SEEK A BETTER WAY INTO SEAsia, Ms PAYNE

 

            Time to euthanise the ASEAN nag

 

 

 Image - Antara

If ASEAN crashed in the Melbourne Cup the on-course vets would be ready with the needle and green tarpaulin.  But this bag-o’-bones is such a dud it would have been scratched by the stewards.

The ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations has been grazing in the pension paddock for so long no amount of doping will turn the 54-year old gelding (double the normal lifespan) into a strapping stallion. 

Yet a rejuvenation is being claimed based on one limp decision to ban member Myanmar from ASEAN’s bi-annual meet in Brunei this week. [26-28 Oct]  That’s almost nine months since the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) staged a coup after civilian candidates won last year’s election.

 Former Burma will have to be represented at the ASEAN gathering by a ‘non-politician’, as though any neutral negotiators have survived scything by the current ruthless regime.

(The country’s ambassador to the UN was sacked by the junta after refusing to recognise army rule.  Kyaw Moe Tun said no one should co-operate with the military until it handed back power to the democratically elected government.  He’s been charged with high treason, lives in exile and has reportedly been stalked by assassins.)

The resolution to snub Myanmar’s leader General Min Aung Hlaing has been lauded by ASEAN’s few fans as an example of culturally appropriate collective reasoning when it’s just a ploy to keep the knackers away.

The clique’s rules insist on non-interference in members’ internal affairs, angering Yangon anti-junta protesters who’ve reportedly been burning the ASEAN flag. The Philippines Foreign Minister is also fed up with inaction.

Teodoro Locsin broke from the tradition of bland statements when he was quoted saying playing neutral on Myanmar was no longer an option:  ’Our credibility as a real regional organisation disappears … We're a bunch of guys who always agree with each other on the worthless things’.

The worthy thing should have been the furious condemnation of the 1 February take-over.  Last November electors in the nation of 54 million voted 87 per cent for the National League for Democracy and its leader Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

But the former British colony has a long history of being run by men with guns and the generals wanted their power back.  The electors didn’t and hit the streets.  So far more than 1,100 have paid with their lives.  Thousands have been arrested and imprisoned.

The UN, Western nations and others protested furiously, while ASEAN pondered.  In April its leaders met Myanmar's junta chief Min Aung Hlaing in Jakarta and reached a ‘five-point consensus’ on how to tackle the crisis made by the general. That was paraded as an example of Asian quiet diplomacy.

So has the recent release of hundreds of political prisoners, a theory scotched by Nicholas Coppel.  The former Australian ambassador to Myanmar and now a Monash academic says opening cell doors often happens around auspicious days in the Buddhist calendar.

There’s no point in spelling out details of the Jakarta plan because nothing happened.  Some ASEAN members – notably Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore – were getting edgy. In August Brunei’s Second Foreign Minister Erywan Yusof was appointed as ASEAN’s crisis envoy. He tried to meet Suu Kyi who is under house arrest but got knocked back.  So the group decided to ban the self-appointed PM from its bi-annual summit.

Coppel claims the decision to kick Myanmar out ‘would have been a shock to Min Aung Hlaing as he, along with most observers, are habituated to expect ASEAN inability to address difficult internal issues.’

David Scott Mathieson who works with The Asia Institute in Myanmar but writes as ‘an independent analyst’ argues that ‘ASEAN’s fiasco is also the West’s moral failure.

‘The West’s thinking it could subcontract the crisis to the regional bloc and, from afar, impose sanctions, strong statements and humanitarian assistance, has contributed to the impasse.  The UN, US, EU, UK and Australia are all complicit in ASEAN’s failings by failing to build support structures around regional diplomacy.’

A little history starting with the Vietnam War and fear of the Red Wave rolling south helps to understand this mess.

To avoid an imagined Communist tsunami and after slaughtering at least 500,000 citizens who may – or may not – have been lefties, Indonesia set up ASEAN in 1967 with Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. The HQ is in Jakarta.

ASEAN is now better known for what it doesn’t do than its successes. Ironically two members are Red – Vietnam and Laos, with Cambodia sticking close to China. Myanmar joined in 1997.

Four are in some weak form of democracy (Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines). Two are military dictatorships (Thailand and Myanmar) and one authoritarian sultanate (Brunei). Apart from the former Siam, all were once ruled by colonial powers. Now the only glue is recent history, geography and being Asian. 

It’s through this inept sodality that FM Marise Payne wants us to engage with Southeast Asia.

In Jakarta last month she told Indonesians that Australia’s ‘vision for the future of our region has ASEAN at its centre. It's principally a shared vision, underpinned by shared principles.

‘ASEAN's outlook on the Indo-Pacific  … resonates strongly with our own Indo-Pacific vision including principles of ASEAN centrality, openness, transparency, inclusivity, and a rules-based region.

‘Australia strongly believes that the principles enshrined in the ASEAN Outlook should guide the post-pandemic order in the region … We believe that engaging with ASEAN and supporting our partners in Southeast Asia is one of the best investments Australia can make in a stronger, more prosperous, and more secure future for our region.

She spoke of the group 34 times.

In her enthusiastic embrace, Payne forgot to mention secret ‘engagement and investment’ had already been done with Washington and London to buy nuclear-powered subs to cruise seas around the archipelago, and build bigger bases in Australia for foreign troops to point their missiles northward. 

No consultation with the locals. At the worst, this puts Indonesia on the front line of any future clash of the US and PRC titans, or a ‘strategic spectator’ as one commentator said.

The wash-up of anger, dismay, bewilderment and accusations of an arms race has smothered Payne’s paean on ASEAN which she may now choose to forget.  Better put her money on another horse come 2 November.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 28 October 2021: https://johnmenadue.com/faltering-forum-time-to-euthanise-the-asean-nag/

 

 

 

 

 

 

GLUCKLICHE DEUTSCHE DURING JAAPANESE OCCUPATION

 

 

How some Europeans thrived during the Japanese occupation     

 

              

Should President Joko Widodo model any of his ‘Ten New Balis’ tourist attractions on the mountain resort of Sarangan in East Java then he won’t be drawing too many discerning visitors.

The lakeside village is a lovely location with splendid surrounds and a curious history, sadly spoilt by densely-packed crowds, raucous noise, trashy souvenirs and parking rip-offs.  The local government tries to keep the place clean and deter touts by advertising fixed prices, but visitor numbers overwhelm.

 It wasn’t always a mess; the 30-hectare volcanic crater Telega Pasir (Sand Lake), and its rich carpets of multi-color vegetable plots tumbling down from the hillside settlement was once a place of serenity and safety for a chosen few – Germans trapped far from their homeland.

When the Second World War erupted in September 1939, the Western nations confronting the Third Reich included the Netherlands, and by extension the kingdom’s East Indies colony.  At the time there were several hundred German professionals, business people, retirees and their families scattered around the archipelago, though mainly in Java.

The Dutch authorities shipped them back to Europe as prisoners or herded them into camps as enemy aliens, with many suffering hardships.  Then came the 1942 invasion of Indonesia by Japan, an ally of Germany.  The Dutch were trounced, the barbed-wire gates  dragged open and the camps emptied.

Though not for long.  Now the jailers were the jailed, Dutch nationals and other citizens of European states at war with the Nazis and its Axis partners.               

It wasn’t wise for liberated Germans to wander Indonesia where they might be mistaken for former colonialists and killed by the Japanese before their documents could be authenticated, so a safe place had to be chosen.

That was Sarangan, formerly a small resort for Dutch officials on the eastern side of Mount Lawu. The volcano (3,265 metres) straddles the border with Central Java and is supposedly dormant.  The last known rumblings were in 1885 along with a dusting of ash.

 

At 1,400 metres, Sarangan’s cool climate and rich volcanic soils made it ideal for a self-sufficient community.  Who better than the disciplined Germans well imbued with the work ethic, and who thought they were marking time prior to becoming masters of the universe?

They lived on vegetables grown in the valleys, meat and milk from dairy farms.  There was enough produce to export.  The never-idle foreigners opened a kindergarten and the Sarangan German School on 20 April 1943 (Hitler’s 54^th  birthday) before Japanese and German VIPs.

At one stage there were 350 students, according to German historian Horst H Geerken, a former telecommunications engineer in Indonesia.  His book Hitler’s Asian Adventure  has been used to research this story:

 ‘‘The pupils marched around the lake to lively tunes: the German youth movements of the Jungvolk, and the Hitler Youth had arrived in the East Indies. The Japanese set up  the Badan Pemuda Asia Raya, the Great Asia Youth Corps, a fanatical, tightly organised troop ... (which)  later played an important role in the fight for independence.’

 ‘Far from the terrible war in Europe, the Germans lived as if they were at peace in a self-governing German island in exotic surroundings. There was no orderly schooling back home in Germany because of the daily Allied air raids, and city children were being evacuated to the countryside.’

Sarangan also became a rest-and-relax centre for German officers from warships and submarines which docked in Surabaya to replenish supplies.  The Japanese invaders, and later Indonesian nationalists, were keen to use German expertise to launch an indigenous navy.

SORA (Sekolah Olahraga), a training center for sport and languages with military overtones was started in Sarangan for Indonesian cadets.  It was led by German officers who were also instructors in Soekarno’s volunteer army, PETA, (Pembela Tanah Air – Defenders of the Homeland) established in 1943 by the Japanese.

 

When the war ended in 1945 and Indonesia’s independence was proclaimed, the Sarangan school stayed open.

 

Geerken records ‘the relationship between Soekarno and the Indonesian military and the Germans was one of great mutual respect and affection. As opponents of the Dutch and as only half friends of the defeated Japanese they saw Germany as their ally of the future.

 

‘German experts in a wide range of areas – engineers, craftsmen and doctors – who had previously worked for the Dutch colonial government were now needed by the young and inexperienced Indonesian Republic.’

 

In 1946, the first year of the Dutch return to Indonesia, it seemed Sarangan and its shrinking German population (42 women and children, and ten men) had been overlooked.  Then the Dutch opened their second ‘police action’ and in late 1948 Indonesian partisans torched the town to stop the returning colonialists from seizing assets.

 

The Germans were taken prisoners by the Dutch again and eventually repatriated by the Red Cross.  Now all that remains is an undated and unattributed small plaque in the wall surrounding the lake, largely unnoticed as the crowds goggle speedboats roaring across the once tranquil waters.  It reads in Indonesian and German:

 

‘In memory of the friendship between Germany and Indonesia, and the German school and the German mothers and children who lived in Sarangan and endured the difficult times between 1943 and 1949.’

 

Geerken was in Sarangan in 1963, 15 years after his compatriots had left: ‘It was once more a dreamy, picturesque little village, though the ruins left by the scorched earth policy were still there, as were the foundations of the school.’

 No longer.  What Pancasila University tourism lecturer Fahrurozy Darmawan calls ‘overtourism’ has swamped the site:  ‘One of the main problems in tourism management is that there is no symbiosis between tourism and the community. Tourism, which is expected to be a catalyst for development, has turned into a conflict between tourists, local communities, and investors.’

 But the Sarangan scenery is a knockout and the weather is usually mild and air clean.  Local produce, like honey melons and strawberries, is field-fresh.  The lake is three hours from Surabaya by road and with plenty of hotels and guest houses.  Just don’t go on a public holiday.

 

First published in Indonesia Expat, 26October 2021: https://indonesiaexpat.id/travel/history-culture/how-some-europeans-thrived-during-the-japanese-occupation/

DON'T QUIT - DIE

 

Indonesia’s dying industry keeps lighting up   

This outdoor screen in central Malang runs cigarette commercials day and night - though these are banned on TV till after 9.30 pm
       

         

Where there’s smoke, there’s sickness. And clouds of money.

A tobacco price affray is underway in Indonesia triggered by a tax increase of 12.5 per cent with companies developing new sales pitches and crushing quality to soften the blow. Some weird names (Scorpion, Bolt) are priced at Rp 8,000 (AUD 0.73) for a dozen, though the sticks are thin and contents loosely packed. 

The top internationals retail for around $2 for twenty ciggies. Can’t afford but still keen on cancer?  Just buy one.

In Australia prices are high, controls rigid and obstacles widespread. Trade journal Tobacco Reporter has a 25-stick packet of Marlboro Gold at $48.50 while the average 20-box sells for around $35.  Packs are plain and products out of sight at checkouts.  Promotions are illegal. Buyers can’t browse open shelves.

The low-prices paid by Indonesians keep them hooked to nicotine and manufacturers to profit.  The two richest men in Indonesia are the Hartono brothers, Robert and Michael, owners of the Djarum brand of kretek (clove) cigarettes plus other businesses.  According to Forbes magazine, their net worth is $52 billion.

A wee way down the list is Susilo Wonowidjojo ($7 billion) with Gudang Garam, followed by Putera Sampoerna ($2.4 billion).  He sells under the family name which translates as ‘perfect’. Then there’s the transnationals, Philip Morris and British American.

The number of Indonesians killed and crippled by their products – and those of other factories – is unknown.  Estimates start at 250,000 deaths a year. WHO research indicates smokers have a higher risk of contracting Covid-19 as the virus targets the lungs. 

US-trained Dr Soewarta Kosen works on tobacco control policy at the Indonesian Health Ministry. He’s calculated macroeconomic losses from smoking in 2015 were four times more than that year’s tax. 

 

This year excise is expected to yield 173.78 trillion rupiah ($16.5 billion), a sum just below the $17 billion reaped by Australia’s Inland Revenue from the diehard gaspers – around 15 per cent of all citizens aged over 18.

Kosen wrote: ‘Ironically, the household spending of the poor on cigarettes ranks third highest after fast food and rice, above spending on health and education.’ Indonesian tobacco use is proportionally the third highest in the world behind China and India. 

Almost two-thirds of adult men smoke, women less than five per cent, not because they’re more health-conscious (though probably true), but through shame; Indonesian culture labels a woman with a fag a prostitute. 

There are some warnings. Packs and adverts must carry the words Peringatan merokok membunuhmu (smoking kills you) which seems to bother few as the message is tucked away and frequently ‘forgotten’.  A photo of a tracheotomy isn’t effective because the unnamed man’s story isn’t told.

Coughers say they need to reduce ‘stress’, though keeping in with the boys is another factor.  On many worksites a pack gets used by all, a communal bonding of blokes through sharing.

Indonesia ranks fifth for production in the world and is one of only eight nations that’s neither a signatory nor a party to the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. That puts RI way offside with the 180 states that forbid or limit ads promoting smoking.

 

Visitors to Bali may not have seen billboards pushing smokes as they are blocked in some progressive towns. Giant signs continue to pollute the streetscapes in Javanese cities like Malang which have tobacco farms and factories in their region lobbying to keep incomes healthy.

 

 

The industry asserts six million are directly and indirectly employed in growing, harvesting, processing and packaging, with most work done by women.  That’s a powerful figure to frighten politicians from introducing controls that might threaten jobs.  However, the World Bank estimate of the workforce is nine times smaller.

 

 Sales are supposed to be restricted to those over 18.  Big supermarkets comply, but small traders don’t and fear naught, even selling single sticks.  Reports that 30 per cent of boys took their first drag before their voices broke are no surprise.

 

Just when lads are most impressionable they’re hit by images of cool guys, tops at sport and wallets full.  Sometimes svelte girls are added to ooh and aah. The pictures show one or three men, presumably to deflect ideas that a couple of blokes together might be gay.

 

The models’ gums are never yellow, their fingers unstained. They could dart down to another agency and star in a healthy living commercial with nary a cough or spit on the way.

 

Slogans in English include ‘Bold’, ‘Dare’ and ‘Don’t Quit’, a real up-yours to health campaigners as ‘Quit’ is widely used in the West to help addicts.

 

The super-slick TV commercials featuring daring studs challenging the wild can only be screened after 9.30 pm when impressionable kiddies are supposed to be abed. That regulation has been trashed by the use of open-air screens running day and night.

Slim hotshots in corporate offices and adventure heroes in safari jackets are fantasy figures. It’s the ordinary folk who are the big users and losers, even labourers earning less than ten dollars a day want to swagger. A ‘waterproof cigarette’ has been developed for fishermen and sailors.

 

Attempts to forbid ‘mild’ because it suggests less harm were stubbed out by printing ‘MLD’ with the upright on the second letter in bold print to look like ‘I’.

 

A government ‘Development Plan’ to ban promos, enlarge the cautions and curb sales to minors has been puffing its way slowly through the legislatures. The WHO wants taxes ramped to 70 per cent of the retail price. 

Some wonder why Muslims are allowed to use the drug.  Intoxicants and substances that harm the body are haram (prohibited) but the tobacco industry seems even more powerful than religious jurists.

Indonesia’s Majelis Ulama Indonesia (the law-making body of Islamic scholars) has vetoed smoking in public or near pregnant women.  If the savants know the habit kills and damages health, then logically it should be outlawed for all.

 

Despite the widely-known dangers Big Baccy isn’t heading to the graveyard.  Some are forecasting ‘huge growth’ worldwide in the next five years.

 

In Indonesia health warnings, ad alerts, higher taxes, religious rules and other deterrents just don’t work.  They’re all too MLD.

 First published in Australian Outlook, 22 October 2021:https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/indonesias-dying-industry-keeps-lighting-up/a

 

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