Indonesia can kiss our butts.

Over 42 refugees? Let them just keep their ambassador.

eeeeeyup

No, we should calmly tell them that we will not be affected by their protests in how we deal with these refugees.


I assume this is mainly posturing for domestic consumption, since I imagine Indonesia does not want investigation into their treatment of people in Irian Jaya, and they are very sensitive to losing face internationally.

To respond they way Wilso suggests is just silly.

The posturings of the government in no way affects the need of the country for aid, nor the extent to which their people deserve it, nor that it is in Australia's interests to provide aid.



Heheee.....one of their papers has depicted our Prime Minister as a dingo, being mounted by another dingo remarkably resembling our Foreign Minister....as Noel Coward said of the elephant which shat enormously on stage during an especially lavish mounting of the opera Aida:

"Shocking manners, of course, but what a critic!"

So why should Indonesia be so upset about giving refugee status to these people? Are they criminals?

No, as the Wabbit has pointed out, the regime is embarrassed because they do not want attention brought to how they treat people in their little piece of the Island of New Guinea.

Indonesia, such as it is, was a creation of the Dutch East India Company, in that they took control of all of these islands over a period of centuries. In many cases, they had to shoot their way in, which is what they did, their "conquest" of Bali being one of the most eggregious examples. With the Japanese invasion in the Second World War, the Dutch, who only had two small cruisers and a few thousand troops in the islands, were quickly driven from their colony. After the war, their straitened circumstances at home obliged them to give up overseas colonies which they could no longer afford.

At no time prior to the Dutch "conquest" had these islands ever been a part of a single, cohesive "nation," nor even an imperial entity. In circumstances which one could call "natural," the peoples of this long chain of literally thousands of islands (dozens of which are heavily populated, and serveral of which are quite large with millions of inhabitants) would never have willingly united to form a nation. The prospect for the long term is that Indonesia will lurch from one crisis of ethnic rebellion to another, and one exposure of brutal repression on the part of the central government to another.

For Americans with short memories, i recommend doing a brief web search on "Timor." If you are using google, search for "East Timor," and select the "Google News" option. This ain't the first time, and it will certainly not be the last.

bm

By the way, the two largest islands are Sumatra and Java. The former was the most heavily devastated by the tsunami, and i won't be surprised to learn of charges of government neglect emerging over the aid to the Sumatrans (if it hasn't already happened and i missed it). There is no love lost between the people of Sumatra and those on Java. The Dutch established their headquarters at Batavia, on the west end of the north coast of Java--which is now Djakarta, making Java effectively the capital of the islands. Some of the islands were once under Spanish control, and hence have Catholic populations (this was a good deal of the problem on Timor), others have some Protestant minorities, based on the Dutch colonization. Largely, the population is Muslim, but the degree of Muslim adherence is overrated, because Animists are oppressed, and the boys and girls in Djakarta never admit that there are any Animists, because they don't want to acknowledge that there are any "pagans" in Indonesia. A good many of the people on the island of New Guinea are Animists, and they get short shrift from the ruling regime.

Ignore 'em. What'll they do? Declare war? Will Australia soon tremble under the wrath of the mighty Indonesian Army? Horrors!

000
Fredddyy Cruger