WHEN COPS BECOME THE MAFIA

 

Sex, lies – but no videotape

 

 In happier times - the public image of  top cop Ferdy Sambo and his wife Putri

Governments love distractions and there’s a doozy gripping the people next door:  A lurid tabloid tale running for five weeks and counting is keeping electors focussed on spice rather than the erosion of democracy and corruption controls.

The story so far: It’s jerry-built on quicksands so will have shifted between keyboard and digitisation. Apologies for reading like the Daily Mail:

Late afternoon on 8 July a cop kills a comrade in the house of their boss Ferdy Sambo, whose wife may have been a lady of interest to the lower ranks. Officials said ‘self-defence’, but this explanation was too facile.

The latest version has Sambo, 49, (head of Internal Affairs and a two-star general) ordering a subordinate to kill his aide-de-camp and then spray the walls with bullets to suggest a gunfight. Curiously the building’s CCTV cameras weren’t working. Arrests and inquiries continue. 

Without a sub judice rule curbing discussion beyond a courtroom, public speculation has gone feral.  False facts, as Trump would say, dash hither and thither like sheep when yard gates swing free.

Around 30 officers have been fingered amid unproven claims a mafia group has been running rackets.  As this is Indonesia, religion is stirring the pot.   The victim was a Protestant Batak, a North Sumatra ethnic group not known for shyness.  His family has been relentless in demanding answers.

President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo seems to understand the problem goes beyond a smutty scandal: ‘I don’t want this case to erode public trust in the police … We need to maintain its reputation at all costs.’

Fair enough if the cops were overall upright so the tragedy could be labelled an aberration, the one-rotten-apple excuse. This fruity metaphor fails because the barrel is blemished. 

Goodwill is waning as gendarmes in beribboned khaki fudge questions from incredulous reporters. This stop-everything TV is outrating sinetron (soap operas) - scriptos wouldn’t risk such a salacious plot. The motive for the murder should only be heard by adults, said the censorious Chief Security Minister Mohammad Mahfud.

But Indonesian kiddies aren’t unworldly, learning early that if they want to know the time they should never ask a policeman. An old joke has a man reporting the theft of a goat.  The police investigation is so corrupt the farmer ends up losing his cow.

Widodo was raised in an era when foreign books were considered subversive, so may not have encountered the Roman satirical poet Juvenal’s question Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchman?) It remains as relevant today as it did in the second century.

The police investigate their own as they often do in Australia; getting the law enforcers’ cast iron culture to bend to civilian oversight will take a furnace of prolonged determination.

Churchill’s philosophy of never letting a good crisis go to waste is being followed by Widodo.  While the purring voters have been lapping sleaze on the veranda, his government has been quietly strangling democracy in the backyard.

After more than three decades of officials thieving from the public purse, the Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (anti-Corruption Commission), was formed in 2003 to prevent and fight corruption, which it did with gusto, warrantless wiretaps and sting ops. 

Six years later the NY Times reported the KPK had ‘investigated, prosecuted and achieved a 100-per cent conviction rate in 86 cases of bribery and graft related to government procurements and budgets.’

The individuals involved included ‘high-ranking businessmen, bureaucrats, bankers, governors, diplomats, lawmakers, prosecutors, police officials and other previously untouchable members of Indonesian society.’

In 2013 the KPK won the international Ramon Magsaysay Award for ‘integrity in governance, courageous service to the people, and pragmatic idealism within a democratic society.

Success has been its undoing.  Parliament revised the KPK law without consulting the agency and put a police general in charge. Students claimed the changes kneecapped the fight against corruption and turned out in huge demos. Their fury was reinforced by proposed code revisions to criminalize extramarital sex, abortion, and insulting the president.

Another law targets the electronic transmission of information that defames or affronts and has been used against journos. Student concerns are barely breathing, choked by widespread public feasting on the banquet now dubbed Sambo Rambo. At least it’s not Ferdygate.

The KPK has shifted from corruption eradication to prevention. Widodo has done nothing to halt the slide. When elected in 2014 his country ranked 38/100 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index.  There’s been no shift.

The NGO Indonesia Corruption Watch claimed ‘The KPK has now metamorphosed into an impaired government agency... it has lost the Sisyphean institutional battle to curb political corruption in Indonesia. It has become just another politically controlled auxiliary state agency.’

Widodo came to office in 2014 as a Mr Clean but soon showed more enthusiasm for development. Having no military background, he relies on hard army men to advise on the soft stuff of civil society.

With eyes elsewhere, Widodo’s guru and former general Luhut Panjaitan wants retired army officers to be assigned jobs in government ministries and institutions. 

This is a throwback to the authoritarian dwifungsi (dual socio-political function) system used last century to maintain the army’s influence.  It included military-only seats in the parliament and top positions in the public service.  It was abandoned early this century.

Further proof that old soldiers’ ambitions never die comes with Prabowo Subianto, 70, a former commanding general of  Kopassus (Special Forces) announcing another run for President in the 2024 elections. He’s lost two previous attempts.

A Brookings report claimed ‘There is now scholarly consensus that Indonesia’s democracy has not just stagnated but is regressing…. Strengthening institutions, particularly a strong civilian bureaucracy, free and active press, independent courts, and fair elections, will be critical in rolling back some of the illiberalism …’

That was written before the Sambo Rambo circus diverted eyes from the serious issue of rushing repression.

History repeats. Juvenal called it panem et circenses.  Give ‘em food and fun, then they won’t care about civics.  Correction:  Maybe Widodo has read the classics.

First published in Pearls & Irritations,19 August 2022: https://johnmenadue.com/sex-lies-but-no-videotape/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE WOUNDS WEEP STILL

 

       Indonesia’s unfinished business

 

Acknowledgements of Aboriginal land as preludes to formal events are now rarely contested,  a belated acceptance that Australia has a bloody history that needs to be publicly discussed as a move towards reconciliation.  Indonesia also has a grim past, but still shies from recognition – and healing.

August 17 is our neighbour’s Independence Day and the jingoism is over-the-top now pandemic restrictions have been binned.

There’s not a kampong, village or town which isn’t already so bedecked with red and white banners and bunting that buildings and trees can’t be seen. Triumphal archways make streetscapes look like sets from Aida.

 The joy started in July and won’t fade till this month is done and dusted. The big show should have been the 2020 semi-sesquicentennial marking the 1945 declaration of independence from Dutch colonialism and Japanese occupation.  Then Covid hit.

A bit of background to help the gory jigsaw pieces fit.

Two days after Japan surrendered in the Pacific War the revolutionary leader Soekarno proclaimed Merdeka (freedom); his edict was yawned away by the returning Dutch confident the natives still loved white-skinned rulers.

They didn’t: A four-year guerilla war followed till Western pressure forced the colonialists to quit in December 1948.

Just as Anzac Day recalls the disastrous landing at Gallipoli in 1915 rather than the 1918 November Armistice, 17 August celebrates the Soekarno statement not the eventual realisation of independence.

Patriots are letting rip.  Dressmakers’ have been sewing red-and-white creations, bottle-tops and face masks are bi-colour, and workers are splashing paint onto pillars, posts and walls. Indonesia Raya (Great Indonesia) blares from homes and cars, smothering the roar of motorbikes, though sadly not their pollutants.

The Covid shutdown has given progressive historians the chance to rejig the nation’s story which used to be taught as starting 77 years ago. A few posters of resistance leaders from centuries past are now being displayed.

But there are events more recent and politically volatile which remain off limits.

Soekarno became President and for two decades was almost in bed with the Reds much to the distress of the West and the Indonesian Army.  A failed coup on 30 September 1965 when Indonesia had the largest Communist movement outside the USSR and China, led to an outburst of contrived hate which ran for six months.

What happened and why is still contested. Australian translator and academic Dr Max Lane wrote that after an attempt to replace the anti-Communist military leadership, the army launched ‘an extremely violent uprising in which over one million people were killed and tens of thousands imprisoned.’

Real or imagined Communists, trade unionists, teachers, intellectuals and some ethnic Chinese were put to the sword, clubbed to death or shot, their corpses dumped in rivers and swamps.  Millions were tortured and jailed while others were denied work.

The official line remains that the killings were spontaneous reactions by outraged pious peasants who hated the godless Marxists and could not be stopped.

Although this myth has now been buried by overseas researchers proving the slaughter was organized by the Army, millions still believe otherwise.

Their credulity is unsurprising.  Till recently schoolkids were brainwashed by an obscenely violent 1984 government film, Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI (Treachery of the Communists). 

Using official documents Australian academic Dr Jess Melvin has shown the genocide was engineered through the secret police unit Kopkamtib (Komando Operasi Pemulihan Keamanan dan Ketertiban - Operational Command for the Restoration of Security and Order.)

Cracks in the Indonesian government’s disinformation fortress opened after its architect, the late second President Soeharto, yielded to public fury against his mishandling of the 1998 Asian economic crisis.  The former general resigned after 32 years of despotic rule – while amassing $32 billion.

After a brief interregnum, in 2000 his successor, religious leader Abdurrahman (Gus Dur) Wahid, publicly apologized for the killings. Though many former military men and some faith groups were outraged by his stance, it was welcomed by victims’ families.

Komnas HAM, (the National Commission on Human Rights) expected the doors would open wider and the truth revealed to all.  Naive hope. No one has ever been prosecuted for the killings. Mass graves are still being uncovered.  

During the 2014 presidential election campaign, the winning candidate Joko (Jokowi) Widodo was not from the military so seemed ready to follow Gus Dur. Not so: In 2016 Widodo was reported as stating:  ‘One of Indonesian history's darkest moments will not be revisited …the  government will focus on the future by developing the nation to gain competitiveness with other countries, not looking back on the country's past.’

Then he attended a public screening of the propaganda film allegedly telling soldiers: ‘Don’t let the PKI (Communist Party) cruelty happen again … if the PKI revives, just beat them up. ’The party is long dead and little wonder. Advocating for Communism can lead to two decades behind bars.

Once a week since January 2007 victims of human rights violations and their supporters (Aksi Kamisan – Thursday Action)  protest peacefully outside the State Palace in Jakarta. In 2018 – for the first and last time - Widodo met some of the group in a closed session but nothing happened.

This Wednesday the 77^th anniversary of the Proclamation and the Republic’s achievements will not be a gala event for the families of those brutally persecuted by the state last century. 

Although their calls for recognition and reconciliation are growing shriller, few are listening. Indonesia’s military and business oligarchs and the descendants of the killers continue to ensure there’s no widespread ventilation of grievances and certainly no sorry business, as the First Australians say. 

Despite the hush, the anger, hurt and shame continue to gnaw away at the national psyche.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 14 August 2022: https://johnmenadue.com/indonesias-unfinished-business/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

F & M LURKS IN BYRE AND MANGER

 

PAIN IN HOOF AND BANK

 

 Legini and Gimah have foot and mouth. They’ve just been vaccinated privately for Rp 100,000 ($10) each.  Had an Indonesian government vet wielded the syringe the cost would have been Rp 40,000, but Ibu Bambang fears officials might seize her precious charges and give no compensation.

Her concern is shared by village leaders, for trust in government agencies is low.  This is why claims of Bali being free of the highly contagious virus should be treated with scepticism.

If FMD crossed the Arafura Sea the crack of rifles gunning down thousands of bovines would horrify zoophilists and terrify bankers, for exports nationally are worth close to $11 billion.  So far the Australian government has ignored Opposition demands to lock the border against the archipelago, unsurprisingly as Indonesia has been Australia’s primary market for feed-lot cattle for more than two decades.

Then there’s the historical reminder of emoting before thinking. In 2011 the then Federal Labor agriculture minister, Joe Ludwig suddenly banned live exports to Indonesia after an ABC Four Corners programme alleged gross mistreatment in abattoirs.  Although the ruling was supposed to run for six months, trade resumed after four weeks’ following an outcry by exporters who also launched litigation.

If our airports closed gates to flights from Ngurah Rai the impact on Bali’s tourist trade, slowly dragging itself back from Covid shutdowns would be crippling.  BP (Before the Pandemic) a million-plus Ozzies every year spent big at Bali’s bars, eateries and hotels, so travel agents play down the risks.

Scientists don’t: Diponegoro University’s Dr Dian Wahyu Harjanti coordinates a national task force running an awareness campaign through social media. She described FMD as ‘the most important infectious animal disease and the most feared by all countries in the world.’

Australian vets have been in Indonesia advising on vaccination campaigns.  However media reports suggest less than one million cows have been needled since FMD was first diagnosed in East Java in May this year. More doses are coming, but storage and delivery are causing logistical probs.

Australia has committed $5 m to ‘fund testing, personnel and logistics support for the distribution of vaccine’.

Since the outbreak more than 6,000 beasts have been slaughtered and 4,000 have died across Indonesia.  Figures are highly suspect as farmers like Ibu Bambang and her community don’t want bureaucrats to know their kine are crook.  She doesn’t understand how the virus arrived. Her neighbours often come into contact with livestock; there are no footbaths or other hygiene facilities in use.

 

She’s already lost three goats and relatives have told her of other deaths among the cloven footed. Legini and Gimah might be pulling through.  When seen by this unqualified onlooker their mouths were blister-free but the mother and daughter, who’d just delivered a stillborn calf, could not stand, their weeping hooves shedding hard tissue and propped on planks.

Ibu Bambang is a no-nonsense farmer but she wipes away a tear while talking to her pets, who she says weep in pain.  Her treatments have been strong doses of flu medicines meant for humans.  She says the vet who inoculated her cows confirmed FMD, but didn’t know whether it was genuine and if effective on already sick cows.

The scene is altogether different next door. In WA 444 pastoral stations each carry around 2,600 Brahman and Shorthorns walking seven kilometres a day to find food and water, according to the State government.

The size of the industry is clear to travellers through Northern Australia.  Apart from big mobs hanging around dams, where paddocks aren’t fenced the penalty of disobeying the traffic code are bleedingly obvious. Flocks of agile crows and kites – and the slow-flapping wedgetail eagles – feast on the rotting carcases where roadtrains have smashed through those that strayed onto the bitumen.

There are about five million cattle in East Java.  However visitors will see nary a beast apart from an occasional ox dragging a plough through a wet ricefield or maybe plodding down a rural track ahead of a solid-wheel cart. For tourists from developed Western countries, it’s a lens-uncapping scene out of the Middle Ages.

The Java herd is hidden, tucked into tiny sheds usually alongside houses in hamlets, the critters spending much of their life in cramped quarters alongside their owners.  Few eat out; bundles of grass slashed at dawn on fallow land and riverbanks are carted on the backs of herdsmen’s motorbikes and served to the hungry.  The nutritional value of the fodder is low, so corn husks are used as supplements.

Ibu Bambang and her husband, who works as a hotel gardener, supplement their income by selling bull calves (no steers) for public slaughter outside mosques at Idul Adha, the Islamic feast of the sacrifice.  This recalls Ibrahim’s willingness to follow orders from above and get ready to slit his son Ismail’s throat, a story also found in the Bible.

This year’s event in early July may have helped spread the contagion as young bulls were walked and trucked to the killing fields.

If a little fellow is plump and sturdy a seller might get Rp 15 million ($1,500), a handy sum in a district where the average net monthly wage is Rp 2.3 million ($230).   

To date Australian gatekeepers seem aware that Indonesian assurances of control and abatement need to be treated with pitchers of salt. This disease has political symptoms.

(‘Bambang’ is a pseudonym to avoid harassment by government officials.)

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 2 August 2022: https://johnmenadue.com/hush-loose-lips-on-foot-and-mouth-scare-biz/