Back to Jakarta (back to the future)

Trends and Emergent Properties

Giant Rat of the Foja Mountains    (five times bigger than common city rat)

Gong Xi Fat Chai - Year of the Rat

Asia Times

New year bonus for Indonesia’s Chinese

 By Kalinga Seneviratne

During the authoritarian regime of president Suharto (1967-98), public displays of Chinese culture were banned, and many Chinese were asked to change their names to Indonesian ones if they wished to be eventually considered for citizenship. “Suharto’s government saw Chinese characters and culture as political. We were not even allowed to make candles,” said Yu Le, a member of a Buddhist temple.

He said he now prefers to use his Chinese name rather than his adopted Indonesian one of Suherman. “Around the temple there were always police and military. We could not celebrate Imlek here. People were afraid to come. We had to do it at home, hiding.” …>go to article

At the start of the Chinese lunar new year it is tradtional to make predictions about the character of the coming year.  In this Year of the Rat it appears CAUTION will be the watchword as Chinese fortune tellers predict financial and political rumblings, tsunamis and epidemics in the year ahead…

“The mounts of Anak Krakatau, Merapi and Kelud, which last year did not generate a relatively huge explosion, may spew their infernal lava this year,” Jakarta-based feng shui expert Master Tan told The Jakarta Post, placing the eruptions between March and August. “To tell you the truth, I am so worried about these three volcanos… I hope this time my prediction misses.” While mainstream Chinese astrology lists this year as an “Earth” year, Master Tan says it is a fire year, combining the sky element with its positive soil and the earth element with its positive water, producing “fire thunder”. Surabaya-based feng shui practitioner Putri Wong Kam Fu has had the same vision of the three volcanoes. “I don’t know when they will erupt. But if we all repent, they will not explode as a volcanic eruption is actually an admonition of us humans,” she said. …>go to article

One does not necessarily need to be a feng shui practitioner to make predictions regarding the coming year for Jakarta. A close review of the news will do.  As per Indonesia: volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis are a sure thing. No difficulty there. 

I offer a few of my own predictions here:

Soeharto’s “hero status”.  Not going to happen.

The oddest (perhaps not) scandal relating to that came at the conference of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption held on Bali on Februrary 2, 2008. Delegates were asked to bow their heads in a minute of silence to observe the passing of Indonesian dictator Soeharto. SBY jetted off to attend the funeral. The Sydney Morning Hearald reported that, “Dismayed by the irony of the conference’s condolences for Soeharto, Filipino activist Vincent Lazatan took the stage on Wednesday to present civil society groups call for stronger, quicker action to combat corruption - demanding a transparent, effective review mechanism”.  First, he asked all delegates to stand for a second time. “Please, a minute’s silence for all those who have died fighting corruption,” Mr Lazatan demanded. They stood”.  The whole thing seemed simply and utterly strange.

Another interesting development which may tarnish the hero status thing is reported by TempoInteraktif.

“Cendana” Family’s Wealth May be Confiscated as Guarantee
Tuesday, 05 February, 2008

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The state attorney team from the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) is of the opinion that the assets of Suharto’s beneficiaries can be included in the list of guaranteed confiscation in the Supersemar Foundation civil case. According to Yoseph Suardi Sabda, one of the attorneys from the AGO, it can be the responsibility if the foundation’s assets are insufficient to meet the claim’s value. “The AGO can include it by a request during the trial,” he said in Jakarta last Saturday (2/2). …>go to article

If the family moves assets the AGO can move to confiscate them.  Nice.

While the Golkar Party proposes Soeharto as a hero of Indonesia the people dispose. The voices of his victims still live, the historical record too concrete for this to ever happen, now or later.  Of interest is the recent annoucement by the Univerity of Westminster to fund Innovative film project to document Indonesia’s hidden genocide …>go to article

Floods.  There will be more.

Haven’t we been here before? As Jakartass has recently written, “Jeez”.  My comment there was, “welcome to the new Jakarta (or old Jakarta as the case may be). Soon some enterprising individual will start a water taxi service. Jakarta will be the Venice of the Java Sea”. 

Miko added, “already happened Thomas, when Jalan Thamrin turned into a tributary of the Ciliwung river I watched as several enterprising individuals rowed boats down along the Busway picking up passengers and dropping them off at the nearest dry spot. The most ingenious chap for me was the sampah man (scavenger) who used his cart to take people across the flooded car park of Sarinah to the relative dryness of the overpass, for a small fee I hope.

Curiously I couldn’t help but notice the complete lack of Jakarta’s finest money earners who normally populate Jalan Thamrin in large numbers but who seemed to have disappeared completely.

Traffic was directed by street boys, the old and infirm were assisted by passers-by but nary a peeler was to be seen”.

This, of course, jogged my memory of the Jakarta floods of February 2007, where I saw on MetroTV vegetable sellers using rafts to bring their produce to flooded upscale neigborhoods.

Perhaps SBY will have to tow a boat behind his Mercy Benz so he does not get his feet wet (again).

Still, Jakarta as the Venice of the Java Sea has quite a ring to it. I can see the tourist brochures even now.  As the Official Indonesian Tourism web site quotes Frieda Pinto from India, “Everything in Indonesia are great, I never thought about it the moment I came here…“   Or Wai Lok from Hongkong, “I’ll tell them, that the negative thing we heard about Indonesia is a fake news”.

Thought about what? Fake news? Am I missing something here?

In any event flooding is a trend and emergent property which is here to stay.

More ominously…

H5N1. I have written on this subject before below. 

Flu burung, bird flu. It is out there in Jakarta stewing and brewing.  The virus is extremely lethal and while only 103 people have died from it so far there remains a huge uncertainty of where this is all going, except that it is not going away.  This is yet another trend and emergent propety of Jakarta living.

AFP 2.6.2008

‘Mysterious’ bird flu baffles Indonesian scientists

JAKARTA (AFP) - Indonesian scientists and officials said they were baffled by the “mysterious” behaviour of the bird flu virus here, which has already claimed nine lives this year in the world’s worst-hit nation.Indonesia has reported 126 cases of H5N1 bird flu, 103 of them fatal, since 2005. This year’s victims have all come from the capital Jakarta and its satellite cities. …>go to article

Traffic.  I predict there will be a traffic jam in Jakarta in 2008.

Barack Obama.  Jakarta’s favorite son polls 75% of the 100 expat votes cast. 

Reuters 2.6.08

Many Indonesians cheer Obama in Democrat race …>go to article

If you cannot predict you can hope…

How am I doing so far?  When it comes to Jakarta it is not difficult to end up talking or writing in circles. 

As the novelist Haruki Murakami has written, “On the flip side of everything we think we absolutely understand lurks an equal amount of the unknown. Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings. In the world we live in, what we know and what we don’t know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion”.  

Here at Jakarta Urban Blog there are many of things to see and do.  Look for a new review of Helmond and Michiels Jakarta Megalopis: Horizontal and Verticle Observations and new edits to Selamat Jakarta.

Soeharto (the end)

Photo: Rizky Dinata

New York Times
Suharto, Former Indonesian Dictator, Dies at 86

Asia Times
OBITUARY 

Suharto leaves an iron-fist legacy

By Michael Vatikiotis

 

Financial Times of London 1.30.2008

Time-lag archipelago: Suharto casts a long shadow over Indonesia
By John Aglionby in Jakarta

…If everything is so rosy, then, why are so many Indonesians so loath to mourn their late president? After all, he reduced inflation from 650 per cent to single digits in a few years, lifted gross domestic product per capita from $50 to $1,000, won awards from the United Nations for his family planning programmes, made the country self-sufficient in rice and unified the peoples of 17,500 islands and 350 ethnic groups.

It is because several other, less savoury aspects of Suharto’s rule are so deep-rooted that the country has barely made inroads into tackling them, analysts say. Many Indonesians believe that it is only when the country has seriously tackled corruption, addressed the human rights abuses that saw anywhere between hundreds of thousands and 2m people killed and built properly functioning institutions that the nation can really claim to be developed. …>go to article   

AFP 1.30.2008
 US propped up Suharto despite rights abuses: documents

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States declassified documents Monday detailing how Washington propped up ex-Indonesian leader Suharto, who died at the weekend, at the expense of democracy and human rights.

The documents, declassified following requests under a freedom of information law, showed the US administration did not use its leverage to bring Suharto to account during his 32-year reign until his last months in office.

“One thing that is clear from the tens of thousands of pages of which we had declassified concerning US ties with Suharto from 1966 to 1998 — at no moment did US presidents ever exercise their maximum leverage over his regime to press for human rights or democratization,” Brad Simpson of the National Security Archive told AFP. …>go to article

Photo: Al Jazeera

Soeharto (again)

 The New Order

 

Some last notes on Soeharto.

This begins the third week since Soeharto entered the hospital, his condition critical, and his family by his side. His team of forty doctors gave him a 50/50 chance of recovery or not. Then reports appeared that his condition was critical, near certain death.

A stream of dignitaries followed to his bedside- President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Vice president Joseph Kalla, then Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, followed by Matahir of Malaysia, and the third President of Indonesia, Habibie.

Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie educated in Germany, a technocrat in the Soeharto regime, and a very unlikely candidate to assume the role of President after the troubles of 1997-1998. He and Soeharto were close, like father and son. Habibie tells a story in his memoirs something like this: when Soeharto resigned the presidency he expected Habibie to follow and do the same. But he didn’t. Habibie assumed the role of president. The two have not spoken since those events of 1998.

Habibie recently flew out from Germany, where he has a home, to pay his respects and pray at Soeharto’s bedside. When he arrived at the hospital he was refused entry. It was said that he could not see Soeharto because of doctor’s orders. Perhaps the feud between the two lingers on.

What strikes me about this is that Habibie may be a true hero of Indonesia. If he had resigned in 1998 it would have left only the Army generals to contest for power. This would likely have led to yet another Indonesian bloodbath. Perhaps even the return of Soeharto to power. Maybe this is the situation Soeharto was aiming for but prevented from by a most loyal subject. As events transpired there was a peaceful transition of power under the rule of constitutional law. Elections followed and Indonesia has now emerged as one of the most democratic nations of the region. A thought almost impossible to think ten years ago.

This is just small side story but then there appears to be many small side stories as Soeharto lay dying (or not).

If you go to Google News and type in “Jakarta News” there are (as of this writing) some 275 news articles about Soeharto. It would take too long to link them all here. First there is his condition. He’s sick, near death, the doctors do not give him a chance, he’s recovering, he has a blood infection, his condition worsens, he’s getting better, doctors amazed that that he is hanging on, the military prepare his family crypt in Solo for burial, the funeral has been planned, the grave is being readied, passes have been issued to the media, preparations made for an influx of world leaders… and it goes on and on. This is just what I can gather from the internet sitting here at my desk.

I am sure the Jakarta news is a daily Soeharto circus. It also must have put a crimp in some of the big news services as they have already written their Soeharto obituary and it now sits on a shelf somewhere ready to go to press but can’t go to press. Some stories I have seen appear to be edited obituaries which instead of speaking of Soeharto in the past tense must speak of him still in the present tense.

The kicker is that today the Associated Press header is “Doctor: Soeharto could recover”, Bloomberg, “Suharto is less Dependent on Respirator as Condition Improves”, Reuters, “Doctors treating Indonesia’s Soeharto more optimistic”.

Make of this what you will but apparently it is hard for Soeharto to die.

This leads me to yet other side stories.

When I told my wife about the news that Soeharto was about to die she told me not to say anything bad about him. It was not the Muslim way. Even if he did bad things you don’t readily trumpet the list of his evil deeds. You wait out of respect and then do it later after things have cooled down. Later, because it appears he can not readily die, either because he is plugged into all those medical machines or maybe for other reasons.  It seems this  state of affairs suggests that he has not lived a decent life, but rather has much to account for and that keeps him lingering on, dying this long death.

My wife had seen this before and tells the story of a local village leader who took advantage of his position, was corrupt, took land and money from the village, and enriched himself at the expense of others. When he lay dying he could not die. This was surely an indication that he had much to account for from his past and everyone in the village knew it and it bothered them. So, the village came together and discussed this problem and it was decided that they would just let it all go.  Not to forget. Not to forgive. But just let it go. The man quickly died soon after their meeting.

As much confusion as all this seems to have raised in the minds of Indonesians it would be a good bet that the idea of a long death as being representative of a life not so well lived is more than apparent to everyone. Whether or not this is stated openly is another thing altogether.

Then there is all the debate going on about to forgive and forget, forgive and not forget, not to forgive and not to forget, and not to forgive and to forget. Who remembers what and when? Who benefited from the Soeharto regime and who were its victims? Should Soeharto be held accountable or not? Should there be a trial or not? Lee Kuan Yew comes and says something stupid like “what’s a few billion looted from the Indonesian people when so much was done to modernize Indonesia and raise the standard of living” and blah, blah, blah. Piss on Lee Kwan Yew.

All manner of talk is going on. I think if Soeharto had come to the hospital and simply died on the spot we would not get to see and read something of what people are thinking and saying.  This discussion is valuable.  And very interesting.

The Indonesia blogs and press are full these sorts of articles. The Aroengbinang Project has a blog titled “Forgive and Forget” with 19 comments, Jakartass has a blog tilted “An addendum to an obituary (which I haven’t beem able to post yet), and Indonesia Matters has a blog titled “Forgiveness” with 83 comments. If you want to see how this debate is going go there to take a look.

In fact, yet another side story comes to mind from a comment posted on that article in Indonesia Matters from a reader named Jamma which, in passing, mentions the following,

 ”…my husband says he [Soeharto] can’t die so easily cause he’s got too much ilmu, some designated person will have to cross a river with Soeharto’s underpants on their head so he can die”.

According to my bahasa dictionary  ”ilmu” means “supernatural knowledge”, it may be a Javanese word, but I assume it can also mean something like “magic” or “power” or in Hawaii we say “mana”.

So, the side story is about “dukun”. I am surprised that “Culture Shock: Jakarta” has no mention of them. My dictionary defines “dukun” as an “indigenous medical practitioner, shaman”. But a dukun is far more than just that. Dukun can summon the essence of human beings, jinni, ghosts, demons, or any life force from a creature, natural or supernatural. They can borrow the souls of living people as they sleep. There are stories of disembodied heads floating through space or rolling along the ground, humans transforming into animals. Inanimate objects which speak.  You laugh, but I assure you this is serious business.

The Indonesian newspaper classifieds are full of advertisements for dukun offering love, wealth, power or protection from other dukun. Soeharto claimed that he himself was a dukun and there is real evidence that he studied under one. This was part of his mystique, a little more reason for him to be feared. This is not widely mentioned in the ongoing debate, but again, I am sure, this is yet another aspect which people are thinking about. Soeharto is the living dead, his magic so powerful as to be feared even from the grave. Another reason he cannot die a clean fast death.

A few last notes.

I am not Indonesian. I write as an outsider. From what I have seen there is nothing but good to be had by the ongoing discussions regarding Soeharto. Perhaps there may never be justice. Perhaps this will all be buried in some collective amnesia. I do not know. It is for Indonesians to decide and that is exactly the process they are in now. This will work itself out.

Through all this debate (an example is provided from 101 East video in the previous post below) there is no mention of the role the United States Central Intelligence Agency had in bringing Soeharto to power, their role in providing names of PKI, their continued role in supporting the Indonesia military. No mention of Henry Kissinger’s “realpolitik” and the rain of death which fell on the people of Timor. Soeharto is an amateur compared to Kissinger and his like (of which there are many).  Perhaps the Indonesians are too polite to mention this, perhaps now too inward looking.  So, I add this to the discussion.

I cannot speak for my government but as a citizen of the United States I wish to offer my most sincere and heartfelt apologies to the people of Indonesia for what these people have done.

At last, let’s see, just as an experiment of sorts, what would happen if we do not forget and do not forgive but simply let go.

Soeharto

“The embodiment of all that is worst in Asian despots of the 20th century. He combines the blood thirstiness of Cambodia’s Pol Pot and the greed of the Phillippines’ Ferdinand Marcos”. [1]

As  The New York Times reported on January, 8, 2008:  “In September, the United Nations and the World Bank put Mr. Suharto at the top of a new list of world leaders who had embezzled the most from state coffers. They quoted an estimate by Transparency International, a private anticorruption organization, that he stole $15 billion to $35 billion in state assets while in power”.

I will not forget when I visited Sultan’s palace at Yogayakarta. We had walked through the palace led by an elderly docent who helped explain some of the history of the place.  He had probably been doing this for tourists for dozens of years. Not a tall man, wore thick glasses, distinguished, soft spoken.  Toward the end of the walk somehow our conversation, in my poor bahasa Indonesia and his better English, turned to the recent poilitcal situation of Indonesia of the day. Soeharto was gone. The country had survived through Habibe, Gus Dur, and now Megawati was President.  We spoke a little about each of them but when we got to Soeharto he simply told me, with a slight disgust in his voice, that ”Soeharto is a mass murderer”.  It was his only comment regarding Soeharto.  I was aware of what had happened to the PKI.  I had not brought it up with him.  Afterward I realized that he would have been a young man during the troubles of 1965. He likely had some stories, maybe known some people, had been touched by those events.

1965, the Year of Living Dangerously, still shrowded in mystery, still running deep as a subtext of Indonesian history.  1965, the beginning of the New Order.

Betrand Russell, in 1966, would comment that “…in four months five times as many people died in Indonesia as in Vietnam in twelve years”.

“In 1965-66 Central and East Java were the main killing fields for US’ Indonesian enemies… The extent of the slaughter throughout Indonesia led to lurid reports  about rivers red with blood. In December 1965, Time reported that Communists and their “entire families” were being killed in such numbers that small rivers and streams “have been literally clogged with bodies”; and that the disposal of the corpses had “created a serious sanitation problem in parts of the country (17/12/65). Similarly, there were horror stories of bodies floating all over the Malacca Strait. and washing up in various places like the canals of Surabaya. As a bloodbath, the Indonesia massacre was certainly one of the worst of the 20th Century, a fact freely admitted by the CIA itself. Most of the killing took place in a matter of a few months, a massively swift, systematic, savage phenomenon”. [2]  

“Second, on the periphery of Indonesia, the state’s repression of self-determination gave rise to another set of massive crimes. The war against the East Timorese is only the best known of these. Indonesian intelligence agents began by coercing the leaders of several groups of conservative and anti-independence East Timorese into signing a ‘request’ (which the Indonesians had dictated) for assistance. Indonesian armed forces then invaded the former Portuguese colony on December 5th, 1975.

In the following four years, the population of East Timor decreased by 200,000 people. They died as a result of direct Indonesian army killings and bombings, but also through forced re-locations and the starvation and disease that followed the invasion. Since then, torture has been a standard operating procedure for Indonesian forces”. [3]

Aceh. “The Suharto regime, after very limited hostilities with GAM in the late 1970’s, turned Aceh into a free-fire zone in 1990. The terror has been fairly constant since then. The only let-up (and that only partial) was in 1998-99 when the nation’s politcal system was in crisis after Suharto’s fall. During that brief reformist pause, the govenrment sanctioned human rights investigation that conservatively estimated that the military had killed 2,000 to 4,000 people from 1990 to 1998″.  [4]

Where are the monuments to these dead?

Complicit in these events was the United States CIA.  In Iran, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Iraq you can still find their bloody finger prints.  

We should never forget this.

 [1] Suharto Killer File

[2] Ghosts of Genocie: The CIA, Suharto, and Terrorist Culture

[3] Suharto, war criminal

[4] The Tsunami and Military Rule: Aceh’s Dual Disasters

     CIA Compile death lists for Indonesians

     Ford Country: Building an Elite for Indonesia

  

 

Video from:  101 - East  
Soeharto: Legacy of a Dictator