THE AGED BELONG

 

            Oldies wanted, not discarded

 

 

Australia’s aged-care policies include keeping frail oldies apart from society.  Indonesia does the opposite – seemingly benefitting all.

Our sophisticated elderly care system ranges from help at home to palliative clinics. The Medical Journal of Australia reports almost 20 per cent aged above 80 and six per cent of 65 plus get institution long-term care.  We have ‘the highest proportion of older people living in institutional care compared with 11 other nations.’

What’s seldom mentioned is that these facilities are not on call. Waiting times to enter Federal-funded facilities have reportedly now reached five months.

What the figures also don’t show are the intangibles -  the feeling of being wanted, welcomed and included, whatever the clients’ age.  So some social workers are experimenting.

The ABC TV documentary series Old People's Home for 4-Year-Olds follows 11 ‘retirement home residents’ and ten pre-schoolers spending time and playing games together to soften the pains of loneliness, moods, depression, illness, despair – all the emotions eroding as we age. 

Looking at how our northern neighbours handle ageing it’s clear the Indonesian government’s supports are miserly yet the oldies seem to get a better deal.  No need to muster kids to cheer the grey-hairs; in the archipelago next door it’s community care in kampong, villages and older suburbs.

About 40 per cent of Indonesians live in rural desa (hamlets).  Around 5 am after fajr prayers, the old folk are most visible – easing the younger generation’s day-start workload with cleaning and cooking, washing and bathing, much of it in public.

Sure, they move slowly, can be forgetful and often need a stick for support.  But they’re not a nuisance.  Those too weak to wander can nurse a babe and together unfold the day with lullabies.

They see neighbours readying kids for school, the mums checking uniforms and satchels. Be tidy, be polite. Never be ashamed.  Say goodbye to gran, kiss her hand, touch her brow, then your heart. 

This is Salim.  In this mystical mix of ancient traditions, we show respect for age, the place where we’re all heading.

Then come the itinerant sellers of veggies, chicken meat and household needs.  They stop for sales and chats, circulating the gossip.

 In unfenced front yards, sons and grandsons fix motorbikes, clean hoes and sharpen sickles.  In central East Java the irrigated padi where many labour, are so nutrient-rich that three crops of rice a year are possible. 

 

The frail watchers on the hard-wood verandas are vital to village life, commentators on the hourly happenings, custodians of local wisdom, and the memory banks in a country where books are rare.

When they breathe no more, the timber and tile dwellings they inherited will pass to the next generation. No need for lawyers. They’ll be buried at the edge of the desa like we once did in village church graveyards, not a huge and distant impersonal urban cemetery.

Cities are different.  The 60 households in our suburban cul-de-sac are a mix of professionals, tradies and retirees.  The kids used to play in two empty blocks nearby.  One has a new mosque, the other a shopping mall, since closed. 

Now the only space is the street/badminton court/soccer field / BMX track and a school of nature, nippers cuddling kittens produced by the clowder of semi-ferals that litter in attics. It’s also the elders’ entertainment.

It’s not all sweet harmony. A couple of stroke victims park wheelchairs in the street, their drooping limbs reminders of a moment of dreadful, crippling pain, cautionary tales to smokers.  Retired bureaucrats suffering relevance-deprivation syndrome get grumpy with neighbours whose visitors park across gateways. 

The mobile traders once advertised with music, rhythmic taps on the wooden sides of their carts.  Now battery-powered speakers broadcast repetitious promotions.  There’s a plague of strolling minstrels asking payment for serenading the street, though casing for unlocked gates. They get paid to go away.

Underworked bureaucrats come by to check on the welfare of lampposts and power poles.  They always have time to yarn about themselves.

The busyness involves everyone from tots to totterers; all belong.  The elderly are not hidden. Nor are they lonely.  Neighbours may not be friends but all know who they are and what they’ve done. When one dies we mourn together whatever our ages and faiths.

The megalopolis have a few places for pensioners, euphemistically known (in English) as ‘home sweet homes ‘and solely for the rich.  Rumah kesejahteraan (welfare shelters) are run by local councils for the homeless and mentally ill, but care for the aged is largely carried on the shoulders of families.

That weight is becoming heavier as the pool of potential carers shrinks (2.29 births per woman, half the rate of the 1980s) and the population ages.  Ten years ago less than five per cent was over 65 – now it’s 6.26. In Australia, it’s nudging 16 per cent.

The average Indonesian’s lifespan is 72; add eleven years for those Down Under.

As in the West, women are keeping their careers after marriage, meaning daughters and daughters-in-law are none too keen on staying home to tend crotchety gran.  So live-in helpers prepared to clean soiled sheets along with the dishes are in demand.

That’s not a job for young maids who prefer Singapore and Hong Kong where wages are higher. This has led to the curious situation in Indonesia where only a few years separate carer and client.

In Australia, helpers need certificates in aged care, first-aid and a police pass to get work.  The average wage of $28.38 an hour is considered low.  In East Java, the same job as a live-in draws Rp 1.5 million ($150) a month plus food.  Word-of-mouth recommendations replace qualifications. The cost is triple in Jakarta.

If Old People's Home for 4-Year-Olds ever hits free-to-air TV in Indonesia, viewers would puzzle why a rich Western nation claiming to care tolerates segregation. How could the young discard their elders, lock them away even if the surroundings are clean?

The Australian system may be efficient and profitable but it’s an industry.  Seen from t’other side of the Arafura Sea it seems wrong, uncaring even.  

First published in Pearls & Irritations,  29 January 2022: https://johnmenadue.com/old-peoples-home-for-many-indonesians-is-a-useful-life-with-people-they-know/

 

 

 

 

EQUALITY? WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING, SOMETIME

 

               A woman’s place is on the agenda

 

 

Source: Tribun

Although there’s no academic survey to prop up this assertion, here goes:  For most Indonesians, the idea of rape in marriage is as alien as denying prayer in a place of worship.

Joko Widodo aka Jokowi is finally realising that human rights are gender-inclusive, Indonesian women’s anger may carry more clout than the menace of the religious right, and that the Me Too movement isn’t just a fleeting foreign fad.

This is the best explanation for the President’s sudden decision this month to say in public: ‘I hope that the Bill on the Crime of Sexual Violence will soon be passed so that it can provide maximum protection for victims of sexual violence in the country’.

He could have spruiked similar wake-ups at any time during the past six years while the proposed law was in hibernation, but he lacked the will to confront hardliners bent on dilution and delay.

The current criminal code recognizes sexual violence as molestation, adultery and rape.  Forced sex in marriage is not illegal and till recently considered a matter to whisper, not broadcast.

 Five years ago there were 2,979 reports of sexual violence.  Just 172 were allegations of marital rape. Activists claim the real number is far higher as only the bravest speak out.

 Tengku Zulkarnain, a former deputy Secretary-General of the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (Council of Islamic Scholars) and hostile to the bill explained his mores of marriage to a TV audience: ‘If desire wants, then it (sex) must happen. The wife can just lie down or sleep, it doesn’t hurt.’

Komnas Perempuan (the National Commission on Violence against Women) Commissioner Mariana Amiruddin reportedly told a Jakarta website: ‘If wives are forced, they cannot refuse.  It means that wives are merely seen as sex slaves.’   

New laws have been demanded by NGOs since 2012.  Their campaign gained force in 2016 after 14 drunks raped and murdered a 13-year-old schoolgirl in Bengkulu on the west coast of Sumatra.  (The gang leader Zainal, 23, has been sentenced to death.  Others have been jailed for up to 20 years.)

Activists want domestic bashing and intimidation treated as criminal conduct and the government to provide protection and recovery for victims. The original bill defined nine types of sexual violence, but concessions made in debate have cut these to four.

Politicians from the Islamic Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (Prosperous Justice Party) and other conservatives shouted that the reforms have been engineered by pro-Western stirrers promoting a ‘liberal feminist agenda with a permissive attitude towards free sex (meaning a licentious lifestyle) and LGBT’.

They claimed the bill was out of whack with religious and traditional values and would lead to promiscuity and births unsanctioned by wedlock, euphemistically dubbed MBA –married by accident.

Only recently has the media started to highlight cases of brutality against women in a Men First society.  An outrageous example of official discrimination occurred in Aceh province this month where a woman was flogged 100 times for adultery – briefly paused because she suffered too much agony.  The government officer involved got 15 lashes.

Regional prosecutor Ivan Najjar Alavi reportedly said the court gave different sentences because the woman confessed to having sex in a palm oil plantation while the guy pleaded not guilty.

In 2005 Jakarta made a peace deal with the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement) after 29 years and 15,000 deaths through on-off fighting between separatist guerrillas and the army.  To get the cease-fire, Aceh was allowed to use sharia law.  This permits whipping for offences like gambling, adultery, drinking alcohol and gay sex.

The public punishments which draw crowds with cameras have long been furiously condemned by international and local human rights organisations. In 2017 Widodo called for an end to the brutality.  All protests have been ignored.

The role of women in Indonesia has long been defined by men. The nation’s government-approved heroine is the 19^th century aristocratic Javanese Raden Adjeng Kartini who died in 1904 aged 25 after giving birth. Although she condemned polygamy she accepted an arranged marriage to a local leader with three wives.

Kartini advocated for girls’ access to a full education and a ban on child marriage.   Both are now the law though not the practice. According to Lies Marcoes of Rumah KitaB, a research institute advocating for the rights of the marginalised, Indonesia has the second-highest rate of child marriage in ASEAN.  One in nine girls under 18 quit school to wed.  Few relationships survive – another factor in domestic violence. 

Kartini’s fame rests on published letters she sent to friends in the Netherlands arguing for equality and critical of Dutch control. First president Soekarno, a notorious womaniser who had nine known relationships, found the mild self-taught feminist a safe symbol for his anti-colonialism, so made her 21 April birthday a national holiday.

In case this encouraged uppity women to travel beyond their station, second president Soeharto created an organisation of public servants’ wives called Dharma Wanita. Till his fall in 1998, this kept women close to the stove, sink and bed and distant from books – unless needed for the compulsory Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga (Family Welfare Training).

Julia Suryakusuma, author of State Ibuism: The Social Construction of Womanhood in the Indonesian New Order said Soeharto’s authoritarian regime defined women first as a husband’s loyal partner.  Then she was expected to be the kids’ educator, household manager and generator of extra income while still ‘a functioning member of society’.

The scene’s not entirely bleak: A 2020 World Bank study supported by Australia shows  ‘Indonesia has made considerable progress toward gender equality over the past decade, with improved rates of literacy, school enrolment, and employment, as well as policies to pave the way for a more gender-equitable society.’

Some rice husks blown by the breeze of change:  The Javanese phrase Kanca wingking translates as ‘a friend behind’.  It used to mean a woman’s place in the street and home but is now seldom heard.

Men can be seen nursing babies and pushing prams, even in villages, and some mornings hanging washing.  Elderly couples in Muslim garb occasionally hold hands in public, a rare sight last century. 

As in Australia men overwhelmingly run most shows, though women are featuring more in politics and business.  Six of the 34 members of the Cabinet are women (along with six retired generals) – and 120 women in the 575-seat Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (People’s Representative Council).  For the first time that’s just above 20 per cent.

Whether these movements will drive society’s thinking about respect and equality to the point of taking a left turn have yet to be measured. Like the level of marital rape.

 

A version was first published in Pearls & Irritations, 24 January 2022: https://johnmenadue.com/womens-rights-in-indonesia-progress-amid-the-division/

 

 

 

 

 

 

PAYNE'S ASEAN FOLLY

 

                        ASEAN sloughs into its own chasm

 

 

 Photo:  BBC

It was being billed as a clash of ideologies, democracies versus authoritarians over handling a ruthless regime. Then suddenly the contest was off.

Foreign ministers from some of the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations were expected to meet for their annual closed-door retreat on 18 and 19 January. But with less than a week to go chair Cambodia ‘postponed’ the Siem Reap event because it’s ‘difficult’ to travel.

Maybe, but not impossible as politicians and bureaucrats have been zipping around the region for the past year despite the pandemic. Far more arduous is keeping ASEAN alive when it seems determined to die.

Apart from those who make a living serving the decrepit organisation, few believe it has value and purpose.

There is one – Australia’s Foreign Minister Senator Marise Payne.  As reported on this website Payne told diplomats and the media in Jakarta last September 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.’

FM Payne’s bid to use ASEAN to get into SEA because of its ‘centrality, openness, transparency, inclusivity (as) a rules-based region’ makes Australia look naive.  Harsher commentators would write ‘maladroit’.

Tracking ASEAN’s achievements over 54 years requires forensic skills.  Its most vigorous boosters, like political analyst Dr Beginda Pakpahan, stress the organisation has preserved ‘peace and stability’ without listing diplomatic initiatives.

The most worthy move should have been the unqualified and united condemnation of the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) February power grab.  Three months earlier electors in the nation of 54 million had voted 87 per cent for the civilian National League for Democracy led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.  Shocked by this insolence, the generals decided preserving power trumped the people’s will.

More than 1,200 protesters have reportedly been killed in the past year.  Some have been burning the ASEAN flag.  Suu Kyi, 76, is in jail and likely to die there unless the international community gets its act together.

Myanmar, formerly Burma, joined ASEAN in 1984. In 2017 it started slaughtering the mainly Muslim ethnic Rohingya.  More than a million have fled to neighbouring countries leaving behind the bones and ashes of 13,000 victims of genocide.

The UN hasn’t accepted the self-declared ‘State Administration Council’ as Myanmar’s legitimate authority but has delegated Dr Noeleen Heyzer, the Secretary-General's special envoy on Myanmar to negotiate.  This month she won Pearls & Irritation’s Gibberish Gong with her entry calling for: ‘a coordinated strategy towards creating an enabling environment for inclusive dialogue’.

Western nations protested furiously but ASEAN leaders’ responses were more subdued in keeping with its ‘Asian Way’ culture of avoiding criticism, aka spineless.  

 

 

Photo: BBC News

Some met Myanmar's self-styled PM General Min Aung Hlaing (above)  - who had no difficulties flying to Jakarta - and reached a ‘five-point consensus’.  This included an end to violence, a return to democracy, humanitarian help, negotiations with armed ethnic groups, and visits by outside envoys.

All spurned. So at its bi-annual meet in Brunei last October the ASEAN nine found a spec of courage and snubbed Hlaing.  This has been praised as a pivotal point in the organisation’s history.

ASEAN is throttled by a policy prohibiting members from interfering in each others’ affairs.  It operates on the principle of musyawarah described as ‘a common voice that’s arrived at by
a continuous process of discussion’.

Background: In 1967 during the Vietnam War Indonesia set up ASEAN with Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore to block the advance of Communism. Tiny Brunei joined in 1984. Ironically two latecomers are Red – Vietnam and Laos, with Cambodia sticking close to China. Myanmar signed up in 1997. 

This year the rotating leadership is held by Cambodia. Prime Minister Hun Sen has already met Hlaing.  Naypyidaw is claiming the ASEAN head’s visit means its regime is recognised.

Charles Santiago, a Malaysian MP who chairs the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights said  Sen and Hlaing were ‘conducting another coup within ASEAN’ that threatened to divide the organization.

‘Hlaing’s coup has plunged the entire country into a multi-dimensional catastrophe and given rise to the most unified and viable alternative to military rule Myanmar has ever seen.’

ANU doctoral candidate Hunter Marston, who is researching great power competition in SEA, claims Hun Sen, who has held power since 1985, views ASEAN as ‘an old boys’ club where dictators can still be dictators.’

Sen wants Myanmar back in the pagoda. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, the four ASEAN members who follow some forms of democracy, say no way without real changes.

With 273 million citizens Indonesia is the biggest member of ASEAN, its instigator and should wield clout.  Although technically secular it’s also the world’s most populous Islamic nation and was expected to take the lead in demanding protection for fellow Muslim Rohingya.  Instead it sent aid to refugee camps in Bangladesh.

President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has reportedly told Sen the ‘implementation of the five-point consensus (is necessary) to bring democracy back to Myanmar through inclusive dialogue’.

‘Min Aung Hlaing's unilateral actions have dramatically weakened ASEAN’s collective leverage to solve the Myanmar crisis’. 

Bilahari Kausikan, former Permanent Secretary of Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reckons ASEAN should redefine its roles and set up ‘parameters with Great Powers.’

‘In recent years ASEAN has failed in this quite miserably… we have meetings with all of our
dialogue partners. (There are 11 and include Australia). However, the meetings have been extremely ritualistic, nothing much of substance is discussed.’

This is the mob FM Payne believes is central to her country’s ‘regional vision … underpinned by shared principles.’ DFAT should be urgently seeking another way to engage with the neighbourhood.

 

First published in Pearls & Irritations,  16 January 2022: https://johnmenadue.com/wake-up-australia-asean-has-lost-value-and-purpose/