The way Soga kissed Jenkins

Kornelius Purba, Jakarta

Many Japanese TV viewers, reportedly, were surprised at the way Hitomi Soga kissed her husband, Charles Jenkins, when they met at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on Friday, last week. For two years since her return to Japan, after her release in 2002 and 24 years after being abducted by North Korea, she normally appeared calm and quiet.

Soga, 45, looked a different person as soon as Jenkins, who allegedly deserted to North Korea as a U.S. army sergeant in 1965, descended from the airplane. In front of dozens of people, she hugged tightly her husband, whom, along with their two daughters, she had not seen since her return to her native home in Sado island, Japan. She kissed him passionately. After the hot kiss she hugged her two daughters, Mika, 21, and Belinda, 18.

"That was an American kiss, not a Japanese one. However, we must understand it is an international marriage," said a Japanese friend.

The emotion expressed by Soga when kissing her 64-year-old husband, however, indicates the much deeper and more serious feelings of a woman abducted by North Korean agents in 1978 when she was only 19 years old. Indonesians who are familiar with the often brutal treatment by police and military officers of ordinary citizens, especially during Soeharto's 32-year presidency, can easily imagine what Soga's suffering must have been like during her 24 years in North Korea.

She married Jenkins, who taught her English, in 1980. Her grief and physical suffering while living for years as an abductee under North Korean communist leaders -- who brutalized their own citizens, and, clearly, hate Japan for historic reasons -- is already beyond imagination.

"Japan also abducted thousands of Indonesians during World War II, and exploited them either as forced labor or sex slaves. That is why we also sympathize with Soga, regardless of your country's treatment of us in the past," an Indonesian friend reminded a Japanese scholar when they chatted about Soga this week.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is under severe public pressure to reunite the Jenkinses at any cost. Japanese people feel humiliated because the state is powerless to protect its own citizens from the criminal acts of a foreign country. Pyongyang has reportedly kidnapped dozens of Japanese citizens, many of whose whereabouts are still unknown.

But what is happening to us in Indonesia? Is the state able or willing to protect its citizens living abroad or in their own motherland?

For many years it has become routine to hear Indonesian housemaids working in the Middle East complain they were abused by their employers; some even became pregnant, allegedly after being raped there. Workers have been abused by the state from the moment of their recruitment -- the state issuing passports to underage women -- with it neglecting to protect uneducated migrant workers when they encounter trouble abroad.

Hundreds of thousands of our citizens who work illegally in Malaysia will be deported again. Reports of the treatment they have received by Malaysian police or immigration officials seem incapable of touching the consciences of our top leaders. President Megawati Soekarnoputri seemed to be deaf and blind when hundreds of thousands of workers were expelled from Malaysia in 2002.

Indonesian ministers are often upset when the government's stance is compared with that of the Philippines, which strongly protects its migrant workers. Perhaps they will describe as stupid the decision this week by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to consider withdrawing the country's 43 soldiers in Iraq in an attempt to save the life of truck driver Angelo de la Cruz.

What about the domestic situation? Hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom were innocent, were, in 1965, butchered or their whereabouts never heard of again after a coup attempt attributed to the Indonesian Communist Party. How many thousands of families are there that still do not know the fate of their beloved ones?

What has the state (not just the government) done to protect its citizens? The matter has been all but forgotten. How many alleged Muslim extremists were killed in Tanjung Priok, Jakarta, in Lampung and in other places during the Soeharto era, even though there is a belief that many of them wished simply to reclaim their stolen rights?

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people were killed during the May 1998 riots that occurred a few days before Soeharto decided to step down. To public disbelief, the people who were in charge of security said they did their best to protect citizens. Perhaps they want to blame God for their failure?

The state has an obligation to protect its citizens, no matter what background they have. In Poso, Central Sulawesi, and Maluku what has the state done to prevent Muslims and Christians from killing each other?

We cannot expect much from our leaders, including the incumbent president, Megawati. She seems to have no interest in seeking justice for people who sacrificed their lives for her after Soeharto ousted her as chairperson of the Indonesian Democratic Party in 1996.

For decades, the state continued to abuse Acehnese people who thought it would be better to separate from Indonesia, which, they felt, was acting more like a colonial power. Many people have lost their lives there, including Indonesian soldiers who were obliged by the state to treat their fellow countrymen as foreign enemies.

Who cares about the suffering of Acehnese people? Many Muslim groups here seem to think they have a greater obligation to take to the streets to protest at what they consider to be the brutal treatment of Iraqis by America.

They ignore the suffering of Acehnese Muslims, who are much closer to them. It would be more justified to continue defending the rights of Iraqis and Palestinians if we also showed a similarly hard stance against what many perceive to be the government's abusive treatment of devout Muslims in the province.

The way Soga kissed and hugged her husband reflected a much deeper thing. We would be very proud, as Indonesians, if the state kissed its citizens like that because that would mean it was not letting us suffer anymore.

Kornelius Purba (purba@thejakartapost.com) is a staff writer for The Jakarta Post.