Jakarta (permanent emergency and extra-legal executions)

Photo: AFP

Here are some questions I would like to pose.

Why was it that the Noordin Top ‘terrorists’ group  eliminated with extreme prejudice?

Looking at this case one wonders why the Noordin Top people were not simply captured and brought to trial.

Once Top and others of his group were located would it not have been rather easy to isolate them and capture them?

Is the answer  because it would have required trials where evidence must be produced and a right to a legal defense allowed?

It really does appear that Top and his group were simply rubbed out. Extinguished. Executed. And done so in a very spectacular and public performance.

Were they killed because they knew too much? In a trial would they have implicated others? Would it not have been useful to obtain information from them about ‘terrorist’ networks? Or did they know things which would have been embarrassing to the government?

Is there no law in Indonesia except the law of the state of emergency?

I think these are important questions to ask but unfortunately they will never be answered.

Or perhaps the answers are explicitly clear.

Mark Neocleous. The Problem with Normality: Taking Exception to “Permanent Emergency”. Alternatives.  31 (200), 191-213. link is here…> Neocleous 2006 Emergency

Jakarta (society of the spectacle)

Photo: equal-life

from the Wikipedia (something to consider)

“Society of the Spectacle

The concept of a Society of the Spectacle may refer in a narrow sense to the people who appear in television, particularly the hosts of television shows and news. A broader meaning refers to all the people leaving in a society, and whose behavior and lives are heavily conditioned by the behavior of tv presenters. The impact of the medium of television, labeled by Marshall McLuhan as the timid giant, is such that even the small minority of people that don’t watch it at all, are indirectly influenced by their relationship with those who do.

Historically in the capitalist societies, television outlets have not been public places where talented and skilled individuals can make a career and express their ideas without censorship. Instead, they have been owned by powerful corporations or controlled by directors appointed by political officials.

The flow of ideas that go through a society come from, or are edulcorated  [to render sweet] by, the television. This is in fact a totalitarian control of the public discourse, resulting in the pollution of ideas, tastes, behaviors, life styles, and political choices.

Degradation of human life

Debord traces the development of a modern society in which authentic social life has been replaced with its representation: “All that was once directly lived has become mere representation.” Debord argues that the history of social life can be understood as “the decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing.” This condition, according to Debord, is the “historical moment at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life.”

With the term spectacle, Debord defines the system that is a confluence of advanced capitalism, the mass media, and the types of governments who favor those phenomena. “… the spectacle, taken in the limited sense of “mass media” which are its most glaring superficial manifestation…”. The spectacle is the inverted image of society in which relations between commodities have supplanted relations between people, in which passive identification with the spectacle supplants genuine activity. “The spectacle is not a collection of images,” Debord writes. “rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.”

In his analysis of the spectacular society, Debord notes that quality of life is impoverished, with such lack of authenticity, human perceptions are affected, and there’s also a degradation of knowledge, with the hindering of critical thought. Debord analyzes the use of knowledge to assuage reality: the spectacle obfuscates the past, imploding it with the future into an undifferentiated mass, a type of never ending present; in this way the spectacle prevents individuals from realizing that the society of spectacle is only a moment in history (time), one that can be overturned through revolution.

Debord’s aim and proposal, is “to wake up the spectator who has been drugged by spectacular images,” “through radical action in the form of the construction of situations,” “situations that bring a revolutionary reordering of life, politics, and art”. In the situationist view, situations are actively created moments characterized by “a sense of self-consciousness of existence within a particular environment or ambience”.

Debord encouraged the use of détournement, “which involves using spectacular images and language to disrupt the flow of the spectacle.”

from ABC News:

Jakarta bomber has ‘rock idol’ status

By Indonesia correspondent Geoff Thompson

Posted Thu Aug 6, 2009 5:13am AEST

A former student of one Indonesia’s schools that graduated many trained terrorists says Noordin Mohammad Top is considered a “rock-idol” by the country’s young Islamist extremists.

Noor Huda Ismail received a masters degree in International Security from St Andrews, the same university attended by Britain’s Prince William.

But he is better known as former student of the Ngruki boarding school founded by Abu Bakar Bashir which was was also attended by many known terrorists.

His recent interviews with current and former members of Jemaah Islamiah reveal the way some young Islamic radicals regard Top – the man thought to be behind the recent hotel bombings in Jakarta.

“Noordin still considered like a rock idol – they praise him,” Ismail said.

He also says that the bombings may be intended to attract more financial support from organizations like Al Qaeda by demonstrating the capabilities of Indonesian terrorists”.

When I first heard of the goings on in Temanggung, Central Java, this is the first article which I came to. What is of interest is not its brevity but the embedded video which appears in the article. The video has no sound and it likely was taken with a cell phone video camera. There is no attribution of the video in the BBC article. Whoever produced the video was not so much interested in the goings on at Top’s hideout as with the huge numbers of people who had gathered on the scene to watch what was about to play out.  The video is 30 seconds in length and is worth watching. It is not nearly as focused on the police action as in the videos and news accounts I have seen on MetroTV or other news agencys.  It is, well, as if Manchester United had descended on the village ready to play.

from the BBC:

“Indonesia suspect ‘in shoot-out’

Indonesian police have exchanged gunfire with the occupants of a house in Java, believed to include one of South-East Asia’s most wanted men, Noordin Mohamed Top.

[see video here]

The Malaysian citizen is suspected of involvement in last month’s bombings of two Jakarta hotels.”

New York Times:

Plot to Kill Indonesian President Foiled, Police Say

By SETH MYDANS

Published: August 8, 2009

“The president told reporters he had been briefed about a counterterrorism operation by the police, though he did not mention Mr. Noordin. “I extend my highest gratitude and respect to the police for their brilliant achievement in this operation,” he said.”

The Jakarta Post is now reporting that Top was killed in the bathroom of the hideout. More details and details and details to follow. Yet, here is something rather curious from a Google search “Noordin Top killed in bathroom”.

Plenty of red flags, yet it happened

AsiaOne – John McBeth – ‎Jul 25, 2009‎

It has been determined that the explosives themselves were concealed from household staff in an air-conditioning service duct in the bathroom. …

AP Top News at 4:42 am EDT

The Republican – MassLive.com – ‎10 hours ago‎

… militant chief Noordin Mohammad Top, who is blamed for last month’s attacks on two American hotels in the capital Jakarta, was killed in the bathroom of …

Of course there is this bit of recent news as well…

Noordin Top may still be alive

Indonesia News.Net

Saturday 8th August, 2009

“Serious doubts have emerged over the killing of Indonesia’s most wanted terrorist Noordin Mohammed Top.

While a man killed in police raids in central Java on the weekend was assumed to be Top, the dead man’s remains are still in Jakarta being DNA tested.

Indonesian police at the weekend trapped two men in a house in Temanggung, after receiving information Noordin was inside.

They raided the house and shot the men, who were believed to be using the raided house as a refuge.

But there are now fears that police intelligence may have been incorrect.

Indonesian anti-terrorism sources, who were confident they had killed Top, have now refused to confirm widespread local reports of his death, saying they will wait for the DNA tests in Jakarta.”

This is Sinatron.

from: My Fasionable Life [blog]

Tuesday, 27 January 2009

“Do YOU Watch Sinetron?

I do sometimes…to bond with my mum.

Here’s my excuse: Being a working woman, by the time I got home, it usually around 7 or 8 pm and during that time my mum would be in front of the TV, watching her favorite sinetron.

Sure, I have a complete set of entertainment center and American TV Series (told ya…I’m half Americanized, but let’s not get into that) in my room, but we often sit by her…yes….watching sinetron. For someone who dislike sinetron, I have a tolerable knowledge of it, being an obliged daughter that I want to be :p

What bothers us (me and my dad) is not the sinetron part, it is the content that makes us constant complainer every night. My mum used to comment: “aren’t you both ever got tired of complaining?”

No, we don’t.

If the programs are worth watching, we wouldn’t care. Have you seen what our sinetron are all about recently?

The programs are all about wealth exploitation, looks, evil, torture, puppy-love, and consumerism. I’ve noticed that they usually have simple storylines….at the beginning. But…. when its gaining commercials (the success parameter, sadly), what would’ve been a good program is now no better than just a mere object of eye candy, with its eye soothing cast. But that’s just about it. Now…it’s just a crappy program that plays with viewers mind with its neverending conflict and crisis.

My dad used to say, the script writer, director and producer must have been lunatics to come up with an impossible storyline. And for what? Just to fulfill their obsession with money that runs through the incoming commercials….that’s why they prolonged the plot into an impossible to believe storyline.

Through out the neverending episodes the main character suffers badly (if not tortured, both mentally and physically), and she or he doesn’t get to be happy until one last episode. The main character usually is very weak and very giving, never think of herself, a do gooder, a saint, an angel. Arrrrgghhhh!!!!

Now…I have to pray that our Culture and Tourism Minister (do we still have one?) will see for himself and consider to warn TV station to stop harrassing their viewers with bad, bad programs. Is sinetron considered as culture? I think so, keeping in mind that all TV stations are going with the same programs at the same time. If not mistaken this is called “pop culture”, so Pak Menteri…please…please revised these crappy programs.

Bring back program like Si Doel Anak Sekolahan, where the only antagonist was Zaenab’s mom (but would not consider her as evil, just a human being…a saint if compared with current sinetron antagonists). Please produce more quality programs like Rumah Masa Depan, Losmen (hey…I’m reminiscing here) and Jendela Rumah Kita…even ACI.”

My point exactly.

Or more to the point…

On hearing the news of W.S. Rendra’s death ( a tragic loss but a joy that he lived) I came across a review written by Mike Heald of Harry Aveling’s book  Secrets Need Words: Indonesian Poetry, 1966-1998, Center for International Studies, Ohio University: Ohio, 2001

Heald writes:

…In the same week, an article appeared in The Age newspaper written by Wahid, entitled “How to counter Islamic extremism”, a topic, of course, very much on people’s minds after the events of September 11th. Wahid’s argument was that many students from Muslim nations who study overseas do not receive a broadly-based liberal education, focusing only on vocational areas such as engineering and the sciences. He argued that, as a result of this narrow education, many of the students lack the intellectual subtlety and capacity to interpret their religion in any but a simplistic, literalistic way, unmindful of cultural change and nuance:

Because they [the students]have not been trained in the rich disciplines of Islamic scholarship, they tend to bring to their reflection on their faith the same sort of simple modelling and formulistic thinking that they have learned as students of engineering or other applied sciences. Students studying liberal arts are rather better served when it comes times [sic] to reflect on the place of Islam in the modern world.

I read Wahid’s article with an interest fueled, in part, by my own professional role within the teaching program responsible for this journal, the Foundation Studies Program of Trinity College, Melbourne University. The wisdom of including humanities subjects, such as Literature, Drama and History of Ideas, as compulsory elements of our Core Curriculum, is periodically questioned, from the position that a functional competence for one’s vocation is all the formal education that a young person needs. The error of this way of thinking, and the very real connection between suicide bombers and intellectual training, is made very clear by Wahid. Intellectual subtlety, a capacity to deal with ambiguity, metaphor and cultural relativity, are by no means disposable, abstract or decorative educational objectives: they are indeed ‘foundational’, and they lead to certain kinds of behavior which are highly preferable to anyone who values an open and tolerant society. The Core Curriculum of Foundation Studies at Trinity guarantees, for example, that students encounter, and reflect upon, poetry. And poetry, as this anthology Secrets Need Words again confirms, entails a grappling with the subtleties of human experience: so that, through Harry Aveling’s translations, we encounter the ambiguities, the passions, the uncertainties and, in general, the inner life of Indonesians in the Suharto years. After reading such a collection, we can no longer believe in simplistic, or strategically distorted conceptions of contemporary Indonesia: they are dispelled.”

Let us hope so.

Rendra’s death reminds us that there is more than sheer spectacle in life.

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.

-W.S. Rendra, Sajak Sebatang Lisong

Jakarta (The King of Pop, Idle threats,Tehran, the Indonesian Police)

This is IT.

Well…  in case you have not heard the news Michael Jackson is dead. All the news channels are covering the event ad nausuem. I am certain, in short order, the news will filter to as far as Kalabahi on Alor island or to Wetar island where the Wetar Ground-dove coos way down the chain of the Malay Archipelago.

Fox News reported that:

“News of Michael Jackson’s death yesterday caused the largest spike in SMS traffic in our network history,” AT&T Wireless spokeswoman Jeannie Hornung told FoxNews.com. “Nearly 65,000 texts per second were sent as fans reached out to each other to share the sad news.”

And…

“Yahoo! News set a record in unique visitors with 16.4 million UV’s in a day,” Yahoo spokeswoman Carolyn Clark told FoxNews.com. “Our previous record was on Election Day when we had 15.1 million visitors. Yahoo! News had 4 million visitors come to the site between 3-4 p.m. [PDT Thursday], setting an hourly record.”

For sure, by this time tomorrow the news will have circled the globe hundreds of times over.

As I watched the ever continuing news coverage I was reminded by one commentator of how we are all just like Michael Jackson- from the richest potentate to the poorest kampung dweller we will all it up covered in a white sheet hauled off the whatever our final resting place is.  A comforting thought indeed.

Still, while our necks which are attached to our heads are turned to look at the passing wreck in other news North Korea threatens to wipe the United States off the face of the earth in a “shower of fire”.

Do they really believe this? This come while a U.S. Navy destroyer shadows an NK cargo ship carrying small arms to the democratic loving regime of Myanmar. No doubt the NKs are dangerous but it seems an awful lot like putting a few rocks in a tin can and trying to make as much noise as possible all the time screaming  out “hey, look here, we’re dangerous.”

Then there is Tehran. Ahmadinejad today compared Obama to Bush.  Laughable. The man and his regime are clearly mentally ill. The world has seen the video of the tragic death of Neda Soltan. The Iranian government alternately has accused the CIA of killing her and of the British Broadcasting Company of having arranged her death so that they could film it. Currently her family is not to be found.

What is clearly remarkable about the Iranian situation is how clear the Internet and cell phones are contributing to the truth rising above the madness of the lies Iranian government is telling.

This is, apparently, where an Islamic Republic will get you. An oligarch of grey beards who value money and power above the Holy Quran.

The Internet and cell phones played an important role in the 1998 student demonstrations in Jakarta but it has been over ten years since this took place and the technology is cheaper and much more wide spread now.

As this opinion piece which appeared in the Jakarta Post recently indicates…

Iran elections, Prita Mulyasari and Internet freedom

Bonni Rambatan , Malang | Fri, 06/26/2009 1:10 PM | Opinion

On May 13 this year, Prita Mulyasari was sued by Omni International Hospital for defamation and was sent to prison for expressing her opinions online, an action many would consider stifling free speech.

Thousands of people, largely Internet-literate youth, took to Facebook and the blogosphere and rallied for her freedom, after which she was released from prison and placed instead under city arrest to await her trial.

Exactly one month later on June 13, the Islamic nation of Iran entered what has largely been called its worse period of civil unrest in over a decade following the release of election results.

Communication within the country was crippled, with phone lines and many IP addresses blocked. People worldwide signed petitions and voiced support for the protesting Iranians via cyberspace.

The protest movement in Iran have been widely dubbed a “cyberwar” as people offer support to the Iran opposition by providing new venues of free speech, including new proxies for the protesters, baiting fake Iranian identities to government authorities, leaking documents, setting up anonymous forums, and so on.

Regular updates of the situation on the ground that would never have made it to media outlets such as CNN instead emerged through grassroots sources such as Twitter.

Through this technology, people worldwide could follow the unrest virtually in real-time while on YouTube, amateur videos of the protests, complete with the shaky camera angles and sounds of violence, reached our computers.

While it is true that the significance of the Iranian election protests far dwarfs the case of Prita, one should never be so easy to dismiss one case in favor of another, as each provide insight into the current state of society.” go to article…>

Iran is a very  computer literate nation. Seventy percent of the population is below the age of thirty. Iran is also a nation of bloggers, there are 60,000 in Tehran alone.

In Tehran there truly is a Twitter and a Facebook revolution. While there are those who do disparage social networks and “don’t have time for them” Iran has shown how very useful they can be. Apparently they are hard to shut down short of total electrical blackouts.

Here the immediate brutality of the police and government have been reported not in days or hours or minutes but in seconds.

Which brings me to the slow motion of the brutality of the Indonesian Police. No YouTube or Twitter moments here. Yet.

The AFP reports:

Torture ‘widespread’ in Indonesia: Amnesty

By Stephen Coates – 1 day ago

“JAKARTA (AFP) — Indonesian police commonly beat and torture people in custody and offer better treatment in exchange for money and sex, Amnesty International said in a report released.

The human rights organisation demanded the Indonesian government acknowledge the problem and end the culture of impunity that allows police to act as if they are above the law in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.

The report, “Unfinished Business: Police Accountability in Indonesia”, found that the police were particularly brutal to the most vulnerable and marginalised people, such as drug addicts and women.

“Amnesty International’s report shows how widespread the culture of abuse is among the Indonesian police force,” the organisation’s Asia Pacific deputy director, Donna Guest, said.

“The police’s primary role is to enforce the law and protect human rights, yet all too often many police officers behave as if they are above the law.”

The report cited the case of 21-year-old sex worker Dita, who was arrested in 2006 and described being sexually abused on the way to the police station.

“I was arrested with five or six other prostitutes. On the way to (the station) they were grabbing me and touching me saying, ‘You’re so young, why aren’t you in school?’,” she was quoted as saying.

At the station the women were told they could buy their freedom with 100 dollars or with sex.

“Three of the girls agreed to have sex with them. I point blank refused to do either. Our pimps have paid them enough already,” she said.

Abuses meted out included shootings, electric shocks and beatings, sometimes for days on end, the report said.

“The suspects often received inadequate medical care for the injuries they received as a result of torture and other ill treatment,” Amnesty said.

“In some cases detainees had to pay for treatment after police abused them, and received inadequate medical care from police medical institutions.”

The report, based on interviews in Indonesia over two years, said police frequently sought bribes from detainees in return for better treatment or lighter sentences.

“At a time when the Indonesian government and senior police figures have made the commitment to enhance trust between the police and the community, the message is not being translated into practical steps,” Guest said.

“Too many victims are left without access to real justice and reparations, thus fuelling a climate of mistrust towards the police.”

Most police do not even know of, let alone follow, the force’s code of conduct which forbids abuse, she said.

Victims’ complaints were not impartially investigated and opened the plaintiff to further abuse, especially if they were still in police custody.

Amnesty recommended the government acknowledge and condemn the problem but no police or government officials attended the launch of the 84-page report.

It is the second report from a major international rights group to condemn torture in Indonesia this month.

US-based Human Rights Watch said on June 5 that torture and abuse of prisoners in a jail in Indonesia’s sensitive Papua region is “rampant.”

The United Nations has reported that Indonesian police routinely torture and beat suspects in custody.

Indonesia is a signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture but it has no corresponding law against the practice.

The UN special rapporteur for torture visited Indonesia in 2007 and found that police used torture as a “routine practice in Jakarta and other metropolitan areas of Java”.

A decade of political and institutional reform after the fall of the military-backed Suharto regime in 1998 has not left its mark on the police and prison system, analysts say.”

I would argue that the violence on the streets of Tehran is not so much different that the violence on the streets of Jakarta.

We are caught between sensational pop news,  the lies of violent governments whose only intent it to perpetuate their grip on power, and histories which we do not care to address in polite company.

Time to fire up the cell phone camera.

Shine a light.

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 (LPG, 1998 Riots, Human Rights)

Jakarta, Glodok, 2008

Here is just one reason why Indonesia should nationalize its oil and gas industry.  Indonesia will pay 32 million dollars to the U.S. ConocoPhilips plant in Teluk Semangka, Lampung for liquified natural gas. Indonesia is buying what it already owns.

Indonesia to buy LPG from U.S. company

from Chinaview …> go to article

JAKARTA, May 17 (Xinhua) — Indonesia’s oil and gas company Pertamina Inc. plans to buy 40,000 tons of liquefied petroleum gas(LPG) from U.S.-based ConocoPhilips with 32 million U.S. dollars to secure its May supply, which has been disrupted by a glitch at its Balongan refinery in West Java province, local media reported here on Saturday.

Director for marketing and trading of the company Ahmad Faisal said the purchase was needed as current supply would only last for up to three days after a unit in the refinery last week went off-line, according to local newspaper the Jakarta Post.

“The LPG will come from a ConocoPhilips plant in Teluk Semangka, Lampung, Indonesia” Faisal said.

The Balongan refinery is the country’s largest LPG producer, with an output of 1,200 tons of LPG per day, which is delivered to Jakarta and other cities on Java.

Pertamina processing director Rukmini Hadihartini said the company needed 18 days to repair the equipment and get operations back to normal.

Pertamina will also increase May gasoline imports by 1 million barrels as the commodity’s consumption has risen 5 percent following a period of panic buying caused by the government’s announcement to raise fuel prices.

The government has capped the volume of subsidized fuels at 35.5 million kiloliters with a state budget allocation of 126.8 trillion rupiah (some 13.7 billion U.S. dollars), the Jakarta Postsaid.

Editor: Du Guodong

Folowing are two recent articles from Reuters published May 15 and May 16, 2008.  Your assignment is to contemplate how and in what ways these two articles are connected.

Victims of 1998 Indonesia riots still silent-report
Thu May 15, 2008 5:41am EDT

JAKARTA, May 15 (Reuters) – Ten years after riots that preceded the fall of former Indonesian President Suharto in 1998, victims of sexual violence are still too traumatised to speak out, a rights group said on Thursday.

About 1,000 people were killed in the capital Jakarta, mostly those trapped in burning buildings, as mobs rampaged through the streets and attacked shops and malls at the height of the Asian financial crisis in May 1998.

The riots followed daily student protests as discontent against Suharto’s rule grew after he was re-elected for a fifth consecutive term by a rubber-stamp parliament.

An independent team set up to investigate the riots found that 85 mostly ethnic Chinese women were sexually assaulted, but authorities dropped the inquiry, citing a lack of evidence.

Ten years later the victims remain silent because they fear for their safety and have no faith in the country’s justice system, according to a new report issued by the National Commission on Violence Against Women.

The general public’s refusal to acknowledge that rapes took place means that there is little hope the victims will see justice, the report said. …> go to article

U.N. body says torture widespread in Indonesia
Fri May 16, 2008 12:00pm EDT

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA, May 16 (Reuters) – Indonesia’s police, armed forces and intelligence services routinely torture and degrade criminal suspects to extract confessions, with almost total impunity for those responsible, a United Nations rights body said on Friday.

The U.N. Committee Against Torture said it was “deeply concerned about numerous ongoing credible and consistent allegations” of abuse in the Indonesian justice system.

Military officials and “morality police” were also found to use disproportionate force and violence, particularly against women, in the Aceh province and other areas of conflict, the 10-member independent panel said in a report released in Geneva.

It cited “grave concerns over the climate of impunity for perpetrators of acts of torture, including military, police and other state officials, particularly those holding senior position.”

“No state official alleged to have perpetrated torture has been found guilty,” the committee said in its 14-page findings, which are not legally binding but carry diplomatic weight.

The report expounded upon the concerns raised in November by U.N. torture expert Manfred Nowak, who said torture of detainees in Indonesian police custody was rife despite efforts to combat rights abuses after the ouster of autocratic president Suharto. …> go to article               

I will add, out of fairness, that Indonesia is not the only country with a torture problem. We have one here in the United States. We have our very own war criminals to deal with vis-a-vis our current government and the Iraq War. Let me just name a few: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice. There are not enough jail cells at the Hague to fit them all in.

POST SCRIPT

This from Asia Sentinel, published on May 18, 2008, adds a sad but appropriate post script here.

Indonesia Loses a Human Rights Voice

OUR CORRESPONDENT
18 May 2008
Internecine warfare in the courts results in a civil rights leader’s disbarment

Todung Mulya Lubis, Indonesia’s most prominent human-rights voice, Friday 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.” …> go to article

Jakarta (fear of the street, part 2)

Taman Anggrek, Jakarta 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

West Jakarta

 

I have left Jakarta. Three weeks of eating the Jakarta air and being saturated with advertising (promising much but delivering little) has been interesting to say the least.  But just in time anyway for MENTAL DETOX WEEK.

At my family’s house, just outside of Depok, TelKom Indonesia, has been out of order for the last six days. I had internet access on one of those six days.  But as my family says (almost in a chorus) “well, you know, that’s Indonesia”.

I have come away with over 500 photographs and 17 short videos.  Some of those, after I process it all (both mentally and physically) will filter down into the future postings of Jakarta Urban Blog. That in itself is worth returning for, yes?

In the meantime I have a layover in Seoul, Korea. Here there is high speed internet 24/7. It is free. But, alas it is not Jakarta.  

In any event to keep myself occupied I am posting the second part of my review of Chapter Four: The Violence of Categories: Urban Space and the Making of the National Subject in Abidin Kusno’s book Behind the Post-Colonial: Architecture, urban space and political cultures in Indonesia.

THE PROTECTING EYES OF THE FATHER, THE DEATH OF THE STREET, AND THE BIRTH OF THE NATIONAL FAMILY

Kusno: “The New Order of Suharto, however, did not legitimize its presence by merely fabricating the threat of “internal” others, initiating the danger of the street and providing security measures. Instead, a second point of tensions associated with a desire to form a new collective subject that represented “modernity” complicated these techniques of social control through the heavy-handed display of power and the spectacle of punishment”.

In 1974 the first student protests, demonstration, and urban youth riots occurred. The regime was beset not only with attempting to bridge the rapidly widening gap between the rich and the poor but also to satisfy demands for upward mobility.

Here again Jakarta would be used as a “symbol of the nation” but not to instill a national or revolutionary spirit as that of the Sukarno generation. This time it would be used to form, as Kusno states “national subjects who were both obedient and “modern”. Suharto’s style was to “guide from behind” like an ever-watchful parent. He is the “smiling general” representing the ideology of “development”. This idea as Kusno states “had its sense of authentic Javanese wisdom in which the children of the family are guided from behind to their destined place. The lesson has been that they know their place, do not get lost, or go astray”.

And here is what happens.

Kusno: “This task, of preventing national subjects from going astray, was perhaps first practiced by the famous Governor of Jakarta, Ali Sadikin, a Sukarno protégé who also worked under Suharto from 1966-1977. From the beginning of his administration, Sadikin found himself dealing with what he came to perceive as the problem of “urban excess”, namely, the migration of people who lacked “urban rationality” to the capital city. Under his tenure, Jakarta was given the title of “metropolitan” and “modernity” was defined in relation to the spaces occupied by the urban poor who were then subjected to the strong arm of the law”.

Here is Sadikin’s twisted logic, “The execution of law enforcement is homage to the poor people (‘rakyat kecil’). They are those with no skill, who are lacking consciousness of the law, who build their houses along riverbanks, along railways, under electric poles, along the green belt, those who sleep under bridges or in the park, or use pedestrian ways and streets for vending, those who ride ‘becak‘ (pedicab).”

The urban problems Sadikin lists are still present today in Jakarta but his war on the becak was a success. Becak, nearly synonymous with Jakarta and Indonesia, were confiscated under force, gathered up, and dumped into the ocean.

Kusno cites Sadikin, “This form of transportation, used by the poor, was too slow for “the economy (which) should move faster” and furthermore, “it is hard to administer, and the leadership simply does not want rustic-looking people pushing bikes around in their capital city”.

Kusno: “Here the memories of the populist politics of the previous regimes and the social environment of the poor became interchangeable. Both became “non-modern” elements in the city. For Sadikin, the capital of the nation must be represented as modern so that “potential troubles” embedded on the streets and in environments constructed as “non-modern”, could be suppressed, eliminated, and transformed”.

FLYING OVER THE KAMPUNG: CLASSIFYING NATIONAL SUBJECTS

Kusno: “Central to the state’s concern about discipline and order in the city, therefore, are the overlapping interests between the government’s promotion of its ideology of “development” on the one hand and the increasing numbers of the new generation of New Order “middle class”, for want of a better word, concerned with their identity, on the other. Here elevated highways occupy a special position, not least because of their “visibility”, like a giant roller coaster stretching over the capital city. The elevated highways are not just a means for de-congesting metropolitan Jakarta; they are also a sign of progress for developmentalist regime that measures its achievement through the way the city is represented…

Driving through the elevated highways suggests an experience of flying over the top of the city, escaping from its congested roads and leaving behind the “lower” classes who are routed through the crowded street at ground level. From this suspended driveway, the details of the urban fabric of Jakarta’s streets and kampung, the poor urban neighborhoods, are transformed into a series of blurred images, giving a sense of detachment from the “worldly” place below. The elevated highway is thus a system of representation that allows some forms and spaces to be visualized and others to be concealed. It is a kind of fluency provided by the city to create a dream-state of upward mobility in order to overcome the contradictions of “development”…

…this infrastructure is not merely a representation of the dominant class. It also helps to constitute the general populace by way of city buses that occasionally travel on the elevated highways. On these occasions, the relatively poor urbanites are also provided with a similar new experience of the city, but with different political implications. Here urban space is constructed to define and regulate both the privileged and the poor. They are both celebrated and constituted by the urban infrastructure, constructed to assemble crowds for uplifting purposes…

…This emphasis on the centrality of vision in architecture and urban space constitutes a phantasmagoria of display of the achievement of the New Order in embracing commodity capitalism. Along with the highway net work, it reaches its apogee in the design of department stores, high-rise office towers and real estate housing, all of which are seen to provide a field of vision available for the well-to-do. On the other side, the majority of the poor that live behind this façade, surrounded by images of a metropolis, are conditioned by the visible proof of “historical progress”. From pleasure, alienation and wonder that are derived from spectacle alone a society of consumption is produced (emphasis mine)”.

 

There is a punch line to this which I will attempt to deliver in Jakarta (fear of the street, part 3)…

 

 

 

 

Jakarta (fear of the street, part 1)

President Sukarno Addressing May Day Rally 5/7/1965-Djakarta, Indonesia- President Sukarno of Indonesia addresses a mass May Day rally in the Sports Hall Building. Sukarno announced his decision not to attend a peace conference with Malaysian Prime Minister Rahman in Tokyo. The announcement was viewed as a victory for Indonesia’s powerful Communist Party. Posters above the silent crowd stress the unity of the working classes in their struggle to overcome “imperialism.”
Image: © Bettmann/CORBIS
Date Photographed: May 7, 1965

see: kaskus

Reading further into Abidon Kusno’s book Behind the Postcolonial: Arctitecture, urban space and political cultures in Indonesia is both interesting and enlightening.

All cities have their aspects of violence. American cities have long been associated with violence. Gang warfare, the drug trade, and poverty, domestic violence, random shootings fills the news here in a regular cycle. But Jakarta being Jakarta fear of the street has its own particular aspect.

What follows is a review, of sorts, from Chapter Four, which Kusno has titled:

 The Violence of Categories: Urban Space and the Making of the National Subject

Let us again begin with Sukarno. The sub-chapter headings are from Kusno.

THE CITY, THE SUPREME LEADER AND THE EMBODIMENT OF THE NATIONAL SUBJECT

“My friends and my children, I am no Communist… I am not prejudiced. I am no dictator. I am no holy man or reincarnation of God. I am just an ordinary human being like you and you and you… Why is it that people ask me to give a speech to them, even when the sun is at its hottest? The answer is this: What Bung (brother) Karno says is actually written in the hearts of the Indonesian people. The people want to hear their own voice but… they cannot speak eloquently for themselves… (Therefore) when I die… do not write on the tombstone: ‘Here rests His Most Exalted Excellency Dr. Ir. Raden Sukarno, the first President of the Republic of Indonesia’ … [but] write… ‘Here rests Bung Karno, the Tongue of the Indonesian People”.

-Sukarno, 1959

“In every Seventeenth of August meeting [Independence Day] … it is as though I held a dialogue. A dialogue with the people of Indonesia. A two-way conversation with Sukarno-the-man and Sukarno-the people, a two-way conversation between comrade in arms and comrade in arms. A two-way conversation between two comrades who in reality are one. That is why, every time I prepare a Seventeenth of August address I become like a person possessed”.

-Sukarno, 1963

Kusno suggests that the results of political experimentation in the decade of the 1950s ultimately ended in social and political unrest threatening Indonesia’s national unity and national economy. Sukarno’s response was to initiate “guided democracy” based on the leadership of his personal authority. Sukarno’s reasoning was that the troubles which beset Indonesia were the outcome of the politics of the “looseness” of the center. Indonesia “should become whole again, that the state become whole again”, as Sukarno stated.

Kusno argues that in order for Sukarno to achieve this end that, “…it appeared important for Sukarno to find a way to communicate with the whole population, and to convince them that he, the leader, is not merely representing “them” as the head of state, but he actually is them…” and that, “Sukarno, as the “extension of the tongue of the people” is also “Sukarno the people.” This political representation demanded that Sukarno embody the people himself as a way to communicate with them. As a result, “populist politics” was initiated, a policy which demanded the constant mobilization of the crowds on the principal streets of the capital city (emphasis mine). In this period of populist politics, in the first quarter of the 1960s, the city of Jakarta became a symbolic representation of state power”.

As illustrated in the Sukarno quotes in the previous posting Sukarno then began his program to rebuild the central part of Jakarta with monuments, a department store, a convention center, a stadium, and grand boulevards. Jakarta, certainly the idea of Jakarta, was linked to nation building. Jakarta was the stage of populist politics and high performances. Acted out by Sukarno this was the appeal to “the street”.

Kusno again: “In this train of subjective thought, the Parliament House, the people’s Republic of Indonesia, and Sukarno, the megalomanic architect, are all interchangeable, each one representing the other. The imagined Parliament House was to be a building that would capture the voices of the 105 million people in the country in which he could better hear them and also speak with them. Sukarno represents the people, and the people are represented by the buildings and the city he created. Through the city, a singular collective national body was created. It is from this early official affinity between the city and the nation that as Toer wrote in 1955, one begins to feel that “one cannot be fully Indonesian until one has seen Jakarta”. Once one identifies with the nation’s capital, one is an Indonesian.”

1965 would be the breaking point. The bother (bung) was overthrown and the father (pak) would take his place.

THE SCENE OF THE STREET: THE STATE OF NEW ORDER AND THE PATHOLOGICAL COLLECTIVE SUBJECT

“Before” appears as a time of chaos, with men and women angrily gesticulating and debating. Then Suharto takes control – the symbol of reason and harmony. “After” shows people quietly going about their business, under the protective eye of the military.

(Abeyasekere 1987)

Kusno begins, “Perhaps it was in relation to this extraordinary attempt to produce a single abstract body of the nation that, when Suharto took power from Sukarno in 1966, he ended this era of populist politics. His regime, officially named as the New Order, legitimized itself by “decapitating” the supreme leader, disembodying the single collective body of Sukarno and turning the revolutionary street into a space of discipline and fear”.

This New Order begins with the massacre of perhaps as many as half a million Indonesians. The New Order characterizes politics of the Sukarno era as one of chaos, communism, and a danger to the stability of the state. As a result, Kusno notes, “the space of the street, the locus of Sukarno’s revolution, has been turned into the site of “disturbance”. It became a “dangerous” place which, in the name of national security, demanded constant anticipation from the government. With the end of populist politics, Sukarno’s revolutionary subject was decapitated and the street, where they used to parade, was criminalized”.

The example Kusno gives of the New Order’s politics of the street comes from acts of state terrorism which took place in the early 1980s.

By the early 1980s the New Order was busying itself with “producing a new generation of “modern” Indonesian”: elevated highways, office towers, “dream homes” in the suburbs. But what was to come came as a shock and so it was intended.

Kusno: “During this period, urbanites began to find the corpses of tattooed men known as “gali” on the streets. “Gali” were mostly petty criminals and members of gangs. To ensure the winning of the 1982 election, the government hired many of these people. When they were no longer needed, the shooting began. The “gali” were killed and their bodies left in the streets as public spectacle. This state-sponsored operation became known as the case of “Petrus-Penembak Misterius” (mysterious shooter) and “Matius-Mayat Misterius” (mysterious corpse)”.

The names, as Kusno points out are the names of Catholic Saints, Saint Peter (“Petrus”) and Saint Matthew (“Matius”) and refer to the “powerful presence of Catholic officers and civilians in Indonesia’s security apparatus that were sent to “discipline” the Catholic province of East Timor”.  The techniques of terror and social control used in the Indonesian war against East Timor after it was “pacified” were transposed other localities through Indonesia including Jakarta.

Kusno: “…this technique of violence was soon integrated into the national pedagogy. To the incident of “Petrus” and “Matius”, it was reported that President Suharto, after the operation, was proudly fascinated by the technique that “…the corpses were left where they were, just like that“. For him “this was for ’shock therapy’ (in English). This therapy, as James Siegel points out, is meant to shock in order to cure, and is directed not at criminals but at the general populace. The corpses were left in the streets, Suharto continues, “so that the crowds (‘organg banyak’) would understand that, faced with criminals, there [are] (sic) still some who would act and would control them“.

“What is extraordinary in this statement is the way the state makes its appearance on the street through the dead bodies of those considered as “criminal”. Through the display of the murder victims, viewers see the state, and acknowledge its presence. This “theatrical representation of pain” in which the power of the state was inscribed in the visible flesh of the condemned serve to discipline and normalize the well-being of the general populace. However, the corpses, instead of scaring people away, as Siegel reports, “became attractions not only to newspapers readers but to people on the streets where the bodies were distributed”. Through this display of violence towards the underclass, collective identities were constituted (empasis mine). The dead body is the message sent by the state to the “underclass”, who are seen as potential criminals, as a way of communicating with them. The message, however, also addresses the upper class, which fear that they are not distinguishable from “criminals”. This method of “criminalizing” the street makes the corpses on the street a sign of menace provoking, as a result, as Siegel indicates, a fear among the general populace not merely towards the “gali”, but the possibility of them to be like the “gali”. This displacement of the street creates a collective body of the populace whose identity is contructed through a retreat from it (emphasis mine).”

 As my wife would say, “Just wow”.  I had been mulling these ideas over for some time. When I finally got to Kusno’s book I was blown away. There is more to come…

I have quoted Kusno at length here in this post.  His analysis is spot on and serves to set up the second part of this review (which I hope to post soon) which will address the economic crisis and the Jakarta riots of 1997-1998 in context of the urban poor, the urban intellectuals, the urban middle class and the state elite to further explore the idea of  ”fear of the street”.

 

Jakarta (assignment)

 

 Photo by Osocio

This morning as I was reading through the news I came across the two articles below published by Xinhua News.  I have posted each of the articles here in full. Both articles appear to be wire stories orignating from The Jakarta Post.

Jakarta is always mentioned and written about as a city of contrasts.

 Violence against women rises in Indonesia …>go to site

 JAKARTA, March 8 (Xinhua) — Violence against women in Indonesia has steadily increased after nearly a decade of political reform, the Jakarta Post quoted the National Commission for Women’s Protection as saying here Saturday.

State institutions both in central and regional governments were among the main perpetrators through their discriminatory regulations, the report said.

Violence has increased despite the fact that the government has enacted 10 laws and signed three regional treaties to eliminate all forms of violence against women.

In a report on the state of women’s protection issued in conjunction with tje International Women’s Day, the commission highlighted 27 regional bylaws which it says discriminate against women, either through the criminalization of women or seeking to control women’s bodies.

“For example, there’s a regulation that forbids women from going out at night or others that determine how women should dress,” commissioner Arimbi Heroepoetri said.

She said that under these regulations women could easily be labeled, and punished, as “immoral” women simply because they went home late at night or wore tight clothes.

Tangerang municipality near Jakarta last year issued an ordinance banning women from going outside of their homes after 10p.m.

According to Arimbi, there has been a significant increase in the number of cases of domestic violence reported thanks to the law, which categorizes all acts of violence against women as criminal.

She said the sharpest increase in the number of reported cases of domestic violence occurred in 2005, with 16,615 reported cases, or almost four times the 4,310 cases reported in 2004.

The second article is: 

5 Indonesians on Forbes’ list of richest …>go to site

JAKARTA, March 8 (Xinhua) — Five Indonesian businessmen are among the 1,125 wealthiest people in the world listed by Forbes magazine.

The 58-year-old Sukanto Tanoto, owner of the Raja Garuda Mas group, is ranked 284th on the list with estimated assets of some 3.8 billion U.S. dollars, local English newspaper the Jakarta Post reported on Saturday.

Raja Garuda Mas group and its subsidiaries operate in a range of industries, including pulp and paper, palm oil plantations and construction.

Also on the Forbes list are Michael Hartono and Budi Hartono, owners of tobacco company PT Djarum. Their fortunes were estimatedat 2 billion dollars each.

Other Indonesians to make the list are Martua Sitorus, the owner of palm oil producer Wilmar International Holding, who is ranked at 652nd with 1.9 billion dollars, and Peter Sondakh, the owner of Rajawali Group, at 962nd with 1.2 billion dollars.

This year’s list includes 1,125 people with a total net worth of 4.4 trillion dollars.

There are 211 Asians on this year’s Forbes list, up from 160 the previous year. Apart from the five Indonesians, India has 53 people on the list, including four in the top 10, the Chinese Mainland has 42, China’s Hong Kong has 26 and Japan has 27.

Your assignment is to think of how and in what ways these two articles are connected.

Jakarta (megalopolis)

 Photo by mizsz

 Review

Jakarta Megalopolis: Horizontal and Vertical Observations

Arjan van Helmond and Stani Michiels, Valiz Publishers, 2007, 179 pages.

What were we doing? Now I remember, we were headed to Gambir Station to buy tickets to Perwokerto and then after that just burning time before we had to take the new Toyota van my wife’s brother had just purchased back to his house in Depok and meet him there after he was finished working for the day.

It must be a tradition in Indonesia that when you purchase a new vehicle the first thing you do is loan it out to family member.

So then, it was Budi, the husband of my wife’ sister, and I, with the new van, heading out from Citayam on an early sunny morning and headed into Jakarta for the day. We drove out of the neighborhood and onto the main street winding past shops, stores, and businesses packed to the very edge of both sides of the road and which seemed to stretch away like an endless film loop, then on past the Citayam train depot bottleneck, on through Depok, and then finally taking the back roads all the way into Jakarta.

By this time I had been to Jakarta so many times that I had lost count but with out doubt on every occasion there seemed to be a new way to go and new things to see. This day was no different. Budi was taking me on the maximum tour. Down streets I never knew existed, past apartment complexes, malls, embassies, cemeteries, monuments, and a lake where he said he had once seen monkeys. “But maybe no more“, he added. I really liked the notion that there was a lake with monkeys. I filed that away in my head where the idea has rooted into a life of its own to this day.

Jakarta – Lake – Monkeys

Just like that.

Budi clearly knew what he was doing and where he was going. He only mentioned once or twice, out of sincere humility, that he was lost as a result of on the spur of the moment experimenting with a new shortcut. Still, we were back in good order in a snap.

I was there for the ride and the pleasure of watching Jakarta float by my window. But I wondered how he knew where he was going and where we were.

“Budi, how do you know where we are and where we are going?”

“When I first moved to Jakarta I just drove around and around the city day after day”.

Budi had, through time, experience, and experiment created in his head a mental map of Jakarta. He could not survive there with out it. He had made place out of Jakarta’s urban space. He had worked up his own internal geography.

Whether I realized it or not this is what I was also doing. Through most of our day I had no landmark I could anchor myself to in the warren of Jakarta’s densely complex streets punctuated by crazy intersections where no pedestrian would dare to tread, until I saw, in the long distance, hovering in the sky like a signal, the National Monument. I knew then Gambir Station was not far off.

I think it was at that time that Jakarta started to click in my mind

There is an occasional moment or two during the day when all this comes back to me. Out of the murk it comes to the surface like a fish in a pond and rolls its back once or twice. There I am magically arriving at Gambir Station or stuck in the jammed traffic around Blok M or picking out the landmarks heading back Citayam, home, the mosque across the street, the beautiful faces of the children returning from school.

How do you know Jakarta?

 the review is continued here …> go to page