Tom Pepinsky

Category: Politics

  • Papuan Election, Pornography

    The elections in the provinces of Papua and Irjabar seem to have gone well, with no allegations of corruption or money politics making it to the news sources that I read.  Of course, some folks are still upset that the government decided to create the new province at all, and reject any elections as illegitimate, but they seem not to have a very strong voice.

    One thing that’s been in the news these days–and which has a direct impact on Papua–is the Indonesian government’s proposed anti-pornography bill.  The rather strong Islamic opposition party known as the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS, Partai Keadilan Sejahtera) is a big sponsor of this bill.  We should note that while PKS is an Islamic party, it is not an Islamist party–it has no plans to adopt sharia law or anything like that, it just counts on pious Muslims for its support.  Its biggest campaign promises are always to cut down on corruption and to emphasize morality in governance, similar to Hamas in Palestine but without the commitment to annihilate Israel.  Of course, many Christians in Indonesia fear that PKS would try to introduce sharia if it ever held the presidency and a majority in the legislature, but my own view is that is a losing proposition.

    The pornography bill, anyway, is supposed to regulate the spread of immorality in culture and the media.  It tries to define pornografi (pornographic images) and pornoaksi (pornographic actions) as two separate things that it will fight against.  The gist of the opposition is that most people are satisfied with existing anti-pornography regulations, and religious and cultural minorities feel that the bill may infringe on traditional cultures.  For example, will Balinese people still be allowed to bathe in rivers?  Will Papuans be allowed to wear their traditional dress (link not safe for work)?  Will traditional religious ceremonies with sexual undertones be outlawed?  Many protestors point out that the proposed bill makes no provisions to protect these minorities.  Another group of protestors believe that the anti-pornography and pornoaksi bill will repress women’s rights–one Catholic Indonesian friend referred to it as the "Arabization of Indonesia."  The proposed bill, in its first draft, made it a crime punishable by fines for Indonesian women to wear clothes that reveal legs, midriffs, and shoulders.  It’s not clear what the new version of the bill includes.

    Here’s a quote from Din Syamsuddin, a proponent of the bill: "We are concerned by the moral
    liberalization that will lead the nation to the brink of collapse,
    unless it is stopped as soon as possible."      Seems a bit of a stretch to consider that Indonesia could fall apart because of nudity in the arts and bare midriffs.  Watch this space for updates as negotiations about the bill continue.

  • Irjabar

    The other day I was watching MetroTV, one of the main Indonesian TV stations.  They had a campaign advertisement for an upcoming gubernatorial election in Irian Jaya Barat (a.k.a. Irjabar), a new province that was carved out of the Indonesian province of Papua in 2003.  If you click on that link, you can read a bit about the history of West Papua, the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea.  Suffice it to say, it is not unreasonable to view Indonesia’s presence on that island as an occupation, much like its former occupation of East Timor. 

    Irjabar, like many other new provinces in Indonesia, is the product of a phenomenon called pemekaran daerah, or “regional splitting,” that is common since the fall of Soeharto and the adoption of political decentralization.  Simply put, if you get yourself a new province, or a new regency (the level below the province), you get steady access to government funds targeted more directly towards you.  Well off parts of provinces split off in order not to have to fund poor parts of their former, larger province.  I would guess that the demand for the creation of Irjabar came from some local political entrepreneur tired of having to share his budget with the rest of this desparately poor province.

    So anyway, the election commercial.  It was, quite simply, racist.  They first had a wild-looking man wearing nothing but a koteka (link is not safe for work) and some bird feathers, with a face painted white, saying “I’m a native, and I support candidate X.”  Then they had a prim Javanese woman, in modern western clothes, saying “I’m an immigrant, and I also support candidate X.”  Finally, they had a laborer in work clothes, saying “I’m mixed, and I too support candidate X.”  Then, all three of them together said “Let’s all support candidate X.”

    I realized after a couple double-takes that all of the actors were Javanese or otherwise Western Indonesians.  The “native” was a Javanese guy literally painted black from head to toe, and the “mixed” was a Javanese guy literally painted brown.  Quite terrible.  My view of anti-Papuan racism was reinforced during a conversation with a security guard an interviewee’s office.  The security guard and I were chatting about the different languages he can understand (Indonesian, Javanese, Sundanese, and Minang).  I asked half-jokingly about languages in Papua.  He shook his head.  “No, not them.  Too savage.”  I pressed him a bit on what he meant.  “Those ones with the black skin, they are wild (liar).  If you have problem, they don’t talk or argue, just stab.”  OK, riiiiight, a simple “no, their languages are seldom spoken here” would have sufficed.