Page 57 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

46 Jonathan Woodier
The Bali tragedy and the bombings in Jakarta placed the ‘war on terror’ firmly
on the doorstep of Southeast Asia’s governments, and, all the while, the media, in
particular the new media, is seen as carrying change to the heart of these soci-
eties, with ambiguous and unpredictable consequences. The new technologies,
moreover, have ambiguous predictable consequences. They support both a con-
centration and a dispersion of power. New media allow those on the periphery to
develop and consolidate power and ultimately to challenge the authority of the
centre. In this high-tech mobilisation of radical constituencies, the voices often
speak in opposition to globalisation, fed by ‘its major discontents, nationalism,
regionalism, localism and revivalism’ (Majod 1999: 81), challenging the authority
of the centre and eliciting a response at an elite level.
In Southeast Asia, as regimes toppled in Thailand and Indonesia in the 1990s, the
global communication media was increasingly identified as an important cause of
regional political upheaval (Atkins 1999: 420). Governments identified the bur-
geoning media industry as a key variable driving political upheaval and are keen to
quarantine what many see as the source of a contagion of internal instability (Ayoob
1995: 196). There are powerful forces arranged against the free media in Indonesia,
which will be considered later. These are reinforced by deeper, historical and
cultural understandings that reject the right to an existence for a plural media.

Politics, political culture and the Asian media:
strictly one-way traffic
The world’s largest archipelago, Indonesia achieved independence from the
Netherlands in 1949. Today, Indonesia’s population of 238,452,952 (July 2004 esti-
mate), makes it the world’s fourth-most populous nation and the largest Muslim
nation. A vast polyglot nation, Indonesia’s population is spread over an area com-
prising 17,508 islands and islets, of which 6,000 are inhabited, and stretching 5,000
kilometre east to west and 1,750 north to south, with 100 ethnic groups. Despite this,
87 per cent of Indonesians are Muslims, and the island of Java (home to Indonesia’s
largest ethnic group, the Javanese) is one of the most densely populated areas in the
world, with more than 107 million people living in an area the size of New York State.
Indonesia has struggled to recover from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis:
estimates from 2003 indicated that its GDP based on purchasing power parity
comes out at $US758.8 billion or $3,200 per capita, compared to Malaysia at
$207.8 billion, approximately $9,000 pre capita, and Singapore at $109.4 billion,
or $23,700 per capita (CIA 2004). Indeed, of all the Asian economies,
‘Indonesia’s experience in the wake of the economic crisis of 1997, has to be the
most intense and destructive’ (Robison 2001: 104). In its latest report, the World
Bank insisted Indonesia move quickly to reinforce the country’s improving eco-
nomic growth, pass fresh laws to boost investor confidence and cut the country’s
soaring fuel subsidies (The Jakarta Post 2004b).
The political system is a modern construct and the political culture has a modern
veneer laid by early nationalist movements in the 1920s but only really gaining
roots after the Second World War and the creation of the modern independent