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Now
Paving the Way for Further Militarization
and Environmental Devastation
Bush's
Big Indonesian Photo-Op
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."
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