INDONESIA NOW with Duncan Graham

CENDRA PERKASA AT PALMERSTON NORTH

2009-05-28T10:53:00.001+07:00

CENDRA PERKASA - THE RIGHT STUFF

2009-05-28T10:47:00.002+07:00

Flying clear of the grey areas © Duncan Graham 2009

Viewers of the addictive National Geographic TV program Air Crash Investigation know all about flight crew confusion as systems malfunction, alarms wail, dials spin like propellers and the plane turns turtle.

Cockpit chaos has a fancy academic label – crew resource management, and it’s a key topic in pilot training according to student Cendra Perkasa.

“Team building is extremely important, particularly with multi-national, multi-cultural aircraft crews,” he said.

“In the commercial pilot licence course I’m undertaking this is a major issue. We must know each other’s weaknesses and strengths and can use these in an emergency.”

Cendra, 21, is a final year student at New Zealand’s Massey University School of Aviation, and the son of Air Vice Marshall Eris Herryanto, the director general for defence facilities in the Indonesian Defence Department. He’s the man who buys the republic’s armaments.

When Cendra graduates with a multi-engine aircraft licence at the end of this year he hopes to become a Garuda pilot.

Problems faced by aircrew aren’t confined to staying up-to-date with mechanical and procedural changes, remaining physically fit and mentally alert, and living a stress-free lifestyle.

There are also cultural issues that have sometimes featured in crash post-mortems where junior staff have feared contradicting the captain when they see the boss’s errors. Better to nose dive into the ocean than insult the status of a senior by gently suggesting the plane levels out.

“The Massey instructors know about the problems with some cultures, particularly Asian, where young people are not supposed to question or challenge their superiors,” Cendra said.

“The junior crew must have the confidence to alert the captain to any errors and the captain must listen to what they are saying. Anyone can make a mistake.

“There has to be harmony and honesty. This is professionalism, acting as a team. I don’t know that this always happens in Indonesia where observance of the rules is sometimes a bit greyish.

“When I get back to Indonesia maybe I can start changing things a bit.”

It would be easy to flick aside his comments as naive, the mouthings of a lad barely out of his teenage years and who would hardly know which way is up. But while his little friends were pushing toy trains across their bedroom floors Cendra was at 10,000 feet getting intimate with ailerons, flaps and stabilisers. He’s been in and around aircraft since he was a toddler, taken into the cockpits of the F 16 fighter jets his dad flew during his long air force career.

“When I was a child I always wanted to fly,” he said. “I wanted to join the air force but eyesight tests showed I was one per cent minus.

“I’ve since had corrective laser surgery, but by then it was too late to enter the military so I decided to become a commercial pilot. In any case there aren’t too many planes in the Indonesian Air Force so opportunities are limited.

“I chose Massey because the training is so thorough and great emphasis is placed on safety and problem solving. NZ is really good for aviation; everything is done well, from forecasts to friendly air traffic controllers.

“In Indonesia there’s a bit of an attitude of: ‘Problems? Ah, well, no worries.’ Pilot training isn’t just about rudder and stick – it’s also about good management and developing decision making skills. These include caring for the passengers.”

All fliers will know what he means. We slyly watch the crew stride through the departure lounge, dragging black boxes stuffed with manuals and forecasts. Do they look neat and efficient, capable and cautious?

One stagger or alcoholic belch and every passenger would race back to the check-in to demand another flight. We want these men and women to keep us aloft, and we also expect them to have gravitas.

It’s the same with the in-flight announcements. The voice must be friendly, but authoritative, no slurred speech or nervous hesitancy. If the captain sounds unhappy, what’s he doing holding the joystick?

On all these simplistic and subjective measurements the fearless Cendra comes across as a levelheaded lad with The Right Stuff, at home in a profession where youths with maturity are kings of the sky.

Add a moustache and his image would be right for the life-size cardboard cut-outs travel agents employ to persuade querulous customers to open their wallets, take to the stratosphere and trust their destiny to someone they’ve never known.

“It is also important to be clear and fluent in English (the language used in international aviation) to communicate with air traffic control staff,” Cendra said.

“I had to pass level 6.5 in the International English Language Testing System to get entry into this course, and all training is in English.”

His instructor said Cendra was a good student who would have no problems. “He’ll go far,” he said, and although this is the standard pilot’s joke the prediction should literally and metaphorically come to pass.

The young Indonesian chose a degree course so that he’ll have the right academic qualifications to enter airline management when his flying days are over.

Cendra could have studied in Jakarta at a far lower cost, but believed the Massey course has high credibility in Indonesia where Garuda has employed its graduates, including Pudji Susanto who was the standout academic graduate in 1995.

The Aviation School attracts students from around the world giving trainee pilots insights into other cultures. International commercial pilots with the right aircraft certification have a global work ticket and are not confined to their country’s flag carrier.

The three-year degree course is expensive at $NZ 140,000 (Rp 840 million) plus at least $NZ 1,000 (Rp 6 million) a month living costs.

The school uses a civil aviation airport at Palmerston North in the lower North Island of NZ, a location that gets lashed with heavy winds and rain.

“This is a problem,” said Cendra, “but it gives us the ability to handle take-offs and landings in difficult conditions.

“I love flying. When I’m in the air I feel free. On the ground I don’t have the same freedom. It makes me happy.”

Which should put passengers at ease. If the pilot feels good, then let’s stop sweating and just follow the calming instructions to ‘sit back, relax and enjoy the flight’. Provided, of course, the in-flight entertainment isn’t showing Air Crash Investigation.

(First published in The Jakarta Post Wednesday 27 May 2009)
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ASSAD ABDULLAH al-MADANI

2009-05-23T01:40:00.002+07:00

Master shipbuilder who impressed the world

Under normal circumstances the death of Assad Abdullah al-Madani this month (May) would have passed little noticed outside Pagerungan Kecil, a flat 5.6 square kilometer island north of Bali and east of Madura.

Governments tend to officially recognize the rich, powerful and famous, often overlooking the talented and creative little folk.

Yet it’s these unsung, ordinary achievers going about their lives quietly and competently who give the nation its great strength, rather than the strutting generals, preening politicians and ephemeral pop stars.

This obituary would not have been written had two foreigners not met Assad in late 2002 when the traditional boat builder was about 68, though “still robust, big-bodied, sharp-minded and commanding respect,” according to marine archaeologist Nick Burningham.

He now lives in Western Australia, but had been in and around Indonesia for many years, generally messing about in boats.

The other outsider at the meeting was Philip Beale, a cashed-up Englishman who’d become obsessed with the flaking carvings of ships that he’d seen on the Borobudur temple terraces in 1982.

The carvings had been made a thousand years or more earlier. Beale was captivated by the idea that the masons had depicted ships that may have sailed southwest from Indonesia taking spices to Madagascar and Africa. He resolved to replicate the craft and sail what came to be called the Cinnamon Route.

Beale wasn’t able to realise his dream for another 20 years when he commissioned Burningham to help build a replica.

But who to carry out such a formidable task? Was there anyone still alive with the skills to translate the ancient carvings into a real ship?

After some disappointing leads the two men met Assad who agreed to complete the ship in four months. He’d already built more than 40 big boats and had a substantial local reputation.

Assad’s ancestors probably came from the Gulf of Aden in the late 19th century as Muslim Hadhrami missionaries to Sulawesi. The family settled on the then empty and almost barren island before the Second World War and struggled to survive.

Assad told Burningham that during the occupation there was no rice on the island and people could be beaten to death by the Japanese just for bringing coffee from Java. The family planted coconuts. Assad married Fatmah and became a supercargo on a 30-ton trader, then a boat builder. The family prospered and the island population grew. It now supports more than 1,000 families.

But could a man with just basic education re-create a ship he’d never seen? Burningham built a model. “Assad and Abdul (the head shipwright) looked at the model very rarely, but they had absorbed the design and shape, and built as accurately as if they’d been taking measurements from a set of drawings every day,” said Burningham.

“The only deviations from the design were to make the finished ship more attractive and neater on construction.

“Working with him was easy and pleasant – none of the usual frustrations or misunderstandings – no attempts to introduce sub-standard materials when I wasn’t looking.

“Longitudinal symmetry was scrupulously avoided because of the philosophy that Assad called ganjil. If there was symmetry there would be a kind of perfection and wholeness, so the ship would be content in itself and would have nothing to seek – it would not be eager to find friends, cargo, income, fish, new lands or anything else.

“Assad’s role was also imbuing and amplifying semangat, the life force in the developing hull.

“A good master-shipwright is believed to have the mental strength, focus and consistency to influence in a beneficial way the developing character of the boat. And character is destiny.

“He was confident that he could have the ship built better than anyone else – and he was right.”

The 19 meter long, 4.25-meter wide boat was built by 26 barefoot men using basic tools like adzes. The timber was sourced locally and from Papua. A hand auger bored through the keel for the ship’s navel, and the shavings were given to Assad and Beale.

The wood from the hole represented the placenta and would help the ship know where it belonged.

The ship cost Rp 250 million (US 24,000) and was launched in 2003 in an emotional atmosphere. “It is widely believed in Indonesia that mental concentration is important in ceremonies which contribute to the life-energy of a ship,” said Burningham. “She rode the water proud as a lion.”

A month later at a major event graced by the then president, Megawati Soekarnoputri, the expedition led by Beale set off into the Indian Ocean.

Named Samudraraksa (guardian of the sea) the ship successfully sailed to West Africa with a multi-national crew of 15. This became an international event stirring Indonesian pride, adding to the belief that people from the archipelago had been pioneer global traders, selling spices in Africa and returning with iron tools, and maybe even slaves, long before Europeans started exploring the world.

Assad’s masterpiece is now in a museum in the Borobudur complex, close to the carvings that inspired its construction. Beale, who was given an award by the Indonesian government for his services to culture, is at sea with the Phoenician Ship Expedition. This will try to recreate the first circumnavigation of Africa in 600 BC.

Assad lived to see the triumph of his skills on display and died on 3 May from a stomach disorder. His eldest son Rauf, 43, is continuing dad’s work as a shipbuilder though using woodworking machines. One of his grandchildren, Azmi, is studying English at a university in Malang, East Java, so he can market the boats overseas.

Rauf said he had a moral responsibility to continue his father’s work, though the economic crisis had hit orders.

“My father was a hard worker and persistent,” he said. “He was also friendly, humorous and patient. Since he was seven years old he was clever at drawing and making toy boats.

“Apparently he got this talent from his father. At the beginning it was only a hobby, but he was motivated to help fishermen by building boats that made it easy to catch fish. His philosophy was to build quality craft and on-time.”

Said Burningham: “Assad was a great craftsman who combined an aesthetic and sculptural genius for traditional ship building with integrity and can-do management. The world is diminished by his passing.”

(With additional reporting by Arnold Metekohy)

(First published in The Jakarta Post 22 May 09)

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DECODING THE INDONESIAN ELECTION

2009-05-12T11:44:00.002+07:00

Indonesia’s Mr Try-Hard gets voters’ nod Duncan Graham

Out of the chaos of Indonesian politics has come forth clarity. More than half the voters in the world’s most populous Muslim nation prefer moderate secular parties rather than those sheltering under the crescent of Islam.

On the surface this looks like good news for the West, particularly Australia which has long had an edgy relationship with its northern neighbour. (See Scoop 22 April 2009) About 240 million people are squashed into the archipelago that straddles the equator. More than 40 million live below the poverty line, earning less than $US 2 a day.

The election results are also warming for New Zealand. Indonesia remains our biggest market in South-East Asia. Our exports are worth about $NZ I billion and growing fast, so the stability of our big customer is of great importance. A free trade agreement between the nations was signed in February.

The just released official results of the 9 April election have closely followed informal exit polls. They’ve shown the Democratic Party of the incumbent president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (widely known as SBY) ahead of all 38 parties seeking power, winning 21.04 per cent of the vote.

Second was the Democratic Party of Struggle led by the former president Megawati Soekarnoputri with 14.52 per cent, a whisker ahead of Golkar mustering 14.23 per cent.

Golkar is the political vehicle designed and driven by the late president Soeharto to hold absolute power for 32 years. More recently it’s been steered by the vice-president Jusuf Kalla.

Fourth with 8.16 per cent was the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) that has kept its Islamic credentials in the background while campaigning hard against corruption. This has caused a frisson of fear among those who suspect the party has another agenda.

In New Zealand most Indonesian voters backed SBY.

Clearly with these results a coalition will have to run the 560-seat Parliament, known as the DPR. How that’s going to be engineered is the critical question, though this time round SBY can bargain from a position of strength.

Under the Indonesian system the people directly elect the president and vice president for a five-year term. In the 2004 election the Democratic Party was a tiny player with less than eight per cent of the vote. But the electorate wanted SBY, not his principal rival Megawati, by a margin of three to two.

Optimists say all this shows Indonesians have embraced democracy and are making it work. Those who don’t use rose-coloured glasses note only 61 per cent of the nation’s 171 million eligible electors bothered to vote and millions were disenfranchised through registration stuff-ups.

Critics of SBY’s administration during the past five years often overlook the huge problems he faced and give insufficient weight to his skills in keeping the political system intact and the economy on course.

For a Kiwi comparison, imagine Jeanette Fitzsimons being elected PM by popular vote while the Greens bump along the bottom in Parliament.

In 2004 SBY campaigned for the nation’s top job with businessman Jusuf Kalla, thereby binding Golkar into the government. SBY still hasn’t chosen his running mate for this year’s election. Golkar gave SBY the numbers on the floor of Parliament, but the compromises required eroded much of his authority.

Unless SBY picks a mightily unpopular running mate, or someone considered corrupt, the man with a public approval rating of 70 per cent looks set in the job. Megawati will challenge but she’s a lacklustre candidate famous for being aloof and believing she deserves the job just because her dad was the country’s first president.

Westerners dealing with Indonesia have been barracking for SBY, not because he’s been an outstanding leader but because the alternatives look so scary.

During the authoritarian and corrupt rule of General Soeharto that ended in 1998 with the Asian economic crisis, the military ran the country and just about everything else. The army had seats in Parliament, controlled many businesses, had a major internal security role, oversaw the police and were considered untouchable.

Although the army’s influence is no longer so blatant it’s still a major force behind the scenes. Boosters for SBY highlight his academic qualifications (he has a doctorate in agriculture), his urbanity and English skills learned while studying in the US, and his middle ground, ultra-cautious politics. He appears to genuinely believe in democracy and has gravitas on the international stage.

Supporters play down the fact that he was a four-star general before entering politics and comes from a military family. His father, father-in-law and one son are, or were, soldiers.

Two former generals with questionable human-rights records were major party candidates in this year’s election and Megawati is largely regarded as a tool of the military.

SBY has been unable to stop the imposition of some aspects of Islamic Sharia law in the provinces. These include forcing female bureaucrats and students to wear headscarves, banning alcohol, enforcing prayers and setting up community patrols to sniff out sexual naughtiness, though the Constitution appears to prohibit such local initiatives.

By contrast, and after decades of oppression, the media in Indonesia is now the freest in South-East Asia, robustly pushing the old barriers on a wide range of social and political issues.

Despite doomsayers claiming Indonesia would become another Pakistan as fundamentalism flourished, that hasn’t happened. The battle against terrorism, with significant help from the Australian Federal Police, has notched up many wins against the bombers.

SBY’s push against corruption has had limited success; pulling out the wallet remains the standard way to bypass stalling bureaucrats at all levels. The arrest this month of the Corruption Commission boss Antasari Azhar on charges of being involved in the murder of a businessman has crippled the clean-up campaign.

The judiciary is still a mess, continuing to use colonial Dutch law from early last century, and the over-staffed public service a dinosaur sturdily resisting extinction. Outsiders trying to do business need to tread warily.

The economy has slumped, though not as much as expected and less than other Asian nations. Poverty and poor quality education remain major concerns, although there have been patchwork successes in improving the lives of those on Struggle Street.

The consensus, both inside and outside the Republic seems to be that Mr Try-Hard has made a reasonable fist of handling one of the world’s toughest tasks – and given the line-up against him is clearly the best bloke around.

There are two standout dangers: If he wants to divorce Golkar and get a workable majority in the Parliament, SBY may be forced to cohabit with the PKS and other minor Islamic parties. This could let the extremist tail wag the reformist dog.

The other concern is that the opposition parties frustrated at their inability to find candidates with popular appeal may combine to spoil SBY’s legislative program out of spite. Success here seems less likely; though the emotion is real they’ll find it hard to bury differences because so many are single-issue or policy-free parties.

The election for the president will be held on 8 July, with a run off on 8 September if no candidate gets above 50 per cent of the vote.

* (First published in Scoop.com Tuesday 11 May)
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AOTEAROA'S LOMBOK LINK

2009-04-28T00:44:00.002+07:00

Aotearoa’s Lombok learning link © Duncan Graham 2009

Lombok folk probably know more about New Zealand than most Indonesians, particularly those who still think the South Pacific islands (also known in Maori as Aotearoa) are an offshore colony of Australia.

This knowledge has nothing to do with the efforts of paid NZ government agents promoting their little country of just over four million people. It does have everything to do with Istiqlal, (“my name’s easy to remember – just think of the big mosque in Jakarta”), the principal of a big government vocational college in Mataram.

“Everyone knows about Australia because Lombok, like Bali, is an Australian holiday spot, but NZ is a bit of an unknown. Kiwis tend to get a bit cranky when Indonesians confuse them with Australians,” said Istiqlal, demonstrating his comprehensive grip on the vernacular, perceptiveness and past tertiary studies in Darwin.

“I thought it was about time we helped build our relationships with NZ by sending them some of our students to improve their cultural understanding and experience of the world outside Lombok. There were a few difficulties, but I like a challenge.”

His wish was granted. The difficulties included no easy access to NZ. Australia is less than a couple of flying hours away at its closest point and just a meal and an in-flight movie between Bali and Perth.

Garuda no longer serves NZ and the cheaper fares require travellers to first fly north to Brunei, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. They then have to hang around the sensory deprivation units known as airport terminals waiting for connecting flights. This makes the journey southeast unnecessarily long and exhausting.

The other hurdles were the cash and education imbalances. Despite having free food and lodging the cost of sending an exchange student to NZ for a fortnight was around Rp 25 million (US $2,000) – a heavy burden for some Indonesians.

Then came the language problem. Many Australian schools teach Indonesian, but that’s not the case in NZ where European languages and Maori still dominate the curriculum, with Chinese and Japanese plodding along behind.

Nonetheless, in late March 18 teenagers from various Lombok schools found themselves in the capital Wellington, shivering in a sparkling autumn day that most Kiwis considered brilliant and balmy. In August a similar number of NZ students will be in Lombok facing heavy humidity and a diet dominated by rice.

Since Istiqlal took over SMK Negeri 4 (State vocational college) in May 2008 the rule on campus has been that the 850 students, the majority girls, must master English. To underline the message he insisted that anyone meeting him on the school grounds had to open the discussion in English.

“This had the effect of many people trying to avoid me,” he noted wryly. “But we produce graduates in tourism and they must be able to use the world language. That’s not so easy because till now we haven’t been able to employ native speakers – though that may change.

“My goal is to make our college number one in training for the hospitality industry with international standards. I don’t just want our alumni to be content with basic jobs; I expect them to become hotel managers and even owners of hotels in Indonesia and overseas.”

Bill Russell, the chairman of NZ company Education Network Indonesia, which brokered the exchange program, confirmed that Istiqlal’s college was exceptionally well equipped with modern teaching facilities.

“Some Westerners go to Indonesia and say: ‘We’re all right, you’re all wrong’,” commented Bill Russell. “They need their bums kicked. There are so many talented students who could hold their own anywhere. I always feel humble in Indonesia.”

Proving his point was Lombok lad Muhammad Haikal, 16, who gave a humorous off-the-cuff speech in laid-back English at a formal Indonesian Embassy function in Wellington. This was after spending sleepless hours squashed in an Airbus jumping time zones.

He didn’t even have time to change out of his sweat-soaked crumpled clothes, which would have fazed most public speakers because the VIP audience was in suits, crisp uniforms and pressed batik.

Istiqlal, 41, is no stranger to NZ. He was with a group of principals who flew south in 2008 on a study tour. For the energetic teacher who uses the Internet day and night like an international futures trader, this was no junket. He was one of the few that did any follow up work once he was back in the archipelago.

He promptly reported to the Education Department with ideas on how the trip could be used as a feeder into an educational highway, not a one-way street, - the fate of many study tours.

Astonished bureaucrats in Jakarta told him he was the only participant to come back with anything in writing and invited him to address principals from around the country on his plans.

He told them that in Wellington he’d met the Indonesian Ambassador to NZ, Amris Hassan who matched the Lombok teacher’s enthusiasm by endorsing a student exchange program.

The Ambassador took him to a Malaysian restaurant because there’s no Indonesian eatery in Wellington and said: “Since I took up this post two year ago I’ve been wondering why so many Malaysians come to NZ to study and so few Indonesians, and what to do about the problem.”

Amris Hassan introduced Istiqlal to Bill Russell and the ENI. This is a consortium of NZ secondary and tertiary institutions now recruiting Indonesian students. (See sidebar)

“Coping with the weather is going to be their biggest problem, followed by comprehension,” said Istiqlal as the Lombok students, many wearing headscarves, stole glances at their short-skirted Amazon hosts, wondering how they would fit in to the casual sport-mad lifestyle of NZ.

“We gave them cross-cultural courses before they left Lombok and of course they’ve seen many bule (foreign) tourists in Lombok, so the way they behave and dress shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

“Religion isn’t a concern. Parents know that their children will be staying with Christian families, with some studying at Catholic schools. Our cultures, foods and lifestyles are quite different, but the schools and host families are most concerned with the care of their visitors.

“This is a pilot project. I love NZ and want others to enjoy this country. The education here is world class, the people are friendly and everything is clean. It’s not just a land of sheep and dairy cows. I’m working very hard for NZ and wish we could get more government help.”

(Sidebar)

Handshaking opens doors © Duncan Graham 2009

Jane Holloway finds the heavy international promotion of New Zealand as a clean, green under-populated outdoor adventure land full of knockout scenery a bit of a handicap.

When trying to persuade Indonesian teenagers that they should enhance their education in NZ, preferably at St Catherine’s College in Wellington where she’s the principal, she also stressed that the country does have shopping malls, cosmopolitan cities, cellphones, and lots of urban attractions.

“Wellington is a compact, safe, cultural city, easy to explore with a good social life,” she said. “That’s a real strength.”

To convince the students’ parents that they should send their offspring to a land far away she mentions money. A short-term education program (usually of around 12 weeks) costs about $NZ 6,000 (US $3,500 – Rp 40 million) less than in Australia.

“NZ dropped out of the Indonesian education market during the Asian economic crisis 11 years ago,” Mrs Holloway said. “Australia stayed on – so that’s made our task so much more difficult. It’s a bit like re-inventing the wheel.”

St Catherine’s College is one of several high schools and universities that have joined Education Network Indonesia to sell the benefits of Kiwi education. They are getting there, though slowly. Four years ago 194 Indonesians got long-term student visas – last year the number jumped to 249.

ENI chairman Bill Russell said education and accommodation in NZ was much cheaper than Australia though the education quality was equal or better. To get a three year university qualification would cost around $NZ 100,000 (US$ 59,000 – Rp 670 million) including full board and lodging.

“This is about ten per cent less than Australia without considering exchange rates,” he said, before dashing off to handle another study tour.

“A lot on people don’t understand the downstream benefits of overseas student programs. Apart from improving international relationships and generating goodwill the students spend their money in their host country.

“ Now education is being decentralized in Indonesia progressive teachers and officials are realising they can improve their education overseas.

“We’ve signed memoranda of understandings with four provincial governors and are putting together upskilling courses in English and maths in NZ for Indonesian teachers. NZ is a world leader in all aspects of tourism and that’s a real attraction to overseas students.

“District by district we’re building a rapport between Indonesia and Kiwis. We’re getting a tremendous response by making personal contacts. Building relationships is critical in Indonesia. Handshaking really does open doors.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post Monday 27 April 2009)

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INDONESIA: THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN FRIGHT

2009-04-22T12:19:00.003+07:00

There’s a group of 17 Indonesian academics currently studying English at Massey University. Five of the seven women in the group (see picture below) wear jilbab, the Islamic headscarf.

Before leaving their homeland they worried about discrimination. Their fears were based on reports of attacks on Muslims in Australia. Though sporadic these assaults get a good run in the Indonesian media.

The women, who have been in Wellington for more than a month, report no hostility. Like the 3,000 Indonesians now living in NZ they are discovering that although this country does have pockets of racism it doesn’t have the Australian hang-ups about Indonesia and Islam.

It would be warming to think we are a more tolerant society, but the reason for our acceptance may have more to do with geography and history than a generosity of spirit.

Indonesia is Australia’s big nation next door, 240 million people in an overcrowded archipelago with porous borders where democracy is still struggling after more than three decades of repressive military rule.

Australians have long considered Hindu Bali their backyard cheap exotic holiday destination, like Kiwis favor the Pacific islands. But few tourists venture into adjacent Java where Islam dominates, and where they might learn more about their neighbours. The Bali bombers, who killed 88 Australians in 2002, were Muslim fanatics from Java and their crimes have not been forgotten. Three Kiwis also died in the blasts but we’ve moved on.

Deep in the psyche of Australia is the fear of the ‘yellow peril’, millions tumbling out of Asia into the vast empty and loosely defended resource-rich continent below. ‘They’ were up there and it was obvious that gravity, if not poverty and envy, would force them Down Under.

This simpleton’s view was nurtured during the late 19th and early 20th century by a virulent anti-Chinese media campaign. The ‘White Australia’ immigration policy didn’t officially end till 1973; some Asians think it’s still in place..

The demons are no longer Chinese, but Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and others, particularly ethnic Hazaras who follow the minority Shi’ite branch of Islam. Many have been genuine asylum seekers fleeing conflict and persecution – a few have been economic refugees seeking a better life.

After paying people smugglers huge amounts they’ve been shepherded through the Indonesian islands where poor fishermen will ferry cargoes of humans across the Timor Sea. People smuggling is not a crime in Indonesia; it is in Australia.

Losing their boats and freedom is no great deterrent to the fishermen. Their families already have the up-front fees from the smugglers, and life in an Australian prison with good health care and wholesome meals is often better than the breadline existence in a coarse-life coastal village.

Until the authorities woke up, many fishermen were getting a free flight home at the end of their discounted sentences with their wallets stuffed with cash garnered in gaol. Though only a few dollars a day were given to buy necessities in return for doing basic jobs, the sums were vast when compared with earnings in their heavily plundered seas.

The previous Liberal government claimed its tough line against people smugglers reduced the flow, but changes in the law under Labor are said by the Opposition to be encouraging the risk-takers.

Previously the asylum seekers, (‘illegals’ in the tabloid press, ‘unlawful non-citizens’ to the bureaucrats), were sent to Nauru under the so-called ‘Pacific Solution’.

Those who made it to the mainland were sometimes given TPVs – temporary protection visas. These did not allow relatives to join the refugees who could be deported once Australian authorities decided the dangers they faced in their homelands had abated. Some who were rejected by Australia were accepted by NZ.

Now the TPVs have been dumped. The boat people are taken to a detention camp on tiny Christmas Island, Australian territory 500 km south of Jakarta. Here claims for asylum are processed. The island has been excised from Australia’s migration zone.

The boat that last week was allegedly fire bombed killing five and putting scores in hospital, has again roused national ire about Islam and Indonesia – a debate that’s seldom heard in this nation.

There are about 360,000 Muslims in Australia, ten times more than in NZ, and they’ve built mosques in most big cities. Well-reported conflicts with local communities over the establishment of Islamic schools, and occasional extremist comments by radical imam have kept the fire stoked.

Australian politicians claim thousands are mustering in Indonesia waiting to make the perilous sea journey in rickety boats. Some arrested by Indonesian authorities have told reporters they ‘loved Australia’ and its ‘good and kind government which would help them solve all their problems’.

Clearly they hadn’t heard the rabid Australian talkback radio comments where the ‘queue jumpers’ have stirred the old fears about ‘the threat from the north’. The fact that there’s no orderly queue for refugees seeking entry to Australia hasn’t dented the myth.

Not have they hearkened PM Kevin Rudd’s claim that his policy is ‘hardline, tough (and) targeted’.

New Zealand, with the huge barrier of arid Australia to the northwest, the vast Pacific to the north and only penguins below has no such concerns. Even if Fiji Frank becomes more ruthless it’s unlikely that flotillas of little boats crammed with the oppressed will set sail for NZ across 2,000 km of empty ocean.

In short, border protection is not a major public issue in NZ, making this country a more welcoming nation to Muslims refugees, migrants and students. As the Indonesian academics in Wellington are now discovering, Islamophobia has yet to cross the ditch.

(First published in Scoop 22 April 2009)
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2009-04-22T12:13:00.000+07:00

THE LEGACY OF KARTINI DOWN UNDER

2009-04-22T12:09:00.002+07:00

Kartini’s legacy gets the Kiwi touch Duncan Graham

They see themselves as the inheritors and custodians of the spirit of Raden Ajeng Kartini, national heroine and pioneer of women’s rights.

They are modern Indonesian women who are pursuing their own careers through further education and offering the younger generation role models of independence without devaluing their culture.

However their pride is cautious and conservative. Outside Indonesia they are seen as stand-alone professionals, respected for their learning and skills and what they do.

Yet they also know that when they are back home in Malang, East Java they’ll first be assessed as wives and mothers. However smart they may be in a competitive workforce they’ll still be viewed as second-class citizens by many Indonesians, just by virtue of their gender.

“Women are getting better educated and as a result more independent,” said Dr Lily Agustina, an agricultural scientist and lecturer at Malang’s Brawijaya University where she heads a study program.

“There are plenty of opportunities for women in Indonesia, but men are still seen as the head of the household. So are we modern Kartinis? Well, not yet.”

Lily, who specialises in organic farming, was one of seven senior women academics from Brawijaya who have been studying English full time in New Zealand. They’ve been accompanied by ten male colleagues from the same university.

Although they are all highly qualified, mainly middle-aged and well-established in their prestigious positions they have chosen to leave their husbands and children for three months to improve their education overseas. They’ve been doing this in an egalitarian Western country where their status is that of just another student.

New Zealand has been a leader in women’s rights, the first country in the world to give women the vote. That was in 1893, 14 years after the Javanese aristocratic Kartini was born and when she was starting to mildly question the established order and develop her ideas of equality.

Kartini died after childbirth aged 25 and was declared a national heroine in 1964 with her birthday a national holiday.

Her legacy is the acceptance of women’s rights to education, though in other areas, such as property rights in marriage, women still lag behind. The Brawijaya seven have been noting NZ law where a divorced wife automatically has the rights to 50 per cent of her husband’s property, and where joint ownership of bank accounts and land titles are common.

But old ideas about gender roles die hard.

“Men and women can’t be the same because they have different functions,” said plant tissue culture expert Dr Wahyu Widoretno. “Women give birth. Men can’t do that. In our religion men have to be the leaders.”

Eavesdropping was Professor Woro Busono, the deputy vice rector of student affairs who contributed: “And women can’t have more than one husband,” a remark that was greeted with brief and brittle laughter by the ever-so-polite Indonesian women. Fortunately for him there were no Kiwi feminists nearby or an international incident might have exploded, demanding ambassadorial intervention.

Wahyu added pensively, her mind on her domestic situation more than the battle of the sexes: “We don’t know how they can survive without us.”

Others, like Dr Nurul Isnaini from the faculty of animal husbandry, had a more robust take: “We all have our roles but men and women should treat each other with respect, whatever we do. I think we are the new Kartinis.”

The Indonesian academics have been sent to NZ as part of Brawijaya’s bid to set up international study programs where the classroom language will be English. Next year the university plans to recruit students from nearby Asian countries to learn in Malang and establish Brawijaya as a tertiary institution of regional repute.

The 17 Indonesians have been studying at Massey University in Wellington, the NZ capital. On their return they will head new post-graduate programs across several faculties.

For most it has been their first trip to a Western country. They have been staying with host families and their home university has paid all their expenses.

When they arrived in NZ they found that their years of formal study of English to be of little help when they crashed into the Kiwi vowel-warping accents head on. “We had to rapidly learn a new tongue – Tarzan English,” said analytical chemist Dr Atikah who had no qualms about making the appropriate arm-waving, finger-wagging gestures to embellish her requests.

“We were not fluent in English. Our education had been formal and passive. We had concentrated on theory, not practise.

“We’ve had no discrimination, though we were a little concerned before we left home because we’d heard of attacks on women wearing headscarves in Australia. That has not happened. People here have been friendly and helpful.

“We’ve had to forget about jam karet (rubber time). Here we have to be disciplined and that’s been good for us. I’ve changed my habits, and I hope I won’t change back again when I return home.”

Other shocks have been the pace of life – “rush, rush” commented Lily, though most visitors from Europe, the US and Australia reckon the NZ lifestyle is so laid back that it’s practically stationary.

Ignorance of Indonesia has been a concern so the academics have had to spend time explaining that the republic is not a hotbed of terrorism, but a land where friendly folk help each other through the principle of gotong royong – community self help.

When challenged on their mild disapproval of the Western culture of individualism they acknowledged that NZ society, despite it’s mind-your-own-business philosophy, had a similar set of values when it came to people assisting their neighbors at times of need.

(That morning a NZ community had rapidly raised $NZ 8,000 (Rp 50 million) to repatriate the body of a penniless young Kiwi who had died after a fight in Bali.)

The way Kiwi women dress and behave did not worry the academics, though it would distress the police in some Indonesian provinces. “That’s their culture and their business,” said Nurul. “I think it’s more of a problem for the men.”

Commented economist Dr Kusuma Ratnawati: “Some of the difficulties facing women in Indonesia come from within. Many are not brave enough to assert themselves. Some feel their jobs are not as important as men’s work.

“It’s important that we help empower them to have confidence in themselves, to lift their spirits.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 21 April 2009)

Picture above: From left Hamidah Nayati Utami, Wahyu Widoretno, Atikah, Ani Mulyasuryani, Lily Agustina, Nurul Isnaini, Kusuma Ratnawati.

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INDONESIA'S FEMINISTS ON THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN

2009-02-22T15:40:00.002+07:00

Damsels of democracy seduce your vote Duncan Graham

Returning after a few months abroad certainly sharpens appreciation of the community-order shifts underway in modern Indonesia.

They’re minor and marginal, tremors rather than shakes, just quivers on the societal seismograph. No tsunami will follow but it seems the tide is surely, slowly and imperceptibly rising, unnoticed by stay put locals.

The first indicator was a giant poster at the end of our block promoting a hopeful for the upcoming election. So what? The streets have become tunnels flanked, topped and tailed by billowing silk-screened cotton advertising scores of candidates on the principle that quantity beats quality.

At previous elections the protocols were clear; candidates had to be male, ageing, plump and wear a peci, the Javanese rimless black cap. A black moustache was also de rigueur, indicating masculine vigor plus a finger thrust skyward, a la the Republic’s first president.

All academic qualifications, whether bought, borrowed or MM (Mickey Mouse) had to be listed, while the title Haji, indicating a visit to Mecca, was another important vote-catcher.

The few women who dared put their names forward as supporting acts were grizzled grannies cocooned like Egyptian mummies in mourning black or virgin white.

Slightly out of focus, and hovering like Banquo’s ghost over the candidate’s shoulder, must be a more recognisable face, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono or a previous holder of the nation’s top job, like Gus Dur or Megawati Soekarnoputri – though never Habibie.

During her time as the most powerful woman leader in the world I watched her age under the burdens of office. Then she was dethroned and vanished for the next half decade.

Now she’s back and .. what a miracle! The former First Lady is younger, slimmer and more graceful, at least on the posters. If this is what five years in political limbo can do to a woman, then forget Omega 3 – just keep out of the public eye.

But there’s no phantom endorsing the candidature of Nanik, the lady whose portrait graces our suburb gateway for she’s a real stand-alone, a flawless knock-em-down beauty who should be pushing perfume, not politics.

She probably spent a week in a cream-bath before the photo was taken and another week getting each eyelash to turn heavenwards. She’s a Christian – surprising because followers of the Nazarene in this area are rare as honest cops.

For every surreptitious prayer meeting above a motorcycle workshop there are 20 magnificent Saudi-funded mosques, so the result will probably be No, No, Nanik.

It would be impolite and sexist to comment on this candidate’s other robust attributes. Enough to note that her jewel-encrusted crucifix doesn’t dangle vertically but nestles horizontally.

Not 200 metres further on Nanik is seriously challenged by auburn-tinted Siti whose chandelier earrings sparkle through tumbling locks. Siti dares show her glistening teeth. One is clearly a fang – so she’ll do well in politics.

Across the road is Golkar’s favorite, Endang who has apparently been to Mecca where she must have mislaid her headscarf. She seems a thoroughly modern matron, even backing the local football team, though unlike Nanik and Sita she keeps her blouse well buttoned.

Nearby is Tineka who forgot to visit a salon before the photo shoot so has had to rely on Photoshop. She has so few face lines her nose has almost vanished; the effect is like Sailor Moon having a bad-hair day. This must be for the teenage vote.

Only hot Farida thought a headscarf necessary to advertise her piety as a substitute for policy. She chose flame red and matched it with her lipstick, a far more volatile effect than some of her rivals.

In the long-standing and allegedly mature liberal Western democracy where I retreat from Java’s smog and noise, defacing, chain-sawing and even burning the posters of rival political parties is a pastime for inarticulate youth who think the ballot a bore.

Here in Indonesia, where hard-won democracy is still fumbling her way towards the light, the billboards remain intact.

Though only Neanderthals would vandalise pioneering Nanik and her courageous pioneering sisters, selflessly offering their splendid talents to the electorate. If they don’t get into parliament at least they’ll be able to sell skin-whiteners and wrinkle-removers.

Good luck to them all. I just wish I could vote.

(First published in The Sunday Post 22 February 09)

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THE ROTTEN EGG RESPONSE TO FUNDAMENTALISTS

2009-02-02T02:24:00.001+07:00

Back to basics and responding eggsistentially © 2009 Duncan Graham

Just across the road from the Surabaya headquarters of the mighty Islamic organization Nahdlatul Ulama is a branch of Pizza Hut.

Along with KFC and McDonalds this fast-food outlet represents another insidious plot cooked up by the Great Satan to destroy Asian cuisine. That’s my view, and it’s probably shared by fundamentalists like the Majelis Mujahiddin and the Laskar Mujahiddin.

Though not apparently by the green-clad NU workers who queue for their double cheese Hawaiian crusty pizzas, tugging wispy beards and glaring ferociously at the Chinese teens, free of headscarves and inhibitions, who reckon Pizza Hut is the place to be seen.

But I don’t want to be seen. I loathe fast food and the one-taste-fits-all imperialist marketing. I’m here only because my favorite warung (roadside diner) has introduced salmonella into its otherwise delicious martabak.

These are the pancakes that contain a few dozen eggs and several cans of sweetened condensed milk plus a secret blend of herbs and spices. This dish is to cholesterol what petrol is to fire extinguishing. My martabak are fried inside a crepe mixture beaten tissue-thin by a nimble-fingered octogenarian who washes his hands in an open drain fed by nearby toilets.

The pizzas are overpriced and the taste indistinguishable from their cardboard boxes, but the food and surroundings are spotless, even if the ambience is easy-wipe walls and the furniture as plastic as the staff smiles.

Maybe the anger-enhanced NU lads staggering back to their recitations with stacks of takeaways also get sick eating roadside food and want to keep their stomachs in a state of grace. As my mother used to say, ‘cleanliness is next to Godliness.’

So I reckon the Mujahiddin mobs who threw rotten eggs at a fast food outlet in Mataram and demanded the restaurant replace Western fare with Indonesian food had the right idea. Note that they didn’t want the standards of hygiene changed.

If I’d been in the Lombok city I might have even egged them on with a few Allah Akbars (God is Great) of my own. That would have shaken their black and white view of the world and might have encouraged some East-West dialogue like this:

“Hey guys, why not go the whole hog… woops, er.. way, and throw out everything Western. Indonesia is just fine as it is. I love your country and its traditional simplicity – who needs capitalist materialism?

“Are those Nokia hand-phones you’re forever thumbing? Crush them underfoot, and let not their dust settle on your sandals.

“Are those Kijangs you’re driving? Tip them in the river, and may a mighty flood of waters cover these fossil-fuel guzzlers forever.

“Planning to fly to Mecca for the Hadj? Don’t do it brother, the airlines all use Boeings.

“Say, if you’ve got any rotten eggs left let’s hoof it down to the Garuda office and give them a serve. Demand they use Indonesian planes built with local resources, like bamboo.

“What, you’d rather go by ship? I don’t think Pelni takes its ferries that far but they’d give it a go with the right threats – sorry, encouragement. Not keen? Oh, I’ve got it. Most of the ships have been made in Europe

“You’re right, better to walk. After all the Walisongo nine who brought Islam to Java didn’t scoot around on Suzukis. But keep off the highways; remember they were built by the repressive Dutch. Stick to the paddies and we’ll get the feel of good Indonesian dirt between our toes. Forget tetanus shots – faith will get you through.

“Yes, I’ll join you, at least to Jakarta. Let’s hit the road and get into the dialectic together probing principles, prejudices and warped logic, seek a bit of common ground. We’ll swap yarns and create an archipelago version of the Canterbury Tales.

“A world without handphones, hamburgers and Hondas sounds just right to me, but butt out the butts. That’s another Western habit we can all do without.

“OK, one concession. No Marlboros. Just kretek hand rolled by virgins. So rip off those I-pods, discard those jeans. If it’s back to basics then I’m your man. But no martabak, thanks - unless they’re made by Pizza Hut.”

(First published in The Sunday Post 1 February 2009)

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Pak Kuntoro in Wellington

2009-01-01T03:29:00.001+07:00

KUNTORO MANGKUSUBROTO

2008-12-28T05:44:00.001+07:00

Kuntoro Mangkusubroto
Working as the hands of God Duncan Graham

At the time it was the toughest job in Indonesia.

Repair a landscape ripped raw by the world’s most extreme natural disaster; house the grief-torn survivors who’d lost more than 170,000 relatives, friends and neighbors; rebuild roads, bridges, ports, power stations, hospitals – all the infrastructure that makes cities function.

Manage a huge budget and be accountable to governments and NGOs in Indonesia and around the world.

Cope with the hostility, the prejudice, the deep-seated suspicions still virulent after 30 years of civil war, the jealousy, the angry confrontationists and the back-stabbers. Aceh was a tortured land drained of trust, particularly hostile towards Javanese from the central government.

That Kuntoro Mangkusubroto stayed the distance, achieved the goals and at 61 looks fresh enough to tackle another epic catastrophe indicates that the director of the Bureau of Rehabilitation and Reconstruction in Aceh and Nias (BRR) is a distinctly gifted human being – though he rejects this appraisal: “I’m just myself.”

Four years ago this Boxing Day a massive undersea earthquake off Aceh triggered a tsunami. Waves to 12 meters swept across 800 kilometers of coast and up to 1.6 kilometers inland.

It was a scene from Armageddon.

The world pledged US $7.2 billion and paid $6.7 billion. Thousands of aid workers flooded in with a multiplicity of agendas. Also lured were those who saw the chance to exploit the situation and milk the largesse.

Indonesia ranks 143 on the world’s corruption index and the cynics predicted much of the aid would never reach those hurting most, and that petty bureaucracy would destroy even the best intentioned and most resilient.

There has been some minor project-level corruption that’s being pursued, according to Kuntoro, but the BRR has not been infected. The agency’s accounts have been checked by international auditors and given an unqualified pass.

“We set up an internal anti-corruption unit, the first for any Indonesian government agency,” he said in Wellington, New Zealand. He was in the country to address a conference on disaster risk management and thank Kiwis for their aid. Like Australia, NZ was among the first countries to offer help.

“We developed new standards of accountability for Indonesia and in advance of many other countries.

“We encouraged everyone to blow the whistle if they saw anything amiss. They just had to send me an SMS. I asked my staff to pledge their honesty and promise never to take one penny they were not entitled to have.”

When President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono hand picked the former Minister for Mines, business rescuer, company director, academic and civil engineer to take on the new BRR job in April 2005 Kuntoro dictated his terms.

They included ministerial ranking, direct access to the President (a privilege used only three times) and a salary three times larger than other ministers, an issue that drew much criticism.

“They were able to moonlight to supplement their salaries. I have no other income,” he said. “I do not take speaking fees or envelopes for anything I do.

“I fly economy class and not just to save money. At the back of the plane people talk to me and tell me what’s really happening. I thought this job was the chance given by God to touch the hands of the needy people, to go and do something good.

“Not many have that opportunity. Our success can be measured.”

Kuntoro said he draws his moral values and anti-corruption stand from his parents: “My father was a straight lawyer and my mother a professor of English.

“They brought me up to do good for other people, to be a good person, to be happy. We led a simple life. Although I started as a civil engineer (he was educated at Bandung Institute of Technology and Stanford University in the US), I fell in love with decision analysis.

“This discipline covers so many issues, but above all moral values are the most important. There are consequences to every action and the last defence is your conscience. You can compromise your strategy but never compromise your values.

“Have I been tempted? Many times, but it’s always like that. Life isn’t all about money. How does money relate to family, values and God?

“There were no how-to textbooks available for this job, no models of what to do. The task was so huge. I’ve had to face demonstrations and brutal words.

“Management was a nightmare. People blamed me for being too slow or not sensitive enough, but I had to remember they were the victims and had the right to blame.

“Twice I felt like giving up. I’m not too religious, but I believe. Yes. I trusted that we were sent by God to do this job. We are the extension of the hands of God and it is our duty.”

The first bureaucratic challenge came within hours of Kuntoro being sworn into office at the Presidential Palace. No one in the government would give him the money for airfares to Aceh because there was no system in place and it was a weekend.

The Australian aid agency AusAID stepped in with US $100,000 cash and Kuntoro and his team were able to get to ground zero. But there was no office or housing. Then the United Nations High Commission for Refugees gave the BRR space.

“I thought these things were God’s doing,” he said. “I was just the man in the middle.”

“When I chose staff I sought people of the highest integrity. I didn’t know them before. I asked if they were willing. If they said ‘yes’ they were employed. If they asked ‘how much?’ or ‘I’ll have to ask my boss’ then they were out.

“I have self confidence – some think I have too much. A good manager must have guts and be self reliant, have a nothing-to-lose attitude. You will make mistakes. The art is in solving problems at the lowest cost, to create harmony and make unbiased judgements, to get results.”

In April the BRR vanishes from everything except the history books. One of these will be written by Kuntoro unless he’s headhunted to fix another crisis.

In material terms the BRR has changed Aceh for the better. Much good has come from much horror.

More than 93 per cent of the job has been done. People are back farming and fishing. Traffic chaos has returned. The roads are bituminised, the bridges sturdy, the 125,000 new houses hygienic, the public buildings of a standard better then other provinces. Visa, work permit and import clearance procedures have been streamlined and accelerated, delivered through a one-stop shop.

Land titles now include the wife’s name ensuring her security should her husband die – a reform yet to spread to other provinces. National whistle-blower laws are being considered.

The templates for business and departmental propriety are there for other agencies and managers to pick up – if they so desire. Could corruption be eliminated and Indonesia rank high among the world’s clean countries?

Kuntoro, normally master of the snappy response, paused: “Yes. But only if there’s the political will.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post on Boxing Day 2008)
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Romo (Father) Benny in Wellington, NZ

2008-12-15T07:13:00.000+07:00

BENNY SUSETYO - TURBULENT PRIEST

2008-12-15T07:03:00.002+07:00

Bashed, bloodied but unbeaten © Duncan Graham 2008

Preaching the universal religious virtues of peace, love, understanding and forgiveness is easy enough before backslapping thinkalikes in a safe house.

In the warmth of the applause the speaker can bask in the sunshine of self-righteousness. The challenge comes when the audience is hostile, even brutal and the environment is the street.

Catholic priest Benny Susetyo has been confronted by the ugly side of Indonesian life and passed the test splendidly. Though not without considerable pain.

In August he was bashed senseless by three thugs and spent five days recuperating and undergoing tests in a Singapore hospital. So far no-one had been arrested for the crime.

His assault came a few months after hoons from the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI) thumped peace marchers in central Jakarta, wounding 70. This encouraged the Christian press to claim Father Benny was the victim of a planned assault by fundamentalists aiming to fracture Indonesian pluralism. However the victim doesn’t go so far, saying he doesn’t know why he was bashed.

He said he is no longer in pain and had forgiven his assailants – “of course.” Maybe they were just after his handphone.

If the criminals were religious loonies or hired hitmen who thought their violence might bludgeon the secretary of the Inter-Religious Commission of the Indonesian Bishops’ Conference into silence they selected the wrong man.

For the human rights activist is still hammering his message of reform in the way Indonesians use and misuse religion and he’s taking his mission far afield.

His latest stop was New Zealand where he was invited during Human Rights Week by the Indonesian Embassy to promote the Republic as a multi-faith tolerant society. His visit was also used to celebrate the Christmas season.

NZ is a nation that still holds to a Judaeo-Christian heritage and values, but where organised religion is in decline. There are about 40,000 Muslims in the South Pacific country and only a tiny fraction from Indonesia.

“There are so many things that New Zealanders can do to help democracy and promote public civilization in Indonesia,” he told anyone who would listen during a tour in early December.

“I don’t just mean in terms of trade. Visit Indonesia and do whatever you can to explain what’s happening in the world. Spread the message that religion must be on the side of the poor and disadvantaged.

“Religion is being used as an instrument of power in Indonesia, manipulated by the State and big business.

“Religion has been trapped by rituals, people chasing after symbols and failing to find the balance between the state and the market. Religion must be a source of morality.”

Father Benny sees parallels in Indonesia with the Soviet Union after Mikhail Gorbachev, the last head of the USSR who presided over the disintegration of the union and the arrival of democracy.

Father Benny claimed that the Russian people eventually grew tired of the way democracy was being mishandled and corrupted, and are now drifting back to totalitarianism. He fears the same disillusionment may infect Indonesians.

He said this is because politicians are continuing to use religion for their own ends and consequently risking harmony in Indonesia.

Benny Susetyo, 40, is normally based in Malang in East Java where he studied for a masters’ degree in philosophy. He is a member of the Alliance for National and Religious Freedom and has written several books on pluralism and religion.

In the mass media he has used Indonesia’s press (“the most free and democratic in Asia”) to savage the government’s response to the Lapindo mud volcano disaster in East Java, demanding that businessman Aburizal Bakrie (who is also the Coordinating Minister for the People’s Welfare) be held accountable.

The meddlesome priest has even dared to demand the government seize the Bakrie Group’s assets to compensate the thousands who have lost homes, land and jobs to the unstoppable eruption of gas and slime. (A Bakrie company was associated with the gas drilling that allegedly caused the eruption.)

Father Benny has also been a critic of the banning of the Islamic Ahmadiyah sect under pressure from hardline Muslims who believe that only their interpretation of the faith is correct.

His other targets have been poorly educated religious leaders who have used the hate passages in the ancient books to provoke violence. So it’s easy to assume the man has garnered many enemies who might want to give him a hard time – literally and metaphorically.

“We need a new paradigm for religious teaching that will interpret the texts in accordance with modern usage,” he said.

“Take off your exclusive glasses and start looking at the world in an inclusive way. The dialogue must be about life. The challenge for religion is to take sides with the downtrodden, the poor, migrant workers – and advocate on their behalf.

“In many cases religion has lost its true essence in bringing peace and justice to the world – advocating solidarity, forgiveness and being good friends with all. Plurality should be the main issue in the development of our national character.”

In an earlier age Father Benny would have been pilloried as a Communist and publicly harassed by the military and police if not jailed. For he is not afraid of putting the boot into politicians and the corporate world, both untouchables during Soeharto’s authoritarian era.

He has focussed on the power of cashed-up business-backed politicians to buy media time and who use religion to clothe themselves with piety in the search for votes.

At the same time he has trust in the common sense of the ordinary people. He said they had not been fooled by the large number of celebrities and clerics who have put their names forward for public office; these candidates have been dumped at the ballot box.

He unsuccessfully supported the removal of religious affiliation from identity cards and thinks it will be some time before Indonesians can accept the idea that the state and religion should be divorced, as it is in NZ and many other Western countries.

“The issue is not to have a religion, but to be a religion,” he said. “Religion has become a plaything of the state.

“The important things are not the number of places of worship, but the creation of a life of togetherness. We have to become better educated and intellectually more mature.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 13 December 2008)

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JACK BODY: Kiwi master of Indonesian music

2008-11-12T11:14:00.001+07:00

Jack Body
Interpreting Indonesia’s sensuality through the Bard © Duncan Graham 2008

Living in one of the most isolated Western countries in the world requires adjustments and rituals. For Pakeha (white Kiwis) one essential has long been the big trip abroad known colloquially as OE, or overseas experience.

This journey, mainly to explore the northern hemisphere and seek the family’s roots, is an important part of the culture of New Zealand, a country still searching for its identity.

Young musicologist Jack Body was no exception. He’d already graduated with a masters degree from Auckland University and won a prestigious arts fellowship. In the late 1960s he headed for Europe where he studied in Cologne and at the Institute of Sonology at Utrecht.

Then he took the long way home wandering through Europe and South-East Asia with his mind and microphone open. The last stop was Indonesia.

“I was an innocent abroad and I knew next to nothing about the country,” he said. “I’d already been to India and was intrigued by the music I’d heard in the streets and villages.

“But Indonesia was quite different. By comparison I found India to be harsh. In Indonesia I started recording the sounds I heard, like other people take photographs of their travels.

“I followed my ears. I recorded birds, animals, street sounds, music. I was fascinated by the fantastic richness of the culture. I liked the way that people took things easily. They couldn’t be bothered to get hot and bothered.

“What attracted me most? The sensuality.”

Back in NZ Body transcribed some of the music he’d collected, a laborious task but one he thought necessary to understand what he’d heard. He also knew he needed more of the seductive archipelago.

In 1976 he scored a guest lectureship at the Akademi Musik Indonesia in Yogyakarta where he stayed for two years. On his return home he joined the academic staff of the School of Music at Wellington’s Victoria University where he’s now an associate professor.

He’s been a featured composer in the US and Holland, a widely exhibited photographer and he also runs a music publisher called Waiteata Music Press. His speciality has been cross-cultural compositions and experimental electro-acoustics.

In these jobs he’s set out to bring the music of Asia, and Indonesia in particular, to the attention of Kiwis and he’s done this with such success that he’s won a swag of awards, including a NZ Order of Merit in the 2001 Honors List. The following year his recordings titled Pulse won the NZ Music Award for the Best New Classical CD.

And all the time he’s been promoting Indonesian culture, along the way collecting a set of Javanese gamelan instruments for his university donated by Ibu Tien Soeharto, the wife of the late Indonesian president.

This year he’s been back to Indonesia twice, recording music played by the soldiers of the kraton (palace) in Yogyakarta. He said the music was an intriguing and ancient European-derived mix of fifes, drums and other instruments performed by men in quaint uniforms whose origins could well be the topic of a PhD.

Body’s work isn’t the only way Kiwis are learning more about Indonesia. He’s organized numerous residencies in Wellington for Indonesian artists and praised the Indonesian government for offering a range of cultural scholarships for structured three-month arts programs. These are expected to be enhanced later this year when an agreement between Indonesia and NZ is signed allowing young people from both countries to get work visas.

Now 64 Body shows no sign of going stale, repetitive or monotone. If he followed the Shakespeare formula he’d be ‘the lean and slippered pantaloon’ but he moves, physically and intellectually, as nimbly as his students.

He has the quirky mannerisms of a long-time creative artist living in a parallel universe where music rules. While he has to be involved in teaching and university administration his mind seems to be somewhere else, pulling sounds and ideas together for some future fusion.

His latest production (“exhilarating, the most ambitious I’ve ever done”), staged with help from the Indonesian Embassy in NZ and the Asia-NZ Foundation, was the Seven Ages of Man, a ‘cross-cultural, multi-media music theater’ piece based on Shakespeare’s famous lines in All’s Well That Ends Well:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

Body’s idea was to mix bits of the Bard in English with music from the Javanese gamelan and a Balinese gamelan, plus an electric violin, four vocalists singing in Javanese and Balinese, and have the lot interpreted in dance and puppetry.

Translation of the Shakespeare was not without difficulties. The verse about the soldier ‘full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,’ caused problems.

“In Shakespeare’s time most of the military were mercenaries, but in Indonesia being a soldier is an elitist occupation,” said Body. “We had to make some adjustments in the language.

”Many people in the English-speaking world have been taught the Seven Ages of Man and I found Indonesians related well to the sentiments.”

The composers included the Javanese gamelan director Budi Putra (originally from Solo but now a NZ resident) and the Balinese gamelan director I Wayan Gde Yudane. Most of the gamelan players were university students and staff, including Jack Body.

In the wrong hands this could have become a real dog’s breakfast, but in fact it worked brilliantly on every level – emotional, imaginative and creative.

There were several reasons; the inclusion of the masked multi-talented Balinese dalang (puppet master) I Nyoman Sukerta as a musician, singer, dancer and actor, was a masterstroke.

So was a lighting system that included a haze machine, recreating in the Wellington timber studio the misty, musty, dusty, mysterious, spooky, smoky and almost tangible atmosphere found in villages and kampongs of Indonesia come nightfall. The only thing absent was the scent of clove cigarettes, for NZ takes its anti-smoking laws seriously.

“The reception has been great,” said the exuberant ethnomusicologist. “I love this synthesis – I’ve long wanted to use dance and now I’ve got the theater bug. We’re hoping to take the production on tour around NZ, maybe even to Indonesia. That would be terrific.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 11 November 2008)

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KALIANDRA TREKKING

2008-10-19T11:36:00.002+07:00

The march of the eco-tourists draws closer © Duncan Graham 2008

Are they flashpackers or backpackers plus? They’re the same creature, but the second term is the polite one you use when you meet these knowledge-hungry 60 somethings out to exercise their minds and bodies around the world.

Having done the Australasian wilderness they’ll soon be heading for the mountains of East Java if Janet Cochrane and her Indonesian colleagues have their way.

British academic Dr Cochrane has done the hard yards in the tourism industry. Before teaching at Leeds University she used to lead and organize tours, including outbound events.

She’s also been a frequent visitor to Indonesia, so her surprise at the lack of development in hiking, eco-tourism and cultural tourism carries some clout.

“Trekking tours are extremely popular in other parts of the world,” she said. “It’s amazing that nothing has yet been successfully developed in Indonesia, other than hikes of a day or more up and down mountains which can be extremely challenging.” (See sidebar)

This dearth is now being tackled in central East Java where a group of young Indonesians backed by a conservation center and some of Dr Cochrane’s students, are developing a one-week trekking tour with the pedestrian title ‘A Walk Around Arjuna’.

Arjuna, 3,339 meters, squats between Surabaya and Malang. It last erupted in 1952. Its neighbor is Mount Welirang, just 183 meters lower and a well-known sulfur mine for those brave or driven enough to enter the smoking crater. There’s a 1,000-meter deep valley between the two peaks.

“We want to create an experience where visitors can get involved in local culture and traditional arts,” said Agus Wiyono, executive director of the Kaliandra Sejati Foundation that runs an education and training center. “We’d like them to understand and maybe experience the cycles of rural life, including the harvesting of rice.

“To do this successfully we need to be supported by the local communities, so we are taking things slowly and smoothly. We are calling this our pride campaign and want it to encourage conservation of the environment. We don’t want them to feel threatened.”

Or exploited. The days when tourism was considered benign and a plus for the locals have long gone. The Bali experience, where farmers’ land has been lost to hotels and the post-construction jobs they anticipated have been given to outsiders, is a classic example of the downside of tourism.

Dr Cochrane said the negative impacts include arousing the desire for material goods, particularly the shiny buzzy things that tourists carry. However mobile phone coverage in the Arjuna area is like the landscape - full of holes. So the pleasure of arousing envy by browsing e-mails from Exeter while standing on the crumbling cusp of a smoking caldera will be limited.

Then there’s the danger of infection by the glazed-eye monotone ‘have a good day’ virus that infects city supermarket checkout chicks. If this sickness gets into the Arjuna villagers it would be a tragedy because the locals are genuinely friendly, even though their interrogation of visitors’ age, faith and fertility can get a bit wearing.

Agus and his Kaliandra colleagues, Sapto Siswoyo and Agus Sugianto have been organizing village meetings to help people understand what might happen when the trekking program gets underway in a big way. So far there have been nine sessions involving farmers and householders.

Agus Wiyono said the locals are enthusiastic because they have the chance of adding to the income they currently raise from farming and forestry. They’ll get the opportunity to build and maintain tracks, erect signs, act as tour guides and provide handicrafts, food and accommodation.

The other issue concerning the organizers is whether they should try to limit visitors. If the trekking tours get too popular cashed-up developers from outside might muscle in to build flash resorts and destroy the things that attract genuine eco-tourists.

Although the trekkers are likely to be hardy Europeans and Australians enjoying an active retirement on handsome pensions, they’ll still want their little comforts. They may be prepared to forgo hot showers and sit-down toilets, but they will insist on cleanliness, and their desire for contact with nature will vanish if the little black things on the bedroom floor turn out to be rat droppings.

So the Kaliandra crew are busy explaining about foreigners’ needs and funny customs, like wanting to take part in some of the most boringly repetitious jobs in agriculture – threshing rice by hand and pushing buffaloes to plough paddy.

As a tourist lure Arjuna and its neighboring mountains have so many add-on attractions that even the most wilderness-worn will find something new. It’s not just the views that make high-definition TV look like black-and-white transmissions. The area is rich in culture and history, mystery and magic. For in these lush and fecund mountains the major religions haven’t had the missionising successes they’ve enjoyed in the coastal cities.

Many ancient traditions and ceremonies have survived, particularly those involving planting and harvesting of crops. The locals will share these with outsiders provided they’re not trying to shut down these practices.

Then there’s the chance to spot a rare Javan hawk-eagle, or the grizzled langur. Both are heading down the one-way track made by hundreds of other Indonesian birds and beasts as forests are felled.

“There’s a huge variety of things to see, from ancient temples and pristine montane forests to nightclubs, from hot-springs and waterfalls, to tea plantations and rice fields,” said Dr Cochrane. The area is also cool – Kaliandra is 850 meters up Arjuna. It’s not quite outside mosquito range but they’re not the saber-toothed brutes found on the steaming floodplains far below.

Although it will be another year before the long tour is ready for its first corrugated-sole footfall, shorter one-day tramps around Kaliandra are almost open for business. Check www.kaliandrasejati.org for details and prices.

Kicking-off the trekking trend

Kaliandra isn’t the first to highlight nature tourism based on tramping. In West Java an NGO called the Forum for Information on Nature Tourism has published detailed maps and high-quality booklets promoting trekking around Mount Gede and Mount Pangrango.

This is a big project covering 140 kilometers of walks that takes up to two weeks to complete, though it can be handled piecemeal.

The mountains lie inside a block marked at its corners by Bogor, Cianjur and Sukabumi. UNESCO calls this the Cibodas Biosphere Reserve, ‘an example of an ecosystem in the humid tropics undergoing strong human pressure.’

City-based Indonesians and expats fed up with negotiating Jakarta’s concrete canyons started circumambulating the mountains late last century. They formed a walking club loosely based around the University of Indonesia’s Geography Department and eventually found the time and funds to publish.

Bogor-based Alex Korns, who led the project, has pointed out that unlike the US and many European countries, hikers are ‘free to walk almost anywhere he or she fancies, along paths that wind between farmers’ tiny garden plots.’

It’s the same situation in East Java where the folk who live in the hills seem unworried about pink-skinned men and women in khaki shorts wandering past their smallholdings. The TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED signs that disfigure much of outback Australia are largely absent in Indonesia where ironically it’s the entrances to the national parks that are policed.

Check www.puncaktrek.com for more information.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 17 )ctober 08)

CHARLES PILLIET

2008-10-11T22:27:00.002+07:00

The curious yarn of a Kiwi in Java © Duncan Graham 2008

Hanging on the wall of a cramped kampong house in Singosari, East Java is a set of grainy soft-focus photos of the family’s ancestors. Sunshine, termites, damp and age haven’t treated them well, and the pictures started with a disadvantage.

In the early days of photography the rules were rigid; you had to dress formal and look severe. Today it’s difficult to sense the soul behind the monochrome stare, humanity in the flat featureless features.

And so it is here with the portraits of a gaunt, long faced foreigner in a bow tie flanked by Javanese teenagers, or with his housekeeper, equally stern. They seem to say; ‘We don’t trust this newfangled technology’.

The man wearing the ‘butterfly’, as they say in Singosari, was Charles Mainwaring Pilliet, a New Zealander who fled a disciplinarian father in his homeland to become an adventurer in South East Asia. He eventually died in 1959 in East Java aged 90, nursed by Mutmainah one of his adopted nieces.

Now 68 she recalled the day of his passing vividly: “As we took the body out of the house a powerful wind sprang up,” she said. “Windows banged open or slammed shut. The trees shook and bent their branches. We knew he was a paranormal.

“He was fanatical about the number seven. We had seven windows in the house and seven trees in the garden. He gave me seven bracelets.”

Who was this strange septenary Kiwi who apparently supported the Indonesian revolution and loathed the Dutch? What was he doing squatting in an Indonesian village and dying poor after being cheated of his wealth by the Madurese wife of a Scottish banker who got Pilliet to sign over his estate to her husband?

At the end of his life the old Kiwi was reduced to boiling buffalo bones to extract fat for sale as a rheumatism cure and getting the kids to hawk this door-to-door.

Now his great, great nephew Michael Pringle is trying to put together the missing threads in the tapestry of his colourful relative’s life. Pringle came to Indonesia 11 years ago to research the story and will return in January to see if he can sew a more complete narrative.

Unfortunately the old man’s books seem to have vanished. Mutmainah said he kept thousands in cupboards and wardrobes, but only the furniture remains.

Pilliet was born in 1869 in NZ’s South Island into a family with legal, journalistic and political connections, and ancestors from France. His mother died when he was three. It seems he didn’t get on with his stepmother and was raised by his grandfather.

Pilliet worked as a merchant seaman, then a miner before leaving for what was then the Dutch East Indies.

“His experiences on the west coast of Sumatra were extraordinary,” said Michael Pringle who is writing a biography of Charles’ father Walter. “Charles hunted tigers and elephants up remote rivers and undertook extremely dangerous exploratory forays into regions which had never previously seen a white man.

“ He suffered numerous bouts of malarial sickness and was probably lucky to have survived. In 1899 he was exploring the northern coast of the Celebes (now Sulawesi) sleeping in the open to avoid leprosy and other diseases that were rife in the villages.”

In Sulawesi Pilliet apparently fathered a daughter with a local woman, though the child later died. He set up house in Kupang, owned a lugger and traded in pearls in Western Australia and Singapore, amassing considerable wealth. He became the British consul in Dili where he worked as a spy monitoring German activities in the area.

He seems to have been fascinated by Eastern religions and philosophies. He read widely and in 1923 moved to Lawang, about 15 kilometers north of Malang where he built a house and had coffee plantations.

“He had a Javanese housekeeper who moved her two young nieces in with her for company,” said Pringle. “Charles became very fond of these children and almost adopted them as his own, picking them up from school and treating them with great affection. He was well regarded by the people of Lawang and taught the local children English in his house.”

Stories vary about his time during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia. One version has him being transported to the Changi prisoner-of-war camp in Singapore, though Mutmainah is adamant that didn’t happen.

She said he was arrested by the Japanese and released later when they discovered he wasn’t Dutch. This seems unlikely because New Zealand, along with Australia, was fighting with the Allies and Pilliet would have been considered an enemy alien.

However Mutmainah said that after the war he did stay for a year or more in Singapore where he had a Jewish friend. This may have been during the four-year war for Indonesian independence.

When Pilliet returned to Java he was a poor man though he got some support from his family in NZ.

Why didn’t he go back to his homeland? Mutmainah said this was because of his antagonism towards his father, but Walter had died in 1885 aged 45 from typhoid when young Charles was still a teenager. If this was the reason the hostility must have run deep.

What attracted Pilliet to East Java? Mutmainah said he spoke Indonesian, but not Javanese. He doesn’t seem to have gone native and continued to read newspapers from Singapore, drink whisky, make his own wine and dress as a European.

Pringle is particularly keen to trace his great, great uncle’s books. These were probably in English because the old man refused to use the Dutch language. They may well have been sold to libraries and were probably about philosophy.

If you have any clues or anecdotes, please contact Michael Pringle at tixall@xtra.co.nz
#
(First published in The Jakarta Post Saturday 11 October)
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SINETRON AND SHAKESPEARE

2008-09-08T14:46:00.001+07:00

Where there’s a Will, there’s a sinetron Duncan Graham

If you consider sinetrons (soap operas) much ado about nothing, the most base Indonesian art form loitering at the depths where tectonic plates jostle for space, then this BTW is about to change your mind.

Lend me your tears, for I come not to bury sinetrons, but to praise them.

My extensive research shows that sinetrons have style and substance. They embrace the wit and wisdom of our times, expose emotions, drive visions, reveal truths. Watch closely and you’ll notice they’re really high culture, up there with Shakespeare.

The prolific penman from Stratford-on-Avon had a way (or as he was wont to say at home, Hathaway) with plots. And so does Raam Punjabi, the producer from Jakarta-on-Ciliwung and boss of PT Multivision Plus, custodian of this republic’s rich tele-literature and clearly a Shakespearean scholar of note. Mainly large currencies,

Take the use of soliloquies. The Bard employed this technique to avoid scene building and shifting and it’s an equally handy cost saver for a budget shoot. The tousle-haired lad who ponders on the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as the Prince of Demak, astonished at the arrival of Islam in his hometown, has other things on his mind. He’s just learned that his family is more dysfunctional than the House of Windsor. Better to muse aloud than employ set designers.

Black magic practitioners are the unstable staple of a good sinetron. On the small screen they’re usually men with bad teeth and rank hair and a fondness for goat-skull arrangements. But just like the three hags from the highlands they make vile brews, rabbit on over their steaming road-kill menu and unleash fearsome threats we know will come to pass, like night the day.

Scenes in cemeteries are a dead giveaway of the plagiarism, with a grove of frangipani sheltering the mist-shrouded tombstones the tropic equivalent of a blasted heath. Bringing on the banshees is a masterful piece of theater equally effective on SCTV as it was in the Globe where the God-fearing Elizabethans were as partial to a haunting as any modern Javanese.

Treason, treachery and trauma – but what about love? Muhammad Montague and Sri Capulet are faithful remakes of the timeless theme. In Indonesia these involve teenage trysts set in the local high school, a furnace of raw emotions where trigonometry means plotting a three-way affair.

Mr Punjabi knows well that though the path of true love never did run smooth it does lead to his bank.

Who hasn’t thrilled at the sequence where the red-lipped, rouge-cheeked nymph in her seam-straining white shirt and black skirtlet flits and flirts from class to class on level two?

Missed it? No worries, you can catch it tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

Meanwhile her beau with a showroom-fresh Mercedes CLK 350 coupe parked among the clapped-out Yamahas gets a glimpse of her long black locks as she steals a glance over the wall of cancerous concrete.

Don’t tell me this clip doesn’t have a direct lineage to Mr WS’s static balcony scene.

The world’s finest wordsmith was flexible enough to add bawdiness to his plots, a bit of light relief for the folk in the pits. Sinetrons follow suit with comedies of errors, using dishevelled security guards as the knockabout buffoons, indifferent to the needs of the anti-hero desperately seeking to break into his mother-in-law’s house and drip caustic soda into her happy soda.

Not that she doesn’t deserve the crimson phial treatment. These brutal, scheming maid-monstering matrons are determined to thwart young love. They make the mad Scotswoman’s ambitions for her weak-kneed soldier hubby a toddler’s bedtime story.

But all’s well that ends well. The villains in the best sinetrons realise that using shabu-shabu as an elixir isn’t so smart (a message that’s lost on some actors if the gossip tabloids are right). Overnight their tattoos vanish and they awake from their midsummer night’s dream with neat haircuts and no interest in a cold Bintang or a winning hand at cards. So they return to mum, the mosque and the patient virgin in the headscarf.

So don’t knock Indonesia’s sinetrons. There’s method in their madness. Remember – the play’s the thing.

(First published in the Sunday Post 7 september 08)

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DIN SYAMSUDDIN ON PLURALISM, FATWAS AND THE PRESIDENCY

2008-09-04T12:45:00.004+07:00

Confessions of a most misunderstood man

Other faiths and Westerners have nothing to fear from Indonesia, despite a fatwa (binding ruling) against pluralism by religious scholars. Nor should outsiders be concerned about nationalism, according to Professor Din Syamsuddin, head of the Muhammadiyah Islamic organization that claims 30 million members.

On a visit to Malang in central East Java the US trained scholar with a doctorate in political science spoke to Duncan Graham. This is an edited version of the interview on the eve of the possible presidential candidate’s 50th birthday.

The West tends to label you a moderate. Is that accurate and what does it mean?

I don’t come with labels. I don’t know whether I am a moderate or not – that’s for others to decide. I have a principle of taking the median position between left and right in terms of balance.

There’s a lot of misunderstanding – all Muslim organizations suffer from attribution, generalization and stigmatisation.

However I have been strongly against the war on terror. I was misquoted as saying President George W Bush was a drunken horse. I used the metaphor of the kuda lumping (the Javanese hobby-horse trance dance). That was changed in translation and my statement misunderstood.

Now many in the US and the West are supporting my position.

You say you support pluralism, but the MUI (Majelis Ulama Indonesia - the Council of Religious Scholars), where you’ve long held senior positions, has issued a fatwa against pluralism.

I’m still in the MUI, though not active – I have too many other duties. I wasn’t involved in the fatwa. Most of the members of the MUI committee that pronounced the fatwa were members of NU (Nahdlatul Ulama - a second Islamic organization that claims 40 million members.)

(Syamsuddin was raised in a prominent NU family but moved to Muhammadiyah as a student. He said this was “a rational choice based on my understanding of Islam – I was drawn to Muhammadiyah by the combination of ideas and action with our schools, hospitals and other institutions – what some have called ‘Protestant Islam’.”)

So is the fatwa wrong?

The title of the fatwa is wrong. The context and the title are different. The position has been distorted. The truth of religion is in relativism. It was a mistake of the committee in using the term pluralism and not relativism.

What do you mean by relativism?

This is a semantic problem. The Holy Koran has many verses about religious pluralism. It has also been a mistake made by outsiders to exaggerate by saying the fatwa is against pluralism. I am active in many national and international inter-faith groups and promoting dialogue.

At the top level there seems to be no problem. After every inter-faith conference we see media photos of happy leaders from different religions embracing and passing resolutions of tolerance. Meanwhile in some kampongs and villages people of different faiths keep fighting.

There has to be a new paradigm on inter-faith dialogue. We have to include the excluded. We should focus on the state of being, not believing. We should all be in one big tent. The only exceptions are those who encourage violence. The government must deal with them.

But how do you include extremists of any faith who refuse to even discuss other people’s positions?

This is the dilemma. Everything is in a state of change and we must involve the non-religious sectors of society in these problem-solving discussions. Let me make it very clear: I am totally against terrorism and I took an active and very tough stand against the tragic events (the World Trade Center attacks) in the US. I did not escape my responsibilities, like some others.

The West often finds the apparent inferiority complex of some Muslims in Indonesia puzzling. You are the overwhelming majority. Why should you fear other beliefs?

Islam was put in a corner by the Soeharto government. After reform started (in 1998) Islam in Indonesia faced multi-level problems and new challenges. We have been like the Indonesian proverb about a man who falls from a ladder, gets hurt, causes breakages and is then blamed by the ladder’s owner.

I agree there is a need for reform in Islam, but I do not support the Liberal Islamic movement. They confuse liberal with liberated.

We don’t want our society to be divided. I tell Muslims not to feel inferior, not to loose hope and blame others. The Arabs took Islam into the golden age. I see Muslims in South-East Asia leading the way into a new age of tolerance and understanding. Of course there’s a place for other faiths.

The next time we meet will you by a candidate for the vice presidency?

Why the number two position? Nothing is definite yet, but I think I’m able. I’m the president of a great and complex organization that is almost like a state. Many have asked me – probably yes, maybe no. I must be whole hearted.

If you did get the top job what changes would you make?

I’d like to see Indonesia as the world’s third largest democracy enforcing freedom …

Enforcing?

No, that’s too strong a word. Promoting freedom and the people’s social, political and economic rights, and having religious freedom. We need overseas investment from those who accept our sovereign position.

Sounds like nationalism …

I only want what is the most favourable and best possible position for all Indonesians.

I’ve met Kevin Rudd (Australian Prime Minister) and he is a very good man. I like him a lot. We must be good friends with Australia and work together. We are not a threat to each other. Australia needs to become more Asian.

I didn’t get enough time with him. I want to go to Australia soon and propose Australia working with Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan to counterbalance the growing power of China and India.

My obsession if for a peaceful and prosperous world. I want to see a mature, modern and moderate Indonesia facing the world with self-confidence. But at times I feel that I have been a most misunderstood person.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 1 September 2008)

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BUYERS CUT BACK ON INDONESIAN TIMBER FURNITURE

2008-08-17T17:03:00.005+07:00

Killing the Kwila Trade Down Under © 2008 Duncan Graham

Conservationists are claiming an early victory in the preservation of Indonesian native forests, not by taking action in the lush forests of Papua and Kalimantan, but by protesting on the hard streets of Western cities.

Kwila, also known as merbau and ipil, is an Indonesian hardwood much loved in Australia and New Zealand for its durability, color and price. It’s particularly popular in outdoor furniture, a much sought after consumer item in the two countries that love open-air recreation and barbecues.

Though not at present as winter winds cut across Australasia; entertainment is around log fires in well-sealed houses, leaving the rain-lashed backyards empty.

But once the sun reappears come Spring the buyers will be back, though many will not be able to buy their favorite furniture once present stocks are cleared.

“We’ve been trying to persuade New Zealanders not to buy furniture made from Indonesian timbers that have been illegally harvested,” said Dr Russel Norman, co-leader of the NZ Green Party and a member of Parliament.

“ We’ve been lobbying the shops not to buy kwila furniture for the next season. Of course some don’t care but we are on the cusp of getting there in terms of making people aware of the issues.

“The illegal destruction of forests in Indonesia is a major concern because it’s contributing to global warming. The timber is being cut in Indonesia then exported to Vietnam and China where it’s made into furniture for export.”

Kwila grows to 50 metres and was once common in South East Asia. Traditionally its bark was used a medicine.

According to the Greens about 80 per cent of the illegally sourced wood sold in NZ is kwila. The NZ government reckons this trade is costing the NZ forestry industry $NZ 266 million (Rp 1.9 billion) in lost revenue because buyers are not selecting goods made using local timbers.

The trade to Australia is even bigger. Kwila resists termites, a huge problem in that country, making the timber even more desirable.

Although Indonesia bans the export of kwila that hasn’t been verified as sustainable and legally obtained, conservationists allege the timber is being sent to China using forged documents. Some is made into furniture and sold to Australia and NZ - a lot has reportedly been used in Beijing Olympic Games venues.

Dr Norman was an invited speaker at an event organized by the Indonesian Embassy in the NZ capital Wellington to promote TV programs on preserving orang-utans in Kalimantan where illegal felling is contributing to destruction of the animals’ environment. The films, made by Natural History NZ, are being shown internationally on the Discovery channel. Dr Norman urged Indonesia to pay farmers in Kalimantan and Papua not to fell native timbers.

“Indonesians want to develop economically,” he told the audience. “We’ve chopped down our native forests and it’s not fair to ask Indonesians to do the same without compensation.” NZ banned the felling of native timbers in 2000.

Kwila exports aren’t the only concern of NZ conservationists. In 1999 NZ imported about 400 tonnes of palm kernels for cattle feed; that figure has now jumped to more than 400,000 tonnes as rising milk prices have created a huge demand for dairy products leading to rapid growth in dairy farms.

Large areas of land in Indonesia are being clear felled and turned into palm plantations, mainly for the oil that is now being used to make bio-diesel fuel. The kernels are a by-product.

The campaign to stop Kiwis buying furniture made from Indonesian hardwoods, and spearheaded by the Indonesian Human Rights Committee in NZ seems to having an impact. Harvey Norman stores, a major retail outlet in Australia and NZ and the target of protests in Auckland, has written to the campaigners saying it has stopped buying kwila products and will stop selling goods it has by 31 March next year.

Committee spokesperson Maire Leadbeater said the campaign was starting to change the public perception of kwila.

“I do believe that collectively we have made a difference,” she said. “The NZ government’s recent statements on this issue confirm the close link between illegally logged wood and kwila but unfortunately they are not willing to regulate to stop the imports – yet.

“However retailers are quite sensitive to consumer reaction and many have said they won’t stock kwila next summer.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 12 August 08)
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DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT

2008-08-05T03:38:00.003+07:00

Disaster management – making the mess less © Duncan Graham 2008

How do two nations celebrate 50 years of diplomatic relations? To play it safe stage a traditional cultural event with a lushness of finger-flicking maidens swirling batik and rolling their enticing eyes.

Thirty minutes of gamelan gonging and it’s all over for another half century.

That’s not the way it will be next month (Aug) when Indonesia and New Zealand recognise five decades of a mostly harmonious and relatively stable marriage. Instead a clutch of Kiwis will fly to Jakarta, Aceh and Yogyakarta to share skills on disaster risk management at a conference that’s expected to attract up to 200 participants and impact on nearby nations.

This isn’t a topic for fatalists who believe there’s nothing that mortals can do when the wrath of a vengeful Deity is unleashed, punishing the faithless and tormenting the transgressors with tsunami, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Those who take a more scientific view argue that many things can be done to prepare, though not always to prevent, natural disasters. Their key word is ‘mitigation’, not earthquake-proofing.

“ We’ve got some real skills here in NZ, developed over the years,” said civil engineer Dr David Hopkins, co-leader of the 21-strong Kiwi contingent.

“We have a different attitude - we work with people; we enjoy rolling up our sleeves. Let’s see if we can make a real difference here, not trying to do everything but working in specific areas of expertise because we’re a small country with limited resources.”

Decoded this means NZ can’t compete against big-donor nations like Japan and the US so has to deliver quality, not quantity.

Hopkins, a specialist in earthquake risk management, looks differently at disaster photos, like those from China’s Wenchuan earthquake in May. While most of us gape at the damage he seeks out the constructions that have survived. Then he wonders why.

In most cases the upright buildings have been robustly built using top materials and following best practices. These included steel reinforcement of concrete, cross bracing walls and no heavy loads at high levels. Critical is the use of materials that can flex not fracture, sway not crumple.

Inevitably the cost is initially higher, which is why some are built to lower standards and building inspectors are bribed to ignore non-compliance with regulations.

This isn’t rocket science; Hopkins knows that Indonesian authorities are just as well read on the building codes that have been developed in NZ, Japan, California and other unsteady locations. The problem is getting the rules implemented. To make his point he employs the image of a skyhook using a chain to hold a huge weight above the people.

“Each link is critical,” he said. “We’re very good at strengthening the strong links but not so good at looking at the weak.”

The idea of discussing disaster risk management to celebrate the 50 years of diplomatic relations came from Amris Hassan the Indonesian ambassador to NZ who lives in Wellington, one of the world’s most shaky capitals.

Three faults run north and south through the harbor and city of about 500,000 people. Wellington is also the center of government and the parliament so if disaster strikes the nation’s leaders would be among the victims. Managing the risks is treated seriously and the city has become a center of excellence in earthquake research.

An audit of public and private buildings recently found hundreds needed strengthening and the work is underway. A technique called ‘base isolation’ using rubber and lead blocks between the foundations and beams of old buildings was pioneered in NZ.

Few Kiwis can be unaware that their land is dangerous. The government has a Minister of civil defence and emergency management who will be at the conference.

As former NZ prime minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer said: “It does us a power of good to remind ourselves that we live on two volcanic rocks where two tectonic plates meet, in a somewhat lonely stretch of windswept ocean just above the Roaring Forties. If you want drama - you've come to the right place.”

The last major earthquake in Wellington was in 1855, but there have been several recent disasters nearby. Gisborne on the east coast of the North Island was hit on 20 December 2007 causing considerable damage. NZ gets about 14,000 quakes a year; like Indonesia it’s part of the Pacific Rim of Fire.

Hopkins worked for almost a year in Turkey looking at apartment blocks. He expected fatalism but was “mind-bogglingly overwhelmed” by the positive response to ideas of mitigating the impact of natuiral disasters.

His message to public officials, builders and developers is to ask: “Do you have a defensible position?”

“This means asking if you’ve identified the hazards and potential damage,” he said. “You must have taken all reasonable steps prior to the event to reduce its impact under the four Rs of emergency management – Reduction, Readiness, Response and Recovery.

“You won’t be doing enough to be in a defensible position until you examine these issues seriously and develop a sensible action plan that balances the risks, funding constraints and community expectations.”

Geomorphologist (landforms scientist) Dr Noel Trustrum, the other co-leader of the conference, spent time in Aceh after the 2004 tsunami identifying projects where NZ know-how could be of use. He focussed on the Sumatran highlands where heavy clearing had threatened water supplies.

“We want to marry NZ expertise with Indonesian experience,” he said. “NZ is best at doing what’s absolutely necessary, not looking for Rolls Royce solutions. For example twisting reinforcing iron a different way can be significant.

“The Bureau of Rehabilitation and Reconstruction (BRR) hands over to local and regional governments after April next year and there is still a lot of unspent money.

(The Indonesian government created the BRR to coordinate reconstruction after the tsunami. Dr William Sabandar, the BRR regional director for Nias, was educated in NZ.)

“We want to maintain relationships with Indonesia and together look beyond to helping in South-East Asia and the Pacific.”

(The conference opened at the Hotel Borobudur in Jakarta on 5 August.)

(First published in the Jakarta Post Tuesday 29 July 08)

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AFI SHAMARA: ARISAN PRODUCER TURNS WELLYWOOD PAINTER

2008-06-28T02:11:00.006+07:00

Afi Shamara
Arisan producer turns Wellywood painter © Duncan Graham 2008

Don’t judge a book by its cover, nor a spouse by their partner’s position – a proverb particularly relevant to Afi Shamara.

She’s a woman driven by her creativity fuelled by reading everything and anything, from the late and once banned author Pramoedya Ananta Toer to contemporary writer and poet Remy Silado – and turning her ideas into action.

“I was so excited to read their books, they made me feel as though I was in another time and space,” said the wife of Amris Hassan the Indonesian ambassador to New Zealand. “My imagination was stimulated.”

Particularly by Silado’s Ca Bau Kan (the Courtesan) which Afi pushed on her filmmaker friend Nia Dinata who was equally captivated. At first they thought about making a 24-episode TV series but soon realised the big screen would be more appropriate.

They bought the film rights and set about raising funds and employing directors and artists for their company Kalyana Shira Films. No so simple.

Women filmmakers in Indonesia are still pioneers in an industry dominated by men who weren’t going to give immediate votes of confidence to tyros in tights.

Like most Indonesian films that don’t fall into the genres of gothic horror or teenage trysts, Ca Bau Kan didn’t please the popcorn-crowd. But it did push the boundaries, positively featuring the Chinese in the context of the Japanese occupation and subsequent revolution.

“I loved it but felt it should have run for three hours,” said Afi. “We had to cut it to two hours to meet the demands of the cinema operators and the result was, well, an impasse. It was short (on financial returns) a little bit.”

Though not enough to dissuade her from further film production. Kalyana Shira released Biola Tak Berdawi (the Stringless Violin) in 2004, again to audience indifference and much criticism of the acting.

This situation changed in 2005 when the women, undeterred by failure and male mockery, produced Arisan, a story based on Afi’s experiences with the Jakarta status-conscious, brand-crazy social set, worked into a screenplay by Joko Anwar.

Even after censor’s cuts the metrosexual comedy was a success de scandale largely because it showed gays behaving like anyone else and in one brief scene, stealing a kiss. The controversy did the box office no harm and an estimated 100,000 people bought tickets hoping to be shocked.

By Western standards Arisan was ho-hum, leaving audiences used to sex and nudity nonplussed. But in Indonesia this was groundbreaking stuff with critics enthusiastically predicting a new era in filmmaking and social acceptance. That hasn’t happened.

“Making films in Indonesia isn’t easy,” said Afi in her home perched above Wellington city at the southern tip of NZ’s North Island. “Raising the money and finding sponsors is difficult, particularly for the films that I want to make.

“I’m interested in educating the audience through documentaries, drama and humor. I want to produce beauty, show slices of life.

“Of course there must be a good story line. Indonesia is rich in many different cultures. There is so much material. Few people know about our extraordinary history.

“The other problems are post-production facilities. We’ve had to use facilities in Thailand and Australia to ensure our films look professional. Distribution difficulties are a handicap. Although we have the Jakarta Film Festival there are no art-house cinemas as in Wellington.”

The capital of NZ is also known as Wellywood because of its top-quality film production facilities. These have been led by local director Peter Jackson whose fantasy epic Lord of the Rings trilogy made the city’s creative artists and NZ’s knock-out landscapes world famous.

Although she’s been approached by a Kiwi cinematographer to get involved with a new script, Afi, 42, knows well how film production can be physically, emotionally and financially draining. “After Arisan I just wanted to retire,’ she said – an improbable ambition for a woman with abundant energy and hunger to learn.

Being a producer also meant absence from her husband and four children for weeks, and spending limitless hours lobbying for funds, negotiating complex deals and placating temperamental artists in the hothouse of egos.

As an ambassador’s wife she does her diplomatic duties at the multiple functions that demand her presence, promoting her homeland and culture with an eye to boosting trade.

This she does with a disarming down-to-earth style, popular in a country that loves informality, and where feisty, multi-talented women with ideas and opinions are respected. Her ‘can do’ approach is at the heart of Kiwi values.

The daughter of the late Faisal Abda’oe, former president of the oil giant Pertamina, Afi spent four years in the US where she studied graphic arts. Back in Jakarta she opened the Sunshine pre-school with five friends. Enrolments raced from seven to 200; she pulled out when success meant expansion into primary education.

“I needed to stimulate my artistic side,” she said. “I have always loved reading and I wanted to express myself.” Producing films provided some satisfaction, but Afi has moved on and is now studying art and attending formal classes.

Although her home offers stereoscopic views of Wellington’s rugged harbor Afi is more interested in portraits, preferring to explore the character of her subjects in acrylic. She takes life classes, enjoys pop art, sees herself as an expressionist and is currently producing some imaginative and confrontational nudes.

“I’m the sort of person who loves to mingle and express myself. I have so many friends and family back in Jakarta, so thank goodness for Facebook (the Internet social network). But I love NZ and don’t mind the cold,” she said.

“There is so much to do and see. In Jakarta we’d be going to shopping malls, but here we can walk through the bush and along the shore, breathe in the fresh, clean air, just being a family.

“I walk down to the bookshops and browse and buy. I go to galleries and exhibitions and enjoy the museums.

“If my husband becomes president (he was a politician in the national parliament with Megawati Sukarnoputri’s PDI-P party before taking his present appointment in 2006) I’d be pushing for an art culture as in Singapore, museums for children and films for children.

“And I’d like a film censorship system like the one here in NZ where the censor doesn’t cut but rates the film according to the audience so children can’t see adult movies. We should be stimulating our brains, always trying to learn more, boosting our confidence.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 27 June 2008)

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FACING INDONESIA'S PROBLEMS CLEARLY

2008-06-11T05:16:00.003+07:00

Indonesia has changed in the past decade and so must our attitudes, according to Andrew MacIntyre from the ANU and Douglas Ramage from the Asia Foundation writing in The Age (27 May). Duncan Graham has a different take:
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Indonesia is changing – but MacIntyre and Ramage are jumping the gun by saying the country is a stable democracy.

Better to wait till after next year’s general election before commenting on the future of our over-populated and under-employed neighbor.

Apologists urge us to overlook the street protests, the outrageous statements by Muslim preachers and the government’s inability to cope with natural disasters as growing pains. If so they’ve been going on for far too long. Adolescence is overdue.

Jakarta’s chattering classes condemn President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for vacillating – a strange response for a former military man trained to be decisive. But they are not alone; disappointment with the man and his nation’s current experiment with democracy is widespread. It’s not all SBY’s fault. He heads a tiny party and has to juggle the labyrinthine politics of a parliament with a gaggle of opponents running multiple agendas.

Like Canadians he has to live alongside a giant and temper his policies accordingly. In this case it’s Golkar, the allegedly reformed political vehicle set up by the late dictator Suharto.

Vice president and millionaire businessman Jusuf Kalla chairs Golkar and is expected to be opposing his boss in next year’s election, handicapping decision making in the run up to voting.

Former president Megawati who heads the PDI-P party will probably try again for the top job. She’s been invisible since loosing power in 2004. Democracy requires a vibrant opposition offering credible comment and alternative policies, something Indonesia hasn’t experienced. There’s a dearth of bright young altruists seeking office so the same old names from the past get recycled.

In the vacuum rampant nationalism is breeding fast. No problem if it’s kept to culture but a real issue when opposing foreign investment and aid, demanding state controls, subsidies and other simplistic solutions to complex economic issues.

Xenophobia is on the rise and a challenge to Indonesia’s relations with the West. Religious intolerance is destroying places of worship and putting dissidents in jail. For most pluralism is a myth.

Australia has moved on since John Howard infuriated South-East Asia by being portrayed as the regional US deputy sheriff; Indonesia has not, and Kevin Rudd will have to work hard to change our image.

Indonesia has more than 40 million unemployed and under-employed, double the population of Australia. The middle-income class is growing, but not at the same rate as the poor. The gap between the haves and have-nots is obvious, ugly and an awful threat to internal stability.

The government continues to ignore its constitutional duty to spend 20 per cent of income on education. An estimated six million kids don’t go to school and 1.5 million teachers are said to be unqualified. Indonesian education is way behind other Asian countries and slipping fast.

Indonesia has not recovered from the Asian financial crisis of a decade ago. Her neighbors have bounced back. The US dollar continues to sit well above 9,000 rupiah and no improvement is in sight.

Short-term visitors think things are looking up because a few cranes have returned to city skylines. Most are building shopping malls, not improving the nation’s infrastructure. Badly run and poorly maintained transport systems along with an unreformed bureaucracy and a corroded legal system make doing business a continuous struggle. Claims for economic growth need to be considered sceptically: Indonesian statistics are notoriously elastic.

A mud volcano that started erupting in East Java two years ago has turned into a huge environmental and social disaster that has been handled appallingly by the central government.

Corruption has grown since Suharto fell, largely because decentralisation has opened further opportunities for graft conducted openly and brazenly. As the US-funded Freedom House report says: ‘… corrupt relationships between powerful private actors, government bureaucrats, politicians, and security officials infuse the political system and undermine it from within’.

There have been many changes, and some positive. The Indonesian press is the most vigorous in the region, though that doesn’t mean it’s professional, unbiased or widely read. There’s been a book-publishing explosion, but much is low-quality religious tracts and translated Japanese comics. Indonesian literature and film is still decades behind the rest of the world.

Australia has been doing well with training programs in education and administration. These need to be enlarged and expanded to have any impact.

Ensuring Indonesian language and culture are properly funded in our schools and universities is critical. Unless we understand our neighbors, their history and the problems they’re facing, misunderstandings are inevitable.

Australia’s military engagement with Indonesia should be viewed with caution. The Indonesian army has long been used as a political police force suppressing internal separatists; if stories from closed West Papua are true the force is being applied with brutality and demands exposure.

All this is not cause for despair; it should help prod Australia and Australians to work harder using fresh ways to improve relationships. That won’t happen if we think all is well and getting better.

Let’s retain the mystery and magic of Indonesia while deleting the suspicion and fear that affects so many Australians and aggravates relationships. But lets do this from a foundation underpinned by a clear understanding of present reality. The turmoil continues; this is a nation in transition.

(First published in OnLine Opinion 11 June 08)
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Bambang AW (See story below)

2008-06-04T11:50:00.000+07:00

BAMBANG ADRIAN WENZER

2008-06-04T11:34:00.002+07:00

AN ARTIST RELEASED (C) Duncan Graham 2008

One of the most overlooked of the Soeharto regime’s many transgressions was the suppression of artists.

I’m not referring here to the easy-come, easy-go pop singers and sinetron nonentities who have corrupted the word, but to intellectuals who have dedicated their lives to expressing their emotions and concerns through writing, music, film-making, sculpture and painting.

Most creative people aren’t motivated by greed; they have to put food on their family’s table but few are materialists. True artists are driven folk whose emotions are often in turmoil as they wrestle to express themselves, to produce works of perfection – yet knowing that state can never be achieved.

They feel deeply. They fight day and night with the demon demands they set for themselves. They strive to transform their spiritual concerns and observations into forms that we, the less-talented observers, may understand and appreciate. They show us windows into other worlds, but we have to open the glass.

In the dreary decades of the so-called New Order administration such people were viewed with suspicion because they’d been conscripted by their consciences, not by despots with corrupt agendas.

Independent thinkers are much feared by all authoritarian regimes, and with good reason; the army may have the guns and bayonets, but the artists have pens and paintbrushes, weapons that can pierce the soul.

We are lucky that Bambang Adrian Wenzer is still young enough to know that his best years still lie ahead and that he now lives in more tolerant times. Older artists haven’t been so fortunate; many were so crushed by censorship that their talents have been lost forever.

The gruesome state of the present Indonesian film industry is one legacy of Soeharto’s 32-year oppression of creative thinkers. The shallowness of much Indonesian literature as it flounders for identity after decades of fear is another example. Three generations of Indonesians have had their souls corroded because they were not exposed to the ideas of the nation’s best and brightest.

Bambang, and a small palette of fellow artists in Malang, have managed to sidestep those perils and are now enjoying an extraordinary freedom their brave predecessors could never have imagined.

Here’s a small, but significant, point. Bambang was born into a half Chinese, half Madurese family in the Java east coast town of Banyuwangi almost 50 years ago.

Being an artist with a Chinese background made him doubly suspect in the eyes of the authorities. Even when no criticism was intended, the New Order spies and censors were constantly alert, seeking symbols they could interpret as subversion.

So anything in Bambang’s art with a sniff of Sinology exposed him to risk. Now he can release that part of his once-imprisoned heart and let it roam free in his art, even sign his name using Chinese characters in red.

He can also relax in his large personal library amongst books on philosophy, politics, history and art where he draws much inspiration knowing that Intel (the sinister intelligence service) won’t be kicking in his door to check for forbidden words.

This means that after a long winter his art is now in early spring and budding brightly. He is moving into mixed media, trying new forms, experimenting without having to look over his shoulder or fear the denouncers. This is a time of dramatic social change with almost everything open to question, and Bambang is up there in front.

What he hasn’t lost is his spiritual search. He remains a Catholic but expresses his faith in the subtlest ways. On the sliding scale that has the religious kitsch of burning hearts and mournful heaven-turned eyes on one end, Bambang’s art is at the other pole.

He has also suffered a personal tragedy with the loss of his wife. It seems this has added sadness to his art, though it is never bleak or maudlin. Nor is it forced.

Because his work is so eclectic many will think it’s not Indonesian. I disagree. For too long Indonesian art has been defined by dancing Balinese maidens and landscapes of rice threshers, a school pioneered by the European artists of early last century and unashamedly plagiarised ever since.

In Yogya the tourist market has defined ‘traditional’ art and made an appalling fist of the job, with the magical and mysterious figures from the Mahabharata and Ramayana epics reduced to factory-produced cutouts with all the charisma of sliced bread.

Meanwhile the lovingly rough-hewn carvings, the fecund earth ochres and lush greens of ancient Java have been rejected as too primitive.

Bambang’s work draws on so many themes that it continually challenges. He has chosen to live in Malang, at the heart of the ancient Majapahit kingdom, an area saturated in magic, pre-Islamic carvings and holy sites, a landscape of legends, curious customs and darkest secrets.

Here he is creating new Indonesian art determined by committed Indonesians proud of their ancient heritage. He’s blending ideas of the distant past, pulsating present and an uncertain future laced with personal trauma. He’s not beholden to mindless nationalism, business, the State or outsiders.
Don’t assume his art is insular. His concerns for human rights and justice aren’t confined to Java. They are global, gleaned through his extensive reading - though concentrating on Asia.

For the viewer, instant interpretations have to be discarded as new ideas are revealed, many through just a ghost of a hint, a slim key to open the imagination. Surely this is a major definition of good art: it forces us as onlookers to seek and think and open our minds.

Much of his life is spent articulating the plight of the downtrodden and oppressed, though never in a ham-fisted way. His personal quest to help the poor of Porong left landless by the mud volcano that erupted in May 2006 and hasn’t stopped since, is proof of his commitment to justice and social change.

Bambang Adrian Wenzer is an artist of our time setting new agendas for Indonesian creativity, setting a new dawn for the archipelagic arts.

(Published as programme notes for the Yogyakarta exhibition Floating Souls, May 08)