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| Which one looks like a miliary man? |
The paperwork signing late last month by Defence Minister Richard Marles (left) and his Indonesian counterpart Prabowo Subianto in Magelang (Central Java) is being paraded as an extraordinary advance in relationships. It’s not.
Why is this dud deal being sold like a Nobel Prize? Because scores of news outlets here and overseas are cutting-and-pasting press releases. In effect, much media has become a PR team for the government betraying voters.
Some facts to underpin this shameful assertion:
For the past two years, bureaucrats have been to-ing and fro-ing with the Australia-Indonesia Defence Cooperation Arrangement. Now ratified, it has become an “agreement”.
We, the Fourth Estate, aka chooks (as former Queensland Premier, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen called us hacks), haven’t had a peep inside the thick covers and so have to take what’s fed.
Something more nutritious may come if independent experts get the full text to decode definitions and reveal what we’ve sold to appease our huge neighbour.
Marles’ media says the deal is about complex joint activities and exercises. The two militaries can “operate from each other’s countries for mutually determined cooperative activities” and swap soldiers for education and training in science and technology, though these are not disciplines where Indonesia is internationally admired.
Much hullabaloo so the lads can don camouflage and play in the same sandpit – something they’ve done before and are doing now.
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| Fellow journos, unarmed, doing their job, murdered by RI soldiers |
Through design or coincidence, that signing night ABC Australia telecast the 90-minute documentary Circle of Silence with Indonesian subtitles. It’s the story of the Balibo Five journalists in East Timor, killed in 1975 by Indonesian soldiers who knew the men were reporters.
Marles’ opposite number is also president-elect and will take over in October. He’s a former general with a dark past allegedly involving human rights abuses.
Researcher Pat Walsh, who was involved with the East Timor truth commission report, Chega! wrote: “As a member then a commander of Kopassus, Prabowo undertook at least four tours of duty in East Timor… (he was) anything but an innocent or bit player.
“Kopassus is the Indonesian military’s secretive ‘special operations’ force. It specialises in unconventional warfare, counter-insurgency, intelligence gathering and anti-terrorism.
“In plain English, locals are recruited and bribed to do Kopassus’s dirty work and, if necessary, to take the blame.”
(It is not suggested that Prabowo killed the Balibo Five. He has never been charged with war crimes.)
In 1998, he was cashiered for disobeying orders so he ran away to exile in Jordan. That fact has rarely been mentioned since he was convincingly elected in February with a 58% majority.
Ten days before the Magelang signing, Prabowo came to Canberra, ostensibly to approve the “arrangement”. But according to the AFR’s James Curran, his real mission was for “more Australian involvement in the Indonesian economy, especially in agriculture and countering narcotics”.
Apart from watching body language and facial expressions, why did any media bother to front the Canberra show? Journos were told “no questions”, suggesting the ministers fear inquiries and are unable to be straight with their employers, the public.
The men’s minders know any professional would ask Prabowo about blood on his hands, and his resulting fury would destroy the “arrangement”.
Transcribed texts show the two sides are not on the same page.
Marles said it was “profoundly historic” and “the deepest, the most significant agreement that our two countries have ever made”.
Profoundly nonsensical. In 1995, former prime minister Paul Keating secretly signed the Agreement on Maintaining Security with dictator and second president Soeharto.
That was a biggie, though four years later it was shredded by his successor, Bacharuddin Jusuf ‘BJ’ Habibie. He was furious the Australian-led peacekeeping force had entered Timor after the people had voted 8-2 to free themselves from Indonesian control.
Marles and Anthony Albanese said four times that their “arrangement” was about “security”. Prabowo used the word once and prefaced it with “food”. The best label he could muster was a “good neighbour agreement”.
Apart from language slippage, what’s not mentioned in diplomatic back-slaps is often more important. Absent was Australia’s new agreement with the US for their fighters, bombers and spy planes to use NT bases.
Also not in the handouts was Indonesia’s proposed law to let “active-duty personnel hold positions in civilian government ministries and agencies”.
If passed, the Republic will return to the last century dwifungsi (dual function) policy of soldiers controlling domestic departments irrespective of their skills and merits. (In most Western democracies civilian and military affairs are kept apart.)
Also ignored was the Indonesian military’s actions in West Papua, a prolonged and brutal campaign against independence seekers that’s allegedly taken thousands of lives.
Instead, Prabowo stressed that whatever subtexts might be imagined, there would be no revision of the county’s neutrality:
“As you know we are, by tradition, non-aligned. By tradition, our people do not want us to be involved in any geopolitical or military alliances or groupings. I myself, am determined to continue this policy.”
If Indonesians thought their nation was secretly sliding into the US camp through a deal with the region’s “deputy sheriff”, riots would result and Marles’ arrangement trashed.
He’s already crept close. In The Washington Post the Marles reportedly said: “We’re working together (with the US) to deter future conflict and to provide for the collective security of the region in which we live.”
While many elsewhere-based reporters parroted Marles media, The Australian’s Jakarta correspondent Amanda Hodge got her cautions buried on page four but accurately reflected the Jakarta view that the arrangement falls “well short of a mutual security guarantee” and without the weight of a “visiting forces agreement”.
Another realist was the ABC’s Stephen Dziedzic, noting Prabowo only said the two countries had made “great progress” in “ironing out legalistic details” in the arrangement. That’s the job negotiators are paid to perform.
While Marles was in Central Java about 200 Australian troops were dashing around East Java’s north coast in the two-week Super Garuda Shield exercises. Also with the Diggers are almost 2,000 US Marines, supposedly thinking about cyber threats plus toys that go bang.
In the smog of industrial Sidoarjo are sweating soldiers from NZ, Singapore, Canada, France, Thailand and the UK. Not China this time, though the PRC participated in 2009.
Before The Australian implies this means Indonesia is in the Western camp and the signings aimed at “countering growing Chinese threats”, Lachlan Murdoch should know this:
The annual fun-with-guns games have been underway since 2006; next year Beijing’s troops will be starring in yet another “bilateral training exercise”.
If this wasn’t so serious, the idea of Grunts helping Indonesia, then their Chinese equivalents doing the same thing would be a fine film plot. Title suggestion: Dancing with Demagogues.
First published in Pearls & Irritations, 4 September 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/never-mind-the-quality-feel-the-words/
https://johnmenadue.com/never-mind-the-quality-feel-the-words/
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