Ibarruri, life as an ET (Ex-Tapol)

Last October,  Paule and I made a trip to Indonesia: Bali first, then Banjarmasin, Kupang, Waingapu and the Marapu of Sumba, to end in Maumere, where the Indonesian translation of my 3d volume on Catholics in Indonesia was presented in a festive ceremony in the seminary of Ledalero, with some 600 students, starting with the national anthem, speeches by leaders, the question-answer procedure of 1.5 hour after my own impression.
I emphasized that conflict are often useful in the development of something, here the Indonesian Catholic community.
Below some pictures of the seminary, some 10 km south of Maumere, in the hilly landscape of central Flores, Sikka. Thepictures are taken from higher mountains, on the way to the great statue of Mary, Mother of all Nations in Nila.

At the entrance of Ledalero there are two statues of modern saints: Arnold Jansen, founder of the SVD, Societas Verbi Divini and Cina missionary Freinademetz. Also at other SVD institutions, like the Catholic University of Kupang, these two statues are landmarks of the great institutions of this modern order (where now the Indonesians are the largest section of their members).
One special event in Maumere was the Mass on Sunday morning by my closest friend here, Father Dr. John Prior, anthropologist, critical reader of Scripture and on Sunday morning pastor in the local prison of Maumere. We had also a walk along the ca. 150 permanent inhabitants of the prison, many of them with strange life stories, very often also with sad result of the corrupt and strange verdicts by Indonesian judges. One of the prisoners was a young man of 19 years, who had a few years ago a love affair with a girl of 16 and was sentenced to ten years of prison. He is a gifted painter ad had made the modern impression of the last supper.
At the end of Mass John Prior  asked me to sing something and I sang the Salve Regina with reference to the month of October, devoted toMary.

I received also some more books from Ledalero Press. At the suggestion of John Prior I first read the reprint of the biography of Ibarruri Putri Alam, the oldest daughter of Communist leader D.N. Aidit (born 1949). At the time of the 'Communist Coup' in 1965 she was at high school in Moskow and so she survived the terrible killing of more than 500.000 people, suspected of Communism in Indonesia. The book was first published in 2006 at Hasta Mitra, the leftist Publisher who also has printed the books by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. In 2015 this reprint was published by Ledalero Press.

With her younger sister, Iba was educated since 1958 in a special school for international friends of Russian Communism. After 1965 most Indonesian Communist criticized Russian 'Reformism' as a deviation. After much struggle she could move to China where she studied medicine, with a good interest in traditional healing, also acupuncture. While reading the book of 538 pages I had the impression that she used personal diaries.In this way we find much internal debate about the Communist Messianic dreams about 1965: between Russian revisionism and the slow discovery of the deadlock of Stalinism (and later Maoism) and a more realistic political future. She has nice depictions of the combination of pious Islamic practice of her grandparents and the Communist derams (page 73: the young children want to join the prayer of their grandparents, bowing, prostrations; 468-475 on some kind of solidarity between Communism and social programmes of religions; 286-7  on Buddhism and Communism).
From China she moved for some time to Burma, fighting in a guerilla-position in the frontier region; then toMacao until she landed in Paris, 1981, where she had tostart again from zero, learning a new language (after Russianand Mandarin Chinese), working in a supermarket. She also noticed the shrinking presence of Christianity in Europe (425: Di Eropaini gereja semakin kurang dikunjungi orang). Until the publication of her book she lived as an ET: Ex-Tapol, someone known as once connected to Indonesian Communism.
In quite many places she shows her interest in wayang stories, characters (151, 218, 375, 427, 444: also major figures in the wayang plays have there mistakes, they are not perfect begins). Although never educated in a strict Muslim tradition she shows disgust at the idea to eat pork (158).
Writtenin a simple, open and convincing style, it is a marvellous story of someone who had to live with the disaster of the 1965 killings and the end of Communism in her country (where she lived in fact less than 10 years!). Thank you, John Prior andLedalero Press, for this book!