Indonesia is a disaster in the
making, or as some experts often put it, a time bomb. But it is not just a
one-time explosive, but a device that goes off regularly.
Nature is angry, it is furious.
Water is pouring from the skies once again, and millions of people are in
agony; many are now dying – in the capital city of Jakarta, as well as in so many
small villages on remote islands of this sprawling and unfortunate archipelago.
Tragedies occur here with deadly
regularity. And there is nothing mystical or supernatural about what is taking
place, if one is at least ordinarily informed and educated. Everything here is
scientifically, economically and politically explicable. But since the
genocidal fascist massacres that took lives or freedom of almost all great
Indonesian thinkers in 1965-66, both science and rationale have definitely had
a great influence on the nation.
Now, at the end of January 2014,
huge areas of Jakarta are under water. Debris is floating on the surface of the
filthy rivers. Carcasses of animals are I nflated. There are roofs
and doors and garbage all over.
Over-excited, hysterical announcers
of local radio stations are screaming to ether in unbelievable high-pitched
voices: ‘Banjir lagi!’ (the floods again!)
No
relief
It is all Kafkaesque: relief posts
are empty, while people all over the inundated areas complain that there is
hardly any help from the government. Or, when there is help, it is distributed
inflexibly and randomly. One has to belong to an exact administrative area, or
to a certain group.
Relief agencies and “posts”
are almost exclusively self-promoting. Be they Muslim organizations, police, or
even the most notorious military commandos responsible for massacres all over
the archipelago. They are all boasting their logos and “coats of arms.”
But look closely, for instance, at
the area of Kampung Melayu that is hard-hit this year, and you will see police
and military playing games on empty beds, or sleeping “relief workers”
on cots belonging to various religious organizations.
Inflatable boats are resting against
the walls. Ambulances are idle, parked all over the place, with drivers gone
missing.
Photo by Andre Vltchek
Police officer Nurasid, from Kampung
Melayu Command Post, explained:
“It has been three weeks since
police headquarters deployed us here. We do shifts, in the morning 20 people,
and in the evening 10. This year’s floods are worse than those that hit Jakarta
in 2013. We evacuated some people from the areas of Kg Melayu Besar and Gudang
Peluru… We get no extra pay for this.”
They get regular pay, of course, as
anywhere else in the world. But they may not consider such rewards high enough.
The entire scenario resembles similar “relief operations” in Sub-Saharan
Africa, perhaps in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or in Kenya, one of
the places where I am based.
In the shelter, several men, women
and children are resting on cots and straw matrasses. This group is well fed
and taken care of. I ask randomly one of the women where she comes from.
Proudly, she replies:
“My name is Esti, and I am daughter
of the village chief, here at Kr. Melayu.”
“Are there people seeking shelter
under the bridge, as in 2013?”
I ask.
“No,” the group of women begins, waving their hands. “This
year people are well taken care of.”
It is a lie, of course. We drive
towards the flyover, just a few hundred meters from the shelter. Under the
flyover, dozens of desperate people are parked on the grass, on dirt or
makeshift mats. They are in terrible condition, surrounded by domestic animals,
plastic bags, bundles and screaming children.
Photo by Andre Vltchek
Mr. Ilyas is from Kg. Melayu Kecil.
He is so desperate; he does not hesitate to give his name, testimony and even
his mobile number:
“We have been here for 10 days and
except for some food, there is not much help. We were supposed to go to At
Tahiriyah Mosque, but they said they are overburdened there. Other mosques
refused to let us in, saying that we are ‘najis.’ There are 200 of us here. Not
far from here is a police canteen, but they do not share food with us; they
only feed their own men.”
‘Najis’ means filthy, dirty.
There are thousands of desperate
people all over the capital, and their number is growing.
Last year, when I covered the
Jakarta floods in depth, I stumbled on entire groups of politicians, public
figures, police officers and military men, posing in front of desperate
victims, promoting themselves on Twitter and Facebook. One group of “haves”
even “hired” a huge fire truck, and then began driving it around,
filming and photographing its “relief effort,” consisting of distributing
meager food supplies.
Ruined
nature and cities
Unbridled corruption, both moral and
financial, has brought Indonesia virtually to a standstill. Infrastructure has
collapsed, and there are almost no public works or any interest to prevent
disasters or help the victims.
The country’s economy (loudly
praised by Western media and political regimes) mainly consists of unbridled
plundering of natural resources, from occupied and devastated Papua, to Aceh at
the other geographic extreme, as well as high commodity prices on global
markets.
The desire for enrichment in
Indonesia is often absolutely grotesque, a result of pro-market indoctrination
over the decades. As I clearly witnessed after the 2004 tsunami in Aceh, a
horrendous disaster that took around 250,000 human lives, police and the army
were diverting money away from NGOs, who were distributing drinking water to
desperate survivors, and destroying plastic water deposits if the bribes were
not paid.
Now, everything in Indonesia seems
to be ruined: the nature is, and the cities are. Entire huge islands are
deforested; some of them are as gigantic as Sumatra and Kalimantan. Black
chemicals cover eerie and grotesque stumps, in those places where once, native
trees stood tall and proud. Palm oil plantations are all over: they are cheap
to create and easy to maintain, while yields are high. But to create them, all
native vegetation has to be destroyed.
Greenpeace has listed Indonesia in
the Guinness Book of Records as the nation that destroys its rain forests with
greater speed than any other country on earth.
Rivers are clogged, polluted and
impossible to navigate. Several Indonesian institutions had declared the
Citarum River, passing near Jakarta, as the most polluted waterway anywhere in
the world.
How bad can it get in the future?
Can it really get any worse than it is now?
It can, of course. In Indonesia,
anything can happen. It is designated (mainly by Western governments and
corporation that are already plundering the country for decades) as a “capitalist
paradise” and a future leader of Southeast Asia. Indonesia is also called
the “largest Southeast Asian economy.” Well, not on a per capita basis,
just in total numbers. Naturally, with 247 million officially recognized
citizens (and 300 million claimed by some independent statisticians), its
crippled tiny-per-capita economy is still much bigger than that of extremely
rich but geographically tiny Singapore.
Photo by Andre Vltchek
Here, human beings have turned
against Mother Nature, with tremendous irrational wrath and unpardonable spite,
killing not only fauna, but also all creatures that emerged on their way, big
as well as tiny. Why? Simply because nature is not bringing any great
short-term profits and confused animals are once in a while fighting back when
their territory is sprayed by chemicals or divided by barbed wires.
Just a few days ago I visited “the
cruelest zoo on earth,” according to both local and international press;
the zoo in the city of Surabaya.
While still in Japan, while working
on my film about Okinawa, I read in both Indonesian and Japanese press online
about several grisly murders, of an African lion that was hanged in his cage,
of a mountain goat, and of other creatures.
Our own eyes soon confirmed what we
read. After we entered the zoo, we saw the rotting carcass of a tiny kitten,
doubled, hanging from the wall. And nearby, several local photographers were
crawling around the cage inhabited by several gloomy-looking mountain goats.
“One just died yesterday… Yet
another casualty,” explained one of the newsmen,
laconically.
'Anti-people'
society
Nature periodically strikes back.
Terrible landslides, the results of logging and the destruction of original vegetation,
are killing hundreds of people, often burying entire villages. Tsunamis
devastate entire badly constructed (or constructed in totally the wrong places)
neighborhoods of Indonesian cities and towns.
But floods are the most publicized
events, as they occur in the capital and many other major cities of the
country, and therefore they are impossible to ignore.
Professor Muslim Muin from
prestigious Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) explained that one cannot
blame what is happening now in Jakarta simply on the “ocean,” or on
global warming. He was obviously referring to the recent statements of
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was trying to blame the
present situation in the capital solely on climate change.
“High and low tides of the ocean are
normal right now, nothing extraordinary. The problem is that drainage system
cannot cope with amount of water passing through it. And the same can be said
about the rivers and channels of the capital,” Muin said.
The rivers are clogged with garbage
and new, so-called flood channels, are not yet finished or well connected, to
prevent devastation.
“It is said that the rain did not
reach its maximum level, yet,”
Muin said. “Then why are we having floods? The situation simply demonstrates
that the water in Jakarta is not flowing well, and Jakarta administration once
again mismanaged things… They should have performed hydrodynamic simulations.
Then they would learn how wide and deep should be drainage system, and how
powerful should be the pumps.”
Photo by Andre Vltchek
The problem is that public works are
never funded or implemented, if they are really “public,” meaning
non-profit, serving Indonesian society. After the US-sponsored the 1965
military-religious coup, Indonesia became perhaps the most “shamelessly
capitalist,” profit-oriented and “anti-people” society on earth. Its
infrastructure, from roads, railroads and airports to communications, (but also
waste processing system and clean water supply) are all in a state of shambles,
often below the level of those in Bangladesh or sub-Saharan Africa.
Flood channels and drainage systems
are no exception. Flood prevention and control bring no “profits,” while
annual floods actually give jobs to hundreds and thousands in the private
construction companies.
It is the same logic as with the
public transportation: as I was told two years ago by a leading Indonesian
businessman who is presently living abroad: “Jakarta or any major Indonesian
city will never build decent public transportation. The car lobby and other
businesses will simply never allow it. And so the cities such as Jakarta,
Surabaya, Medan and Makassar are choking in almost total traffic jams, with no
metro or urban rail systems, trams or monorails.“
In Indonesia, there is simply no
mechanism to force the political and economic regime of the country to serve
the people. And a majority of the citizens simply give up trying. Everything is
abandoned to the “market.” But market does not seem to care much about
the people.
And so the ideas of humanism are
fully abandoned here. Not even a hint that the economy is here to build the
nation and to serve the people; that all that is done in the country should
have only one basic goal and purpose: to improve the standard of living, and
quality of life of its citizens.
This year 23 people died – victims
of floods in the capital alone. This is an estimate, of course. Tens of
thousands have become refugees. Hundreds of thousands will have to repair their
houses. Most of them have no funds for such repairs, but they will have to find
a way, so those few owners of the businesses could flourish. So the elites can
become even richer, and send their offspring to even more expensive schools
abroad. So they can buy even more Range Rovers (a great car for the floods) and
even fancier condominiums in Australia, Singapore and the United States.
All other Indonesian cities are
unlivable as well. Arguably, Medan and Surabaya are even worse than Jakarta.
But who cares? All members of Indonesian elites have “second homes” or a
“second country” somewhere outside this devastated archipelago.
Indonesia for them is only good for plundering. And it shows. And there is
nothing people can do anymore, it seems.
The statements, views and opinions
expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily
represent those of RT.
