Is the ASEAN

Is the ASEAN
spirit dead?

The lofty ideals of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN), founded more than thirty years ago with such
high hopes and big fanfare, and which has now grown from five
nations to the 10 it is today, may be perceived by the peoples of
ASEAN as seemingly dead in spirit.

They fail to understand why Indonesian workers are unwelcome
in Malaysia. Also, why these workers rioted against their
employer neighbors and why the Malaysian authorities are chasing
them away, as it were. Indonesians and Malaysians have so many
things in common and yet they are behaving like enemies. Surely
those Indonesian workers did not want to damage the welfare of
the people of Malaysia, in spite of their illegal status as
workers.

The peoples of ASEAN expected that the formation of ASEAN
would pave the way to peaceful and brotherly settlement of
whatever conflict and problems might have arisen between them.
The fact is that today they have bitter feelings for each other's
country and government, which appear unable to bring solutions to
the conflict.

Recently, Indonesians, who are in fact also citizens of the
ASEAN community, have taken to the streets to demand the cutting
off of diplomatic ties with another of their neighbors,
Singapore. Singapore's senior minister Lee Kuan Yew has expressed
the belief that there are international terrorists hiding or even
walking free in Indonesia, with an attack on the island republic
of Singapore on their mind as a followup to the Sept. 11
destruction of the World Trade Center in New York.

Some Indonesians, especially those belonging to extremist
Muslim groupings, feel offended by the statement made by Lee Kuan
Yew in public and even thought it fit to burn his effigy. Could
one have expected such animosity, say, even five years ago?

The governments of ASEAN may have agreed on much nice-sounding
cooperation but the peoples of ASEAN are living in a different
world, full of suffering and unfulfilled promises. The ASEAN
spirit indeed looks dead, at least when it concerns the fate of
the common and poor masses of the community.

GANDHI SUKARDI

Jakarta