Indonesia’s elite has too much to lose from addressing its actions in East Timor

Wednesday, 23rd September 2009

While defenders of the country’s bloody history remain in positions of power, justice for the slain Australian journalists will be slow in coming, says Eric Ellis

A friend, recently visiting Jakarta for the first time, surveyed this ugly, chaotic and most inappropriate of metropolises. As we edged our way through the gridlock clogging the fetid sepia dusk, begging mothers with scrawny babes-in-arms pawed at oligarchs’ BMWs and Ferraris circling the downtown ‘Welcome Monument’ fountain, which was dry again. A hawker pushing a sate trolley disappeared into a pothole, emerging bleeding with his cart broken. Someone grabbed at loose notes through the driver’s window, while on the broken footpath in front of a monster mall touting designer accoutrements, a sad man was prodding a sadder monkey with a stick to perform for high-heeled passers-by who didn’t care. ‘I don’t know Indonesia at all,’ my friend said, ‘but I’ve always felt there’s a darkness over it.’

His remark betrays an Australian mindset about our northern neighbour. Australians are suspicious of Indonesia. They don’t much know what goes on here, but whatever it is, it happens in the shadows and that can’t be good. Maybe, its because no two sovereign neighbours are as dissimilar. Australia is temperate, liberal, mostly white and Christian, lightly populated and wealthy. Equatorial Indonesia is mostly Muslim, poor, overcrowded, socially conservative, brown. It is one of the world’s most corrupt nations, with a history of brutal dictatorship, while Australia is one of the least corrupt, and among the most secure democracies. That they are neighbours is an accident of history. Each can behave as if it would rather the other not be there. From Schapelle Corby on, it’s a relationship pregnant with suspicions and misunderstandings, wilful and bumbling.