Tag Archive for 'Indonesia'

Australia’s responsibility to asylum seekers

Published on 8 March 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

The following statement was released today by refugee activists from Australia, Canada and Indonesia:

“The Merak refugees and the Indonesian Solution, not people smuggling, should be at the top of the agenda for discussions between the Australian government and Indonesian  President Yudhoyono,” said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition.

“The Australian government is trying to implicate the Indonesian government in its violation of the Refugee Convention. That is not the action of a friend. The Indonesian solution is actually making things worse for refugees in Indonesia and actually forcing more people onto boats. Resettlement must be on the agenda.”

“Kevin Rudd uses people smuggling to criminalise the refugees themselves to justify detention in Australia and Indonesia. But the problem is not people smuggling. The problem is that there is secure future for refugees in Indonesia.

“Until the Australian government is willing to process and resettle refugees out of Indonesia, the boats will keep coming. Heavier penalties and stiffer sentences will not stop people fleeing persecution,” said Rintoul.

March 10, the day the Indonesian President addresses the Australian parliament will also mark the 150th day that the refugee boat has been stranded at Merak.

There is an urgent need for the Australian and Indonesian governments to resolve the situation at Merak. Kevin Rudd made the call to president Yudhoyono to stop the Jaya Lestari in October last year. One of the Tamil asylum seekers died on 23 December 2009 waiting for proper medical attention. Medical attention at the boat have improved in the last few days, but the asylum seekers are still refusing to leave the boat until there is a guarantee of resettlement.

“The asylum seekers on the boat are ultimately Australia’s responsibility. Until there is an enduring outcome for refugees in Australia, they will, sooner or later, make their way to Australia. Some people have already left the boat to do that,” said Ian Rintoul.

“The Australian and Indonesian governments must use President Yudhoyono’s state visit to put an end to the suffering and uncertainty of the refugees at Merak and the others in detention in Indonesia.

Refugee advocates in Australia, Canada and Indonesia have issued a joint statement (attached) calling for the Indonesian government to begin immigration verification and UNHCR processing and for the Australian government to commit to resettling those at Merak found to be refugees.

Life in Aceh in late 2009

Published on 25 December 2009 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I recently visited Indonesia’s Aceh province, a devoutly Muslim territory.

What is the situation five years after the devastating tsunami?

The ghosts of Gareth Evans

Published on 15 December 2009 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Murdoch columnist Piers Akerman can usually be relied upon to defend the most powerful in society and belittle the least able to respond. He’s a corporate commentator, after all.

But a piece this week, writing about Gareth Evans, the new chancellor of the Australian National University and former Australian attorney-general and foreign minister, surprisingly reminds readers of his bloody past over East Timor:

Students might also like to quiz Evans on the subject of Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor, which Labor in Opposition had strongly condemned “in the strongest terms” including calling for the suspension of all defence aid to Indonesia.

That position was dumped when Labor came to power, however, and sent a parliamentary delegation on a “fact-finding tour” of East Timor. During the tour, Fretilin representatives tried to make contact with delegates but were rebuffed.

They were later captured and killed by the Indonesian military. The report of the delegation concluded that the Indonesian government was acting in good faith.

Evans, as foreign minister, signed the Timor Gap Treaty with Indonesia’s foreign minister Ali Alatas in December 1989, ensuring that Australia and Indonesia would share East Timor’s oil, while the Indonesian army continued to occupy East Timor.

The following year he dismissed concerns about Indonesia’s invasion and occupation of East Timor, saying: “What I can say is simply that the world is a pretty unfair place, that it’s littered over the course of the decades and the centuries with examples of acquisitions by force which have proved to be, for whatever reason, irreversible.”

Nine months before the infamous 1991 Santa Cruz massacre, Evans had stated that East Timor’s “human rights situation has, in our judgment, greatly improved under the present military arrangements”.

When news of the massacre broke, it was, Evans said: “An aberration, not an act of state policy.”

The Indonesian government said the dead civilians had been responsible for provoking the military into firing on them.

The Jakarta Post: Changing people’s perceptions about Jews

Published on 27 November 2009 in General and Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

The following feature by Desy Nurhayati appears in yesterday’s Jakarta Post:

His recent visit to Aceh made Antony Loewenstein the first Jew that most people in the country’s devoutly Muslim province had ever met or engaged with.

Some Acehnese he met were surprised to learn that the Jewish-Australian journalist, author of the controversial and best-selling book My Israel Question, was a harsh critic of Israel’s policy on Palestine, and was in fact a supporter of the latter.

“Are there many of you?” asked a man from a group that had pledged to travel to Gaza to fight the Israeli army during its conflict with Hamas.

Another said, “We don’t hate Jews, but we oppose Israel’s occupation of Palestine.”

A Sydney-based writer and blogger, Loewenstein spent two weeks in Indonesia last month as a guest at the major literary event the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, in Bali, as well as visiting the ancient Buddhist monument of Borobudur (also part of the festival) and going to Aceh to take part in discussion forums.

On his speaking tours elsewhere, he says, the most common reactions he gets are: “You’re Jewish and you don’t like Israel? What do you mean? That’s impossible.”

And he guessed Indonesians would have a similar view.

“In a Muslim-majority country like Indonesia, it might come as a surprise to learn that Jews are critical of Israel,” Loewenstein tells The Jakarta Post.

“It’s a perception in the Arab world as well that all Jews support Israel.”

As he said at a recent event in Australia, “In Aceh, Jews are seen as little more than occupiers and brutes in Palestine. The concept of anti-Zionism never enters their thinking or media.”

He also expresses surprise that more and more Jews are now in opposition to Israel and in support of the Palestinian people, and that is something he is trying to tell the Muslim world about.

“I’m trying to challenge people’s perceptions that I’m Jewish, and I’m proud to be Jewish, but I’m pro-Palestine,” he says.

“Israel is still occupying Palestine, and it’s my moral responsibility to fight against it in my own ways.”

On a visit last July to the devastated Gaza Strip, he found the occupation had never been worse.

He met many of the 1.5 million Palestinians desperate for a normal life, something denied to them for decades due to Israel’s occupation and frequent bombings.

“The war continues, settlements expand, nothing’s changed. The change is only in Obama’s rhetoric. What he said is obviously different from Bush, but it doesn’t solve problems,” Loewenstein says.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama last month was premature, he adds.

“I think the award was more about what Obama is expected to do rather than what he has actually done,” he points out.

“Israel keeps arguing that it is a democratic state fighting terrorism for all of us. It becomes much easier to make that argument, but it is wrong.

“I think Israel’s behavior is outrageous, and it will not change unless the funding it receives from the United States is reduced.

“The Western powers, including the US, the UK and Australia, back Israel’s battle and share its belief that the destruction of the Islamist group benefits their interests.”

Israel should be treated like any other country calling itself a democracy, and not be excused especially given its bellicose tactics in the global arena, he goes on.

“In a Muslim-majority country like Indonesia, it might come as a surprise to learn that Jews are critical of Israel.”

“There are a growing number of Jewish groups joining this call. They are not afraid of being labeled anti-Semitic or self-hating, and simply believe in justice,” Loewenstein says.

He believes that in the Muslim world, there is a need for people to hear more about Jews taking a critical stance against Israel. He even speaks up against his own government for supporting Israel. He has also cofounded an initiative, Independent Australian Jewish Voices, which works with Palestinians on their shared concerns.

His time in Aceh was spent discussing a broad range of issues with journalists, local writers and high school students: the Middle East conflict – comparing his perspective as a Jew and that of the devout Muslim Acehnese, posttsunami development as well as freedom of expression.

Loewenstein also admits he was surprised to find four Jewish tombstones, with Hebrew epitaphs, near the Aceh tsunami memorial museum.

The four Jews, he recounts from what he was told, died in the 1800s and 1900s, and have since lain in peace in the heart of a devoutly Islamic society.

“A writer, Fozan Santa, told me that many Acehnese know about it, yet there was no hatred toward these monuments,” Loewenstein says.

“Generations of Acehnese protected them. Holland sends funds to maintain the cemetery.

“This was not something I expected in a province ruled under sharia law. Although Jews are almost solely defined through brutal Israeli actions, I found no outright hatred of Judaism.”

He also found that people there liked Obama’s rhetoric and his apparent change in US policy toward the Muslim world.

“But their patience has a limit. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Palestine continue and show no signs of closure,” he says.

Despite growing support for Palestinians, even among Jews, Loewenstein doubts the situation will change anytime soon.

“I’m not very optimistic because I don’t see much movement on the ground by the international community,” he says.

“There needs to be a drastic action, where civil society gets together in a targeted boycott campaign to convince Israel that it can’t behave this way.”

He adds public support for Palestine and dissatisfaction of the US continue to grow, “But how we take that opinion and translate it into political action, that’s the question.”

As a Muslim-majority country and emerging democracy, he says, Indonesia should take a stronger lead in this issue.

“I know Yudhoyono said Indonesia would be more involved in the process. I would like him and other leaders to put pressure on different parties to stop Israel’s unacceptable behavior,” he says.

Loewenstein also criticizes Obama, who pledged to create better relations with the Muslim world but continued to support Israel’s occupation of Palestine and did nothing to address this major grievance to Muslims.

The author of The Blogging Revolution also encouraged other writers the world over to be more provocative and less afraid to be critical of the issue.

Several days after Loewenstein left Aceh, an 18-year-old Acehnese girl – one of his translators during the public events – sent him a message, saying, “People here can love Jews now because of you.”

Bali has become home base for the Pan-Asia literati

Published on 25 November 2009 in General and Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I recently attended the wonderful Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali, Indonesia. Here’s a good news story about it, published in the South China Morning Post on 1 November:

With its old craft culture, mildly bohemian cafes and array of misty hilltop vistas, Ubud in Bali seems to have grown almost to fit its twin industries of art and tourism; travelers here have been feeling the pull of poetry, paint and drama for decades. But where this reputation had always been more of a well kept secret or a nice surprise, it is now official: bottled, capped and priced for the greater good each October, as the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. Now for four days every autumn the town’s venues – its museums, restaurants, bars and yoga studios – become host to professional wordsmiths and their fans as they grapple with literary themes over thick Bali-grown coffee. Sound good? Well it is, mostly.

As the brainchild of an Australian local business owner and her Indonesian husband, the festival was born to regenerate tourism after the bombings, and six years on is doing so, while becoming a who’s who of Asian (and Pacific) literati: this year saw Pakistani journalists and novelists Mohammed Hanif and Fatima Bhutto, India’s Vikas Swarup, who wrote Q&A (better known by its screen title, Slumdog Millionaire), and Singapore’s Shamini Flint, author of the irreverent Inspector Singh Investigates series, among nearly 100 other poets, journalists and literary critics from across the continent and beyond. It also bagged itself a Nobel Laureate; Nigerian novelist and playwright Wole Soyinka.

To a backdrop of free events – a couple of play readings, a poetry slam night and book launches – day pass holders were offered a tight schedule of writer’s panels, many of them lightly academic and vaguely instructional. In a seminar called ‘Make ‘em Laugh’, un-comically early on a Sunday morning, British-Kashmiri novelist Hari Kunzru observed that good humour writing follows the pace of a good joke; it’s all about a well drawn out punch line. Black Canadian writer Dany Laferriere, author of How To Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired (and whose twelfth novel gave rise to the 2005 movie, Heading South), explained the pitfalls of choosing a scandalous book title: very few talk about your content. Yet he is unrepentant and his latest book will be called I am a Japanese Writer, despite the best efforts of the Japanese consulate to make him change his mind (due to concerns, he says, that he’ll obliterate real Japanese writers on Google).

With writers like Bhutto and Soyinka in town, the content was also often political. Though most of the festival-goers were from Australia the panel perspectives were gratifyingly Asian, and African. US President Barack Obama received a drubbing in a panel called Writing in the New World; Obama and Dissent, with Bhutto (niece of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto) reminding writers of their responsibility to stay critical. She was joined by Antony Loewenstein, an Australian writer whose book My Israel Question robustly tells fellows Jews that ‘it’s time to stop living like its 1948’. Loewenstein also appeared on a panel on blogging, alongside Singaporean gay activist and writer Ng Yi-Sheng (lastboy.blogspot.com) and Aceh-based writer Doel CP Allisah (doelcpallisah.blogspot.com).

Soyinka, who spent nearly two years in solitary confinement for his activism and first wrote his poems there on toilet paper, spoke at length on the concept of forgiveness. As strident and satirical as his works tend to be, he noted that writing is about understanding the choices people make to survive, and that how, although atrocities are and will always be ‘part and parcel of our very existence’, literature can play a part in reconciliation.

Many of the writers present have explored critical Asian themes in their novels; Mohammed Hanif, a BBC reporter and one-time Pakistani air force recruit, has written the mostly comic A Case of Exploding Mangos about the life and times of Zia–ul-Haq, a dictator who put Pakistan on a massive ‘Islamisation’ drive that it struggles with today. Former lawyer Shamini Flint has had her Inspector Singh investigating a case of marital injustice in Malaysia, caught between its Shariah law and the penal code, and says that Singh will next be sent to Cambodia to uncover a mystery with a Khmer Rouge undertow. Vikas Swarup, who reportedly wrote Q&A in two months while his family were away for the summer (to many a fellow panelist’s annoyance) has followed it up with murder-mystery Six Suspects, another look at Indian caste and corruption.

However possibly the greatest value held by the festival was its introduction to visiting readers of good under-exposed Indonesian writing, and its political backdrop. A number of the panels were bi-lingual and the festival organizers worked closely with Indonesian critics and journalists to join emerging local writers with old hands, like firebrand Seno Gumira Ajidarma, known for his work on East Timor, and Cok Sawitri, an outspoken lesbian poet, novelist and playwright.

Many of them lamented the reluctance of Indonesians still, to look into the brutality of General Suharto’s three-decade New Order regime, in which books were burned, activists were ‘disappeared’ and secret agents mingled in the hallways of universities. They also complained about the lack of accurate records of the time. “It makes it very hard to get the feelings and experiences of ordinary people back then” said critic Nurhady Sirimok. “We writers have to really use our imagination to tell history from the bottom up.”
Most Indonesians at the festival said that they feel a little undernourished, but free to write. But others, who still vividly recall the brutality of ’98 and before, spoke of self censorship and of covert intimidation by state agents. As one academic pointed out, Bali newspapers were full that week of the murder of local journalist A.A. Narendra Prabangsa, who was abducted and killed this year while reporting on corruption connected to a regent.

Yet the festival prompted some liberal outpourings. Well-heeled literary lunchers at the Alila Ubud saw the rousing performance in Bahasa by Cok Sawitri of her short story Womb, which is about women sterilizing themselves as an act of political protest. At another such event author Laksmi Pamuntjak read from her upcoming novel The Blue Widow, which translates characters from Hindu myth into the New Order years – her warrior becomes a dissident medical student – and puts them on Buru island, a notorious tropical gulag for political prisoners.

This gulag is where one of Indonesia’s most celebrated dissident writers, the late Pramoedya Ananta Toer (who many believe was Asia’s best contender for a Nobel), wrote his epic ‘Buru quartet’ about the oppressive cocktail of Javanese feudalism, Dutch colonialism, militarism and communism that makes up Indonesia’s history. At a lunch Sirimok described the covert operation it once took just to get a ‘Pram’ novel, and of the bittersweet feeling he gets now seeing the books, on the shelves but passed over by young Indonesians who prefer modern tales of horror and romance.

As such, despite some glitches and the feeling of it having sprawled a little large for its organisers, Ubud’s lit fest injected as much vital discussion into the town as it did tourist dollars. “Indonesia is not used to a society full of critics,” Sirimok commented, “and when you don’t read critics what can you learn from? We need a culture of polyphonic voices.” This much has been ensured.

Right’s new radicals

Published on 22 November 2009 in General and Israel. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

My following book review appears today in Sydney’s Sun Herald newspaper:

Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party
Max Blumenthal
(Nation Books, $49.95)
Reviewed by Antony Loewenstein

Christian fundamentalists have taken over the Republican Party. “It’s become the party of birthers, deathers and Civil War re-enacters,” Max Blumenthal told the Los Angeles Times last month. Last year’s vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin – anti-abortion, pro-war, pro-torture, anti-Islam and evangelical – epitomised the new, radical America: parochial, intolerant yet homely. “She’s bright and a blank page,” said a former White House official working at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute. The world is aching to be ruled by Washington or at least controlled by it. This book explains the fears and power inherent in this ideology.

Blumenthal is known for making short films documenting the Christian Right and publishes regularly in The Huffington Post, The Nation and The Daily Beast. He’s an unconventional figure, largely allowing his subjects – gun nuts, anti-Semites and Barack Obama haters – to speak in their own words. George W. Bush and Karl Rove were just two of the most recent individuals to push this agenda on a national stage and gained considerable political power in the process. Fear is a rallying tool.

During last year’s Republican National Convention, the writer observes a hard truth about the party that nominated John McCain but almost forced him to select Palin to appease the radical base of the party: “Almost exclusively white, overwhelmingly evangelical, fixated on abortion, homosexuality and abstinence education; resentful and angry and unable to discuss how and why it has become this way.”

Fox News’s Glenn Beck today speaks for some of these people (despite his occasional criticism of the Republicans.) In mid-October, he again called for a return to a “simpler time” in America, a past that never existed except in the minds of those who conveniently ignore the fact that America was a society based on racial apartheid less than 50 years ago.

Blumenthal gives a potted history of the key cultural figures in the Christian Right – James Dobson founded Focus on the Family in the 1970s and shot to fame with a best-selling book that encouraged beating children into submission to restore respect for God – and explains how a “culture of personal crisis” thrives in its bowels. “This culture is the mortar that bonds leaders and followers together,” Blumenthal writes. A politician beat his wife, cheated on her or picked up a gigolo in a male toilet? Christian-oriented solutions can soothe the aches and pains of Middle America (and resurrect flailing careers).

Witness possible future Republican presidential nominee Newt Gingrich, who after failed marriages prostrated himself before Dobson in 2007 almost to ask for forgiveness and now enjoys considerable backing from the radical fringe. His conversion to Catholicism was a shameless attempt to use his own personal crisis to generate sympathy and power. Blumenthal’s book is littered with similar examples.

Perhaps the most striking element of this work is how prescient it has become (the book entered The New York Times bestseller list within weeks of its release). The bitter, sometimes racist campaign against Obama is symptomatic of the rot (though there are many reasons why one would oppose the Democratic Party, from the war in Afghanistan to its policy on the occupation of Palestine).

But appropriation of the most extreme segments of political thought now defines the Republicans. Take its moves last month to investigate America’s leading Muslim advocacy group for wanting to place Muslim interns as aides in congressional offices. Or a leader of the so-called Tea Party movement opposing Obama’s healthcare plan accusing the President of being an “Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief”.

The point isn’t that these views exist and always will; it’s that they are being amplified and supported by leading figures in America’s alternative ruling class. Blumenthal questions the moral code of a party that supports water-boarding but doesn’t tolerate a woman’s right to choose.

Republican Gomorrah is both new and old history, the trajectory of a vocal minority of Americans who both fear the world and want to control it.

It’s a sober warning that as most of the Western world moves towards a more tolerant, secular future, the United States may embrace a doctrine of radical exclusion.

The great pains of Aceh

Published on 31 October 2009 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

For some reason, there’s an avalanche of stories in the Western media about Aceh in Indonesia (all after my recent visit there.)

Here’s the latest, in the Los Angeles Times, about the significance of the two large ships that have become massive memorials to the horrific 2004 tsunami (one of my pictures is here):

They are the ships that fell from the sky; two immovable objects, their very presence defying reason.

Residents call them acts of God. Most cannot fathom that the two ocean vessels were transported miles inland by floodwaters of the 2004 tsunami that ravaged this small city on Sumatra’s northern tip.

Miles apart, both have been left intact as memorials to the 170,000 residents of Aceh province who either died or disappeared in the disaster.

Five years after the waters rose to biblical heights, the city continues to rebuild, constructing schools, clinics, roads and villages in coastal areas that had been wiped clean by the invading ocean.

“Acehnese people have moved on with their lives. Most of them have returned to their homes,” said Yusriadi, a tourism office spokesman who goes by one name. “Aceh is back to normal.”

Not for everyone. Some say Banda Aceh is forever changed, harboring a newfound respect for the natural forces that surround it. Dotting the city are boats of all shapes and sizes that rode the rush of water far from their ocean habitat.

None elicit more amazement than the two behemoths.

One is revered as “Noah’s Ark,” a 100-foot wooden boat that crashed on top of a house, providing a refuge for 59 terrified people who say they would have died without its shelter.

The other is stranger still — a colossal vessel weighing 2,600 tons that plopped down two miles inland, like Dorothy’s Kansas farmhouse crash-landing in Oz.

Aceh moves to the sharia beat

Published on 30 October 2009 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Having just visited Aceh in Indonesia, this New York Times feature about the place is timely:

Just before noon prayers one recent Friday — a mandatory session for men — the Shariah police’s all-female brigade hopped onto a Toyota pickup to begin patrols. Dressed in olive uniforms, the officers hewed to the city center, away from the areas worst hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. They urged stragglers to hurry to the nearest mosque and exhorted the recalcitrant to yield to God’s authority.

“Dear followers of Islam, people of Banda Aceh,” blared a loudspeaker on the Toyota, “our city has applied Shariah. It’s almost praying time. Close all shops, stop all business activities. No more buying and selling.”

Aceh has long been know as “Mecca’s veranda,” because Indonesians used to travel here to board ships bound for Islam’s holiest city on their hajj, or pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam. Aceh’s self-identity, if rooted in Islam, was always somewhat apart from the rest of Indonesia. Local forces fighting for autonomy, whether from Dutch colonizers or Suharto’s three-decade military rule, always demanded the freedom to carry out Shariah.

So as Aceh separatists and the central government forged a peace agreement in the last decade, Aceh won semiautonomy and the right to Shariah. The authorities began putting Shariah into practice in 2001, widening and reinforcing it every few years with legal revisions. The Shariah police, officially known as “wilayatul hisbah,” or the vice and virtue patrol, began operating in 2005 with 13 officers and now has 62, including 14 women.

How moderate is Islam in the world’s largest Muslim state?

Published on 28 October 2009 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , .

Islamism in Indonesia is something I examined during my recent visit there (my thoughts picked up by the Atlantic). It’s a small issue that shouldn’t be over-estimated but the reality exists:

The Jewish background of Aceh

Published on 26 October 2009 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

My following article is published in Crikey:

In the shadow of Aceh’s tsunami memorial museum sits a colonial, Dutch-era cemetery. Framed by overgrown grass and red flowers, graves lie disjoined, the result, I was told by writer Fozan Santa, of time and the tsunami’s raging water. At the back of the space, behind ornate statues to famed generals and soldiers, are four Jewish graves. Hebrew script and the Star of David run across the graves. These four Jews died in the 1800s and 1900s and remain in peace today in the heart of a devoutly Islamic society.

“Many Acehnese know about them,” Fozan said. “Holland sends funds to maintain the cemetery.”

It was not what I expected in a province ruled under sharia law. Although Jews are an abstraction and almost solely defined through brutal Israeli actions, I found no outright hatred of Judaism.

Fozan, with wavy shoulder-length hair, revealed that his definition of Islam was as contradictory and personal as could be. I asked whether he drank alcohol during a recent Ubud Writers and Readers Festival and he said he only asked for Coke. However, his friend, a Muslim from Jakarta, consumed wine and beer. “I’m Acehnese, not Muslim,” Fozan said. “I don’t drink alcohol but many Muslims do. We’re different.”

It was yet another sign that the Acehnese saw themselves as distinct from their Indonesian rulers. Jakarta may now control their lives but an independent streak still runs through the veins of the province.

Within minutes of arriving in Banda Aceh, my young hosts  — three girls in the final year of school, two of whom wore colourful headscarves  — were playfully asking me about girlfriends and life in the West. I was reticent to broach the subject of female circumcision but they were happy to take questions. One girl was mutilated at birth, “because it’s tradition and my mother said she had no choice”. She knew all about the reduced sexual feeling of the procedure but seemed resigned to the reality. They asked if I was circumcised.

That night I spent time at a cultural centre to watch rehearsals for a performance that will soon tour villages. It was aimed primarily at children as a way to teach Acehnese history before and after the 2004 tsunami. Resistance to the Dutch colonialists was a strong theme and the actors used bananas as ships as they stood inside a massively over-sized television set. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment was referenced (my host said that many locals knew the work.)

Although cinemas are banned, pirated DVDs were widely available, including the latest Hollywood blockbusters. Like I noticed in Iran, images of American women in various states of undress were ubiquitous on covers. The Desperate Housewives women seemed to be missing quite a few buttons on their blouses. Satellite television and the internet makes the imposition of strict bans on “unIslamic” entertainment futile. Most people I met were proud to call themselves Muslim but tapped into the connected world that included nudity, violence and sexual proclivities.

During a public forum on writing and culture at a Western-style café in Banda Aceh — featuring my talk about Palestine and two guitarists who played songs eerily reminiscent of Nirvana’s Something in the Way — a young blogger said it was inappropriate to look at female nudity and porn. “We must have a moral responsibility,” he said. But others, commenting on a young artist who had recently caused controversy by painting female nudes, argued it wasn’t the role of society to tell artists what to paint. “As long as you’re true to yourself,” a girl said. It was a civil discussion over various interpretations of Islam that fundamentalists deemed unnecessary, even blasphemous.

Challenging these allegedly acceptable forms of Islam is Violet Gray, a support group for homosexuals and transsexuals. Understanding HIV and sexual orientation is something the Indonesian web does brilliantly and allows Acehnese of a particular orientation to feel less alone. We see similar trends in countless other societies (such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and China) where persecuted minorities gather to share and grieve.

Writer, teacher and publisher Fozan acknowledged the major shifts in his society since 2004 but lamented the lack of readers for his work. “We have too many writers here,” he said. “Everybody is just changing Facebook status updates every few minutes. Aceh is like France years ago when people used to use coffee shops to write books.”

Indonesia moves a little towards America, for now

Published on 25 October 2009 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Following my recent visit to Aceh in Indonesia, this piece in today’s Washington Post is particularly interesting (though highlights the seeming inability of the American corporate media to see the world in anything other than what benefits the US):

In many ways, Indonesia — a nation of 240 million people scattered across 17,000 islands — is moving in America’s direction. It has flirted with Saudi-style dogmatism on its fringes. But while increasingly pious, it shows few signs of dumping what, since Islam arrived here in the 14th century, has generally been an eclectic and flexible brand of the faith.

Terrorism, which many Indonesians previously considered an American-made myth, now stirs general revulsion. When a key suspect in July suicide bombings in Jakarta was killed recently in a shootout with a U.S.-trained police unit, his native village, appalled by his violent activities, refused to take the body for burial.

A band of Islamic moral vigilantes this month forced a Japanese porn star to call off a trip to Jakarta. But the group no longer storms bars, nightclubs and hotels as it did regularly a few years ago, at the height of a U.S. drive to promote “moderate” Islam. Aceh, a particularly devout Indonesian region and a big recipient of U.S. aid after a 2004 tsunami, recently introduced a bylaw that mandates the stoning to death of adulterers, but few expect the penalty to be carried out. Aceh’s governor, who has an American adviser paid for by USAID, opposes stoning.

Public fury at the United States over the Iraq war has faded, a trend accelerated by the departure of President George W. Bush and the election of Obama. In 2003, the first year of the war, 15 percent of Indonesians surveyed by the Pew Research Center had a favorable view of the United States — compared with 75 percent before Bush took office. America’s favorability rating is now 63 percent.

I found very positive thoughts towards America and Barack Obama but rising impatience. Will he deliver? Is his rhetoric sustainable? What’s really happening in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Palestine?

I sensed that patience would not last forever and after all, those four conflicts are only getting worse. Besides, it’s the American military that is escalating tensions.

Life in Aceh, Indonesia

Published on 22 October 2009 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

My following article is published in the Huffington Post:

In a collection of just released work by Acehnese writer Azhari, Nutmeg Woman, we are brought into a world before the devastating 2004 tsunami that killed over 220,000 Indonesians. Civil war wracked the province. Indonesian occupation was brutal and fought against the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). Like the Papuans and East Timorese, the Acehnese wanted to be an independent nation.

Azhari — who wore a t-shirt with the word “iBoobs’ under the Apple logo when I saw him — often writes in riddles, demanding the reader understand the struggles of a people that no colonial power has ever controlled. Outsiders and eccentrics are treated with suspicion. Strong women counter the absence of men, many of whom have disappeared after generations of fighting. Jakarta still refuses to fully investigate this legacy.

During my recent visit to the area — as a guest of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival — I found unconventional attributes of an Islamic state and fierce resistance to orthodox interpretations of the Koran. Aceh is not Saudi Arabia, Iran or Gaza, all places I have witnessed creeping Islamization and brave men and women challenging its implementation.

Aceh remains a traumatized province despite a 2005 peace deal that ended the decades-old, violent conflict. Sharia law is now implemented with homosexuality and adultery punishable by stoning. Poverty is rife — the smell of rubbish is everywhere and dirty water runs across some streets — while women mostly wear headscarves and sit separately from men at public events.

There are no cinemas. Entertainment options are limited. Religion often fills the breach, but I met many young people who thrived on satellite television and the Internet. Facebook was a common thread, an obsession and window to the world. Everybody under the age of 30 asked if I had a Facebook account and if I’d accept their friend request.

Nindy Silvie, Raisa Kamila and Mifta Sugesty, three schoolgirls who were my translators, regularly watch The Simpsons, Family Guy, BBC and CNN. Nindy spoke with an American accent, had a South Park tune as her ring-tone, didn’t wear a veil and read Noam Chomsky, Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens. I couldn’t believe my ears. Here I was in Aceh, talking about the “fundamentalist atheism” of Hitchens and his hatred of religion. She thought he went too far, though she was hardly a devout Muslim.

Although Aceh is no longer under occupation, tourism is virtually non-existent. International NGOs invaded after the 2004 tsunami and huge re-development dots the landscape. A new airport, large German-backed hospital and tsunami museum are tangible signs of modernity.

It was surreal seeing Jewish gravestones, in Hebrew, in the Dutch-era cemetery in the shadow of the tsunami museum. Writer Fozan Santa, with black, greasy shoulder-length hair, told me that there was no hatred towards these monuments and generations of Acehnese had protected them. “People here don’t hate Jews”, he said, “they hate the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”

I met many young men under 20 who said they had wanted to fight against Israel during its bombardment of Gaza in December and January. “For our fellow Muslims”, one said. Many had never met a Jew before and were amazed that I expressed deep disquiet towards Israeli behaviour in Palestine.

Fozan showed me the bookshop he ran near the heart of Banda Aceh, the capital. Most books were in the local language, including titles about Marx, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the power of the Israel lobby in America.

Politics flowed through the veins of many activists, a leftist perspective on the world. During a public forum, I was asked what I thought about the “real terrorism…the issue of globalization and free trade. How do we overcome that?” I replied, slightly unsure what angle to take, that the post-1945 world order was in desperate need of reform and the Muslim world’s time would surely come. Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim country, is talking about assuming a more powerful position on the global stage, not least towards the Israel/Palestine conflict.

The election of US President Barack Obama was welcomed warmly across the province. People like his rhetoric and his apparent change in attitude towards the Muslim world, but their patience is limited. Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Palestine continue with no signs of closure. The relationship to American power is contradictory. Washington’s influence on their lives is minimal but its ability to bring peace doubtful. The idea of a benevolent America was appealing but images on satellite television from the Arab world dispelled those myths very quickly.

Acehnese identity is intimately related to Indonesia’s wish for integration and historical desires for independence. Many craved true freedom but realized it was impossible at the present time. The cataclysmic tsunami wiped out entire families and communities but brought a desperately needed resolution to civil strife.

History can have a cruel sense of humor.

Introducing…Miss Aceh

Published on 21 October 2009 in General and Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

My following article in New Matilda is about the Indonesian province of Aceh:

Despite recently implementing sharia law — including the stoning of adulterers and homosexuals — Aceh does not fit the stereotype of an Islamic state, finds Antony Loewenstein

Muslim extremists in Aceh were outraged when a young woman from the province, Qori Sandioriva, won the Miss Indonesia crown this month. The area has implemented sharia law and Teung-ku Faisal Ali, the secretary general of Aceh’s Ulama Association, told the BBC that Sandioriva, 18, must wear a veil to comply with local values. She has refused, expressing pride in her uncovered head. Sandioriva will be required to wear a swimsuit at the next, global level of the competition.

The Jakarta Post interviewed Banda Aceh housewife “Heny” who said that protests against the woman were inappropriate and “only diminish from the fighting spirit of Acehnese women to perform at the national as well as international level”.

Aceh occupies a unique position in the Indonesian archipelago. Until the 2004 tsunami — which killed over 200,000 Indonesians, many of them in Aceh — the province endured an insurgency for independence against Indonesian occupation. The tsunami changed everything. A peace treaty was signed in 2005 between Jakarta and the rebel Free Aceh Movement. Integration was the new message and true independence almost disappeared as a dream.

Throughout my recent speaking tour of Aceh — as guest of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival — I encountered a range of views about its position within Indonesia. During a meeting with journalists and editors at leading newspaper Harian Aceh, I heard that nobody wanted to return to the bad old days of night-time disappearances, extra-judicial torture and random brutality under occupation.

Despite this, however, most backed the independence claims of West Papua and East Timor and longed for a time when they would also be free. Consider the current situation as a holding pattern, I was informed, until an unpredictable event occurs. (Nobody expected the 2004 tsunami; the consequent political earthquake was entirely unforeseen.)

Launched in 2006, Harian Aceh represents the post-2004 media environment in Aceh. As one journalist said to me, “democracy is not healthy with only one paper”. “Alternative” news was sorely needed in the nascent democracy period. “We believe in balance, want to avoid racism and don’t want to inflame ethnic tensions in the archipelago,” I was told. The newspaper’s offices were bare, with cracks near the ceiling, and only a clock set to the wrong time on the wall. The surroundings were simple but the editors eloquently articulated their vision for a better Aceh.

The province is poor — walking the main markets I saw fruit and fish sellers in almost torn clothing and the smell of decomposing rubbish was ubiquitous — but there are many visible signs of the massive development that has taken place over the last few years.

Every new object or building can be easily dated pre- or post-2004. The modern, sparse airport with the mosque-like dome in the middle, the flash hotels to house the international NGO set (who are, increasingly, departing), the German built hospital and the tsunami memorial museum are all striking for their cleanliness. Many Acehnese worry that as memories of the horrors of the tsunami and its effects begin to fade, aid dollars and workers will depart. Eighteen-year-old student Nindy Silvie said her brother will soon lose his job because the five-year international development program which employs him is about to cease.

The Harian Aceh journalists told me that the Israel/Palestine conflict was a central element of their global coverage. A small number of Acehnese men pledged to travel to Gaza in January to fight against Israel during its conflict with Hamas. I met one of them, a mild-mannered 20-year-old man, who showed no hatred towards Israel and accepted, with some prodding, the historical calamity of the Jewish Holocaust. He seemed genuinely intrigued that Jews existed who opposed Israel’s behaviour. “Are there many of you?”, he asked. “We don’t hate Jews”, another said, “but we oppose Israel’s occupation.”

Muslim identity in Aceh is central to this ideology. Militant views exist and those who profess them also undoubtedly see themselves as leading the purity charge. The proposed upcoming visit of Japanese adult video star Maria “Miyabi” Ozawa to Indonesia to shoot a comedy caused some Muslim students in Java to protest and burn women’s underwear. Many women’s groups, on the other hand, backed the trip.

These tactics are loud and intimidating, but many in Aceh, the most devout Muslim province in the country, laughed at the Miyabi outrage. Writer and teacher Fozan Santa told me that it was absurd for a modern democracy to ban any person who hadn’t committed a crime. I was reminded of Gaza under Hamas and its growing Islamisation program, backed only by a minority and rejected by a tired majority.

The implementation of sharia law in Aceh was ad-hoc, at best. Fundamentalists have called for the toughest penalties for “deviants”, homosexuals, adulterers and criminals but there is fierce resistance.

I spent considerable time with three girls in their final year of high school — Nindy Silvie, Raisa Kamila and Mifta Sugesty — who were the main translators during my public events and media engagements. Two wore headscarves and the other chose not to. Raisa and Mifta said their families were fairly conservative and didn’t oppose the fact that there were no cinemas in Aceh — or many other entertainment options, for that matter. With me, they spoke frankly about a range of issues, from female circumcision — they opposed it, understanding the deleterious sexual effects of the act — to boyfriends, American popular culture and Edward Said. Their openness and knowledge forced me to reassess my views of young Muslim girls in a devout society.

Unlike Gaza, which remains occupied by Israel, Aceh has slowly opened up to the world with all its vices and benefits. I wasn’t expecting backward and parochial people, but it’s often easy to forget the revolutionary effect of the internet and satellite television. The girls said they often watched BBC News and CNN and loved al-Jazeera English. They were far more knowledgeable about the world than most school leavers I’ve met, including myself at their age.

I was the key speaker at a cultural event in the centre of Banda Aceh and these kinds of issues were thrashed out in front of 60 men and women, who voluntarily separated themselves along gender lines. After a passionate performance piece by a violinist who explained why young people should write — “most just watch TV, use perfume and drive” — we heard from an Acehnese blogger. He encouraged the attendees to blog because “there is no intervention from anybody and you own the media”. His main concerns were managing the copyright of his content and other bloggers stealing his work without attribution.

It was encouraging to hear that bloggers across Indonesia meet up regularly and conduct conversations the mainstream media will not touch. Aceh now has its own blogging service that assists people in launching their own websites. Nobody seemed to know the exact number of Acehnese bloggers but even conservative counts reach to the hundreds.

Aceh remains a traumatised society. Less than five years after the cataclysmic tsunami touched everybody in some profound way — I met countless people whose entire families were wiped out and others who told of running for their lives into the nearby mountains — the province remains unsure of its identity. Largely ignored by Indonesia’s burgeoning tourist industry and the world media, a sense of isolation envelops the mindset of many.

History is littered with examples of countries which experience the deepest periods of pain followed by an awakening. Aceh is both blessed and cursed — but most Acehnese I met seemed to believe that overall, the former is the more fitting description.

Jewish graves in Aceh, Indonesia

Published on 18 October 2009 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

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One of four Jewish graves (note the Hebrew) in a Dutch-era cemetery in Banda Aceh
17 October

Reflections in Aceh

Published on 18 October 2009 in General. 0 Comments Tags: .

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Two leading, Acehnese intellectuals and writers at a popular Banda Aceh cafe
17 October

A sunset in Aceh

Published on 16 October 2009 in General. 1 Comment Tags: .

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A face in Banda Aceh

Published on 15 October 2009 in General. 0 Comments Tags: .

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A fruit-seller at a market in Banda Aceh, Indonesia
15 October

Early days in Aceh

Published on 15 October 2009 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I’m in Aceh, Indonesia, a strongly Muslim area with strict views on gender, politics and religion (ie. here). I’ll be conducting a number of public events and media interviews during my time here, engaging with local Indonesians on issues related to sharia law, the Middle East conflict, gender and resistance to Islamisation. I’ve already been amazed with the number of young girls, in their final year at school, telling me how they love The Simpsons, believe Aceh should be independent (along with West Papua) and why they adore Palestine.

Much more in the coming days and weeks.

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A Buddhist beauty in Indonesia

Published on 13 October 2009 in General. 1 Comment Tags: .

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Near Borobudur, Indonesia
12 October

Spreading the word across Indonesia

Published on 12 October 2009 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Post the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, that finished last night in wonderful fashion, I’m now here for this tomorrow night:

“Global Voices in Borobudur” will bring ten writers from around the world and five Indonesian writers to the world’s largest Buddhist temple at Borobudur to present their work on October 13, 2009, as an extension of the 2009 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. The readings and spoken word performances will commence at Manohara at 6:00 p.m., on the Borobudur temple grounds. The presentation will be free of charge and open to the public.

The writers’ performance at Borobudur marks the first time that the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival’s organisers have expanded this international literary festival’s events beyond Bali. Borobudur lies near Yogyakarta in Central Java, the neighboring island west of Bali. The theme of the Festival is Suka Duka: Solidarity and Compassion.

“It is a big leap and really exciting to extend the Ubud Writers Festival from Bali to Borobudur in Java,” said Festival founder Janet DeNeefe. “Buddha’s spirit of compassion and his timeless teachings can help us to navigate the many global problems we face today. It is fitting that the festival, with its theme of ‘Compassion & Solidarity’ culminates at Borobudur.”

Writers presenting their works at Borobudur include the following:

Fatima Bhutto, a journalist and writer, is from Pakistan. Her father was Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed by police in 1996 in Karachi during the premiership of his sister, Benazir Bhutto. Fatima’s third book, a history of the Bhutto family, will be published in the UK by Jonathan Cape in 2010.

Michelle Cahill edited the transnational anthology Poetry Without Borders (Picaro, 2008). Her forthcoming collection Vishvarupa is themed around Hindu deities. Michelle has sojourned in monasteries and ashrams in Thailand, Laos, India, Nepal and Bali, to practice yoga and vipassana meditation.

Tom Cho

Based in Melbourne, Australia, Tom Cho is the author of the fiction collection Look Who’s Morphing, published by Giramondo in April this year.

In addition to writing fiction, Tom works as a freelance writer/editor. He has also worked in programming roles for various arts organisations in Australia, including Footscray Community Arts Centre, Melbourne Fringe and National Young Writers’ Festival.

Andrew McMillan
Andrew’s close contact with the people of East Arnhem Land has resulted in essential reading for those with an interest in Aboriginal history. His award winning book An Intruders Guide to East Arnhem Land tells of a moving and exciting story of warfare, loss, social and cultural struggle, and renewal.

Sophie Hackford is an academic, writer and consultant with a special interest in migration and diaspora. She now works at the innovative James Martin School of the 21st Century at the University of Oxford.

Angelo R. Lacuesta has won the Palanca, Philippine Graphic and NVM Gonzalez Awards for his short fiction. His first book Life Before X and Other Stories won the Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award and the National Book Award in 2000. His second collection White Elephants: stories won the National Book Award in 2005. He has recently published a third collection Flames and other stories and is at work on his first novel.

Sosiawan Leak was born in Solo in 1967. His published poetry includes Umpatan (1995), Cermin Buram (1996), and Dunia Bogambola (2007). He is also playwright, director and performer. In 2006 and 2008, together with two other poets – Martin Jankowski from Berlin and Dorothea Rosa Helriany from Magelang – he has toured Indonesia giving poetry readings.

Antony Loewenstein’s best-selling book on the Israel/Palestine conflict My Israel Question was short-listed for the 2007 NSW Premier’s Literary Award. His second book The Blogging Revolution on the Internet in repressive regimes, was released in 2008. He is the co-founder of advocacy group Independent Australian Jewish Voices and contributed to Amnesty International Australia’s 2008 campaign about Chinese Internet repression and the Beijing Olympic Games.

Gunawan Maryanto was born in Jogya in 1976. He is director and writer in Garasi Theater, Jogja. His books include Waktu Batu (a play story written with Andre Nur Latif and Ugoran Prasad, 2004), Bon Suwung (an anthology of short stories, 2005), Galigi (an anthology of short stories, 2007), Perasaan-perasaan yang Menyusun Sendiri Petualangannya (a poetry book, 2008) and Usaha Menjadi Sakti (an anthology of short stories, 2008). He won a “Sih” award in 2007 and a poetry award from Indonesia’s Education and Tourism Ministry in 2007.

Dyah Merta was born in Ponorogo, East Java, in 1978. Her writing has won the Short Story Contest (Jakarta, 2003 and Lampung 2004). She has published two books – Hetaira, an anthology of short stories, in 2005 and Peri Kecil di Sungai Nipah, a novel, in 2007.

Omar Musa was the 2008 Australian Poetry Slam champion, who has swum with piranhas and alligators in Bolivia and taught Aboriginal children in outback Australia. The 25-year-old Malaysian-Australian baritone has backpacked almost every continent and has a treasure-trove of stories to tell. Musa was a winner of the British Council’s Realise Your Dream award in 2007.

Ugoran Prasad was born in Tanjungkarang, Sumatra, in 1978. He is coordinator at Garasi Theater in Jogya and manager of programs for the Indonesian Performing Art Society. In 2008 he was a visiting scholar in the Performance Studies Department, Tisch School of The Arts, New York University.

Triyanto Triwikromo was born in Salatiga, Central Java, 1964. He is editor of Suara Merdeka daily and lecturer of Creative Writing at Universitas Diponegoro Semarang. His anthologies of short stories include Rezim Seks (1987), Ragaula (2002), Sayap Anjing (2003), Anak-anak Mengasah Pisau-Children Sharpening the Knives (bilingual, 2003), Malam Sepasang Lampion (2004) and Ular Di Mangkuk Nabi (2009).