INDONESIA'S CURSE - THE KKN GORGONS

 

LOOMING NOW: THE AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

There’ll soon be a new leader next door – ageing hardliner Prabowo Subianto.  He’s           Indonesia’s dark lord with a worrying past of alleged human rights abuses, yet overwhelmingly elected in the February national poll.  He’ll take over on 20 October.

Some expect the change from the calming Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo to be seamless.  Others fear his tough guy successor will drive out democracy from the world’s fourth most populous     nation and return to a military-led autocracy – as in last century.

What will Jokowi hand-over after two five-year terms in power? Some differences are huge,

A trip between the East Java capital Surabaya and the province’s major hill city Malang through congested villages was once a five-hour ordeal.  Now the 80-kilometre journey on a toll road takes about an hour, thanks to Pak Infrastruktur.

Since 2014 Jokowi's government put down 2,700 km of bitumen at a dazzling pace using 24/7 Chinese labour and loans; the present debt is reportedly US$27.5 billion.

Projects involving national highways, village roads, airports and dams were all                transformative, speeding trade.  During his decade the population grew by 27 million.  The natural increase matches the number of people living in Australia.

Jokowi in a hard hat symbolised a shovelling aside of the avalanches of blocking bureaucracy.  He dug through by treating the government like a business and finding big backers, mainly from Beijing.

Another achievement already introduced but rapidly enlarged is the national insurance health system.  It has serious flaws as the industry exploits its many weaknesses, but it remains an essential helping ease worries about paying for medical care.

Then came nationalism.  Jokowi’s government peacefully negotiated control of the huge gold and copper Freeport mine in West Papua from the US owners and now has 51 per cent of the company.

Foreign affairs was left to career diplomat Retno Marsudi, a lady of no great achievements.  She’s off to the UN so Prabowo has to find another FM, hopefully a civilian.

All good - but Jokowi’s legacy has been clawed by Indonesia’s Gorgons – Korupsi, Kolusi, Nepotisme.

For Jokowi did dirty deals to keep his family in power ripping his reputation as humble Mr Clean  from a riverside mudbank shack.  His PR story claims he’s a clever climber who got to the top without carrying a rifle or wearing Muslim robes. Nor was he carrying the genes of a feudal Sultanate.

 What he did have then and now is a mentor – US educated former four-star general turned  businessman and prominent Protestant Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, 77.

Officially he’s Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment but on the street he’s Prince Regent and Lord Luhut, titles that infuriate.  He sued two sniggers for defamation and lost.

Before Jokowi became a poli he partnered with Luhut in a furniture export deal. The younger man got into public life through the mayoralty of the small Central Java city of Solo, then as governor of Jakarta.

Jokowi was seen as pure Javanese, socially low key and physically slim; an ideal model for the nation’s marvellous batik shirts, but insufficiently sinewy to wear the uniform of office. His rank was popularity and here he had five stars.

In 2015 he took then-PM Malcolm Turnbull on a blusukan (walkabout) of public markets.  That happy scene is for the archives.  Today Prabowo is into media control.  He waves from jeeps and shuns the media apart from one awkward tussle with Al Jazeera.

There’ll be little access for independent journos ahead, so anticipate few facts but many rumours.

Only skilled cultural anthropologists noted the kid from the kampung was enigmatic and surreptitiously devious, offering ambiguous “why not?” answers to journo’s questions.

Like Icarus he forgot the altimeter.  Denied under the Constitution to extend his stay he used his brother-in-law, a Supreme Court judge to bypass age rules.  That let his eldest son Gibran stand for office and win the vice presidency.  Jokowi’s cleanskin reputation was flayed nationally - likewise his lad’s.

Old social media accounts allegedly published by Gibran rubbishing Prabowo during his earlier tries for the top job have been dismissed as fakes, but the damaging scuttlebutt has spread.

Prabowo is certainly a worry, and not just to his sidekick.   Australian researcher of military crimes in East Timor Pat Walsh has asked if he’s a “fit and proper person” to be president, detailing the commander’s actions in the former Indonesian province. Walsh concluded “no”.

In 1998 Prabowo was cashiered for disobeying orders. That was amid the revolution which saw the authoritarian Soeharto quit the presidency after 32 years of despotic rule.

Prabowo fled to exile in Jordan following his divorce from Soeharto's daughter Siti. He publicly returned in 2008 after his former father-in-law died but failed to get into politics via  any established organisation.

So he started Gerindra (Great Indonesia Movement), now the third largest party. Calling it right-wing is too simplistic. It’s certainly bombastically nationalistic and carries a whiff of fascism along with contradictory social benefit programmes like free lunches for school kids.

Once hostile minor parties are now clamouring to bed down in Prabowo’s coalition and suckle the teats of power leaving the government to face no opposition.

Helped by a mainly partisan media Prabowo’s people have been erasing mentions of his alleged human rights abuses .  These awkward stories that he dismisses or denies saw him refused entry to the US and Australia earlier this century.

Indonesia street stalls are already selling photoshopped official portraits of the upcoming leaders to mount on lounge walls.  The 73-year old has shed wrinkles; his 38-year deputy has garnered wisdom lines.

An ANU conference of students and scholars in September held an Indonesia Update: How Jokowi changed Indonesia.

Their predictions of Prabowo’s rule run from maybe a matured reformist to the baton-master of Soeharto Mark Two and the flight of what’s left of democracy.  Most agree he’s a chameleon. ANU Associate Professor Marcus Mietzner reportedly said:

“Widodo’s enduring mark on his country may well be his decision and ability to put Prabowo into the presidency after defeating him twice and questioning his abilities.”

To a Westerner raised in the culture of confrontational politics the idea of a winning leader appointing his twice-defeated bitter rival as Minister of Defence sounds as whacky as eating cats - or a splendid example of forgiveness by a Muslim that Christians might emulate.

Whatever, Jokowi’s endorsement has propelled Prabowo into power tethered to Gibran to keep an eye on Daddy’s Nusantara – the new capital on Borneo Island. There are already hints that Prabowo’s not too keen on finding the cash.

Once in control the prez may send his VP into a dead-end job, like encouraging shy investors to rethink Pappa’s project. 

We don’t know – and neither do the bemused ANU conference experts, as confused as those who live in the archipelago.  Expect a political future as changeable as the climate – an age of uncertainty.

##

  First published in Pearls & Irritations 30 September 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/looming-now-in-indonesia-the-age-of-uncertainty/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NZ PILOT RELEASED IN WEST PAPUA

 UPDATE

Half a day after this story was published the NZ pilot Phillip Mehrtens was released unharmed.  This is a great outcome for Phil, his family and all humanitarians.  Many feared a bloodbath with the hostage killed in an ‘accidental crossfire’ twixt the Indonesian army and the rebels.  The fact that didn’t happen adds some hope that the crisis is edging towards a solution.

THE SHAMEFUL SILENT WAR NEXT DOOR                                      

 

Why doesn’t the Australian government condemn a brutal guerilla war next door?  Largely because Canberra handles brittle Indonesia tenderly lest it snaps off trade and security deals with its spacious but under-occupied neighbour. 

Raw facts drive policy harder than moral values. The population ratio is 11 Indonesians to every Aussie.  Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous nation and has more Muslims than any other country.

Tribesman archers versus chopper gunships don’t top news bulletins because Western journalists are banned from the resource-rich Indonesian provinces collectively known as West Papua. Reporters can rarely verify stories of killings, starvation, torture and discrimination in the largely Christian province.

Now the allegations are hardening.

A sober but scathing report by the US-based independent NGO Human Rights Watch launched in Jakarta on Thursday carries authority because the checking appears thorough and the sources referenced.  It is directed at the Indonesian Government and the UN.

The 76-page document printed in the US is titled If it’s not racism, what is it?  Lead author Andreas Harsono (left) said HRW staff spent almost five years “conducting 49 in-depth interviews with Papuan activists,” who’d been arrested and prosecuted. “In addition, we interviewed lawyers, academics, officials and church leaders. Informants weren’t paid.”

Jakarta took over the western half of the tropical mountainous island of New Guinea from the colonial Dutch after a flawed referendum in 1969. According to four Australian academic researchers including a former AFP investigator, “hundreds of thousands” have died through fighting and starvation since 1,025 hand-picked locals voted to join the Republic.

Papuan preacher Rev Ronald Tapilatu (below) told Michael West Media he was certain that most of the two million ethnic Melanesians wanted independence but didn’t sanction violence:

“The Indonesian government wants the issue to be domestic, but until it gets widespread international coverage little will change.”

Global interest essential for change

Before she became Foreign Minister Senator Penny Wong revealed that Labor was distressed by “human rights violations” in West Papua. 

As reported earlier on this website, Deputy PM Richard Marles stressed no Australian support for independence.

Swedish and German Embassy staff were at the HRW report launch but no one from the Australian Embassy registered. The UN resident coordinator Valerie Julliand was also absent.   She was kicked out of Indonesia last December reportedly for criticising HR issues in Papua. 

Ironically Indonesia is a member of the UN Human Rights Council until 2026. It says its aim is to “intensify human rights dialogue at global and regional levels, and bolster the implementation of universal human rights values.”

The villainy is not single-sided

Six years ago, 19 civilian road builders were ambushed and killed. This August independence fighters allegedly murdered Kiwi chopper pilot Glen Conning; he was flying for an Indonesian company ferrying local health workers who were unharmed.

Another NZ pilot Phillip Mehrtens was seized early last year by the West Papua National Liberation Army.  He's said to be alive and held hostage.  The group denies shooting Conning and has hinted at military involvement.

HRW researchers using multiple languages gathered info in many locations including Surabaya, the capital of East Java and the nation's second-largest city. Riots here in 2019 followed an attack on a Papuan student dorm by “militant nationalists and security forces”. 

They were reportedly angered by the display of the Morning Star independence flag. Under Indonesian law, offenders face up to 20 years jail time.

Forty-three Surabaya students were arrested for supporting the Papuan Lives Matter movement that’s based on the US social crusade Black Lives Matter.  After the police action which included much racial abuse, violence erupted in 33 Indonesian cities. Houses and cars were firebombed.

Like Marles, the HRW report stresses it “takes no position on claims for independence… We support the right of everyone to peacefully express their political views … without fear of arrest or other forms of reprisal.

“The Indonesian government has legitimate security concerns in West Papua stemming from Papuan militant attacks.”

Unlike Marles, HRW adds a rider: “But these do not justify the government's failure to uphold international human rights and humanitarian law prohibitions against arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and ill-treatment of persons in custody, and unlawful killings.”

When former Jakarta Governor and one-time furniture exporter Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo was elected president in 2014 many assumed he’d be Mr Fixit. Because he had no military background it was expected he’d tackle the West Papua issue with diplomacy.

Instead, he left the task to the army way of violence, more troops and air power. Along with the bombs and bullets disinformation and misinformation campaigns have been run against poorly organised small gangs at first using pre-gunpowder weapons.

Now they’re getting a few modern arms, some ostensibly sold by corrupt soldiers. 

The HRW document’s 18 recommendations call for open access to the province by foreign observers, an end to discrimination, accepting the right to peaceful protest and Indonesian security forces following international rules and protocols when dealing with dissent.

The chances of brittle Jakarta politicians taking notice of what it will see as Western outrage are slim.  HRW sent a copy of its findings to Vice President Ma’ruf Amin in June and talked to his staff, but said there was no response.

Living conditions in West Papua should shake any conscience

Overseas academic reports estimate that between 60,000 and 100,000 people have been internally displaced in the past six years.  Malnutrition is rife and child and mother mortality rates are the highest across Indonesia; life expectancy is the lowest.

Yet these wretchedly poor people, the crushed indigenous owners, are literally living on a mountain of gold.  If there’s ever a case for equal distribution of wealth West Papua could be the global example of moral economics and Indonesia would deserve to win its first Nobel Prize.

That won’t happen because the Indonesian do-nothing position is bolstered by interests so big and powerful they could crush countries. The Grasberg mine in Central Papua has ‘proven and probable reserves of 15.1 million ounces of gold.’ That makes it the world’s biggest deposit of the precious mineral now fetching peak prices – currently $2,570 an ounce.

The mines are run by the Indonesian Government and the US company Freeport-McMoRan.  The gross profit for the year to 30 June was US $7.816 billion, a 23.97 per cent jump year-over-year.

There’s little sympathy across Java for the independence activists widely damned as terrorists and traitors by a largely biased media.  Attempts to crush the rebels could get tougher when disgraced former general Prabowo Subianto becomes president next month. 

Indonesia has about 400,000 men and 30,000 women in uniform, and an equal number of reservists.  Rev Tapilatu estimated 10,000  troops are in West Papua on rotation.

In 1996 Prabowo led a special forces operation to free a group of Indonesian and foreign biologists taken hostage in West Papua.  The military used a disguised Red Cross chopper that had been used in peace negotiations to ferry troops, violating the rules of the international agency’s independence.  

His record of alleged human rights abuses when he served in East Timor last century suggests a bloodless settlement in West Papua is unlikely.

##

First published in Michael West Media 21 September  2024:

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://michaelwest.com.au/silence-on-indonesia-west-papua-atrocities/&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoTOTg3NDkxMjA0NTI2MDA2NzI2ODIcZTgwNDZlM2MwOTUxMjY4ODpjb206ZW46QVU6Ug&usg=AOvVaw1xx00b5yxbmfMWNbS9Yr4W

 

DOING IT THE BOAZ WAY

 FRIEDMAN IN INDONESIA: BOAZ OFFERS A NEW APPROACH                                              

There are 25 million poor in Indonesia living on AUD 3 a day or less. Should outsiders help and if so, how?

The answer’s clear for American economist Dr Charles ‘Chuck’ Nicholson who reckons governments should butt out of the aid business: “Public officials achieve little and tend to become perpetuators of bureaucracy.  They can’t address poverty – only individuals can do that.”

The self-styled "libertarian and definitely a free marketeer" says he’s spent almost 30 years refining his ideas and getting his principles to work in Indonesia.  Now he reckons he’s mastered a model that fits and that he plans to spread.

He runs Sunrei Food Products, a commercial dried fruit business in East Java linked to a training charity; together they’re The Boaz Project.  More of this later.

After teaching English in Indonesia, he returned to study.  His PhD thesis was on irrigation in Vietnam; he spent months seeing the defects of centralised control, hardening his anti-government resolve.

He became a disciple of the works of economist and Nobel Prize laureate Milton Friedman (1912-2006) and adopted his philosophy:

"We may want to help poor people. Not as a means of redistributing income but as a way of helping people who are in trouble and are poor. If possible, the ideal way would be through private activities and private charities.”

There’s a religious flavour in Nicholson’s venture though he says there’s no proselytising among the all-Muslim workforce and not a crucifix in sight. The hint is in the title. Boaz was an Old Testament landholder who helped the striving poor. 

This tale supposedly  implies the Deity wants Christian business people to use their resources “in a wise and generous manner.”  Said Nicholson: “Right and justice are the foundations of my goal. That thinking is also in the Koran.” 

Keeping governments at bay is impossible in a nation that strongly rejects the idea it’s socialist yet has more than 100 State-owned enterprises.

Sceptics would expect strife when Western faith-based idealism moves into a country with almost 90 per cent Sunni Muslims.  But it seems there’s no friction at Sunrei, probably because Nicholson’s style is respectful and he speaks Indonesian.

 His prime advice to foreigners should cheer academics frustrated that Indonesian classes are shrinking: “If you want to start a business here be flexible and patient; but first learn the language.”

And the politics: Nicholson was too diplomatic to comment but knows well the Republic is infamous for worsening KKN – Korupsi, Kolusi, Nepotisme.  The rule of law can be bent with an envelope while rogue officials shake down foreign ventures for taxes and controls not applied to indigenous ventures.

Covid crashed Sunrei’s already small annual profit from AUD 80,000 to below 10,000, yet they got through and completed a spacious and modern two-level plant. The products are packaged to Western supermarket standards and sold on-line, though not yet exported.

The factory is close to orchards on the slopes of the  Arjuno-Welirang stratovolcano that fills the horizon. The company is coupled with a local-run charity Yayasan Bina Manusia Seutuhnya (Building the Whole Person Foundation) to “advance a social enterprise agenda.”

YBMS trains staff to “increase work ethics, enhances interpersonal skills and raises competency in dealing with life issues.”  Nicholson insists these aren’t alien to local culture.

Sunrei employs women recruited through the foundation to slice and dry mangoes and men to heave and haul.  It’s seasonal work and they get the government-stipulated basic wage of around AUD 330 a month. The last call for workers had a queue of 200.

The whole outfit could be a showpiece for foreign investors who’ve been earbashed about potential by guys in ties who’ve never worn work boots. Ensuring Boaz will survive when Nicholson – now in his mid-60s - goes is an issue he’s pondering.

The project so far has cost AUD 1.64 million raised from about 300 US donors – some hoping their money will become an investment. Nicholson goes on speaking tours.  In a prospectus to find AUD 275,000 "for expansion," he nudges the right’s wallets:

“Government programs funded through taxation, burden unknowing citizens to provide benefits to others. Private donations … represent a fully transparent and fully voluntary method of addressing poverty. It provides the best way of contributing to the needs of those who have less.

“Only by reducing the costs of doing business will poverty-stricken areas attract investment and remedy generational poverty. The Boaz Project has a plan to reduce the cost of collaboration - the cost which is born by investors and businessmen (sic) when they attempt to work with those who are hard to work with.”

For populists that cost includes governments while pluralists claim they’re essential. Nicholson’s model might be worth a closer look by both sides. The poor need cash, not the ideologies of foreign aid donors.

First published in Indonesia at Melbourne, 20 September 2024: 

https://indonesiaatmelbourne.unimelb.edu.au/friedman-in-indonesia-boaz-offers-new-approach/

LISTEN TO THE LAND - IT SPEAKS

 REINVENTING THE POLITICS OF FOOD                                                  Duncan Graham 

Indonesian farmers are vanishing fast. Once the majority in the workforce, their produce was essential for stomachs and politics.  Founding President Soekarno was blunt: Food security was "a matter of life and death". 

Meals are more than avoiding hunger. If the land doesn’t yield enough, traders hoard and retailers ramp prices; food riots can topple governments. 

Farmers provide the world with "most of its healthy food acting from a sense of moral commitment to the communities of which they are a part." 

This dedication by the authors of Small Farmers for Global Food Security starts their collection of studies that “charter the demise and reinvention of moral ecologies in Indonesia.” 

It's a curious phrase.  Anthropologists Thomas Reuter (Melbourne University) and Graeme MacRae (NZ’s Massey University) define ecologies as a means of survival that “need to be sustainable if they’re to last.”    

That's agriculture and not to be devalued. Chewing magnetite doesn't build Iron Man muscles. 

Mining can keep us in pocket for a while but ores are finite and the business is fickle. Nickel quarries in Australia are closing because Indonesian companies powered by Chinese money produce cheaper ore.  

Here’s the moral bit: "An almost universal respect for land … embodied in rituals of gratitude, practices of conservation and ideologies of reciprocity with natural systems ... often mediated by divine agents." 

Though largely belittled in a society worshipping status (some Indonesian men grow a long fingernail to show they don't toil for a living), the sowers and reapers are the feeders.  

The practical comes with Sembako, a contraction of sembilan bahan pokok (nine essential foodstuffs) decreed by the Soeharto government last century to try and keep grains flowing and prices under control.   

Modern nutritionists are critical of Sembako - rice, sugar, cooking oil, meat, eggs, milk, corn, LPG, and salt. We now know filling can be unhealthy living. 

As in most Southeast Asian countries rice remains the basic.  In the past, a mighty carved hardwood chest (lumbung padi - domestic granary) was an Indonesian kitchen centrepiece.  Communities had barns.   

Now the government controls supplies through Bulog, the national logistics agency that runs warehouses across the country. 

 Australians are familiar with giant silos dominating Wheatbelt towns, road trains and mechanical elevators.  By comparison, Indonesia's storage and transport system appears primitive and inefficient as the grain is packed in 50kg sacks lugged manually.   

Bulog is often in the general news pages assuring consumers there's plenty of rice - even though much is now imported, usually from Thailand and Vietnam. 

Nationalists consider this shameful; in the early years of independence, the Republic was an exporter. The shrinkage of available land has crippled the idea of Indonesia as a country that can feed its own. 

The dwindling number of farm labourers left are best seen around sunup, pedalling or motorbiking on clap-trap machines. The women come later to pick, wash and pack. 

The workers are poor and their gear is simple: A shouldered hoe, a sickle across the handlebars, and a backpack sprayer, the only tool of modernity.  The rest are the same as those used centuries past. 

East Java’s independent small farmers till some of the richest land in the world, fertilised by volcanic ash falling like snow, irrigated by complex and ancient waterways.  Some areas are capable of three crops a year. 

Blocks are usually less than a hectare, enough to keep granddads busy but not feed their families. 

Younger men are rare; they’re usually on motorbikes in the city ferrying kids to school and adults to eight-hour air-con office jobs.   

Who'd want to dig and hoe, spray and harvest whatever the weather, hour or day? There's more comfort and money and no mud in the spreading concrete paddocks of housing and factories sealing nature forever. 

Socialism is a dirty word in Indonesia, though widely practised, the state forcefully interfering whenever it can. 

When the overuse of insecticides killed the natural predators of plant hoppers destroying rice, Jakarta introduced Farmer Field Schools to educate growers about handling plagues. 

All good until funds dried up, the bureaucrats departed and the pests returned.   

The book tells that Reformation (1998) brought some liberation from Jakarta centrality; farmers encouraged by better-educated local community leaders started to lose their feelings of inferiority. 

Now they’re mixing modern discoveries with ancient wisdoms, tossing aside government orders on how to better production. 

Top-down policies have failed, but bottom-up ideas are getting traction. 

‘Sustainability’, ‘bio-diversity’ and ‘climate change’ are entering village vocabularies, say the authors.  Organic farming is booming, driven by growers responding to market needs.  

Cooperation with other like-minded groups and networking are all made easier through social media. 

However, the problems with certification that troubled Australian producers in the early years of the movement, remain in Indonesia. 

Trusted official agencies are rare. The cost of getting a crop approved turns poor farmers away. The use of new strains of seeds and chemicals is constrained by suspicions that the national government is linked with  Big Agro. 

 Reuter and MacRae claim distrust has been lessening with the current Joko Widodo government, “which appears to be, for the first time, on the side of the farmers”. 

But how many are left? Late last century the population divide was 60-40 per cent in favour of rural areas.  Now it's reversed. 

In those 25 years, more than 40 million people have arrived.  Australia expands through immigration and natural growth - in Indonesia, it's only the latter and worryingly fast. 

The future of Indonesian agriculture is far more complex than keeping supply lines open and people in the paddy.  This book reveals the clumsiness of official policies as powerful agencies try to change and control the ways wee folk keep the world alive. 

Changes in Indonesian farming illustrate the benefits of  better yields  - and the downsides.  Pesticides and machines kill weeds but can also destroy jobs, lifestyles and community cohesion.

For our shelves and tables to stay laden with nutritious foods, hear this book's message: Take great care with change.  Think widely. Innovation, respect for the land and its custodians are as vital as new seeds and systems.

Small Farmers is published in Indonesian by Obor and in English by Cambridge Scholars. 

First published in Australian Outlook, 16 September 2024: 

https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/book-review-small-farmers-for-global-food-security/

RETURNING STOLEN GOODS HELPS DELETE GUILT

 

THE CURSED STONE RESISTS RETURN       

            

            Picture:  Dr Peter Carey

In an age of logic and evidence-based reasoning, modern research has revealed a thousand-year curse.  It could be stopping the superstitious and spiritually-conscious Javanese from vigorously striving to return a thieved “emblem of Indonesian cultural heritage.”

At first glance it's a ridiculous assertion.  But apart from a sudden surge of greed eroding goodwill, how else to explain rehabilitation failure when all parties have been willing?

In a Scottish cottage garden stands a 3.5-tonne stela, a man-high slab much like a gravestone, though there’s no body buried beneath – only the corpse of government resolve.

Indonesians call it Prasasti (inscription) Sangguran; the West label is prosaic - the Minto Stone.

Set on the southern slopes of Arjuno-Welirang in East Java it was consecrated during a Hindu feast on 2 August 928 AD, long before Islam arrived in the archipelago.  Almost nine centuries later it was ripped from near the equator and replanted in cold Roxburghshire County close to the border with England.

This year three international scholars reported the need for its return as “one of the highest priorities among the artefacts which the Indonesian government hopes to bring home.”

The trio also re-translated the Sanskrit and Old Javanese inscriptions to reveal the violence to befall thieves and vandals:

“If there are evil people who do not obey and do not maintain the curse that has been uttered … then he will be hit by his karma.

“Cut down his snout, split his skull, rip open his belly, stretch out his intestines, draw out his entrails, tear out his liver, eat his flesh, drink his blood, without delay finish off.”

Scottish military engineer Colin Mackenzie who shipped the stone to Britain never got to display the monument to British imperialism.  He perished on the journey, though not through such horrendous villainy.

 The Malang regent who let the stone be taken also died unnaturally.  Stamford Raffles, the British Governor of the Dutch East Indies between 1811 and 1816 and who gave the stone to Mackenzie suffered much misfortune.

His wife Catherine died aged 41 (she’s buried in the Bogor Botanical Gardens) and four of his children were victims of tropical diseases. Raffles was felled by a stroke on his 45^th birthday.

There are now expanding global demands for thieved treasures to be returned to their sources. ABC TV is running a documentary series Stuff the British Stole about plunders by the Crown as it swept the world conquering, colonising and looting along the away.

 Australia is negotiating for the return of culturally sensitive Aboriginal artifacts – mainly paintings, weapons, sculptures and even human remains.  There are almost 40,000 objects held in 70 British and Irish museums as historians push the UK to settle its colonial past.

High Commissioner Stephen Smith has been quoted as saying the deals are “part of the modern relationship” between the two Commonwealth countries.

Indonesia has also called for its antiquities to come home through government-to-government deals. Last year the Netherlands sent back 472 artefacts.

The British rule of the Dutch East Indies was for only five years (1811–1816) but resulted in “a voluminous transfer of Indonesian cultural objects to Britain and India.”

Picture 19^th Century artist unknown

Among them the precious Javanese stela on the land of a British hereditary politician with a mouthful instead of a moniker, the seventh Earl of Minto, Timothy Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound.

He’s hosted philologists studying the writings and has apparently “shown openness to the idea of repatriating the artefact to Indonesia.”

However,  reports from 2015 say that after agreeing to gift the artefact he changed his mind, when told Prasasti Sangguran might fetch US $500,000 on the open market. Earlier there’d been talk of an offer of 50,000 British pounds. There were also suggestions it’s ‘owned’ by a family trust so Earl TEMK can’t do a personal deal.

The Indonesian government has balked at paying for what it believes is its own property instead proposing “an award, as well as accommodation costs in Indonesia if the nobleman wanted to see the place where the inscription was placed.”

The Earl has not replied to requests by this writer to clarify his intentions.

In 2021 the Indonesian Director General of History and Archaeology Hari Untoro Drajat told the media that the stone’s upcoming return had been “facilitated by the Hanyim Djojohadikusumo Foundation” (an Indonesian philanthropic organisation).  He said it would be placed in the National Museum in Jakarta.

Two years later  Khofifah Indar Parawansa, the Governor of East Java visited Scotland;  her office reported she “tried to repatriate or return the Sangguran Inscription”:

 "This inscription is an important source of information for all of us Indonesian people, especially in East Java. Because here is written the history of the transfer of the capital of Ancient Mataram to East Java.”

Khofifah did not reply to questions about her failure to recover the stone.

Last year a Glasgow University conference considered “the history of campaigns for the restitution of artefacts to Indonesia …  and the shifting parameters of national narratives.”  Organiser Dr  Adam Bobbette wrote of the inscription’s value in the study of climate change:

“The stones also have much to tell us about early modern Javanese ideas about environmental disaster and catastrophe.

“We feel that the repatriation of the Sangguran is vital to Indonesia’s postcolonial development … The research and repatriation campaign are ways to address historic legacies.”

British historian and author Dr Peter Carey who lives in Indonesia and has studied the inscription, said "there's no interest or will to send things back at this stage.”   

In the meantime the locals in Ngandat, just below Batu, have built a concrete replica under a spring-fed banyan tree.  It’s flanked by Indonesian national flags and painted with words in Old Javanese. Handfuls of half-burned incense sticks in pottery bowls around the base suggest pre-Islamic beliefs remain strong.

Caretaker Siswanto Galuh Aji said he hoped the site would become a place to teach history. The original Prasasti Sangguran stood about 500 metres away and most likely lies in the foundations of the Buddhist Dhammadipa Arama monastery that was built about 50 years ago.

If government officials get brave and right the wrong by bringing the stone home, that could reverse the curse, stay well and help Indonesia thrive. Doing nothing condemns. George Orwell wrote:

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

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Published in Pearls and Irritations: 14 September 2024:  https://johnmenadue.com/the-cursed-stone-resists-return/