Let us maintain the Indonesian language
Let us maintain the Indonesian language
Six figures were recently installed as the best Indonesian language speakers. One of them was a foreigner, British Ambassador to Indonesia Richard Gozney.
Also among them were two ministers who speak the Indonesian language very well. This is significant as the use of the language among officials has become very poor.
Imagine if this nation does not have a common language. Unfortunately, the Indonesian language has not been "well- maintained". It seems that it is only an inheritance from the sky. Many of us are not even proud to speak the language and "adulterate" it with a foreign language.
Many Indonesian people prefer to mention English terms rather than Indonesian ones only for commercial gains.
We are, however, still lucky as India, the Philippines and Singapore have not been capable of using their own languages. Thus, we should maintain our language wholeheartedly.
-- Media Indonesia, Jakarta
No room for a rub-out
The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, sounded inappropriately euphoric when he announced in Parliament on Monday that Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, a fugitive Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) bomb maker, had been shot dead in the southern Philippines. "While we are not a government that would encourage people to be assassinated," Downer said, "it is important to say that this is someone who has been responsible for a series of terrorist attacks."
Downer's use of the word assassinated will do nothing to dispel suspicions that al-Ghozi may have been killed not, as Manila alleges, in a gun battle with police at a road block but while being held in custody. Authorities in the Philippines have given conflicting accounts of how al-Ghozi died, feeding such speculation. In the colorful American gangland idiom employed by Frankie Evangelista, an anchorman for the Philippines' ABS-CBN news channel, "The circumstances of his death must be shown to have been justified, not contrived. A shoot-out, not a rub-out."
Australia has reason to be pleased that regional security forces are cracking down so effectively on JI. But Downer would have been well advised to adopt a more careful position. There are still many aspects of this case that are unclear. Al-Ghozi, an Indonesian jailed last year for 17 years for possessing explosives and falsifying documents, was also said to have been the man behind bombings that killed 22 people in Manila in 2000. He escaped from jail in July as the Prime Minister, John Howard, and the Philippines President, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, were meeting in Manila and hailing a new agreement targeting JI and other terrorist groups.
Did al-Ghozi bribe his jailers and walk out during the night, as seems most likely? Or is it possible he was allowed to believe that he engineered his escape when in fact it had been approved by security officials hoping he would lead them to still bigger fish. We might have had a clearer idea had al-Ghozi been brought before a court and his case dealt with by due process.
There is also a larger issue. If this has indeed been a "rub- out", it suggests that authorities in the Philippines and Indonesia are taking a significantly different approach to the issue of terrorism. The Indonesian police -- helped, it is true, by some foreign police and intelligence services -- have done a remarkable job in identifying and arresting key JI figures, as the detention of so many of the Bali bomb suspects, including the JI mastermind Hambali, makes clear. The open and fair trials of several of these men have been a welcome departure from earlier times, when the Indonesian army had the major responsibility in this area. Then torture and targeted killings were used as a matter of course.
Australia has welcomed Indonesia's embrace of modern police methods and punishment after due process in open court according to law. Downer should not be doing anything that could be construed as a friendly wink to possible killings in custody.
-- The Sydney Morning Herald