GIVE, TAKE & SOLVE - OR SHOOT, KILL & WORSEN?

 Compromise worked in Aceh - why not Papua?     

       

 

There are parallels between Indonesia’s Aceh where an Ozzie surfer faced a flogging, and Papua where a Kiwi pilot is facing death. Both provinces have fought brutal guerrilla wars for independence. One has been settled through foreign peacekeepers. The other still rages as outsiders fear intervention.

 

There were ten stories in a Google Alert media feed last week for ‘Indonesia-Australia’.

 

One covered illegal fishing in the Indo-Pacific claiming economic losses of more than US $6 billion a year - important indeed.

 

Another was an update on the plight of NZ pilot Philip Mehrtens, held hostage since February by the Tentara Pembebasan Nasional Papua Barat (TPNPB West Papua National Liberation Army). 

 

This is the armed wing of the  Organisasi Papua Merdeka, (OPM Free Papua Organisation) that’s been pushing its cause since the 1970s.

 

A major story by any measure. The Indonesian military’s inability to find and safely secure the Kiwi has the potential to cause serious diplomatic rifts and great harm to all parties.

 

There have been unverified reports of bombs dropped from helicopters on jungle camps where the pilot may have been held with uninvolved civilians.

 

The other eight stories were about Queenslander Bodhi Mani Risby-Jones who’d been arrested in April for allegedly going on a nude drunken rampage and bashing a local in Indonesian Aceh.

 

Had the 23-year-old surfer been a fool in his home country the yarn would have been a yawn. Such stupidities are commonplace.

 

But because he chose to be a slob in the strictly Muslim province of Aceh and facing  up to five years jail plus a public flogging, his plight opened the issue of cultural differences and tourist arrogance.  Small news, but legitimate.

 

He’s now reportedly done a $25,000 deal to buy his way out of charges and pay restitution to his victim. This shows a flexible social and legal system displaying tolerance - which is how Christians are supposed to behave.

 

All noteworthy, easy to grasp. But more important than the threatened execution of an innocent victim of circumstances caught in a complex dispute that needs detailed explanations to understand?

 

Mehrtens landed a commercial company’s plane as part of his job flying people and goods into isolated airstrips when he was grabbed by armed men desperate to get Jakarta to pay attention to their grievances.

 

Ironically, Aceh where Risby-Jones got himself into strife, had also fought for independence and won. Like West Papua, it’s resource-rich so essential for the central government’s economy.

 

A vicious on-off war between the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, (GAM - Free Aceh Movement) and the Indonesian military started in 1976 and reportedly took up to 30,000 lives across the following three decades.

 

It only ended when the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami killed 160,000  and  former general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was elected president and  revived peace talks. Other countries became involved, including the European Union and Finland where the Helsinki Agreement was signed.

 

Both sides bent. GAM leaders abandoned their demands for independence, settling for ‘self-government’ within the Indonesian state, while soldiers were withdrawn. The bombings have stopped but at the cost of personal freedoms and angering human rights advocates.

 

Freed from Jakarta's control, the province passed strict Shariah laws. These include public floggings for homosexual acts, drinking booze and being close to an opposite sex person who’s not a relative. Morality Police patrols prowl shady spots, alert to any signs of affection.

 

Australian academic and former journalist Damien Kingsbury was also instrumental in getting GAM and Jakarta to talk. He was involved with the Papua standoff earlier this year but NZ is now using its own to negotiate.

 

Kingsbury told the ABC the situation in Papua is at a stalemate with neither Wellington nor Jakarta willing to make concessions. The Indonesian electorate has no truck for separatists so wants a bang-bang fix. NZ urges a softly-slowly approach. 

 

A TPNPB spokesperson told the BBC: ‘The Indonesian government has to be bold and sit with us at a negotiation table and not [deploy] military and police to search for the pilot.’

 

The 2005 Aceh resolution means the Papua fighters have a strong model of what’s possible when other countries intervene. So far it seems none have dared, fearing the wrath of nationalists who believe Western states, and particularly Australia, are trying to ‘Balkanise’  the ‘unitary state’ and plunder its riches.

 

This theory was given energy when Australia supported the 1999 East Timor referendum which led to the province splitting from Indonesia and becoming a separate nation.

 

Should Australia try to act as a go-between in the Papua conflict, we’d be dragged into the upcoming Presidential election campaign with outraged candidates thumping lecterns claiming outside interference. That’s something no one wants but sitting on hands won’t help Mehrtens.

 

In the meantime, Risby-Jones, whose boorish behaviour has confirmed Indonesian prejudices about Oz oafs, is expected to be deported.

 

Mehrtens will only get to tell his tale if the Indonesian government shows the forbearance displayed by the family of Edi Ron.  The Aceh fisherman needed 50 stitches and copped broken bones and an infected foot from his Aussie encounter, but still shook hands.

 

After weeks in a cell the surfer has shown contrition and apologised. Australian ‘proceedings of crime’ laws should prevent him  earning from his ordeal.

 

If the Kiwi pilot does get out alive, he deserves the media attention lavished on the Australian. This might shift international interest from a zonked twit to the issue of Papua’s independence and remind diplomats that if Jakarta could bend in the far west of the archipelago,  why not in the far east?

 

Lest Indonesians forget:  Around 100,000 revolutionaries died during the four-year war against the returning colonial Dutch after Soekarno proclaimed independence in 1975.  The Hollanders only retreated after external pressure from the US and Australia.

 

First published in Pearls & Irritations 30 May 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/compromise-worked-in-aceh-why-not-papua/

ASK - DON'T TELL. AID THAT WORKS

      

DOING LOTS WITH LITTLE ON MAGIC ISLAND            

 

Our Jakarta Embassy is the ’world’s largest Australian diplomatic mission … designed for 500 staff.’ What do they do? If just 14 media releases this year is a guide, one tiny NGO far away seems to be making a better fist of showing we care.

 

Jacob Nulik is a retired Indonesian forage agronomist with a doctorate from Australia. He lives in Kupang, the old Portuguese trading port on the southern tip of Timor. Most days he can see the low-lying island of Semau (117 square km) to the northwest just a 30-minute ferry trip away.

 

‘But even I wouldn’t go there,’ he said. ‘It was called Magic Island and full of spirits. That didn’t bother Colin Barlow. He went straight in.’

 

The Australian scientist’s impressive scramble through Semau’s dense bush and ancient coral ridges to the dry plains inland was not a demo of Okker bravado but intellectual curiosity. 

 

No wailing phantoms, only the sight of Indonesians struggling to survive in a drought-prone hardscrabble landscape, the people so poor their currency was barter. Semau is a sad example of much that’s wrong where corruption thrives and arbitrary administrations run vast countries.

 

Indonesia stretches 5,100 km west-east; Semau is only 830 km from Darwin but more than twice as far from Jakarta. Government support goes down as the klicks from the national capital go up.

 

Dr Barlow, who died last December aged 90, was no casual tourist but the ‘world’s leading authority on smallholder cash crop economies.’ His wife Dr Ria Gondowarsito is an Indonesian sociologist.

 

The couple had enough clout and contacts to run scholarly seminars about Semau but wanted change to be real and sustained. Back in Canberra they hustled donations from mates and NGOs like Rotary, mustered volunteers and did the unusual:

 

‘He asked the people and he listened’, explained Deborah Kana Hau (right) co-founder with Barlow of the Nusa Tenggara (Southeast Islands) Association (NTA).   ‘We worked from the bottom up.’

 

So much time goes on slow talk which annoys hustlers, but the decisions tend to stick because they’re owned by the locals. 

 

The NTA says its mission is to reduce poverty which has a knock-on effect. In practical terms, this means having more income can lead to better access to water and sanitation, schools and kindies and health clinics. 

 

What started as a minor project in 1988 now has 26 staff (including two Australians) and 120 volunteers; a third are locals.

 

ANU economics professor Stephen Howes wrote: ‘If the province was a country it would be one of the poorest in the world. Income per person is one-third of the Indonesian average’ currently around $4,600 a year.

 

He calls NTA ‘one of the most effective NGOs in Eastern Indonesia, and perhaps in the developing world.’ All this on tiny sums and big commitments.

 

If only politicians were as generous as individuals.  Australian Government documents show aid measured as a proportion of Gross National Income hovers around 0.2 per cent, The OECD country average is 0.32 per cent. This ranks the Lucky Country 21 out of 29 donors.

 

The heaviest cuts were last decade under Coalition PM Tony Abbott. There’s been some repair. In this year’s budget taxpayers are giving slightly more aid to Indonesia - up from $307.3 million to $326.1 million.

 

This year NTA will get $277,000 (previously $150,000). Twenty per cent of the grant must be raised by the NTA. 

 

Semau’s needs were basic and solutions low-tech. With no reticulation, women spent up to three hours a day lugging water from wells to homes using two 20-litre buckets on a yoke.

 

The symbol of Outback Oz is a windmill and a tank, filled from a bore or runoff from homestead rooves. This idea only reached Semau with the NTA. Now more than 1,000 concrete tanks have been built. The materials are gifted if the locals do the labour. 

 

Another regular whinge was roaming livestock chomping crops and angering neighbours. Walls had been built from lumps of coral, but no barrier to agile goats.

 

So ‘living fences’ of green stakes which took root laced with the Australian standard repellent of barbed wire keep the bovids at bay.

 

The knowledge flow has been hastened by Indonesians studying in Australia. Evert Hosang (right) got a scholarship to the University of Southern Queensland where he researched maize DNA for a doctorate. 

 

On Semau farmers buy hybrid seed every season because insects destroy their granaries. So using the Australian principle of high-rise sealed silos he got an Indonesian factory to make 20 kg drums to store enough home-grown seed for a hectare of ground.

 

But it had to be dry and farmers don’t have moisture meters. So he’s taught them to put a handful of maize in a dry plastic water bottle laid on its side in the sun. When no moisture settles inside the container the corn’s dry enough to store in silos, though with the ‘i’ pronounced as ‘e’.

 

A bonus from foreigners fixing faults is the shaming of local governments to lift their game and care for their own. Since the NTA arrived Semau now has some decent asphalt roads and a network of power lines.

 

Schools are being built but finding well-qualified teachers who’ll work for a pittance and tolerate poor living conditions limits kids’ learning. So does stunting.

 

Jakarta is now getting serious about prevention by distributing supplements. Around 77,000 littlies in the East Nusa Tenggara province (pop 5.4 million across 500 islands) grow slowly and sickly largely because their mums were undernourished when pregnant.

 

The NTA is seeking a replacement for Barlow who used his wallet for his trips and sought no fees. 

 

Howes wrote that in the government’s hands the NTA’s budget ‘wouldn’t pay for a single in-country consultant employed by the Australian aid programme for a year. That’s value for money.’  

 

Locals say Australian government officials rarely visit except for audits, but they see many volunteers.

 

To Nulik (right) and his Indonesian colleagues, Barlow was driven by altruism: ‘He was an ambassador for humanity’. That was his Aussie magic.

First published Michael West Media 28 May 2023:  

https://michaelwest.com.au/indonesia-our-biggest-and-closest-neighbour-needs-our-aid/

         

 

SERVING COUNTRY - OR SERVING SELF?

 INDONESIANS EMBRACE DEMOCRACY - BUT DO ITS LEADERS?   

Prabowo, Anies, Ganjar.   Source: Straits Times

                           

More Indonesians than Americans are likely to vote in key presidential elections next year. But Australia is focusing on distant North America, not adjacent Southeast Asia, the zone where the Titans could clash.

 

India is the world’s largest democracy - population 1.3 billion. It’s growing so fast that it will soon overtake one-party China. Far down in second place comes the US with 332 million and heading for ‘demographic shrinkage’.

 

 In the 2020 election, 160 million Americans voted - that’s under 67 per cent of the eligible. The US sees itself as a champion of democracy, starting in the 1630s.

 

The Republic of Indonesia (RI) with 275 million is the world’s third-largest democracy since second president Soeharto quit in 1998 after 32 years of ruthless one-party rule.

 

In the 2019 election more than 158 million registered Indonesian voters fronted ballot boxes - that’s 82 per cent. Voting is voluntary. 

 

 If this participation trend continues Indonesia could overtake the US to be the second-largest democracy measured by committed voters.

 

There’ll be elections in the US and RI next year. The Western media is focusing on the distant race to the Washington White House, not the Jakarta Palace, though what happens next door could be critical for Australia.

 

Indonesian voters have embraced their rights only to be let down by leaders creating a ‘flawed democracy’ according to the Economist Intelligence Unit; nations in this group fail on pluralism, civil liberties, press freedom and political culture.

 

A major problem for Indonesia is ‘the stunted development of a clearly identifiable party opposition’. Small parties form strange coalitions with once bitter opponents, negating their ability to criticise.

 

Indonesians joke bitterly that their representatives’ principles are 5D - datang, duduk, diam, dapat duit - they come, sit down, shut up - and get paid.

 

Such cynicism would dissipate should members of the 575-strong  Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Republik Indonesia, (DPR - House of Representatives) - demonstrate altruism, a hope not confined to this nation.

 

The present president Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo was elected for a five-year term in 2014 and again in 2019. Attempts to get another stay failed in the courts.

 

Overall he’s done a reasonable job, particularly with infrastructure, health insurance, thumping terrorism and helping the poor. Reuters reported his approval rating recently hit an all-time high of 76.2 per cent, but this has more to do with personality than policy.

Source:  Jakarta Post

 

Slim Jokowi (left) is the archetypal laid-back nationalistic Javanese, mildly Islamic with a mix of traditional faiths. Politically he’s socialist favouring state-owned enterprises, emotionally controlled and deliberately ambiguous in his pronouncements.

 

 He came from a poor riverbank family with no ties to the military or Jakarta elite but has now created a dynasty with his three children in politics. What he hasn’t done is focus on the intangibles.

 

A report by two Australian academics, claims that: ‘The quality of Indonesian democracy has noticeably declined as the country continues to struggle with challenges to its democratic institutions and values, with systemic corruption and discrimination and violence against minority groups.’

 

The big ballot will be on 14 February. At this stage, it looks like a three-way punch-up between Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, former Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan and Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto.

 

If there’s no overall majority, there’ll be a run-off between the top two, probably Ganjar and Prabowo. 

 

Australian academic Tim Lindsey writes that politicians ‘getting and maintaining power … is absolutely a domestic issue – because Indonesians look inwards.’

 

Ganjar is backed by the centre-left Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). The name is a misnomer. It’s the fiefdom of Megawati Soekarnoputri, 76, daughter of founding president Soekarno who died in 1971.

 

British Council research showed 52 per cent of Indonesia’s population ‘consists of young people between ages 18 and 39 years old, spanning both Millennial and Gen Z generations; Indonesia’s youth will shape the nation’s future.’

 

On paper, this looks like Anies’ mob. The 54-year-old has a PhD from the US and before entering politics was a university rector. He was handpicked by Jokowi as Education Minister, a job he held for less than two years, then sacked - apparently for being incandescent among dullards and proposing reforms reckoned too radical.

 

Ganjar has no international profile. His politics are domestic. As only the minority elite worry about foreign affairs, he plays on being Jokowi 2.

 

That means maintaining plans on shifting the capital Jakarta to East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo and building more toll roads and ports.

 

Human rights were never in Jokowi’s bag and absent from Ganjar’s - not through ideology but indifference. Intangibles don’t win votes in Indonesia.

 

Certainly not with Prabowo whose record as Special Forces Commander last century crushing dissent includes allegations of kidnapping and killing that should have had him on trial.

 

Instead, he’s back in with a chance thanks to being given a ministry by his opponent Jokowi and bankrolled by his dollar-billionaire brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo. He chairs his political creation - Gerindra (Great Indonesia Party), with the stomp of Trump’s MAGA movement in every Mussolini-style parade.

 

Prabowo appeals to the hard right, relics of the Soeharto era, content for the military to fix all problems so citizens needn’t bother with complex social ills. 

 

 During the 1983-85 military clean-up Petrus (penembak misterius mysterious shooter) campaign, citizens woke to find the bullet-shredded corpses of real or imagined criminals left in their streets. One estimate puts the slaughter above 10,000.

 

No arrests, courts, defence lawyers and all that rule-of-law namby-pamby. One US academic called Petrus ‘prophylactic murder’.

 

Prabowo wants the army, which used to control the police, to expand its power domestically.

 

If Indonesia reverts to a brutal autocracy the impact on trade, investment, security and defence planning would be damaging, hastening the turn back to the Anglosphere and farewell Julia Gillard’s Asian Century. That’s if it hasn’t left Australian air space already.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 18 May 2023:

https://johnmenadue.com/indonesians-embrace-democracy-but-do-its-leaders/

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