There is kind of a gap in the article that doesn’t address the reason WHY the NGO’s are silent. The reason is simply that the bigwig NGO heads in Laos don’t want to get kicked out of the country where they live like kings and queens on their NGO salaries in a dirt-poor country.
They are the only ones that can speak out without being arrested and ‘disappeared’ (they’ll just be expelled if anything) but they are all just cowards, greedy fat porkers that will willingly play the Groundhog Day game forever. That is, accomplish nothing and let’s do the same thing next year.
The NGO economy worldwide is probably worth billions. Its purpose is its own preservation.
The Malays of the Cocos Islands, it is true are not widely known, because they are not a frequent topic of ethnographic analysis. However, they were obviously not entirely unknown, as you point out in your piece, and
scholars of Malay Studies (one of whom writes fairly frequent with comments, on NM, related to the Malaysian Constitution) are well-familiar with the Cocos Malays. I have visited the Cocos Islands, and familiarised myself with the Malay and non-Malay population there. I would point out, there is also a good deal of rather inconspicuous analysis of the Malay population that the British brought to both South Africa and Sri Lanka, a large portion of which mixed with local indigenous people, long ago. Similarly, many of us forget the origins of the Malagasy people and the largely pure Javanese population in Suriname. The point is that Malays and Indonesian peoples were not solely restricted to the Archipelago and the Dutch East Indies, though the vast majority remained in their ancestral homelands. Australia has the distinction of having two Malay populations: Cocos Island
Malays and the ever-increasing Malay (and other Malaysian) population in Melbourne and Sydney. The Cocos Malay dialect has common roots with Bahasa Melayu, but is obviously not the exact same language. In fact, Cocos
Malays have true Malay names, which are non-Arabised, unlike most of the names of Malays in Malaysia (as well as the related Acehnese) which have been exposed to Arab and Indian Muslim influence for 400 years.
Vichai’s ‘half of the story’ packs more gut-truths about the Red/Black Shirts violence and the Thaksin/Yingluck corrosive corruptive divisive regime however.
I have said time again that the Kamnan’s antics are definitely illegal but their very massive and very determined six months anti-Thaksin protests were definitely very peaceful.
Roy Anderson prevaricates. “Murdering several red shirts Roy?”
Here’s betting the rule about passing with at least 50% of eligible voters will disappear for that referendum, only to return any time the people (via their elected politicians), want to change the ‘imposed’ constitution.
But the constitution of Malaysua which has defined the role of the rulers based on a modern democratic state has itself been trampled upon, meaning it has undergone changes, ie violated, to suit the ruling class.
Can one then believe that the Constitution, which originally was so carefully crafted to limit the power of the ruler may not again be violated.
Indonesian tends to forget easily!
Prabowo is the man whom responsible for kidnapping, rapes and death of thousands of people he should be rotted in jail not running for president! This is insane!
If all that a YAD-supported Adjunct Professorship at the Universitas Indonesia’s Faculty of Humanities (Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya/ FIB-UI) allows me to do is to supervise doctoral students in Modern History, then there is certainly no moral equivalent to the work which the respective associations with the Hun Sen Government in Cambodia and the Sasakawa (now Nippon) Foundation permitted myself in the 1989-2012 period when I worked with the Cambodia Trust to contribute to the rehabilitation of that country’s estimated 38,000 mine victims and 56,000 polio sufferers.
It is invidious to publicise what should remain an entirely private matter, but since this question has been asked, I will endeavour to answer it.
Before I left the late Cambodia Trust in July 2012, I carried out two detailed surveys of prosthetic-orthotic (P&O) needs in communities in the greater Jakarta area: the first in Tangerang, where I live, and the second in Cilandak in South Jakarta, where the Jakarta School of Prosthetics & Orthotics (JSPO) is based.
The first involved the 3,000+ community of former leprosy patients in the kelurahan (village community) of Karangsari close to the Sitanala Leprosy Hospital, the second largest such facility in the world after Arcot in India. During this survey I identified well over 100 residents in need of P&O devizes and rehabilitation (a number were double amputees). Some of these were give free P&O devizes while I was still with the Cambodia Trust, but others had not received such assistance by the time I left, and I continued to liaise with them through my contact in the Sitanala community, Mr Deden Sinuhaji. Since the P&O devizes were provided free, I supported the travel costs of those Karangsari residents who still wished to travel from Tangerang to attend the out-patient P&O clinic at the JSPO.
Over the past year, while I have been an Adjunct Professor, such travel cost support has been extended to include a number of children suffering from CP (Cerebral Palsy) in need of specially modified wheelchairs. These are again provided free of charge on a means assessed basis, but travel costs from my area (Banten and northern Bogor) to the west of Jakarta to the Jakarta School frequently often deter very low-income families from attending their out-patient clinic.
My second survey involved the 69,000-strong kecamatan (sub-district) community of Cilandak Barat immediately adjacent to the Jakarta School of P&O, where I identified some 126 residents in need of P&O services, the largest percentages being children (especially the under fives) with CP, and adult stroke victims. Almost none of those surveyed before my July 2012 departure from the Cambodia Trust had availed themselves of P&O services, so I entered into an agreement with the DARE Foundation (www.darefoundation.or.id), of which I am a patron, founded by three of our first-year JSPO graduates, to provide P&O devizes at their Lebak Bulus clinic free-of-charge for children and adults whose personal data had been registered in my survey.
Over the past year, I made available roughly ten percent (USD300) of my monthly salary to support this programme which has now completed the rehabilitation of nearly all the children from economically disadvantaged families surveyed, and made a start on the rehabilitation of adult stroke victims. In order to provide adequate services for these latter, I assisted the DARE Foundation last March in purchasing a vacuum bench (USD1,200), an essential item of equipment for the polypropylene draping process to ensure the production of sufficiently robust sockets for adult P&O devize users.
More recently (since April 2014), I have been involved in the DARE Foundation’s community outreach programme in Pandeglang (Banten) where the Foundation works with the local Ministry of Health rura clinics (Puskesmas) and a Banten NGO, Lazharfah, to address the social welfare and medical needs of rural communities in eleven remote villages. A particularly serious problem here is the very large number – perhaps as many as 100 a month – of snakebite victims, the Malayan pit-viper (Calleselasma Rhodostoma) being particularly prevalent in the areas where the DARE Foundation and Lazharfah work. Many snakebite victims do not survive because of the distance to the nearest hospital where appropriate polyvalent antivenin treatment can be obtained. Others have to self-amputate in order to sever limbs after necrosis (premature death of cells and living tissue) has set in around the snakebite area.
Given this very grievous situation, I consulted with an Oxford colleague, Professor David Warrell, to identify the safest antivenin treatment and put Lazharfah in touch with bona fide local suppliers here in Jakarta. A key challenge here is the establishment of an adequate 2-7 degree Celcius cold chain for the preservation of adequate stocks of antivenin in remote areas. Without this, the very expensive antivenin (IDR450,000 per vial) will not only be ineffective, but also fatal because in higher temperatures the antivenin will revert back to pit-viper poison. Once this issue has been resolved I have undertaken to provide the seed-money to launch a national appeal.
As my work with the DARE Foundation and its partners deepen, I am certain that many other opportunities will arise to address the needs of the estimated ten percent of the 250-million Indonesian population in need of rehabilitation services, and the further two percent who require P&O devizes.
There is also the very real impact of the work with the disabled community in South Jakarta on the local Puskesmas-based community health outreach workers whose capacity to detect early disability issues such as club-foot (talipes equinovarus) can lead to timely medical intervention such as the splinting of feet thus avoiding the need for expensive surgical procedures.
Such continued involvement in disability issues – specifically the follow-up to my two surveys in Sitanala/Karangsari and Cilandak Barat – was part of my contract of employment with YAD as an Adjunct Professor at UI.
Turning to the more conventional aspects of my work, I believe that the ability to remain active in the academic field in Indonesia has brought significant benefits. Besides my teaching at FIB-UI, where I have been involved in the supervision of some ten extremely able doctoral students, one of whom will this week make his promotion, I have also been able to prepare Indonesia’s application for the recognition of Prince Diponegoro’s autobiography – the Babad Diponegoro – to the UNESCO Memory of the World (MoW) International Committee, an application which was accepted at the second attempt (21 June 2013). This makes it the third such Indonesian text in this select category, the others being Empu Prapanca’s Nagarakrtagama (1365), which describes King Hayam Wuruk and Patih Gajahmada’s Majapahit in its fourteenth-century heyday, and the extensive South Sulawesi (Luwu) I la Galigo cycle of stories relating to the origins of the Bugis.
Following that success, I have been able to work with one of Indonesia’s leading actor-writer-dramatists, Mas Landung Simatupang, to present the Babad Diponegoro along with my Power of Prophecy biography of the prince in a series of dramatic readings in four historic venues (the old Residency House in Magelang where Diponegoro was captured (28 March 1830), Tegalrejo [Yogyakarta] where he grew up and spent his pre-war years (1793-1825), the Jakarta Stadhuis [city hall], where he awaited his exile passage to Manado (April 1830), and Fort Rotterdam, Makassar, where spent the majority of his exile years and died, 1833-55), which have revived the ancient Malay-Nusantara tradition of tuturan (textual narration).
This in turn has helped inspire the preparation of a major exhibit at the Indonesian National Gallery on 5 February to 8 March 2015 with the working title of ‘I, Diponegoro; The Fighting Prince in the Memory of the Nation, 1857-2015 (Aku Diponegoro; Sang Pangeran dalam Ingatan Bangsa)’, which is being sponsored by the Goethe Institut with a number of local partners, one of which is the YAD. Another linked initiative with would not have been possible without YAD support who put up half the publication costs (I covered the remainder) has been the publication of a succinct edition of my Power of Prophecy biography, which has been published jointly in English and Indonesian as Destiny; the Life of Prince Diponegoro of Yogyakarta, 1785-1855 (Oxford: Peter Lang) andTakdir; Riwayat Pangeran Diponegoro, 1785-1855 (Jakarta: BukuKompas).
Maybe these initiatives, which are aimed at addressing the very real challenges faced by those with disabilities in Indonesia, and raising the self-esteem and historical awareness of the wider general public here in Indonesia, are not to be compared with the Cambodia Trust’s previous work in Cambodia and its current programmes in South and Southeast Asia (Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines and Burma). Maybe too, our December 1989 decision to work with the Hun Sen government and accept funding from the Sasakawa (Nippon) Foundation, are in a different category to my current Universitas Indonesia contract which YAD has facilitated. If so, I am prepared to accept that. It was my decision and mine alone. If Indonesia was a ‘normal’ country, an invitation to work at a leading government university would have been facilitated financially by that institution and the need to find ‘patrons’ in the private sector would have been unnecessary. That is why in a previous post I referred to the situation as being more akin to Hogarth’s London and Medici Florence than a developed world environment. But that is the difficult reality we live with here.
Peter Carey is Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College, Oxford, and YAD Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Indonesia, Jakarta.
[…] The Chiangrai Times reports that the military “has threatened to arrest and deport all illegal foreign workers, as border officials reported an exodus of Cambodian migrants following last month’s military takeover.” Again, PPT can’t help but wonder if the particular attention being given to Cambodians doesn’t reflect just jingoism but also the influence of the conspiratorial extremists in the anti-democratic movement who repeatedly shouted about armed Cambodians supporting red shirts. All of this was nonsense, but was taken up by some of the crazier military anti-democrats. There were other balmy claims of Cambodians joining protests, not unlike reprehensible claims made by a royalist Australian academic. […]
[…] The Chiangrai Times reports that the military “has threatened to arrest and deport all illegal foreign workers, as border officials reported an exodus of Cambodian migrants following last month’s military takeover.” Again, PPT can’t help but wonder if the particular attention being given to Cambodians doesn’t reflect just jingoism but also the influence of the conspiratorial extremists in the anti-democratic movement who repeatedly shouted about armed Cambodians supporting red shirts. All of this was nonsense, but was taken up by some of the crazier military anti-democrats. There were other balmy claims of Cambodians joining protests, not unlike reprehensible claims made by a royalist Australian academic. […]
Now that the military has turned on foreign workers from several places, including Laos, the true nature of the politics of these claims is more clearly revealed.
Gundiver. The choice is more likely to between the new draft and the 2007 constitution, rather than new draft or no elections. The difference with 2007 is that the military didn’t have an alternate version they liked then, except perhaps Thanom’s 1972 charter. Having an alternative will greatly simplify the process. Organic laws can add some of the fine details either to the new draft or the 2007 version and be passed by the national assembly after the charter is chosen. The trick might be what sweetners to throw into the new draft to make people prefer it to the alternative. However, this might be resolved by simply putting it to the national assembly, rather than a referendum, which would save a lot of taxpayers’ money.
Vichai N at his very best.
This even outshines previous comments made by him.
PEACEFUL PROTESTERS?
Drunken murders within the PDRC guards. Extortion by the mad monk.
Occupying government buildings illegaly.
Threatening passersby.
Murdering several red shirts.
Beatings of journalists.
These are some of the peaceful acts of the PDRC.
The law courts forcing the police and govt not to take action against PEACEFUL demonstrators.
As a last point can Vichai N tell me how many military personnel were importing arms into this peaceful demonstration?
Of course I totally oppose any violence on demonstrations and I have had my fair share.However Vichai N only tells half a story and in his own favour.
Thanks for your response and particularly for making it clear that your references to statements on use of force and not wanting democracy were to social media and internet. I misunderstood that you meant the military on use of force and many anti-government demonstrators not wanting democracy. In that case, I am sure you are correct, but I am not sure how much attention we should pay to online ranting. Unfortunately, the ease and anonymous of the web seems to bring out worst in people. I wonder if they really mean some of the terrible things they write online. I hope not.
I read your article on the courts and found it interesting and useful. Not something I know much about.
Excellent coverage here by the BBC’s truly great Jonathan Head – one of the few Western journalists to have spent considerable time in Isarn (the other very notable : veteran Seth Mydans). The Thai army has entered the Red Shirt villages – but will they be able to get out alive, when inevitable massive corruption from the infrastructure projects eventually leads to yet another inevitable Bangkok uprising – THIRD front against the military ? : http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27735992
” … Violence against protestors is a horrible and indefensible crime and tit-for-tat revenge between rival groups is no doubt a dangerous cycle …”
There it is Robert Dayley! Six months of unending nearly daily murderous attacks by M79 grenades and machine-guns against peaceful (Kamnan) protesters yet. Yet Robert Dayley thinks General Prayuth should continue to stand by, do nothing, and just cross his fingers and mayhem and bloodletting would cease somehow?
Of course General Prayuth had a choice: he could act to stop the vicious murders and escalating violence, OR, he could just wait a few more months for his retirement.
Had General Prayuth chosen the latter (the do nothing option), what is behind Robert Dayley thinking that Yingluck/Suthep or the politicians (including that pesky Dubai gnat) could stop the escalating cycle of political violence?
For heaven’s sake of course he had a choice. He was sitting back hoping that Suthep would do all the dirty work for him. At the same time he was actively assisting the PDRC by refusing to help out a democratically elected government.
Had he taken a proactive stance in support of democracy we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Prabowo Subianto is right to castigate those Indonesians who fail to defend the rakyat. I just hope that he doesn’t find any of these rakyat-betraying scoundrels among his own associates. Hatta Rajasa, for example, who reportedly first wanted to be Jokowi’s running-mate, was minister for communications (including transport) in SBY’s first cabinet when Indonesia suffered a record number of transport accidents. These included the terrible Garuda crash landing in Yogyakarta in 2007, in which all the business class passengers were killed, including five Australians. After one of several rail disasters occurring on his watch, Hatta accused unnamed ‘saboteurs’ of causing the accident, rather than mismanagement in his own department, for which he clearly should have accepted responsibility and resigned. Instead of being sacked, Hatta got promoted, and SBY eventually welcomed him into the bosom of his own family as Ibas’s father-in-law. When his own son was culpable in a fatal traffic accident, at least Hatta did not look for saboteurs. We should be grateful for that.
And Bakrie? What can we say about him? He is as much a defender of the rakyat as the FPI is a defender of Islam. A decade ago, Amien Rais appropriately rebuffed an attempt made by FPI chairman Habib Rizieq to join PAN, but Amien has now forgotten why he did that.
M.D.Mahfud? He stood out even in Gus Dur’s chaotic administration as the most incompetent minister for defence Indonesia has ever known. He was,of course, a comrade in arms of Alwi Shihab, impresario par excellence of the export of unskilled and readily exploitable labour to the Middle East. Another defender of the rakyat?
Prabowo still accepts the backing of the PPP, whose longstanding chairman developed such an innovative approach to the ordering of the pilgrimage waiting list. And the PKS? I used to admire this party when I first got to know its DPR members in 2000. The Partai Keadilan, as it was then known, seemed to be a fresh breeze in the stale air of the political system. I was very impressed. The MPs numbered no more than seven. Their party was called the Justice Party because, they told me, what Indonesia needed most was justice. Now, however, after the Lutfi Hasan scandal, and no doubt other scandals that the KPK will bring to light in the future, Prabowo should tell his Prosperous Justice Party supporters simply to drop ‘Justice’ from the party’s name. The ‘Prosperous Party’ seems somehow more fitting.
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The decline of Lao civil society
There is kind of a gap in the article that doesn’t address the reason WHY the NGO’s are silent. The reason is simply that the bigwig NGO heads in Laos don’t want to get kicked out of the country where they live like kings and queens on their NGO salaries in a dirt-poor country.
They are the only ones that can speak out without being arrested and ‘disappeared’ (they’ll just be expelled if anything) but they are all just cowards, greedy fat porkers that will willingly play the Groundhog Day game forever. That is, accomplish nothing and let’s do the same thing next year.
The NGO economy worldwide is probably worth billions. Its purpose is its own preservation.
The decline of Lao civil society
Fascinating and insightful. It reminds me of Giles Ungpakorn on NGOs.
https://thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/giles-on-ngos-asean-and-cretinism/
Australia’s Malay population
The Malays of the Cocos Islands, it is true are not widely known, because they are not a frequent topic of ethnographic analysis. However, they were obviously not entirely unknown, as you point out in your piece, and
scholars of Malay Studies (one of whom writes fairly frequent with comments, on NM, related to the Malaysian Constitution) are well-familiar with the Cocos Malays. I have visited the Cocos Islands, and familiarised myself with the Malay and non-Malay population there. I would point out, there is also a good deal of rather inconspicuous analysis of the Malay population that the British brought to both South Africa and Sri Lanka, a large portion of which mixed with local indigenous people, long ago. Similarly, many of us forget the origins of the Malagasy people and the largely pure Javanese population in Suriname. The point is that Malays and Indonesian peoples were not solely restricted to the Archipelago and the Dutch East Indies, though the vast majority remained in their ancestral homelands. Australia has the distinction of having two Malay populations: Cocos Island
Malays and the ever-increasing Malay (and other Malaysian) population in Melbourne and Sydney. The Cocos Malay dialect has common roots with Bahasa Melayu, but is obviously not the exact same language. In fact, Cocos
Malays have true Malay names, which are non-Arabised, unlike most of the names of Malays in Malaysia (as well as the related Acehnese) which have been exposed to Arab and Indian Muslim influence for 400 years.
Seven questions for Thailand’s military
Vichai’s ‘half of the story’ packs more gut-truths about the Red/Black Shirts violence and the Thaksin/Yingluck corrosive corruptive divisive regime however.
I have said time again that the Kamnan’s antics are definitely illegal but their very massive and very determined six months anti-Thaksin protests were definitely very peaceful.
Roy Anderson prevaricates. “Murdering several red shirts Roy?”
Seven questions for Thailand’s military
Here’s betting the rule about passing with at least 50% of eligible voters will disappear for that referendum, only to return any time the people (via their elected politicians), want to change the ‘imposed’ constitution.
The confusion about “Constitutional Monarchy” in Malaysia
But the constitution of Malaysua which has defined the role of the rulers based on a modern democratic state has itself been trampled upon, meaning it has undergone changes, ie violated, to suit the ruling class.
Can one then believe that the Constitution, which originally was so carefully crafted to limit the power of the ruler may not again be violated.
Seven questions for Thailand’s military
“However Vichai N only tells half a story and in his own favour.”
If only it were just telling half a story – but that selective half is also routinely huffed and puffed into histrionic hyperbole.
Prabowo’s dog-whistling
Indonesian tends to forget easily!
Prabowo is the man whom responsible for kidnapping, rapes and death of thousands of people he should be rotted in jail not running for president! This is insane!
A lesson for researchers
Bobby Anderson’s points are well taken.
If all that a YAD-supported Adjunct Professorship at the Universitas Indonesia’s Faculty of Humanities (Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya/ FIB-UI) allows me to do is to supervise doctoral students in Modern History, then there is certainly no moral equivalent to the work which the respective associations with the Hun Sen Government in Cambodia and the Sasakawa (now Nippon) Foundation permitted myself in the 1989-2012 period when I worked with the Cambodia Trust to contribute to the rehabilitation of that country’s estimated 38,000 mine victims and 56,000 polio sufferers.
It is invidious to publicise what should remain an entirely private matter, but since this question has been asked, I will endeavour to answer it.
Before I left the late Cambodia Trust in July 2012, I carried out two detailed surveys of prosthetic-orthotic (P&O) needs in communities in the greater Jakarta area: the first in Tangerang, where I live, and the second in Cilandak in South Jakarta, where the Jakarta School of Prosthetics & Orthotics (JSPO) is based.
The first involved the 3,000+ community of former leprosy patients in the kelurahan (village community) of Karangsari close to the Sitanala Leprosy Hospital, the second largest such facility in the world after Arcot in India. During this survey I identified well over 100 residents in need of P&O devizes and rehabilitation (a number were double amputees). Some of these were give free P&O devizes while I was still with the Cambodia Trust, but others had not received such assistance by the time I left, and I continued to liaise with them through my contact in the Sitanala community, Mr Deden Sinuhaji. Since the P&O devizes were provided free, I supported the travel costs of those Karangsari residents who still wished to travel from Tangerang to attend the out-patient P&O clinic at the JSPO.
Over the past year, while I have been an Adjunct Professor, such travel cost support has been extended to include a number of children suffering from CP (Cerebral Palsy) in need of specially modified wheelchairs. These are again provided free of charge on a means assessed basis, but travel costs from my area (Banten and northern Bogor) to the west of Jakarta to the Jakarta School frequently often deter very low-income families from attending their out-patient clinic.
My second survey involved the 69,000-strong kecamatan (sub-district) community of Cilandak Barat immediately adjacent to the Jakarta School of P&O, where I identified some 126 residents in need of P&O services, the largest percentages being children (especially the under fives) with CP, and adult stroke victims. Almost none of those surveyed before my July 2012 departure from the Cambodia Trust had availed themselves of P&O services, so I entered into an agreement with the DARE Foundation (www.darefoundation.or.id), of which I am a patron, founded by three of our first-year JSPO graduates, to provide P&O devizes at their Lebak Bulus clinic free-of-charge for children and adults whose personal data had been registered in my survey.
Over the past year, I made available roughly ten percent (USD300) of my monthly salary to support this programme which has now completed the rehabilitation of nearly all the children from economically disadvantaged families surveyed, and made a start on the rehabilitation of adult stroke victims. In order to provide adequate services for these latter, I assisted the DARE Foundation last March in purchasing a vacuum bench (USD1,200), an essential item of equipment for the polypropylene draping process to ensure the production of sufficiently robust sockets for adult P&O devize users.
More recently (since April 2014), I have been involved in the DARE Foundation’s community outreach programme in Pandeglang (Banten) where the Foundation works with the local Ministry of Health rura clinics (Puskesmas) and a Banten NGO, Lazharfah, to address the social welfare and medical needs of rural communities in eleven remote villages. A particularly serious problem here is the very large number – perhaps as many as 100 a month – of snakebite victims, the Malayan pit-viper (Calleselasma Rhodostoma) being particularly prevalent in the areas where the DARE Foundation and Lazharfah work. Many snakebite victims do not survive because of the distance to the nearest hospital where appropriate polyvalent antivenin treatment can be obtained. Others have to self-amputate in order to sever limbs after necrosis (premature death of cells and living tissue) has set in around the snakebite area.
Given this very grievous situation, I consulted with an Oxford colleague, Professor David Warrell, to identify the safest antivenin treatment and put Lazharfah in touch with bona fide local suppliers here in Jakarta. A key challenge here is the establishment of an adequate 2-7 degree Celcius cold chain for the preservation of adequate stocks of antivenin in remote areas. Without this, the very expensive antivenin (IDR450,000 per vial) will not only be ineffective, but also fatal because in higher temperatures the antivenin will revert back to pit-viper poison. Once this issue has been resolved I have undertaken to provide the seed-money to launch a national appeal.
As my work with the DARE Foundation and its partners deepen, I am certain that many other opportunities will arise to address the needs of the estimated ten percent of the 250-million Indonesian population in need of rehabilitation services, and the further two percent who require P&O devizes.
There is also the very real impact of the work with the disabled community in South Jakarta on the local Puskesmas-based community health outreach workers whose capacity to detect early disability issues such as club-foot (talipes equinovarus) can lead to timely medical intervention such as the splinting of feet thus avoiding the need for expensive surgical procedures.
Such continued involvement in disability issues – specifically the follow-up to my two surveys in Sitanala/Karangsari and Cilandak Barat – was part of my contract of employment with YAD as an Adjunct Professor at UI.
Turning to the more conventional aspects of my work, I believe that the ability to remain active in the academic field in Indonesia has brought significant benefits. Besides my teaching at FIB-UI, where I have been involved in the supervision of some ten extremely able doctoral students, one of whom will this week make his promotion, I have also been able to prepare Indonesia’s application for the recognition of Prince Diponegoro’s autobiography – the Babad Diponegoro – to the UNESCO Memory of the World (MoW) International Committee, an application which was accepted at the second attempt (21 June 2013). This makes it the third such Indonesian text in this select category, the others being Empu Prapanca’s Nagarakrtagama (1365), which describes King Hayam Wuruk and Patih Gajahmada’s Majapahit in its fourteenth-century heyday, and the extensive South Sulawesi (Luwu) I la Galigo cycle of stories relating to the origins of the Bugis.
Following that success, I have been able to work with one of Indonesia’s leading actor-writer-dramatists, Mas Landung Simatupang, to present the Babad Diponegoro along with my Power of Prophecy biography of the prince in a series of dramatic readings in four historic venues (the old Residency House in Magelang where Diponegoro was captured (28 March 1830), Tegalrejo [Yogyakarta] where he grew up and spent his pre-war years (1793-1825), the Jakarta Stadhuis [city hall], where he awaited his exile passage to Manado (April 1830), and Fort Rotterdam, Makassar, where spent the majority of his exile years and died, 1833-55), which have revived the ancient Malay-Nusantara tradition of tuturan (textual narration).
This in turn has helped inspire the preparation of a major exhibit at the Indonesian National Gallery on 5 February to 8 March 2015 with the working title of ‘I, Diponegoro; The Fighting Prince in the Memory of the Nation, 1857-2015 (Aku Diponegoro; Sang Pangeran dalam Ingatan Bangsa)’, which is being sponsored by the Goethe Institut with a number of local partners, one of which is the YAD. Another linked initiative with would not have been possible without YAD support who put up half the publication costs (I covered the remainder) has been the publication of a succinct edition of my Power of Prophecy biography, which has been published jointly in English and Indonesian as Destiny; the Life of Prince Diponegoro of Yogyakarta, 1785-1855 (Oxford: Peter Lang) andTakdir; Riwayat Pangeran Diponegoro, 1785-1855 (Jakarta: BukuKompas).
Maybe these initiatives, which are aimed at addressing the very real challenges faced by those with disabilities in Indonesia, and raising the self-esteem and historical awareness of the wider general public here in Indonesia, are not to be compared with the Cambodia Trust’s previous work in Cambodia and its current programmes in South and Southeast Asia (Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines and Burma). Maybe too, our December 1989 decision to work with the Hun Sen government and accept funding from the Sasakawa (Nippon) Foundation, are in a different category to my current Universitas Indonesia contract which YAD has facilitated. If so, I am prepared to accept that. It was my decision and mine alone. If Indonesia was a ‘normal’ country, an invitation to work at a leading government university would have been facilitated financially by that institution and the need to find ‘patrons’ in the private sector would have been unnecessary. That is why in a previous post I referred to the situation as being more akin to Hogarth’s London and Medici Florence than a developed world environment. But that is the difficult reality we live with here.
Peter Carey is Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College, Oxford, and YAD Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Indonesia, Jakarta.
“Foreign influence” in Red Shirt demonstrations
[…] The Chiangrai Times reports that the military “has threatened to arrest and deport all illegal foreign workers, as border officials reported an exodus of Cambodian migrants following last month’s military takeover.” Again, PPT can’t help but wonder if the particular attention being given to Cambodians doesn’t reflect just jingoism but also the influence of the conspiratorial extremists in the anti-democratic movement who repeatedly shouted about armed Cambodians supporting red shirts. All of this was nonsense, but was taken up by some of the crazier military anti-democrats. There were other balmy claims of Cambodians joining protests, not unlike reprehensible claims made by a royalist Australian academic. […]
“Foreign influence” in Red Shirt demonstrations
[…] The Chiangrai Times reports that the military “has threatened to arrest and deport all illegal foreign workers, as border officials reported an exodus of Cambodian migrants following last month’s military takeover.” Again, PPT can’t help but wonder if the particular attention being given to Cambodians doesn’t reflect just jingoism but also the influence of the conspiratorial extremists in the anti-democratic movement who repeatedly shouted about armed Cambodians supporting red shirts. All of this was nonsense, but was taken up by some of the crazier military anti-democrats. There were other balmy claims of Cambodians joining protests, not unlike reprehensible claims made by a royalist Australian academic. […]
“Foreign influence” in Red Shirt demonstrations
Now that the military has turned on foreign workers from several places, including Laos, the true nature of the politics of these claims is more clearly revealed.
Seven questions for Thailand’s military
Gundiver. The choice is more likely to between the new draft and the 2007 constitution, rather than new draft or no elections. The difference with 2007 is that the military didn’t have an alternate version they liked then, except perhaps Thanom’s 1972 charter. Having an alternative will greatly simplify the process. Organic laws can add some of the fine details either to the new draft or the 2007 version and be passed by the national assembly after the charter is chosen. The trick might be what sweetners to throw into the new draft to make people prefer it to the alternative. However, this might be resolved by simply putting it to the national assembly, rather than a referendum, which would save a lot of taxpayers’ money.
Seven questions for Thailand’s military
Vichai N at his very best.
This even outshines previous comments made by him.
PEACEFUL PROTESTERS?
Drunken murders within the PDRC guards. Extortion by the mad monk.
Occupying government buildings illegaly.
Threatening passersby.
Murdering several red shirts.
Beatings of journalists.
These are some of the peaceful acts of the PDRC.
The law courts forcing the police and govt not to take action against PEACEFUL demonstrators.
As a last point can Vichai N tell me how many military personnel were importing arms into this peaceful demonstration?
Of course I totally oppose any violence on demonstrations and I have had my fair share.However Vichai N only tells half a story and in his own favour.
Thailand, what next?
Khun Khemthong,
Thanks for your response and particularly for making it clear that your references to statements on use of force and not wanting democracy were to social media and internet. I misunderstood that you meant the military on use of force and many anti-government demonstrators not wanting democracy. In that case, I am sure you are correct, but I am not sure how much attention we should pay to online ranting. Unfortunately, the ease and anonymous of the web seems to bring out worst in people. I wonder if they really mean some of the terrible things they write online. I hope not.
I read your article on the courts and found it interesting and useful. Not something I know much about.
“Foreign influence” in Red Shirt demonstrations
Excellent coverage here by the BBC’s truly great Jonathan Head – one of the few Western journalists to have spent considerable time in Isarn (the other very notable : veteran Seth Mydans). The Thai army has entered the Red Shirt villages – but will they be able to get out alive, when inevitable massive corruption from the infrastructure projects eventually leads to yet another inevitable Bangkok uprising – THIRD front against the military ? : http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27735992
Seven questions for Thailand’s military
” … Violence against protestors is a horrible and indefensible crime and tit-for-tat revenge between rival groups is no doubt a dangerous cycle …”
There it is Robert Dayley! Six months of unending nearly daily murderous attacks by M79 grenades and machine-guns against peaceful (Kamnan) protesters yet. Yet Robert Dayley thinks General Prayuth should continue to stand by, do nothing, and just cross his fingers and mayhem and bloodletting would cease somehow?
Of course General Prayuth had a choice: he could act to stop the vicious murders and escalating violence, OR, he could just wait a few more months for his retirement.
Had General Prayuth chosen the latter (the do nothing option), what is behind Robert Dayley thinking that Yingluck/Suthep or the politicians (including that pesky Dubai gnat) could stop the escalating cycle of political violence?
Seven questions for Thailand’s military
For heaven’s sake of course he had a choice. He was sitting back hoping that Suthep would do all the dirty work for him. At the same time he was actively assisting the PDRC by refusing to help out a democratically elected government.
Had he taken a proactive stance in support of democracy we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Prabowo’s dog-whistling
One other thing, I’d be interested to know the author’s reason in suggesting that Hamish McDonald’s piece was misunderstood.
Prabowo’s dog-whistling
Prabowo Subianto is right to castigate those Indonesians who fail to defend the rakyat. I just hope that he doesn’t find any of these rakyat-betraying scoundrels among his own associates. Hatta Rajasa, for example, who reportedly first wanted to be Jokowi’s running-mate, was minister for communications (including transport) in SBY’s first cabinet when Indonesia suffered a record number of transport accidents. These included the terrible Garuda crash landing in Yogyakarta in 2007, in which all the business class passengers were killed, including five Australians. After one of several rail disasters occurring on his watch, Hatta accused unnamed ‘saboteurs’ of causing the accident, rather than mismanagement in his own department, for which he clearly should have accepted responsibility and resigned. Instead of being sacked, Hatta got promoted, and SBY eventually welcomed him into the bosom of his own family as Ibas’s father-in-law. When his own son was culpable in a fatal traffic accident, at least Hatta did not look for saboteurs. We should be grateful for that.
And Bakrie? What can we say about him? He is as much a defender of the rakyat as the FPI is a defender of Islam. A decade ago, Amien Rais appropriately rebuffed an attempt made by FPI chairman Habib Rizieq to join PAN, but Amien has now forgotten why he did that.
M.D.Mahfud? He stood out even in Gus Dur’s chaotic administration as the most incompetent minister for defence Indonesia has ever known. He was,of course, a comrade in arms of Alwi Shihab, impresario par excellence of the export of unskilled and readily exploitable labour to the Middle East. Another defender of the rakyat?
Prabowo still accepts the backing of the PPP, whose longstanding chairman developed such an innovative approach to the ordering of the pilgrimage waiting list. And the PKS? I used to admire this party when I first got to know its DPR members in 2000. The Partai Keadilan, as it was then known, seemed to be a fresh breeze in the stale air of the political system. I was very impressed. The MPs numbered no more than seven. Their party was called the Justice Party because, they told me, what Indonesia needed most was justice. Now, however, after the Lutfi Hasan scandal, and no doubt other scandals that the KPK will bring to light in the future, Prabowo should tell his Prosperous Justice Party supporters simply to drop ‘Justice’ from the party’s name. The ‘Prosperous Party’ seems somehow more fitting.