NOT CONTROL - JUST COERCION

 

            Good lord – what on earth can a girl choose to wear?

An Indonesian woman appears before her maker who’ll pass judgement – heaven or hell?   The almighty checks the freshly-deceased’s CV, noting she prayed regularly at the mosque, recited the Koran and lived an upright life.

 However she didn’t always wear a jilbab.  For the sin of letting strangers see her glossy black locks she’ll be condemned to the everlasting furnace, though not alone.  Also cooking will be her male rellies who didn’t curb her wilfulness, and Mum for her inability to raise a pious daughter.

As if the journey from child to adult isn’t traumatic enough, Ifa Hanifah Misbach had to endure the beliefs above, the condemnation of her deeply religious family, the slurs of her friends and the curses of Islamic leaders for using her intellect and exercising choice.

As a late teen she sat under a pine tree on a hill in Bandung – the capital of West Java - ‘when my tears flowed constantly’.  She also wrote a poem-  A Little Girl Is Asking God.

At the on-line launch of the Human Rights Watch report: I Wanted to Run Away: Abusive Dress Codes for Women and Girls in Indonesia, Misbach read from the book of verse she conceived beneath the bough:

‘God, is it true that I’ll drag my late father and all my brothers to hell because I don't veil? If so, that means all girls will bid not to be born into an Islamic family, if they’re like me, going to ask questions.

‘In the realm of eternity before entering the womb, they’ll ask to be born as sons only, because we daughters have no power over our own bodies.’

 

Misbach survived her intellectual wrestle and ’more than 30 years of bullying’ to be her own woman, undefined by men claiming the ability to faultlessly interpret religious texts. 

She’s now 45, a Connecticut University graduate, an academic and psychologist back in Bandung.  Her architect brother Ridwan Kamil is the provincial Governor – and a likely contender for the presidency in 2024.

Misbach said two of her patients had tried to kill themselves because of the pressure to conform, and ‘body dysmorphic disorders’ were often seen.

The HRW report asserts that pushing the jilbab is part of a movement ‘to reshape human rights protections in Indonesia.

‘It undermines women’s right to be free from discriminatory treatment based upon any grounds whatsoever under Indonesia’s Constitution. Women are entitled to the same rights as men, including the right to wear what they choose.’

The issue of equality in Australia is secular, the debate focusing on consent.  In Indonesia it’s about coercion to the point of resisters being denied schooling, work or promotion.

Research in 2019 found about 80 million Indonesians wear jilbab, mostly in Java. ‘It is unclear how many do so voluntarily and how many do so under legal, social, or familial pressure or compulsion.’  Until this century, films of everyday events showed most women scarfless.

It’s now the topic which elbows aside other concerns. The publisher of the online women’s magazine Magdalene was quoted saying: ‘No other women’s rights stories, from rapes to #MeToo rallies, from celebrities’ profiles to our long features, can compete with jilbab stories.’

As psychologist Alissa Wahid pointed out, this seems to be a ‘small issue in a grand landscape’ of problems besetting the Republic and its 270 million citizens, but it goes to deeper issues.

The eldest daughter of the late fourth president Abdurrahman ‘Gus Dur’ Wahid, wears the kerudung, a loose headscarf revealing some hair as often seen in Pakistan.  ‘This is not about the jilbab,’ she said.  ‘It’s about human rights, justice, democracy and social harmony.’

The 96-page HRW document reports Komnas Perempuan [National Commission on Violence Against Women] had identified ‘421 ordinances passed between 2009-2016 that discriminate against women and religious minorities’

Indonesia recognises six religions and has a Ministry of Religious Affairs.  A citizen’s faith gets stamped on their ID card. Despite regular attempts by zealots to impose sharia law the country remains constitutionally secular. 

Said Alissa Wahid: ’The regulation is very important, crucial, to maintain the idea of Indonesia as a cohesive nation-state. Everyone has the right to religious freedom.’  

Indonesia has 34 provinces, with 24 predominantly Islam. After some parents protested local governments and schools were making the jilbab compulsory for non-Muslims, President Joko Widodo stirred himself.  The President ordered all administrations and the nation’s 300,000 state schools to revoke mandatory jilbab regulations.  Intransigents risk sanctions, including withholding education funds.

The cheering lessened once the exclusions were discovered.  The decree doesn’t apply in the province of Aceh which makes its own religious laws, or the 30,000 pesantren [Muslim schools].  Fundamentalists used the Trump truth-twisting trick by claiming the Jakarta order is a sign of Islamophobia, and means girls will be forced to abandon their headscarves.

HRW Australia Director Elaine Pearson called on the Indonesian government to end all discriminatory laws.

She described Indonesia’s clothing regulations as ‘part of a broader attack by conservative religious forces on gender equality and the ability of women and girls to exercise their rights to an education, a livelihood, and social benefits.’

First they must convince themselves that heading outside sans scarf won’t lead to the pit of perdition.  That journey’s maybe a mite easier with stories of tough trekkers like Ifa Hanifah Misbach helping guide the fearful.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 31 March 2012: 
https://johnmenadue.com/the-jilbab-human-rights-in-indonesia/

 

WA's RI DISENGAGEMENT STRATEGY

 

 

How not to win friends and influence people

 

‘No country is more important to Australia than Indonesia. If we fail to get this relationship right, and nurture and develop it, the whole web of our foreign relations is incomplete.’ 

 

 

Few have disagreed with then PM Paul Keating’s March 1994 speech, endorsed mildly by his successors and embellished by exporters.  Though there’s been a wealth of words and a dearth of action, who’d dare doubt this article of faith?

 

Mark McGowan for one.  The newly re-elected WA Premier has shredded the Asian Engagement ministry he created in 2017.  He’s also dumped the State’s dedicated trade commissioner in Indonesia, a tough market to penetrate for even hardened operators at ease with the language and culture.

 

Connoisseurs of pointless memorabilia should grab a copy of the government’s WA’s Asian Engagement Strategy 2019-2030, Our Future with Asia - before the printout is quietly pulped.

Despite Indonesia mishandling the pandemic [1.5 million cases, 40 thousand deaths] market watchers still reckon the planet’s fourth most populous nation is set to become the fourth biggest economy by 2050. As Perth is just a coffee-and-kip flight to the archipelago, let’s go. The Balinese love us thirsty laid-back Ozzies - Jakarta can’t be that much different.

There’s been some screeching about betrayal because WA was once seriously keen on building lasting ties with East Java, particularly when Labor’s Dr Geoff Gallop was premier [1996-2001]. The problem’s been Perth-based decision makers’ expecting rapid returns for little outlay.  Relating to Asia is a long game; like wine it needs to age.

There’s also disillusionment and envy. What are these trade wallahs up to when out of town?  In their exotic postings they’re supposed to sell the State and nurture neophytes carrying embossed ballpoints, diarrhoea pills and delicious pie-charts.

They care for VIPs on overseas ‘fact-finding missions’ which in one case involved checking Japanese bath-houses.

Craig Peacock was WA’s man in Tokyo garnering praise for his competence and ability to hustle.  He was certainly a great wool-puller, blurring his bosses’ eyesight.  For 17 years he had a grand time till the state’s Crime and Corruption Commission picked apart his reports and receipts, allegedly finding a $540,000 fleecing plus some funny business involving politician mates desiring $700 massages.

In 2019 he lost his job and an opportunity to explain himself in court as the alleged offences occurred overseas.  He’s reportedly agreed to repay the cash.

Naturally there was an inquiry which spread beyond malfeasance into structure causing a furious McGowan to upend the barrel because one apple had codling moth. The Premier’s ‘hub and spokes’ response involves four new investment and trade commissioners in seemingly incompatible and certainly unmanageable geographical groupings: ‘India-Gulf, North-East Asia, China and ASEAN.’

 

Their department is JTSI, which sounds like an office where you’d ask for Winston Smith.  The acronym is as weird as the combine – Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation.  Rearranged as JIST it becomes Kiwi for a joke.

 

Unfortunately there’s nothing witty about forcing such disparate disciplines together in an isolated city to see which cracks first.  This isn’t another absurd TV series but an apparently serious attempt to win new business.

 

Overseas officials and businessfolk used to centralised systems find it passing strange that states in a federation would compete to sell their goodies.  Why duplicate when there are old Austrade hands in our largest Embassy in the world? These diplomats know the ropes and traps, and they’re backed by a Canberra department with 6,000 employees.

 

The WA appointee handling the ten heterogeneous nations which make up ASEAN [pop 600-plus million] will be based in Perth, then Singapore and eventually Jakarta if and when the plague subsides.  Apart from confusing cities, currencies and timezones, pressures will include edgy minders demanding hourly feedback.

McGowan reckons ‘hubs’ will provide a ‘more flexible model to help diversify WA’s mining-dependent economy’.  Indonesia Institute president Ross Taylor, a former Jakarta-based WA trade commissioner, has a different translation, ensuring he’ll miss out on breakfast invites at the next launch of an exciting strategy:

 ‘The real issue is not the demise of the portfolio as it was completely ineffective, but rather the incompetent leadership of JTSI, which has left the critically important trade and investment function a mere shadow of its once visionary and professional self.

‘For 20 years state governments have rebranded, restructured, culled, expanded and now diminished our engagement with Asia. International trade and investment is the life-blood of our economy.  It deserves better than this.’

Australian traders seeking guides to the 4D labyrinth of Indonesian business negotiations will be better advised to ignore the JTSI jesters and recruit polyglot scions of Indonesian corporate families.  There are plenty around.  They’ve studied abroad so know how to engage with Australia.

 

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First published in Pearls & Irritations, 26 March 2021:  https://johnmenadue.com/how-not-to-win-friends-and-influence-people/

A WARM SHOULDER FOR A RED JAB

 

The long Chinese march into Indonesia

Chinese officials in Australia rarely miss an opportunity to chill relations by turning down the thermostat on our democratic values and way of seeing the world.  Meanwhile, the Middle Kingdom’s men in Jakarta are playing a long and warming game.

Johns Hopkins University tracking data reports more than 1.4 million coronavirus cases and 38,000 deaths in Indonesia.  These are widely considered to be underestimates as testing isn’t free and post mortems rare.

There’s a small plus.   Despite an early sluggish response to the virus, the vaccination programme is moving faster than its Western neighbour. The unabating anti-Communist Indonesians with their sleeves rolled up seem unconcerned the inoculant is politically Red. So far about four million have had their first shot and around 1.5 million needle two.

Sinovac and Sinopharm may not be infused with hypnotics to make patients speak Mandarin, but the vaccines are carrying unsubtle messages. Reinforcing these has been China’s ambassador to ASEAN Deng Xijun, a 38-year veteran of multiple postings in the region.

Australia’s equivalent is Will Nankervis.  Soon after his appointment last October he proved his Canberra credentials with an anodyne masterpiece:  ‘Australia will continue to actively support ASEAN to play a central role in addressing the challenges facing the region... with significant new programs and a new platform for leader-level engagement, coupled with our abiding, deep commitment to ASEAN and its architecture.’  

Architecture?  This impotent outdated group of ten misfits couldn’t agree on the colour of a blueprint. No specifics from Mr N, no dollars, no footage of refrigerated containers rolling out of Airbus 380 cargo holds for the nightly news.

Deng Xijun believes in more than pictures, reminding the world’s third-largest democracy of his authoritarian state’s generosity.  Donating vaccines is ‘writing a new chapter of close anti-pandemic cooperation.’

Three million ready-to-jabs, one million ‘semifinished vaccines’ and 35 million doses of bulk vaccines have been flown in from Beijing along with excess publicity.  

Writing in The Jakarta Post, Deng Xijun said that when his country ‘was in the darkest moments of its struggle with the virus early last year, the governments and people of ASEAN countries offered China timely, valuable and selfless support and assistance.  

‘Right after China brought the domestic situation under control, China returned the favour to meet the most urgent needs of ASEAN. 

‘China has provided a great number of emergency medical supplies to ASEAN, sent multiple medical expert teams to several ASEAN countries and assisted several ASEAN member states in building virus-testing labs.’ 

In case cynics might think this assistance is not altogether driven by altruism he added:  

‘China doesn’t have any geopolitical agenda, vie for any economic gains or attach any political conditions. The only thing that is on China’s mind is to make the vaccines a public good that is accessible and affordable.’ 

The love-in follows a senior Indonesian minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, a close confidant of President Joko Widodo, talking to China’s FM Wang Yi about handling the pandemic. They decided Indonesia should be the distribution hub in Southeast Asia.

In The Conversation, UK-educated international relations lecturer Dr Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat suggested Sino-Indo co-operation benefits both parties.  

‘On one hand, China will have Indonesia with its 270 million population as a testing ground for its Covid-19 vaccines and, at the same time secure access to the Southeast Asian market.’ 

Indonesia is being rewarded for its mateship. No bulk-carrier stand-offs outside Guangzhou while trade ministry calls go unanswered. Last year the world’s largest thermal coal exporter had its ships waved straight into waiting berths to unload 407 million tonnes when the target was 400.

So what are we doing to enhance our standing with nation number four on the big population ladder?  As Aussies know well, our most important future relationship is with the Republic - a message hammered by every successive leader for the past 30 years.  That’s also the time China and ASEAN have been together since starting ‘dialogues’. 

In mid-2020 Australia gave AUD 6.2 million to WHO to ‘strengthen Indonesia’s laboratories, improve the way Indonesia collects and uses health information and help to protect patients and health workers at health facilities’.  

We’ve also offered an AUD 1.5 billion loan to be repaid across 15 years ‘to support Indonesia’s budget’ as it hurtles into recession, the first since 1999.  

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the advance ‘builds on our highly valued economic relationship and a strong record of bilateral cooperation,’ but academics haven’t been impressed.  Some told the ABC the money was ‘insignificant in the overall scheme of things ... no more than a rounding error in government spending’. 

Other economists claimed it was a ‘symbolic gesture' to calm investors and remind the region us Ozzies are good guys.  One stat puts it in perspective: The Indonesian government has to conjure up AUD 12 billion a month just to handle the pandemic’s impact.

 

Minister Pandjaitan hasn’t been a lone emissary to the Asian imperium.  FM Retno Marsudi, state-owned enterprises minister Erick Thohir, and defence minister Prabowo Subianto have also made the pilgrimage north.  If this phalanx of power has flown south on similar missions they’ve kept the itineraries secret.  What we do know is that their Australian counterparts haven’t made it to Jakarta.

Fortunately Scott Morrison did get to the world’s most populous Muslim nation for one day in 2018.  This was enough time to pronounce the two nations are ‘not just close neighbours — but great friends.’

In the fight against the plague, it might be more accurate to suggest the PM’s words refer to a relationship elsewhere.  NZ maybe? 

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 15 March 2021:  https://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-the-long-chinese-march-into-indonesia-with-vaccines/