got ‘em, folks looking for something
to belong to, something that makes sense when nothing else does.
When they weren’t working those fields, they were praying or
practicing silat—martial arts that looked like dancing until it didn’t.
The rumor mill said they’d praise Allah with tasbih, tahmid, takbir,
and tahlil—each a hundred times per session. But what really got under
the skin of the authorities was how they’d developed their own tarekat—their
own Sufi order. Nothing scares power like people who make their own rules.
“Rampak cisaribu,” that was their philosophy
according to Police Chief Major General Rukman Samirudin. It means “living
independently.” Independence sounds nice on paper, until you realize it means
cutting ties with everyone else, including those who think they govern you.
Here’s the thing about isolation—it curdles. Good intentions
go sour in the dark. Manan and his followers cut themselves off from the world,
holed up in that valley, and the authorities didn’t like that one bit. Called
their teachings “deviant,” straying from Islam. And maybe they were right;
maybe they weren’t. That’s not for me to say.
At first, nobody much cared what Manan and his people did
out there. They weren’t thieves or troublemakers. They grew their own food.
Kept to themselves. The only oddity was how they held their own Friday prayers,
separate from everybody else. But in June 1993, the wheels came off the wagon.
It started small—doesn’t it always? The Village Head, a man
named Rohamid, came knocking for a census. Turns out, none of Manan’s followers
were registered as residents. Now, to most folks, this would be bureaucratic
nonsense, nothing to get worked up over. But when you’ve cut yourself off from
society, even a clipboard and a smile looks like the first wave of invasion.
Words were exchanged. Then fists. One of Manan’s
men—Sudarna—allegedly struck Rohamid. And once violence enters the picture,
things have a way of going sideways real quick.
(This is how it happens, you understand. Not with
declarations of war, but with misunderstandings and bloody noses.)
Rohamid complained to the cops. They summoned Sudarna to the
Majalengka Police Station. Summons were ignored. Letters from Manan’s former
teacher, a respected Kiai Sambas, fell on deaf ears. The group wasn’t budging.
“Better to die,” Abdul Manan supposedly said when asked to
hand over his follower. At least, that’s how Police Chief Lieutenant Colonel M.
Djunaini told it. And maybe those words were spoken exactly that way, or maybe
they weren’t. Memory’s a tricky thing, especially when you’re trying to justify
what comes after.
Come Wednesday, July 28, 1993, the police had had enough. A
whole company swooped down on Manan’s residence—sabhara (public order),
detectives, intelligence units, the works. Police Chief Djunaini himself led
the charge.
But Manan wasn’t caught napping. He and his people were
ready, armed with celurit (those wicked curved sickles), machetes, and
those yellow bamboo staves they believed made them invulnerable.
(They weren’t, of course. Nothing makes you invulnerable.
That’s the cruelest joke God plays on the faithful.)
The raid went bad faster than milk in August. The Bantarujeg
Police Chief, Chief Sergeant Sri Ayeum, went down first. Then came the
slashing—frenzied, desperate, the kind of violence that happens when trapped
animals lash out. Warning shots fired by Second Sergeant Ismail did nothing to
calm the storm. If anything, they just heightened the frenzy. Ismail nearly got
torn apart himself.
Sri Ayeum died right there on the dirt. One of Manan’s
followers caught a police bullet and joined him.
The next day, they came back in force. Four trucks of
Siliwangi Division soldiers, West Java Regional Police Brimob units.
They surrounded Manan’s house like wolves circling a wounded deer. Tear gas
hissed through the air. Then came the flames.
The police say Manan torched his own hermitage. Some locals
whisper it was Molotov cocktails thrown by the cops. In the end, does it matter
who struck the match? Fire is fire, and it devours everything the same.
Five more died in that second raid, including Abdul Manan
himself—shot through the chest and rushed to Majalengka Hospital where the
reaper was waiting for him anyway. A toddler was among the dead. Let that sink
in for a moment—a toddler.
Eight of Manan’s followers were seriously injured. One was
just eight years old, handcuffed to a hospital bed like he might somehow sprout
wings and escape with a bullet in him. Seven others were arrested. Two managed
to vanish—and sometimes I wonder where they ended up, those two. Whether they’re
still carrying yellow bamboo staves, still believing in their protection
against a world gone mad.
The then-Chief of National Police, Banurusman Astrosemitro,
admitted later that the bloodshed could have been avoided. The authorities had
been cocky, unprepared. They’d treated Manan’s refusal like a child’s tantrum
instead of the death-grip of a drowning man.
General Feisal Tanjung, the Armed Forces Commander, put his
own spin on it: “The Haur Koneng group indeed does not agree with the policies
of the Indonesian Government.” As if disagreement alone justified what
happened.
That’s how it goes, though, isn’t it? Authorities see only
nails that need hammering down. They slap labels on people—“criminal,” “deviant,”
“troublemaker”—and once those labels stick, blood becomes easier to spill.
Violence becomes the only language they know how to speak, and conflict ends
not with understanding but with body bags.
The saddest damn thing is what Kiai Sambas—Abdul Manan’s own
teacher—said during questioning. He swore his student never preached hatred
against the government, that he believed Manan respected authority in his own
way.
Even more gut-wrenching was the testimony from the police
psychologist who spoke with Manan before he died. “To me, he seemed like a
person who was very serious about his faith, even a good person,” the shrink
admitted. “Before dying, he expressed his regret about what had happened and
sighed, ‘I just wanted to be left alone.’ ”
I just wanted to be left alone. Aren’t those the saddest
words you’ve ever heard?
Abdurrahman Wahid, the Chairman of PBNU at the time, saw
deeper than most. He figured groups like Haur Koneng sprouted from neglect—when
the government fails to provide, people find their own way. They were poor
farmers, these followers, just trying to grow enough to feed themselves.
According to researcher Ubaedilah Cece, they were victims of
the state’s fear of anything that didn’t fit their narrow definition of
acceptable Islam. The authorities were so scared of any interpretation of
Pancasila (the official Indonesian state ideology) that didn’t match theirs
that they saw enemies in every shadow.
The Chairman of MUI, Hasan Basri, put it bluntly: “The act
of raiding is like dealing with robbers. I regret the violent actions taken by
the police; they should have been left alone for the time being.”
But they weren’t left alone, and all of Manan’s people who
survived ended up behind bars. The prosecutor Suharso demanded prison sentences
for everyone—even three young women aged 15, 18, and 31, and a 16-year-old boy
whose crime was participating in the chaos that erupted when strangers came to
destroy his home.
Sometimes I drive through small towns in West
Virginia—places where everybody knows everybody, where secrets fester beneath
smiles, where outsiders are watched with narrowed eyes—and I wonder how many
Abdul Manans are out there, just wanting to be left alone. How many yellow
bamboo staves are being gripped by white-knuckled hands, their owners believing
in protection that isn’t coming.
Because the truth is, the most terrifying monsters aren’t
the ones hiding under your bed. They’re the ones wearing badges, carrying
clipboards, or waving holy books. They’re the ones who decide what’s normal and
what’s deviant. They’re the ones who burn down hermitages and handcuff children
to hospital beds.
And they’re everywhere, in every town, in every country,
just waiting for someone to step out of line.
Just waiting for someone who just wants to be left alone.
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