KAMPONG KID MAKES GOOD IN BONDI © 2007 Duncan Graham
It seems to be a particular Western hang-up, this need to label, compartmentise, catalogue.
However slippery the concept Europeans think creativity needs to separated, trapped and stuffed in a box: This is ART, over there is MUSIC and somewhere under the pile is DANCE. All under the rubric of CULTURE.
For those ineradicably infected by this disease the work of East Java artist Jumaadi fits nicely into the slot marked NAÏVE. But for this kampong kid there's no such pigeonhole. Only reluctantly does he offer INNOCENT.
Hardly. SURREALISM looks more appropriate, but we'll let his version stand before this story gets too esoteric and indigestible.
"This is my sub-conscious - the place I can visit only in my paintings," he said after launching an exhibition of his work at the French consulate in Surabaya called Alam Buatan (artificial nature). Around the walls were ghostly cows, two-dimensional figures with both eyes on the same side, phantom angels breathing spirit into mortals and checkerboard collages.
"Others need alcohol and drugs to find that space. I do it through art. At times I achieve bliss."
In his homeland there's no great appreciation of Jumaadi's work. If you buy paintings by the square meter and like horses in the surf and perky-bosomed maidens shouldering earthenware, Jumaadi is not your man.
Followers of contemporary art will see he's working at the edge of the medium, teetering sometimes as the cliff crumbles and the onlooker loses her or his hold on the artist's complex emotion-charged ideas.
But back in Sydney where he lives with his Aussie wife Siobhan Campbell the lad from Sidoarjo seems to be a discovery of the decade. He's been winning substantial prizes, selling through the galleries where patrons who ask 'how much?' soon know they're in the wrong place, and generally being a one-man ambassador for the archipelago.
At a time when relations between the Lucky Country and the Islands of Awful Disasters are bouncing around the floor of the Arafura Sea, Jumaadi is giving any Okker who'll hearken another view of Indonesia.
When not exhibiting he tours backblock schools (80 last year) to yarn about activities in his village where the divisions at the top of this story don't exist, and beautiful objects like rice straw puppets can be woven as a pastime using commonplace materials.
He explains that in Java someone can be an artist and a farmer – creating because that's an expression of their soul, not necessarily to raise cash. They might craft alone or, more likely, with others, work all night or dip in and out. Myths and magics, history and the present, fantasy and fact all blend into life.
For his services to international understanding Jumaadi ought to be put on the payroll of some Indonesian government Department for Dispelling Nasty Thoughts about Neighbors – though that's impossible. He's just a bit too much of his own man – a bloke who has found his way so far in a hit-and-miss fashion - and he isn't going to let those precious discoveries be neutered by mealy-mouthed diplomacy.
Jumaadi was born in 1973, the son of a farmer with a bit of paddy and a few prawn ponds in the village of Pecantingan at the edge of Sidoarjo. He seems to have spent much of his youth looking for ways to express himself without having to winnow rice and clean crustaceans.
"I tried a lot of things, and I failed a lot of the time," he said. "I wasn't thinking of being an artist – I was more interested in words."
He liked to write poetry and short stories, wrapped his tongue around English and developed a gift for the gab. He headed for Yogya where he sold jewelry on the sidewalks and chatted to anyone who stopped to sample. Many were Westerners.
He also spent time with art mates at Seloliman, the East Java environmental education project near Mojokerto set up by visionary conservator Suryo Prawiroatmodjo where they planned an art center. The idea was stillborn at that location, but has been brought to life at Pecantingan on the family farm in a converted 19th century Javanese timber house.
Also in Yogya and at Gadjah Made University was Siobhan, one of the Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies top students, later to become an accredited translator working for the United Nations in Timor Leste.
In the days before the Kuta killings and the explosion of distrust it wasn't too difficult for Jumaadi to move to Australia where he's been granted permanent residence. The couple have set up home in the Sydney seaside suburb of Bondi – and you can't get a more Australian address than that.
After a bit more knocking about with poetry, paintings, (including visiting the continent's Dead Center to look at Aboriginal desert art), plus working in a potato chip factory, Jumaadi got into Sydney's National Art School.
"I was really happy I did that," he said. "Suddenly I knew this was what it was about. Before it had all been dreams. Everything started to make sense."
He graduated with a fine arts degree and is now working on his master's thesis titled Mapping Memory. And painting. He gets back to Java for about two months every year for a creative refresher.
Jumaadi's work has the feel of Marc Chagall, the 20 th century Russian-Jewish painter famous for his airborne Eiffel Towers, flying cows and fiddlers on the roof. It's a connection the Javanese doesn't deny.
Like Chagall, Jumaadi turns to his religion (in this case Islam), the holy books, the lives of villagers, the cycle of rural life, the oral histories and natural things for inspiration and interpretation.
"A lot of my work is autobiographical and the search for identity, looking for my cultural roots," he said. "I think that everything in nature has a soul.
"Metaphors are important for me. I'm always searching for the perfect shape. I like to think of this as poetry. (His shapes tend to be a wavy-lined oblong, a sort of thought-bubble that might contain ethereal matter.)
"I paint small because that's a personal thing, like a wallet, something special, like a gift. I'm not interested in overwhelming people. You can see the power of God through the sublime."
(First published in The Jakarta Post 30 Jan 07)
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FAITH IN INDONESIA
The shape of the world a generation from now will be influenced far more by how we communicate the values of our society to others than by military or diplomatic superiority. William Fulbright, 1964
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Saturday, January 27, 2007
MOHAMMED KOESNAN
THERE'S MONEY IN MILK, BOUNTY IN BLOOMS © Duncan Graham 2007
Local and overseas investors should add rural interests to their portfolios to slow the urban drift, boost the economy of country towns and help educate and employ local people.
Plus get a decent return, and enjoy a better lifestyle, according to Mohammed Koesnan, head of one of Indonesia's most successful cooperatives.
"Too much money is going into city developments," he said. "Many have a blinkered view of rural Indonesia. They're overlooking the opportunities to be found in the hinterland.
"Farm produce is part of the chain of life. Quality food helps build our children's health and intellect so they can better cope with the future. That will benefit us all. I don't think money should be the number one motive."
For a man who hasn't been driven by profit Koesnan has done better than most who've made amassing cash their goal.
In 2005 he was given a presidential medal for his pioneering skills in making an East Java cooperative one of the most progressive in the Republic. Last year his work was recognized by the Indonesian Livestock Industry with a national award.
Appropriate, for in the past decade he's imported 5,000 dairy cattle from Western Australia (WA) and Victoria. The ambition has been to lift milk production and quality throughout Java, but particularly around Nongkojajar in East Java.
This is a village on the western slopes of Mount Bromo, 2,000 metres above sea level and about 80 kilometers southeast of Surabaya. It has long been a major dairy center and its dominant building is the milk factory. But till recently animal husbandry and processing systems have been primitive.
Now the Setia Kawan (loyal friend) Cooperative has an Ultra-High Treatment (UHT) plant producing packaged milk for the local market and export to South East Asian countries. It runs 24 hours a day and takes milk from five other cooperatives.
The Co-op has also built a model dairy using modern milking machines and an udder-to-vat piping system to avoid contamination. The idea is to encourage farmers to upgrade. Workshops on cattle feeding and hygiene are held most weekends.
The big changes started in 1992 when Koesnan was part of an Indonesian farmers' group that visited WA. On dairy properties he was astonished to learn that big-bodied Friesians were producing up to 40 litres of milk a day – more than four times the yield of Indonesian cows.
He bought a few pregnant Aussie heifers, but at first they didn't adjust well to the Indonesian way of doing things. With land scarce, cows in Nongkojajar are stabled and grass brought to them. The newcomers were used to broadacre grazing and ample exercise at lower altitudes.
An Australian vet was brought in; he advised supplementary dry foods. So a factory has been built to supply this need using waste products from wheat milling. The cattle are now thriving and producing around 30 litres a day.
Koesnan was also surprised on his WA visit to meet potato growers who budgeted for yields of up to 70 tonnes per hectare compared with an East Java average of 15 tonnes.
In 2000 he imported one container of Australian seed potatoes. Three years later he was bringing in ten containers, and although numbers have dropped as farmers have nurtured their own seeds, he is still buying from WA.
Together with local farmers he has 300 hectares under cultivation, with the potatoes mainly sold to factories producing chips and crisps.
"We have limited space in the mountains so it's important that we learn how to produce more using the resources that are available," he said.
"The Co-op has 12,000 dairy cattle. This year I hope we'll be able to increase numbers by 850. This area has the capacity to run 15,000 cows. We need a lot more milk."
Despite his honors Koesnan prefers to keep his head below the skyline – which is difficult when he is such a standout corporate success.
He doesn't speak English so has relied on his instincts to judge character when dealing with Australians. He likes to do business direct, farmer-to-farmer, stay on properties and meet families. Despite the vast cultural difference he says he's found few problems.
He's sent his sons to study agriculture in NZ so they'll be aware of modern trends and be fluent in the international language.
His office is modest and has none of the show-off trappings normally associated with big business. He is particularly keen to get mid-level investors into agriculture and claims opportunities lie in supplying local markets.
Fresh and UHT milk consumption in Indonesia is increasing by one or two per cent every year. Although this sounds small, the quantities are huge when measured against the population.
Before the UHT plant was built the Setia Kawan Co-op sold milk to other companies for powdered milk manufacture. Indonesians have long favored this product for kitchen use and baby formula, while in most other countries fresh milk is preferred.
The lack of refrigerated transport and domestic fridges has been a principal factor. Now more households are getting used to the benefits of liquid milk.
"Future prospects look good," said Koesnan. "This year I'll bring in apple trees from WA to improve local stocks and grow different varieties better suited to changing tastes. I'm also importing tropical vegetable seeds, including capsicums.
"There's a strong demand for cut flowers and plants, with the market seeking new blooms. We're now looking at varieties from South Africa and New Zealand which have a much longer shelf life.
"There are openings for agricultural tourism facilities. As the stress of city living increases more people want to savor country lifestyles. Homestays and retreats are becoming popular.
"I urge Indonesian business people to travel widely and see what other countries are doing. I'd like to see joint ventures between local people and foreigners. We welcome them."
(First published in The Jakarta Post 26 January 2007)
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Local and overseas investors should add rural interests to their portfolios to slow the urban drift, boost the economy of country towns and help educate and employ local people.
Plus get a decent return, and enjoy a better lifestyle, according to Mohammed Koesnan, head of one of Indonesia's most successful cooperatives.
"Too much money is going into city developments," he said. "Many have a blinkered view of rural Indonesia. They're overlooking the opportunities to be found in the hinterland.
"Farm produce is part of the chain of life. Quality food helps build our children's health and intellect so they can better cope with the future. That will benefit us all. I don't think money should be the number one motive."
For a man who hasn't been driven by profit Koesnan has done better than most who've made amassing cash their goal.
In 2005 he was given a presidential medal for his pioneering skills in making an East Java cooperative one of the most progressive in the Republic. Last year his work was recognized by the Indonesian Livestock Industry with a national award.
Appropriate, for in the past decade he's imported 5,000 dairy cattle from Western Australia (WA) and Victoria. The ambition has been to lift milk production and quality throughout Java, but particularly around Nongkojajar in East Java.
This is a village on the western slopes of Mount Bromo, 2,000 metres above sea level and about 80 kilometers southeast of Surabaya. It has long been a major dairy center and its dominant building is the milk factory. But till recently animal husbandry and processing systems have been primitive.
Now the Setia Kawan (loyal friend) Cooperative has an Ultra-High Treatment (UHT) plant producing packaged milk for the local market and export to South East Asian countries. It runs 24 hours a day and takes milk from five other cooperatives.
The Co-op has also built a model dairy using modern milking machines and an udder-to-vat piping system to avoid contamination. The idea is to encourage farmers to upgrade. Workshops on cattle feeding and hygiene are held most weekends.
The big changes started in 1992 when Koesnan was part of an Indonesian farmers' group that visited WA. On dairy properties he was astonished to learn that big-bodied Friesians were producing up to 40 litres of milk a day – more than four times the yield of Indonesian cows.
He bought a few pregnant Aussie heifers, but at first they didn't adjust well to the Indonesian way of doing things. With land scarce, cows in Nongkojajar are stabled and grass brought to them. The newcomers were used to broadacre grazing and ample exercise at lower altitudes.
An Australian vet was brought in; he advised supplementary dry foods. So a factory has been built to supply this need using waste products from wheat milling. The cattle are now thriving and producing around 30 litres a day.
Koesnan was also surprised on his WA visit to meet potato growers who budgeted for yields of up to 70 tonnes per hectare compared with an East Java average of 15 tonnes.
In 2000 he imported one container of Australian seed potatoes. Three years later he was bringing in ten containers, and although numbers have dropped as farmers have nurtured their own seeds, he is still buying from WA.
Together with local farmers he has 300 hectares under cultivation, with the potatoes mainly sold to factories producing chips and crisps.
"We have limited space in the mountains so it's important that we learn how to produce more using the resources that are available," he said.
"The Co-op has 12,000 dairy cattle. This year I hope we'll be able to increase numbers by 850. This area has the capacity to run 15,000 cows. We need a lot more milk."
Despite his honors Koesnan prefers to keep his head below the skyline – which is difficult when he is such a standout corporate success.
He doesn't speak English so has relied on his instincts to judge character when dealing with Australians. He likes to do business direct, farmer-to-farmer, stay on properties and meet families. Despite the vast cultural difference he says he's found few problems.
He's sent his sons to study agriculture in NZ so they'll be aware of modern trends and be fluent in the international language.
His office is modest and has none of the show-off trappings normally associated with big business. He is particularly keen to get mid-level investors into agriculture and claims opportunities lie in supplying local markets.
Fresh and UHT milk consumption in Indonesia is increasing by one or two per cent every year. Although this sounds small, the quantities are huge when measured against the population.
Before the UHT plant was built the Setia Kawan Co-op sold milk to other companies for powdered milk manufacture. Indonesians have long favored this product for kitchen use and baby formula, while in most other countries fresh milk is preferred.
The lack of refrigerated transport and domestic fridges has been a principal factor. Now more households are getting used to the benefits of liquid milk.
"Future prospects look good," said Koesnan. "This year I'll bring in apple trees from WA to improve local stocks and grow different varieties better suited to changing tastes. I'm also importing tropical vegetable seeds, including capsicums.
"There's a strong demand for cut flowers and plants, with the market seeking new blooms. We're now looking at varieties from South Africa and New Zealand which have a much longer shelf life.
"There are openings for agricultural tourism facilities. As the stress of city living increases more people want to savor country lifestyles. Homestays and retreats are becoming popular.
"I urge Indonesian business people to travel widely and see what other countries are doing. I'd like to see joint ventures between local people and foreigners. We welcome them."
(First published in The Jakarta Post 26 January 2007)
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JOHAN WAHYUDI
PLAYING FOR THE GLORY, NOT THE GAINS © Duncan Graham 2007
Is there a better way to deflect young people from drugs, idleness and dissolute lifestyles?
Johan Wahyudi reckons there's nothing quite like badminton for keeping the kids out of the discos and away from television. It would be good to add to those examples the standard cliché about 'keeping them off the streets'; but sadly that's the only place many can use to whack their shuttlecocks.
"There's a serious lack of facilities," said the badminton legend at his home in Malang. "There aren't enough clubs, funds and sponsors. The government doesn't have enough money."
In 1974 Wahyudi and his partner Tjuntjun won the All England Men's Doubles at London's Wembley Stadium, a feat they repeated in 1975 and again in 1977.
These were the golden years of Indonesian badminton, when a few dedicated youngsters were putting their homeland on the international sporting map.
A photograph at the time shows two strapping blokes holding their trophy and bottles of bubbly, looking just a little feral but quietly proud. No fist waving, no company logos, no tantrums.
They'd just shaken hands with Queen Elizabeth (whose geographical knowledge of Indonesia during the brief chat apparently ended with Bali) and they were the heroes of the Republic.
On their return they were summoned to the home of Adam Malik. The foreign minister later to become vice president commented that when he visited villages few locals knew who he was, while all were familiar with the badminton superstars.
There was a minor slump in trophy counts during the 1980s, but national pride got a boost in the early 1990s. Since then it has been mainly downhill – and the timing seems to match the economic crash.
Wahyudi now scratches his head and wonders where and why it has all gone so wrong. Is it lack of cash or will power?
Last year (06) Indonesia won only 14 titles from 11 of 22 tournaments run by the World Badminton Federation, well eclipsed by China at the All England – the most prestigious event on the shuttler's circuit.
In the Asian Games Indonesia won a gold, silver and two bronze medals. But overall things aren't looking too good for next year's Beijing Olympics, despite lots of rhetoric about planned hard work and new development programs.
Wahyudi was one of the players dubbed the Magnificent Seven by an awestruck media. Their skills on the world's courts during the 1970s gave them the stellar status now enjoyed by TV sinetron (soapie) stars.
They are all still alive: Tjuntjun, Wahyudi's partner for 11 years, Rudy Hartono, (an eight-times All England winner, now in Australia), Liem Swie King, Iie Sumirat, Christian Hadinata (now doubles coordinator for the Indonesian Badminton Association), and Ade Chandra.
"We played for the red and white (Indonesian flag), not for money," said Wahyudi. "The government made us very conscious of our national responsibilities. We were a former colonial country beating our old European masters!
"Yet we were all amateurs getting minimal sponsorship – no money, just clothing, travel, food and accommodation. I had to take time off from my business to compete.
"And we were also playing for the Chinese community in Indonesia which gave us a lot of support."
(Ethnic Chinese have long dominated Indonesian badminton. Scholars overseas have linked Chinese sporting success with improved treatment of the minority during the Soeharto era.)
After their first big wins Adam Malik gave Wahyudi and Tjuntjun Rp 2.5 million each. At the time this was equal to US $1200 – now it's worth less than a quarter of that sum.
Today top prize money for international events can reach US $200,000 (Rp 1.8 trillion).
"I've seen the way other countries nurture their sportspeople with scholarships, prize money and facilities," Wahyudi said. "We have nothing like that. We desperately need big sponsors.
"There was a different attitude back in the 70s. We were absolutely disciplined. There were no government guarantees – we only knew about the flag.
"Players today don't think about the nation. They're arrogant and only consider self. We were proud for our country, not for ourselves. What was the highlight win? All those years were highlights.
"At one stage I was offered US $5,000 (Rp 45 million) to train in Switzerland. On another occasion I could have gone to South Korea where I was promised everything.
"I refused. I wanted to stay in Indonesia and play for Indonesia."
Wahyudi, now a fit 54-year old, started playing badminton when he was six with the encouragement of his father. Though he retired from the international circuit in 1982 he's a regular on the badminton and tennis courts with friends. He has a timber business in Sulawesi.
"Let me give you an example of our determination," he said. "Just before the finals at one All England championship Tjuntjun became sick with back problems and a swollen foot. He was in such pain he wanted to pull out.
"I prayed for him and we met an Indian doctor who gave him an injection. I had to carry him on my back to the court. He found the strength to play and we won. Then he collapsed. He had to go through the airport in a wheelchair.
"The discipline has to be mental and physical. In a healthy body you have a healthy mind.
"Badminton is an intellectual and athletic exercise. You need talent and the ability to concentrate. I think people were fitter in the old days. We should be giving sport a high priority in schools. It's a great alternative to drugs."
(First published in The Jakarta Post 25 January 2007)
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Is there a better way to deflect young people from drugs, idleness and dissolute lifestyles?
Johan Wahyudi reckons there's nothing quite like badminton for keeping the kids out of the discos and away from television. It would be good to add to those examples the standard cliché about 'keeping them off the streets'; but sadly that's the only place many can use to whack their shuttlecocks.
"There's a serious lack of facilities," said the badminton legend at his home in Malang. "There aren't enough clubs, funds and sponsors. The government doesn't have enough money."
In 1974 Wahyudi and his partner Tjuntjun won the All England Men's Doubles at London's Wembley Stadium, a feat they repeated in 1975 and again in 1977.
These were the golden years of Indonesian badminton, when a few dedicated youngsters were putting their homeland on the international sporting map.
A photograph at the time shows two strapping blokes holding their trophy and bottles of bubbly, looking just a little feral but quietly proud. No fist waving, no company logos, no tantrums.
They'd just shaken hands with Queen Elizabeth (whose geographical knowledge of Indonesia during the brief chat apparently ended with Bali) and they were the heroes of the Republic.
On their return they were summoned to the home of Adam Malik. The foreign minister later to become vice president commented that when he visited villages few locals knew who he was, while all were familiar with the badminton superstars.
There was a minor slump in trophy counts during the 1980s, but national pride got a boost in the early 1990s. Since then it has been mainly downhill – and the timing seems to match the economic crash.
Wahyudi now scratches his head and wonders where and why it has all gone so wrong. Is it lack of cash or will power?
Last year (06) Indonesia won only 14 titles from 11 of 22 tournaments run by the World Badminton Federation, well eclipsed by China at the All England – the most prestigious event on the shuttler's circuit.
In the Asian Games Indonesia won a gold, silver and two bronze medals. But overall things aren't looking too good for next year's Beijing Olympics, despite lots of rhetoric about planned hard work and new development programs.
Wahyudi was one of the players dubbed the Magnificent Seven by an awestruck media. Their skills on the world's courts during the 1970s gave them the stellar status now enjoyed by TV sinetron (soapie) stars.
They are all still alive: Tjuntjun, Wahyudi's partner for 11 years, Rudy Hartono, (an eight-times All England winner, now in Australia), Liem Swie King, Iie Sumirat, Christian Hadinata (now doubles coordinator for the Indonesian Badminton Association), and Ade Chandra.
"We played for the red and white (Indonesian flag), not for money," said Wahyudi. "The government made us very conscious of our national responsibilities. We were a former colonial country beating our old European masters!
"Yet we were all amateurs getting minimal sponsorship – no money, just clothing, travel, food and accommodation. I had to take time off from my business to compete.
"And we were also playing for the Chinese community in Indonesia which gave us a lot of support."
(Ethnic Chinese have long dominated Indonesian badminton. Scholars overseas have linked Chinese sporting success with improved treatment of the minority during the Soeharto era.)
After their first big wins Adam Malik gave Wahyudi and Tjuntjun Rp 2.5 million each. At the time this was equal to US $1200 – now it's worth less than a quarter of that sum.
Today top prize money for international events can reach US $200,000 (Rp 1.8 trillion).
"I've seen the way other countries nurture their sportspeople with scholarships, prize money and facilities," Wahyudi said. "We have nothing like that. We desperately need big sponsors.
"There was a different attitude back in the 70s. We were absolutely disciplined. There were no government guarantees – we only knew about the flag.
"Players today don't think about the nation. They're arrogant and only consider self. We were proud for our country, not for ourselves. What was the highlight win? All those years were highlights.
"At one stage I was offered US $5,000 (Rp 45 million) to train in Switzerland. On another occasion I could have gone to South Korea where I was promised everything.
"I refused. I wanted to stay in Indonesia and play for Indonesia."
Wahyudi, now a fit 54-year old, started playing badminton when he was six with the encouragement of his father. Though he retired from the international circuit in 1982 he's a regular on the badminton and tennis courts with friends. He has a timber business in Sulawesi.
"Let me give you an example of our determination," he said. "Just before the finals at one All England championship Tjuntjun became sick with back problems and a swollen foot. He was in such pain he wanted to pull out.
"I prayed for him and we met an Indian doctor who gave him an injection. I had to carry him on my back to the court. He found the strength to play and we won. Then he collapsed. He had to go through the airport in a wheelchair.
"The discipline has to be mental and physical. In a healthy body you have a healthy mind.
"Badminton is an intellectual and athletic exercise. You need talent and the ability to concentrate. I think people were fitter in the old days. We should be giving sport a high priority in schools. It's a great alternative to drugs."
(First published in The Jakarta Post 25 January 2007)
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Sunday, January 21, 2007
MERLYN SOPJAN - MISS TRANSSEXUAL INDONESIA
Merlyn Sopjan
A SPORTING WAY TO FIGHT DISCRIMINATION © Duncan Graham 2007
Malang in East Java is a leafy university town that likes to present itself as a cool city in terms of climate and lifestyle. Now it has a new tag that’s far from welcome – HIV Central. Duncan Graham reports:
Most Monday afternoons in the heart of Malang a curious crowd gathers at the local stadium to watch volleyball.
The games are played in the open close by a major road, so it’s an easy event to access. Prop your wheels under the trees, sit down with your mates, light up and catch the action. Yet most onlookers seem indifferent to the fine points of the game.
Their interest is the 20 or so players and it’s not always admiration for athletic skill that’s the drawcard. Instead there’s much snickering and nudge-nudge winking among the watchers focusing on the players’ tight shorts, their hairy legs and bumping bosoms.
For these athletes are transsexuals and if they care a damn that the crowds are there as voyeurs then they’re not going to give anyone a rise through recognition. This is the game with no shame.
When the final whistle blows the tables are turned. The teams run to the fence and distribute brochures to the red-faced pseudo-fans before they can kick-start an escape. The pamphlets warn of the dangers of contracting Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
The players also hand out free condoms. Their particular targets are the middle-aged men who appear to be good family fellows and upright citizens, yet who somehow find time to gawk at a flesh-show on a working weekday.
“This tends to be the group that visits prostitutes but is reluctant to use condoms because they think it’s not manly, or it’s like wearing clothes while having sex,” said organizer Merlyn Sopjan. “They only think of condoms as contraceptives, not as prophylactics.
“They catch a disease and pass it on to their wife or partner who leads a monogamous life. This is the second major way that HIV is getting into the community. The first is through intravenous drug users shooting up with shared and dirty needles.
“East Java is now second only to Jakarta for the number of infected people. We’ve even overtaken Papua. Most victims are in Surabaya, but Malang is the next center.”
Merlyn is Indonesia’s current Putri Waria (Miss Transsexual) and her job till mid 2007 is to tour the country and spread the safe sex message. When she’s addressing a sophisticated and sympathetic audience that’s no great problem.
The difficulty comes in trying to reach the closed minds, those who think that sexually transmitted diseases are a Western affliction and have nothing to do with them. These are the walnut-hearts who condemn campaigners like Merlyn for allegedly encouraging promiscuity.
Critics beware; she may look demure, even delicate. She’s slim and pretty – there’s nothing butch about her figure - but this is one unfazed activist with a husky voice.
Merlyn handles criticism with straight-talk, eyeballing questioners, refusing to accept that keeping people ignorant is a proper way to cope with a serious public health issue. In one TV talk show she took audience questions without flinching, even the smutty ones about which public toilet she uses. (A woman’s, of course.)
Nor is she prepared to apologize for her situation or be coy. “God isn’t running a factory,” she said. “Humans can make mistakes, but God can’t.
“There’s a reason for people like me. If you say I’m not perfect you are criticizing God. Who’s normal? I don’t want to be treated as though I’ve got a handicap.
“I’m a Christian and I’ve never experienced discrimination in church. I’m not judged.
“Every human being has a function and purpose in life. I’m a happy transsexual – I never rebel against God.”
An Indonesian male transsexual (See sidebar) is faced with blunt choices; either she tries to hide her feelings and behave as a man – difficult in a society where close living is the norm and secrets hard to hide - or she comes out and flaunts her sexuality, staring down the tut-tutters, daring them to condemn.
Which is why so many chose to work as entertainers, as if to say: ‘If you want to leer then you can bloody well pay for it!’
“Transsexuals are better tolerated in Thailand than Indonesia where we’re still considered, like, ‘wow, look at that!‘ and sexually harassed,” said Merlyn.
“Apart from the safe-sex message I’m also pushing for transsexuals to be recognized as full Indonesian citizens, with a place in society equal to anyone else. We want the opportunity to work in ordinary jobs, to use our talents like other people.
“Public rejection is the reason so many turn to prostitution.”
Merlyn seems to have escaped some of the anguish experienced by so many transsexuals and which result in a high rate of suicide. She was born a boy in Kediri (East Java) in 1973 and no one suspected that her gender interests were different.
Instead her family attributed her feminine behavior to her status as the last child, pampered and spoilt by doting relatives.
When it later became clear she was a woman trapped in a male body she was backed by her family, even though she described her now deceased parents as “traditional, conservative Javanese.”
“I could not be doing my job as a public advocate if my family wasn’t behind me,” she said. “My father came from nothing and worked hard all his life to succeed as a businessman. I will do the same.
“I’ve learned how to become tough. There’s no role model for a person like me. I don’t want one. I have to make my own way.”
After school she studied civil engineering at the Malang National Institute of Technology expecting to be employed in the family contracting business, but instead turned to advocacy.
Three years ago in a bid to assert the rights of transsexuals she sought election as mayor of Malang. Her application was rejected by bureaucrats claiming her nomination was received too late, though Merlyn thinks there was another agenda.
Nonetheless she got the publicity, and most was positive. “I didn’t really want to be mayor,” she said. “I did this to show we're just as capable as anyone else in making a contribution to society.
“Many people have suggested I move to Jakarta and the big scene. But I’m happy here with all my networks. I wouldn’t want to have to start again.”
She’s the case manager in a Malang hospital, working on an internationally funded campaign to raise awareness of AIDS, and help keep those with the disease active in society. Retroviral drugs that control – but don’t cure – the disease are free, but the treatment isn’t.
The project is administered by the Health Department that chose to outsource the work through the local Association of Transsexuals which Merlyn chairs. There are at least 580 known HIV positive cases in the city of less than one million, with 15 part-time carers giving advice and encouraging the worried to get a blood test.
Apart from spreading information, another benefit of the public volleyball games is that men and women wracked with the problems of expressing their gender can meet others who face similar challenges.
In Jakarta and Surabaya most homosexuals, lesbians and transsexuals meet in hotel bars, usually up-market hangouts where the cost of a drink would buy a kampong family a week’s meals. There’s no discotheque in Malang for those with different sexual preferences.
There’s often great rivalry between gay men, transsexuals and lesbians and little cooperation in the campaign for pubic understanding and tolerance.
“Gays tend to see themselves as superior,” Merlyn said. “The Lesbians here are very private. I’m trying to get us to work more closely – we suffer the same problems of stigma and discrimination. We can make a better life for all if we’re together.
“We are leading in the public health campaign because AIDS was first identified in the homosexual community in Bali back in the 1980s. Others were in a state of denial, so the gays had to do their own research.
“Malang has such a big HIV problem because it’s a university city, drawing students from all across the country. There’s a lot of drug use, but the police are opposed to harm reduction programs operating overseas, like clean needle exchange and teaching users how to sterilize equipment.”
At last count there were at least 350 transsexuals in Malang, with many working in beauty salons. Only one is known to have had a sex-change operation, a procedure that has now fallen out of favor. Apart from the multiple operations and agonizing surgery involved (amputation of the penis and the fashioning of a vagina), the psychological impact can also be traumatic.
Hormone treatment can suppress male characteristics and enhance breasts, but bad side effects, including nausea, are often reported.
Being a man or woman doesn’t depend on reproductive organs – it’s also a state of mind. Merlyn’s first book was titled Don’t Look At My Genitals! a frank account of her feelings as a woman. Her second, just published is titled Woman Without V (as in vagina.) These are cathartic let-it-all-hangout diary notes of her life and emotions.
Merlyn said she’s been in relations with men, but these haven’t lasted, sometimes because her partners wanted children. She says she’d like to get married, and desires love from the opposite sex.
“I want people to know me for what I do, not who I am,” she said. “I want to dedicate my life for humanity. I feel I have a mission from God.
“I respect difference in others – I want them to do the same for me and all transsexuals. Don’t judge. Look at our capacity – at the good things that we can do in this world for everyone.”
(Sidebar one)
ONE WORD DOESN’T FIT ALL
The Indonesian word waria (an amalgam of wanita (woman) and pria (man) tends to be used for homosexuals, transsexuals and other minority sexual groups. However these are quite different.
A homosexual is attracted to members of his or her own sex. Most female homosexuals use the word Lesbian. This is a reference to the Greek island of Lesbos where the poet Sappho wrote about love between women. ‘Gay’ is the preferred Western term and can refer to both sexes, though it’s normally associated with men.
Homosexuality is not confined to any country or culture. About ten per cent of the population is naturally homosexual.
Bi-sexuals are people who enjoy sex with men and women.
Transsexuals are people with the physical traits of one sex and the psychological make-up of the opposite sex. The condition, medically called gender dysphoria (unease), is rare. One Dutch study claims the incidence is about one in 10,000 for males, one in 30,000 for females.
(Sidebar 2)
GOING UP
The latest World Health Organization figures (November 2006) claim somewhere between 169,000 and 216,000 Indonesians have HIV. If the current rate of infection continues the number will jump to one million by the end of this decade.
However activists say these figures are unreliable and grossly underestimate the problem.
Health Ministry data claims that more than half of the AIDS cases are found among drug injectors.
The incidence of HIV among transsexuals is reported to be high, with some estimates of up to 22 per cent.
(First published in The Sunday Post 21 January 2007)
##
">Link
A SPORTING WAY TO FIGHT DISCRIMINATION © Duncan Graham 2007
Malang in East Java is a leafy university town that likes to present itself as a cool city in terms of climate and lifestyle. Now it has a new tag that’s far from welcome – HIV Central. Duncan Graham reports:
Most Monday afternoons in the heart of Malang a curious crowd gathers at the local stadium to watch volleyball.
The games are played in the open close by a major road, so it’s an easy event to access. Prop your wheels under the trees, sit down with your mates, light up and catch the action. Yet most onlookers seem indifferent to the fine points of the game.
Their interest is the 20 or so players and it’s not always admiration for athletic skill that’s the drawcard. Instead there’s much snickering and nudge-nudge winking among the watchers focusing on the players’ tight shorts, their hairy legs and bumping bosoms.
For these athletes are transsexuals and if they care a damn that the crowds are there as voyeurs then they’re not going to give anyone a rise through recognition. This is the game with no shame.
When the final whistle blows the tables are turned. The teams run to the fence and distribute brochures to the red-faced pseudo-fans before they can kick-start an escape. The pamphlets warn of the dangers of contracting Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
The players also hand out free condoms. Their particular targets are the middle-aged men who appear to be good family fellows and upright citizens, yet who somehow find time to gawk at a flesh-show on a working weekday.
“This tends to be the group that visits prostitutes but is reluctant to use condoms because they think it’s not manly, or it’s like wearing clothes while having sex,” said organizer Merlyn Sopjan. “They only think of condoms as contraceptives, not as prophylactics.
“They catch a disease and pass it on to their wife or partner who leads a monogamous life. This is the second major way that HIV is getting into the community. The first is through intravenous drug users shooting up with shared and dirty needles.
“East Java is now second only to Jakarta for the number of infected people. We’ve even overtaken Papua. Most victims are in Surabaya, but Malang is the next center.”
Merlyn is Indonesia’s current Putri Waria (Miss Transsexual) and her job till mid 2007 is to tour the country and spread the safe sex message. When she’s addressing a sophisticated and sympathetic audience that’s no great problem.
The difficulty comes in trying to reach the closed minds, those who think that sexually transmitted diseases are a Western affliction and have nothing to do with them. These are the walnut-hearts who condemn campaigners like Merlyn for allegedly encouraging promiscuity.
Critics beware; she may look demure, even delicate. She’s slim and pretty – there’s nothing butch about her figure - but this is one unfazed activist with a husky voice.
Merlyn handles criticism with straight-talk, eyeballing questioners, refusing to accept that keeping people ignorant is a proper way to cope with a serious public health issue. In one TV talk show she took audience questions without flinching, even the smutty ones about which public toilet she uses. (A woman’s, of course.)
Nor is she prepared to apologize for her situation or be coy. “God isn’t running a factory,” she said. “Humans can make mistakes, but God can’t.
“There’s a reason for people like me. If you say I’m not perfect you are criticizing God. Who’s normal? I don’t want to be treated as though I’ve got a handicap.
“I’m a Christian and I’ve never experienced discrimination in church. I’m not judged.
“Every human being has a function and purpose in life. I’m a happy transsexual – I never rebel against God.”
An Indonesian male transsexual (See sidebar) is faced with blunt choices; either she tries to hide her feelings and behave as a man – difficult in a society where close living is the norm and secrets hard to hide - or she comes out and flaunts her sexuality, staring down the tut-tutters, daring them to condemn.
Which is why so many chose to work as entertainers, as if to say: ‘If you want to leer then you can bloody well pay for it!’
“Transsexuals are better tolerated in Thailand than Indonesia where we’re still considered, like, ‘wow, look at that!‘ and sexually harassed,” said Merlyn.
“Apart from the safe-sex message I’m also pushing for transsexuals to be recognized as full Indonesian citizens, with a place in society equal to anyone else. We want the opportunity to work in ordinary jobs, to use our talents like other people.
“Public rejection is the reason so many turn to prostitution.”
Merlyn seems to have escaped some of the anguish experienced by so many transsexuals and which result in a high rate of suicide. She was born a boy in Kediri (East Java) in 1973 and no one suspected that her gender interests were different.
Instead her family attributed her feminine behavior to her status as the last child, pampered and spoilt by doting relatives.
When it later became clear she was a woman trapped in a male body she was backed by her family, even though she described her now deceased parents as “traditional, conservative Javanese.”
“I could not be doing my job as a public advocate if my family wasn’t behind me,” she said. “My father came from nothing and worked hard all his life to succeed as a businessman. I will do the same.
“I’ve learned how to become tough. There’s no role model for a person like me. I don’t want one. I have to make my own way.”
After school she studied civil engineering at the Malang National Institute of Technology expecting to be employed in the family contracting business, but instead turned to advocacy.
Three years ago in a bid to assert the rights of transsexuals she sought election as mayor of Malang. Her application was rejected by bureaucrats claiming her nomination was received too late, though Merlyn thinks there was another agenda.
Nonetheless she got the publicity, and most was positive. “I didn’t really want to be mayor,” she said. “I did this to show we're just as capable as anyone else in making a contribution to society.
“Many people have suggested I move to Jakarta and the big scene. But I’m happy here with all my networks. I wouldn’t want to have to start again.”
She’s the case manager in a Malang hospital, working on an internationally funded campaign to raise awareness of AIDS, and help keep those with the disease active in society. Retroviral drugs that control – but don’t cure – the disease are free, but the treatment isn’t.
The project is administered by the Health Department that chose to outsource the work through the local Association of Transsexuals which Merlyn chairs. There are at least 580 known HIV positive cases in the city of less than one million, with 15 part-time carers giving advice and encouraging the worried to get a blood test.
Apart from spreading information, another benefit of the public volleyball games is that men and women wracked with the problems of expressing their gender can meet others who face similar challenges.
In Jakarta and Surabaya most homosexuals, lesbians and transsexuals meet in hotel bars, usually up-market hangouts where the cost of a drink would buy a kampong family a week’s meals. There’s no discotheque in Malang for those with different sexual preferences.
There’s often great rivalry between gay men, transsexuals and lesbians and little cooperation in the campaign for pubic understanding and tolerance.
“Gays tend to see themselves as superior,” Merlyn said. “The Lesbians here are very private. I’m trying to get us to work more closely – we suffer the same problems of stigma and discrimination. We can make a better life for all if we’re together.
“We are leading in the public health campaign because AIDS was first identified in the homosexual community in Bali back in the 1980s. Others were in a state of denial, so the gays had to do their own research.
“Malang has such a big HIV problem because it’s a university city, drawing students from all across the country. There’s a lot of drug use, but the police are opposed to harm reduction programs operating overseas, like clean needle exchange and teaching users how to sterilize equipment.”
At last count there were at least 350 transsexuals in Malang, with many working in beauty salons. Only one is known to have had a sex-change operation, a procedure that has now fallen out of favor. Apart from the multiple operations and agonizing surgery involved (amputation of the penis and the fashioning of a vagina), the psychological impact can also be traumatic.
Hormone treatment can suppress male characteristics and enhance breasts, but bad side effects, including nausea, are often reported.
Being a man or woman doesn’t depend on reproductive organs – it’s also a state of mind. Merlyn’s first book was titled Don’t Look At My Genitals! a frank account of her feelings as a woman. Her second, just published is titled Woman Without V (as in vagina.) These are cathartic let-it-all-hangout diary notes of her life and emotions.
Merlyn said she’s been in relations with men, but these haven’t lasted, sometimes because her partners wanted children. She says she’d like to get married, and desires love from the opposite sex.
“I want people to know me for what I do, not who I am,” she said. “I want to dedicate my life for humanity. I feel I have a mission from God.
“I respect difference in others – I want them to do the same for me and all transsexuals. Don’t judge. Look at our capacity – at the good things that we can do in this world for everyone.”
(Sidebar one)
ONE WORD DOESN’T FIT ALL
The Indonesian word waria (an amalgam of wanita (woman) and pria (man) tends to be used for homosexuals, transsexuals and other minority sexual groups. However these are quite different.
A homosexual is attracted to members of his or her own sex. Most female homosexuals use the word Lesbian. This is a reference to the Greek island of Lesbos where the poet Sappho wrote about love between women. ‘Gay’ is the preferred Western term and can refer to both sexes, though it’s normally associated with men.
Homosexuality is not confined to any country or culture. About ten per cent of the population is naturally homosexual.
Bi-sexuals are people who enjoy sex with men and women.
Transsexuals are people with the physical traits of one sex and the psychological make-up of the opposite sex. The condition, medically called gender dysphoria (unease), is rare. One Dutch study claims the incidence is about one in 10,000 for males, one in 30,000 for females.
(Sidebar 2)
GOING UP
The latest World Health Organization figures (November 2006) claim somewhere between 169,000 and 216,000 Indonesians have HIV. If the current rate of infection continues the number will jump to one million by the end of this decade.
However activists say these figures are unreliable and grossly underestimate the problem.
Health Ministry data claims that more than half of the AIDS cases are found among drug injectors.
The incidence of HIV among transsexuals is reported to be high, with some estimates of up to 22 per cent.
(First published in The Sunday Post 21 January 2007)
##
">Link
A NEW GUIDE TO JAVA'S GOLDEN AGE
UNPACKING THE MYSTERIES OF THE MAJAPAHIT © Duncan Graham 2007
Modern Indonesians have mixed feelings about the Majapahit Era, the so-called Golden Age of Java. This was the period about 700 years ago when much of the archipelago, and some nearby countries, were ruled by a Hindu-Buddhist kingdom based around Trowulan, East Java.
Why the ambiguous emotions? Some seem to think that centuries gone are countries best left unvisited. Religious fundamentalists fear ancient predictions forecasting the return of the Majapahit may yet come to pass. Let sleeping eras lie.
A few are proud that Java has such a rich and magnificent past, but most seem indifferent. Maybe because the teaching and presentation of history is so often pedestrian.
Those who’ve had the privilege of living in major cities overseas know museums don’t need to be forbidding and archaeology a bore. The non-profit Indonesian Heritage Society (IHS), a repository of such illuminati, is now doing its best to bring sunlight to the statuary, appreciation to the artifacts.
The Society’s latest venture together with the Japanese-Indonesian cultural organization Nihindo is Majapahit / Trowulan, a glossy well-presented A4 plus book in Indonesian and English bringing much of the known information up to date.
In his happy / sad foreword Jero Wacik, Minister of Culture and Tourism writes that the involvement of foreigners “stirs emotion because those not owning our culture still give it serious attention, sometimes more than we do as inheritors …”
This is no new event; interest in the history of Java started with Stamford Raffles during the 19th century British Interregnum. It continued with the Dutch once they tired of plunder and turned to scholarship.
The new book complements another accessible text – Memories of Majapahit - published by the East Java Government in 1993 and now hard to find. Since then more discoveries have added to our knowledge, particularly on the lifestyles of ordinary people.
Also new is thinking about the way the two Indian-sourced religions co-existed in Java. ‘Syncretism’ has yielded to ‘coalition’ and now ‘parallelism’. Ugly terms, but you can see how interpreting the past is a plastic art open to all.
Memories was written in English by one person. The new book is a collection of essays and updated research by Indonesian experts and well translated into English. A politically correct decision, but it doesn’t make for smooth reading. Academics everywhere, whatever their discipline, reckon they communicate with clarity; few can.
Some see the Majapahit story as a collection of dates, names and references. Wrong. This is a lusty tale of vile kings, scheming rogues, devilish plots, inventive artisans, clever courtesans, sinister omens, disasters natural and unnatural - all wrapped in myth and magic.
Unpacking this parcel of wonders requires the special skills of storytelling. Poets are needed, not pedants. Some contributors have the talent to touch the reader with their awe. Others are more concerned with fluffing up their own erudition.
The IHS members involved in this splendid project must have aged decades in getting it together, prodding laggards, soothing the affronted, placating the pompous. If entertainers strut their egos, archaeologists put theirs on pedestals and expect others to polish. (If you doubt this, check the academic brawls over the hobbits of Flores.)
Adding to the explorer’s delight is that there are few reliable records of this extraordinary period, leaving hectares of space to exercise the imagination. This book is not the last word - inscribed pots that may tip over long-held interpretations are probably being exposed by farmers’ ploughs, even as I write and you read.
The people of Majapahit were literate, creative and sexy; their water pots are sensuous and erotic, their ‘modesty shields’ appropriately enticing. They were frugal cashed-up traders who loved piggy banks. When they weren’t goldsmiths they were hydraulic engineers.
They built dams, dykes and drains that helped control floods and conserve water to keep crops growing in the dry. Their bricks were like a good marriage – they stuck together by being rubbed together – no cement needed. They were the masters of terracotta.
They were also skilled in the arts of war and administration – creating tax-free zones and a robust cash economy using coins, many from China. They did big business with Vietnam and were open to ideas from everywhere.
What brought these smarties down? Why did the survivors flee to Bali and the uplands of Mount Bromo? The arrival of Islam, internecine strife, natural disasters or something else? Pick a theory, gather the evidence. It’s all here in Majapahit / Trowulan.
So are photos (stylish, but too few), and maps. Sadly these don’t enhance the text. Some are blurred, others too small. Publishers should know that the same care and cash that’s put into words and pictures needs to be spent on cartography.
Like its topic this book is too complex to use as an instant guide to Trowulan; it needs to be read first and annotated (there’s a glossary, but no index), before exploration. This is best done by pedicab because some sites are distant. Fortunately the land is flat.
The staff at the Trowulan museum are helpful, but not all are knowledgeable. Many pieces on display lack provenance and other useful details. Nor is this the only place to see Majapahit relics as the site has been mercilessly plundered and the finds scattered to private and public collections here and overseas.
I hope this book will be available and on sale at the museum in Trowulan for foreign visitors. At Rp 200,000 (US $22) it’s a great buy and an ideal memento or gift for anyone who wants to know more about this astonishing archipelago.
But it’s too dear for the average local student so getting copies into school libraries will be an essential part of making history anything but bunkum – and help the next generation find pride in their heritage.
(Majapahit / Trowulan has been published as a ‘companion book’ to The Grandeur of Majapahit exhibition at the National Museum in Jakarta. For more details check www.heritagejkt.org )
(First published in The Sunday Post 21 January 2007)
##
">Link
Modern Indonesians have mixed feelings about the Majapahit Era, the so-called Golden Age of Java. This was the period about 700 years ago when much of the archipelago, and some nearby countries, were ruled by a Hindu-Buddhist kingdom based around Trowulan, East Java.
Why the ambiguous emotions? Some seem to think that centuries gone are countries best left unvisited. Religious fundamentalists fear ancient predictions forecasting the return of the Majapahit may yet come to pass. Let sleeping eras lie.
A few are proud that Java has such a rich and magnificent past, but most seem indifferent. Maybe because the teaching and presentation of history is so often pedestrian.
Those who’ve had the privilege of living in major cities overseas know museums don’t need to be forbidding and archaeology a bore. The non-profit Indonesian Heritage Society (IHS), a repository of such illuminati, is now doing its best to bring sunlight to the statuary, appreciation to the artifacts.
The Society’s latest venture together with the Japanese-Indonesian cultural organization Nihindo is Majapahit / Trowulan, a glossy well-presented A4 plus book in Indonesian and English bringing much of the known information up to date.
In his happy / sad foreword Jero Wacik, Minister of Culture and Tourism writes that the involvement of foreigners “stirs emotion because those not owning our culture still give it serious attention, sometimes more than we do as inheritors …”
This is no new event; interest in the history of Java started with Stamford Raffles during the 19th century British Interregnum. It continued with the Dutch once they tired of plunder and turned to scholarship.
The new book complements another accessible text – Memories of Majapahit - published by the East Java Government in 1993 and now hard to find. Since then more discoveries have added to our knowledge, particularly on the lifestyles of ordinary people.
Also new is thinking about the way the two Indian-sourced religions co-existed in Java. ‘Syncretism’ has yielded to ‘coalition’ and now ‘parallelism’. Ugly terms, but you can see how interpreting the past is a plastic art open to all.
Memories was written in English by one person. The new book is a collection of essays and updated research by Indonesian experts and well translated into English. A politically correct decision, but it doesn’t make for smooth reading. Academics everywhere, whatever their discipline, reckon they communicate with clarity; few can.
Some see the Majapahit story as a collection of dates, names and references. Wrong. This is a lusty tale of vile kings, scheming rogues, devilish plots, inventive artisans, clever courtesans, sinister omens, disasters natural and unnatural - all wrapped in myth and magic.
Unpacking this parcel of wonders requires the special skills of storytelling. Poets are needed, not pedants. Some contributors have the talent to touch the reader with their awe. Others are more concerned with fluffing up their own erudition.
The IHS members involved in this splendid project must have aged decades in getting it together, prodding laggards, soothing the affronted, placating the pompous. If entertainers strut their egos, archaeologists put theirs on pedestals and expect others to polish. (If you doubt this, check the academic brawls over the hobbits of Flores.)
Adding to the explorer’s delight is that there are few reliable records of this extraordinary period, leaving hectares of space to exercise the imagination. This book is not the last word - inscribed pots that may tip over long-held interpretations are probably being exposed by farmers’ ploughs, even as I write and you read.
The people of Majapahit were literate, creative and sexy; their water pots are sensuous and erotic, their ‘modesty shields’ appropriately enticing. They were frugal cashed-up traders who loved piggy banks. When they weren’t goldsmiths they were hydraulic engineers.
They built dams, dykes and drains that helped control floods and conserve water to keep crops growing in the dry. Their bricks were like a good marriage – they stuck together by being rubbed together – no cement needed. They were the masters of terracotta.
They were also skilled in the arts of war and administration – creating tax-free zones and a robust cash economy using coins, many from China. They did big business with Vietnam and were open to ideas from everywhere.
What brought these smarties down? Why did the survivors flee to Bali and the uplands of Mount Bromo? The arrival of Islam, internecine strife, natural disasters or something else? Pick a theory, gather the evidence. It’s all here in Majapahit / Trowulan.
So are photos (stylish, but too few), and maps. Sadly these don’t enhance the text. Some are blurred, others too small. Publishers should know that the same care and cash that’s put into words and pictures needs to be spent on cartography.
Like its topic this book is too complex to use as an instant guide to Trowulan; it needs to be read first and annotated (there’s a glossary, but no index), before exploration. This is best done by pedicab because some sites are distant. Fortunately the land is flat.
The staff at the Trowulan museum are helpful, but not all are knowledgeable. Many pieces on display lack provenance and other useful details. Nor is this the only place to see Majapahit relics as the site has been mercilessly plundered and the finds scattered to private and public collections here and overseas.
I hope this book will be available and on sale at the museum in Trowulan for foreign visitors. At Rp 200,000 (US $22) it’s a great buy and an ideal memento or gift for anyone who wants to know more about this astonishing archipelago.
But it’s too dear for the average local student so getting copies into school libraries will be an essential part of making history anything but bunkum – and help the next generation find pride in their heritage.
(Majapahit / Trowulan has been published as a ‘companion book’ to The Grandeur of Majapahit exhibition at the National Museum in Jakarta. For more details check www.heritagejkt.org )
(First published in The Sunday Post 21 January 2007)
##
">Link
Friday, January 19, 2007
NAILA-LAILA CONJOINED TWINS
TOGETHER FOR LIFE © Duncan Graham 2007
Towards the end of this month (Jan) a team of about 30 doctors and specialists in Malang, East Java, will meet to discuss an operation on a three-month old. If surgery goes ahead it could involve the amputation of two arms at the shoulder blades.
That sounds extreme, but the patient will still be left with two arms. Patient? Maybe that should be in the plural, for these are conjoined twins in a condition so rare only 25 cases have been recorded worldwide since 1684.
Naila-Laila was / were born by Caesarian section to Laseni, 28, last October when vaginal delivery became impossible. The mother and her unemployed farm worker husband Supriono, 32, already had one normal child, a boy.
The family lives in Tlekung-Gangsiran a village close to the hill town of Batu, northwest of Malang. Like many rural poor Laseni had no antenatal medical care.
The pregnancy was uneventful and ran full-term. Nothing unusual was anticipated. The birth weight was 3.35 kilos. There was only one placenta.
The babies have two heads, four arms, two chests (although externally it appears otherwise), two hearts, one vagina, one anus and two legs. Two of the arms are fused from the shoulders to the wrists and pinned behind the heads causing discomfort as the twins grow.
X ray photos show two spines coming from one pelvis. It's unclear from the images whether Naila-Laila share a stomach, spleen and liver. They have two kidneys. This is not a case of two separate bodies joined at only one place. Naila-Laila can never be divided.
Though less than three months old they already have different personalities and push and shove each other for comfort space with their free hands. When confronted by The Jakarta Post's camera Naila screwed up her face in disgust, but Laila looked curious. Nurses said one could be crying while the other is smiling.
"Most conjoined twins are stillborn," said surgeon Dr Respati Dradjat. "Of those who survive, 40 per cent die soon after. The chances aren't good. (See sidebar)
"But in this case the prognosis is optimistic. The babies are developing normally and have survived an early bout of pneumonia. All organs are functioning well.
"The girls are 4.4 kilos and in the normal weight range. There's a small defect in the left and right ventricles of one heart but it can work properly.
Dr Respati is head of the team caring for Naila-Laila at Malang's Saiful Anwar hospital, the largest government medical facility in central East Java. The twins were transferred there when two days old because the private hospital in Batu where they were born didn't have the appropriate intensive care facilities.
The parents have suffered greatly, though so far not financially. Public donations, including funds from the mayor of Batu, have kept them from having to pay bills of Rp 250,000 (US $27) a day for the twins' hospital care.
Supriono camps day and night on the veranda outside the intensive care unit to be by his daughters while Laseni is back in her village. Hospital staff said she is rejecting the babies and can't breastfeed.
"I hope they will be able to come home one day," said Supriono. "Everything is in God's hands. We must accept what He has given."
Although the medical facts behind the abnormality have been explained, the parents still believe they've been cursed by an angry Deity for sins they have committed. The family is Muslim.
Adding to their trauma are the mutterings of others. What the neighbors think and say is a major concern in small towns and villages.
"Supriono has discussed this with me," said Dr Respati. "We have psychologists and psychiatrists on the case and helping. If we operate and the babies survive then I hope they'll be able to go home and live with the family.
"Of course if this happens they may be seen as freaks. Who knows? The other problem could be if one develops at a faster rate than the other. It will be a step-by-step process.
"The functional amputation is simple. That's not the problem. We have to deliver the anesthetics to both bodies simultaneously. If surgery is undertaken, then the younger the better.
"We don't know about their level of immunity – it may be less than normal. There's a danger of organ failure. What happens if one dies and the other lives? There are no fixed decisions. This is very challenging."
Dr Respati said that although euthanasia is illegal in Indonesia a case could have been made out for basic care of the twins in the expectation that they'd die naturally. The hospital has limited resources, and money spent on Naila-Laila could have benefited 30 other children, he said.
"A similar case in Jakarta a few years ago died, but we decided that it was our duty to try and save these babies," he said. "This is a teaching hospital and maybe the experience we gain can be useful in other situations elsewhere in the world in the future. There is also a moral reason for continuing care."
(Sidebar)
RARE AND COMPLEX
Few conjoined twins (also known as Siamese twins) are born. Three have been recorded in Indonesia. The previous known case before Naila-Laila was in Nigeria in 2005.
However other conjoined twins may be naturally or artificially aborted, or their births and deaths kept quiet.
There are many differences in the cases, depending on where the bodies are joined and what organs are shared. The Malang case is known as dicephalus.
In the 19th century two men in a similar situation lived till they were 60. More recently there's a case of two girls in Minnesota called Abigail and Brittany Hensel. They were born in 1990 with dicephalus, similar to Naila-Laila and are still alive.
The US twins had one extra arm that was amputated. When they were 12 they also underwent operations to correct curvatures of their spines.
These young women appear to have adjusted well, and have openly discussed their situation on TV. Each twin controls her own arm and leg, but have learned to coordinate. They are reported to play sport, do other standard Western teenage activities and expect to graduate from high school this year.
Little is known about the condition or why it's caused. Genetic and environmental reasons have been suggested.
It is believed conjoined twins are created around the 13th day of pregnancy. There's incomplete separation of the fertilized ova that would otherwise naturally develop as separate twins.
(First published in The Jakarta Post 17 January 2007.)
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Towards the end of this month (Jan) a team of about 30 doctors and specialists in Malang, East Java, will meet to discuss an operation on a three-month old. If surgery goes ahead it could involve the amputation of two arms at the shoulder blades.
That sounds extreme, but the patient will still be left with two arms. Patient? Maybe that should be in the plural, for these are conjoined twins in a condition so rare only 25 cases have been recorded worldwide since 1684.
Naila-Laila was / were born by Caesarian section to Laseni, 28, last October when vaginal delivery became impossible. The mother and her unemployed farm worker husband Supriono, 32, already had one normal child, a boy.
The family lives in Tlekung-Gangsiran a village close to the hill town of Batu, northwest of Malang. Like many rural poor Laseni had no antenatal medical care.
The pregnancy was uneventful and ran full-term. Nothing unusual was anticipated. The birth weight was 3.35 kilos. There was only one placenta.
The babies have two heads, four arms, two chests (although externally it appears otherwise), two hearts, one vagina, one anus and two legs. Two of the arms are fused from the shoulders to the wrists and pinned behind the heads causing discomfort as the twins grow.
X ray photos show two spines coming from one pelvis. It's unclear from the images whether Naila-Laila share a stomach, spleen and liver. They have two kidneys. This is not a case of two separate bodies joined at only one place. Naila-Laila can never be divided.
Though less than three months old they already have different personalities and push and shove each other for comfort space with their free hands. When confronted by The Jakarta Post's camera Naila screwed up her face in disgust, but Laila looked curious. Nurses said one could be crying while the other is smiling.
"Most conjoined twins are stillborn," said surgeon Dr Respati Dradjat. "Of those who survive, 40 per cent die soon after. The chances aren't good. (See sidebar)
"But in this case the prognosis is optimistic. The babies are developing normally and have survived an early bout of pneumonia. All organs are functioning well.
"The girls are 4.4 kilos and in the normal weight range. There's a small defect in the left and right ventricles of one heart but it can work properly.
Dr Respati is head of the team caring for Naila-Laila at Malang's Saiful Anwar hospital, the largest government medical facility in central East Java. The twins were transferred there when two days old because the private hospital in Batu where they were born didn't have the appropriate intensive care facilities.
The parents have suffered greatly, though so far not financially. Public donations, including funds from the mayor of Batu, have kept them from having to pay bills of Rp 250,000 (US $27) a day for the twins' hospital care.
Supriono camps day and night on the veranda outside the intensive care unit to be by his daughters while Laseni is back in her village. Hospital staff said she is rejecting the babies and can't breastfeed.
"I hope they will be able to come home one day," said Supriono. "Everything is in God's hands. We must accept what He has given."
Although the medical facts behind the abnormality have been explained, the parents still believe they've been cursed by an angry Deity for sins they have committed. The family is Muslim.
Adding to their trauma are the mutterings of others. What the neighbors think and say is a major concern in small towns and villages.
"Supriono has discussed this with me," said Dr Respati. "We have psychologists and psychiatrists on the case and helping. If we operate and the babies survive then I hope they'll be able to go home and live with the family.
"Of course if this happens they may be seen as freaks. Who knows? The other problem could be if one develops at a faster rate than the other. It will be a step-by-step process.
"The functional amputation is simple. That's not the problem. We have to deliver the anesthetics to both bodies simultaneously. If surgery is undertaken, then the younger the better.
"We don't know about their level of immunity – it may be less than normal. There's a danger of organ failure. What happens if one dies and the other lives? There are no fixed decisions. This is very challenging."
Dr Respati said that although euthanasia is illegal in Indonesia a case could have been made out for basic care of the twins in the expectation that they'd die naturally. The hospital has limited resources, and money spent on Naila-Laila could have benefited 30 other children, he said.
"A similar case in Jakarta a few years ago died, but we decided that it was our duty to try and save these babies," he said. "This is a teaching hospital and maybe the experience we gain can be useful in other situations elsewhere in the world in the future. There is also a moral reason for continuing care."
(Sidebar)
RARE AND COMPLEX
Few conjoined twins (also known as Siamese twins) are born. Three have been recorded in Indonesia. The previous known case before Naila-Laila was in Nigeria in 2005.
However other conjoined twins may be naturally or artificially aborted, or their births and deaths kept quiet.
There are many differences in the cases, depending on where the bodies are joined and what organs are shared. The Malang case is known as dicephalus.
In the 19th century two men in a similar situation lived till they were 60. More recently there's a case of two girls in Minnesota called Abigail and Brittany Hensel. They were born in 1990 with dicephalus, similar to Naila-Laila and are still alive.
The US twins had one extra arm that was amputated. When they were 12 they also underwent operations to correct curvatures of their spines.
These young women appear to have adjusted well, and have openly discussed their situation on TV. Each twin controls her own arm and leg, but have learned to coordinate. They are reported to play sport, do other standard Western teenage activities and expect to graduate from high school this year.
Little is known about the condition or why it's caused. Genetic and environmental reasons have been suggested.
It is believed conjoined twins are created around the 13th day of pregnancy. There's incomplete separation of the fertilized ova that would otherwise naturally develop as separate twins.
(First published in The Jakarta Post 17 January 2007.)
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TURNING WASTE INTO STOCK FEED
RUBBISH? THAT’S JUST CHICKEN FEED © Duncan Graham 2006
Foreigners often face difficulties starting a business in Indonesia. But the faults aren’t all with this country. Duncan Graham reports:
Last May bureaucrats and potential investors of East Java were expecting to get the first local lab figures of an important analysis: Would the results show that chicken food made from Surabaya’s waste would be nutritious and palatable to poultry?
Probably. Hens will eat anything – even each other. But this project – which needs a US $25 million (Rp 20 billion) investment - had to convince people.
“There’s a lot of sceptics in the government particularly in animal husbandry, but I’m pretty optimistic,” said Surabayan businessman Ron Kho. “Once this gets up and running everyone will want to be involved.”
His partner Sam Salpietro from Western Australia, whose company BioCulture is pushing the idea to convert foul refuse into fowl food, was equally upbeat:
“This is the only project that can be considered a viable and commercial operation,” he said. “There’s no need for subsidies or government funding.”
But then the idea hit the speed bumps. Dissatisfied with local lab procedures the partners decided to get another opinion of their product – in Australia.
Sending anything organic into the country next door is difficult enough. When the material is processed trash the problems compound.
“No-one has ever wanted to import rubbish into Australia before,” said Salpietro. “We were told it would be easy – but the bureaucratic problems were incredible.”
Nonetheless they’ve been overcome and six months later the partners have their analysis from the Western Australian government’s chemical laboratory – which they’ll be presenting to potential investors in Surabaya today (21 Dec).
The figures certainly look good - like most projections before a factory is built. Every day the folk of Indonesia’s second biggest city produce 3,000 tonnes of rubbish destined for the tip.
The overall quantity is much higher, but efficient scavengers pull tonnes of plastic, glass, wood and other recyclables out of the refuse long before it gets to the landfill.
Now imagine a low-tech process where about half that waste could be converted into chicken pellets that could be sold at a profit. The garbage pits would then last twice as long in a land where space is needed for the living, not their waste.
‘Where there’s muck, there’s money,’ has long been a truism as many millionaires know. If a job is unpleasant people prefer to have someone else get their hands dirty.
In the West those hands are mightily expensive so the costs of processing waste into anything useful is prohibitive. But not in Indonesia.
“There’s no doubt this project can only work in developing countries where labour is cheap,” Kho said. “Most of the work is manual. It requires teams of people sorting through refuse on a moving table and rejecting everything inorganic.
“The foods and plants which do get through will be cooked and processed to remove impurities. Extra nutrients will be added and the mix forced through an extruder to make pellets.”
So far Kho has processed 300 kilograms using manual gear assembled in his paint pigment factory, PT Holland Colours Asia. The extrusion process is much the same so there’s a fit with his present plant. However heating and other controls will need to be adapted.
“We reckon we can make high quality poultry feed for about US $ 75 (Rp 700,000) a tonne when other manufacturers are charging US $250 (Rp 2.25 million) a tonne,” he said.
“So there’s a lot of space to play. We hope existing animal feed companies will want to invest.”
OK so far. Now consider the difficulties: Manufacturers of any product want their raw materials to be of a consistent quality, easily measured. But no two truckloads of rubbish will ever be the same.
And how will the BioCulture managers ensure that every noxious object is spotted and doesn’t make it into the organic waste? Watching rubbish roll by hour upon hour is not a fun pastime, even if the bosses are paying top rupiah for nimble fingers and sharp eyes as they promise to do.
When Mum tosses out her supply of birth control pills because it’s time to start a family and the drugs get into the chicken food, there could be some curious results. Contraceptive hormones in Australian sewage discharged into the sea are already reported to be doing funny things to fish.
Then there’s the danger of transmitting Frankenstein ailments like Mad Cow disease if certain animal products get into the feed. Dead rats seem to be a significant component of Surabaya’s rubbish.
Kho stressed that these and other hazards had been considered. The organic waste would be pasteurised to kill any toxins. Continuous laboratory tests would pick any unforeseens and reject suspect feed.
Magnets would pull out anything metallic and closed circuit TV would monitor every stage. The sorters would work in teams each focussing on only one type of waste. “The end product has to be food quality,” said Salpietro.
The other hurdle is the lack of an up-and-running plant. Potential investors might be more enthusiastic if they could actually see a real banging, clanking, steaming operation rather than a Power Point presentation.
Salpietro acknowledged the problem: “Someone has to be a pioneer. We don’t have the money, but would be prepared to be shareholders. We’ve already spent about AUD $1 million (Rp 7,000 million) and five years to get this far.
“People from all over the world keep coming to Indonesia and saying: ‘We can solve your waste problems.’ They can – but someone has to pay. This system generates income.”
“We expected a 30 per cent organic recovery but in fact the pilot yielded 50 per cent,” Kho said.
“We reckon it will cost about US $20 - $25 million to build a viable plant on about five hectares, and take around 18 months to construct. Capital return should be rapid.
“We’d prefer a joint venture with the government to ensure continuous supplies of waste – maybe around 20 per cent of the capital.
“I don’t normally like dealing with governments but with this project there have been no bribes asked or given.”
(First published in The Jakarta Post January ? 2007)
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">Link
Foreigners often face difficulties starting a business in Indonesia. But the faults aren’t all with this country. Duncan Graham reports:
Last May bureaucrats and potential investors of East Java were expecting to get the first local lab figures of an important analysis: Would the results show that chicken food made from Surabaya’s waste would be nutritious and palatable to poultry?
Probably. Hens will eat anything – even each other. But this project – which needs a US $25 million (Rp 20 billion) investment - had to convince people.
“There’s a lot of sceptics in the government particularly in animal husbandry, but I’m pretty optimistic,” said Surabayan businessman Ron Kho. “Once this gets up and running everyone will want to be involved.”
His partner Sam Salpietro from Western Australia, whose company BioCulture is pushing the idea to convert foul refuse into fowl food, was equally upbeat:
“This is the only project that can be considered a viable and commercial operation,” he said. “There’s no need for subsidies or government funding.”
But then the idea hit the speed bumps. Dissatisfied with local lab procedures the partners decided to get another opinion of their product – in Australia.
Sending anything organic into the country next door is difficult enough. When the material is processed trash the problems compound.
“No-one has ever wanted to import rubbish into Australia before,” said Salpietro. “We were told it would be easy – but the bureaucratic problems were incredible.”
Nonetheless they’ve been overcome and six months later the partners have their analysis from the Western Australian government’s chemical laboratory – which they’ll be presenting to potential investors in Surabaya today (21 Dec).
The figures certainly look good - like most projections before a factory is built. Every day the folk of Indonesia’s second biggest city produce 3,000 tonnes of rubbish destined for the tip.
The overall quantity is much higher, but efficient scavengers pull tonnes of plastic, glass, wood and other recyclables out of the refuse long before it gets to the landfill.
Now imagine a low-tech process where about half that waste could be converted into chicken pellets that could be sold at a profit. The garbage pits would then last twice as long in a land where space is needed for the living, not their waste.
‘Where there’s muck, there’s money,’ has long been a truism as many millionaires know. If a job is unpleasant people prefer to have someone else get their hands dirty.
In the West those hands are mightily expensive so the costs of processing waste into anything useful is prohibitive. But not in Indonesia.
“There’s no doubt this project can only work in developing countries where labour is cheap,” Kho said. “Most of the work is manual. It requires teams of people sorting through refuse on a moving table and rejecting everything inorganic.
“The foods and plants which do get through will be cooked and processed to remove impurities. Extra nutrients will be added and the mix forced through an extruder to make pellets.”
So far Kho has processed 300 kilograms using manual gear assembled in his paint pigment factory, PT Holland Colours Asia. The extrusion process is much the same so there’s a fit with his present plant. However heating and other controls will need to be adapted.
“We reckon we can make high quality poultry feed for about US $ 75 (Rp 700,000) a tonne when other manufacturers are charging US $250 (Rp 2.25 million) a tonne,” he said.
“So there’s a lot of space to play. We hope existing animal feed companies will want to invest.”
OK so far. Now consider the difficulties: Manufacturers of any product want their raw materials to be of a consistent quality, easily measured. But no two truckloads of rubbish will ever be the same.
And how will the BioCulture managers ensure that every noxious object is spotted and doesn’t make it into the organic waste? Watching rubbish roll by hour upon hour is not a fun pastime, even if the bosses are paying top rupiah for nimble fingers and sharp eyes as they promise to do.
When Mum tosses out her supply of birth control pills because it’s time to start a family and the drugs get into the chicken food, there could be some curious results. Contraceptive hormones in Australian sewage discharged into the sea are already reported to be doing funny things to fish.
Then there’s the danger of transmitting Frankenstein ailments like Mad Cow disease if certain animal products get into the feed. Dead rats seem to be a significant component of Surabaya’s rubbish.
Kho stressed that these and other hazards had been considered. The organic waste would be pasteurised to kill any toxins. Continuous laboratory tests would pick any unforeseens and reject suspect feed.
Magnets would pull out anything metallic and closed circuit TV would monitor every stage. The sorters would work in teams each focussing on only one type of waste. “The end product has to be food quality,” said Salpietro.
The other hurdle is the lack of an up-and-running plant. Potential investors might be more enthusiastic if they could actually see a real banging, clanking, steaming operation rather than a Power Point presentation.
Salpietro acknowledged the problem: “Someone has to be a pioneer. We don’t have the money, but would be prepared to be shareholders. We’ve already spent about AUD $1 million (Rp 7,000 million) and five years to get this far.
“People from all over the world keep coming to Indonesia and saying: ‘We can solve your waste problems.’ They can – but someone has to pay. This system generates income.”
“We expected a 30 per cent organic recovery but in fact the pilot yielded 50 per cent,” Kho said.
“We reckon it will cost about US $20 - $25 million to build a viable plant on about five hectares, and take around 18 months to construct. Capital return should be rapid.
“We’d prefer a joint venture with the government to ensure continuous supplies of waste – maybe around 20 per cent of the capital.
“I don’t normally like dealing with governments but with this project there have been no bribes asked or given.”
(First published in The Jakarta Post January ? 2007)
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">Link
BUDDHIST TV
(Dhamma TV)
THE CALMING RAYS OF CATHODE © Duncan Graham 2007
Cynics claim that owning a television station licence is like having a permit to print money. Read on to learn about a TV mogul who's licensed to spend, not earn.
Mogul? In this case the cap doesn't fit bald Bhiku Dhammavijayo, boss of East Java's Dhamma TV, a station with no advertising.
This means viewers can enjoy a programme from go to whoa without being urged to purge dandruff and find true romance, ride a motorbike that never sees thicket-thick traffic, or whiten skin for instant popularity.
With this most welcome quality there has to be a downside; no police reality shows where ghouls gape at corpses, sinetrons (soapies) with lovelorn teens - or news. The first two are no loss, but a telecaster without breathless reports on the day's events is like a warung with no rice.
"All other stations have news so you can turn to them, then come back to us," said Dhammavijayo breaking the first commandment of a television producer: Thou shalt not suggest viewers might finger the remote control once they're married to your wavelength.
But Dhammavijayo has smashed all conventional ideas about this rapacious industry and the people who feed its hungry jaws. Yet again a correction is necessary – for Dhamma TV the metaphor is too brutal.
"We always seek the peaceful way," he said. "We must be positive, never negative. We must develop goodness.
"The programs we transmit must not disadvantage people. They must not be dangerous or cause suffering. What's important is what we can give, not what we can get."
When he's not calling the shots, woops, calmly directing activities among the 15 staff and numerous volunteers at Indonesia's only Buddhist TV station, Dhammavijayo is a monk. (Dhamma means the teachings of Buddha).
Born in Surabaya into a Buddhist family with a car accessories business he found information on the religion's teachings hard to find. This was during the Soeharto era when the regime's steel grip on politics, information and the economy extended to faith.
He went to Thailand for eight years and trained in monasteries. On returning to his homeland he became a missionary and publisher, distributing books and pamphlets about Buddhism around the archipelago.
While this was fine, the message wasn't reaching the masses. "At every monastery I visited I urged them to open a radio or TV station," he said. "All agreed it was a good idea but only at Samarinda (in East Kalimantan) did they start broadcasting.
"Most thought the job too big or impossible to achieve. So I had to do it myself."
By now the Orde Baru era had ended and with it the rigid controls on telecasting. New licences became available – all you needed was kilowatts of cash and a contact list of mates in high places. But the Buddhists were able to do things differently.
"Actually it wasn't difficult at all," said Dhammavijayo. "We were very fortunate. We found someone who had already secured a licence and had the equipment, but after three and a half years of preparation couldn't go ahead. Actually it was going to be a Christian station.
"You can only succeed if you have a social mission. (There goes TV commandment number two.) If only money is your god then you won't. You can't take money with you when you leave this world."
So on 15 January last year the station powered-up from its tower in the village of Oro Oro Ombo, 1000 metres up the mountain slopes outside the central East Java town of Batu.
This area has been allocated to all telecasters and is a forest of red and white steel structures. Many are mighty affairs alongside intimidating buildings inside high fences with lots of staff, as befits a megabucks machine.
Though not Dhamma TV. Its control room is a tiny roadside cottage alongside a sapling antenna dwarfed by its giant neighbours - though building of new Rp 600 million (US $ 67,000) facilities are underway nearby. Two squashed blokes tweak knobs and finesse transmission.
Though the catchment area has 8.5 million souls, Dhamma's signal is not as powerful as the big operators. Those who do receive can watch imported wildlife programmes where nature is red in tooth and claw and decidedly not peaceful, education, talk and travel shows and, of course, a bounty of Buddhism.
Has this created problems? Haven't fundamentalists rushed into the foothills to fell the unprotected mast and kill messages that might induce faith changes?
"We haven't had any difficulties," said placid Dhammavijayo. "We're not seeking to convert anyone. We only want to explain our beliefs.
"The truth is not for Buddhists alone – it's for everyone. All we are doing is trying to find the best way.
"Not all the workers we employ are Buddhists. We need people who can do the job."
Many are communication students huddled over screens in an editing suite where the insertion of one extra VCD might cause the walls to rupture. More generous quarters are being built. There's no studio so all programs have to be shot outside. If staffers weren't barefoot this could be described as shoestring TV – running on only Rp 25 million (US $2,800) a month.
Like to buy some airtime? It won't require an overseas loan. For just Rp 2 million (US $220) you can have an hour to reach the masses. Don't bother applying if you sell smokes, but if you have a different religious message – no worries.
And don't expect to be hustled by leggy marketers with promotion plans and desirable discounts. This station isn't into selling space. However if you ask nicely and aren't offering anything offensive then a deal might be done.
Neither Dhammavijayo nor the station manager Jemmy Mulyono (an electrical engineer) had any prior experience of TV. Consequently they haven't imported the awful culture of the industry into Batu.
There are no up-themselves executives screaming in phones, hiring and firing in the same breath, no wannabe stars willing to murder for a flickering moment of fame, no grotesque displays of raw emotion.
How many people watch Dhamma TV? Stand by for another shock – the producers have no data and seem unconcerned. They don't subscribe to the ratings system and like any sane person doubt the veracity of the statistics that power decisions in the industry.
"Looking back over the past year we've been told by many that they find our programs interesting and comforting," said Dhammavijayo. "Viewers who have been depressed and suicidal have been helped.
"Our station is also recommended for those who have problems sleeping. If you watch our meditation program at night you'll have no trouble dozing off."
A TV boss honest about his product being soporific? As noted at the start of this story, Dhamma TV is no ordinary station. Happy birthday!
(If you're in the Malang area you can catch Dhamma TV on Channel 3.)
(First published in The Jakarta Post 15 January 2007)
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THE CALMING RAYS OF CATHODE © Duncan Graham 2007
Cynics claim that owning a television station licence is like having a permit to print money. Read on to learn about a TV mogul who's licensed to spend, not earn.
Mogul? In this case the cap doesn't fit bald Bhiku Dhammavijayo, boss of East Java's Dhamma TV, a station with no advertising.
This means viewers can enjoy a programme from go to whoa without being urged to purge dandruff and find true romance, ride a motorbike that never sees thicket-thick traffic, or whiten skin for instant popularity.
With this most welcome quality there has to be a downside; no police reality shows where ghouls gape at corpses, sinetrons (soapies) with lovelorn teens - or news. The first two are no loss, but a telecaster without breathless reports on the day's events is like a warung with no rice.
"All other stations have news so you can turn to them, then come back to us," said Dhammavijayo breaking the first commandment of a television producer: Thou shalt not suggest viewers might finger the remote control once they're married to your wavelength.
But Dhammavijayo has smashed all conventional ideas about this rapacious industry and the people who feed its hungry jaws. Yet again a correction is necessary – for Dhamma TV the metaphor is too brutal.
"We always seek the peaceful way," he said. "We must be positive, never negative. We must develop goodness.
"The programs we transmit must not disadvantage people. They must not be dangerous or cause suffering. What's important is what we can give, not what we can get."
When he's not calling the shots, woops, calmly directing activities among the 15 staff and numerous volunteers at Indonesia's only Buddhist TV station, Dhammavijayo is a monk. (Dhamma means the teachings of Buddha).
Born in Surabaya into a Buddhist family with a car accessories business he found information on the religion's teachings hard to find. This was during the Soeharto era when the regime's steel grip on politics, information and the economy extended to faith.
He went to Thailand for eight years and trained in monasteries. On returning to his homeland he became a missionary and publisher, distributing books and pamphlets about Buddhism around the archipelago.
While this was fine, the message wasn't reaching the masses. "At every monastery I visited I urged them to open a radio or TV station," he said. "All agreed it was a good idea but only at Samarinda (in East Kalimantan) did they start broadcasting.
"Most thought the job too big or impossible to achieve. So I had to do it myself."
By now the Orde Baru era had ended and with it the rigid controls on telecasting. New licences became available – all you needed was kilowatts of cash and a contact list of mates in high places. But the Buddhists were able to do things differently.
"Actually it wasn't difficult at all," said Dhammavijayo. "We were very fortunate. We found someone who had already secured a licence and had the equipment, but after three and a half years of preparation couldn't go ahead. Actually it was going to be a Christian station.
"You can only succeed if you have a social mission. (There goes TV commandment number two.) If only money is your god then you won't. You can't take money with you when you leave this world."
So on 15 January last year the station powered-up from its tower in the village of Oro Oro Ombo, 1000 metres up the mountain slopes outside the central East Java town of Batu.
This area has been allocated to all telecasters and is a forest of red and white steel structures. Many are mighty affairs alongside intimidating buildings inside high fences with lots of staff, as befits a megabucks machine.
Though not Dhamma TV. Its control room is a tiny roadside cottage alongside a sapling antenna dwarfed by its giant neighbours - though building of new Rp 600 million (US $ 67,000) facilities are underway nearby. Two squashed blokes tweak knobs and finesse transmission.
Though the catchment area has 8.5 million souls, Dhamma's signal is not as powerful as the big operators. Those who do receive can watch imported wildlife programmes where nature is red in tooth and claw and decidedly not peaceful, education, talk and travel shows and, of course, a bounty of Buddhism.
Has this created problems? Haven't fundamentalists rushed into the foothills to fell the unprotected mast and kill messages that might induce faith changes?
"We haven't had any difficulties," said placid Dhammavijayo. "We're not seeking to convert anyone. We only want to explain our beliefs.
"The truth is not for Buddhists alone – it's for everyone. All we are doing is trying to find the best way.
"Not all the workers we employ are Buddhists. We need people who can do the job."
Many are communication students huddled over screens in an editing suite where the insertion of one extra VCD might cause the walls to rupture. More generous quarters are being built. There's no studio so all programs have to be shot outside. If staffers weren't barefoot this could be described as shoestring TV – running on only Rp 25 million (US $2,800) a month.
Like to buy some airtime? It won't require an overseas loan. For just Rp 2 million (US $220) you can have an hour to reach the masses. Don't bother applying if you sell smokes, but if you have a different religious message – no worries.
And don't expect to be hustled by leggy marketers with promotion plans and desirable discounts. This station isn't into selling space. However if you ask nicely and aren't offering anything offensive then a deal might be done.
Neither Dhammavijayo nor the station manager Jemmy Mulyono (an electrical engineer) had any prior experience of TV. Consequently they haven't imported the awful culture of the industry into Batu.
There are no up-themselves executives screaming in phones, hiring and firing in the same breath, no wannabe stars willing to murder for a flickering moment of fame, no grotesque displays of raw emotion.
How many people watch Dhamma TV? Stand by for another shock – the producers have no data and seem unconcerned. They don't subscribe to the ratings system and like any sane person doubt the veracity of the statistics that power decisions in the industry.
"Looking back over the past year we've been told by many that they find our programs interesting and comforting," said Dhammavijayo. "Viewers who have been depressed and suicidal have been helped.
"Our station is also recommended for those who have problems sleeping. If you watch our meditation program at night you'll have no trouble dozing off."
A TV boss honest about his product being soporific? As noted at the start of this story, Dhamma TV is no ordinary station. Happy birthday!
(If you're in the Malang area you can catch Dhamma TV on Channel 3.)
(First published in The Jakarta Post 15 January 2007)
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JOHN TONDOWIDJOJO TONDODININGRAT
TALK MORE, LOVE LOTS, LIVE LONGER © Duncan Graham 2006
People don’t get along because they fear each other
People fear each other because they don’t know each other
They don’t know each other
Because they haven’t properly communicated with each other.
This quote from Martin Luther King, jnr features in students’ introduction to courses at the Catholic Communication Training Centre in Surabaya headed by a lean and fit septuagenarian frugal with clues to his age.
The only giveaway is when Romo (Father) John Tondowidjojo Tondodiningrat pulls himself up from a seductively deep sofa, and then pauses for a nanosecond to let the blood surge into lax muscles and any giddiness subside.
Moments later he’s striding across the reception lounge at Surabaya’s Gereja Kristus Raja (Church of Christ the King) like a lithe executive hunting a sale and going in for the kill.
But this man’s life mission is love, the banishment of misunderstanding and the construction of tolerance - and he’s determined to pursue these great goals to the very end.
“Poor communication can contribute to disease,” he said, quoting research that claims people who don’t talk to each other have a shortened life span. They certainly do when living in some of Indonesia’s sectarian hot spots and not through coronaries.
“When I was a child growing up in Yogyakarta relationships between Muslims and Christians were good,” he said. “There was better cooperation and we lived easily together. We accepted and respected each other.
“Disintegration started in the Sukarno era. Politics were based on religion. That’s different from religious politics. That’s created a situation where some politicians can exploit religious feelings and beliefs. It has not been good for my country.”
Romo Tondo was the eldest of ten children in a royal Javanese family which traces its roots back to the mid 15th century. His grandfather’s sister was the famous Muslim emancipationist Kartini who died as a young woman in childbirth and is now one of the nation’s heroes.
Naturally little John was expected to remain Muslim. But like many Javanese concerned that their children should get a sound education, his parents sent him to Catholic schools.
For then, as now, the Catholics’ reputation for scholarship and discipline cut across religious boundaries. And in the classroom young John proved a star pupil, excelling in the language of instruction, the tongue of the colonialists. It wasn’t their only contribution to his life; he also embraced their religion and converted as a teenager.
Apostasy is a singular and awful crime in Islam, with many sects practising social exclusion in the here and predicting eternal damnation in the hereafter for those with the courage to change. But Romo Tondo seems to have escaped at least one of these penalties.
“There’s been no problem with my family even though I’m the only one who’s a Catholic,” he said. “At the end of Ramadan I usually spend a week with them in Yogyakarta celebrating Idul Fitri (the close of the fasting month). My parents were broad minded.”
They were also blessed with an exceptionally gifted son who won scholarships to study in Europe, including five years in Rome where he added Latin and Italian to his repertoire.
He was ordained more than 40 years ago and returned to his homeland as a priest in the order of St Vincent de Paul who charged his followers to ‘embrace the world in a network of charity’.
“I saw that it was not a good situation in Indonesia,’ said Romo Tondo. “I knew I had to do everything possible to help ordinary people improve their conditions.’
The parallel ambition was to continue learning, which he did in Canada, the US, Britain, Holland, Australia the Philippines and a few other countries that may have slipped his mind.
His specialty was mass communications and he now uses his experience to teach the skills of journalism, filmmaking, public speaking and advertising. He travels the nation presenting train-the-trainer workshops in parishes, pushing the message of tolerance and the need to be informed.
He writes newspaper columns for down-market papers and is at ease in front of camera and microphone. His message is unambiguous: “If a person is Muslim then that’s their faith. We must respect that. Christ did not discriminate. People need good information, not rumors. There is a lot of misinformation about Christianity.”
The polymath’s most recent interest has been the French Revolution and the factors which brought it about. He sees parallels in Indonesia:
“The social distance is vast and getting bigger. Jobless numbers are huge and increasing. Nepotism thrives and there’s injustice. The use of Bahasa Indonesia instead of the formal and hierarchical Javanese language has promoted equality.
“But that advantage has been offset by the rise in neo-feudalism, particularly in the bureaucracy where those in power can have great influence over the lives of ordinary people. They have the qualifications but don’t use them. NATO – no action, talk only.
‘Some people at the top are like those in pre-revolutionary France. They think they are divine. Some have no real understanding of what is happening, of how others feel. They have not internalised the plight of the poor. There is so much crime because people have empty stomachs.
“Of course there is anger and envy, though mostly under control. But those emotions are there to exploit if the opportunity presents. Politicians are opportunists”.
The solutions proposed by Romo Tondo are founded on education, and ‘family values’ - which he says means respect for others, and making learning a priority. He was particularly critical of the quality of Indonesian teachers who, he said, maintained rote-learning practices, the memorisation of facts without analysis, and a rigid them-and-us approach to students. His other demands are for an improved and fairer tax system that can’t be sidestepped.
Since 1969 Romo Tondo and his Vincentian colleagues have been running an informal welfare organisation, spotting the genuine poor and talented, then making personal pleas directly to affluent Catholics.
He’s just sent 400 contacts a copy of his latest book on the challenges facing families. Inside an envelope inviting the recipient to donate to the poor.
“The Rp 10,000 (US $1.10) the well-off might spend on one nasi goreng (fried rice) could keep a child in school for a month,” he said.
This last comment was neither bitter nor accusatory, just a statement of fact. With his regal heritage, ecclesiastical status and overseas qualifications the urbane Romo Tondo could be a plump and pampered priest, disbursing saccharine theology, a must-have tame cleric on the five-star hotels’ A list.
Fortunately hubris yielded to the happy knack of feeling at ease in the plastic hovels of the poor and the tiled and monstrous palaces of the rich. And - more important – acceptable in both.
“I’m not saying there’ll be another revolution in Indonesia, but there’s always the possibility,” he said. “We must do everything we can to bring the poor into the future.
“We need a new system of government with educated leaders, people of goodwill. The qualities of egalite, fraternite, equalite which created the French republic are also part of our culture - if we can give them the chance for expression.”
(First published in The Jakarta Post 15 January 2007
##
">Link
People don’t get along because they fear each other
People fear each other because they don’t know each other
They don’t know each other
Because they haven’t properly communicated with each other.
This quote from Martin Luther King, jnr features in students’ introduction to courses at the Catholic Communication Training Centre in Surabaya headed by a lean and fit septuagenarian frugal with clues to his age.
The only giveaway is when Romo (Father) John Tondowidjojo Tondodiningrat pulls himself up from a seductively deep sofa, and then pauses for a nanosecond to let the blood surge into lax muscles and any giddiness subside.
Moments later he’s striding across the reception lounge at Surabaya’s Gereja Kristus Raja (Church of Christ the King) like a lithe executive hunting a sale and going in for the kill.
But this man’s life mission is love, the banishment of misunderstanding and the construction of tolerance - and he’s determined to pursue these great goals to the very end.
“Poor communication can contribute to disease,” he said, quoting research that claims people who don’t talk to each other have a shortened life span. They certainly do when living in some of Indonesia’s sectarian hot spots and not through coronaries.
“When I was a child growing up in Yogyakarta relationships between Muslims and Christians were good,” he said. “There was better cooperation and we lived easily together. We accepted and respected each other.
“Disintegration started in the Sukarno era. Politics were based on religion. That’s different from religious politics. That’s created a situation where some politicians can exploit religious feelings and beliefs. It has not been good for my country.”
Romo Tondo was the eldest of ten children in a royal Javanese family which traces its roots back to the mid 15th century. His grandfather’s sister was the famous Muslim emancipationist Kartini who died as a young woman in childbirth and is now one of the nation’s heroes.
Naturally little John was expected to remain Muslim. But like many Javanese concerned that their children should get a sound education, his parents sent him to Catholic schools.
For then, as now, the Catholics’ reputation for scholarship and discipline cut across religious boundaries. And in the classroom young John proved a star pupil, excelling in the language of instruction, the tongue of the colonialists. It wasn’t their only contribution to his life; he also embraced their religion and converted as a teenager.
Apostasy is a singular and awful crime in Islam, with many sects practising social exclusion in the here and predicting eternal damnation in the hereafter for those with the courage to change. But Romo Tondo seems to have escaped at least one of these penalties.
“There’s been no problem with my family even though I’m the only one who’s a Catholic,” he said. “At the end of Ramadan I usually spend a week with them in Yogyakarta celebrating Idul Fitri (the close of the fasting month). My parents were broad minded.”
They were also blessed with an exceptionally gifted son who won scholarships to study in Europe, including five years in Rome where he added Latin and Italian to his repertoire.
He was ordained more than 40 years ago and returned to his homeland as a priest in the order of St Vincent de Paul who charged his followers to ‘embrace the world in a network of charity’.
“I saw that it was not a good situation in Indonesia,’ said Romo Tondo. “I knew I had to do everything possible to help ordinary people improve their conditions.’
The parallel ambition was to continue learning, which he did in Canada, the US, Britain, Holland, Australia the Philippines and a few other countries that may have slipped his mind.
His specialty was mass communications and he now uses his experience to teach the skills of journalism, filmmaking, public speaking and advertising. He travels the nation presenting train-the-trainer workshops in parishes, pushing the message of tolerance and the need to be informed.
He writes newspaper columns for down-market papers and is at ease in front of camera and microphone. His message is unambiguous: “If a person is Muslim then that’s their faith. We must respect that. Christ did not discriminate. People need good information, not rumors. There is a lot of misinformation about Christianity.”
The polymath’s most recent interest has been the French Revolution and the factors which brought it about. He sees parallels in Indonesia:
“The social distance is vast and getting bigger. Jobless numbers are huge and increasing. Nepotism thrives and there’s injustice. The use of Bahasa Indonesia instead of the formal and hierarchical Javanese language has promoted equality.
“But that advantage has been offset by the rise in neo-feudalism, particularly in the bureaucracy where those in power can have great influence over the lives of ordinary people. They have the qualifications but don’t use them. NATO – no action, talk only.
‘Some people at the top are like those in pre-revolutionary France. They think they are divine. Some have no real understanding of what is happening, of how others feel. They have not internalised the plight of the poor. There is so much crime because people have empty stomachs.
“Of course there is anger and envy, though mostly under control. But those emotions are there to exploit if the opportunity presents. Politicians are opportunists”.
The solutions proposed by Romo Tondo are founded on education, and ‘family values’ - which he says means respect for others, and making learning a priority. He was particularly critical of the quality of Indonesian teachers who, he said, maintained rote-learning practices, the memorisation of facts without analysis, and a rigid them-and-us approach to students. His other demands are for an improved and fairer tax system that can’t be sidestepped.
Since 1969 Romo Tondo and his Vincentian colleagues have been running an informal welfare organisation, spotting the genuine poor and talented, then making personal pleas directly to affluent Catholics.
He’s just sent 400 contacts a copy of his latest book on the challenges facing families. Inside an envelope inviting the recipient to donate to the poor.
“The Rp 10,000 (US $1.10) the well-off might spend on one nasi goreng (fried rice) could keep a child in school for a month,” he said.
This last comment was neither bitter nor accusatory, just a statement of fact. With his regal heritage, ecclesiastical status and overseas qualifications the urbane Romo Tondo could be a plump and pampered priest, disbursing saccharine theology, a must-have tame cleric on the five-star hotels’ A list.
Fortunately hubris yielded to the happy knack of feeling at ease in the plastic hovels of the poor and the tiled and monstrous palaces of the rich. And - more important – acceptable in both.
“I’m not saying there’ll be another revolution in Indonesia, but there’s always the possibility,” he said. “We must do everything we can to bring the poor into the future.
“We need a new system of government with educated leaders, people of goodwill. The qualities of egalite, fraternite, equalite which created the French republic are also part of our culture - if we can give them the chance for expression.”
(First published in The Jakarta Post 15 January 2007
##
">Link
THE PONG OF PORONG
THE STATE’S HIGHWAY – OR THE PEOPLE’S PARK?
© Duncan Graham 2007
Most weekends we drive to and from Surabaya and Malang, the two major cities in East Java. In the good old days BC (Before Crisis) the trip took about 90 minutes using a toll road that goes about one third of the way.
Now up to five hours can be the norm.
Since the last leg of the turnpike has been drowned by the Lapindo mudflow disaster, traffic has been diverted through the village of Porong. This road now bears all non-rail freight south and east of Indonesia’s second major city.
What was once a rural byway has become Indonesia’s most congested thoroughfare, its thin asphalt pounded and rammed, bashed and broken by steel axles and black rubber.
Forty-tonne container trucks, behemoths hauling 24-wheel log-laden trailers, inter-city busses steered by Formula One fanatics, rusting tankers sloshing with high-octane fuels and toxic chemicals, pick-ups overloaded with perishables, medicines and merchandise, squeeze between thin-skinned cars.
The three-lane highway becomes two, then one. This is where the Porong market spills and splashes into the road every day, starting before sunrise and dribbling into noon.
Now the huge smoking, steaming endless convoy gets mixed with pedicabs laden with limp vegetables pushed by wrinklies, motorbikes revved by dreadnought hoons, backblock rustbuckets delivering and dumping, kids on bikes double-dinking, plump mums shuffling through the mass and the mess, their arms tugged taut by bulging bags.
You think you’ve seen mayhem on Indonesian roads? You reckon you’ve tasted toxins, coughed clouds of carcinogens? Not unless you’ve savored the pong of Porong: This is the ultimate clogged artery, thickened by the cholesterol of maladministration.
Bottleneck? A ridiculous metaphor. Better think of pouring rice through a straw.
Since the earth started bleeding black mud and burping white gas last May all bids to halt the hemorrhaging have failed. So have attempts to intelligently handle the unstoppable surge of traffic pouring through Porong.
To put it politely – the authorities have stuffed up big time. But maybe they were always doomed; roads in regal Britain may be the Queen’s Highway, but in this Republic they belong to the people.
In a country where parks are few and recreation centers the preserves of the rich, the poor have no-where to go but the bitumen.
Having a wedding, a circumcision ceremony, a funeral? No need to hire a hall or book a mosque, church or temple. Just commandeer the area outside your home and tell commuters and commerce to go elsewhere.
Need to kick a football, fly a kite, swipe a shuttlecock? The tarmac playing fields may be hard and narrow, but they’re straight.
Need some funds? Set up a roadblock and man it with thugs ready to scrape knives down your paintwork.
Want to offer your wares but don’t have cash for a kiosk? Problem solved – your selling space starts at the kerb and spreads outwards. Bang a few staples into the concrete, add four props, a tarpaulin, bench and table – bingo! It’s business on the blacktop. All you need is gall.
In other countries impeding the free flow of traffic is a serious offence. Roads are reserved for vehicles. In Indonesia the highway is public open space where cars are intruders.
Grinding along in fits and starts, overtaken by limping pedestrians, trying to shrink from bulging bald tyres towering over your roof rack, it’s easy to damn the market folk of Porong for endangering us all.
But where else can these already damaged people go to trade? They’ve lost their land, their homes, their jobs, their schools, their places of worship. Some have lost their lives.
Sure they’ve been compensated with a cornucopia of fine words pouring out of Jakarta. These may sustain newsprint – but not life.
There must be space somewhere for a new market, but the civil authorities who are paid to handle such matters haven’t looked or haven’t negotiated.
So as you suck in the fumes and feel your tenure on life lessening with every lungful, praying a load won’t slip, a tank rupture or a truck tip while you’re alongside to make the trip terminal, please forgive the people of Porong for making your journey a misery.
Their lives are miserable enough already.
(First published in The SundayPost, 14 January 2007)
##
">Link
© Duncan Graham 2007
Most weekends we drive to and from Surabaya and Malang, the two major cities in East Java. In the good old days BC (Before Crisis) the trip took about 90 minutes using a toll road that goes about one third of the way.
Now up to five hours can be the norm.
Since the last leg of the turnpike has been drowned by the Lapindo mudflow disaster, traffic has been diverted through the village of Porong. This road now bears all non-rail freight south and east of Indonesia’s second major city.
What was once a rural byway has become Indonesia’s most congested thoroughfare, its thin asphalt pounded and rammed, bashed and broken by steel axles and black rubber.
Forty-tonne container trucks, behemoths hauling 24-wheel log-laden trailers, inter-city busses steered by Formula One fanatics, rusting tankers sloshing with high-octane fuels and toxic chemicals, pick-ups overloaded with perishables, medicines and merchandise, squeeze between thin-skinned cars.
The three-lane highway becomes two, then one. This is where the Porong market spills and splashes into the road every day, starting before sunrise and dribbling into noon.
Now the huge smoking, steaming endless convoy gets mixed with pedicabs laden with limp vegetables pushed by wrinklies, motorbikes revved by dreadnought hoons, backblock rustbuckets delivering and dumping, kids on bikes double-dinking, plump mums shuffling through the mass and the mess, their arms tugged taut by bulging bags.
You think you’ve seen mayhem on Indonesian roads? You reckon you’ve tasted toxins, coughed clouds of carcinogens? Not unless you’ve savored the pong of Porong: This is the ultimate clogged artery, thickened by the cholesterol of maladministration.
Bottleneck? A ridiculous metaphor. Better think of pouring rice through a straw.
Since the earth started bleeding black mud and burping white gas last May all bids to halt the hemorrhaging have failed. So have attempts to intelligently handle the unstoppable surge of traffic pouring through Porong.
To put it politely – the authorities have stuffed up big time. But maybe they were always doomed; roads in regal Britain may be the Queen’s Highway, but in this Republic they belong to the people.
In a country where parks are few and recreation centers the preserves of the rich, the poor have no-where to go but the bitumen.
Having a wedding, a circumcision ceremony, a funeral? No need to hire a hall or book a mosque, church or temple. Just commandeer the area outside your home and tell commuters and commerce to go elsewhere.
Need to kick a football, fly a kite, swipe a shuttlecock? The tarmac playing fields may be hard and narrow, but they’re straight.
Need some funds? Set up a roadblock and man it with thugs ready to scrape knives down your paintwork.
Want to offer your wares but don’t have cash for a kiosk? Problem solved – your selling space starts at the kerb and spreads outwards. Bang a few staples into the concrete, add four props, a tarpaulin, bench and table – bingo! It’s business on the blacktop. All you need is gall.
In other countries impeding the free flow of traffic is a serious offence. Roads are reserved for vehicles. In Indonesia the highway is public open space where cars are intruders.
Grinding along in fits and starts, overtaken by limping pedestrians, trying to shrink from bulging bald tyres towering over your roof rack, it’s easy to damn the market folk of Porong for endangering us all.
But where else can these already damaged people go to trade? They’ve lost their land, their homes, their jobs, their schools, their places of worship. Some have lost their lives.
Sure they’ve been compensated with a cornucopia of fine words pouring out of Jakarta. These may sustain newsprint – but not life.
There must be space somewhere for a new market, but the civil authorities who are paid to handle such matters haven’t looked or haven’t negotiated.
So as you suck in the fumes and feel your tenure on life lessening with every lungful, praying a load won’t slip, a tank rupture or a truck tip while you’re alongside to make the trip terminal, please forgive the people of Porong for making your journey a misery.
Their lives are miserable enough already.
(First published in The SundayPost, 14 January 2007)
##
">Link
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
WONOSARI TEA
T IS FOR TOURISM © Duncan Graham 2006
If you are cold, tea will warm you.
If you are too heated, tea will cool you.
If you are depressed, it will cheer you.
If you are excited it will calm you.
That endorsement reads like a TV commercial jingle, but it has far more credibility. It was written by British prime minister W E Gladstone 140 years ago and the message seems to have held up despite the jerky rhythm.
State owned enterprises don’t have a good name for efficiency or productivity anywhere. And when the business is hospitality it would be reasonable to expect surly service and indifferent care.
So this column is happy to report that assumptions are no guide to practice, at least in the case of the Wonosari Tea Plantation and agro-tourism project.
More than 600 hectares of forest was cleared and planted with tea bushes on the slopes of Mount Arjuno about 30 kilometres northwest of Malang in East Java. That was early last century, and a few of the original trees are still alive.
During first president Sukarno’s purge of the Dutch in the 1950s the plantation was one of the many foreign businesses confiscated and nationalised. Now it has the unlovely name of PTP Nusantara X11, which certainly doesn’t carry a memorable ring.
Conscious of this the nimble-minded staff have named their retail products Rolas (Javanese for 12) thereby preserving the bureaucrats’ sense of importance while creating a marketable brand.
Apart from the over-staffing there are few reminders that this is a government business, though it wasn’t always like that. A few years ago the place looked unloved. It had notices forbidding photographs in the factory, apparently because it was feared spies would copy the technology.
As some of the equipment was installed by the Dutch in 1910 and is still in use the prohibition might indicate that industrial espionage was a hollow excuse. A more likely reason was public servants’ love of saying DO NOT rather than WELCOME.
Now the signs are cheerful and positive, the place looks well maintained and bright, even though when The Jakarta Post visited there’d been no rain for five months and water supplies were low.
“We have a new management team in place with a vision,” said Willy Franciscus, the plantation’s deputy manager. Although trained as a social scientist he’d previously worked as a tea taster before becoming an administrator.
“We want to create a proper museum illustrating the history of tea. We have such a long history here and I’m afraid we could lose it.
“A major problem is lack of water, largely caused by forest felling on the hills above. Now we’re planting 150,000 shade trees. We also want to make the place more interesting for guests.”
Everyone to their own taste, but for this visitor Wonosari is already packed with constructive and recreational activities. On the fun side there’s a big warm-water pool, mini zoo, playground, tennis courts and many other pastimes. For those who hate being out of the city there’s a karaoke lounge.
Educationally it’s one big schoolroom, minus the whiteboard and pedant. You can walk around the plantation or be driven in an open carriage rubber-tyred train.
Puji Iskandar who has worked at the plantation for around 20 years heads the tourist part of the enterprise.
“Most Indonesians are happy just to look around, but foreigners always want to ask questions,” he said. “We have educational tours of the factory and explain the process. People can see tea bags being filled and the packaging system.”
After the shiny green leaves have been picked they’re taken to ‘withering boxes’ in the factory to be partly dried by hot air. Dry season production is about three tonnes of leaf a day – much higher during the Wet.
The leaves are then chopped and fermented before sorting and further drying.
The old equipment from the Dutch era takes longer to process the tea, but the product tastes better, said Puji. About 95 per cent of the tea is exported in bulk and often blended with other leaves. Lipton is the main buyer. The locally sold tea has a touch of vanilla added for taste.
Up to 8,000 people visit at weekends, with many staying overnight in cottages or hotel-style rooms. More accommodation is needed.
If you don’t like crowds go during the week when you’ll be sharing with a few business groups and school parties. You’ll also get a 20 per cent discount. It’s a great place to relax and enjoy the Javanese countryside, feel the cool and watch thousands of swiftlets darting across the tea bushes feeding on insects.
The tea trees may have displaced teak, but the birds are benefiting. And so can you.
(Wonosari is six kilometres west of the Surabaya-Malang road. Turn at Lawang, 30 kilometres north of Malang. Phone 0341 426032.)
A NICE CUPPA CHA
There have been some wonderful inventions in the history of the world. In the top ranks would have to be the S-bend toilet, hot showers, sliced bread – and tea bags.
But who discovered the tea that goes in the bags? There are tens of thousands of different trees on the planet. Did our ancestors go through them one-by-one, dunking the leaves in hot water, and then risking a sip?
It would have been a painstaking and painful process – sometimes fatal. Not all plants are benign. Better to settle for the myths. You have three choices – Chinese, Japanese or Indian.
All have male sages magically or fortuitously encountering the beneficial effects of Camellia sinensis. These yarns should not be taken seriously. How many men ever get involved in tea making? Around the world it’s usually women’s business.
After 5,000 years of tea drinking in China where the tree is a native the idea caught on in the West.
It wasn’t till the 17th century that tea arrived in Europe, but it didn’t become a great success for another century. It was expensive and considered a drink for aristocrats who were supposed to need its medicinal properties.
The British broke the Chinese monopoly by growing tea in India where the tree also grows naturally, and the Dutch followed in Indonesia.
The extra supply created a market among working class people. Tea drinking became part of the English meet-and-greet culture, with all its elaborate rituals of pot warming and brewing, and which serve as conversation starters.
In countries influenced by Britain tea is usually taken with milk (‘white tea’). In Indonesia it’s normally drunk weak and black, usually with heavy doses of sugar, hot or cold.
Cha? That’s English slang for tea and comes from the Mandarin word. Another synonym is ‘China’. Is there a word for coffee? Indeed – ‘Java’.
And the tea bag? That’s supposed to have come about when an American shipper put samples in small silk bags for his buyers and the idea developed. Clearly it suited us down to a T.
(First published in The Jakarta Post 5 January 2007)
##
">Link
If you are cold, tea will warm you.
If you are too heated, tea will cool you.
If you are depressed, it will cheer you.
If you are excited it will calm you.
That endorsement reads like a TV commercial jingle, but it has far more credibility. It was written by British prime minister W E Gladstone 140 years ago and the message seems to have held up despite the jerky rhythm.
State owned enterprises don’t have a good name for efficiency or productivity anywhere. And when the business is hospitality it would be reasonable to expect surly service and indifferent care.
So this column is happy to report that assumptions are no guide to practice, at least in the case of the Wonosari Tea Plantation and agro-tourism project.
More than 600 hectares of forest was cleared and planted with tea bushes on the slopes of Mount Arjuno about 30 kilometres northwest of Malang in East Java. That was early last century, and a few of the original trees are still alive.
During first president Sukarno’s purge of the Dutch in the 1950s the plantation was one of the many foreign businesses confiscated and nationalised. Now it has the unlovely name of PTP Nusantara X11, which certainly doesn’t carry a memorable ring.
Conscious of this the nimble-minded staff have named their retail products Rolas (Javanese for 12) thereby preserving the bureaucrats’ sense of importance while creating a marketable brand.
Apart from the over-staffing there are few reminders that this is a government business, though it wasn’t always like that. A few years ago the place looked unloved. It had notices forbidding photographs in the factory, apparently because it was feared spies would copy the technology.
As some of the equipment was installed by the Dutch in 1910 and is still in use the prohibition might indicate that industrial espionage was a hollow excuse. A more likely reason was public servants’ love of saying DO NOT rather than WELCOME.
Now the signs are cheerful and positive, the place looks well maintained and bright, even though when The Jakarta Post visited there’d been no rain for five months and water supplies were low.
“We have a new management team in place with a vision,” said Willy Franciscus, the plantation’s deputy manager. Although trained as a social scientist he’d previously worked as a tea taster before becoming an administrator.
“We want to create a proper museum illustrating the history of tea. We have such a long history here and I’m afraid we could lose it.
“A major problem is lack of water, largely caused by forest felling on the hills above. Now we’re planting 150,000 shade trees. We also want to make the place more interesting for guests.”
Everyone to their own taste, but for this visitor Wonosari is already packed with constructive and recreational activities. On the fun side there’s a big warm-water pool, mini zoo, playground, tennis courts and many other pastimes. For those who hate being out of the city there’s a karaoke lounge.
Educationally it’s one big schoolroom, minus the whiteboard and pedant. You can walk around the plantation or be driven in an open carriage rubber-tyred train.
Puji Iskandar who has worked at the plantation for around 20 years heads the tourist part of the enterprise.
“Most Indonesians are happy just to look around, but foreigners always want to ask questions,” he said. “We have educational tours of the factory and explain the process. People can see tea bags being filled and the packaging system.”
After the shiny green leaves have been picked they’re taken to ‘withering boxes’ in the factory to be partly dried by hot air. Dry season production is about three tonnes of leaf a day – much higher during the Wet.
The leaves are then chopped and fermented before sorting and further drying.
The old equipment from the Dutch era takes longer to process the tea, but the product tastes better, said Puji. About 95 per cent of the tea is exported in bulk and often blended with other leaves. Lipton is the main buyer. The locally sold tea has a touch of vanilla added for taste.
Up to 8,000 people visit at weekends, with many staying overnight in cottages or hotel-style rooms. More accommodation is needed.
If you don’t like crowds go during the week when you’ll be sharing with a few business groups and school parties. You’ll also get a 20 per cent discount. It’s a great place to relax and enjoy the Javanese countryside, feel the cool and watch thousands of swiftlets darting across the tea bushes feeding on insects.
The tea trees may have displaced teak, but the birds are benefiting. And so can you.
(Wonosari is six kilometres west of the Surabaya-Malang road. Turn at Lawang, 30 kilometres north of Malang. Phone 0341 426032.)
A NICE CUPPA CHA
There have been some wonderful inventions in the history of the world. In the top ranks would have to be the S-bend toilet, hot showers, sliced bread – and tea bags.
But who discovered the tea that goes in the bags? There are tens of thousands of different trees on the planet. Did our ancestors go through them one-by-one, dunking the leaves in hot water, and then risking a sip?
It would have been a painstaking and painful process – sometimes fatal. Not all plants are benign. Better to settle for the myths. You have three choices – Chinese, Japanese or Indian.
All have male sages magically or fortuitously encountering the beneficial effects of Camellia sinensis. These yarns should not be taken seriously. How many men ever get involved in tea making? Around the world it’s usually women’s business.
After 5,000 years of tea drinking in China where the tree is a native the idea caught on in the West.
It wasn’t till the 17th century that tea arrived in Europe, but it didn’t become a great success for another century. It was expensive and considered a drink for aristocrats who were supposed to need its medicinal properties.
The British broke the Chinese monopoly by growing tea in India where the tree also grows naturally, and the Dutch followed in Indonesia.
The extra supply created a market among working class people. Tea drinking became part of the English meet-and-greet culture, with all its elaborate rituals of pot warming and brewing, and which serve as conversation starters.
In countries influenced by Britain tea is usually taken with milk (‘white tea’). In Indonesia it’s normally drunk weak and black, usually with heavy doses of sugar, hot or cold.
Cha? That’s English slang for tea and comes from the Mandarin word. Another synonym is ‘China’. Is there a word for coffee? Indeed – ‘Java’.
And the tea bag? That’s supposed to have come about when an American shipper put samples in small silk bags for his buyers and the idea developed. Clearly it suited us down to a T.
(First published in The Jakarta Post 5 January 2007)
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">Link
GARBAGE TO CHICKEN FEED
RUBBISH? THAT’S JUST CHICKEN FEED © Duncan Graham 2006
Last May bureaucrats and potential investors of East Java were expecting to get the first local lab figures of an important analysis: Would the results show that chicken food made from Surabaya’s waste would be nutritious and palatable to poultry?
Probably. Hens will eat anything – even each other. But this project – which needs a US $25 million (Rp 20 billion) investment - had to convince people.
“There’s a lot of sceptics in the government particularly in animal husbandry, but I’m pretty optimistic,” said Surabayan businessman Ron Kho. “Once this gets up and running everyone will want to be involved.”
His partner Sam Salpietro from Western Australia, whose company BioCulture is pushing the idea to convert foul refuse into fowl food, was equally upbeat:
“This is the only project that can be considered a viable and commercial operation,” he said. “There’s no need for subsidies or government funding.”
But then the idea hit the speed bumps. Dissatisfied with local lab procedures the partners decided to get another opinion of their product – in Australia.
Sending anything organic into the country next door is difficult enough. When the material is processed trash the problems compound.
“No-one has ever wanted to import rubbish into Australia before,” said Salpietro. “We were told it would be easy – but the bureaucratic problems were incredible.”
Nonetheless they’ve been overcome and six months later the partners have their analysis from the Western Australian government’s chemical laboratory – which they’ll be presenting to potential investors in Surabaya.
The figures certainly look good - like most projections before a factory is built. Every day the folk of Indonesia’s second biggest city produce 3,000 tonnes of rubbish destined for the tip.
The overall quantity is much higher, but efficient scavengers pull tonnes of plastic, glass, wood and other recyclables out of the refuse long before it gets to the landfill.
Now imagine a low-tech process where about half that waste could be converted into chicken pellets that could be sold at a profit. The garbage pits would then last twice as long in a land where space is needed for the living, not their waste.
‘Where there’s muck, there’s money,’ has long been a truism as many millionaires know. If a job is unpleasant people prefer to have someone else get their hands dirty.
In the West those hands are mightily expensive so the costs of processing waste into anything useful is prohibitive. But not in Indonesia.
“There’s no doubt this project can only work in developing countries where labour is cheap,” Kho said. “Most of the work is manual. It requires teams of people sorting through refuse on a moving table and rejecting everything inorganic.
“The foods and plants which do get through will be cooked and processed to remove impurities. Extra nutrients will be added and the mix forced through an extruder to make pellets.”
So far Kho has processed 300 kilograms using manual gear assembled in his paint pigment factory, PT Holland Colours Asia. The extrusion process is much the same so there’s a fit with his present plant. However heating and other controls will need to be adapted.
“We reckon we can make high quality poultry feed for about US $ 75 (Rp 700,000) a tonne when other manufacturers are charging US $250 (Rp 2.25 million) a tonne,” he said.
“So there’s a lot of space to play. We hope existing animal feed companies will want to invest.”
OK so far. Now consider the difficulties: Manufacturers of any product want their raw materials to be of a consistent quality, easily measured. But no two truckloads of rubbish will ever be the same.
And how will the BioCulture managers ensure that every noxious object is spotted and doesn’t make it into the organic waste? Watching rubbish roll by hour upon hour is not a fun pastime, even if the bosses are paying top rupiah for nimble fingers and sharp eyes as they promise to do.
When Mum tosses out her supply of birth control pills because it’s time to start a family and the drugs get into the chicken food, there could be some curious results. Contraceptive hormones in Australian sewage discharged into the sea are already reported to be doing funny things to fish.
Then there’s the danger of transmitting Frankenstein ailments like Mad Cow disease if certain animal products get into the feed. Dead rats seem to be a significant component of Surabaya’s rubbish.
Kho stressed that these and other hazards had been considered. The organic waste would be pasteurised to kill any toxins. Continuous laboratory tests would pick any unforeseens and reject suspect feed.
Magnets would pull out anything metallic and closed circuit TV would monitor every stage. The sorters would work in teams each focussing on only one type of waste. “The end product has to be food quality,” said Salpietro.
The other hurdle is the lack of an up-and-running plant. Potential investors might be more enthusiastic if they could actually see a real banging, clanking, steaming operation rather than a Power Point presentation.
Salpietro acknowledged the problem: “Someone has to be a pioneer. We don’t have the money, but would be prepared to be shareholders. We’ve already spent about AUD $1 million (Rp 7,000 million) and five years to get this far.
“People from all over the world keep coming to Indonesia and saying: ‘We can solve your waste problems.’ They can – but someone has to pay. This system generates income.”
“We expected a 30 per cent organic recovery but in fact the pilot yielded 50 per cent,” Kho said.
“We reckon it will cost about US $20 - $25 million to build a viable plant on about five hectares, and take around 18 months to construct. Capital return should be rapid.
“We’d prefer a joint venture with the government to ensure continuous supplies of waste – maybe around 20 per cent of the capital.
“I don’t normally like dealing with governments but with this project there have been no bribes asked or given.”
(First published in The Jakarta Post Monday 8 January 2007)
##
">Link
Last May bureaucrats and potential investors of East Java were expecting to get the first local lab figures of an important analysis: Would the results show that chicken food made from Surabaya’s waste would be nutritious and palatable to poultry?
Probably. Hens will eat anything – even each other. But this project – which needs a US $25 million (Rp 20 billion) investment - had to convince people.
“There’s a lot of sceptics in the government particularly in animal husbandry, but I’m pretty optimistic,” said Surabayan businessman Ron Kho. “Once this gets up and running everyone will want to be involved.”
His partner Sam Salpietro from Western Australia, whose company BioCulture is pushing the idea to convert foul refuse into fowl food, was equally upbeat:
“This is the only project that can be considered a viable and commercial operation,” he said. “There’s no need for subsidies or government funding.”
But then the idea hit the speed bumps. Dissatisfied with local lab procedures the partners decided to get another opinion of their product – in Australia.
Sending anything organic into the country next door is difficult enough. When the material is processed trash the problems compound.
“No-one has ever wanted to import rubbish into Australia before,” said Salpietro. “We were told it would be easy – but the bureaucratic problems were incredible.”
Nonetheless they’ve been overcome and six months later the partners have their analysis from the Western Australian government’s chemical laboratory – which they’ll be presenting to potential investors in Surabaya.
The figures certainly look good - like most projections before a factory is built. Every day the folk of Indonesia’s second biggest city produce 3,000 tonnes of rubbish destined for the tip.
The overall quantity is much higher, but efficient scavengers pull tonnes of plastic, glass, wood and other recyclables out of the refuse long before it gets to the landfill.
Now imagine a low-tech process where about half that waste could be converted into chicken pellets that could be sold at a profit. The garbage pits would then last twice as long in a land where space is needed for the living, not their waste.
‘Where there’s muck, there’s money,’ has long been a truism as many millionaires know. If a job is unpleasant people prefer to have someone else get their hands dirty.
In the West those hands are mightily expensive so the costs of processing waste into anything useful is prohibitive. But not in Indonesia.
“There’s no doubt this project can only work in developing countries where labour is cheap,” Kho said. “Most of the work is manual. It requires teams of people sorting through refuse on a moving table and rejecting everything inorganic.
“The foods and plants which do get through will be cooked and processed to remove impurities. Extra nutrients will be added and the mix forced through an extruder to make pellets.”
So far Kho has processed 300 kilograms using manual gear assembled in his paint pigment factory, PT Holland Colours Asia. The extrusion process is much the same so there’s a fit with his present plant. However heating and other controls will need to be adapted.
“We reckon we can make high quality poultry feed for about US $ 75 (Rp 700,000) a tonne when other manufacturers are charging US $250 (Rp 2.25 million) a tonne,” he said.
“So there’s a lot of space to play. We hope existing animal feed companies will want to invest.”
OK so far. Now consider the difficulties: Manufacturers of any product want their raw materials to be of a consistent quality, easily measured. But no two truckloads of rubbish will ever be the same.
And how will the BioCulture managers ensure that every noxious object is spotted and doesn’t make it into the organic waste? Watching rubbish roll by hour upon hour is not a fun pastime, even if the bosses are paying top rupiah for nimble fingers and sharp eyes as they promise to do.
When Mum tosses out her supply of birth control pills because it’s time to start a family and the drugs get into the chicken food, there could be some curious results. Contraceptive hormones in Australian sewage discharged into the sea are already reported to be doing funny things to fish.
Then there’s the danger of transmitting Frankenstein ailments like Mad Cow disease if certain animal products get into the feed. Dead rats seem to be a significant component of Surabaya’s rubbish.
Kho stressed that these and other hazards had been considered. The organic waste would be pasteurised to kill any toxins. Continuous laboratory tests would pick any unforeseens and reject suspect feed.
Magnets would pull out anything metallic and closed circuit TV would monitor every stage. The sorters would work in teams each focussing on only one type of waste. “The end product has to be food quality,” said Salpietro.
The other hurdle is the lack of an up-and-running plant. Potential investors might be more enthusiastic if they could actually see a real banging, clanking, steaming operation rather than a Power Point presentation.
Salpietro acknowledged the problem: “Someone has to be a pioneer. We don’t have the money, but would be prepared to be shareholders. We’ve already spent about AUD $1 million (Rp 7,000 million) and five years to get this far.
“People from all over the world keep coming to Indonesia and saying: ‘We can solve your waste problems.’ They can – but someone has to pay. This system generates income.”
“We expected a 30 per cent organic recovery but in fact the pilot yielded 50 per cent,” Kho said.
“We reckon it will cost about US $20 - $25 million to build a viable plant on about five hectares, and take around 18 months to construct. Capital return should be rapid.
“We’d prefer a joint venture with the government to ensure continuous supplies of waste – maybe around 20 per cent of the capital.
“I don’t normally like dealing with governments but with this project there have been no bribes asked or given.”
(First published in The Jakarta Post Monday 8 January 2007)
##
">Link
BALIBO FIVE
THE HAUNTING RETURN OF THE BALIBO FIVE
© Duncan Graham 2006
It’s a pity radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir was cleared of wrongdoing by Indonesia’s Supreme Court during Australia’s Silly Season.
This is the normally slow-news period just before Christmas and into the New Year. Politicians, PR hustlers, ambitious academics and other column poachers and airtime thieves are at the beach taking a break from feeding the media with their pontificating and posturing.
The press and TV heavies are also hitting the surf and sand, so minor events often get a run beyond their normal value.
So it has been with the toothy whitebeard skilled in needling his neighbors, even recommending that Prime Minister John Howard take the Haj.
Now that would be news. But in the absence of the Protestant Howard heading for Mecca swathed in white - or any other solid stories - reporters have been asking and getting the predictable responses from victims of the Bali bombs. These are the outrages that Ba’asyir allegedly engineered as spiritual head of the militant group Jemaah Islamiah.
Innocent according to the new legal decision, but guilty in the court of public opinion Down Under. Understandably the badly wounded jurors tend to be deaf to the opinions of more learned commentators. These people, including Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty, remain unsurprised at the court’s decision because the circumstantial evidence used for the conviction was tissue thin.
All this was said before and at length when Ba’asyir was released in June after serving part of a 30-month sentence. But that hasn’t stopped the anger and accusations being recycled when there’s been little else to report apart from sport and bushfires.
Then another Christmas goodie with Foreign Minister Alexander Downer again warning holiday-hunting Aussies to steer clear of the archipelago because they might get bombed.
The State Intelligence Agency BIN reckons no problem, leaving us to think the Aussie spooks know more than the locals – or Australia has another agenda in maintaining travel alerts and talking about unspecified and uncheckable ‘credible threats’.
So here at the end of 2006 we have our long-suffering patient Ms AusIndo Relations sick yet again, with her condition likely to worsen in the next two months.
That’s because a coronial inquest is scheduled early next year to examine the deaths of the Balibo Five.
Many outside the Antipodes will be bemused by this shorthand term that refers to the deaths of five Australian newsmen covering Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of what was then Portuguese Timor.
The unarmed TV crews were allegedly shot dead by the Indonesian military at the border village of Balibo. Their bodies were then burned.
This is an issue that the Australian media has never abandoned. Nor have some of the victims’ families – particularly Shirley Shackleton widow of reporter Greg.
After more than 30 years and numerous inquiries you might expect no new evidence could be forthcoming. Wrong. Information has now become public that didn’t make it into the media during earlier closed-door investigations.
It’s claimed that two Australian officials knew of intercepted radio messages transmitted by the Indonesian Army during the fighting. These allegedly ordered the journalists to be killed.
Till now it has been argued that the men died in crossfire as TNI troops and Fretilin fighters confronted each other – in other words a tragic accident. Few in the Australian media believe this version.
Some of the TNI commanders involved are still alive and likely to be named at the inquest. Not the sort of coverage that will refresh Ms AIR.
In November Australia and Indonesia signed the so-called Lombok Treaty that’s supposed to make sure we all stay mates. Ms AIR’s wounds started to heal – but as many observers have pointed out soothing sounds among politicians doesn’t mean the hearts and minds of the electorate will follow the same song sheet.
Why should Australian taxpayers continue to help Indonesia when some of its military elite allegedly ordered the murder of our young men (all were in their 20s) who were just trying to do their job as neutral observers? (Indonesia ranks number two in Australian aid, behind Papua New Guinea).
And why should voters accept the Australian government’s present intentions when past administrations allegedly knew the killings were willful but put appeasement ahead of confrontation with its overcrowded neighbor?
There’ll be calls for the assassins to be prosecuted if the inquiry finds against them, but of course nothing will happen. If the masterminds behind the September 2004 Garuda airline slaying of local human rights activist Munir are untouchable, there’s no chance the executioners of foreigners three decades ago will ever see the inside of a courtroom.
For Indonesia this is a closed volume. For Australia the page is heavily book marked and the edges dog-eared.
We don’t expect the polygamous Ms AIR to expire – she’s being lavished with lots of top-level care from her two lovers. Unfortunately she doesn’t have too many friends elsewhere to wish her well, and they’re the ones that matter.
So here’s a New Year’s resolution we can all undertake: Let’s make 2007 the year we tone down the slander and make the effort to try and understand each other. In brief – behave like good democratic neighbors, explore a bit of reconciliation and take a breath of fresh air.
(First published in The Jakarta Post 5 January 2007)
">Link
© Duncan Graham 2006
It’s a pity radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir was cleared of wrongdoing by Indonesia’s Supreme Court during Australia’s Silly Season.
This is the normally slow-news period just before Christmas and into the New Year. Politicians, PR hustlers, ambitious academics and other column poachers and airtime thieves are at the beach taking a break from feeding the media with their pontificating and posturing.
The press and TV heavies are also hitting the surf and sand, so minor events often get a run beyond their normal value.
So it has been with the toothy whitebeard skilled in needling his neighbors, even recommending that Prime Minister John Howard take the Haj.
Now that would be news. But in the absence of the Protestant Howard heading for Mecca swathed in white - or any other solid stories - reporters have been asking and getting the predictable responses from victims of the Bali bombs. These are the outrages that Ba’asyir allegedly engineered as spiritual head of the militant group Jemaah Islamiah.
Innocent according to the new legal decision, but guilty in the court of public opinion Down Under. Understandably the badly wounded jurors tend to be deaf to the opinions of more learned commentators. These people, including Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty, remain unsurprised at the court’s decision because the circumstantial evidence used for the conviction was tissue thin.
All this was said before and at length when Ba’asyir was released in June after serving part of a 30-month sentence. But that hasn’t stopped the anger and accusations being recycled when there’s been little else to report apart from sport and bushfires.
Then another Christmas goodie with Foreign Minister Alexander Downer again warning holiday-hunting Aussies to steer clear of the archipelago because they might get bombed.
The State Intelligence Agency BIN reckons no problem, leaving us to think the Aussie spooks know more than the locals – or Australia has another agenda in maintaining travel alerts and talking about unspecified and uncheckable ‘credible threats’.
So here at the end of 2006 we have our long-suffering patient Ms AusIndo Relations sick yet again, with her condition likely to worsen in the next two months.
That’s because a coronial inquest is scheduled early next year to examine the deaths of the Balibo Five.
Many outside the Antipodes will be bemused by this shorthand term that refers to the deaths of five Australian newsmen covering Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of what was then Portuguese Timor.
The unarmed TV crews were allegedly shot dead by the Indonesian military at the border village of Balibo. Their bodies were then burned.
This is an issue that the Australian media has never abandoned. Nor have some of the victims’ families – particularly Shirley Shackleton widow of reporter Greg.
After more than 30 years and numerous inquiries you might expect no new evidence could be forthcoming. Wrong. Information has now become public that didn’t make it into the media during earlier closed-door investigations.
It’s claimed that two Australian officials knew of intercepted radio messages transmitted by the Indonesian Army during the fighting. These allegedly ordered the journalists to be killed.
Till now it has been argued that the men died in crossfire as TNI troops and Fretilin fighters confronted each other – in other words a tragic accident. Few in the Australian media believe this version.
Some of the TNI commanders involved are still alive and likely to be named at the inquest. Not the sort of coverage that will refresh Ms AIR.
In November Australia and Indonesia signed the so-called Lombok Treaty that’s supposed to make sure we all stay mates. Ms AIR’s wounds started to heal – but as many observers have pointed out soothing sounds among politicians doesn’t mean the hearts and minds of the electorate will follow the same song sheet.
Why should Australian taxpayers continue to help Indonesia when some of its military elite allegedly ordered the murder of our young men (all were in their 20s) who were just trying to do their job as neutral observers? (Indonesia ranks number two in Australian aid, behind Papua New Guinea).
And why should voters accept the Australian government’s present intentions when past administrations allegedly knew the killings were willful but put appeasement ahead of confrontation with its overcrowded neighbor?
There’ll be calls for the assassins to be prosecuted if the inquiry finds against them, but of course nothing will happen. If the masterminds behind the September 2004 Garuda airline slaying of local human rights activist Munir are untouchable, there’s no chance the executioners of foreigners three decades ago will ever see the inside of a courtroom.
For Indonesia this is a closed volume. For Australia the page is heavily book marked and the edges dog-eared.
We don’t expect the polygamous Ms AIR to expire – she’s being lavished with lots of top-level care from her two lovers. Unfortunately she doesn’t have too many friends elsewhere to wish her well, and they’re the ones that matter.
So here’s a New Year’s resolution we can all undertake: Let’s make 2007 the year we tone down the slander and make the effort to try and understand each other. In brief – behave like good democratic neighbors, explore a bit of reconciliation and take a breath of fresh air.
(First published in The Jakarta Post 5 January 2007)
">Link
GREENING OF SURABAYA
FROM GARBAGE TO GARDENS: A SURABAYA SOLUTION
© Duncan Graham 2006
Regular readers of these pages may have gained the impression that while Surabaya is economically blooming it’s not exactly a city of flowers. If so, here’s an apology.
Indonesia’s second biggest metropolis is certainly overcrowded and polluted. It’s a port and an industrial center, gray and grimy. The streets are paved with grit, not gold. But it also has charms, made all the more interesting through the virtue of rarity. Here’s a couple.
Kebun Bibit (seed garden) also known as Taman Flora (flower park) is a pretty little tree-studded park close to the city center and an ideal spot for another shopping mall.
That it’s escaped that retail virus is thanks to past city administrations who demonstrated that rare political quality called foresight - and this was long before conservation became an issue. Thirty years ago this area was one big wet hole in the ground, and as all planners know human nature abhors an urban vacuum.
The euphemism ‘sanitary land fill’ has long been used to describe the standard way of quitting trash, so inevitably this spot was designated a rubbish dump. Unusually it later became a welcome patch of green when there was no more space for crushed cans and shredded plastic. Now it’s a two-hectare delight, made even more acceptable by the banning of street vendors and other hustlers.
The Surabaya City Government promotes the East Java capital as a green and clean metropolis. In most suburbs that’s an absurd claim – though not here.
At Kebun Bibit you can sit hassle-free under a canopy of trees from across the archipelago. You’ll be shielded by leaves big and small, every shape and shade of green imaginable plus a few others demonstrating the limitless nature of nature.
Each one labeled with its Latin name, though sadly not with the provenance. This is a place where stressed students and frazzled business folk come to eat their lunch and read reports, though watching furtive young lovers with fumbling fingers seems to be a welcome distraction. The ambience is almost European.
It’s also a venue for concerts and outdoor meetings when the organizers don’t have sponsorship because their cause isn’t fashionable.
Which is why Anita and her colleagues from an activist group used the park for a late celebration of Human Rights Day.
“There’s a real shortage of good locations, particularly near the city center and where access if free,” she said. “This is ideal. We can easily fit 2,000 in this area. This is the right place for us.”
The 13 staff at Kebun Bibit propagate plants, promote medicinal herbs and maintain two hothouses. They’ll chat to you about the plants and their qualities, but they won’t sell their produce; surplus stock goes to help beautify the other city green spots, mostly tissue-sized.
Not to worry because next to the park is Pasar Bunga Bratang (Bratang flower market) Surabaya’s biggest. It has also been built on the land once used to dump rubbish (which was also a swamp) and the rehabilitation has transformed the area. Here’s proof that reclamation does work.
There are many other flower sellers around the city, but they tend to squat on river banks and median strips near open drains giving easy access to water.
Bratang has been purpose-built and it shows. The alleyways are necessarily narrow, but are well paved and clean. Buyers don’t have to wade through mud with the stench of gutters in their nostrils to find their orchid of choice.
The main hazard is bumping into hanging pots or tripping over vines that push their probing tendrils into every empty corner. If it wasn’t for the nearby traffic you could hear the plants growing. For Java is the world’s most fertile island and Bratang a most fecund place. Keep moving or you’ll sprout leaves; this is a real urban jungle.
Subandri, chair of the Bratang Florists’ Association said 200 stallholders operated in the area. Chinese Indonesians were the main buyers of flowers with many favoring European varieties like roses. Although Indonesia has a rich botany, it’s the ornamentals from overseas that get most attention. Another example of cultural cringe?
Small potted plants sold best because they could fit into apartments and back yards, Subandri said. Few people had the space for bushes and trees. These bigger plants usually sold to hotels and property developers.
“The recent boom in real estate has been a great benefit to business,” he said. “There’s new housing going up everywhere, mostly to the west of the city.
“This is a very good spot for us. There’s plenty of parking space and it’s popular with tourists. There’s a bird market next door that also brings in people. Many come just for recreation, but usually end up buying something.”
So next time you’re in the 700 year old city and need a break, try the flower market and the seed garden. No entrance fees, no pressure and best of all is the green.
(First published in The Jakarta Post 5 January 2007)
">Link
© Duncan Graham 2006
Regular readers of these pages may have gained the impression that while Surabaya is economically blooming it’s not exactly a city of flowers. If so, here’s an apology.
Indonesia’s second biggest metropolis is certainly overcrowded and polluted. It’s a port and an industrial center, gray and grimy. The streets are paved with grit, not gold. But it also has charms, made all the more interesting through the virtue of rarity. Here’s a couple.
Kebun Bibit (seed garden) also known as Taman Flora (flower park) is a pretty little tree-studded park close to the city center and an ideal spot for another shopping mall.
That it’s escaped that retail virus is thanks to past city administrations who demonstrated that rare political quality called foresight - and this was long before conservation became an issue. Thirty years ago this area was one big wet hole in the ground, and as all planners know human nature abhors an urban vacuum.
The euphemism ‘sanitary land fill’ has long been used to describe the standard way of quitting trash, so inevitably this spot was designated a rubbish dump. Unusually it later became a welcome patch of green when there was no more space for crushed cans and shredded plastic. Now it’s a two-hectare delight, made even more acceptable by the banning of street vendors and other hustlers.
The Surabaya City Government promotes the East Java capital as a green and clean metropolis. In most suburbs that’s an absurd claim – though not here.
At Kebun Bibit you can sit hassle-free under a canopy of trees from across the archipelago. You’ll be shielded by leaves big and small, every shape and shade of green imaginable plus a few others demonstrating the limitless nature of nature.
Each one labeled with its Latin name, though sadly not with the provenance. This is a place where stressed students and frazzled business folk come to eat their lunch and read reports, though watching furtive young lovers with fumbling fingers seems to be a welcome distraction. The ambience is almost European.
It’s also a venue for concerts and outdoor meetings when the organizers don’t have sponsorship because their cause isn’t fashionable.
Which is why Anita and her colleagues from an activist group used the park for a late celebration of Human Rights Day.
“There’s a real shortage of good locations, particularly near the city center and where access if free,” she said. “This is ideal. We can easily fit 2,000 in this area. This is the right place for us.”
The 13 staff at Kebun Bibit propagate plants, promote medicinal herbs and maintain two hothouses. They’ll chat to you about the plants and their qualities, but they won’t sell their produce; surplus stock goes to help beautify the other city green spots, mostly tissue-sized.
Not to worry because next to the park is Pasar Bunga Bratang (Bratang flower market) Surabaya’s biggest. It has also been built on the land once used to dump rubbish (which was also a swamp) and the rehabilitation has transformed the area. Here’s proof that reclamation does work.
There are many other flower sellers around the city, but they tend to squat on river banks and median strips near open drains giving easy access to water.
Bratang has been purpose-built and it shows. The alleyways are necessarily narrow, but are well paved and clean. Buyers don’t have to wade through mud with the stench of gutters in their nostrils to find their orchid of choice.
The main hazard is bumping into hanging pots or tripping over vines that push their probing tendrils into every empty corner. If it wasn’t for the nearby traffic you could hear the plants growing. For Java is the world’s most fertile island and Bratang a most fecund place. Keep moving or you’ll sprout leaves; this is a real urban jungle.
Subandri, chair of the Bratang Florists’ Association said 200 stallholders operated in the area. Chinese Indonesians were the main buyers of flowers with many favoring European varieties like roses. Although Indonesia has a rich botany, it’s the ornamentals from overseas that get most attention. Another example of cultural cringe?
Small potted plants sold best because they could fit into apartments and back yards, Subandri said. Few people had the space for bushes and trees. These bigger plants usually sold to hotels and property developers.
“The recent boom in real estate has been a great benefit to business,” he said. “There’s new housing going up everywhere, mostly to the west of the city.
“This is a very good spot for us. There’s plenty of parking space and it’s popular with tourists. There’s a bird market next door that also brings in people. Many come just for recreation, but usually end up buying something.”
So next time you’re in the 700 year old city and need a break, try the flower market and the seed garden. No entrance fees, no pressure and best of all is the green.
(First published in The Jakarta Post 5 January 2007)
">Link
Thursday, January 04, 2007
ANTI-SMOKING LAWS
FEAR CAMPAIGN FORECAST IN WAR AGAINST SMOKES © Duncan Graham 2007
Indonesian lawmakers and health professionals face a rough, tough fight to tighten the country’s tobacco control laws according to an Australian activist.
Professor Mike Daube, a 33-year international veteran of the battle against smoking, predicted a heavy campaign by the tobacco industry to protect its business.
“They’ll be claiming a loss of freedom of speech and that sporting events and music shows will vanish without their sponsorship,” he told The Jakarta Post.
“Our experience shows that’s just not true. They’ll use all the second-hand arguments that have failed elsewhere in the world. That shows a real contempt for countries like Indonesia.”
Daube, professor of health policy at Western Australia’s Curtin University, was commenting on moves by 220 Indonesian legislators who are trying to butt out tobacco advertising and sponsorship.
The politicians have already been confronted by tobacco industry claims that millions will be thrown out of work if the laws are introduced.
The proposed changes, which include higher taxes and a ban on advertising, are based on the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
Indonesia is the only country in Southeast Asia that has neither signed nor ratified the convention. So far 168 nations have signed and 141 ratified.
Indonesia has a huge tobacco industry employing thousands. How many? Supporters claim five million, but independent researchers have not dissected that figure.
House of Representatives member Hakim Sarimuda Pohan, who chairs the committee drafting the tobacco control bill, has been quoted as saying new laws are needed to stop children smoking.
He claimed that in the past five years there’s been a 900 per cent increase in children under ten smoking.
Indonesia has some of the slackest controls on smoking in the region. Cigarettes are cheap, taxes are low, adverts can be seen almost everywhere, and restrictions on smoking in public are widely ignored. Compulsory health warnings are miniscule.
Thailand insists cigarette packs carry gruesome pictures of the damage smoking can do to the body. Cigarettes can’t be displayed in shops and must be kept under the counter.
Although sales to minors in Indonesia are illegal the law isn’t policed. The sight of schoolboys brazenly smoking in the street is common. There’s even an open trade in tax-free fags, hand-made and sold in roadside eateries in East Java. These sell for around Rp 3,000 (US 30 cents) a packet, less than half the price of legal brands. The tobacco is apparently smuggled out of nearby factories.
According to 2003 research funded by the WHO and the American Cancer Society almost 70 per cent of Indonesian men smoke. The most effective ads link cigarettes with rugged masculinity and being “a real man.”
The good news is that only three per cent of women light up, largely because the culture links smoking to prostitution.
In 1969 the average cigarette consumption in Indonesia was 469 sticks a year. That’s now almost tripled. The death rate from smoking-related diseases is close to 50 per cent, with cancer and heart attacks as the main killers.
Daube was the first director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) in the UK in the early 1970s. He moved to Western Australia in 1984 to work for the government and got involved in tobacco control. Later he became CEO of the Cancer Council.
Along with other health professionals he advocated the establishment of a foundation financed by cigarette taxes. This would replace tobacco company sponsorship of sport, the arts, community events, and fund health research. (See sidebar).
Daube said that during his career he’d been served with three writs by tobacco company lobbyists. He alleged that a health minister who later went on the board of a cigarette company blocked his promotion in Britain.
He said tactics used in the past by the tobacco lobby included recruiting financial journalists to run stories claiming controls would trigger business collapses, and “flat earth doctors” denying medical evidence of the health dangers.
He said the argument that tobacco farmers would go bankrupt were false. In Australia growers had shifted to other crops.
Daube claimed the tobacco lobby was now less effective because top professional people were no longer prepared to work for a discredited industry. However the people who were now fighting against controls were probably “tougher and nastier.”
“Tobacco companies are immoral and evil,” he said. “Smoking kills about half the known users. It’s responsible for about ten per cent of global deaths.
“The industry will claim it has a right to advertise because there’s no scientific proof that advertising encourages people to start smoking, and that the product is legal.
“Newspapers and magazines will protest that they’ll lose revenue. Sports administrators will say games will suffer. We’ve heard all these claims before and seen them refuted.
“Politicians, doctors and other health workers really have to get their act together and fight this menace. There needs to be a coalition of health organizations and professionals, and sports stars.
“In Australia the involvement of doctors in anti-smoking campaigns has been critical.
“Sadly I’m told that up to 30 per cent of Indonesian doctors smoke. There’s no better ad for cigarettes than a doctor who smokes.”
SMOKES PAY FOR SPORTS
A scheme devised by Australian doctors 20 years ago to combat tobacco sponsorship of sport and culture has proved so successful it’s now being applied in Malaysia, Thailand and some European countries.
In Western Australia it’s know as Healthway, an independent organization funded by tobacco taxes. Last year it collected AUD $17 million (Rp 122 billion). This was used to sponsor sports and cultural events, conduct research and promote healthy lifestyles.
Executive director Neil Guard said that when Healthway started in 1990 about 25 per cent of adults in WA were regular smokers. That figure had now dropped to 15.5 per cent.
“Healthway has played a significant role in helping achieve this outstanding result in tobacco control,” he said.
“The key areas are advocacy, the creation of smoke-free environments, public awareness and education programs, support for smokers wanting to quit and prevention of people taking up smoking.
“Also important is research into new ways of tobacco control, and legislation to restrict smoking in public places and the sale of tobacco products.”
This year the WA government banned smoking indoors in hotels, restaurants and nightclubs, despite being confronted by claims that patrons would stay at home and businesses would collapse.
The hospitality industry is now opening outdoor eating and drinking areas to cater for smokers. Another factor in promoting change has been successful legal action by sick employees against companies that allow smoking in the workplace.
Guard said the creation of smoke-free areas at sporting and music events was a critical factor in lowering tobacco use.
Getting public support for anti-smoking laws was important. When tobacco advertising bans and other controls were proposed, surveys showed the public was prepared to tolerate higher “virtuous taxes” if these were used to help sport and culture.
Australia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore impose tobacco taxes starting at 70 per cent. The Indonesian rate is 31.5 per cent. Although prices will increase next March by up to Rp 7 a stick, smokes in Indonesia are around one fifth of the cost of those sold in nearby countries.
Guard said organizations that wanted Healthway sponsorship had to make the event smoke free and had to advertise a healthy lifestyle.
Before the law was changed cigarette companies claimed they were spending big amounts on helping sport, music and culture. However research revealed the donations were small.
Healthway had to pay only AUD $2.5 million (Rp 18 billion) to buy out cigarette sponsors of sporting and cultural events when the forecast was for almost four times that sum.
“Sport and the arts are doing much better with Healthway sponsorship than they ever did with cigarette companies,” he said. “They get more money with fewer restrictions.”
(Sidebar 2)
CREATING A CLEAN IMAGE
Not surprisingly tobacco companies don’t like being portrayed as purveyors of poisons and killers of citizens. So they try to boost their image by seeming to be socially responsible. A popular campaign is to clean up the environment – a cause that seldom attracts sponsors.
Ironically the tobacco industry is responsible for creating garbage like cigarette butts and packaging.
In Indonesia Sampoerna, now owned by the US giant Philip Morris, has sponsored signs urging people not to litter. In Australia British American Tobacco is behind the seemingly benign Butt Littering Trust.
This educates smokers in thoughtfully disposing of their fags and includes giving people little canisters they can use as personal ashtrays. It ignores the fact that people who don’t smoke don’t produce butts.
Activists say Australians flick away 18 billion non-biodegradable cigarette butts every year. Not all are dead. Careless smokers start more than 4,500 bush and home fires.
The trust claims it is independent, but critics say it’s wholly funded by BAT that has a representative on the board.
Another ploy is to fund educational institutions and scholarships. These are illegal in many countries when the company uses its own name or the name of a product.
So the Sampoerna Foundation, which gives the company the profile of a good corporate citizen, could not function under that title elsewhere because it would be seen as advertising.
(First published in The Jakarta Post 3 January 2007)
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Indonesian lawmakers and health professionals face a rough, tough fight to tighten the country’s tobacco control laws according to an Australian activist.
Professor Mike Daube, a 33-year international veteran of the battle against smoking, predicted a heavy campaign by the tobacco industry to protect its business.
“They’ll be claiming a loss of freedom of speech and that sporting events and music shows will vanish without their sponsorship,” he told The Jakarta Post.
“Our experience shows that’s just not true. They’ll use all the second-hand arguments that have failed elsewhere in the world. That shows a real contempt for countries like Indonesia.”
Daube, professor of health policy at Western Australia’s Curtin University, was commenting on moves by 220 Indonesian legislators who are trying to butt out tobacco advertising and sponsorship.
The politicians have already been confronted by tobacco industry claims that millions will be thrown out of work if the laws are introduced.
The proposed changes, which include higher taxes and a ban on advertising, are based on the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
Indonesia is the only country in Southeast Asia that has neither signed nor ratified the convention. So far 168 nations have signed and 141 ratified.
Indonesia has a huge tobacco industry employing thousands. How many? Supporters claim five million, but independent researchers have not dissected that figure.
House of Representatives member Hakim Sarimuda Pohan, who chairs the committee drafting the tobacco control bill, has been quoted as saying new laws are needed to stop children smoking.
He claimed that in the past five years there’s been a 900 per cent increase in children under ten smoking.
Indonesia has some of the slackest controls on smoking in the region. Cigarettes are cheap, taxes are low, adverts can be seen almost everywhere, and restrictions on smoking in public are widely ignored. Compulsory health warnings are miniscule.
Thailand insists cigarette packs carry gruesome pictures of the damage smoking can do to the body. Cigarettes can’t be displayed in shops and must be kept under the counter.
Although sales to minors in Indonesia are illegal the law isn’t policed. The sight of schoolboys brazenly smoking in the street is common. There’s even an open trade in tax-free fags, hand-made and sold in roadside eateries in East Java. These sell for around Rp 3,000 (US 30 cents) a packet, less than half the price of legal brands. The tobacco is apparently smuggled out of nearby factories.
According to 2003 research funded by the WHO and the American Cancer Society almost 70 per cent of Indonesian men smoke. The most effective ads link cigarettes with rugged masculinity and being “a real man.”
The good news is that only three per cent of women light up, largely because the culture links smoking to prostitution.
In 1969 the average cigarette consumption in Indonesia was 469 sticks a year. That’s now almost tripled. The death rate from smoking-related diseases is close to 50 per cent, with cancer and heart attacks as the main killers.
Daube was the first director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) in the UK in the early 1970s. He moved to Western Australia in 1984 to work for the government and got involved in tobacco control. Later he became CEO of the Cancer Council.
Along with other health professionals he advocated the establishment of a foundation financed by cigarette taxes. This would replace tobacco company sponsorship of sport, the arts, community events, and fund health research. (See sidebar).
Daube said that during his career he’d been served with three writs by tobacco company lobbyists. He alleged that a health minister who later went on the board of a cigarette company blocked his promotion in Britain.
He said tactics used in the past by the tobacco lobby included recruiting financial journalists to run stories claiming controls would trigger business collapses, and “flat earth doctors” denying medical evidence of the health dangers.
He said the argument that tobacco farmers would go bankrupt were false. In Australia growers had shifted to other crops.
Daube claimed the tobacco lobby was now less effective because top professional people were no longer prepared to work for a discredited industry. However the people who were now fighting against controls were probably “tougher and nastier.”
“Tobacco companies are immoral and evil,” he said. “Smoking kills about half the known users. It’s responsible for about ten per cent of global deaths.
“The industry will claim it has a right to advertise because there’s no scientific proof that advertising encourages people to start smoking, and that the product is legal.
“Newspapers and magazines will protest that they’ll lose revenue. Sports administrators will say games will suffer. We’ve heard all these claims before and seen them refuted.
“Politicians, doctors and other health workers really have to get their act together and fight this menace. There needs to be a coalition of health organizations and professionals, and sports stars.
“In Australia the involvement of doctors in anti-smoking campaigns has been critical.
“Sadly I’m told that up to 30 per cent of Indonesian doctors smoke. There’s no better ad for cigarettes than a doctor who smokes.”
SMOKES PAY FOR SPORTS
A scheme devised by Australian doctors 20 years ago to combat tobacco sponsorship of sport and culture has proved so successful it’s now being applied in Malaysia, Thailand and some European countries.
In Western Australia it’s know as Healthway, an independent organization funded by tobacco taxes. Last year it collected AUD $17 million (Rp 122 billion). This was used to sponsor sports and cultural events, conduct research and promote healthy lifestyles.
Executive director Neil Guard said that when Healthway started in 1990 about 25 per cent of adults in WA were regular smokers. That figure had now dropped to 15.5 per cent.
“Healthway has played a significant role in helping achieve this outstanding result in tobacco control,” he said.
“The key areas are advocacy, the creation of smoke-free environments, public awareness and education programs, support for smokers wanting to quit and prevention of people taking up smoking.
“Also important is research into new ways of tobacco control, and legislation to restrict smoking in public places and the sale of tobacco products.”
This year the WA government banned smoking indoors in hotels, restaurants and nightclubs, despite being confronted by claims that patrons would stay at home and businesses would collapse.
The hospitality industry is now opening outdoor eating and drinking areas to cater for smokers. Another factor in promoting change has been successful legal action by sick employees against companies that allow smoking in the workplace.
Guard said the creation of smoke-free areas at sporting and music events was a critical factor in lowering tobacco use.
Getting public support for anti-smoking laws was important. When tobacco advertising bans and other controls were proposed, surveys showed the public was prepared to tolerate higher “virtuous taxes” if these were used to help sport and culture.
Australia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore impose tobacco taxes starting at 70 per cent. The Indonesian rate is 31.5 per cent. Although prices will increase next March by up to Rp 7 a stick, smokes in Indonesia are around one fifth of the cost of those sold in nearby countries.
Guard said organizations that wanted Healthway sponsorship had to make the event smoke free and had to advertise a healthy lifestyle.
Before the law was changed cigarette companies claimed they were spending big amounts on helping sport, music and culture. However research revealed the donations were small.
Healthway had to pay only AUD $2.5 million (Rp 18 billion) to buy out cigarette sponsors of sporting and cultural events when the forecast was for almost four times that sum.
“Sport and the arts are doing much better with Healthway sponsorship than they ever did with cigarette companies,” he said. “They get more money with fewer restrictions.”
(Sidebar 2)
CREATING A CLEAN IMAGE
Not surprisingly tobacco companies don’t like being portrayed as purveyors of poisons and killers of citizens. So they try to boost their image by seeming to be socially responsible. A popular campaign is to clean up the environment – a cause that seldom attracts sponsors.
Ironically the tobacco industry is responsible for creating garbage like cigarette butts and packaging.
In Indonesia Sampoerna, now owned by the US giant Philip Morris, has sponsored signs urging people not to litter. In Australia British American Tobacco is behind the seemingly benign Butt Littering Trust.
This educates smokers in thoughtfully disposing of their fags and includes giving people little canisters they can use as personal ashtrays. It ignores the fact that people who don’t smoke don’t produce butts.
Activists say Australians flick away 18 billion non-biodegradable cigarette butts every year. Not all are dead. Careless smokers start more than 4,500 bush and home fires.
The trust claims it is independent, but critics say it’s wholly funded by BAT that has a representative on the board.
Another ploy is to fund educational institutions and scholarships. These are illegal in many countries when the company uses its own name or the name of a product.
So the Sampoerna Foundation, which gives the company the profile of a good corporate citizen, could not function under that title elsewhere because it would be seen as advertising.
(First published in The Jakarta Post 3 January 2007)
##
">Link
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