RI's shame won't blow away

RI's shame won't blow away

For weeks, Indonesian big business cleared forests for palm
oil cultivation, creating pollution that enshrouded neighboring
states, causing inestimable damage to the health of millions,
devastating agriculture and local economies alike.

In some parts of the region, Kuala Lumpur in particular, the
carcinogenic export from Indonesia had the same effect on human
lungs as smoking two packets of cigarettes a day.

It took weeks to extract any form of apology from the
administration of President Soeharto.

After trying to pin the blame of El Nio, an apology of sorts
came but without a pledge to stop the seasonal devastation of
forests. And so the region can expect varying degrees of airborne
delayed death next year too, and the year after that and the year
after that.

In Southeast Asia, nothing stands in the way when there is a
baht, a rupiah, a ringgit or whatever to be made. When the forest
fires were at their peak, Thailand and Malaysia offered to send
fire-fighting crews and equipment, such as planes to help contain
Indonesia's grotesque folly. Some of our ministers muttered about
demanding compensation from Jakarta, but nothing eventuated.

In Malaysia, where millions of people could not see the sun
and where thousands will, in years to come, develop health
problems as a direct result of the fires, the government seemed
forgiving.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that in the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations, governments can do precisely what
they want because they haveentered into an unwritten agreement
not to criticize one another.

The bottom line is that ASEAN governments can get away with
the most appalling treatment of their own people. There can be no
finer example of this cosy little arrangement (since the
admission of the Myanmarese dictatorship to ASEAN) than the
Indonesian forest fires.

Across the region, there are countless examples of profit
being put before people, all too often with the connivance of
government. It is abundantly clear that the region will be laid
to waste as long as governments remain enslaved to big business.

-- Bangkok Post