Pen's might

Pen's might

The People's Republic of China has pledged to Indonesia
medicine and food aid worth US$3 million, along with $200 million
in export credit facilities, to help us in our present economic
difficulties. So what's wrong with this new development, which
is, in essence, an act of friendship and solidarity between two
Asian nations?

On Feb. 11, 1998, the International Herald Tribune, that most
erudite of world daily newspapers, felt it necessary to play up
some Western analyst's view that China "might feel compelled to
deploy her navy to Indonesian territorial waters in order to
collect refugees and pressure Indonesia's leadership into
restraining anti-Chinese violence." The source of that statement?
Some highbrow in Chicago, half a world away from the Asian
region.

The same publication also suggested strongly in other issues
that the government was somehow behind the anti-Chinese riots of
past months, supposedly in order to deflect criticism from
itself. I thought at the time: Then why not start with the main
population centers such as Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung and Medan?
Why the minor, isolated towns?

The world's daily newspaper didn't give up, though. On Feb.
14, one over-enthusiastic editor gave a front page story the
subheading: Fresh unrest comes closer to the capital. Oh, wow. I
could imagine the next day, a gray-suited man in Paris
frantically e-mailing his reporter here: "Isn't Jakarta burning
yet? We can't hold the presses forever."

The mainland Chinese government knows full well that it does
not hold sway over Indonesian-Chinese minds. People of Chinese
descent here would know better where Jakarta's Jl. Pecenongan or
Semarang's Jl. Pemuda were than say, where Fuxingmenwai Avenue (a
major Beijing thoroughfare) is located. The crews of Chinese
naval vessels would have a hard time trying to communicate with
most Indonesian-Chinese.

Now, the worse seems to be over for our country. A sign of
this is that Indonesia has been off the front pages in many
overseas newspapers for the past few weeks.

It only goes to show that even when reading internationally
acclaimed newspapers, we should not let our minds shift to
"idle", but learn to think for ourselves.

I will end this letter by quoting what George Bernard Shaw
once wrote, which is very true: "Some journalists don't know the
difference between a bicycle accident and the end of the world."

FARID BASKORO

Jakarta