Bad news leads Western media coverage of RI

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