Pelopor.nl

One or two things I don’t like

It is hard to imagine that the group you belong to, one that defines your identity, is guilty of despicable behavior. That actually you, at least  by proxy,  are one of the bad guys. That, in your name also, your mother- and fatherland for instance committed horrible crimes. That you were on the wrong side of history.

Yet, that was what I experienced when I watched the trailer of Merah Putih. The movie shows the wasted efforts by the Dutch to keep the independence fighters down. There is no denying and I don’t deny it: the Dutchmen were the oppressors and nasty, brutal murderers – in the movie and in real life.

But times have changed apparently. Very much so, I daresay. So much that Max Blom, a compatriot of mine who is in a hospital in Singapore just now, wrote a letter to president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono a few days ago. In that letter he told that in the five years he has lived in Indonesia he had fallen in love with the country. A love which didn’t diminish now he is trying to regain a life with what remains of his body after he met a few Indonesian martyrs in a posh hotel in Jakarta a month ago.

I can see what he means. The country is like an exciting woman: sexy,  beautiful, mysterious and generous. Yet sometimes fickle-minded to the point of being malicious, cruel every now and then and hiding some dark dangerous secrets also. But, she gets under your skin. The kind of woman you can’t resist and of whom your mother would say you better stay away from – for your own wellbeing.  I can sympathize with him because I am a fellow lover.

Such a woman also can make you feel ill at ease some of the time of course.

For instance when the convicted murderer of human rights activist Munir, Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, is being released from prison. Because of Independence Day, he got pardoned after serving only a short time of the sentence he got. Maybe ” ill at ease” isn’t the right expression in this case. To be honest, “outright rage” would have been more accurate. I never understood why justice should be distorted by rituals of nationalism. For God’s sake, in stead of liberating a criminal, the authorities should do their duty and bring the perpetrators of that crime who are still at large, to justice at long last.

And there he is again: the pain-in-the-ass Abu Bakar Baashir. The most nauseating part of the gorgeous lady RI. Though I should immediately admit he is diabolical funny.  Look at his logic; at the funeral of two killed terrorists he publicly declared both men were martyrs. Yet he told elsewhere that suicide bombings were not right in the Indonesian context.  So, his audience may conclude, they are in other contexts.  Perhaps Manilla, Mumbai or Madrid are the appropriate targets according to this man of God?

Why, I wonder, don’t his fellow men of religion, who usually don’t waver in telling people what’s right and wrong ( and parade like they are the country’s conscience one might say) address this devilish man much harder. He should be dismissed by them as the criminal half baked intellectual he is. But all I see and hear is some half-hearted mutterings by MUI ( the Indonesian Muslim Council).

It is better to be frank to the one you love. I love Indonesia. That’s why I got it off my chest.