While not wishing to engage in a ‘Fidlonian’ literary slinging match with Mr Halimah Mohd-Arif, I would like to respond to his criticisms and clarify my position on Schapelle Corby’s incarceration. I do believe her long sentence was grossly unfair and in fact trivial, when compared with the range of social, democratic, institutional challenges facing Indonesia. One of these challenges is the ever increasing consumption of cigarettes.
My point was, while most people in Indonesia would recognise the negative health impacts of ‘illegal drugs’ like cannabis, heroin or methamphetamine, few would be aware that the number one drug of addiction in the world is nicotine and it is ‘legal’. Most people understand that, when an individual overdoses on illegal drugs-narcotics, sudden dramatic death is a consequence from respiratory-cardiac arrest. But many Indonesians would not understand the insidious, progressive, degenerative impact of tobacco consumption over time. They do not know about Chronic Obstructive Airways Disease [ie, COAD] cerebro vascular accident or ‘stroke’, they are often not present when cardiac arrest or ‘heart attack’ occurs. They do not understand the medical term ‘co-morbidity’ in the disease process and consequently Indonesia is, within the next fifty years or so, going to be spending literally billions on a smoking tsunami, a consequence of the cigarette scourge. Corby’s actions were, in my opinion, proportionally, comparatively… trifling.
The second point I was trying to make was, over the decades, Indonesian society has had a tumultuous, often violent history. Whether we are discussing the ‘65-66 coup’, the long years of Acehnese resistance [ie, GAM] to Javanese governance, the invasion then later independence of East Timor or the current suppression of West Papuans, there seems to be a lot of killing going on. And, many of the individuals responsible for the killings, the direct gross abuse of human rights, are not brought to account for their actions, either domestically or internationally. Two examples are Muhammad Yunus Yosfiah and Eurico Guterres.
It is alleged that Yosfiah, a captain in the Indonesian military, was directly involved in the 1975 murder of five unarmed Australian journalists [ie, the ‘Balibo Five’] during the invasion of East Timor and Guterres is the ‘pony-tailed – strutting’ militia leader seen frequently on TV during the fight for East Timorese independence in 2000.
So, returning to Schapelle Corby once more, my thinking was…here is a kid sentenced to twenty years in a Balinese prison for trafficking cannabis, while one Indonesian soldier who murders five unarmed Australians is acclaimed as a national hero and continues a career in national politics, to this day. Equally Guterres, implicated in the 1999 Liquica Church massacre, was convicted, but has never spent time in prison. Now I recognise that one nation’s patriot is the invader’s insurgent or terrorist, but in general terms of international justice, international definitions of human rights..Indonesian justice delivered to Corby was harsh, comparative to Yosfiah and Guterres’s actions. It remains in my mind, unreasonable.
Halimah continues, assuring me that West Papuan ‘development under Indonesia…is sound…peaceful’ even. Halimah might have trouble explaining that position to the widow of Theys Eluay, or the families of Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage. Eluay was a prominent self determination activist, strangled by Indonesian intelligence officers [ie, Kopassus], then thrown down a gully in 2001. Karma and Pakage are two Papuan natives, who had the audacity in 2004 to raise the Morning Star flag, a symbol of autonomy and or resistance to progressive Javanese colonisation. Both men were sentenced to ten and fifteen years in prison respectively, one is still there.
It did occur to me that Halimah’s comments were laced with paternalism. In Indonesia this top down style of decision making is known as ‘bapakisme’ or father knows best. But in Australia we hopefully aspire to objectivity, transparency and or evidence, as we gather around the kitchen table to discuss matters of importance, gender per se… receives little weighting in most intellectual or abstract debate. The Indonesian President granting Schapelle clemency, is the epitome of father knows best. He is the living example of the Indonesian concept ‘dwifungsi’ or dual role, being both a retired military officer and now a political leader, so therefore unlikely to head hunt his own defenders [ie, Yosfiah and Guterres] of the motherland in the name of fair justice.
Finally, in response to Halimah’s comment that I may be ‘suffering from a serious case of racism’ just let me say that I have been intoxicated by the Indonesian archipelago and its inhabitants for many years now, having travelled up there approximately seven times since 1995. During the completion of a Bachelor of Asian Studies through the University of New England, majoring in bahasa Indonesia, I had the pleasure of personally hosting several Indonesian students studying agricultural science, later visiting their extended families in Lombok and Java. The political-geological volatility, the physical colour, the ethnic diversity, draws me to the islands year after year like a five-year-old to an Easter egg hunt…so ‘racist’, I don’t think so. The beauty of living in Australia is that we can express both sides of the story, without fear of retribution.
Brendon Perrin,
Armidale
