Magic expected during Johnson's matches in RI

Magic expected during Johnson's matches in RI

By Bruce Emond

JAKARTA (JP): Times have indeed changed for the better since
1994, when Earvin "Magic" Johnson was denied a visa to enter
Indonesia for an exhibition tour amid a media torrent focusing on
the basketball star's HIV status. The blitz, marked by lurid
speculation on Johnson's "risk" to others, was notable for a
singular lack of clarity in defining how the virus is actually
contracted.

Johnson should be applauded for coming to Indonesia,
particularly considering the frenzied reception which greeted his
previous proposed visit. He has been remarkably candid about how
he believes he contracted the disease (through promiscuous
heterosexual sex) and expressed his remorse about the danger he
put his wife in before they were married.

Despite lingering moral questions, Johnson puts a human face
on this disease for many Indonesians. (More than one analyst has
cited the irony of the public's almost reverential acceptance of
Johnson's admissions while any woman would have been branded a
whore for the same behavior).

Although ostensibly a basketball tour, Johnson's upcoming
visit to Indonesia may be championed by some as a positive sign
that sensitivity to the rights of people with HIV and AIDS is
growing in Indonesia. There is no doubt that awareness of the
disease has increased enormously in recent years following
increased activities conducted by both government and private
agencies. Witness the various forums from panel discussions to
art shows, held in conjunction with World AIDS Day on Dec. 1.

Awareness, however, does not necessarily translate into
tolerance or acceptance. Johnson's visit does not change the fact
that misconceptions prevail about this disease, particularly that
it cannot touch ordinary Indonesians.

Granted, Indonesia has come a long way from the AIDS "Dark
Ages" of the 1980s and early 1990s, when mention of the disease
was dismissed with a perfunctory "only gays get it" or an
overwhelming paranoia founded on ignorance about the disease.

A visit to an AIDS information center, tucked away in a
deserted corridor in one of Jakarta's oldest hospitals, would
yield little but a kaleidoscope of stomach-churning photos of
people with advanced stages of HIV infections. Inquiries about
the services on offer were for naught as the woman on duty
referred all questions to the head of the center.

Ignorance among all sectors of the public was astounding. A
gay man in his mid-40s, who worked as a guess relations manager
at a hotel, said he was not worried about AIDS. "I think it is
easier for European people to get this virus," he said earnestly.
"Indonesian people have hotter blood because we live in the
tropics and that will kill the virus."

Others would state confidently that the appearance of an
individual revealed his or her HIV status, or, barring the sight
inspection test, that a motley cocktail of orange juice,
vitamins, antibiotics and traditional medicine would ward off the
virus.

Some of the stories were heart-rending, such as that of the
lover of an expatriate man who had died of AIDS. The Indonesian
had moved back to his hometown, exiled by the loss of his friend
and the inhumanity of the treatment. Several years after the
incident his pain was still raw as he recounted seeing his
deathly ill friend for the last time as he was sent home to die,
how various authorities descended on the home they shared
together to destroy "unclean" items, and his own feelings of
having nobody to turn to in his grief.

Or there is the story of the expatriate teacher who contracted
pneumocytis carinni pneumonia. When his illness became known to
the authorities in his Central Java town, he was deported,
literally on his deathbed, and his family was forced to buy up a
row of seats on the airplane to allow him to rest on the long
journey back to the U.S.

For all the progress that is made in educating the public and
disseminating information about AIDS, several cases reveal that
much remains to be done in ending myths, even within the medical
community. Last August, a doctor was sanctioned at a major
Jakarta hospital for treating a person with AIDS.

These are the reasons why Magic Johnson's visit to Indonesia
should be feted.

Attractive, likable and articulate, Johnson destroys the
stereotypes of the weak, craven, individual or monster images
which have been a part of some of the more sensational AIDS
"misinformation" efforts in Indonesia.

Let us hope that the public sits up and listens to what
Johnson has to say about AIDS before the face of the disease
comes even closer to home.

The writer conducted informal research on AIDS information
programs in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand as a Thomas
Watson Fellow from 1991 to 1992.