Jakarta (Selamat hari ulang tahun!)

Kampung Betawi

Happy 482nd birthday, Jakarta!

Of course it is all made up. I think Jakarta is actually older that 482 but it is not nice to ask an old lady her age. When asked she is bound to cut a few years off what she knows to be her real age.

Or, on the other hand, Jakarta might be much younger than she looks- like the song goes, “her name was McGill but she called herself Lil but everyone knew her as Batavia…”

But let’s face it, when you’re old you’re old and give or take a hundred years does not amount to much.

Either way its nice to have a birthday and to be remembered.

Being born on June 22 places Jakarta in the sign a Cancer. The Cancer horoscope for the week comes from Rob Brezsney’s Free Will Astrology.

And how very appropriate!

Cancer Horoscope for week of June 18, 2009

Cancer (June 21-July 22)

“We ask that you not divulge the climax of the epic story to anyone — at least until you’ve let it sink in for a while and felt all the reverberations it has unleashed. After that, you’ll be wise to speak about it only with skilled listeners and empathetic allies who can help you harvest the meaning of all the clues that were packed inside your adventures. One further counsel: Before you reach the absolute, final denouement of the drama, there may be a tricky turn that looks a lot like the ending.”

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 Sukarno fellow? He wasn’t all that bad.

I hope the next 482 years will be as interesting as the last.

Jakarta (the legacy)

I have posted Tom Allard’s excellent reporting from the Sydney Morning Herald here in full. This is just a small part of the Indonesian puzzle. There is Timor, Ache, Trisakti, and Semanggi… Ambon and Kalimantan…  There are just too many cockroaches of the Soeharto era to stamp out.  Some are even prominent politicians.

Starting here would be a good thing.

Survivors … Sumini and Anwar Umar. Photo: Tom Allard

From the Sydney Morning Herald, June 13, 2009

Indonesia unwilling to tackle legacy of massacres

Tom Allard Herald Correspondent in Jakarta

MOST Thursday afternoons, octogenarians Sumini and Anwar Umar take a bus from their homes in Jakarta’s suburbs to the city centre and set up camp outside the presidential palace in the city centre.

They join a smattering of other elderly Indonesians. Each of them are victims of the brutal crackdown on leftists that wracked the country from 1965 to 1966. The massacre of about 500,000 people, and imprisonment without trial of about 1 million others, ranks as one of the worst mass killings of the 20th century.

Yet this meagre, if heartfelt, protest each week across the road from the offices of the President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is testament to the ambivalence many feel about the slaughter and its inability to reconcile the actions of the perpetrators, the military and vigilante groups from Indonesia’s mass Islamic organisations.

The spark for the bloodletting was the failed coup in 1965,which began with the abduction and murder of six generals but lasted barely one day.

Crushed by an obscure general, Suharto, who would later become a long-standing dictator, the forces behind the coup remain a subject of debate.

But, with the support of the United States and the acquiescence of Australia, the army began a propaganda campaign that blamed the treasonous uprising on the Communist Party, then a major force in society.

Whipping up a frenzy of anti-communist hatred before it launched its killing spree, members of the Communist-linked Indonesian Women’s Movement, or Gerwani, were accused of cutting off the genitals of the generals. The women, so the reports went, then took part in a sexual orgy with Communist cadres and sympathetic air force officers at the very place the bodies of the generals had been thrown into a well.

Sumini was a member of Gerwani, living in Central Java and working as a kindergarten teacher. She remembers the propaganda campaign. “I did not believe it,” she said. “Gerwani was good … Its statutes said we should help the illiterates, children from poor families.”

It was a couple of months after the failed coup that Sumini was detained by an army officer and sent to prison, along with her sister and cousin. It was another 10 years before she was released.

“I remember my sister being stripped and electrocuted,” she said.

Mr Anwar, who was a secretary-general of a civil servants union, spent 12 years in prison. He, too, was electrocuted, beaten with a chair and fists. The worst thing, though, was being separated from his family.

They had no idea what had happened to him, but remained ostracised for his affiliation with the union movement. Three of his children had died – including one who committed suicide – before his release.

Like all those identified as leftists, Sumini and Mr Anwar were unable to get work after their release, their identity papers marking them as former political prisoners.

Even so, compared with other victims, Mr Anwar and Sumini got off relatively lightly.

The mass killings were particularly gruesome. Some were lined up and shot by the military. Many more were beheaded, garrotted or had their throats slit by Islamic militias with knives or machetes.

“It was done face to face,” says Greg Fealy, of the Australian National University. “It’s not like the mechanical process that the Nazis had, or Pol Pot’s farms [in Cambodia].”

Mr Fealy will be among about 30 academics who will congregate in Singapore next week for the biggest conference ever held on the massacres.

It is perhaps instructive that the conference is not being held in Indonesia and that most of the participants are not Indonesians.

Despite some steps towards accounting for the events of 1965 and 1966 after the fall of Suharto, Indonesia’s efforts to undertake a detailed official investigation into the coup and its aftermath have been stillborn.

The Parliament set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission after Suharto was deposed, but it never got off the ground after Mr Yudhoyono failed to appoint delegates and the Constitutional Court ruled it unlawful.

The highly sanitised history of the period taught at schools was briefly abandoned in 2004.

But the old texts, depicting the events as a patriotic campaign that resulted in less than 80,000 deaths, were reintroduced in 2006 following protests by Islamic groups and the military. The offending text books from 2004 were burnt.

Katherine McGregor, a University of Melbourne academic and the convener of next week’s conference, said there remained a lack of political will from the highest levels to tackle the legacy of the massacres.

As the Indonesian scholar Asvi Warman Adam notes, Mr Yudhoyono’s father-in-law, Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, was the military officer who led the killings in Central Java.

Jakarta (President Obama – Bung Karno Stadium)

Photo: Reuters

Jakarta is in need of  a large dose of “the fierce urgency of now” and “the audacity of hope”.  There is so much to be done. I hope in the coming months that President Obama has the opportunity to travel to Jakarta and to speak directly to the people of Indonesia. He could fill Bung Karno Stadium ten times over. This may seem both improbable and impossible but that is the character of the events which has brought us to today. Think of these words in the context of Indonesia…

…that the lines of tribes shall soon dissolve…

Selected quotes:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them – that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, health care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.

And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.

And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

 Full text of inauguration speech here …>

 

SUPPORT JAKARTA URBAN BLOG

Jakarta (apa?)

 Jakarta, 2008

 

Is Jakarta a city?

In the conclusion to the chapter titled The Cultural Construction of Malay Cities in Southeast Asian Urbanism by Evers and Korff is the following comment regarding Jakarta:

“Modern Jakarta is, to paraphrase Oswald Spengler, “a very large settlement but, nevertheless, not a city”.”

The context of this statement is regarding the cultural construction of urban space and urban traditions in Indonesia based on the kraton or istana and the mosque.

As Evers and Korff conclude it is noted that these “…urban traditions seem to have lost their importance. Colonialism, immigration, and lately, integration into a world economy and globalization certainly implied an increased homogenization of the morphology of the cities. The sky-line of Bangkok, Manila,  Jakarta and Singapore look quite similar to the postmodernist high-rise architecture, which hides the temples, palaces, and masjids. However, the traditional concepts of the city still play a role as they define specific views of urbanism, specific contested genii loci  within the city that quite often form the “hot” spots of urban conflicts. These conflicts associated with kampung demolition, or, urban re-construction in general. For the understanding of present-day urbanism in Southeast Asia, these concepts have to be taken into consideration.”

However,  whether or not Jakarta is a city is still a very intriguing question. And if Jakarta is not a city then what is it? If Jakarta is simply “a very large settlement” then what does that mean?

Post updated 11/22/2008

Is Jakarta a city?

I decided to ask around to a few folks who write about Jakarta. I will continue to update this post as I receive comments. And, of course, I thank all for their time and trouble regarding my question.

Below are some of the replies to date:

aroengbinang

Interesting…
Googling with keywords “define: city”, and the answer of yes, based on that simple definition, is there.

The not so simple answer is a No. Yogya is certainly a city, but Jakarta is more of a huge crowd where most of its inhabitants are still strongly attached to the place where they originally came from.

 

Jakartass

Of course Jakarta is a city.

Cities generally spread out from an original core to engulf surrounding villages, all of which have some attachment to the core, generally for trading purposes. Jakarta remains a collection of kampung, e.g. Kampungs Melayu and Rambutan. This is much like London with its collection of villages, e.g. Hampstead and Blackheath, and the (village) Greens of Chiswick and Islington.

 

Lightbeamers MD

Yes, obviously Jakarta is a city. It has the infrastructure, dynamics, and density of a city. It has the economics, transportation and utilities of a city. And most of all, it has the diversity of a city.

However, if you asked if it’s an ideal city, then the answer would be different; an ideal city would involve me riding a bike to office and not being worried of getting hit by a car, robbed by a street thug, or inhaling toxic emission in the air.

Something you and your survey respondents might like:

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/01/super-green-cit.html

http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/11/third-world-slums-biz-cx_21cities_ee_0611slums.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEiy4zepuVE

 

Indonesia’s Urban Studies

Hi Thomas,

It’s nice to hear from you again. I learned that your blog now is quite
informative. A lot of interesting posts. Well done!

In response to your question, below is my two cents:

Jakarta is a city, but it is not an Indonesian city. As the capital of
Indonesia, Jakarta can’t represent the heart of Indonesia. Jakarta has
been globalized. There are many Indonesian characters that have been
diminishing and they are replaced by other characters from around the
world. That’s the consequence of a globalized world.

As you mentioned in your post, the Indonesian cultural construction and
urban tradition such as istana and mosques have become less important than
newly skyscrapers in many parts of Jakarta. Nevertheless, a few parts of
Jakarta, i.e. kawasan Kota Lama, have been revitalized and Jakarta is
attempting to preserve its historical buildings. This area has been
publicized by the Jakarta’s tourism bureau to attract more tourists to
visit Jakarta. That’s certainly a good thing for Jakarta, but it could
even better if more Indonesian characters in Jakarta can be revitalized
and preserved for many generations to come!

Best,
Deden

 

Igor Firdauzi
http://wandererjourney.blogspot.com/ 

now, i understand your question!

I didnt check my blog feeds before i answer your question
, but my my answer will be the same and quite legal definition

jakarta is a city, capital city of indonesia and because of that jakarta also a province

now, if you put sociology, anthropology, urban and social study, public facility in the picture, the answer will vary

cheers

Rob
http://therabexperience.blogspot.com/ 

It is an interesting question on a number of levels.

I agree that within the most accepted definitions of a city, then Jakarta is rightfully to be classed as a city.

It is bigger than a village. I would agree with J that in many ways Jakarta started out as a village that has gradually absorbed surrounding villages. However, I was always led to believe that the various names of those villages such as Kampung Melayu, Kampung Bali, Kampung Rambutan and the like reflected the origin of many of the inhabitants of the locale or a physical feature of the place.

However, the idea that you have Jabotabek and a now much longer abbreviation that includes other satellite cities that have been linked by the urban sprawl that is Jakarta begs the question of what is the word that best describes this if it is not “city”. That said, I think it is more than just a very large settlement.

I was interested in Deden’s comments that Jakarta is not an Indonesian city because it has been globalized. I would never have thought about the idea. for example, of saying that Sydney, Canberra, or Melbourne were not Australian cities because they have been globalized or that they could not represent the “heart” of Australia.

I tend to agree with Lightbeamers MD on the idea of Jakarta not being an ideal city. I would include general cleanliness and state of repair of roads footpaths and the like.

I don’t know this contributes anything to the discussion.

The short and sweet answer is that I think Jakarta is a city.

Jakartass

Greetings all.

I’m not a teacher or student of urban studies, but as I’m a city person, a Londoner and now a resident of Jakarta for 20+ years, may I disagree with you Deden.

Jakarta is most definitely an Indonesian city, a reflection of the many ethnic groups resident here who, as in cities all over the world, tend to congregate with group members. Thus there are predominantly Chinese areas, and, for example, clusters of Bugis and Batak. There are also the specific Betawi areas. I would suggest there fore that Jakarta does represent the ‘heart’ of Indonesia. For you, Deden, the heart of Indonesia is probably somewhere in Central Java - I’m just guessing, but I know from your name that you’re not from Sumatra.

Where I do agree with you, is that more of Jakarta’s ‘ history’ should have been preserved.

 

Roy

Jakarta is very much an Indonesian city. It is not so much an Indonesian city because it has plenty of mosques and kaki limas, but because of its form: it is a sprawled city, a desakota, and therefore unlike cities like my hometown Amsterdam, which is built according to the logic of concentric circles with the oldest part in the center. And I don’t see much in preservation of old buildings (mostly Dutch anyway), either they become death objects for tourists (what is the name of that museum in front of Batavia cafe? with a very strange collection) or they become commercialized (the former kantor imigrasi is since last monday offcially the Buddha Bar, owned by Sutoyoso’s daughter and opened by Fauzi Bowo). I see more in the creation of more public space (in its political sense) to keep this sprawled city together (spatially as well as politically), thus more public transportation, less private car ownership, more parks (which are not to be fenced), a public funded theater for dance and music performances, a public funded modern art museum, etc.

salam,

Roy 
http://fatumbrutum.blogspot.com/
http://parahyanganphilosophy.blogspot.com/
 

SUPPORT JAKARTA URBAN BLOG

Jakarta (Jakarta_6)

 

done

 

Jakara_6

 

The Jakarta_6 video posted above was produced from photos and video clips taken in Jakarta in February, 2008. All photos and videos are from The Jakarta Urban Blog, some of which have been published here previously.  I want to note additional credits: two photos from The Jakarta Post (the boy swimming in the garbage and ‘Merdeka’, I have no author attribution), IndCoup (b&w kampung), and Hermanus Prihatna (soldier).

The original video was created from a slide show produced on my MacBook with iPhoto software. This slide show was exported to Quicktime and saved as  .mov file where the video clips and sound track were then added. The video posted above is a .mp4 file which allowed for a faster download time in WordPress.  The resolution is not as good at the Quicktime file, there is some pixilation in the photo transitions, but is adequate for the posting here.  The sound track quality is very good.

The sound track is music from Paul Winter, Siti Nurhaliza, Dewa, Parkdrive, Sharina Munaf, and Bruce Cockburn.  

I love Jakarta.

My heart is there. My people are there. I dearly miss that city. So, Jakarta_6 is a tribute, a love note, a documentary.  I hope you enjoy it. 

The title “Jakarta_6″ comes through default of naming the file. It took me six times before I got what I wanted. The video still needs some editing. The running time for the video is just over 39 minutes. 

A high resolution DVD is available from The Jakarta Urban Blog. The cost is $12.00 US per copy and includes shipping to anywhere in the world where there is a mailing address. You can purchase a copy through the PayPal donation button posted at the left bottom column (be sure to email me about your purchase and include your name and mailing address) or by visiting my SUPPORT page. My contact information is posted there.

Turn down the lights. Turn on the sound. Turn up the volume.

School has started again. Posting my be sporadic for the next ten days or so.

Comments are encouraged and welcomed.

Thanks.  

Support Jakarta Urban Blog

 

Jakarta (urban language, cultural gado-gado)

Detail from Borobudur

Indonesian is part of that great language family group known as Austronesian  which is the most widely spread language group on the planet. Stretching as far west as Madagascar and a far east at Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as it is known by it original Polynesian settlers.

The Hawaiian language, for example still shares words with modern Indonesian: Hawaiian, ahi = Indonesian, api (fire, though I was told that in Seram the tool used to make the fire is called ‘ahi’), Hawaiian, maka = Indonesian, mata (eye), Hawaiian, maki = Indonesian, mati (dead). The name ‘Hawai`i may be a cognate of ‘Java’, the name of Indonesia’s most populous island; you can see it in the ‘awa’ and the ‘ava’. On Seram there is the village of Wahai, perhaps yet another cognate. Also on Seram the prefix ‘wai’ is used to mean river and in Hawai`i it means ‘water’.

Back in the deep time when people pushed their sailing canoes off the beaches somewhere in the Indonesian archipelago they carried with them the roots of the Austronesian family group. They also carried the real roots of taro, banana, kukui, sugar cane, ti, and the other Polynesian “canoe” plants which are known to have their biological and evolutionary origins in Indonesia.

Thus the world is linked and it is always bigger and more connected than we might assume as first glance. The word moa has a long reach; it means ‘bird’ or ‘chicken’ and is still in use today in Madagascar, Aeotearoa, and Hawai`i.

The other lesson here is that language is, in and of itself, not static. Language is pliable and transforms over time. I like to think of it as a mental plastic; resilient, and absorbing. Perhaps there is no language which gives such a good example as this as Indonesian.

Modern Indonesian is rooted to Old Malay originating in southern Sumatra and spreading during the 7th through the 9th century under the Hindu Sriwijaya kingdom. Modern Malay came in to its own in the 13th and 14th centuries as a lingua franca (or trading language) when it was spread through the archipelago coincident with the spread of Islam.

That is how I think of Bahasa Indonesia; a commercial trading language at the core, having incorporated words from Sanskrit, Chinese, Arabic, and later Portuguese, Dutch, and English, with good portions of Javanese, Sundanese, Maduraese, Minankabauese and other far flung indigenous languages thrown in the mix for good measure.

Traveling the far reaches of the archipelago I always get the humbling impression that people speak two, three, or even four different languages. Modern Indonesian really is “unity in diversity“.

Jakarta, of course, is particularly interesting because it has always been, since the days of Batavia, a place where all these influences rubbed up against each other and mixed together, both metaphorically and physically.

The Betawi of Jakarta is a cultural result.

The Dutch actually got around to building a city in the eighteenth century when the walls surrounding Fort Batavia were finally pulled down and hauled up to Gambir. From this time onward, and especially in the early nineteenth century, Indonesian ethnic groups increasingly found their place in the life of Batavia, however marginal that may have been.

The Dutch,  for administrative purposes and security reasons divided Batavia into small ethnic enclaves, or kampungs. But, as Abeyasekere states, “By the 1820s… …intermixing had gone so far that observers could no longer divide the Indonesian community into distinct ethnic groups. In the nineteenth century Indonesians born in Batavia generally came be called Orang Betawi, a recognition that the Indonesians of the city formed a distinct ethnic group”.

The cultural force which held the Orang Betawi together was their common faith of Islam; in fact they had a reputation of being fanatically Islamic. In the Dutch colonial world of Batavia which set the economic and social rules of the day this was at least something the Betawi had under their control and could claim as their own. They sent their children to Muslim schools. They avoided employment which would bring them into contact with Europeans.

They spoke their own language, a distinct dialect of Malay. From this, other distinct cultural practices evolved; wedding ceremonies, architecture, dress, music, dance, oral traditions, ondel-ondel, and Silat.

By the 1930s the growth of Batavia was so rapid that the Betawi were viewed as an ethnic minority in the very city which created them. Their culture persists in Jakarta today in their language, art, theatre and they came still be found, on a Saturday morning, practicing Silat.

Silat, Kampung Betawi, Jakarta, 2008

The urban scene has always been a hothouse of cultural evolution. In the case of Jakarta the crowding together of large numbers of people from widely diverse areas throughout the archipelago results in a blend of  varied ethnic traditions mixing under the influence of the social stress of urban living and enhanced by the pressure of external cultural influences.

Abeyasekere notes how quickly new immigrants to the city become Jakartans.

It’s a cultural gado-gado.

“…language is the colour of our skin, in a way- it will never wash off. It isn’t necessarily about the language, it’s about the message, the perseverence of culture implied somewhere in the context.”

-Marisa Duma

PROKEM: An Analysis of A Jakarta Slang. Thomas H. Slone. Masalai Press, Oakland, California, 2003. 95 pages.

What is a “ludling” you might ask?

The literal meaning of the term is “play-language”. Linguists use the term to describe languages created from ordinary languages “as the result of a transformation or series of transformations acting regularly on an ordinary language text, with the intent of altering form but not the content of the original message, for the purposes of concealment or comic effect”. Slone states in his Introduction to PROKEM that, “As such, ludlings exist as a subset of play languages, namely those that are formed by regular transformation of a standard, base language. Ludlings as well as most other slang languages retain the grammar of the base language”.

Oing-gay o-tay karta-jay o-tay uy-bay ome-say ice-ray.

What is this?

In the US, and perhaps in England, every school age child comes across this sooner or later. This is a ludling known as “Pig Latin” where the words are formed by taking a standard English word, transposing the initial part of the word to the end, and adding “ay”.

So the above is: Going to Jakarta to buy some rice.

Or something like that. I am a bit rusty on my Pig Latin as I probably have not spoken it since the fifth grade.

Slone defines Prokem as “a slang language that is spoken in Jakarta, primarily by youth who speak the Jakartan dialect of Indonesian. It most likely originated as a secret criminal language, but is today spoken by both high school and university students and by members of street gangs, preman, from which the name Prokem comes”.

Jakartan is a dialect of Indonesian and Prokem is a slang Jakartan.

Slang has its roots in puns, jokes, crime, sex, violence, politics, arcronyms, generational changes, fashion, “the scene”. It is the same for the beatniks, hippys, or surfers. To speak slang is an entrance ticket to a  community which is often opposed to and out of the norm.

As Abayesekere notes:

“Some of the more well-to-do clearly felt that Western influence had most to teach about shaping a modern urban society. They watched Western films frequently and tried to keep in touch with trends abroad. This troubled many nationalists, who feared that Jakartans were absorbing all the worst aspects of Western culture. In 1952, Vice-President Hatta noted that Indonesia’s large cities were much influenced by Westerners: “In these places, most of our people just become imitators. As usual, the easiest thing to imitate is the shallow, the superficial…” He pus this down to the fact that, “most of our cities did not arise from our own society but rather as appendages of a foreign economy. These cities are not the centers of the creative activity of our own people but primarily distribution centers of foreign goods”.

In the Jakarta of the 1950s, Hatta’s remarks seemed to be supported by the appearance of the so-called ‘cross-boys’. These were gangs of youths who modeled themselves on the juvenile delinquents portrayed in Western films and who were usually associated with jeans and motor bikes. Some view them suspiciously as a sign of imported social decadence, but they also had much in common with the pemuda of the Revolution days. When martial law was introduced in 1957, the military authorities in Jakarta banned ‘cross-boy organization’, of which there seemed to be a large number: thirty-six were listed by name, including Cross-Boys Club, Deddy [sic] Boys Club, and James Dean Club. And for good measure, the wearing of jeans in public by anyone over the age of ten was forbidden. This was no hollow threat: arrests were subsequently made at cinemas.”

Slang emerges to meet the social surroundings.

Here are some examples as given by Slone.

“What does MBA [ Master of Business Administration ] mean?” (pun, riddle)  Prokem = “Master by Accident and “Masih belum apa-apa.” (“Still nothing”).

APIK (acronym) : Indonesian = Akademi Pendidikan Il mu Keguruan [ "Training Academy of Science Teachers" ]   Prokem = agak pikun ["rather senile"]

ANGGUN (acronymic redefinition of regular word meaning “well dressed”) in Prokem = angota ragunan, [ "ugly person, literally "member of the Ragunan Zoo" ].

SIMPATIK (another acronymic redefinition whose standard meaning is “congenial” or “sympathetic) in Prokem = simpanse pakai batik [ "chimpanzee dressed in batik" ].

 CHICAGO Indonesian = Cikini, Kali Pasir, Gondangdia Lama; Prokem = Chicago, Illinois; three street names in Jakarta that form a triangular area and may have been a gang territory.

OPEC Indonesian = Organisasi Pedagang Ekonomi Cukupan; Prokem = Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Organization of Economic Tranders [providing] Just Enough).

These are just a small sample of Prokem which Slone cites in his book. There may be well over 4,000 words in the Prokem vocabulary; some words dropping away and new ones added. The book itself is a slim volume but rich in the technical understanding of where Prokem comes from, how it functions, and where it is going. It’s detail is thorough, educational, and entertaining. It shows the reach of Bahasa Indonesia; “the perseverence of culture implied somewhere in the context”.

Other Sites of Interest:

Indonesian Language Resources

Kelas Bahasa: Huh? This is Indonesian?

IndonesiaLogue: Betawi

TeakDoor: Leanring Indonesian Urban Slang (some good examples here).

trims

Support Jakarta Urban Blog

Jakarta (global climate change and the wealth of nations)

East Jakarta, 2008

“It is the business of the future to be dangerous”

-A.N. Whitehead

This morning I decided to turn on the TV and check the news. The first thing I saw along the bottom of the screen in the CNN news ticker was “4,118 US forces dead in Iraq.” 

The war in Iraq is not only a war for oil, as all the Bush adminstration rationales for the war have now been exposed as blatant lies and intentional fraud, it is a war for oil profits led by war criminals.

From N.Y. Times, 7/11/2008

Book Cites Secret Red Cross Report of C.I.A. Torture of Qaeda Captives

By SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 11, 2008
Correction Appended

WASHINGTON – Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes, according to a new book on counterterrorism efforts since 2001. …> go to article

From AFP

Antarctic Ice Shelf ‘Hanging by Thread’: European Scientists

PARIS – New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.

Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is “hanging by its last thread” to Charcot Island, one of the plate’s key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release.

“Since the connection to the island… helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk,” it said. …> go to article

Brilliant Plans to Destroy the Planet: The World Bank Tackles Climate Change

By Janet Redman, Institute for Policy Studies. Posted July 11, 2008.

President Bush and other leaders of the industrialized world managed to produce a masterfully vague, loophole-ridden statement on climate change at a Group of 8 summit held at a secluded resort on the banks of Lake Toyako in Japan this week.

Meanwhile, thousands of delegates from grassroots movements transformed tranquil Odori Park in downtown Sapporo into the central nervous system of a bottom-up response to ecologically destructive development policies. On the opening day of the G8 summit, activists from every continent joined Japanese environmental and global justice groups in the streets brandishing banners, flags and megaphones. Their message was unambiguous: “Climate Justice, Yes! World Bank, No!” …

…Also offensive to developing countries is that the World Bank is asking the countries least responsible for causing climate change to take out loans to help pay for adapting to the inevitable impacts. According to the G8 statement, rich country “donations” to the Strategic Climate Fund will count toward those nations’ obligations for development aid, stretching an already pitiful sum impossibly thin.

Piling more debt onto many already heavily indebted nations will mean less money for climate-related disaster preparedness, emergency services and food shortages in the future.

World Bank Climate Hypocrisy

The World Bank’s effort to reinvent itself as the global climate crusader is a dangerous charade. With $2 billion already spent on coal, oil and gas projects this year, the World Bank continues to be among the world’s largest multilateral financiers of greenhouse-gas-emitting projects in the developing world.

The new Climate Investment Funds proposed by the United States and others will house the Clean Technology Fund. Donations from rich countries will ostensibly be used to bring low-carbon technologies to developing countries, and clean energy access to their poorest citizens. But environmental groups have taken to calling the Clean Technology Fund the Slightly Less Dirty Technology Fund because of the bank’s outright support for slightly more efficient coal power…

U.S. Role

Fiery protest in Japan was matched by a chilly reception among some members of the U.S. Congress to the Bush administration’s request for a $2 billion donation to the World Bank’s new funds. Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, pointed out at a recent committee hearing on a U.S. contribution that the “World Bank is not seen as an institution friendly to the environment” and that it seems to “spend one day a month protecting the environment and the other 29 days destroying it.” Still, it’s likely that Congress will authorize the money…” …> go to article

Janet Redman is a researcher for the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., where she provides analysis of the international financial institutions’ energy investment and carbon finance activities. She is the author of the recent report “World Bank: Climate Profiteer.”

Cheney’s staff censored EPA, ex-official alleges
Warming’s effects on health at issue

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post / July 9, 2008

WASHINGTON – Members of Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff censored congressional testimony by a top federal official on the health threats posed by global warming, a former official of the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday.

In a letter to Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, Jason Burnett, former EPA deputy associate administrator, said an official from Cheney’s office ordered that six pages be edited out of the testimony last October of Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Several media outlets, including The Washington Post, reported at the time that Gerberding had planned to say that the “CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern,” among other passages. White House officials said then that they questioned the scientific basis of aspects of Gerberding’s draft testimony.

Boxer, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the administration feared that Gerberding’s testimony would force the federal government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. The White House has opposed mandatory limits and insisted that voluntary measures and increased research are the best way to address the issue. …> go to article

Is this picture becoming clear?

Follow the Money (an example)

Thomson Financial News
Indonesia’s Adaro sets IPO this week after securing approval
07.06.08, 10:22 PM ET

JAKARTA (Thomson Financial) – Indonesian integrated coal company PT Adaro Energy Tbk said on Monday it has scheduled its $1.3 billion initial public offering for Tuesday through Friday after obtaining approval from the capital market regulator Bapepam-LK.

Adaro is planning to sell 11.3 billion shares or 34 percent of its enlarged capital at 1,100 rupiah a share, making the IPO the biggest ever on the Indonesian stock market.

Adaro Indonesia is the country’s second-biggest coal company after PT Bumi Resources Tbk.

In 2007 Adaro produced 40 million tonnes of coal and sold 36.6 million tonnes, while Bumi sold 55.4 million tonnes of coal.

The shares will be listed on the Indonesian stock exchange on July 16.

The IPO was originally set for June 24 to 26 but was delayed due to issues relating to a share ownership dispute as well as tax and royalty payments.

Adaro Energy currently owns 61.23 percent of Adaro Indonesia, and has a 61.8 percent stake in Indonesia Bulk Terminal and 58.89 percent of Coaltrade Services International Pte. Ltd. …> go to article

 RPT-Indonesian “rent-a-mob” queue for $1.3 bln coal IPO
Thu Jul 10, 2008 3:39am

By Andreas Ismar

JAKARTA, July 10 (Reuters) – They didn’t look like your typical investors, as they queued under the scorching sun in Jakarta’s posh business district for shares in Indonesia’s biggest, hottest, initial public offering PT Adaro Energy.

There were women carrying babies, and men in flip-flops, shorts and faded T-shirts — the poor and unemployed, bussed in from Jakarta’s suburbs or slums and paid to stand in line for others.

Adaro Energy, Indonesia’s second-biggest coal miner by output, offered $1.3 billion of shares for sale this week, but most of those are earmarked for connected parties and many other investors are scrambling to get hold of the stock.

That’s where hundreds of people like Hilmawati and Arif come in, earning 25,000-35,000 rupiah ($2.70-$3.80) to queue up for shares on behalf of a man they called “the boss” .

“I’ve been waiting here since 7 o’clock, waiting for them to open at 10,” said Hilmawati, a 30-year-old housewife, as she waited in front of the exhibition hall in Jakarta’s Sudirman Central Business District.

“I’ve been going back and forth three times already. The officials were cruel, they asked so many questions, I just say I came from here,” she said, brandishing an order form from state-owned Danareksa Sekuritas.

“We came in one bus, 50 of us. For one form we got 25,000 rupiah, excluding lunch money, they take care of the transport. Later they will take us back home at four o’clock. If we got the form we give it to the leader, if not we won’t get paid,” said Hilmawati, adding that she knew nothing about Adaro or shares.

The boss uses their names and IDs to apply for multiple share allocations, betting that some, if not all, will be successful.

Brokers in Jakarta admit privately that this is a common practice to get shares in “hot” issues. In a country with millions of poor and unemployed, it is easy to rent a crowd, whether to buy shares or to gather in protest.

Several big foreign investors active in Asia have grumbled that they were shut out of the Adaro offering despite heavy overseas interest in what is seen as an attractively priced offering.

The deal underscores the opacity that sometimes plagues Southeast Asia’s biggest country and gives international investors pause. Red tape and rampant corruption are also frequent complaints.

On Thursday, a few applicants were turned away because of their scruffy attire, but entrepreneurs were at hand, renting out business shirts and ties, so that would-be investors could look the part.

“I cannot get in because of my shoes, they said we must wear leather shoes. They screen us by our looks,” said Arif, an unemployed man in his twenties who said he had at least tried to do some homework on the share offering.

“This is a kind of mining company, you know, coal. Many people know nothing about Adaro, I just tried to find out about it, asking around, hearing what people said.

“We were never informed about this by the boss. What the boss did was just tell us that there’s a share offering, then he gave the print out which contains our name and the company that we should buy.”

Adaro said in a document that 69.15 percent of the 11.14 billion shares offered will be allocated to five investors who already had stakes in PT Adaro Indonesia, a coal miner that Adaro Energy plans to acquire with the proceeds from the IPO. They are Farallon Capital, Kerry Coal, the Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC), Citigroup (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), and Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

Just 22.82 percent of the IPO shares are being allocated to domestic institutions, asset managers, insurers, pension funds, and individuals. (Additional reporting by Harry Suhartono; Editing by Sara Webb) …>go to article

Partners get huge chunk of Indonesia’s Adaro IPO
Wed Jul 9, 2008 11:52am 

By Harry Suhartono and Tony Munroe

JAKARTA/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Shares in PT Adaro Energy’s $1.3 billion IPO, Indonesia’s largest offering, were mostly distributed to connected parties, disappointing some domestic investors and global funds.

Several big foreign investors active in Asia have grumbled that they were shut out of the country’s biggest-ever initial public offering despite heavy overseas interest in what is seen as an attractively priced deal.

The deal underscores the opacity that sometimes plagues Southeast Asia’s biggest country.

No international prospectus was issued, which was surprising to some observers given the size of the IPO, but not unheard of, people familiar with the matter said.

Adaro said in a document that 69.15 percent of the 11.14 billion shares offered will be allocated to five investors who already had stakes in PT Adaro Indonesia, a coal miner that Adaro Energy plans to acquire with the proceeds from the IPO. They are Farallon Capital, Kerry Coal, the Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC), Citigroup (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research), and Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research).

Just 22.82 percent of the IPO shares are being allocated to domestic institutions, asset managers, insurers, pension funds, and individuals. Schroders Investment Management Indonesia will become the biggest unconnected institutional buyer of the IPO with $12 million worth of shares.

Remaining shares went to foreign investors including Dubai Investment Group, a company document said. …> go to article

Commentary

From my ”comment” on Jakartass post “Blinkers“, July 8, 2008

…I am convinced that the current energy market is being manipulated (in the mix of supply and demand issues and rank speculation) to enrich elites, both in Indonesia and in the United States.

I would argue that the natural resources of Indonesia belong to the Indonesians and not to political cliques or Chinese investors.

… the wealth of the nation (Indonesia) is on a vertical elevator ride to the small percentage of those who sit at the top while it should be spread horizontally to the benefit of society as a whole.

Scarcity of food, fuel and high rates of inflation hurt those at the bottom the most.

Push it to the limits of poverty and indeed as in some places in Indonesia the results are malnutrition and death.

From my ”comment” on Indonesia Matters post “Power Blackouts“, July 12, 2008

“Indonesia is a rich country but we are poor people, why is that?”

I have heard that on more than one occasion from my brother-in-law.

It is part question, part statement, and part indictment.

How can there be an energy crisis in Indonesia when the country is so energy rich?

Globalization, multi-national corporations, and the corrupt political elite have conspired to steal the wealth of Indonesia for the benefit of themselves and at the expense of the national welfare.

This is not inherently an Indonesian problem as we see here in the US record profits being posted by the oil companies the likes which have never been seen in the history of capitalism.

Given the dire warnings we have been given regarding global climate change it seems folly to continue to pursue our fossil fuel way of life but that way of life cannot be changed over night, in a snap.

Oil profits need to be used to stabilize energy needs and invested in alternative sources of energy through developing those technologies through research and development.

More to the point the wealth of the nation needs to be spread horizontally and not vertically.

Right now those profits sit in the bank accounts of the rich and the rest of us can clearly all go to hell.

Indonesia to shift factory hours amid blackouts: vice president
Fri, Jul 11, 2008 AFP

JAKARTA – INDONESIA will move manufacturers’ working hours to weekends in a bid to avoid prolonged rolling blackouts across the country, the vice president said on Friday.

The move, which will also see working hours shifted to off-peak times, has been brought in to avoid burdening the overstrained grid during peak hours.

‘A joint ministerial decree will be signed this afternoon, and will become effective in August,’ Mr Jusuf Kalla told Dow Jones Newsires, without giving further details.

State power monopoly PLN started two weeks of rolling blackouts in Jakarta on Friday after six months of frequent outages on the dense Java-Bali grid cost businesses millions of dollars in losses.

The rolling blackouts in Jakarta are officially due to maintenance work that will interrupt gas supplies to two state-owned generating stations in North Jakarta, but analysts have blamed the country’s crumbling infrastructure.

Analysts have warned electricity shortages could limit economic growth and discourage local and foreign investment in South-east Asia’s largest economy.

‘The economy will not be able to grow above six per cent if (PLN) can’t increase supply by nine per cent annually,’ said Mr Purbaya Sadewa, chief economist at the state-owned investment bank PT Danareksa.

Rising demand for electricity has led to increasing numbers of blackouts across the country in the past few years despite its vast resources of oil, natural gas, coal and geothermal energy.

The power crisis appears to be deteriorating even though only 53 per cent of the archipelago’s 234 million people has access to electricity.

The government is planning to boost capacity by some 30 per cent to about 40,000 megawatts by 2011, but the first new power station is not expected to be operational until mid-2009.” …> go to article

 

My favorite quote of late is from A. N. Whitehead, “It is the business of the future to be dangerous“.

We will soon see just how dangerous it will be.

Support Jakarta Urban Blog

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.

 

Support Jakarta Urban Blog

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. 

 

Support Jakarta Urban Blog

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.

 Support Jakarta Urban Blog