Page 68 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

Indonesia: perning in the Gyre 57
separate East Timorese children from their parents and bring them to orphanages
in Java after East Timor voted overwhelmingly to separate from Indonesia in 1999,
claiming Indonesian troops had poured boiling water over a baby who later died
in Aceh (Timberlake 2002). It was also a police report from the head of BIN that
had the executive editor of the Rakyat Merdeka daily charged with defamation.
In the run up to the presidential elections in 2004, the government expelled an
American researcher, Ms. Sydney Jones, working for a ‘well-respected’ think-
tank, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG). Her expulsion was seen
as part of the ongoing efforts of President Megawati’s government to crack down
on its critics, including the detention of peaceful protestors and the conviction for
libel of several newspaper editors (The Economist 2004: 29). Jones was a long-
time source for foreign journalists, and she was known to have very good contacts
with some of the radical Islamic groups. Hendropriyono’s name emerged again
when Jones was expelled. He labelled the organisation’s reports on Indonesia, par-
ticularly those on Islamic radicalism and the separatism-racked provinces of Aceh
and West Papua, as inaccurate, biased and subversive, though he gave no details.
However, some reports by the ICG had clearly embarrassed the military. In a
report on operations by Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and the Christmas Eve bombing in
Medan, published in December 2002, the ICG had suggested, although not con-
clusively, that the Free Aceh Movement, the TNI and JI may be surprising bed-
fellows. In addition, it recommended that the government strengthen the capacity
and coordination of intelligence, with an emphasis on the police rather than the
BIN or the TNI, and also pay serious attention to corruption among the police, the
military and the immigration service, particularly in connection with the trade in
arms and explosives (International Crisis Group 2002).

Indonesia’s ‘war on terror’

Jones’s expulsion was put down partly to politicians looking to score points on the
campaign trail (The Economist 2004: 29). However, while internal political inter-
ests, alongside the efforts to hold Indonesia together, have long been the main
focus of the country’s political elites, the post 9/11 world is now impinging on
developments within Indonesia.
The terrorist attacks on foreign targets in the country, alongside the government’s
failure to deal effectively with those the West wants to see incarcerated, notably
Abu Bakar Ba’asyir (the alleged spiritual leader of JI), is in marked contrast to
the efficiency of Indonesia’s neighbour, Singapore. The US and the United
Nations have blacklisted JI as a terrorist organisation, and the Western powers
expect the Indonesian government to root out dangerous militants and shut down
any organisation they may belong to or face dire economic and diplomatic reper-
cussions. And yet, internal divisions continue to reduce Indonesia’s political scene
to a ‘Babel of conflicting and sometimes violent factions’ (Scarpello 2002).
Indonesia has an image problem. Asia as a whole is seen in the US as a ‘risky
place, the common explanation was television news images of anti-US protests
and Islamic extremists with guns’ (Pesek Jr 2003: B2). It is a problem created by
the ‘TV effect’ – where the focus of media attention, in particular television,