SOURCE: Pramoedya Ananta, Toer, and Michael Vatikiotis. “Unreconciled.” Far Eastern Economic Review 163, no. 24 (15 June 2000): 78-9.

In the following interview, Pramoedya discusses the political situation in post-Suharto Indonesia.

Nothing has changed, says Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Indonesia's greatest living writer, for decades a political prisoner and outcast in his own country, doesn't buy the idea that the fall of former President Suharto in May 1998 has created a new Indonesia. And, as President Abdurrahman Wahid grapples with the grim task of trying to bring about reconciliation after decades of state-sponsored violence, Pramoedya staunchly resists the idea.

“How can we have reconciliation?” he asks. “Nothing has changed. The bureaucracy is still the same. Everything is as it was under Suharto's New Order. It's all hot air.”

After what he's been through, it is perhaps not hard to understand Pramoedya's reaction. It's just two years since he was released from 18 years of city...