kopitubruk

Exorcising bad spirits marks Javanese New Year

by Nabiha Shahab

JAKARTA, Jan 20, 2007 (AFP) - No different than many other cultures, new year's day in Javanese culture is marked with the cleansing of the spirit and starting of the coming year with fresh attitude and hope.

In the past 12 months, Indonesia had been hit by many disasters, natural and man-made, including a mud volcano that caused thousands of people to leave their homes in East Java in May.

A tsunami that hit Java in July claimed 628 lives, while many problems remain unsolved from the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 168,000 people in Aceh in December 2004, such as the prolonged rebuilding of destroyed houses.

The long list of disasters goes on, including recent transportation incidents, with an airliner with 102 people on board missing on January 1, and a ferry carrying about 600 people sinking in the Java sea in December.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in his speech for the Islamic new year in Istiqlal mosque in Jakarta called on people to "be patient, strong and keep working. I am sure with Allah's will, however hard the problems we face, we will be able to go through it."

The Javanese calendar coincides with the Islamic year.

The ethnic Javanese make up roughly about 40 percent of the Indonesian population of 220 million people.

Yudhoyono, himself a Javanese, reminded people to remain united while facing difficult problems.

"Keep praying so this country can be safe from disasters and other dangers even though some of them are beyond (our power)," he said.

In Javanese culture, a streak of bad luck calls for a ceremony called "ruwatan", or the cleansing of bad luck.

"Ruwatan is a kind of exorcism rites, anyone or place that is unlucky should perform it to rid them from 'the curse of time'," Javanese ritual master Kasidi Hadiprayitno told AFP, while getting ready for the ceremony.

According to the Javanese tradition, Bathara Kala, a giant god of time, feed on unlucky people or "sukerta".

In the main ritual of the ruwatan ceremony, a wayang puppet performance plays the story of Murwakala, telling the story of the giant god's return to purity and goodness.

The ceremony was often performed during the presidency of Suharto, who is believed to be a loyal follower of Javanese traditions.

"Now the country's condition is like this, does the leader wants to take that route?" said Hadiprayitno, indicating that the time is prime for Indonesia to undergo the cleansing ceremony.

Dini, 11, and Luthfi, 9, dressed in white, kissed their parent's hands as part of the procession before the parents hand them over to the ceremony master or "dalang" to be cleansed.

"They are Kendini-Kendono, or two siblings, the eldest a girl and a boy," Haniyah Supardi, 40, the children's mother told AFP.

"This means they need to be cleansed, so they are free from any bad luck," she said.

"In the initiation ceremony, after the dalang cuts their hair, they will be bathed with water from seven springs," explained Hadiprayitno, whose father, a prominent dalang, lead the ruwatan ceremony.

In the ceremony, a smorgasbord of offerings will be blessed and then thrown into the sea along with the sukerta's clothing worn in the ceremony and locks of their hair, symbolising the riddance of bad influence.

A range of poultry, pairs of male and female chickens, ducks, and birds and various shapes of rice, are among the offering.

"We hope the 'unseen' accept our offer, it will be a problem if they don't," said Hadiprayitno.
nsh/bgs

Exorcismes en Indonésie pour que l'année soit clémente (MAGAZINE)

Par Nabiha SHAHAB
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JAKARTA, 21 jan 2007 (AFP) - L'Indonésie a changé samedi d'année islamique et dans l'île principale de Java des incantations aux dieux et aux esprits ont demandé davantage de clémence après une série noire de catastrophes.

Alors que le calendrier musulman coïncide avec le calendrier lunaire javanais, des cérémonies de purification spirituelle et des exorcismes particulièrement fervents ont témoigné du doute tenaillant la population.

Les douze derniers mois ont en effet été très durs pour les Indonésiens. Déjà frappés par le tsunami du 26 décembre 2004, ils ont enduré un nouveau raz-de-marée en juillet dernier à Java, qui a fait plus de 600 morts.

Deux mois plus tôt, un séisme dans la région de Yogyakarta avait tué environ 6.000 personnes et fait plus d'un million de sinistrés.

Dans cette même île de Java, une éruption incoercible de boue volcanique se déroule depuis huit mois, forçant toujours plus d'habitants à fuir.

La fin de l'année musulmane a été particulièrement cruelle avec des inondations et glissements de terrain meurtriers à Sumatra et Bornéo.

Enfin les désastres se sont accumulés dans le secteur des transports, avec le naufrage de plusieurs ferries, dont un transportant 600 personnes, et la disparition d'un Boeing 737, toujours recherché.

Tout l'archipel est enfin concerné par une épidémie de grippe aviaire qui a tué des dizaines de villageois, faisant de l'Indonésie le pays le plus touché du monde.

"Continuons à prier afin que ce pays soit préservé des catastrophes et des autres dangers, même si certains dépassent notre volonté", a lancé samedi le président Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono à la grande mosquée de l'Istiqlal de Jakarta.

"Soyez patients, forts et continuez à travailler. Je suis sûr qu'avec l'aide d'Allah, malgré toutes les épreuves que nous traversons, nous parviendrons à les surmonter", a-t-il ajouté.

Parallèlement aux prières dans les mosquées (environ 88% des 220 millions d'Indonésiens se réclament de l'islam), des incantations particulières se sont déroulées à Java, l'île la plus peuplée où les coutumes ancestrales sont encore vivaces.

Une suite d'événements funestes appelle un "ruwatan", "une sorte de rite d'exorcisme que chaque personne malchanceuse devrait pratiquer pour se défaire du mauvais sort actuel", a expliqué Kasidi Hadiprayitno, un maître javanais.

Lui-même a pratiqué à Jakarta un "ruwatan", qui fait appel à des personnages vivants et à des marionnettes du "wayang kulit", le fameux théâtre d'ombres javanais.

Le rituel met en scène Bathara Kala, un dieu mauvais semant la malchance, notamment chez les enfants. Par une cérémonie appelée Murwakala, lui et ses victimes retrouvent la bonté.

Des enfants habillés de blanc ont ainsi été purifiés et protégés du mauvais sort en sacrifiant une mèche de leurs cheveux et en étant aspergés d'eau bénite provenant de sept sources.

Des poulets, canards et autres oiseaux, ainsi que du riz, ont été proposés aux dieux.

"Nous espérons que les forces invisibles accepteront nos offrandes, nous aurions des problèmes si ce n'était pas le cas", a lancé Hadiprayitno.
nsh/seb/mt

Indonesian tomb raiders find treasure trove

by Nabiha Shahab


JAKARTA, Jan 19, 2007 (AFP) - Farmers have sold hundreds of gold artefacts stolen from skeletal corpses unearthed at a newly-found ancient burial complex in Indonesia, media reported Friday.

Skeletons wearing chains of gold rings around their necks, heads, hands and feet were found in the tombs in a rice field at Kendal Jaya village, about 60 kilometres (37 miles) east of Jakarta, the Seputar Indonesia daily said.

They were buried with other accessories made of precious stones or gold as well as axes and other pottery articles.

Between 15 and 25 people are estimated to have been buried at the site at a depth of only about 1.5 metres (five feet).

Archaeologists expressed concern at reports that hundreds of villagers have been selling gold necklaces and ornaments they found at the site over the past week.

"We only take the gold, because we can sell it for 120,000 rupiah (13 dollars) per gram," local farmer Surip, 29, who has been digging for the past week, told the paper. Rumasih, 40, said she had collected around 100 grams (four ounces) in the past week.

"I have bought 100 grams, this week alone. And there are many other buyers here, so most likely there are hundreds of grams found so far," she said, adding that she sold the gold at a local market.

The newspaper estimated that already hundreds of kilograms of gold ornaments and jewellery had been taken from the site.

"They shouldn't have sold the findings, there are laws against it," Peter Ferdinandus, from the Ministry of Education's Archaeological Study, told AFP.

"We should quickly investigate this and stop what they're doing. And if possible get back whatever has been sold off," he said.

There has been no official announcement on the find and the archaeologist said he only heard of it from the media.

Ferdinandus, who has worked on an archaeological site near the new finds since 1993, said the graves could date from the Buni people who lived around the second century AD, roughly 1,800-1,900 years ago.

"In the Batu Jaya ancient temple site we found traces of the Buni people. Carbon dating results estimated the complex to be from around the second century AD," he said.

There are 24 ancient Buddhist temples in the Batu Jaya complex.

Two other findings thought to be from ancient temples were found in Central Java and Yogyakarta provinces recently.

Local residents in Yogyakarta have reported finding statues of Buddha and of monkeys, lions and religious symbols.

An archaeological team working in Magelang district near Yogyakarta has also unearthed a site from the Mataram Kingdom dating back to the ninth century AD.

The site at Losari village is believed to possibly be even bigger than the famous Borobudur Buddhist monument near Yogyakarta city, which also dates back to around the ninth century.

The head of the Yogyakarta ancient heritage office, Manggar Sariayuwati, said the findings were estimated to be dated from the eighth to the ninth century AD.

Java has many ancient sites dating back to the Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms which flourished from the seventh century onwards.
nsh/mtp/km

Brands sell illegal Indonesian coffee, threaten rare species: WWF

by Nabiha Shahab

JAKARTA, Jan 17, 2007 (AFP) - Global food giants Nestle and Kraft Foods have sold coffee illegally grown in a key conservation area for endangered tigers and rhinos, WWF said Wednesday.

The coffee comes from the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park on the southern tip of Indonesia's Sumatra island, which is home to about 40 Sumatran tigers, of which there are fewer than 400 left in the wild, the conservation group said.

It is also home to about 500 Sumatran elephants, a quarter of the remaining population, and 60 to 85 critically endangered Sumatran rhinos.

Despite its importance as a conservation area and World Heritage Site, nearly 20 percent of the park has been cleared for illegal coffee cultivation, the WWF said in a report titled "Gone in an Instant".

"About 17 percent of the national park area is being cultivated for coffee," Nazir Foead, from WWF Indonesia, told AFP.

"If current trends continue, in 10 years' time the area could double, causing significant impacts to the (endangered) species' habitats," he said.

Indonesia is now the world's fourth-largest coffee exporter and second-largest producer of robusta, widely used for instant coffee. At least half the country's coffee is exported through the port of Lampung, adjacent to the national park.

"All the coffee exported from Lampung is tainted," said Foead, who authored the report. Local traders mixed illegally grown coffee with legal beans and exported it to international firms.

Kraft Foods, ED and F Man in Britain, Dutch firm Andira, Hong Kong's Noble Coffee, Germany's Neumann Kaffee Gruppe, Marubeni Corp. of Japan, Hamburg Coffee Company, Nestle, Olam of Singapore and Italy's Lavazza were the top 10 buyers of Lampung coffee in 2003, the WWF said.

Folgers and Tchibo also received shipments from Lampung in 2004.

The WWF said data indicated Starbucks had received coffee from Lampung but the coffee shop chain had said it was legally grown coffee from Northern Sumatra trans-shipped through Lampung. Starbucks said it was not involved in selling illegally grown coffee.

Foead said buyers were probably unaware of its illegal origins, due to the lack of regulations in the region. "I think they don't know where the coffee comes from," he said.

"The village and sub-district traders are mixing the (illegal and legal) coffee." Neither exporting nor importing companies had mechanisms in place to prevent the trade in illegal beans.

"We are asking the coffee companies to first of all recognise the problem," he said.

Swiss food giant Nestle responded by "launching an effort to clean up part of its supply chain and advise farmers on how to produce higher-quality coffee," the WWF said.

US-based Kraft Foods Inc., the world's second-largest food and beverage company after Nestle, and Lavazza were in the early stages of engaging with the WWF on the issue, the group said.

Foead said the WWF was also working with farmers to convince them to cultivate coffee outside conservation areas and provide them with the technical knowhow to produce better quality beans.

"We would like the big buyers to clean up their chains of supply and help the poor farmers to plant coffee in a sustainable way outside the national park," he said.

"We do not want the buyers to shift to somewhere else."

Foead said farmers could improve their productivity and profits if they tended their plants properly and selectively harvested them.

The WWF also called on the Indonesian government to better protect the park and give incentives to legitimate coffee producers and microcredit for coffee farmers.
nsh/mtp/th