Bad news leads Western media coverage of RI

Soe Tjen Marching, London

Indonesian have never interested the mainstream Western media as much as in the last few years, particularly since the Bali bombings, the attack on the Australian Embassy, the Tsunami disaster, the Nias earthquake and the recent polio cases.

For the last couple of years, the Western mass media has been full of stories about this poor country that has suffered a string of disasters.

The help from people all over the world has indeed been incredible, but Indonesia has once again become the center of attention because of corruption: so corrupt is this country that the government and its officials had no shame about reportedly embezzling the donations for the tsunami victims.

The production of news, dominated by the Western countries, often shapes the views of their people. Indeed, questions that I have often heard asked about Indonesia reflect these mainstream Western views: "Why are Muslim countries like Indonesia cruel toward women?" or "Why do people in Indonesia victimize not only other people but also each other?"

The above questions create the impression that there are mainly two kinds of people in Indonesia: victims and perpetrators. The first group may become refugees, while the second may lead to terrorism.

One thing is clear -- none of the above are to be admired; the victims may be pitied, the perpetrators may be hated or insulted -- but both can be looked down upon. The need for help and protection, the need for the more prosperous countries to act in order to save these poor people, leads to the idea that people in Indonesia are more of a nuisance than anything else. Even if these people are victims, they are victims of their own people, nature or circumstances. They are certainly not, like the Americans portray them in the mass media, the victims of foreign terrorists.

Indeed, the treatment of Indonesian citizens by some Western governments echoes the often simplistic representations of Indonesians in the mainstream media. Every time Indonesians wish to enter Western countries, they often have to go to great lengths to obtain visas, because these people are considered to be a potential nuisances and sometimes, even, potential criminals.

Fear of terrorism may justify such treatment. The Bali bombings and the Australian Embassy bombing are enough to scare people, and as Tony Blair, John Howard and George Bush keep repeating, these incidents did not happen in isolation, as there has been a history of Islamic terrorism. But if people want to learn history, they had better read several perspectives rather than just one side of the story.

All of the above incidents cannot be isolated from what happened in Indonesia in 1965. Then, about 2 million to 3 million people were murdered and millions of others were imprisoned and tortured by the Soeharto regime, helped by the CIA and supported by the British and Australian governments. Some critics also suspect that the CIA worked together with some Muslim organizations and the military in Indonesia, for the American government was desperate to crush the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

The CIA, however, was seldom accused of being a terrorist organization. Having been involved in the murders during the 1960s, and having left Indonesia in limbo during the repressive years of the dictatorship of Soeharto (1965-1998), the American government has not tried to compensate Indonesians for what they have done.

While condemnation of, or pity for, the Indonesian people has often been heard, admiration for them has rarely been broadcast. The mainstream mass media in Britain, for instance, would rather repeat the name of the cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir than the name of Dita Sari, a young Indonesian woman, who has strived years to help poorly paid laborers.

In 2001, Reebok offered Dita a human rights award worth US$50,000. However, Dita decided refused both the award and the money, stating that Reebok should have improved the conditions of the Indonesian laborers first before giving her an award worth that amount of money. Having been arrested herself, after protesting against the low rates of pay offered to Indonesian laborers by Reebok, Dita considered the money and the award to be a kind of bribery.

But the heroic Dita Sari rarely represents Indonesia in most mainstream Western media; rather, representations of Indonesia are dominated by corrupt Indonesian presidents, military figures and high officials; the threatening Abu Bakar Ba'asyir and his aggressive followers; the smiling convicted terrorist Amrozi; or the helpless victims of the tsunami.

These mainstream representations serve to obscure the diversity and complexity of the Indonesian people. Maybe these portrayals also provide a justification for the toughness of some Western governments toward Indonesians, enabling them to forget that they have been at least partially responsible for many of the hardships suffered by Indonesians.

The writer is a staff member at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) and can be reached smarching@yahoo.com