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