Jakarta (the wheels of justice go around)

Denpasar, Bali   photo: Quiseng

Fatahillah Square, Jakarta Historical Society, Jakarta Kota, 2008

“Old Batavia, like most of the world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was a place of frequent and harsh punishment. In the cobbled square before the Town Hall it was commonplace to see people in the stocks. On one day in 1676 a visiting European witnessed four people beheaded, six broken on the wheel, one hanged, and eight whipped and branded.”

-Abeyasekere, Jakarta: A History

I was informed, by a docent working at the Town Hall, that 20,000 executions took place in the square during the period from the Dutch times up to the end of the World War II.  This is not to mention the dungeons, still extant, in the basement, and the water torture cells still present to view in front of the Town Hall. I was emphatically informed that the Dutch placed “scorpions in there” to enhance the punishment. 

The Dutch were real mean bastards for sure. Thankfully we live in more sanitary times.

And YOU have been warned.

From: The Age

Indonesia to speed up drug executions
Karen Michelmore, Jakarta
June 27, 2008
INDONESIA says it will speed up the execution process of drug traffickers, in a major blow for three Australians on death row for heroin smuggling.

As authorities prepared for the executions last night of two Nigerian heroin smugglers, Attorney-General Hendarman Supandji said other drug offenders on death row could expect their cases to be expedited.

The head of Indonesia’s anti-drugs group also said executions must take place more quickly to deter traffickers.

“To give them a lesson, drug traffickers must be executed immediately,” Police chief and National Anti-Narcotic Body chairman General Sutanto said. …>go to article

 And two Nigerians, from a country far, far away from Indonesia  were executed to mark “anti-drug day” in Indonesia.  There are 58 remaining Nigerians facing the death penalty in Indonesia. This is a rather sober prospect to say the least.

From: Rueters

Two Nigerians executed in Indonesia for drugs
Fri 27 Jun 2008, 12:21 GMT

[-] Text [+] CILACAP, Indonesia (Reuters) – Two Nigerians convicted of drug smuggling have been executed by firing squad in Indonesia, officials said on Friday.

“Samuel Iwachekawu Okoye and Hansen Anthony Nwaoysa were executed before midnight on Thursday on Nusakambangan prison island, which is off the coast of central Java…

…Indonesia has defended the death penalty as a necessary deterrent in a country with a growing drugs problem. The last foreigners to be executed for drugs offences were two Thai nationals in October 2004…

…Dicky Atotoy, head of the Central Java mobile brigade police, said the two Nigerians had been tied to two wooden poles with their heads covered, and shot by two teams of police snipers.

“The doctor declared the two convicts dead at 00:00 following the firing squads’ duty to execute them,” Atotoy said…”

(Additional reporting by Telly Nathalia and Camillus Eboh in Abuja; Writing by Olivia Rondonuwu; Editing by Sara Webb and Valerie Lee) …> go to article

 Next up to the post:

Three Australians convicted of drug trafficking arrested on the island of Bali in 2005 with 8.2 kg (18 lb) of heroin.

Indonesian authorities are also preparing the executions of three Bali bombers for their role in deadly attacks in 2002 that killed 202 people. 

Of course the United States is not immune to criticism.

In the State of Texas under the administration of George W. Bush 155 executions were conducted. More than any other elected official in recorded American history.

Down stream from executions the Schapelle Corby case in particular gets a lot of press. HBO will air a documentary on the case on American cable TV  soon titled “The Ganja Queen“.  Corby is serving a twenty year jail sentence for smuggling 4.1 kg of ganja into Bali.

She recently has not been feeling well and is being treated in hospital for “depression” where she has a “private room with TV and air conditioning”.

Well, this is messed up for sure. 

In Dutch times she probably would have been put on trial for being a witch, hung, drawn and quartered, and then the pieces shot out of a large cannon.

Someone should roll up a big spliff and sneak it in to her room. She might feel better after a few tokes.

I suppose this is a mean joke but if she were say, Tommy Soeharto, a thing like this would not be far off the mark.

Even further down stream there is this.

Remember the case of “modern day slavery” ?  I wrote about that here on December 17, 2007.

Just to remind you…

The AP, December 17, 2007, writes:

Long Island millionaires guilty in ‘modern-day slavery’ case

Frank Eltman, AP

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. – The woman had been tortured for more than five years when she wandered into a Dunkin’ Donuts on Mother’s Day morning, wearing rags on her back and with wounds oozing from her ears. Scars of various sizes covered her body.

She had run away from the nearby home of Varsha Sabhnani and her husband Mahender Sabhnani _ millionaire perfume moguls whose extravagant life in their Long Island mansion was worlds apart from the humble existence the woman led back in Indonesia.

The mansion was also the place where the Indonesian woman, named Samirah, said she and a fellow maid were subjected to horrific abuse at the hands of the Sabhnanis. When authorities arrived at the home, they found the second maid cowering in a small closet under the basement stairs; the women were taken to the hospital to treat all the abuse they endured”.

The AP reports

2nd NY millionaire gets prison in slavery case
1 day ago

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) – A millionaire convicted along with his wife of virtually enslaving two Indonesian housekeepers has been sentenced to more than three years in prison.

Mahender Sabhnani (sahb-NAH’-nee) was convicted in December of counts including forced labor and involuntarily servitude. He was sentenced Friday to three years and four months in prison.

The workers testified that they were beaten with brooms and umbrellas, slashed with knives, and forced to take cold showers.

On Thursday, Varsha Sabhnani received an 11-year sentence. Prosecutors said she was the one who abused the women”.

A small thing indeed.

Now, can anyone tell me what has happened with Todung Mulya Lubis?

Todung Mulya Lubis, Indonesia’s most prominent human-rights voice, Friday  (May 17, 2008 ) was disbarred from practicing law by the Jakarta Regional Honor Board after another prominent lawyer, Hotman Paris Hutapea, filed a complaint against him for an ethics violation.

In a telephone interview with Asia Sentinel, Mulya Lubis called the decision “totally baseless and unlawful” and said he has little hope of winning an appeal.

“For me this is a conspiracy of corrupt lawyers who feel troubled and disturbed by my stand to play by the rules and consistently fight against corruption,” he said. “The accuser, Hotman Paris Hutapea, is known as the most corrupt lawyer in Indonesia, while I am regarded as symbol of an incorruptible lawyer. The judgment is outrageous and has killed my life, violated my right to practice law, and defied common sense and justice. I will appeal, but I am losing hope in the integrity of the Bar Association. The legal profession is rotten.”

A large thing indeed.

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Jakarta (the scene, McLuhan, Rendra, cockroach, herding, MD.)

 

The Color of Wheels   photo: Angelforest

 

The answers are always inside the problem, not outside.

-Marshall McLuhan

 

Hiding in the Rain   photo: Angelforest

 

This is my poem.
An emergency appeal.
What is the meaning of art,
If divorced from the world of suffering.
What is the meaning of thought,
If separated from the troubles of life.

-Rendra, Sajak Sebatang Lisong

 

 From Adbusters, The Reconquest of Cool #76, Douglas Haddow, March 25, 2008

Cockroach
A group of researchers at the Free University of Brussels have recently figured out how to influence the behavior of one of the world’s most resilient creatures: the cockroach. Combining elements of entomology and robotics, the group created an experiment that involved mingling light sensitive, cockroach-scented robots with the real deal.

Within a constructed social arena, the researchers set up two separate shaded areas, one area being darker than the other. Upon being released into the arena, the 16 organic roaches, which have a natural distaste for light, chose to socialize in the darker of the two spaces. The researchers then placed four of the robot roaches into the arena and allowed the two groups to mingle and become acquainted.

After the living roaches warmed up and befriended their artificial counterparts, the group then programmed the robots to graze in the area with more light. Although cockroaches are instinctively drawn to the darker of the two areas, they were unable to resist the impulse to imitate, and ultimately follow their cockroach-smelling robotic friends into the light.

Herding
A team of marketing specialists have recently figured out how to effectively influence the social patterns of Manhattan’s most trend-savvy demographic: the hipster. Utilizing elements of guerilla methodology in conjunction with a strong understanding of cultural capital, the team successfully interloped the Lower East Side’s vibrant nightlife and established an intimate venue where they could easily manipulate young consumers.

The team engineered a recurring, premeditated “non-event” in which they would hang out on a street bench located in front of New York’s most prominent American Apparel branch. Initially, they were able to attract the interest of passing youths because of their status as minor celebrities within the city’s taste-making elite, but over time “The Bench” (also known as the “anti-scene”) grew to become a hyper-local social phenomenon and quickly developed a reputation as a cool alternative to neighborhood bars and clubs.

Positive media publicity further popularized “The Bench” and soon enough the surrounding sidewalk was packed with thronging youths eager to hang out at New York’s newest and freshest night spot. Although youth are supposed to be resistant to social control, they were unable to resist the impulse to imitate, and ultimately follow their marketing-savvy friends into the light of American Apparel.

 

The MAG, Jakarta, 2008

 

 When a thing is current, it creates currency.

-Marshall McLuhan

 

“Levis”  East Jakarta, Jalan Tikus, 2008

 

Tomorrow is our permanent address.

-Marshall McLuhan

 

Street intersection near Depok, 2008 (click on image to see full size)

 

The medium is the message.

-Marshall McLuhan

 

 

 A lovely tasty chickens, Toreore sign at the MAG, Jakarta, 2008

 

“I like the phrase: Budaya senang orang susah, which explains how the society is in my perspective. The society feasts on it subliminally.”

-Marisa Duma, 100 ÷ (things³) x ½.about = [me],  Journal by the Lightbeamers, MD.

 

 

Snow Bloom, Incheon Airport, South Korea, 2008

 

We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

-Marshall McLuhan

 

This post was updated on 6/26/2008.

The Color of Wheels and Hiding in the Rain come from Angelforest at deviantArt and are used with permission.

The Marshall McLuhan quotes can be found here at marshallmcluhan.com

More on McLuhan here …> go to site

The Marisa Duma quote comes from her (highly recommended) site at  Journal by the Lightbeamers, MD.

All photos in this post with no attribution are from The Jakarta Urban Blog.

 

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Jakarta (Selamat hari ulang tahun!)

Jakarta, Jalan Jaksa, 2008 

 

Happy birthday Jakarta!

June 22, 1527 to June 22, 2008.  Today you are 481 years old. 

From Selamat Jakarta

“To the west, at some distance from the Ciliwung River, is the city of Banten, once one of the largest cities in Southeast Asia, and then threatened by Muslim troops. By the time the Portuguese returned in 1527, both Banten and Sunda Kalapa had fallen to the Muslim leader Fatahillah. It was Fatahillah who renamed Sunda Kalapa, Jayakarta, which means “Great Deed” or “Complete Victory”. Jakarta marks it founding from June 22, 1527, the day which Fatahillah claimed his victory over the Sundanese Hindus and their Portuguese allies”.

And so Jakarta was born out of the “great victory” of Fatahillah.

June 22 Birthday Horoscope (everyone is interested to know that)

From Cafe Astrology.com

“Your desire nature is powerful and intense this year, and often easy to satisfy. Your social life picks up pace, and you could find yourself working hard and playing hard. Finances are strong, although the desire to spend what you earn could put a dent in your savings! Changes are in store. Your best bet is to identify the areas of your life that need “renovating” and work on making necessary adjustments so that change isn’t forced upon you. This is an excellent year in which to make important lifestyle changes, to draw upon your stores of energy and initiative, and to focus on projects that reflect your innermost desires.

2008 will be a Number Two year for you. Ruled by the Moon. This is a year of potential companionship. It is a quiet, gentle, and mostly harmonious year that is less active than other years. Instead, you are more responsive to the needs of others. If you are patient and open yourself up in a gentle manner, you will attract both things and people. This is an excellent year in which to build and develop for the future. Advice – be patient, be receptive, enjoy the peace, collect”. 

“Your best bet is to identify the areas of your life that need “renovating” and work on making necessary adjustments so that change isn’t forced upon you”.

hmmm?

Old town’s heritage buildings unsafe

Tifa Asrianti , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Fri, 06/20/2008 10:34 AM | City

Damaged and collapsed heritage buildings in 2008 (so far)

Feb 1: A building of shipping company PT Samudra Indonesia at Jl. Kopi collapsed; no one was injured as the company had closed due to flooding.

Feb 3: A ceiling beam collapsed in a storage building of the Maritime Museum complex, there were no fatalities.

Feb 26: An empty old building on Jl. Tiang Bendera V, Roamalaka, West Jakarta, collapsed. There were no fatalities.

March: An empty warehouse on Jl. Krapu, North Jakarta, collapsed and killed a man.

June 18: A wall of a heritage building in Roamalaka, West Jakarta, collapsed and killed a man.

 

Hey, don’t ask me why but I love you Jakarta.

I know you are old, decrepit, overworked, run down, and have changed your name a few times over the years. Your arteries are clogged and you are frequently incontinent. You are in need of a long hot shower and should pay more attention to your dental hygiene. Maybe try to quit smoking, or at least cut down a bit. Don’t hang out at the mall so often and try to pick some nicer boyfriends for a change.  

You deserve better than what you are getting.

Hey, remember that Soekarno fellow? He wasn’t all that bad.

I hope the next 481 years will be as interesting as the last. 

 

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Jakarta (news, books, and sex, news)

Nites  Photo by =Geiss

News

How the wheels of justice turn so very slowly… still, better late than never (with some qualifications)…

From Reuters 6/16/2008

Top court won’t review Exxon Indonesia lawsuit

Reporting by James Vicini, Editing by David Alexander and Sandra Maler

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear an appeal by Exxon Mobil Corp. seeking to dismiss a lawsuit by 11 Indonesian villagers who claim the company’s security forces committed human rights abuses at a natural gas processing plant in the Aceh province.

The high court followed the recommendation of the U.S. government and it turned down the company’s appeal without any comment. The Supreme Court’s action does not set any precedent and does not represent a ruling on the merits of the dispute.

The lawsuit, filed in 2001 in federal court in Washington claimed the security forces at the facility were comprised exclusively of members of the Indonesian military and that Exxon retained them even though it had been aware the Indonesian army had committed human rights abuses in the past. … go to article

 Books

I recently received, showing up in my mail box, Celebrating 60 Years – 1948 – 2008 TUTTLE, A Memeber of the Periplus Publishing Group, New Titles and Complete Backlist, Fall 2008.

Periplus, of course, has bookshops throughout Jakarta. Their site is found here.  Over the years I have purchased many of their publications which include Tuttle’s Concise Indonesian Dictionary and the Periplus wall map of Indonesia(71 cm X 118 cm), a beautiful full color map of the archipelago which is a work of art in itself.  I have on order the Jakarta Street Atlas 2nd. Ed.(don’t leave home without it). Tuttle is famous for its Asian language dictionaries, Periplus for its maps and travel books. And much, much more.

From Tuttle

“2008 marks a milestone for Tuttle Publishing. Originally established in 1948 in Rutland, Vermont, and Tokyo, Japan, this year we are fortunate and honored to be celebrating our 60th anniversary. Since its inception, Tuttle Publishing has been a leading publisher of books on Asia. We are extremely pleased to be able to continue this tradition, and invite you to explore the rich cultural heritage of Asia through this website”.

The catalog is full of beautiful books, of that there is no doubt, and if I had deeper bank account than I currently have there certainly would be several new titles appearing on my bookshelves. Here are five below which caught my eye (not including Straits and Narrow by Grace McClurg, The Rain Tree by Sylvie Phillips, and Unhooking a DD-cup Bra without Fumbling by Adam Adams (a book which claims to be written without the use of the letter “E”, now that is something!). 

Well, it is summer in Hawaii, so it is not just a question of my bank account but also the time, the hammock strung between two shade trees, and the large glasses of iced tea necessary to address this stack of books.

     

    

 

 

Sex

Two things come to mind here.  You can’t judge a book by its cover. Sex sells.  Unfortunately, I have not read the books which I have mentioned here. Not yet anyway. So I cannot make a fair comment. 

The Asian Review of Books panned Jakarta Undercover writing that, “The blurb on the back of JAKARTA UNDERCOVER claims it as Indonesia’s answer to America’s ‘Sex and the City’. It has sold over 200,000 copies in Indonesia, and proved something of a sensation, lifting the lid on the sexual adventures to be had in the world’s fourth largest capital, and giving the lie to the image of a puritanical Muslim nation.

But MOAMMAR EMKA’s book probably proves the truth of a different adage: that one country’s erotica is another’s turn-off. The exploits chronicled here are described in a spare, bland style, both slightly cold and offputting. Emka talks about the services available for the rich and favoured in the new Jakarta — expats, the wealthy business people, some politicians, the elite — and only once or twice does he does mention that Indonesia is still one of the poorest countries in the world, where the sort of prices he mentions here for nights of wild excess would add up to earnings for a year or more”.

Monsoon Books wrote of Jakarta Undercover II, “After the enormous success of Jakarta Undercover, Moammar Emka is back with more on the seedy nightlife and underground sex servics of modern, hip Jakarta. Delving deep into the city’s karaoke clubs, massage parlours and transit hotels, the author takes it upon himself to experience first-hand the tasty delights on offer and what exactly they involve.

What is a cat-bath massage? Who are the Mickey Mouse girls? How much does an all-night gigolo really cost? How popular is the after-lunch hand-roll service?

From swingers parties to midnight lesbian packages, Jakarta seems to have it all when it comes to sexual services. And if you thought the first book was explosive, Jakarta Undercover II will leave your imagination running wild. 

Indonesia’s bestselling series—over half a million copies sold!”

Not much of a real review.  But something to think over at any rate.

Gerrie Lim’s The Invisible Trade is altogether something different as reviewed by the Asian Sex Gazette

“Welcome to the very real, largely hidden, and often surreal world of high-class sex for sale in Singapore, where the sexual desires of this tiny island run the gamut from simple missionary zeal to the cracking of the whip. Never before have outsiders been offered such a fascinating look into the weird and wonderful, delightful and sometimes depraved world of five-star, high-class prostitutes that operate in Singapores flourishing sex trade.

For those writing about the sex industry, there is always the danger that the story will become as exploitative as its subject matter. In this survey of high-end sex workers in Singapore, Lim (Inside the Outsider) manages to avoid this trap by giving the workers space to speak for themselves.

Emily, one of Lim’s subjects, describes her first time with a client: “On my first job I was very frightened and didn’t know what to do… I didn’t know how to do a massage or how to talk to a strange guy.” But now, she says, “If you think about the money you can do anything.” …> go to review

“If you think about the money you can do anything.”

I can’t see how Lim’s Part II can beat that quote.

Erotica Revealed has a good review of The Best of Singapore Erotica.

“What I discovered was a collection of stories, essays and poems that help clarify why Singapore has a sex-hostile reputation. Legal restrictions on homosexuality and other “deviant” sexual acts are only the beginning. The obstacles to satisfying sex in the city-state appear to be many and formidable: ferocious upward mobility and a punishing work ethic; shortage of affordable housing, which leads to young adults living with their parents in situations with little privacy; traditional values that favor security over romance; and finally, a complex, multi-racial class hierarchy with social distances that are near-impossible to bridge.

In spite of, perhaps even because of, all these barriers, some of the authors represented in this volume do succeed in creating arousing and emotionally involving tales that I would classify as erotica. One of my favorites is Ricky Low’s “Clean Sex,” in which a successful young Chinese businessman falls in love with an Indonesian housemaid, only to lose her when she’s accused of stealing the expensive presents he has bought for her. Another highlight is “Naked Screw” by Alison Lester, which portrays an initially confrontational but ultimately sensual encounter between a free-spirited ex-pat who likes to walk around her apartment without clothing, and a traditional South Asian laborer who claims that her nakedness offends him. Meihan Boey’s “A Dummy’s Guide to Losing Your Virginity,” in which she chronicles her methodical approach to finding and bedding her first lover, is a clever comic gem:

“Feel free to fit us both into any convenient category of human behavior. Rest assured, I will not complain. Complaining, I find, is the refuge of the weak and unimaginative who have neither the courage to put up with shit nor the wherewithal to get out of it.”

“And Then She Came,” by Jonathan Lim, is a creepy yet unquestionably sexy story of a helpless student “not sober enough to be superstitious,” who attracts the attention of a voracious female ghost. Aaron Ang’s “A Perfect Exit” is a sweet, sentimental and finally surprising story of geriatric lust. I also enjoyed “Self-Portrait with Three Monkeys,” by Chris Mooney-Singh, although it is more a character study than a story, the heroine a middle-aged career woman who consoles herself for her loveless couplings with an orgy of art. Another notable contribution is Weston Sun Wensheng’s “An MRT Chronicle,” a wry commentary on the trials of being young and horny in a society that offers no privacy at all”.

 Jakarta Urban Blog has previously posted on human trafficking in Asia and Indonesia.  

March 7, 2008 Jakarta (informal) part 2

 

And so here is the flip side to all of this…

 News

From The National (United Arab Emirates)

 Illegal logging trade forces jungle brothel in Indonesia

Marianne Kearney, foreign correspondent
Last Updated: May 24. 2008 5:39PM UAE / May 24. 2008 1:39PM GMT

JAKARTA // The illegal logging destroying Indonesia’s tropical forests is fuelling another illicit trade: the trafficking of girls as sex slaves.

Girls as young as 13 are being lured from their homes with promises of employment as waitresses or maids, and then pressed into servicing loggers, their bosses and forestry officials deep within the jungles of West Kalimantan, on Indonesia’s side of Borneo island.

Maria, a child’s rights activist, stumbled upon the jungle brothel during a trip to West Kalimantan to rescue teenagers in illegal gold mines.

The girls, many of them between 13 and 17, had been trafficked from within West Kalimantan, or Indonesia’s main island of Java, 920km away, she said.

“If they want to run, they’re in the middle of the forest, living beside a river, which is too deep and dangerous to swim,” said Maria, who asked that her real name not be used for fear of being tracked down by the traffickers.

The girls were paid as little as 300,000 rupiah per month (Dh118), and forced to live in appalling conditions, she said.

“They didn’t even have simple houses; they were living in huts or just tents made of plastic, with thatch roofs. There were no facilities for them,” Maria said. …> go to article

 Destroy a forest. Destroy a people. 

 “If you think about the money you can do anything”.

 

 

 

 

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Jakarta (Jakarta is coming)

Detail, from monument at Lubang Buaya

Why is this?

Malnutrition kills 21 Indonesia toddlers

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – At least 21 toddlers have died of malnutrition in eastern Indonesia in recent months due to a food shortage that threatens the lives of thousands more children, a local health official said Thursday.

An additional 116 youngsters have been admitted to clinics and hospitals in critical condition, said Stephanus Bria Seran, who heads the health department in East Nusa Tenggara province.

“We urgently need medicine and nutritional foods to save the children,” he said. “We are racing against time because they need nutritious food within 30 days if we want to save their lives.”

The food shortages have been caused by flooding and drought. Farmers fear the next harvest may also fail due to excessive rainfall and landslides.

Children’s diets began lacking sufficient nutrients, causing diseases, hospitalizations and deaths over the past six months, he said.

In the same period, nearly 85,000 children have been registered as malnourished in the province, one of the country’s least developed.

The figures show a sharp jump from the whole of 2007, when 10 toddlers died out of 68,000 registered as malnourished in the province. …> go to article

Or this?

Hungry monkeys raid farmland around Indonesia’s Borobudur temple

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP): Bands of starving monkeys have destroyed crops around Indonesia’s famous Borobudur Buddhist temple in search of food their habitat can no longer supply, an official said Wednesday.

Thousands of long-tailed macaques went searching for sustenance in several villages of Central Java province, said Dedi Rinyadi, who works for the Natural Resources Conservation Agency.

The population of monkeys has exploded due to dwindling predators, but drought has led to food shortages, Rinyadi said.

The monkeys have stolen crops and destroyed about 990 acres of farmland – including around the 7th-century Buddhist temple complex of Borobudur outside the sultanate of Yogyakarta.

Some have invaded villagers’ yards in search of fruit, vegetables and rice. Distressed farmers have used firecrackers and air rifles to chase them away.

Farmers are worried they are so occupied fighting off the monkeys they will not be able to tend their land, Rinyadi said.

“Monkeys are another threat to food production during this dry season,” Rinyadi said. …> go to article

There certainly appears to be something amiss in Central and East Java.  What does this have to do with Jakarta? Jakarta is the capitol of Indonesia. It is the center of national government, it is the center of the banking and communication sectors. Jakarta also produces and consumes a large percentage of the GDP.

Can you blame Jakarta for malnourished children, rampaging monkeys, the weather?

Jakarta Urban Blog’s focus is, of course, Jakarta but it would be amiss to think that Jakarta sits in isolation from distant events elsewhere in Indonesia and amiss to think that Jakarta sits in isolation of larger global events outside of Indonesia.

“Jakarta is coming”

The date is September 11, but not September, 11, 2001, it is September, 11, 1973. This is the date of the coup led by Augusto Pinochet and the CIA against the freely elected government of Salvador Allende. This was the date of the beginning of a dark night of torture and draconian economic policies which would last in Chile for the next seventeen years. The night spread its dark wings to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay and later to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Vibrant emerging economies and political systems would be overthrown in the name of “free markets” while tens of thousands of people were “disappeared” and hundrends of thousands tortured in the jails of CIA backed juntas.

This is the story of a new book which has come across my desk recently. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein, Metropolitan Book, 2007, 558 pages.

From The Shock Doctrine:

“Suharto…had shown that if massive repression was used preemptively, the country would go into shock and resistance could be wiped out before it even took place. His use of terror was so merciless, so far beyond even the worst expectations, that a people who only weeks earlier had been collectively striving to assert their country’s independence were now sufficiently terrified that they ceded total control to Suharto and his henchmen. Ralph McGhee, a senior CIA operations manager during the years of the coup, said Indonesia was a “model operation…You can trace back all major, bloody events run from Washington to the way Suharto came to power. The success of that meant that it would be repeated, again, and again”.

The other crucial lesson from Indonesia had to do with the pre-coup partnership between Suharto and the Berkeley Mafia. Because they were ready to take up top “technocratic” positions in the new government and had already converted Suharto to their worldview, the coup did more than just get rid of a nationalist threat; it transformed Indonesia into one of the most welcoming environments for foreign multinationals in the world.

As momentum began to build toward Allende’s ouster, a chilling warning began appearing in red paint on the walls of Santiago. It said,  ‘Jakarta is coming’.”

The shock in Indonesia left perhaps one million dead. It was hailed by the CIA as the “perfect model” to be repeated “again and again”. The Berkeley Mafia, as Klein points out, were those Indonesian economists which were educated at the University of California at Berkeley since 1956 and funded by the Ford Foundation where they returned home to the University of Indonesia to “build a faithful copy of a Western-style” economics department.  After Suharto consolidated power key financial posts were filled by these Berkeley educated economists where they “passed laws allowing foreign companies to own 100 percent of these resources, handed out “tax holidays”, and within two years, Indonesia’s natural wealth – copper, nickle, hardwood, rubber, and oil – was being divided among the largest mining and energy companies in the world”.

But the Berkeley Mafia were small players compared to those which came out of the Chicago School of Economics under Milton Friedman. These were the people who carried the banner of the true economic orthodoxy, the so-called neoliberals, who advocated a “pure” laissez-faire economics, whose economic philosophy was the antithesis of that of John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith.

Friedman’s book Capitalism and Freedom “laid out what would become the global free-market rulebook and in the U.S., would form the economic agenda of the neoconservative movement.

First, governments must remove all rules and regulations standing in the way of the accumulation of profits. Second, they should sell off any assets they own that corporations could be running at a profit. And third, they should dramatically cut back funding of social programs… …Friedman’s vision coincided with precisely with with the interests of large multinationals, which by nature hunger for for vast new unregulated markets. In the first stage of capitalist expansion, that kind of ravenous growth was provided by colonialism- by “discovering” new territories and grabbing land without paying for it, then extracting riches without compensating local populations. Friedman’s war on the “welfare state” and “big government” held out the promise of a new font of riches- only this time, rather than conquering new territory, the state itself would be the new frontier, its public services and assets auctioned off for far less than they were worth”.

As Klein states in her introduction:

“Some of the most infamous human rights violations of this era, which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by antidemocratic regimes, were in fact either committed with the deliberate intent of terrorizing the public or actively harnessed to prepare the ground for the introduction of radical free-market “reforms“.

Reforms which were neither liberal, free, or democratic.

It was not just a matter of “regime change” that the CIA and the U.S. government was concerned with but also to apply, after appropriate shocks to the population, literal in terms of the torture employed and the economic hardships endured, a “pure” and “orthodox” economic theory.

These shocks, as Klein so well documents, were carried through into events as seemingly divergent as the Solidarity movement in Poland, Thatcher’s war in the Falklands, Tiananmen Sqaure, the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the fall of the Soviet Union, the Asian economic crisis of 1997-1998, the Septemebr 11 attacks in the United States, and the war in Iraq. The shocks are not just limited to political or economic crisis but now are also those natural disasters such as the tsunami of 2004 or Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  These tragic events are now seen as opportunities to deregulate, privatize, cut back social services, and to turn a profit for the elite.  In the case of Iraq, the war has been privatized, the population “shocked and awed” and for those who oppose there awaits Abu Ghraib, the jails of Baghram, the torture of Guantanamo, or rendition into the void. This, in the name of profit and the free market.

Is this why children die from malnourishment in East Java, why monkeys run amok in Central Java, why the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund manufacture a world food crisis and speculate on the price of a barrel of oil?

Klein has written a remarkable book.  It is a book which exposes over thirty years of crimes perpetrated on the people of the world in the name of corporate profit. To expose this is not only courageous but gives us the tools to fight back. This is always the case when one is armed with the truth.

Naomi Klein

Democracy Now!

Focus on the Global South

UPDATE 6/15/2008

From: Bloomberg.com: Asia

Indonesia’s Mulyani to Head Economic Affairs, Jakarta Post Says

By Nesa Subrahmaniyan

June 15 (Bloomberg) — Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati has been appointed acting coordinating minister for economic affairs, the Jakarta Post reported, citing Sudi Silalahi, the cabinet secretary.

Mulyani, who will retain her post as finance minister, take over from Boediono, who has become head of the central bank, the newspaper said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono signed a decree for the appointment on June 19, the report said.

From: Perspective on World History and Current Events

Sri Mulyani Indrawati
Minister of National Development Planning
Chairperson of the National Planning Agency (Bappenas)

Name: Dr Sri Mulyani Indrawati

Profile: Born in Tanjungkarang, Lampung, on 26th August 1962, Mulyani received her doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois. She is an executive director of the International Monetary Fund, representing 12 economies in Southeast Asia. In 2001 Mulyani left for Atlanta, United States, to serve as a consultant with the U.S. Aid Agency USAID for programs to strengthen Indonesia’s autonomy. She lectured on the Indonesian economy at Georgia University. A prominent economist, Mulyani was appointed a member of the National Economic Council during Abdurrahman Wahid’s administration.

Source The Jakarta Post

In light of what has been said above I will leave this without comment.

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Jakarta (Batavia, Djakarta, Jakarta, population and the Chinese)

 

House detail, Pasar Baru, Jakarta

Population

How many people live in Jakarta? (And who counts them?). That number varies depending on what you mean by ‘Jakarta’. Is it Jakarta or Daerah Khusus Ibukota or Jabodetebek? Is it the number within metropolitan Jakarta or greater metropolitan Jakarta? Is it nine million or thirteen million or twenty-three million people?

Prior to 1619, how many people lived in Jayakarta? Perhaps, maybe one or two thousand people.

When the Dutch anchored their ships in Jakarta Bay at the mouth of the Ciliwung River how many scruffy lice bitten Dutchmen were there? Not many.

Here are some interesting notes gleaned from Abeyasekere’s Jakarta: A History, with some additions.

Batavia – Jakarta 1673 to 2004

Year       Population

1673     27,000 (including 13,278 or 49% slaves and 2,024 or 7%
                          Netherlanders, 2,747 or 10% Chinese)

1730     20,000 (walled town) 15,000 (suburbs)

1779     12,131 (old town) 160,986 (scattered to the mountains)

1815     49,000
1850     70,000
1900     116,000
1930     435,000

1945     844,000 (20,000 or 2.3% of this population were ‘beggars’)

1948     1,050,000 (in 1948, the first 1 million people)

1952     1,782,000 (in 1953, 75% of Jakartans were born outside of
                               Jakarta)
1965     3,813,000
1976     5,700,000
1980     6,500,000
1989     9,000,000

2004     13,000,000 (2004 population exceeds that of 1900 by 112 times)

 

 

2008? 19 to 23 million people in greater Jakarta. Does anyone know? And is it possible to count everyone? Making Jakarta the seventh, eighth, or ninth, largest city on the planet. There are new arrivals daily.

It took 329 years, from 1619, when Dutch slaves built Fort Batavia, to 1948, before the city’s population reached one million

In the period from 1900 to 2004, the city’s population grew by 112 times to reach a population of thirteen million and more. This is one-third the time it took the city to reach its first one million residents. This is also where Batavia, essentially a Dutch colonial city, disappears to become Jakarta, the ‘mother city’ of Indonesia.

During the 1950s things really started to roar.

The rapid rise in population was such that, as Abeyasekere writes,

“The majority of new immigrants shared existing housing… …The state of affairs is described by the poet Ayip Rosidi, who arrived in Jakarta as a boy in 1951. Coming from Jatiwangi in West Java, he was appalled at the place where his uncle took him to live in. It was an alley in Galur sub-district, east of the Senen Market. The area was only a few years old, very muddy and full of huts with grass-thatched roof. Rosidi lived for several years in one of these huts backing onto a river lined with privies.

Houses were built in an unbroken row; his row measured 33 feet by 23 feet, and contained 57 inhabitants. The boy shared a bed with two other men in a small room inhabited by five people.

He later wrote: ‘It was entirely beyond anything I had imagined before actually coming to Djarkarta, and I felt nauseated. I had never, never thought I could live in such squalor. Yet little by little… I grew familiar with Djakarta housing, knowing that it was sometimes possible to live in a row of shacks, as we did, only after some stroke of good luck’ “.

That is 57 people in an area measuring 33 feet by 23 feet or 759 square feet. Shared among 57 people this would allow each person a space of 3.5 feet by 4.5 feet. If you calculate the space needed for cooking, sleeping, or other household items this space is further reduced.

Later, Abeyasekere quotes Rosidi in his attempt to come to terms with urban life,

“…I felt that I’d been placed in a sickening cage, that I’d lost my roots, that I stood right in the middle of an international city’s whirling confusion, a city that opened itself to every current and never flinched away, a bustling activity without direction or purpose, a city of lies and tricks“.

In 1951, there were only 47 trucks and 600 handcarts available to collect rubbish. Of the trucks which were available about one in six was out of action and in need of repair.

For the entire city there were only 60 men and 4 trucks employed to empty privies. In 1954, in a city of nearly two million people, there were only 84 public restrooms, none of which had water.

If you wanted to ring up City Hall to complain there were only 8,204 telephone connections. The joke was that it was quicker to walk across town to deliver a message than use the telephone (if you could find one).

The Chinese

Chinese presence in Java dates from as early as the ninth century. Trade in spices and Chinese luxury goods was long established before the arrival of Europeans.

Before the Portuguese and the Dutch started mucking things up the Chinese were present in the town of Jayakarta where they grew sugar cane and distilled arak. The de Haan map of Jayakarta shows ‘Chinese Houses’ along the left bank of the Ciliwung River between the ‘defense line’ north of Kyai Aria’s District and Fort Batavia. Neither in or out of one camp or another but always potentially in the line of fire of either.

Abeyasekere quotes Coen as saying that “…there is no people who serve is better that the Chinese, and so easy to get as the Chinese“. She writes, “So keen was he [Coen] to build up their numbers quickly in Batavia that in 1622 he sent ships to kidnap people on the coast” … and “The Europeans were heavily dependent on Chinese labor and on merchandise from East Asia brought in by Chinese junks. In 1625, the Chinese fleet trading in Batavia had a total tonnage at least as large as that of the whole VOC return fleet” … and concluding that “so dominant was the role of the Chinese, in fact, that a recent historian has argued that from 1619 to 1740 Batavia was, economically speaking ‘basically a Chinese colonial town under Dutch protection’.

Abeyasekere: “The rapid influx of Chinese contributed to the opening up of the country around Batavia, and it was this development which caused anxiety to the Company, since outside the walls it was much harder to keep the Chinese under surveillance”.

It was these Chinese, as Abeyasekere points out, which developed Batavia’s sugar estates and its only original export of raw sugar and arak.

“From 2,747 Chinese within the town in 1674 the registers show a jump to 4,389 in 1739; in the environs (a nebulous term denoting the hinterland as far south as the mountains) 7,550 Chinese were counted in 1719 and 10,574 in 1739 (likely to be an understatement)”.

To control this rapid rise of immigration the Dutch concocted escalating regulations. They tried to place a quota on how many Chinese could be brought in by junk. This was evaded by the Chinese simply through landing people along the coast away from Batavia. Finally, in response to a glut of sugar on the global market which threw many Chinese coolies out of work the Dutch proposed to move them to their company outposts in Ceylon, “which rumour had it amongst the distressed Chinese, was just a ruse for dumping them at sea”.

The year 1740 marks a bloody turning point in the Dutch and Chinese relationship. The economic down turn in the sugar markets eventually led to a peasant revolt on the outskirts of Batavia. Abeyasekere writes, “Carrying home-made weapons and flying banners inscribed ‘To assist the poor, the destitute, and the oppressed’ and ‘Follow the righteous of old times’, the Chinese coolies marched on the city, where hundreds of their compatriots lived behind the walls. Although the latter had little or no contact with the Chinese outside, rumors spread that they were planning to assist the rebels. When the ill-armed Chinese force attacked the town on 8 October, the fact that they were easily repulsed did not save the Chinese inside”.

And so it began. Europeans and Indonesians “attacked, burned, and plundered” six to seven thousand Chinese homes and massacred perhaps as many as one thousand Chinese while the government stood by and did nothing. Five hundred Chinese were arrested and held at the Town Hall only to eventually be led out and executed one by one. “For a week the town blazed with fire and the canals ran red with blood.” While order was eventually restored the peasant rebellion would continue to 1743.

The events would set the pattern for later incidents in Jakarta’s history such as the anti-Chinese protests of the 1960s, the Soeharto purge of the Communist Party in 1965, and the ethnic riots in 1997. Still, the root of anti-Chinese violence lies with the Dutch who created and enforced the highly stratified society of colonial Batavia which is something the Indonesia elites of Jakarta have taken advantage of, have promoted, and have yet to address and resolve.

Abeyasekere concludes that, “Jealousy of Chinese commercial success simmered among many other citizens, who took advantage of a break down in law and order to attack the Chinese and loot their property. Little protection of the Chinese has been offered by Jakarta’s governments, who have often seemed prepared to allow the Chinese to be treated as scapegoats for the inadequacy of their own administration”.

Indeed.

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Jakarta (but first a word from our sponsor)

  

Jakarta, 2008

Jakarta Urban Blog, which originates from my office in Hilo, Hawaii, is now a registered non-profit business.

(Hawaii Tax ID Number W47549818-01).

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School No. 18, Depok, Indonesia


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Jakarta (Batavia)

Batavia, 1929

This remarkable photo (the scene may be along the canal in the Pasar Baru area) is posted (along with some other old scenes from Batavia, Bandung, Malang, and Semarang at morning coffee ~o)

Click on the photo to view at its full size.  It’s laundry day in Batavia. A time to meet friends, share some gossip, exchange the news in the community of women.  There is much going on in this photo. Take some time with it. 

In the next series of posts Jakarta Urban Blog will visit Batavia.  To know where you are it is useful to see where you have been and to see where you have been is often useful in understanding where you are going.

In my library of Indonesian books Susan Abeyasekere’s Jakarta: A History is a much loved volume. This is the book which has inspired my own effort here. My copy of this book was published by Oxford University Press and shows a copyright date of 1987. Susan Abeyasekere at this time was lecturer in Southeast Asian History and Politics at Footscray Institute of Technology, Melbourne.  According to my search in Google Scholar this work is cited in 54 books and journal articles.  Her work prominantly figures in my Urban Studies Reading List. “A” IS for Abeyasekere.

Susan Abeyasekere clearly knew and loved Jakarta (in all its faults).  A close reading of her book reveals her interests in colonialism, social justice, human rights, gender equality, and the meaning of historical processes. These themes which she developes in Jakarta: A History are as valid today as in her own time.

I have not been successful in finding information about Susan Abeyasekere’s biography. She apparently was active in researching and writing about Indonesia through the 1980’s.  I do not know if she is still living, still teaching, or retired.  If there is anyone who is familiar with her career and work a comment here would be greatly appreciated.

In November 1980 she published an article in the New Internationalist (issue 093) titled “In Search of the Good life” where she wrote,

“Neglect of the countryside in favour of foreign investment in extractive industries and Jakarta-based manufacturing and construction has proved disastrous on the island of Java with its rural-based population of 90 million. Since there is not enough land to support them, millions of poor, unskilled people have flooded into the big cities.

Yet Jakarta’s affluent persist in believing that the capital is their city, to be developed in ways which will serve only their needs. This is justified on the grounds that the poor cannot afford to pay for facilities, even basic ones like pure drinking water. Less than 15 per cent of the city’s houses have mains water, and people in those houses pay several times less than those who buy it from street-sellers (necessary in many areas where well water is polluted).

Forty per cent of the city’s daily rubbish is not collected for disposal. There is no sewage system. Only 20 per cent of the city’s budget is spent to improve the areas where 60 per cent of the population is living. Thewealthy have monopolised the scarce supplies of water, electricity (available to only 21 per cent of the city’s houses), medical care, education and well-drained land. There is regular flooding of areas occupied by the poor. While the swelling population suffers from escalating land costs, speculators benefit from absurdly low rates of municipal property taxation”.

 Remember, she is writing this in 1980, some twenty-eight years ago.  Has much changed?

 Batavia (from Jakarta: A History)

“Javanese were not permitted to live in the city. Batavia was not intended to be the colonial capital of a large territory; it was run by a trading company which envisaged the town as a port where its ships could be serviced, as a collection point for goods and as an administrative headquarters for company activities in the region. Coen’s [the notorious VOC governor] vision rapidly materialized: in the seventeenth century Batavia became the centre of a great web of Dutch commerce in Asia, with trading posts stretching from Capetown and Persia through India, Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Malacca through Formosa and Deshima in Japan. And most of these places contributed to the building up the population of Batavia, which was not a Javanese but a Company town”.

Perhaps most remarkable was that very few Europeans were actually engaged in the trade and commerce of Batavia and what Europeans were there Coen called “the scum of the earth”.  The number of Eurpean women could be counted on one hand.

Coen wrote his VOC directors that, “Everyone knows that the male sex cannot exist without women. Yet it seems that your Excellencies wish to have a colony planted without them. To make good that lack, we have sought finance here and have many women purchased. But just as up to now you gentlemen have sent me only the dregs of the earth, so it seems there here also only dregs are bought for us, for several good fellows have been poisoned by the women, for which some have been severely punished. Shall we, on account of these rejects, give up seeking good citizens, as it seems you people have done? Do we have to die out entirely? On this matter we request that, if Your Excellencies cannot get any honest married people, do not neglect to send under-age young girls: thus we hope to do better with them than with older women”.

Still the number of European women remained “infinitesimal.” Abeyasekere states the even as late as 1900 there were only 1,363 European women in Batavia while the men “consisted of fortune hunters, careerists, and pavenues. Everyone was obsessed with rank and completely uninterested in ideas”.

Abeyasekere writes that, “Batavia continues as it had begun, a town of people brought in from all over Asia at the convenience of the Company. Good and loyal fighters were recruited from as far afield as Japan and the Philippines for the town’s garrison; Chinese were encouraged to settle as shopkeepers and as a link to the lucrative China trade, and labour was provided by slaves from anywhere but Java, whose inhabitants were too suspect. It was a society assembled by the Company exclusively for its own interests“.

By the late 1790s “the VOC [Dutch East Indies Company] slipped more deeply into that bankruptcy, nepotism, inefficientcy, corruption, maladministration and military decline of which Batavia was cause, symptom, and symbol”.

Here are the roots of the city which would become Jakarta.  In future posts Jakarta Urban Blog will examine the role of the Chinese in Batavia and the expanding population.

 

Jakarta (Barack Obama)

Jakarta’s favorite son…

From Reuters, June 3, 2008:

 

OBAMA CLINCHES NOMINATION

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Barack Obama captured the Democratic presidential nomination, capping a rapid rise from political obscurity to become the first black to lead a major U.S. party into a race for the White House. …> go to artcile