Saturday, November 27, 2010
Indonesia section of the report "TRUE COST OF COAL"
publication date: November 26, 2008
Full report: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/planet-2/report/2008/11/true-cost-of-coal.pdf
In 2006, the bustling industrial town of Cilacap was filled with optimism. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had announced the opening of a new coalfired power plant in the area. But despite the initial hope for local economic growth, the real cost to the Southeast Java town soon became shockingly clear.
The original aim of building the power plant was to encourage local economic growth. In turn, this would help expand Cilacap’s industrial area to around 2,000 hectares – more than ten times its former size.64 At the beginning of the project, the government watched proudly. The plant was delivering 600 megawatts of electricity to the Java- Bali electricity grid. Many new jobs had been created, causing a booming trade in building materials. Other locals earned money by renting their houses to construction engineers. Soon the reality hit home – and it all started with a black cloud of dust that covered the local town.
Alia is four and lives with her parents and two older siblings. An abandoned rice field is the only thing separating their home from the coal-fired power plant, 300 metres away. In the early days of the power plant being opened, Alia played happily with her friends outside her house. The only small sign of danger was the persistent coughing that all the children began to pick up.
It was an early sign of something far more serious: seven months ago, Alia was diagnosed with bronchitis. Her father has been affected, too. He worked at the plant for over a year, unloading the coal trucks without a breathing mask, inhaling the soot and fumes. Now he has lung spots.
Another local girl who suffers is three-year-old Safira. She’s small for her age and has had coughs and colds at least twice a month since she was born. Her mother, Rohimah, can’t afford to take her to the doctor. The only medication Safira gets is over-the-counter fever tablets and cough syrup.
Purwanto, a local doctor, told us: “A lack of nutrition caused many of the mothers in the area to be unable to nurse their children, reducing their babies’ resistance to infections. I have seen a shift to more cases of respiratory infections in children than adults in the area since the plant started operating.” 65 Purwanto is all too familiar with the suffering of children caused by the power station. He was forced to leave his own home in a nearby complex after two of his children developed bronchitis.
Air pollution
Unlike Purwanto, Imam Sarjono, a 59-year-old pensioner, chose to stay in his home. He worked hard to buy it for his retirement, after a long career as a warden in a high security prison. When he bought it, he was one of 200 buyers in the complex, all attracted by the prime location, fresh air, and distance from the hustle and bustle of the city centre.
Now, black soot covers Sarjono’s white orchids and the jasmine he planted in front of his house. Trees around the area have layers of black dust on their leaves. Dozens of people have been driven away by the coal dust and constant humming coming from the plant.
“We pay double our water bill to clean our houses. Dust keeps us sweeping the floors many times a day,” Sarjono tells us. “Many of my neighbours have moved away. Who can stand living like this?”
Job losses
The pollution from the plant has had a devastating effect on the ability of many to make a living from the land. About 12 hectares of productive rice fields in two villages were effectively ruined after the plant flooded them with a mixture of hot salt water and effluent from the plant. This incident forced one farmer, Noto, and his son off their land. Now, to earn money, they dig sand and transport it back to his village in a small boat. With a 10-hour day starting at 6 a.m. it’s backbreaking work just to fill a small truck. Noto’s tiny earnings are never more than about 80,000 rupiah a day, about US$8.67 Along with many of his neighbours, losing his rice field meant Noto had no choice. In fact, Noto and his son are among the lucky ones – many of his neighbours have no work at all.
A local uprising
The illnesses, pollution and deterioration in quality of life have taken their toll on the locals living near the power station. One day at dawn, in late 2005, the neighbourhood was woken by a loud noise from the plant. Residents said it sounded like a plane taking off nearby.
“The noise kept coming on and off every five minutes. We couldn’t even hear ourselves talking. Later we found out it was the plant cleaning their pipes,” said Sugriyatno, who also lives in the complex.68 The incident drove the people of the housing complex, and three surrounding villages, to gather together and protest about the many problems by the plant. They formed a committee so they could take their complaints to the local government and the power plant.
Sugriyatno, who led the effort, said: “We are negotiating compensation for the damage in the three villages and Griya Kencana Permai complex caused by the plant’s operation. There has been a lot of damage already. However, we are still hopeful that a positive solution will come out of this.” 69He also pointed out that the power plant’s owners had never showed sympathy or offered support to the neighbourhood they destroyed. The locals won’t back down; but neither, it seems, will the polluters.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/12/13/madeleine-habib-captain-courageous.html
Madeleine Habib: Captain Courageous
The Jakarta Post -- WEEKENDER | Sat, 12/13/2008
Madeleine Habib is the captain of the Esperanza, the 2,000-ton ship that is the biggest in the Greenpeace fleet. Nabiha Shahab, one of the few Indonesians ever invited aboard the vessel, sat down with the skipper during a recent voyage across the archipelago and learned of the Australian’s fond Indonesian connections.
I had imagined Madeleine Habib to appear older, unapproachable and hardened by years of sailing. But hers is a kind, easygoing demeanor.
She greeted me with a “Selamat datang” and a string of other Indonesian words. I was surprised, the standard amazement of an Indonesian hearing a bule slurring Indonesian words.
For a second I even forgot that she is Australian: I always underestimate how many Aussies are proficient in our language.
Madeleine picked up the language when she was living in the country for six months. After studying journalism, she was wondering what to do with her life.
“I was lucky enough to go sailing on a yacht for a week and then I realized that’s what I want to do,” says Madeleine, 42. “It’s the right combination of physical and mental challenge, it’s exciting, it’s outside, and I wanted to sail around the world.”
She packed her bags and went to sea, working on boats to earn money and then stopping off in a country. She says she was lucky to learn the ropes on yachts, which required doing a bit of everything, from work on deck to preparing meals. All the while she held the dream of working for Greenpeace one day.
“In 1994, I flew into Kupang and I wanted to learn to surf. In Kupang, I saw an Australian guy with a surfboard. I asked him where he’s going and he said he’s going to Rote, so I went there.”
The Tasmanian native learned firsthand about daily life in an Indonesian community.
“I stayed with a family who lived on the beach at Nambrela. For me it was a very interesting insight into village life in Indonesia and I really enjoyed going with the women every day to the well to get the water every day and learn to balance the buckets on my shoulders on the bamboo pole,” she says.
“They had a beautiful place that they would go. It was like a freshwater spring inside a cave; there was where the ladies use to go to bathe. I had very long hair at the time and the young girls always liked to brush my hair and they called me Rambut Mie or noodle hair because I had curly hair.
“I was there during Christmas that year. We were invited to go to church on Christmas Eve and I said it would be nice if we could sing a song so we learned to sing ‘Selamat Hari Natal dan Tahun Baru’, the Indonesian version of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’.”
She stayed there for a month and continued her surfing quest to Nias in North Sumatra. She ventured out to the small islands off the coast of Nias and stayed for three months, surfing every day.
“I was speaking Bahasa every day and really enjoying the company of the local people,” she says.
After breaking her surfboard for the second time, Madeleine bought herself a bicycle and decided to cycle through northern Sumatra.
“Sumatra has a mythical quality around the world; it’s like the Amazon, the wild jungle place that people hear about. I was fascinated with the idea of traveling through Sumatra.”
She started from Sibolga, rode up to Lake Toba and found her way up to the Gunung Leuser National Park.
“I met the ranger and asked directions for the next village, and he invited me to stay at the ranger station. There was another person there, a scientist who was studying apes.
“I went with the ranger and the scientist up to some remote places in the mountains for three or four nights. They were doing a wildlife survey and I was part of that. It was raining a lot.
“One morning I looked up to see an orangutan spread-eagled in the canopy of trees that bridged the road. It was silhouetted against the sky with a halo of orange fur glowing in the morning sun. I stood for ages watching the true ‘man of the forest’ moving thought the trees and vines. It made me realize how precious these forests are.
“The hike was tough, lots of leeches, muddy and wet. There was little food and it was difficult to light a fire. I was quite glad to get back at the ranger station.”
Madeleine continued her journey up to Banda Aceh and cycled back south, down the coast back to Medan and then up through Malaysia into Thailand.
I asked her whether she had encountered any problems traveling as a lone woman.
“You have to be conscious of the fact that you are outside your own culture, and respect that culture. It was quite surprising for local people to see someone on a bicycle by themselves. But I found that as long as I tried to approach family groups or women, people were always hospitable.
“I usually stayed with families because I was in places that were too small to have any kind of accommodation. No, I didn’t have problems. I tried to dress respectfully. I had a sarong on the back of my bike, so whenever I stopped even for a minute, I put on my sarong,” she says.
“I would say that the reception was much more friendly than dangerous on every occasion.”
Later, in Thailand, Madeleine worked for a private yacht that was a replica of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior. The skipper, Peter Willcox, was captain of the Rainbow Warrior when it was bombed by French agents in 1985.
“Finally, after maybe eight years of applying, I got a job with Greenpeace,” she says. “The Rainbow Warrior was my first Greenpeace ship; I started as third mate on that ship.
“We were going to Mururoa atoll to protest nuclear testing. My first action was to drive an inflatable boat into a nuclear test site in the middle of the Pacific. We’re surrounded by French navy, a really powerful military force. I had to set out in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the night, 20 miles from the nearest land and the nearest land is a nuclear test site.
“I drove a boat off into the darkness, found my way across the reef and climbed up on a drilling rig where they were going to do a nuclear test. It was totally my childhood fantasy. Although we didn’t stop every nuclear test I think it certainly brought the nuclear testing issue to the front pages of the world news.”
The surfing and cycling trip was the last time Madeleine was in Indonesia but she was later involved in the tsunami relief effort, based in Langkawi in neighboring Malaysia.
“I was working for a group called Waves of Mercy. We were sending supplies to Pulau Weh where there was a very large refugee camp. Because it wasn’t on the main island, Pulau Weh had a massive population of people and it wasn’t getting very many services.
“We were sending supplies directly from Malaysia. That made me feel very close to Indonesia again.”
Now she is crossing the country on the Esperanza, from the very eastern tip of Indonesia all the way to Sumatra.
“I’m very happy to be back in the country.”
Madeleine Habib: Captain Courageous
The Jakarta Post -- WEEKENDER | Sat, 12/13/2008
Madeleine Habib is the captain of the Esperanza, the 2,000-ton ship that is the biggest in the Greenpeace fleet. Nabiha Shahab, one of the few Indonesians ever invited aboard the vessel, sat down with the skipper during a recent voyage across the archipelago and learned of the Australian’s fond Indonesian connections.
I had imagined Madeleine Habib to appear older, unapproachable and hardened by years of sailing. But hers is a kind, easygoing demeanor.
She greeted me with a “Selamat datang” and a string of other Indonesian words. I was surprised, the standard amazement of an Indonesian hearing a bule slurring Indonesian words.
For a second I even forgot that she is Australian: I always underestimate how many Aussies are proficient in our language.
Madeleine picked up the language when she was living in the country for six months. After studying journalism, she was wondering what to do with her life.
“I was lucky enough to go sailing on a yacht for a week and then I realized that’s what I want to do,” says Madeleine, 42. “It’s the right combination of physical and mental challenge, it’s exciting, it’s outside, and I wanted to sail around the world.”
She packed her bags and went to sea, working on boats to earn money and then stopping off in a country. She says she was lucky to learn the ropes on yachts, which required doing a bit of everything, from work on deck to preparing meals. All the while she held the dream of working for Greenpeace one day.
“In 1994, I flew into Kupang and I wanted to learn to surf. In Kupang, I saw an Australian guy with a surfboard. I asked him where he’s going and he said he’s going to Rote, so I went there.”
The Tasmanian native learned firsthand about daily life in an Indonesian community.
“I stayed with a family who lived on the beach at Nambrela. For me it was a very interesting insight into village life in Indonesia and I really enjoyed going with the women every day to the well to get the water every day and learn to balance the buckets on my shoulders on the bamboo pole,” she says.
“They had a beautiful place that they would go. It was like a freshwater spring inside a cave; there was where the ladies use to go to bathe. I had very long hair at the time and the young girls always liked to brush my hair and they called me Rambut Mie or noodle hair because I had curly hair.
“I was there during Christmas that year. We were invited to go to church on Christmas Eve and I said it would be nice if we could sing a song so we learned to sing ‘Selamat Hari Natal dan Tahun Baru’, the Indonesian version of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’.”
She stayed there for a month and continued her surfing quest to Nias in North Sumatra. She ventured out to the small islands off the coast of Nias and stayed for three months, surfing every day.
“I was speaking Bahasa every day and really enjoying the company of the local people,” she says.
After breaking her surfboard for the second time, Madeleine bought herself a bicycle and decided to cycle through northern Sumatra.
“Sumatra has a mythical quality around the world; it’s like the Amazon, the wild jungle place that people hear about. I was fascinated with the idea of traveling through Sumatra.”
She started from Sibolga, rode up to Lake Toba and found her way up to the Gunung Leuser National Park.
“I met the ranger and asked directions for the next village, and he invited me to stay at the ranger station. There was another person there, a scientist who was studying apes.
“I went with the ranger and the scientist up to some remote places in the mountains for three or four nights. They were doing a wildlife survey and I was part of that. It was raining a lot.
“One morning I looked up to see an orangutan spread-eagled in the canopy of trees that bridged the road. It was silhouetted against the sky with a halo of orange fur glowing in the morning sun. I stood for ages watching the true ‘man of the forest’ moving thought the trees and vines. It made me realize how precious these forests are.
“The hike was tough, lots of leeches, muddy and wet. There was little food and it was difficult to light a fire. I was quite glad to get back at the ranger station.”
Madeleine continued her journey up to Banda Aceh and cycled back south, down the coast back to Medan and then up through Malaysia into Thailand.
I asked her whether she had encountered any problems traveling as a lone woman.
“You have to be conscious of the fact that you are outside your own culture, and respect that culture. It was quite surprising for local people to see someone on a bicycle by themselves. But I found that as long as I tried to approach family groups or women, people were always hospitable.
“I usually stayed with families because I was in places that were too small to have any kind of accommodation. No, I didn’t have problems. I tried to dress respectfully. I had a sarong on the back of my bike, so whenever I stopped even for a minute, I put on my sarong,” she says.
“I would say that the reception was much more friendly than dangerous on every occasion.”
Later, in Thailand, Madeleine worked for a private yacht that was a replica of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior. The skipper, Peter Willcox, was captain of the Rainbow Warrior when it was bombed by French agents in 1985.
“Finally, after maybe eight years of applying, I got a job with Greenpeace,” she says. “The Rainbow Warrior was my first Greenpeace ship; I started as third mate on that ship.
“We were going to Mururoa atoll to protest nuclear testing. My first action was to drive an inflatable boat into a nuclear test site in the middle of the Pacific. We’re surrounded by French navy, a really powerful military force. I had to set out in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the night, 20 miles from the nearest land and the nearest land is a nuclear test site.
“I drove a boat off into the darkness, found my way across the reef and climbed up on a drilling rig where they were going to do a nuclear test. It was totally my childhood fantasy. Although we didn’t stop every nuclear test I think it certainly brought the nuclear testing issue to the front pages of the world news.”
The surfing and cycling trip was the last time Madeleine was in Indonesia but she was later involved in the tsunami relief effort, based in Langkawi in neighboring Malaysia.
“I was working for a group called Waves of Mercy. We were sending supplies to Pulau Weh where there was a very large refugee camp. Because it wasn’t on the main island, Pulau Weh had a massive population of people and it wasn’t getting very many services.
“We were sending supplies directly from Malaysia. That made me feel very close to Indonesia again.”
Now she is crossing the country on the Esperanza, from the very eastern tip of Indonesia all the way to Sumatra.
“I’m very happy to be back in the country.”
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/09/23/hok-soebagio-a-balanced-life.html
Hok Soebagio: A Balanced Life
The Jakarta Post - WEEKENDER | Tue, 09/23/2008
Jakarta resident Hok Soebagio, 60, is married with a son. Raised a Catholic but a self-described “rebel” who disliked the rituals of religion, he now practices Falun Gong. By Nabiha Shahab
After retiring early at the age of 50, I felt my body starting to age. In the morning my arms would ache and it scared me. I thought, if I don’t do something I will live my parents’ life and spend my old age with a stroke or a heart attack.
I had to find an alternative way of living, a more spiritual life. At first, I started to learn health meditation; I even went to Bali to learn about it. I tried doing yoga and also Buddhist meditation, vipasana. In the course of doing vipasana, I met a Chinese-American assistant instructor who told me about his plan to spread his teachings in mainland China. He mentioned at the time that they had to be careful because there was currently suppression of another spiritual movement called Falun Gong. That was around 1999. A few months later, the instructor came back to Indonesia and called us, his meditation students, for a reunion.
The gathering was to take place in a bookstore. I was about an hour early and I went inside the bookstore to kill time. I don’t know whether it was fate, but I saw this book, Zhuan Falun. It sounded like the movement I had been hearing about, Falun Gong. I was curious but the book was sealed, and I couldn’t peek inside. It was a bit expensive for a spiritual book, I thought. I put it down and walked away.
But something pulled me back, I hesitated and picked up the book but then put it down again. I walked away three times before I finally decided to buy it.
I read the book in three days. It was interesting but difficult to understand. It was like a folk story, like a fairy tale about the gods’ world, out of this world. I wondered how to practice the exercises: there were no instructions in the book. So I called their office in Jakarta and they told me they would teach me how to practice and meditate.
After a while, I stopped doing yoga and concentrated on meditation, and then decided to practice Falun Gong only. I became active in the organization, although there is no hierarchy in Falun Gong. You can say I was active on the streets, because I initiated the demonstrations we did in front of the Chinese Embassy here.
When we first planned to stage a protest about two years ago by meditating in front of the embassy, I received harassing phone calls, demanding that I cancel the demonstration or I would be shot. Another caller threatened to bomb my house. My wife was very scared, and after a while she disconnected our phone so the ringing would stop. She begged me to cancel the plan. I said I would only stop if nature wanted me to.
It rained very hard the night before the demo. My wife prayed for it to keep raining the next day. But in the morning, the sky was clear. For me, it was a sign to keep going. I meditated by myself in front of the Chinese Embassy in the beginning, and then more friends joined me. There were police all over with firearms. I was not afraid. This is my choice and I had to do it for Falun Gong.
Now, the police understand what we do, that we are peaceful and nonviolent. There has been no more harassment. In Indonesia, I estimate there are a few thousand people practicing Falun Gong, mostly in Bali. Some people study a while and practice by themselves at home, so it is difficult to tell exactly how many people are actively practicing.
Falun Gong is not a religion, so there are no rituals. It’s free. It all made sense to me. The universal law of nature is analyzed in Zhuan Falun. Everything that I learned from other teachings suddenly made sense. For instance, I used to read the Bible, and by understanding nature’s principles, now I understand what the things mentioned in the Bible meant. Zhuan Falun contains everything, from the very basic philosophy up to a sophisticated level. You have to read the book many times (for a full understanding).
Another example is how in other teachings we are taught to be patient. In Christianity, if you are hit on the left cheek, then you should give your right cheek, that’s about it. Here, it is explained what really is happening when you are hit by another person, and what will happen if we strike back. In another dimension it is all balanced, like karma.
I don’t eat meat anymore. Although there is no specific prohibition from eating meat, after studying Falun Gong it is something that comes naturally. I try to avoid taking any lives, however small they are. The bigger the life you take, the bigger the karma will be.
About a year after I started practicing Falun Gong, I was cleaning the gutter in front of my house and as I was dredging the garbage to the side of the street, a lot of larvae from the water was also taken out. My chickens ate the larvae, and after that they started laying eggs like never before. However, at the same time my feet started to ache whenever I meditated, and it kept getting worse. In the beginning I didn’t think it had anything to do with me taking so many lives.
The bad or good things we do in time will manifest in this material world. If I do good today to one person, I may get a good thing some day in return from another person. This is also true for bad things. It could come back to you after three months or three years, tomorrow or next year.
Photo by Nadrah Shahab
Hok Soebagio: A Balanced Life
The Jakarta Post - WEEKENDER | Tue, 09/23/2008
Jakarta resident Hok Soebagio, 60, is married with a son. Raised a Catholic but a self-described “rebel” who disliked the rituals of religion, he now practices Falun Gong. By Nabiha Shahab
After retiring early at the age of 50, I felt my body starting to age. In the morning my arms would ache and it scared me. I thought, if I don’t do something I will live my parents’ life and spend my old age with a stroke or a heart attack.
I had to find an alternative way of living, a more spiritual life. At first, I started to learn health meditation; I even went to Bali to learn about it. I tried doing yoga and also Buddhist meditation, vipasana. In the course of doing vipasana, I met a Chinese-American assistant instructor who told me about his plan to spread his teachings in mainland China. He mentioned at the time that they had to be careful because there was currently suppression of another spiritual movement called Falun Gong. That was around 1999. A few months later, the instructor came back to Indonesia and called us, his meditation students, for a reunion.
The gathering was to take place in a bookstore. I was about an hour early and I went inside the bookstore to kill time. I don’t know whether it was fate, but I saw this book, Zhuan Falun. It sounded like the movement I had been hearing about, Falun Gong. I was curious but the book was sealed, and I couldn’t peek inside. It was a bit expensive for a spiritual book, I thought. I put it down and walked away.
But something pulled me back, I hesitated and picked up the book but then put it down again. I walked away three times before I finally decided to buy it.
I read the book in three days. It was interesting but difficult to understand. It was like a folk story, like a fairy tale about the gods’ world, out of this world. I wondered how to practice the exercises: there were no instructions in the book. So I called their office in Jakarta and they told me they would teach me how to practice and meditate.
After a while, I stopped doing yoga and concentrated on meditation, and then decided to practice Falun Gong only. I became active in the organization, although there is no hierarchy in Falun Gong. You can say I was active on the streets, because I initiated the demonstrations we did in front of the Chinese Embassy here.
When we first planned to stage a protest about two years ago by meditating in front of the embassy, I received harassing phone calls, demanding that I cancel the demonstration or I would be shot. Another caller threatened to bomb my house. My wife was very scared, and after a while she disconnected our phone so the ringing would stop. She begged me to cancel the plan. I said I would only stop if nature wanted me to.
It rained very hard the night before the demo. My wife prayed for it to keep raining the next day. But in the morning, the sky was clear. For me, it was a sign to keep going. I meditated by myself in front of the Chinese Embassy in the beginning, and then more friends joined me. There were police all over with firearms. I was not afraid. This is my choice and I had to do it for Falun Gong.
Now, the police understand what we do, that we are peaceful and nonviolent. There has been no more harassment. In Indonesia, I estimate there are a few thousand people practicing Falun Gong, mostly in Bali. Some people study a while and practice by themselves at home, so it is difficult to tell exactly how many people are actively practicing.
Falun Gong is not a religion, so there are no rituals. It’s free. It all made sense to me. The universal law of nature is analyzed in Zhuan Falun. Everything that I learned from other teachings suddenly made sense. For instance, I used to read the Bible, and by understanding nature’s principles, now I understand what the things mentioned in the Bible meant. Zhuan Falun contains everything, from the very basic philosophy up to a sophisticated level. You have to read the book many times (for a full understanding).
Another example is how in other teachings we are taught to be patient. In Christianity, if you are hit on the left cheek, then you should give your right cheek, that’s about it. Here, it is explained what really is happening when you are hit by another person, and what will happen if we strike back. In another dimension it is all balanced, like karma.
I don’t eat meat anymore. Although there is no specific prohibition from eating meat, after studying Falun Gong it is something that comes naturally. I try to avoid taking any lives, however small they are. The bigger the life you take, the bigger the karma will be.
About a year after I started practicing Falun Gong, I was cleaning the gutter in front of my house and as I was dredging the garbage to the side of the street, a lot of larvae from the water was also taken out. My chickens ate the larvae, and after that they started laying eggs like never before. However, at the same time my feet started to ache whenever I meditated, and it kept getting worse. In the beginning I didn’t think it had anything to do with me taking so many lives.
The bad or good things we do in time will manifest in this material world. If I do good today to one person, I may get a good thing some day in return from another person. This is also true for bad things. It could come back to you after three months or three years, tomorrow or next year.
Photo by Nadrah Shahab
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/09/23/laine-berman-living-harmony.html
Laine Berman: Living in Harmony
The Jakarta Post - WEEKENDER | Tue, 09/23/2008
Most of us “inherit” our religion or set of values from our families. But others don’t find the belief system that works for them until later in life. Nabiha Shahab reports.
Laine Berman, 53, is an American citizen now based in Yogyakarta. She is married to an Indonesian. She follows the traditional Javanese spiritual practice of kejawen.
I grew up in New York City and London, very much a city girl. I was never brought up in any faith at all: my parents were nonbelievers and hadn’t been brought up with religion themselves. So whatever we found, we basically had to do it on our own.
I came across kejawen in the early 1990s when I came here to do research on the Javanese language. I have been living in Indonesia on and off since my late 20s. After getting my research visa, I had to report to different offices. I remember reporting at this one village office and the chief just automatically assumed that since I was an expat and I spoke Javanese that I must be into gamelan.
I actually did play in the Indonesian Embassy gamelan in Washington DC. I was a pesinden (a female singer with the gamelan orchestra), because it was a great way to learn more Javanese. Then the village chief said that I needed to meet Ibu Lindur, the head pesinden in the palace at the time. She had been a member of the court since she was 12 and a pesinden her entire life.
She wasn’t exactly what I expected. She was probably about 80 years old and very tiny. She ended up becoming my adopted mother for the entire time I was here and she invited me into the palace as one of the pesinden trainees. At first it was an opportunity I jumped at for my research, but then it very much became a way of life. I was very fortunate in that respect.
I did all my interviews in Javanese, because if people realized that I spoke Indonesian, that’s the language they’d use. So I basically told people I couldn’t speak any Indonesian and only spoke Javanese. It worked. Within a couple of months my Javanese was fluent.
My time with Ibu Lindur in the palace was the highlight of my life, and it’s pretty much one of the only periods of my life that I look back on and I really miss. Ibu Lindur was very old at this point, and she didn’t really live in the mundane world anymore. She would talk with spirits in the spirit world.
When I was in the palace, it was early in the reign of the current sultan. There was still a very, very strong sense of belief in the palace, which has now dissipated somewhat.
In those days, with the other people employed in the palace, we would follow all the rituals; they were very much part of our daily life. I use to fast every Monday and Thursday, and on Fridays I would bicycle down to Kotagede and semedhi, and meditate by the grave of Panembahan Senopati with the palace employees. We would go to different places depending on the day of the week.
And I spent at least one night every week sleeping at the cemetery behind the Adisucipto airport.
People usually think members of the court are related to the sultan and they are high class, wealthy people. This is not the case. There were women in the palace who had never owned a pair of shoes. They would get up really early in the morning to finish up whatever they needed to do in the house and then walk to the palace barefoot, and did this pretty much as a ritual for life. These were fabulous people; I learned so much from them.
A lot of the things that I learned from them are things that are related to Javanese philosophy. In essence, going through life being totally open to feelings, thoughts, ideas, patterns, nature – and accepting things for what they are. It’s not helplessness at all, although a lot of people can see it that way.
A lot of people use kejawen as a way to distance themselves from the real world. Maybe it’s because the people I studied under were so poor and so much part of the physical world that I learned to see it as very much a part of being in the world and not out of it. It taught me to care more, to not look at cruelty and ignore it. I ended up really being involved in a lot of social issues in town.
I must admit, though, the whole aspect of kejawen is something that I don’t really follow the way I used to anymore. It used to be very much the central part of my life. I find it’s a lot harder to take part in the classical rituals, like the Jemuah Kliwonan and Pareng Kusumo. I find that all of the so-called sacred sites have been usurped in a way for economic purposes.
Jogja has changed. It’s become such an economic center rather than a cultural center. And I think what’s referred to as culture is also being transformed into just cultural tourism, rather than something that’s authentic. But I still find that when you hang out with poor people, just the wong cilik (ordinary people), there is still that strong sense of spiritualism and authenticity that I really appreciate.
What I learned from kejawen is to respect every single person I meet whether or not they’ve been to school. The thing that I learned from the people at court – most of them from backgrounds as poor farmers – is how they all live a daily life that is very much in harmony with nature. The idea that every living object has a kind of a spirit – plants, the environmental aspects of it – I follow very, very strongly.
I have become a sort of a militant environmentalist. I do my own composting, I recycle all of my rubbish. People turn to look for power in wealth rather than quality of life, they hold on to slogans rather than thoughts, while what I learned from kejawen is pasrah (total acceptance).
I’m proud that I don’t have to go to the market for food, I grow my own food. And how to live by example instead of hypocrisy. How to respect the wind, respect the rain, respect the weather. How to respect the water: I’m not going to waste water because it’s not a renewable resource.
I still meditate on a daily basis; I do yoga in the garden. I’ll get up at sunrise and breathe really deeply, when the air is still so clean and I can just feel the wind embrace me while everything is still so quiet.
Photo by Tarko Sudiarno
Laine Berman: Living in Harmony
The Jakarta Post - WEEKENDER | Tue, 09/23/2008
Most of us “inherit” our religion or set of values from our families. But others don’t find the belief system that works for them until later in life. Nabiha Shahab reports.
Laine Berman, 53, is an American citizen now based in Yogyakarta. She is married to an Indonesian. She follows the traditional Javanese spiritual practice of kejawen.
I grew up in New York City and London, very much a city girl. I was never brought up in any faith at all: my parents were nonbelievers and hadn’t been brought up with religion themselves. So whatever we found, we basically had to do it on our own.
I came across kejawen in the early 1990s when I came here to do research on the Javanese language. I have been living in Indonesia on and off since my late 20s. After getting my research visa, I had to report to different offices. I remember reporting at this one village office and the chief just automatically assumed that since I was an expat and I spoke Javanese that I must be into gamelan.
I actually did play in the Indonesian Embassy gamelan in Washington DC. I was a pesinden (a female singer with the gamelan orchestra), because it was a great way to learn more Javanese. Then the village chief said that I needed to meet Ibu Lindur, the head pesinden in the palace at the time. She had been a member of the court since she was 12 and a pesinden her entire life.
She wasn’t exactly what I expected. She was probably about 80 years old and very tiny. She ended up becoming my adopted mother for the entire time I was here and she invited me into the palace as one of the pesinden trainees. At first it was an opportunity I jumped at for my research, but then it very much became a way of life. I was very fortunate in that respect.
I did all my interviews in Javanese, because if people realized that I spoke Indonesian, that’s the language they’d use. So I basically told people I couldn’t speak any Indonesian and only spoke Javanese. It worked. Within a couple of months my Javanese was fluent.
My time with Ibu Lindur in the palace was the highlight of my life, and it’s pretty much one of the only periods of my life that I look back on and I really miss. Ibu Lindur was very old at this point, and she didn’t really live in the mundane world anymore. She would talk with spirits in the spirit world.
When I was in the palace, it was early in the reign of the current sultan. There was still a very, very strong sense of belief in the palace, which has now dissipated somewhat.
In those days, with the other people employed in the palace, we would follow all the rituals; they were very much part of our daily life. I use to fast every Monday and Thursday, and on Fridays I would bicycle down to Kotagede and semedhi, and meditate by the grave of Panembahan Senopati with the palace employees. We would go to different places depending on the day of the week.
And I spent at least one night every week sleeping at the cemetery behind the Adisucipto airport.
People usually think members of the court are related to the sultan and they are high class, wealthy people. This is not the case. There were women in the palace who had never owned a pair of shoes. They would get up really early in the morning to finish up whatever they needed to do in the house and then walk to the palace barefoot, and did this pretty much as a ritual for life. These were fabulous people; I learned so much from them.
A lot of the things that I learned from them are things that are related to Javanese philosophy. In essence, going through life being totally open to feelings, thoughts, ideas, patterns, nature – and accepting things for what they are. It’s not helplessness at all, although a lot of people can see it that way.
A lot of people use kejawen as a way to distance themselves from the real world. Maybe it’s because the people I studied under were so poor and so much part of the physical world that I learned to see it as very much a part of being in the world and not out of it. It taught me to care more, to not look at cruelty and ignore it. I ended up really being involved in a lot of social issues in town.
I must admit, though, the whole aspect of kejawen is something that I don’t really follow the way I used to anymore. It used to be very much the central part of my life. I find it’s a lot harder to take part in the classical rituals, like the Jemuah Kliwonan and Pareng Kusumo. I find that all of the so-called sacred sites have been usurped in a way for economic purposes.
Jogja has changed. It’s become such an economic center rather than a cultural center. And I think what’s referred to as culture is also being transformed into just cultural tourism, rather than something that’s authentic. But I still find that when you hang out with poor people, just the wong cilik (ordinary people), there is still that strong sense of spiritualism and authenticity that I really appreciate.
What I learned from kejawen is to respect every single person I meet whether or not they’ve been to school. The thing that I learned from the people at court – most of them from backgrounds as poor farmers – is how they all live a daily life that is very much in harmony with nature. The idea that every living object has a kind of a spirit – plants, the environmental aspects of it – I follow very, very strongly.
I have become a sort of a militant environmentalist. I do my own composting, I recycle all of my rubbish. People turn to look for power in wealth rather than quality of life, they hold on to slogans rather than thoughts, while what I learned from kejawen is pasrah (total acceptance).
I’m proud that I don’t have to go to the market for food, I grow my own food. And how to live by example instead of hypocrisy. How to respect the wind, respect the rain, respect the weather. How to respect the water: I’m not going to waste water because it’s not a renewable resource.
I still meditate on a daily basis; I do yoga in the garden. I’ll get up at sunrise and breathe really deeply, when the air is still so clean and I can just feel the wind embrace me while everything is still so quiet.
Photo by Tarko Sudiarno
Monday, February 22, 2010
url: http://www.developments.org.uk/articles/exchange-of-fire
Exchange of fire
Thousands of former female fighters sidelined by Aceh’s peace process are getting business start-up packages, helping them to play a full part in the region’s economic recovery. Report by Nabiha Shahab.
Banda Aceh at a glance looks no different from other provincial capitals in Indonesia. It is a bustling, colourful city filled with traditional shops and buzzing with tricycle taxis. A closer look reveals the ruins from the Indian Ocean tsunami, a legacy of the massive disaster in 2004 which claimed around 230,000 lives.
Aceh, the westernmost province of Indonesia is now at peace after decades of conflict. On 15 August, 2005, in the aftermath of the tsunami, the Indonesian government and the separatist Free Aceh Movement signed an accord in Helsinki ending 30 years of armed conflict. The predominantly Muslim province is now led by a former member of the resistance and the government’s focus is on reconciliation and economic growth.
In any conflict women, children and the elderly are caught in the crossfire. However, thousands of Acehnese women joined their men, some as informants and couriers, some to carry arms and fight battles. Asmanidar is 32 and a former fighter. She became a commander in the resistance 10 years ago, and used her parents’ brick factory as a meeting place for her fighter friends. "We cooked and got supplies for our friends in the hills, but never in our homes," she says, "as the authorities already suspected our involvement".
Asmanidar met her husband, also a fighter, during the conflict but she didn’t follow him when he gave himself up before the peace agreement was signed in 2005. Like many former female fighters, she was left out of the initial phase of reintegration. However, last year, Asmanidar started looking after her neighbour’s goats. When she heard there was an opportunity for former female fighters to receive European Commission aid, she asked for more goats of her own. Today her three children and eight goats spring around her feet. "All three of my children are a handful," she says. "But for their sake I want to be a successful goat trader, maybe next time you come here I will be a goat trading boss and have 80 goats instead of eight."
A few kilometres away, Rais Naiyah, a young mother of 23, says she was only 12 when she became an informant for the Free Aceh Movement. Her task was to buy clothes, medicine and other provisions for the fighters. As a schoolgirl, at first it was easy enough to pass through security without suspicion, but one day Rais was caught. The authorities didn’t have enough proof to convict her and she fled to Peurelak in the south to work as a housemaid. Now back in Aceh, Rais looks after her sixmonth- old daughter and, together with her husband, runs a motorcycle repair business. "We just moved our shop to this new spot and more people drop by to repair their motorcycles," she explains. "The EC aid helped a lot to complete our shop. I requested tyres, oil and other items. Now if people need tyres, we have them in stock."
Rais and Asmanidar are two of more than 2,000 beneficiaries of a livelihood programme run by the NGO Terre des Hommes, Italy. They distribute aid to female ex-combatants, especially those who did not receive aid after peace was brokered in 2005. "Most women included in this project did not have a livelihood, many are illiterate so without the assistance they would not be engaged in any income generating activities", says Akira Moretto, programme officer at Terre des Hommes.
According to the UN’s women’s agency UNIFEM, it is common for former women fighters to be undervalued or ignored during peacetime. "Reintegration of women ex-combatants is a crucial component for the stability of the peace process," says Moretto, "as women hold an important role in households, in supporting husbands, and the wider communities they live in." In spite of improvements to Aceh’s infrastructure following the tsunami, distributing the aid was no easy task, because many of the women live far from each other in remote areas. The project covers an area larger than the Netherlands and Luxembourg combined. The women will receive training in developing their business plans and they will also be linked up with local microfinancing institutions. "It is important for the women to be able to keep a record of their business. They have to understand that we will not be here for ever and they have to be able to develop their business on their own," says Moretto.
Indonesia
Population 228.8 million Average life expectancy 70 years Average per capita income $3,580
Indonesia includes many ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups and sectarian tensions and separatism have led to violent confrontations undermining stability. With a substantial part of the world’s untapped resources in energy, minerals and agriculture, prosperity has risen for many in recent decades, but more than half the population live below the international poverty line. Indonesia is also dealing with the effects of the massive tsunami in 2004 and two major earthquakes.
Find out more at www.dfid.gov.uk/indonesia
Breakdown & recovery
A visible path to peace
"Reintegration of women ex-combatants is a crucial component for the stability of the peace process - as women hold an important role in households, in supporting husbands, and the wider communities they live in."
Exchange of fire
Thousands of former female fighters sidelined by Aceh’s peace process are getting business start-up packages, helping them to play a full part in the region’s economic recovery. Report by Nabiha Shahab.
Banda Aceh at a glance looks no different from other provincial capitals in Indonesia. It is a bustling, colourful city filled with traditional shops and buzzing with tricycle taxis. A closer look reveals the ruins from the Indian Ocean tsunami, a legacy of the massive disaster in 2004 which claimed around 230,000 lives.
Aceh, the westernmost province of Indonesia is now at peace after decades of conflict. On 15 August, 2005, in the aftermath of the tsunami, the Indonesian government and the separatist Free Aceh Movement signed an accord in Helsinki ending 30 years of armed conflict. The predominantly Muslim province is now led by a former member of the resistance and the government’s focus is on reconciliation and economic growth.
In any conflict women, children and the elderly are caught in the crossfire. However, thousands of Acehnese women joined their men, some as informants and couriers, some to carry arms and fight battles. Asmanidar is 32 and a former fighter. She became a commander in the resistance 10 years ago, and used her parents’ brick factory as a meeting place for her fighter friends. "We cooked and got supplies for our friends in the hills, but never in our homes," she says, "as the authorities already suspected our involvement".
Asmanidar met her husband, also a fighter, during the conflict but she didn’t follow him when he gave himself up before the peace agreement was signed in 2005. Like many former female fighters, she was left out of the initial phase of reintegration. However, last year, Asmanidar started looking after her neighbour’s goats. When she heard there was an opportunity for former female fighters to receive European Commission aid, she asked for more goats of her own. Today her three children and eight goats spring around her feet. "All three of my children are a handful," she says. "But for their sake I want to be a successful goat trader, maybe next time you come here I will be a goat trading boss and have 80 goats instead of eight."
A few kilometres away, Rais Naiyah, a young mother of 23, says she was only 12 when she became an informant for the Free Aceh Movement. Her task was to buy clothes, medicine and other provisions for the fighters. As a schoolgirl, at first it was easy enough to pass through security without suspicion, but one day Rais was caught. The authorities didn’t have enough proof to convict her and she fled to Peurelak in the south to work as a housemaid. Now back in Aceh, Rais looks after her sixmonth- old daughter and, together with her husband, runs a motorcycle repair business. "We just moved our shop to this new spot and more people drop by to repair their motorcycles," she explains. "The EC aid helped a lot to complete our shop. I requested tyres, oil and other items. Now if people need tyres, we have them in stock."
Rais and Asmanidar are two of more than 2,000 beneficiaries of a livelihood programme run by the NGO Terre des Hommes, Italy. They distribute aid to female ex-combatants, especially those who did not receive aid after peace was brokered in 2005. "Most women included in this project did not have a livelihood, many are illiterate so without the assistance they would not be engaged in any income generating activities", says Akira Moretto, programme officer at Terre des Hommes.
According to the UN’s women’s agency UNIFEM, it is common for former women fighters to be undervalued or ignored during peacetime. "Reintegration of women ex-combatants is a crucial component for the stability of the peace process," says Moretto, "as women hold an important role in households, in supporting husbands, and the wider communities they live in." In spite of improvements to Aceh’s infrastructure following the tsunami, distributing the aid was no easy task, because many of the women live far from each other in remote areas. The project covers an area larger than the Netherlands and Luxembourg combined. The women will receive training in developing their business plans and they will also be linked up with local microfinancing institutions. "It is important for the women to be able to keep a record of their business. They have to understand that we will not be here for ever and they have to be able to develop their business on their own," says Moretto.
Indonesia
Population 228.8 million Average life expectancy 70 years Average per capita income $3,580
Indonesia includes many ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups and sectarian tensions and separatism have led to violent confrontations undermining stability. With a substantial part of the world’s untapped resources in energy, minerals and agriculture, prosperity has risen for many in recent decades, but more than half the population live below the international poverty line. Indonesia is also dealing with the effects of the massive tsunami in 2004 and two major earthquakes.
Find out more at www.dfid.gov.uk/indonesia
Breakdown & recovery
A visible path to peace
"Reintegration of women ex-combatants is a crucial component for the stability of the peace process - as women hold an important role in households, in supporting husbands, and the wider communities they live in."
url: http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Media-Room/Case-Studies/2009/Aceh-Women-soldiers-get-down-to-business/
Aceh: women soldiers get down to business
How UK aid, delivered through the European Commission, is making a difference
30 December 2009
Thousands of former female soldiers sidelined by Aceh's peace process are getting business start-up packages and playing a full part in the region's economic recovery, five years after the tsunami.
Asmanidar is 32 and a former ‘inong bale’ - or female fighter.
She became a commander in the resistance ten years ago, and used her parents’ brick factory as a meeting place for her fighter friends.
"We cooked and got supplies for our friends in the hills, but never in our homes as the authorities already suspected our involvement," she says.
Thousands of Acehnese women joined their men, some as informants and couriers, some to carry arms and fight battles.
Asmanidar met her husband, also a fighter, during the conflict but she didn’t follow him when he gave himself up before the peace agreement was signed in 2005.
Like many former female fighters, she was left out of the initial phase of reintegration.
Aceh, the westernmost province of Indonesia is now at peace after decades of conflict.
On 15 August, 2005, several months after the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Indonesian government and the separatist Free Aceh Movement signed an accord in Helsinki, ending 30 years of armed conflict.
The predominantly Muslim province is now led by a former member of the resistance and the government’s focus is on reconciliation and economic growth.
'I want to be successful'
Last year, Asmanidar started looking after her neighbour’s goats. She is now one of 2,000 female former fighters who has received European Commission aid in the form of a livelihood programme run by the Italian NGO, Terres des Hommes.
She used the money to buy her own goats.
Today her three children and eight goats spring around her feet. "All three of my children are a handful," she says. "But for their sake I want to be a successful goat trader, maybe next time you come here I will be a goat trading boss and have 80 goats instead of eight."
A few kilometres away, 23-year-old mother Rais Naiyah, says she was only 12 when she became an informant for the Free Aceh Movement, buying clothes, medicine and other provisions for the fighters.
As a schoolgirl she avoided suspicion from security checkpoints but one day Rais was caught.
She later fled to Peurelak in the south to work as a housemaid but news broke that she had been killed in a crossfire, allowing her to return home anonymously.
"It was my friend who died, but the mistaken identity worked in my favour", she says.
Now Rais looks after her six-month-old daughter and, together with her husband, runs a motorcycle repair business.
"We just moved our shop to this new spot and more people drop by to repair their motorcycles," she explains. "The EC aid helped a lot to complete our shop. I requested tyres, oil and other items.
"Now if people need tyres, we have them in stock."
Training and development
Former fighters were identified after a door-to-door campaign covering an area larger than Holland and Luxembourg combined, many women found living far apart in remote areas.
The women get training in developing their business plans and will also be linked up with local micro-financing institutions.
Among other livelihood projects for former female fighters are training courses for the police - with an emphasis on community policing and human rights - as well as new legislation going through parliament, which will offer people in Aceh health insurance for the first time and provide more rights for women.
Key facts and stats
* The livelihood project has a budget of US$1,376,492.
* The EC contributed 93% of the total project budget (UNDP provided 7%)
Aceh: women soldiers get down to business
How UK aid, delivered through the European Commission, is making a difference
30 December 2009
Thousands of former female soldiers sidelined by Aceh's peace process are getting business start-up packages and playing a full part in the region's economic recovery, five years after the tsunami.
Asmanidar is 32 and a former ‘inong bale’ - or female fighter.
She became a commander in the resistance ten years ago, and used her parents’ brick factory as a meeting place for her fighter friends.
"We cooked and got supplies for our friends in the hills, but never in our homes as the authorities already suspected our involvement," she says.
Thousands of Acehnese women joined their men, some as informants and couriers, some to carry arms and fight battles.
Asmanidar met her husband, also a fighter, during the conflict but she didn’t follow him when he gave himself up before the peace agreement was signed in 2005.
Like many former female fighters, she was left out of the initial phase of reintegration.
Aceh, the westernmost province of Indonesia is now at peace after decades of conflict.
On 15 August, 2005, several months after the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Indonesian government and the separatist Free Aceh Movement signed an accord in Helsinki, ending 30 years of armed conflict.
The predominantly Muslim province is now led by a former member of the resistance and the government’s focus is on reconciliation and economic growth.
'I want to be successful'
Last year, Asmanidar started looking after her neighbour’s goats. She is now one of 2,000 female former fighters who has received European Commission aid in the form of a livelihood programme run by the Italian NGO, Terres des Hommes.
She used the money to buy her own goats.
Today her three children and eight goats spring around her feet. "All three of my children are a handful," she says. "But for their sake I want to be a successful goat trader, maybe next time you come here I will be a goat trading boss and have 80 goats instead of eight."
A few kilometres away, 23-year-old mother Rais Naiyah, says she was only 12 when she became an informant for the Free Aceh Movement, buying clothes, medicine and other provisions for the fighters.
As a schoolgirl she avoided suspicion from security checkpoints but one day Rais was caught.
She later fled to Peurelak in the south to work as a housemaid but news broke that she had been killed in a crossfire, allowing her to return home anonymously.
"It was my friend who died, but the mistaken identity worked in my favour", she says.
Now Rais looks after her six-month-old daughter and, together with her husband, runs a motorcycle repair business.
"We just moved our shop to this new spot and more people drop by to repair their motorcycles," she explains. "The EC aid helped a lot to complete our shop. I requested tyres, oil and other items.
"Now if people need tyres, we have them in stock."
Training and development
Former fighters were identified after a door-to-door campaign covering an area larger than Holland and Luxembourg combined, many women found living far apart in remote areas.
The women get training in developing their business plans and will also be linked up with local micro-financing institutions.
Among other livelihood projects for former female fighters are training courses for the police - with an emphasis on community policing and human rights - as well as new legislation going through parliament, which will offer people in Aceh health insurance for the first time and provide more rights for women.
Key facts and stats
* The livelihood project has a budget of US$1,376,492.
* The EC contributed 93% of the total project budget (UNDP provided 7%)
Monday, January 28, 2008
Indonesia-politics-Suharto-opponents,lead-REAX
For opponents, Suharto's death does not dull anger
by Nabiha Shahab
JAKARTA, Jan 27, 2008 (AFP) - The death Sunday of Indonesia's autocratic former president Suharto has not dulled the anger of his political opponents, who see his demise as a missed opportunity to bring him to justice.
For them, including many who were thrown into prison for dissent, time has failed to heal the wounds of Suharto's three decades of repressive rule.
"His death is a tragedy for all the victims of his crimes, they will never get justice," said Budiman Sudjatmiko, who was jailed as a student under the Suharto regime and now works for the People's Democratic Party of Struggle.
The 86-year-old former president, who stepped down in 1998, was accused of many crimes -- among them, the mass killing of over half a million suspected communists in 1965-66.
He and his family also left a legacy of massive corruption, bleeding up to 35 billion dollars out of the Indonesian economy, according to the anti-graft watchdog Transparency International.
As head of the army's Kostrad elite forces, Suharto led a campaign against the then-powerful Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and suspected sympathisers shortly after a failed 1965 coup attempt blamed on communists.
The ensuing violence across the country is acknowledged -- mostly outside Indonesia -- as one of the worst mass killings of the 20th century.
"This is the mother of all crimes against humanity. Suharto was never held accountable, he was even praised as a hero," Sudjatmiko said.
"Count in his corruption then he is a perfect criminal -- he can be put up there with Pol Pot and Hitler."
Sudjatmiko lamented Suharto's passing as a second lost opportunity, saying he could also have been brought to trial in the reform era that followed his resignation in 1998.
Carmel Budiardjo, the British-based founder of Tapol, an organisation which advocates human rights in Indonesia, described Suharto's demise as "the death of a tyrant."
"The political elite don't see the need for justice," Budiardjo told AFP.
But, she added, "there are people who will feel like I feel, that he died without facing justice. I only hope the obituaries will highlight what he did during his reign."
Budiardjo, a British citizen, said she was locked up for three years from 1968 in a women's prison in Bukit Duri, Jakarta, because of her connection to an academic discussion group.
Under Suharto, intellectuals were frequently jailed after being accused of links to the PKI.
Fadjroel Rachman, who heads a non-governmental organisation called Suharto Inc. Busters that worked to bring him to trial for graft, followed up his own expressions of condolences to Suharto's family with a call that "legal action against his cronies, families and loyalists should continue."
Rachman, who was jailed for defamation as a student during Suharto's rule, cited the 1975 invasion of East Timor and military crimes during the bloody separatist war in Aceh province as abuses for which victims of his regime are still seeking justice.
Investigative journalist and activist Andreas Harsono vividly remembers as a teenager watching the president's military police shoot a young boy in the street in a bid to reduce petty crime.
"He did not hesitate to take the law into his own hands to solve the problem. The question is: did he solve the problem? Of course not," Harsono said.
Harsono said as a journalist he experienced first hand the suppression of the media by Suharto's regime.
"In the future people will praise him, people will call him the 'father of development', people will deny that he was even involved in fascist activities, in killings and suppressing our freedoms, because he has never been tried," Harsono said.
nhs/bs/str/aub/pst
For opponents, Suharto's death does not dull anger
by Nabiha Shahab
JAKARTA, Jan 27, 2008 (AFP) - The death Sunday of Indonesia's autocratic former president Suharto has not dulled the anger of his political opponents, who see his demise as a missed opportunity to bring him to justice.
For them, including many who were thrown into prison for dissent, time has failed to heal the wounds of Suharto's three decades of repressive rule.
"His death is a tragedy for all the victims of his crimes, they will never get justice," said Budiman Sudjatmiko, who was jailed as a student under the Suharto regime and now works for the People's Democratic Party of Struggle.
The 86-year-old former president, who stepped down in 1998, was accused of many crimes -- among them, the mass killing of over half a million suspected communists in 1965-66.
He and his family also left a legacy of massive corruption, bleeding up to 35 billion dollars out of the Indonesian economy, according to the anti-graft watchdog Transparency International.
As head of the army's Kostrad elite forces, Suharto led a campaign against the then-powerful Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and suspected sympathisers shortly after a failed 1965 coup attempt blamed on communists.
The ensuing violence across the country is acknowledged -- mostly outside Indonesia -- as one of the worst mass killings of the 20th century.
"This is the mother of all crimes against humanity. Suharto was never held accountable, he was even praised as a hero," Sudjatmiko said.
"Count in his corruption then he is a perfect criminal -- he can be put up there with Pol Pot and Hitler."
Sudjatmiko lamented Suharto's passing as a second lost opportunity, saying he could also have been brought to trial in the reform era that followed his resignation in 1998.
Carmel Budiardjo, the British-based founder of Tapol, an organisation which advocates human rights in Indonesia, described Suharto's demise as "the death of a tyrant."
"The political elite don't see the need for justice," Budiardjo told AFP.
But, she added, "there are people who will feel like I feel, that he died without facing justice. I only hope the obituaries will highlight what he did during his reign."
Budiardjo, a British citizen, said she was locked up for three years from 1968 in a women's prison in Bukit Duri, Jakarta, because of her connection to an academic discussion group.
Under Suharto, intellectuals were frequently jailed after being accused of links to the PKI.
Fadjroel Rachman, who heads a non-governmental organisation called Suharto Inc. Busters that worked to bring him to trial for graft, followed up his own expressions of condolences to Suharto's family with a call that "legal action against his cronies, families and loyalists should continue."
Rachman, who was jailed for defamation as a student during Suharto's rule, cited the 1975 invasion of East Timor and military crimes during the bloody separatist war in Aceh province as abuses for which victims of his regime are still seeking justice.
Investigative journalist and activist Andreas Harsono vividly remembers as a teenager watching the president's military police shoot a young boy in the street in a bid to reduce petty crime.
"He did not hesitate to take the law into his own hands to solve the problem. The question is: did he solve the problem? Of course not," Harsono said.
Harsono said as a journalist he experienced first hand the suppression of the media by Suharto's regime.
"In the future people will praise him, people will call him the 'father of development', people will deny that he was even involved in fascist activities, in killings and suppressing our freedoms, because he has never been tried," Harsono said.
nhs/bs/str/aub/pst
Indonesia-quake-housing-recovery,FEATURE
High spirits drive speedy recovery after Indonesian quake
by Nabiha Shahab
BANTUL, Indonesia, Jan 16, 2008 (AFP) - With every step he takes, Sukasdi feels a shard of pain shoot down his back, reminding him of the day two years ago that a powerful earthquake destroyed his home and broke his spine.
"I had to stay more than a month in hospital. I didn't know what had happened to my family and home, so I insisted on going home," says the wiry survivor who still moves slowly but speaks with a lively sparkle in his eye.
Already, the 40-year-old handicrafts maker has a new house and his business is thriving, like many in Bantul, the district worst ravaged by a 6.3-magnitude quake on Indonesia's main island of Java in May 2006.
More than 6,000 people were killed and around 280,000 homes damaged or destroyed in the dawn temblor that rattled the provinces of Yogyakarta and Central Java.
Yet less than two years after the disaster, 90 percent of reconstruction is complete and businesses are up and running again thanks to the survivors' drive and a community spirit that saw them band together, people here say.
Sukasdi was at his home in Manding village, a handicrafts centre in Bantul, when the quake struck.
A brick wall collapsed breaking his back and arm as he saved the life of his two-year-old daughter. He spent months in a wheelchair.
With the little money he had saved, the father of two set up his business again in a makeshift bamboo shack next to the ruins of his home.
And he did not have to wait long before he received his first purchase order, with his regular clients sticking by him despite the hiccup in production.
"I wasn't well then, so I just made the designs and directed from my wheelchair," Sukasdi tells AFP, adding that now his family has moved back into an almost completed brick house where their old home used to be.
"Almost 85 percent of the businesses in Manding were destroyed after the quake, but now almost everyone has recovered," says neighbour Sarjimin, who leads a group of around 70 handicraft businesses.
Recovery after the quake, says Nia Sarinastiti from the World Bank office in Jakarta, was "quite fast".
"The spirit of working together among the community there is very strong. Our approach is community-driven so people feel more responsibility to their recovery work," she says.
The World Bank, which is providing some of the financial assistance for reconstruction, estimated total damage and losses from the quake at around 29.1 trillion rupiah (3.1 billion dollars).
-- Strong community spirit helps rebuild homes and lives --
Total financing for reconstruction was almost eight trillion rupiah -- around 80 percent of which was provided by the central government of the world's fourth most populous nation.
Rizon Pamardhi Utomo, an expert with the government agency overseeing the Java quake reconstruction, said the disaster was quite a different phenomenon compared to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Indonesia's Aceh province, at the tip of Sumatra island, bore the brunt of the disaster, which killed 168,000 people as massive walls of water obliterated vast swathes of coastline, wiping out entire villages and extended families.
About 120,000 homes are being built for survivors, with more than 100,000 completed.
"Unlike Aceh, the people here can be said to be quite lucky in the sense that they could still use materials from their destroyed homes to rebuild their houses," Utomo says, speaking during a tour organised by the body to showcase the speed of recovery here.
After the Java quake, materials could be reused, while social structures remained in place -- something Utomo says "is the main reason behind the rapid recovery of the quake victims here".
On average, each household contributed 27 million rupiah towards rebuilding on top of government assistance of 15-20 million rupiah for each home, he adds.
The strong cooperative spirit is evident across the region.
At one high school, the government provided funding to rebuild 13 classrooms, but managed to rebuild 18 as parents chipped in and old materials were reused, headmaster Emanuel Wigyosundoro says.
Under the reconstruction system, the government gave money directly to communities, which then chose how to spend it, with residents pitching in to help save cash where possible.
The school has transformed the foundations of a three-room building which collapsed at the school, leaving only one corner standing, into a monument of the ill-fated day, now mounted with a marble plaque.
One student was killed, six were injured and one staff member had her back broken.
"Most of the classrooms are functioning back to normal, but we still have to rebuild the student's science lab and handicraft workshop," the headmaster says. "We're hoping for some more aid for that."
nsh/sb/lod
High spirits drive speedy recovery after Indonesian quake
by Nabiha Shahab
BANTUL, Indonesia, Jan 16, 2008 (AFP) - With every step he takes, Sukasdi feels a shard of pain shoot down his back, reminding him of the day two years ago that a powerful earthquake destroyed his home and broke his spine.
"I had to stay more than a month in hospital. I didn't know what had happened to my family and home, so I insisted on going home," says the wiry survivor who still moves slowly but speaks with a lively sparkle in his eye.
Already, the 40-year-old handicrafts maker has a new house and his business is thriving, like many in Bantul, the district worst ravaged by a 6.3-magnitude quake on Indonesia's main island of Java in May 2006.
More than 6,000 people were killed and around 280,000 homes damaged or destroyed in the dawn temblor that rattled the provinces of Yogyakarta and Central Java.
Yet less than two years after the disaster, 90 percent of reconstruction is complete and businesses are up and running again thanks to the survivors' drive and a community spirit that saw them band together, people here say.
Sukasdi was at his home in Manding village, a handicrafts centre in Bantul, when the quake struck.
A brick wall collapsed breaking his back and arm as he saved the life of his two-year-old daughter. He spent months in a wheelchair.
With the little money he had saved, the father of two set up his business again in a makeshift bamboo shack next to the ruins of his home.
And he did not have to wait long before he received his first purchase order, with his regular clients sticking by him despite the hiccup in production.
"I wasn't well then, so I just made the designs and directed from my wheelchair," Sukasdi tells AFP, adding that now his family has moved back into an almost completed brick house where their old home used to be.
"Almost 85 percent of the businesses in Manding were destroyed after the quake, but now almost everyone has recovered," says neighbour Sarjimin, who leads a group of around 70 handicraft businesses.
Recovery after the quake, says Nia Sarinastiti from the World Bank office in Jakarta, was "quite fast".
"The spirit of working together among the community there is very strong. Our approach is community-driven so people feel more responsibility to their recovery work," she says.
The World Bank, which is providing some of the financial assistance for reconstruction, estimated total damage and losses from the quake at around 29.1 trillion rupiah (3.1 billion dollars).
-- Strong community spirit helps rebuild homes and lives --
Total financing for reconstruction was almost eight trillion rupiah -- around 80 percent of which was provided by the central government of the world's fourth most populous nation.
Rizon Pamardhi Utomo, an expert with the government agency overseeing the Java quake reconstruction, said the disaster was quite a different phenomenon compared to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Indonesia's Aceh province, at the tip of Sumatra island, bore the brunt of the disaster, which killed 168,000 people as massive walls of water obliterated vast swathes of coastline, wiping out entire villages and extended families.
About 120,000 homes are being built for survivors, with more than 100,000 completed.
"Unlike Aceh, the people here can be said to be quite lucky in the sense that they could still use materials from their destroyed homes to rebuild their houses," Utomo says, speaking during a tour organised by the body to showcase the speed of recovery here.
After the Java quake, materials could be reused, while social structures remained in place -- something Utomo says "is the main reason behind the rapid recovery of the quake victims here".
On average, each household contributed 27 million rupiah towards rebuilding on top of government assistance of 15-20 million rupiah for each home, he adds.
The strong cooperative spirit is evident across the region.
At one high school, the government provided funding to rebuild 13 classrooms, but managed to rebuild 18 as parents chipped in and old materials were reused, headmaster Emanuel Wigyosundoro says.
Under the reconstruction system, the government gave money directly to communities, which then chose how to spend it, with residents pitching in to help save cash where possible.
The school has transformed the foundations of a three-room building which collapsed at the school, leaving only one corner standing, into a monument of the ill-fated day, now mounted with a marble plaque.
One student was killed, six were injured and one staff member had her back broken.
"Most of the classrooms are functioning back to normal, but we still have to rebuild the student's science lab and handicraft workshop," the headmaster says. "We're hoping for some more aid for that."
nsh/sb/lod
UN-climate-Indonesia-environment-Papua-deforestation
Indonesia's Papua scarred by vanishing forests
by Nabiha Shahab
JAKARTA, Dec 1, 2007 (AFP) - Twenty-five years ago, Papuan tribal leader Ananias Muit was sent from his jungle home to Indonesia's Sumatra island by the local government to learn about lucrative palm oil, and bring it back.
A new short film, "Defenders of the Tribal Boundaries", tells how the arrival of a state-owned plantation company soon afterwards devastated Muit's community in the Arfak mountains of Papua's Bird's Head region.
"'Give us the land and we will give the money to plant,' they said. 'We will bring a palm oil plantation,'" Muit says, repeating the government's promise.
Instead, the forests were cleared, but factory effluent polluted the local river, making the water supply unusable.
"The promise was sweet, but now it is bitter," he laments.
"We were not compensated for our land or even thanked. Now we are really suffering, and we regret it."
The film, one of four locally-made shorts that highlight the shocking impact of deforestation in remote Papua, will be featured at a UN climate change conference on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, which begins next week.
The 10-minute clips, shot by aid workers using handheld digital cameras over the past three months, demonstrate the impact expanding palm oil plantations and other destructive logging is having on local communities.
Indonesia is losing its forests at the world's fastest rate, with some two million hectares (4.9 million acres) disappearing each year, according to environmental watchdog Greenpeace.
Up to 80 percent of logging in Indonesia is estimated to be illegal -- due to a lack of political will to crack down as well as negligible law enforcement -- but the films demonstrate that even legal logging has far-reaching and negative consequences.
In "Tears of Mother Mooi", the people of Sorong issue an impassioned call to the government to revoke the licenses of two palm oil companies operating on their ancestral land.
Startling images of the devastated remnants of formerly forested areas, clear-cut for plantations, hammer home their plea.
Ronny Dimara, a resident in the community and director of Triton, a local non-governmental organisation that produced the film, said most of the footage had to be recorded secretly.
Much of Papua is closely monitored by Indonesia's military, who stand accused by activists of human rights abuses. Journalists require special permission from the Jakarta government to visit the region.
"We played the film in front of about 20 tribal leaders and they said the problem (of the two companies) needed to be addressed soon," Dimara told a press briefing in Jakarta after the films were screened.
"Early next year we will meet again in a bigger group to decide whether we still want the companies in our area."
The third film, "Gaharu: Disaster or Blessing?", shows how the profitable agarwood industry -- known locally as gaharu -- has brought a myriad of social problems to one Papuan district.
Father Dicky Ogi, who leads an organisation working to offer locals better education, said that along with higher incomes came gambling, prostitution and the spread of HIV/AIDS.
"Education is key, so the people can judge the benefits of selling their land," he told reporters.
The final piece, "Destiny... My Land", explores how external investors exploited the forests of a local community that had previously lived off the land for generations.
"These films may be local stories but they are very relevant to the national and the international level, so we urge people to watch these films," said Jago Wadley from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an independent campaigning organisation that helped the local groups produce the films.
nsh/sb/sst
Indonesia's Papua scarred by vanishing forests
by Nabiha Shahab
JAKARTA, Dec 1, 2007 (AFP) - Twenty-five years ago, Papuan tribal leader Ananias Muit was sent from his jungle home to Indonesia's Sumatra island by the local government to learn about lucrative palm oil, and bring it back.
A new short film, "Defenders of the Tribal Boundaries", tells how the arrival of a state-owned plantation company soon afterwards devastated Muit's community in the Arfak mountains of Papua's Bird's Head region.
"'Give us the land and we will give the money to plant,' they said. 'We will bring a palm oil plantation,'" Muit says, repeating the government's promise.
Instead, the forests were cleared, but factory effluent polluted the local river, making the water supply unusable.
"The promise was sweet, but now it is bitter," he laments.
"We were not compensated for our land or even thanked. Now we are really suffering, and we regret it."
The film, one of four locally-made shorts that highlight the shocking impact of deforestation in remote Papua, will be featured at a UN climate change conference on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, which begins next week.
The 10-minute clips, shot by aid workers using handheld digital cameras over the past three months, demonstrate the impact expanding palm oil plantations and other destructive logging is having on local communities.
Indonesia is losing its forests at the world's fastest rate, with some two million hectares (4.9 million acres) disappearing each year, according to environmental watchdog Greenpeace.
Up to 80 percent of logging in Indonesia is estimated to be illegal -- due to a lack of political will to crack down as well as negligible law enforcement -- but the films demonstrate that even legal logging has far-reaching and negative consequences.
In "Tears of Mother Mooi", the people of Sorong issue an impassioned call to the government to revoke the licenses of two palm oil companies operating on their ancestral land.
Startling images of the devastated remnants of formerly forested areas, clear-cut for plantations, hammer home their plea.
Ronny Dimara, a resident in the community and director of Triton, a local non-governmental organisation that produced the film, said most of the footage had to be recorded secretly.
Much of Papua is closely monitored by Indonesia's military, who stand accused by activists of human rights abuses. Journalists require special permission from the Jakarta government to visit the region.
"We played the film in front of about 20 tribal leaders and they said the problem (of the two companies) needed to be addressed soon," Dimara told a press briefing in Jakarta after the films were screened.
"Early next year we will meet again in a bigger group to decide whether we still want the companies in our area."
The third film, "Gaharu: Disaster or Blessing?", shows how the profitable agarwood industry -- known locally as gaharu -- has brought a myriad of social problems to one Papuan district.
Father Dicky Ogi, who leads an organisation working to offer locals better education, said that along with higher incomes came gambling, prostitution and the spread of HIV/AIDS.
"Education is key, so the people can judge the benefits of selling their land," he told reporters.
The final piece, "Destiny... My Land", explores how external investors exploited the forests of a local community that had previously lived off the land for generations.
"These films may be local stories but they are very relevant to the national and the international level, so we urge people to watch these films," said Jago Wadley from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an independent campaigning organisation that helped the local groups produce the films.
nsh/sb/sst
Lifestyle-Indonesia-books-comic,FEATURE
Islamic superheroes invade Indonesia
by Nabiha Shahab
JAKARTA, Oct 2, 2007 (AFP) - An apparent explosion has levelled high-rise buildings in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah, triggering a security alert. It's the work of an Islamic superhero, a giant, confused teenager who sneezed.
Jabbar the Powerful, the alter-ego of teenager Nawaf Al-Bilali, is the first of 99 superhero characters in an Islamic culture-based comic book series called "The 99" just launched in Indonesia.
The comic seeks to act as a metaphor for what's happening in the Islamic world, its creator, Kuwaiti-born Naif Al-Mutawa, told AFP during a recent visit to Jakarta to launch the colourful, action-packed comic.
"Islam or the Koran can be used for good or for bad," Al-Mutawa said, adding that when either are misused, people blame the Koran, "when in fact they should be blaming the person interpreting the Koran".
Each of the superheroes personifies one of the 99 attributes of God in Islam, with their individual powers derived from mystical gemstones originating from 13th-century Baghdad, and infused with lost ancient knowledge.
Jabbar, for instance, has extraordinary strength that gives him "near-invulnerability and durability". Indonesia's own character, Fatah the Opener, can create a portal dimension used to travel anywhere on Earth.
The main struggle in the story happens between two characters representing the classic good-evil dichotomy, with each competing for the allegiance of "The 99". Even the superheroes themselves are sometimes deceived into crossing to the side of evil, Al-Mutawa explained.
But while the comic is based on Islamic archetypes and culture, there's nothing overtly Islamic in them, he said.
"They are as religious as Spiderman," Al-Mutawa quipped. "There's no mention of prayers or prophets, none of that."
The characters, who work in threes, do not carry weapons and are evenly split between males and females.
In a bid to represent Islam's spread around the world, characters frequently hail from two nations, which also helps to "make sense of the Islamic diaspora".
"For example, Bari is from Sudan but grew up in France, Hadya is from Pakistan but grew up in the UK," he said.
Al-Mutawa worked as a clinical psychologist for more than a decade before he started his own media company. He had treated former prisoners of war in Kuwait and worked with survivors of political torture in New York.
"The Iraqis that I treated were tortured by Saddam or his people. These are people who grew up with Saddam as their hero and yet they were tortured by (his people)," he said.
"What kind of message are we sending our children? Is this what heroes do?"
This disillusionment drove him to write several successful children's books and then to create and co-write "The 99," with former Marvel and DC comic artists helping out, hoping to fill a gap in the global market.
The comic, co-written with Fabian Nicieza, who has worked on hit Marvel titles such as X-Men, is now published across the Middle East in Arabic.
"'The 99' is selling as well in Kuwait and the Emirates as Spiderman is. I know because I sell Spiderman," he said.
The comic will debut in the United States in October, followed by Malaysia next year, while Al-Mutawa is in talks with publishers in Turkey and France.
Yudha Kartohadiprodjo, general manager of "The 99's" Indonesian license holder Femina Group, said he believed the comics would find a receptive audience in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
"In the market today there are no contemporary comics based on Islamic values," he said. "The creator understands Islamic history, and that's important for this Islamic-based story."
Indonesian Muslims can be sensitive when it comes to religious-based stories, with any criticism from Islamic groups potentially risking a nationwide boycott.
A poem recently published in a newspaper in West Java, for instance, sparked outrage from a local religious group for its "un-Islamic" depiction of angels, forcing the writer and the newspaper to print a public apology.
Kartohadiprodjo said he was confident in Al-Mutawa's Islamic credentials.
The 68-page, full-colour first issue of "The 99" had a print run of 25,000 copies and is selling at bookstores for 18,000 rupiah (two dollars). A few national newspapers are considering printing extracts, Kartohadiprodjo said.
And of course, merchandising is to follow soon, with the Islamic superheroes preparing to infiltrate homes via notebooks, T-shirts and mobile phone paraphernalia.
nsh/sb/lod
Islamic superheroes invade Indonesia
by Nabiha Shahab
JAKARTA, Oct 2, 2007 (AFP) - An apparent explosion has levelled high-rise buildings in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah, triggering a security alert. It's the work of an Islamic superhero, a giant, confused teenager who sneezed.
Jabbar the Powerful, the alter-ego of teenager Nawaf Al-Bilali, is the first of 99 superhero characters in an Islamic culture-based comic book series called "The 99" just launched in Indonesia.
The comic seeks to act as a metaphor for what's happening in the Islamic world, its creator, Kuwaiti-born Naif Al-Mutawa, told AFP during a recent visit to Jakarta to launch the colourful, action-packed comic.
"Islam or the Koran can be used for good or for bad," Al-Mutawa said, adding that when either are misused, people blame the Koran, "when in fact they should be blaming the person interpreting the Koran".
Each of the superheroes personifies one of the 99 attributes of God in Islam, with their individual powers derived from mystical gemstones originating from 13th-century Baghdad, and infused with lost ancient knowledge.
Jabbar, for instance, has extraordinary strength that gives him "near-invulnerability and durability". Indonesia's own character, Fatah the Opener, can create a portal dimension used to travel anywhere on Earth.
The main struggle in the story happens between two characters representing the classic good-evil dichotomy, with each competing for the allegiance of "The 99". Even the superheroes themselves are sometimes deceived into crossing to the side of evil, Al-Mutawa explained.
But while the comic is based on Islamic archetypes and culture, there's nothing overtly Islamic in them, he said.
"They are as religious as Spiderman," Al-Mutawa quipped. "There's no mention of prayers or prophets, none of that."
The characters, who work in threes, do not carry weapons and are evenly split between males and females.
In a bid to represent Islam's spread around the world, characters frequently hail from two nations, which also helps to "make sense of the Islamic diaspora".
"For example, Bari is from Sudan but grew up in France, Hadya is from Pakistan but grew up in the UK," he said.
Al-Mutawa worked as a clinical psychologist for more than a decade before he started his own media company. He had treated former prisoners of war in Kuwait and worked with survivors of political torture in New York.
"The Iraqis that I treated were tortured by Saddam or his people. These are people who grew up with Saddam as their hero and yet they were tortured by (his people)," he said.
"What kind of message are we sending our children? Is this what heroes do?"
This disillusionment drove him to write several successful children's books and then to create and co-write "The 99," with former Marvel and DC comic artists helping out, hoping to fill a gap in the global market.
The comic, co-written with Fabian Nicieza, who has worked on hit Marvel titles such as X-Men, is now published across the Middle East in Arabic.
"'The 99' is selling as well in Kuwait and the Emirates as Spiderman is. I know because I sell Spiderman," he said.
The comic will debut in the United States in October, followed by Malaysia next year, while Al-Mutawa is in talks with publishers in Turkey and France.
Yudha Kartohadiprodjo, general manager of "The 99's" Indonesian license holder Femina Group, said he believed the comics would find a receptive audience in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
"In the market today there are no contemporary comics based on Islamic values," he said. "The creator understands Islamic history, and that's important for this Islamic-based story."
Indonesian Muslims can be sensitive when it comes to religious-based stories, with any criticism from Islamic groups potentially risking a nationwide boycott.
A poem recently published in a newspaper in West Java, for instance, sparked outrage from a local religious group for its "un-Islamic" depiction of angels, forcing the writer and the newspaper to print a public apology.
Kartohadiprodjo said he was confident in Al-Mutawa's Islamic credentials.
The 68-page, full-colour first issue of "The 99" had a print run of 25,000 copies and is selling at bookstores for 18,000 rupiah (two dollars). A few national newspapers are considering printing extracts, Kartohadiprodjo said.
And of course, merchandising is to follow soon, with the Islamic superheroes preparing to infiltrate homes via notebooks, T-shirts and mobile phone paraphernalia.
nsh/sb/lod
