Strength of criticism

The reason I made my Aug. 4 letter brief was to provide space for the pile of letters that were bound to arrive in response to Masli Arman's July 30 article on ethnic Chinese. My short message seems to have been misunderstood.

Calm down, Ms. Rahayu Ratnaningsih (Aug. 6). My letter was not a "defense" of Mr. Arman's views. But do we wish The Jakarta Post to become a one-viewpoint newspaper? The late John F. Kennedy once declared: "The unity in freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion."

For a more familiar quotation, try Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Perhaps that is what I was trying to get at.

In one way, I saw Mr. Masli Arman's article through Mahatma Gandhi's dictum that "Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err."

Other letter writers pointed out certain sentences in the article under discussion. When I requested Mr. Dean Boulding for elaboration, it could be that I was curious as to his personal thinking on our ethnic Chinese problem, no?

I ventured a look in the mirror and saw my paranoid, chauvinistic and anti-western face, filled with sinister ulterior motives.

Thank you for your opinion, Ms. Rahayu. I would never dream of censoring your views -- or in that case, Mr. Arman's.

To placate you, yes, I will admit I loathe pictures of cigarette-smoking cowboys everywhere around developing countries. Perhaps that is prejudice against westerners, but I must announce the fact I don't smoke, for reasons of health.

One last quotation, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, to end this letter: "The strength of criticism often relies on the sensitivity of the person being criticized."

FARID BASKORO

Jakarta