One can understand Brendon Perrin’s feelings (May 30) about the unfortunate fate of Schapelle Corby, but the laws of most countries nowadays require serious punishment, even the death penalty, for the possession and trafficking of cannabis. In the case of Indonesia we should be grateful for the reduction of the term of imprisonment granted by the Indonesian President, and work from there. However, what is hard to understand is Brendon’s extrapolation that the 57 million of Indonesians that smoke legally, which is killing 200,000 of them each year, would be smoking cannabis. Presumably this is to suggest that cannabis smuggling and the smoking that would have been engendered by the mere 4.2 kg smuggled by Schapelle, is negligible by comparison and therefore should be viewed as a minor offence. His statement suggests that the Indonesian Government should have been lenient because it would not further damage the health of the Indonesians because they are already legally smoking and dying by the thousands; and if the Indonesian Government doesn’t get its act together (birth rates, literacy levels, government regulations, etc) more deaths will occur. If they had any sense they should take note of what he says. However, the phenomena are not connected. He might as well have said they should try to reduce road casualties instead of convicting Schapelle! Moreover, very few Indonesians actually use cannabis; it is largely tourists who are the smokers. Indonesians smoke tobacco.
But notwithstanding Brendon’s confused thinking on that matter, it is the opinions that he presents on other altercations that need serious correction. The inference seems to be that Indonesians are not very nice (immoral even) and cause the killing of people by what they do. He mentions the Communist purge of 1964/6, the Timor invasion and takeover from Portugal, the Timor Liberation by us, and the West Irian problems. I would like to comment on these:
The first two took place in the 1960s at a time when the Western nations, including Australia and New Zealand, were involved in Vietnam and were very nervous about Communists getting a foothold in South-east Asia. “All the way with LBJ”, was our motto at that time, and the fact that the independence activists against Portugal in East Timor wore Che Gevara berets, would seem to have been part of the logic.
So the truth is that we, the Western nations, were all complicit in supporting both the communist purge and the invasion of Timor by Indonesia. Both these activities were to a large extent financed by the Western nations; and as far as Timor was concerned, many inside observers from those times will tell you that Suharto was not very keen on the idea of invading Timor. He had enough to look after in Indonesia itself – and he knew that the Timorese are rabid Roman Catholics unlikely to become communists.
With regard to the ‘liberation’ of Timor from Indonesia (which we had agreed with in the first place), our enthusiasm for that had a lot to do with international political face keeping at the time – and other matters which are too complex to consider here. In Java and Sumatra that were the primary areas of ‘the purge’ most of the people are fairly serious Muslims with little interest in communism. Among the village people some even thought that the PKI (Parti Komunist Indonesia) stood for Parti Kristen Indonesia.
And the politics of West Irian is also complex, but to Brendon I would say that Indonesia inherited it legally from the Dutch. I have lived there and can assure him that if he goes there he will be able to see that the level of development and the involvement of the local people under Indonesia is sound, and far better than what occurred under the Dutch. It is peaceful and its development is also a far cry from the shenanigans going on in our own former close-by territory of PNG.
My feeling is that Brendon may be suffering from a serious case of racism, and would serve the cause of Schapelle Corby much better by refraining from writing nonsense about Indonesia.
Halimah Mohd-Arif
