OST: Maju ta' gentar membela yang bayar
SEI RAMPAH - Pemkab Sergai (Serdang Bedagai),--pemekaran kabupaten Deliserdang,--ditengarai menghabiskan dana Rp 270.310.000,- untuk wartawan. Sejumlah 40 wartawan pun buat pernyataan yang diaktenotariskan, harus patuh menyukseskan kinerja bupati setempat,--T. Erry Nuradi.Ini meruapakan tindakan kekerasan psikis dan pembodohan wartawan Sergai. Pemasungan 40 wartawan di Kabupaten Sergai, Sumatera Utara, untuk tidak melakukan sosial kontrol (mengeritik) kinerja bupati dan wakilnya Soekirman, merupakakan tragedi kebebasan pers nasional.
Dari berbagai tanggapan yang dikumpulkan hingga Minggu (21/3), tindakan pemasungan wartawan tersebut mengundang reaksi keras Dewan Pers, pemerhati hukum terkait hukum pers, pimpinan organisasi profesi pers, dan KIPPAS (perhati pers).
Menurut Ketua Komisi Hukum dan Perundangan-undangan Dewan Pers, Wina Armada, berdasarkan UU Pers No 40 1999, tidak dibenarkan adanya sensor dan beredel, menghilangkan sebagian atau keseluruhan tulisan pers. “Hal itu tindakan melawan hukum,” kata Wina.
Selain itu mengancam dan menghalang-halangi tugas jurnalistik yang dijamin undang-undang dan kode etik, adalah bagian dari menghambat proses demokrasi. “Tindakan membatasi dan menghalangi tugas wartawan, bisa dilaporkan ke polisi oleh wartawan lain, atau organisasi pers, sesuai UU Pers pasal 18 ayat 2,” tegas Wina Armada pula.
Penjara 2 Tahun
Hal itu dibenarkan oleh pemerhati hukum Agung Matauch SH di Jakarta. Tindakan membatasi dan melarang pers nasional menjalankan fungsinya melakukan sosial kontrol adalah pelanggaran yang bisa dikenai pidana. “Tindakan menghalang-halangi jurnalis dalam mencari dan menyiarkan informasi yang benar merupakan tindak pidana,” kata Agung.
Ancaman pidana berdasarkan itu, tambah Agung, sesuai Undang-undang No 40 tahun 1999. Utamanya pada pasal 18 ayat (1) yang berbunyi, "Setiap orang yang secara melawan hukum dengan sengaja melakukan tindakan yang berakibat menghambat atau pelaksanaan ketentuan Pasal 4 ayat (2) dan ayat (3) dipidana dengan pidana penjara paling lama 2 (dua) tahun atau denda paling banyak Rp 500.000.000,00 (lima ratus juta rupiah)."
Sedangkan pasal 4 ayat (2) berbunyi, "Terhadap pers nasional tidak dikenakan penyensoran, pembredelan atau pelarangan penyiaran." Sementara Pasal 4 ayat (3) menyebutkan, "Untuk menjamin kemerdekaan pers, pers nasional mempunyai hak mencari, memperoleh, dan menyebarluaskan gagasan dan informasi.
Mendapat Kaplingan
Jadi tindakan membuat pernyataan 40 wartawan Sergai yang dimotori seorang pengusaha wisata Pantaicermin, AW, untuk tidak membuat berita miring (mengeritik) tentang kinerja Bupati Segai T Erry Nuradi dan wakilnya Soekirman sangat menyakiti hati insan pers. Apalagi ke 40 watawan yang seperti dipasung itu diharuskan mendukung pencalonan T Erry dan Soekirman sebagai pasangan bupati 2010-2015. Artinya pers disiapkan untuk tidak independen, tetapi memihak kepada kepentingan seorang pejabat negara yang ngotot memenangkan Pemilukada Sergai 2010-2015.
Tidak cukup sampai di situ, untuk mengikat perjanjian dan pernyataan 40 wartawan bersama seorang pengusaha AW dicatatkan di Notaris Marsella SH MKN di Sergai Januari 2010, dengan nomor 09/L/NOT/MR/I/2010 yang isinya tidak akan memberitakan miring tentang kinerja T Erry Nuradi dan Soekirman. Tekad dan pernyataan itu ditandatangani wartawan bersama cap jempol sebagai sebuah kesungguhan yang harus dipatuhi.
Sebagai imbalan dari pemasungan 40 wartawan Segai tersebut, dijanjikan setiap wartawan mendapat keuntungan dari kaplingan areal di kawasan wisata Pantaicermin. Menurut informasi dikumpulkan Harian Orbit, ide pemasungan ini ditengarai dimotori AW bekerjasama dengan T Erry.
Menyalahgunakan Kekuasaan
Sebab, sebelum muncul pernyataan 40 wartawan, T Erry dan kinerjanya gencar diberitakan media di Medan atas berbagai penyimpangan dan dugaan korupsinya senilai Rp 8 miliar telah dilaporkan masyarakat ke Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (KPK). Direktur Kajian Informasi Pendidikan Penerbitan Sumatera (KIPPAS) J Anto mengatakan, terkait pers bermitra dengan pejabat negara telah disalahartikan. “Bermitra dalam arti berteman silakan saja. Tetapi bukan pertemanan kemudian sampai memasung dan membungkam pers dalam menjalankan tugas-tugas jurnalistik yang telah diatur UU Pers dan kode etik,” ungkap J Anto.
sosiasi Wartawan Muslim (AWAM) Indonesia Sugeng Satya Dahrama menyebutkan di Jakarta, tindakan pemasungan tugas-tugas jurnalistik bukan hanya pelanggaran UU Pers, tetapi jika benar pihak Bupati Sergai berada di belakang perbuatan itu, telah menyalahgunakan kekuasaannya yang bisa dikenai sanksi.
Harus Dihormati
“Dalam melaksanakan tugasnya menyebarluaskan informasi yang benar, wartawan mendapat perlindungan hukum sesuai UU Pers pasal 8. Usut tuntas kasus pemasungan wartawan tersebut dan lakukan proses hukum siapapun yang terlibat,” sergah Sugeng Satya Dharma.
Apalagi, kata Sugeng, sampai ada pernyataan yang dinotariskan. Hal itu terang-terangan telah melanggar hukum. Segera dilaporkan ke Dewan Pers, dan institusi media di mana wartawan tersebut menjalankan tugas jurnalistik, harus menindak tegas wartawannya yang tidak profesional itu.
Sementara Ketua Aliansi Junalis Independen (AJI) Medan, Rika Yoes menyebutkan, jika benar terjadi bentuk pemasungan terhadap watawan seperti itu, adalah bagian dari tindak kekerasan terhadap wartawan. “Selain tindakan kekerasan psikis, juga upaya pembodohan terhadap jurnalis, dan merusak independensi pers,” katanya.
Ketika disinggung apakah AJI sebagai organisasi pers siap untuk melakukan gugatan atas pelanggaran hukum tersebut. Menurut Rika, pihaknya sedang mempelajari kasusnya. “Jika sudah cukup jelas terbukti pelanggaran pidana, mengapa tidak. Karena kemerdekaan pers harus dihormati oleh siapapun,” katanya.
Agar Tidak Belot
Perlu diketahui, dalam rentang kepemimpinan T Erry Nuradi menjadi Bupati Sergai senantiasa diterpa dugaan berbagai penyimpangan dan korupsi. Untuk menutup pemberitaan miring (sosial kontrol) berbagai media, sejak tahun 2005 hingga 2007 menyediakan dana untuk wartawan mencapai Rp 124.795.000,- dalam satu tahun APBD.
Selain itu berdasarkan sumber informasi di Jakarta, diketahui dana Rp 270.310.000,- yang bersumber dari beberapa mata anggaran dihabiskan untuk layanan pengiriman berita wartawan Rp 124.795.000,- diberikan kepada wartawan dan redaktur yang nama dan medianya tercatat. Biaya kelancaran Wartawan Unit Pemerintahan Kabupatan Sergai sebesar Rp 89.615.000,- dibayarkan secara rutin setiap bulan. Hal ini jelas tidak sesuai dengan PP No 58 tahun 2005 tentang pengelolaan Keuangan Daerah, apalagi tidak sesuai dengan peruntukan.
Ketika kiat untuk ‘memelihara’ wartawan Sergai mulai terungkap, kata sumber yang tidak ingin disebutkan namanya, dilakukanlah cara-cara pemasungan yang dinotariskan agar tidak ada wartawan yang belot. “Ide pemasungan ini seakan-akan datang dari wartawan dan pengusaha AW, tetapi Bupati tahu, karena tidak berusaha melarangnya,” kata sumber itu.
T Erry Nuradi sendiri sangat sulit untuk dikonfirmasi. Begitu juga Kepala bagian Humas Pemkab Sergai, Rahmat Karo-karo, sulit memberi keterangan dan menutup informasi. Kecuali Humas terbuka terhadap para wartawan yang selama ini menjadi ‘peliharaan’ Pemkab Sergai. Terkait pernyataan 40 wartawan yang diaktenotariskan, Rahmat Karo-karo mengatakan dulu ada, tetapi sekarang tidak ada lagi.(Harian Orbit)
http://www.intipnews.com/view/3/8193/40-Wartawan-Buat-Pernyataan-yang-Diaktenotariskan.html
Jakarta Tanggap COVID-19
Data Pemantauan COVID-19 Nasional dan DKI Jakarta
21 Januari 2020 sampai hari ini
Greenpeace Minta Komitmen Penuh Nestle Untuk Menghentikan Sinar Mas Menghancurkan Hutan Indonesia
JAKARTA, 24 Maret 2010: Aktivis Greenpeace mengenakan kostum Orangutan hari ini melakukan aksi di Kantor Nestle Jakarta untuk mendesak produsen KitKat itu memutus semua hubungan dengan perusahaan perusak hutan Sinar Mas Grup, termasuk pembelian dari pihak ketiga seperti Cargill dan IOI (Loders Croklaan).
Pekan lalu Nestle memutus kontrak langsung pembelian minyak kelapa sawit dengan perusak lahan gambut terbesar Indonesia Sinar Mas menyusul diluncurkannya laporan Greenpeace “Caught Red-Handed (Tertangkap Basah)”.(1) Laporan ini mengungkap betapa Nestle menggunakan minyak kelapa sawit dari suplier seperti Sinar Mas, yang terus melakukan perusakan lahan gambut kaya karbon dan hutan alam yang sangat penting untuk habitat orangutan.
“Pembatalan kontrak langsung dengan Sinar Mas oleh Nestle belum cukup.Mereka harus menghentikan pembelian produk Sinar Mas dari pihak ketiga seperti Cargill dan IOI. Nestle mempunyai pengaruh dan tanggung jawab untuk membersihkan seluruh sistem suplai minyak sawit, menyelamatkan rumah terakhir orangutan dan membantu menghentikan peningkatan pesat perubahan iklim akibat perusakan hutan di Indonesia,” ujar Bustar Maitar, Team Leader Kampanye Hutan Greenpeace Asia Tenggara.
Indonesia saat ini mempunyai laju deforestasi tercepat disbanding negara-negara yang masih punya hutan di dunia. Perusakan hutan tropis Indonesia untuk dijadikan perkebunan kelapa sawit dan pulp and paper adalah bencana ekologis dan kontributor utama emisi gas rumah kaca Indonesia, membuat negara ini menjadi negara ketiga terbesar dunia penghasil emisi gas rumah kaca setelah China dan Amerika Serikat.
Sejak lebih dari setengah abad lalu, sudah 74 juta hektar hutan alam Indonesia –atau dua kali lebih besar dari wilayah negara Jerman telah hancur atau dibakar.
“Greenpeace tidak anti industri kelapa sawit, kampanye kami bertujuan untuk menghentikan perusahaan seperti Sinar Mas merusak hutan alam Indonesia yang masih tersisa. Greenpeace mendukung komitmen Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono untuk mengurangi emisi Indonesia hingga 41% dengan dukungan internasional. Menghentikan perusakan hutan dan lahan gambut serta menghentikan perusahaan seperti Sinar Mas adalah jalan satu-satunya untuk mencapai ini,” Maitar menambahkan.
Greenpeace meminta Presiden Yudhoyono untuk menerapkan segera moratorium (penghentian sementara) perusakan hutan yang bermanfaat untuk memberi ruang bagi implementasi program jangka panjang perlindungan hutan yang didukung oleh dana internasional. Moratorium semacam ini juga bisa meningkatkan investasi dan kebijakan yang terkait akan mendorong perbaikan di area perkebunan yang sudah ada, terutama perkebunan yang dimiliki oleh petani sawit skala kecil, serta pengembangan perkebunan di daerah non-hutan.
Greenpeace adalah organisasi kampanye global independen yang bertindak untuk mengubah sikap dan perilaku, untuk melindungi dan melestarikan lingkungan, dan mempromosikan perdamaian. [PR/GP]
http://www.greenpeace.org/seasia/report/caught-red-handed-how-nestle
Pekan lalu Nestle memutus kontrak langsung pembelian minyak kelapa sawit dengan perusak lahan gambut terbesar Indonesia Sinar Mas menyusul diluncurkannya laporan Greenpeace “Caught Red-Handed (Tertangkap Basah)”.(1) Laporan ini mengungkap betapa Nestle menggunakan minyak kelapa sawit dari suplier seperti Sinar Mas, yang terus melakukan perusakan lahan gambut kaya karbon dan hutan alam yang sangat penting untuk habitat orangutan.
“Pembatalan kontrak langsung dengan Sinar Mas oleh Nestle belum cukup.Mereka harus menghentikan pembelian produk Sinar Mas dari pihak ketiga seperti Cargill dan IOI. Nestle mempunyai pengaruh dan tanggung jawab untuk membersihkan seluruh sistem suplai minyak sawit, menyelamatkan rumah terakhir orangutan dan membantu menghentikan peningkatan pesat perubahan iklim akibat perusakan hutan di Indonesia,” ujar Bustar Maitar, Team Leader Kampanye Hutan Greenpeace Asia Tenggara.
Indonesia saat ini mempunyai laju deforestasi tercepat disbanding negara-negara yang masih punya hutan di dunia. Perusakan hutan tropis Indonesia untuk dijadikan perkebunan kelapa sawit dan pulp and paper adalah bencana ekologis dan kontributor utama emisi gas rumah kaca Indonesia, membuat negara ini menjadi negara ketiga terbesar dunia penghasil emisi gas rumah kaca setelah China dan Amerika Serikat.
Sejak lebih dari setengah abad lalu, sudah 74 juta hektar hutan alam Indonesia –atau dua kali lebih besar dari wilayah negara Jerman telah hancur atau dibakar.
“Greenpeace tidak anti industri kelapa sawit, kampanye kami bertujuan untuk menghentikan perusahaan seperti Sinar Mas merusak hutan alam Indonesia yang masih tersisa. Greenpeace mendukung komitmen Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono untuk mengurangi emisi Indonesia hingga 41% dengan dukungan internasional. Menghentikan perusakan hutan dan lahan gambut serta menghentikan perusahaan seperti Sinar Mas adalah jalan satu-satunya untuk mencapai ini,” Maitar menambahkan.
Greenpeace meminta Presiden Yudhoyono untuk menerapkan segera moratorium (penghentian sementara) perusakan hutan yang bermanfaat untuk memberi ruang bagi implementasi program jangka panjang perlindungan hutan yang didukung oleh dana internasional. Moratorium semacam ini juga bisa meningkatkan investasi dan kebijakan yang terkait akan mendorong perbaikan di area perkebunan yang sudah ada, terutama perkebunan yang dimiliki oleh petani sawit skala kecil, serta pengembangan perkebunan di daerah non-hutan.
Greenpeace adalah organisasi kampanye global independen yang bertindak untuk mengubah sikap dan perilaku, untuk melindungi dan melestarikan lingkungan, dan mempromosikan perdamaian. [PR/GP]
http://www.greenpeace.org/seasia/report/caught-red-handed-how-nestle
IsLib "Proyek Theologis" US di Indonesia?
In the early 1980s, Nasir Tamara, a young Indonesian scholar, needed money to fund a study of Islam and politics. He went to the Jakarta office of the U.S.-based Ford Foundation to ask for help. He left empty-handed. The United States, he was told, was "not interested in getting into Islam."
The rebuff came from President Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, a U.S. anthropologist who lived in Indonesia for more than a decade. Dunham, who died in 1995, focused on issues of economic development, not matters of faith and politics, sensitive subjects in a country then ruled by a secular-minded autocrat.
"It was not fashionable to 'do Islam' back then," Tamara recalled.
Today, Indonesia is a democracy and the role of Islam is one of the most important issues facing U.S. policy in a country with many more Muslims than Egypt, Syria, Jordan and all the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf combined. What kind of Islam prevails here is critical to U.S. interests across the wider Muslim world.
"This is a fight for ideas, a fight for what kind of future Indonesia wants," said Walter North, Jakarta mission chief for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), who knew Dunham while she was here in the 1980s.
It is also a fight that raises a tricky question: Should Americans stand apart from Islam's internal struggles around the world or jump in and try to bolster Muslims who are in sync with American views?
A close look at U.S. interactions with Muslim groups in Indonesia -- Obama's boyhood home for four years -- shows how, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, rival strategies have played out, often with consequences very different from what Washington intended.
In the debate over how best to influence the country's religious direction, some champion intervention, most notably a private organization from North Carolina that has waded deep into Indonesia's theological struggles. But, in the main, U.S. thinking has moved back toward what it was in Dunham's day: stay out of Islam.
A change in public mood
In many ways, Indonesia -- a nation of 240 million people scattered across 17,000 islands -- is moving in America's direction. It has flirted with Saudi-style dogmatism on its fringes. But while increasingly pious, it shows few signs of dumping what, since Islam arrived here in the 14th century, has generally been an eclectic and flexible brand of the faith.
Terrorism, which many Indonesians previously considered an American-made myth, now stirs general revulsion. When a key suspect in July suicide bombings in Jakarta was killed recently in a shootout with a U.S.-trained police unit, his native village, appalled by his violent activities, refused to take the body for burial.
A band of Islamic moral vigilantes this month forced a Japanese porn star to call off a trip to Jakarta. But the group no longer storms bars, nightclubs and hotels as it did regularly a few years ago, at the height of a U.S. drive to promote "moderate" Islam. Aceh, a particularly devout Indonesian region and a big recipient of U.S. aid after a 2004 tsunami, recently introduced a bylaw that mandates the stoning to death of adulterers, but few expect the penalty to be carried out. Aceh's
governor, who has an American adviser paid for by USAID, opposes stoning.
Public fury at the United States over the Iraq war has faded, a trend accelerated by the departure of President George W. Bush and the election of Obama. In 2003, the first year of the war, 15 percent of Indonesians surveyed by the Pew Research Center had a favorable view of the United States -- compared with 75 percent before Bush took office.
America's favorability rating is now 63 percent.
There are many reasons for the change of mood: an economy that is growing fast despite the global slump; increasing political stability rooted in elections that are generally free and fair; moves by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a U.S.-trained former general who won reelection by a landslide in July, to co-opt Islamic political parties.
Another reason, said Masdar Mas'udi, a senior cleric at Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia's -- and the world's -- largest Islamic organization, is that the United States has backed away from overt intrusions into religious matters. A foe of hard-line Muslims who has worked closely with Americans, Mas'udi said he now believes that U.S. intervention in theological quarrels often provides radicals with "a sparring partner" that strengthens them. These days, instead of tinkering with religious doctrine, a pet project focuses on providing organic rice seeds to poor Muslim farmers.
In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Washington deployed money and rhetoric in a big push to bolster "moderate" Muslims against what Bush called the "real and profound ideology" of "Islamo-fascism. "Obama, promising a "new beginning between America and Muslims around the world," has avoided dividing Muslims into competing theological camps.
He has denounced "violent extremists" but, in a June speech in Cairo, stated that "Islam is not part of the problem."
North, the USAID mission chief, said the best way to help "champions of an enlightened perspective win the day" is to avoid theology and help Indonesia "address some of the problems here, such as poverty and corruption." Trying to groom Muslim leaders America likes, he said, won't help.
Rethinking post-9/11 tack
This is a sharp retreat from the approach taken right after the Sept. 11 attacks, when a raft of U.S.-funded programs sought to amplify the voice of "moderates." Hundreds of Indonesian clerics went through U.S.-sponsored courses that taught a reform-minded reading of the Koran.
A handbook for preachers, published with U.S. money, offered tips on what to preach. One American-funded Muslim group even tried to script Friday prayer sermons.
Such initiatives mimicked a strategy adopted during the Cold War, when, to counter communist ideology, the United States funded a host of cultural, educational and other groups in tune with America's goals.
Even some of the key actors were the same. The Asia Foundation, founded with covert U.S. funding in the 1950s to combat communism, took the lead in battling noxious strands of Islam in Indonesia as part of a USAID-financed program called Islam and Civil Society. The program began before the Sept. 11 attacks but ramped up its activities after.
"We wanted to challenge hard-line ideas head-on," recalled Ulil Abshar Abdalla, an Indonesian expert in Islamic theology who, with Asia Foundation funding, set up the Liberal Islam Network in 2001. The network launched a weekly radio program that questioned literal interpretations of sacred texts with respect to women, homosexuals and basic doctrine. It bought airtime on national television for a video
that presented Islam as a faith of "many colors" and distributed leaflets promoting liberal theology in mosques.
Feted by Americans as a model moderate, Abdalla was flown to Washington in 2002 to meet officials at the State Department and the Pentagon, including Paul D. Wolfowitz, the then-deputy secretary of defense and a former U.S. ambassador to Jakarta. But efforts to transplant Cold War tactics into the Islamic world started to go very wrong.
More-conservative Muslims never liked what they viewed as American meddling in theology. Their unease over U.S. motives escalated sharply with the start of the Iraq war and spread to a wider constituency. Iraq "destroyed everything," said Abdalla, who started getting death threats.
Indonesia's council of clerics, enraged by what it saw as a U.S. campaign to reshape Islam, issued a fatwa denouncing "secularism, pluralism and liberalism."
The Asia Foundation pulled its funding for Abdalla's network and began to rethink its strategy. It still works with Muslim groups but avoids sensitive theological issues, focusing instead on training to monitor budgets, battle corruption and lobby on behalf of the poor. "The foundation came to believe that it was more effective for intra-Islamic debates to take place without the involvement of international organizations, " said Robin Bush, head of the foundation's Jakarta
office.
Abdalla, meanwhile, left Indonesia and moved to Boston to study.
One U.S. group jumps in
While the Asia Foundation and others dived for cover, one American
outfit jumped into the theological fray with gusto. In December 2003, C. Holland Taylor, a former telecommunications executive from Winston-Salem, N.C., set up a combative outfit called LibForAll Foundation to "promote the culture of liberty and tolerance."
Taylor, who speaks Indonesian, won some big-name supporters, including Indonesia's former president, Abdurrahman Wahid, a prominent but ailing cleric, and a popular Indonesian pop star, who released a hit song that vowed, "No to the warriors of jihad! Yes to the warriors of love."
Taylor took Wahid to Washington, where they met Wolfowitz, Vice President Richard B. Cheney and others. He recruited a reform-minded Koran scholar from Egypt to help promote a "renaissance of Islamic pluralism, tolerance and critical thinking."
Funding came from wealthy Americans, including heirs of the Hanes underwear fortune, and several European organizations. Taylor, in a recent interview in Jakarta, declined to identify his biggest American donor. He said he has repeatedly asked the U.S. government for money but has received only $50,000, a grant from a State Department counterterrorism unit.
"You can't win a war with that," said Taylor, who is working on a 26-part TV documentary that aims to debunk hard-line Islamic doctrine. "People in Washington would prefer to think that if we do nothing we will be okay: just cut off the heads of terrorists and everything will be fine."
As the atmosphere has grown less hostile, Abdalla, the much-reviled American favorite, returned this year to Jakarta. He hasn't changed his liberal take on Islam but now avoids topics that fire up his foes. "I've changed. The environment has changed," he said. "We now realize the radical groups are not as dominant as we thought in the beginning."
Tired of being branded a fringe American stooge, he plans to run in an election next year for leadership of Nahdlatul Ulama, a pillar of Indonesia's traditional religious establishment. He doesn't stand much of a chance but wants to "engage with the mainstream instead of the periphery." His Liberal Islam Network doesn't get U.S. money anymore, skirts touchy topics on its radio show and no longer hands out leaflets in mosques.
"Religion is too sensitive. We shouldn't get involved," said Kay Ikranagara, a close American friend of Obama's late mother who works in Jakarta for a small USAID-funded scholarship program. Ikranagara worries about Islam's growing influence on daily life in the country, but she's wary of outsiders who want to press Indonesians on matters of faith.
"We just get in a lot of trouble trying to do that," she said.
***
By Andrew Higgins
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/24/AR2009102402279.html
The rebuff came from President Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, a U.S. anthropologist who lived in Indonesia for more than a decade. Dunham, who died in 1995, focused on issues of economic development, not matters of faith and politics, sensitive subjects in a country then ruled by a secular-minded autocrat.
"It was not fashionable to 'do Islam' back then," Tamara recalled.
Today, Indonesia is a democracy and the role of Islam is one of the most important issues facing U.S. policy in a country with many more Muslims than Egypt, Syria, Jordan and all the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf combined. What kind of Islam prevails here is critical to U.S. interests across the wider Muslim world.
"This is a fight for ideas, a fight for what kind of future Indonesia wants," said Walter North, Jakarta mission chief for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), who knew Dunham while she was here in the 1980s.
It is also a fight that raises a tricky question: Should Americans stand apart from Islam's internal struggles around the world or jump in and try to bolster Muslims who are in sync with American views?
A close look at U.S. interactions with Muslim groups in Indonesia -- Obama's boyhood home for four years -- shows how, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, rival strategies have played out, often with consequences very different from what Washington intended.
In the debate over how best to influence the country's religious direction, some champion intervention, most notably a private organization from North Carolina that has waded deep into Indonesia's theological struggles. But, in the main, U.S. thinking has moved back toward what it was in Dunham's day: stay out of Islam.
A change in public mood
In many ways, Indonesia -- a nation of 240 million people scattered across 17,000 islands -- is moving in America's direction. It has flirted with Saudi-style dogmatism on its fringes. But while increasingly pious, it shows few signs of dumping what, since Islam arrived here in the 14th century, has generally been an eclectic and flexible brand of the faith.
Terrorism, which many Indonesians previously considered an American-made myth, now stirs general revulsion. When a key suspect in July suicide bombings in Jakarta was killed recently in a shootout with a U.S.-trained police unit, his native village, appalled by his violent activities, refused to take the body for burial.
A band of Islamic moral vigilantes this month forced a Japanese porn star to call off a trip to Jakarta. But the group no longer storms bars, nightclubs and hotels as it did regularly a few years ago, at the height of a U.S. drive to promote "moderate" Islam. Aceh, a particularly devout Indonesian region and a big recipient of U.S. aid after a 2004 tsunami, recently introduced a bylaw that mandates the stoning to death of adulterers, but few expect the penalty to be carried out. Aceh's
governor, who has an American adviser paid for by USAID, opposes stoning.
Public fury at the United States over the Iraq war has faded, a trend accelerated by the departure of President George W. Bush and the election of Obama. In 2003, the first year of the war, 15 percent of Indonesians surveyed by the Pew Research Center had a favorable view of the United States -- compared with 75 percent before Bush took office.
America's favorability rating is now 63 percent.
There are many reasons for the change of mood: an economy that is growing fast despite the global slump; increasing political stability rooted in elections that are generally free and fair; moves by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a U.S.-trained former general who won reelection by a landslide in July, to co-opt Islamic political parties.
Another reason, said Masdar Mas'udi, a senior cleric at Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia's -- and the world's -- largest Islamic organization, is that the United States has backed away from overt intrusions into religious matters. A foe of hard-line Muslims who has worked closely with Americans, Mas'udi said he now believes that U.S. intervention in theological quarrels often provides radicals with "a sparring partner" that strengthens them. These days, instead of tinkering with religious doctrine, a pet project focuses on providing organic rice seeds to poor Muslim farmers.
In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Washington deployed money and rhetoric in a big push to bolster "moderate" Muslims against what Bush called the "real and profound ideology" of "Islamo-fascism. "Obama, promising a "new beginning between America and Muslims around the world," has avoided dividing Muslims into competing theological camps.
He has denounced "violent extremists" but, in a June speech in Cairo, stated that "Islam is not part of the problem."
North, the USAID mission chief, said the best way to help "champions of an enlightened perspective win the day" is to avoid theology and help Indonesia "address some of the problems here, such as poverty and corruption." Trying to groom Muslim leaders America likes, he said, won't help.
Rethinking post-9/11 tack
This is a sharp retreat from the approach taken right after the Sept. 11 attacks, when a raft of U.S.-funded programs sought to amplify the voice of "moderates." Hundreds of Indonesian clerics went through U.S.-sponsored courses that taught a reform-minded reading of the Koran.
A handbook for preachers, published with U.S. money, offered tips on what to preach. One American-funded Muslim group even tried to script Friday prayer sermons.
Such initiatives mimicked a strategy adopted during the Cold War, when, to counter communist ideology, the United States funded a host of cultural, educational and other groups in tune with America's goals.
Even some of the key actors were the same. The Asia Foundation, founded with covert U.S. funding in the 1950s to combat communism, took the lead in battling noxious strands of Islam in Indonesia as part of a USAID-financed program called Islam and Civil Society. The program began before the Sept. 11 attacks but ramped up its activities after.
"We wanted to challenge hard-line ideas head-on," recalled Ulil Abshar Abdalla, an Indonesian expert in Islamic theology who, with Asia Foundation funding, set up the Liberal Islam Network in 2001. The network launched a weekly radio program that questioned literal interpretations of sacred texts with respect to women, homosexuals and basic doctrine. It bought airtime on national television for a video
that presented Islam as a faith of "many colors" and distributed leaflets promoting liberal theology in mosques.
Feted by Americans as a model moderate, Abdalla was flown to Washington in 2002 to meet officials at the State Department and the Pentagon, including Paul D. Wolfowitz, the then-deputy secretary of defense and a former U.S. ambassador to Jakarta. But efforts to transplant Cold War tactics into the Islamic world started to go very wrong.
More-conservative Muslims never liked what they viewed as American meddling in theology. Their unease over U.S. motives escalated sharply with the start of the Iraq war and spread to a wider constituency. Iraq "destroyed everything," said Abdalla, who started getting death threats.
Indonesia's council of clerics, enraged by what it saw as a U.S. campaign to reshape Islam, issued a fatwa denouncing "secularism, pluralism and liberalism."
The Asia Foundation pulled its funding for Abdalla's network and began to rethink its strategy. It still works with Muslim groups but avoids sensitive theological issues, focusing instead on training to monitor budgets, battle corruption and lobby on behalf of the poor. "The foundation came to believe that it was more effective for intra-Islamic debates to take place without the involvement of international organizations, " said Robin Bush, head of the foundation's Jakarta
office.
Abdalla, meanwhile, left Indonesia and moved to Boston to study.
One U.S. group jumps in
While the Asia Foundation and others dived for cover, one American
outfit jumped into the theological fray with gusto. In December 2003, C. Holland Taylor, a former telecommunications executive from Winston-Salem, N.C., set up a combative outfit called LibForAll Foundation to "promote the culture of liberty and tolerance."
Taylor, who speaks Indonesian, won some big-name supporters, including Indonesia's former president, Abdurrahman Wahid, a prominent but ailing cleric, and a popular Indonesian pop star, who released a hit song that vowed, "No to the warriors of jihad! Yes to the warriors of love."
Taylor took Wahid to Washington, where they met Wolfowitz, Vice President Richard B. Cheney and others. He recruited a reform-minded Koran scholar from Egypt to help promote a "renaissance of Islamic pluralism, tolerance and critical thinking."
Funding came from wealthy Americans, including heirs of the Hanes underwear fortune, and several European organizations. Taylor, in a recent interview in Jakarta, declined to identify his biggest American donor. He said he has repeatedly asked the U.S. government for money but has received only $50,000, a grant from a State Department counterterrorism unit.
"You can't win a war with that," said Taylor, who is working on a 26-part TV documentary that aims to debunk hard-line Islamic doctrine. "People in Washington would prefer to think that if we do nothing we will be okay: just cut off the heads of terrorists and everything will be fine."
As the atmosphere has grown less hostile, Abdalla, the much-reviled American favorite, returned this year to Jakarta. He hasn't changed his liberal take on Islam but now avoids topics that fire up his foes. "I've changed. The environment has changed," he said. "We now realize the radical groups are not as dominant as we thought in the beginning."
Tired of being branded a fringe American stooge, he plans to run in an election next year for leadership of Nahdlatul Ulama, a pillar of Indonesia's traditional religious establishment. He doesn't stand much of a chance but wants to "engage with the mainstream instead of the periphery." His Liberal Islam Network doesn't get U.S. money anymore, skirts touchy topics on its radio show and no longer hands out leaflets in mosques.
"Religion is too sensitive. We shouldn't get involved," said Kay Ikranagara, a close American friend of Obama's late mother who works in Jakarta for a small USAID-funded scholarship program. Ikranagara worries about Islam's growing influence on daily life in the country, but she's wary of outsiders who want to press Indonesians on matters of faith.
"We just get in a lot of trouble trying to do that," she said.
***
By Andrew Higgins
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/24/AR2009102402279.html
Langganan:
Postingan (Atom)