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