Subject: Bush's Big Indonesian Photo-Op
CounterPunch & Paras Indonesia
November 27, 2006
Bush's Big Indonesian Photo-Op
Paving the Way for Further Militarization and Environmental Devastation
By BEN TERRALL and JOHN M. MILLER
On his return from last week's Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
summit in Vietnam, President Bush briefly touched down in Indonesia on
November 20. Protests against the visit were held across the archipelago,
demonstrating popular outrage against the Bush Administration's wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. backing for Israel's wars on Lebanon and
Palestine. But the Jakarta Post noted, "The Bush couple need not
worry [as] apart from the U.S. Secret Service, Indonesian Military
personnel - who were trained during the Suharto era to oppress not foreign
enemies but the Indonesian people - will also be deployed to guard Bogor."
The historic botanical gardens where Bush was scheduled to arrive to
meet Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Bogor, 40 kilometers
south of Jakarta, were dug up to build an enormous asphalt landing pad for
Bush's helicopter. In the end, Bush landed in a nearby Sports Center
instead of the formerly-pristine botanical gardens.
A group of fifty-three U.S. human rights, labor, religious and peace
groups sent a public letter to Bush in advance of the visit condemning the
failure to hold the Indonesian military (TNI) accountable for years of
serious human rights abuses. The groups wrote, "restrictions on U.S.
assistance to the Indonesian military are essential to promote concrete,
demonstrable progress in the areas of military reform, accountability, and
respect for human rights in Indonesia and Timor-Leste [East Timor]."
They urged Bush "to maintain the best leverage the U.S. has -
withholding prestigious U.S. military assistance, including foreign
military financing and training such as IMET and JCET - to demonstrate
that the U.S. government's commitment to these issues goes deeper than
words to actual action."
The primary focus of discussions between the two Presidents was
economic development and facilitation of trade deals, but Condoleeza Rice
did tell Indonesian television that the meeting would give Bush a chance
to discuss U.S.-Indonesian military ties. Bush administration support for
the TNI is now a given. Normalization of military relations accelerated
when the final legislated restrictions on weapons sales were waived a year
ago. Thus there was little need to make additional assistance in this area
a major item on last week's agenda.
Press statements from Bush and Yudhoyono after the meeting were, not
surprisingly, free of any reference to limits on military ties.
In March, 2005 testimony
before the U.S. Congress arguing against
re-establishing ties between Washington and the Indonesian military, Ed
McWilliams, who headed the political section of the U.S. Embassy in
Jakarta from 1996 to 1999, said: "the Indonesian military poses a
threat to the fledgling democratic experiment in Indonesia. It receives
over 70 percent of its budget from legal and illegal businesses and as a
result is not under direct budget control by the civilian president or the
parliament. Its vast wealth derives from numerous activities, including
many illegal ones that include extortion, prostitution rings, drug
running, illegal logging and other exploitation of Indonesia's great
natural resources, and as charged in a recent Voice of Australia broadcast
(August 2, 2004), human trafficking. With its great institutional wealth
it maintains a bureaucratic structure that functions as a shadow
government paralleling the civil administration structure from the central
level down to sub-district and even village level."
Since that testimony, existing limits on military assistance to
Jakarta, passed into law after the Indonesian military destruction of East
Timor in 1999, were lifted by the Bush Administration. Shortly after Bush
left Indonesian airspace this week, McWilliams told us, "Bush
Administration support for the TNI has expanded vastly beyond levels seen
at any time in the last 15 years. TNI impunity, corruption and violation
of human rights has continued and in some ways worsened. TNI involvement
in illegal logging continues unchecked in West Papua and elsewhere.
Efforts to hold TNI senior officials responsible for their orchestration
of the 1999 bloodbath in East Timor have ground to a halt. Similarly,
despite promises that justice would be done in the 2004 murder of leading
human rights advocate Munir, senior ex-military officials implicated in
the crime by evidence developed by a Presidential commission have not been
prosecuted. In West Papua intimidation of human rights advocates have
continued forcing some to flee abroad. Others face daily abuse in jail as
political prisoners."
McWilliams added, "It is a cruel irony that as the Bush
Administration chooses to ignore the absence of TNI reform in favor of
recruiting the TNI as an 'ally in the war on terror,' that ally continues
to be a key sponsor of terror groups in Indonesia, including Islamic
fundamentalist groups such as Laskar Jihad and the Front for the Defense
of Islam, among others."
In 1999, Australian Prime Minister John Howard described his government
as the U.S.'s ''deputy" in the Asia-Pacific region. The recently
signed "Framework for Security Co-operation" between Australia
and Indonesia strengthens relations between Canberra and Jakarta, and
strengthens Australia's role as a U.S. surrogate in the region.
Dr Clinton Fernandes, Senior Lecturer in Strategic Studies at the
University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy, argued in
the Australian press that the security deal will do nothing to support
democratic reform in Indonesia:
"The TNI is not a neutral instrument of the elected government but
a partisan force with its own agenda. Through its territorial command
structure, it is embedded at every level of Indonesian society, including
the bureaucracy, legislature, and economy[ ... ] Its officers engage in
commercial activities that increase their personal wealth, and they
influence the electoral process by supporting or opposing civilian
politicians[ ... ] The TNI as a whole has been fashioned for more than
half a century into a tool for suppressing popular social forces in
Indonesia. Kopassus is merely its most versatile and deployable formation
and therefore plays a leading role in any crackdown on pro-democracy
forces."
The pro-trade development model Bush and Indonesian President Yudhoyono
advocate offers as grim a picture for Indonesia's future as increasing the
power of the archipelago's military.
Indonesia specialist John Roosa, a historian at the University of
British Columbia, told us, statistics touting economic growth in Indonesia
are useless for judging quality of life issues. One big issue is the
disappearance of the rain forest. The government has been incapable of
stopping the burning of forests in Sumatra and Kalimantan--the smoke has
often blanketed Singapore and Malaysia during the dry seasons over the
last eight years and has created respiratory problems for millions of
people. Also, the fires have caused a major spike in the amount of
greenhouse gases and have ignited the ancient peat bogs that are now,
according to some scientists, releasing carbon every year equal to
one-seventh of the world's annual fossil fuel emissions. The forests in
those areas and in Sulawesi and Papua are being rapidly cut down,
especially now, with China's insatiable appetite for wood. The loss of the
Indonesian forest is one of the most important global issues today."
Roosa added, "The White House press office said the two presidents
'applauded the resumption of cooperation and capacity building activities
between the U.S. Forest Service and the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry'
and signed a memorandum of understanding on illegal logging, but I'd like
to see the actual agreement before getting my hopes up. The problem is not
just illegal logging, it is also legal logging -- the government has given
massive tracts of land out as concessions to loggers. Much of the illegal
logging is actually being done by the legal loggers; they move into the
forests adjacent to their concession areas. Environmental activists in
Indonesia tend to advocate a moratorium on all industrial-scale logging
precisely because the government has been unable to tell the difference
between the illegal and legal logging. One may also note that the burning
of the forests is usually done by legally recognized palm oil
plantations."
Earlier this month, the International NGO Forum on Indonesian
Development (INFID) targeted Washington-backed neoliberal policies when it
released a report highlighting increased poverty in the country. The INFID
study revealed that in 2006, the Indonesian government paid out about one
billion dollars more in debt installments, than it spent on health,
education and public services. The Jakarta Post quoted INFID spokesperson
Donatus Marut saying, "According to INFID calculations this year,
Indonesia needs Rp 200 trillion (US$22 billion) a year to halve extreme
poverty by 2015, as stated in the Millennium Development Goals ...
Neck-deep in debt, we will not be able achieve the Millennium Development
Goals on poverty alleviation by 2015, not even by 2020."
Just days after Bush's visit, the two concerns of rearming Indonesia
and increasing trade came together at the Indo Defence 2006 Expo and
Forum. U.S. weapons manufacturers took their place among regional and
European weapons brokers at the arms bazaar, which Indonesia's defense
minister Juwono Sudarsono called an important platform for Indonesia to
develop and build regional and international military ties." The
program for the event, which touts "A Holistic Approach to Regional
Security"[sic], promises "over 400 of the leading names in the
industry from 30 countries ... will be there for the biggest ever defence
industry showcase in Indonesia."
Ben Terrall is a San Francisco-based writer.
John M. Miller is the Brooklyn-based National Coordinator of the East Timor and Indonesia
Action Network.
http://www.counterpunch.org/terrall11272006.html
see also
Groups Urge Bush Not to Offer Military
Assistance to Indonesian President on Visit
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