A safer place

JAKARTA — On the eve of my departure for this Indonesian capital, the three men convicted of carrying out the nightclub bombings in Bali in 2002 were executed.

So on Monday when I arrived here, security forces were on high alert amid threats of retaliatory bomb attacks on the US and Australian embassies as well as shopping malls and hotels.

Leaving the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport there was heavy traffic to downtown Jakarta. My cab driver wove in and out of lanes like many of the other drivers, overtaking even on road shoulders. The air smelled of vehicle exhaust. It was like I never left home!

But the traffic cleared when we hit the equivalent of their skyway. Then I could appreciate the Indonesian landscape. On a stretch of the highway you can still see portions of the marshlands on which Dutch colonizers built the port of Old Batavia. Last year the marshes overflowed and flooded low-lying areas of the capital, killing 88 people mostly living in slums. You can see the shanties on the 20-minute drive into the city — again so reminiscent of Manila. 

But the ugly aspects are not the only similarities we have. It’s easy to understand the language here because Tagalog evolved from Bahasa Indonesia. Early settlers in the Philippines came from Indonesia’s Borneo island. The shared gene pool may account for the easy smile of the Indonesians, who are as friendly as the typically hospitable Pinoy. Like us they are quick to laugh.

Even their terrorists, who are responsible for the deaths of 202 people, laugh all the way to their date with the firing squad.

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I am here for a program on reporting in a multicultural world, sponsored by New Zealand together with Indonesia, for journalists from the Asia-Pacific.

By coincidence the program is starting as Indonesia braces for retaliation from the Southeast Asian terror cell Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) for the Sunday execution of Bali bombers Imam Samudra, the “smiling assassin” named Amrozi and his brother Mukhlas, whose real name is Ali Ghufron.

All vehicles approaching the driveways or entrances of hotels and shopping malls must go through a security check. People entering the buildings must yield their bags for inspection and pass through a security sensor. Again, so reminiscent of home.

Even before news of the executions broke, I had tried to find out if I would be staying in a hotel that was part of a Western chain. After the car bomb attack on the JW Marriott here in August 2003, which killed 12 people, security officials warned me that JI tended to go after Western-owned establishments.

I had planned to stay away from driveways, lobbies, and soft targets such as shopping malls, coffee shops and restaurants here. But as in previous terrorist attacks — in the US on 9/11, in Metro Manila and other parts of the Philippines several times, the thought that eventually prevails is that you can’t let the soldiers of violence, hatred and intolerance run your life.

So I went to the nearest shopping complex, where I found “mangga, pepaya” and “belimbing” on supermarket shelves.

The supermarkets are in the basements of the two high-end shopping complexes, which sell the major luxury brands. The malls look so much like the ones in our country.

What is different is that there are a lot of veiled women shopping. But Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation, is not a bastion of fundamentalism. Shopping along with the veiled women are many others without veils, clad in body-hugging clothes. I saw teenage girls and older women walking around in shorts and high heels. Several sported plunging necklines. And unlike in Afghanistan or parts of Pakistan, where such clothes draw hostile stares from men, everyone here seems used to such apparel.

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People on the resort island of Bali see not only plunging necklines but also topless women. There were reports that among the reasons cited by the Bali bombers for staging the attacks was that they were scandalized by the sight of topless Western tourists on the beach.

The bombings, followed by another one in October 2005, destroyed tourism, the main industry of the island. When I went to Bali about three years ago long-time residents on the predominantly Hindu island expressed concern about the influx of Muslims from the main island of Java. The Hindus did not mind the topless women; they minded that their livelihoods were incinerated together with the nightclubs that were bombed.

Last Monday The Jakarta Post reported that the Balinese simply shrugged off the executions, reflecting the newspaper’s main editorial, which bade the terrorists “good riddance.”

The paper also blamed the Indonesian mass media for turning the bombers into martyrs, allowing them to spread their extremist message and urge their followers to avenge their looming executions.

Is Indonesia a safer place with the executions? Opponents of capital punishment say no. But the best gauge of the success of counterterrorism, security officials say, is the absence of attacks. George W. Bush uses this argument in defending his conduct of the war on terror: America has not been attacked since 9/11, though his administration has alienated much of the world.

The incoming leader of the global war on terror, Barack Obama, who spent part of his childhood in this country under the care of his mother and Indonesian stepfather, will have to sustain that seven-year record of safety even as he tries to inject respect for human rights in the conduct of a dirty war.

The Democrats have vowed to dismantle the most despised symbols of the war, led by the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Among those believed detained there is Indonesian JI leader Riduan Isamuddin, a.k.a. Hambali, who was arrested in Thailand.

America has not abolished the death penalty. Would executing Hambali make the world a safer place? No one can say. But there are people who find comfort in the thought that he and the three Bali bombers are no longer in Indonesia.