Indonesia too complex to be treated
as a pariah

JAKARTA -- Pound for pound, Indonesia has to be the least understood country in the world. With 200 million people, it is the globe's fourth-largest nation and by far the largest Muslim country -- triple the population of Iran.

It takes the same time to fly across the 17,000 islands and 300 different ethnic groups that make up Indonesia as it does to fly across the United States.

But ask most Americans about Indonesia and only three things are likely to come to mind: Bali, East Timor and "The Year of Living Dangerously" starring Mel Gibson.

The US looms somewhat larger in Indonesia. The US Congress has been one of the main forces pressing for improved rights for Indonesian workers, as well as for the much brutalised people of East Timor.

Human rights activists here say the US spotlight has been crucial in keeping Indonesia's leaders focused on addressing abuses, even if progress is sporadic and at a snail's pace.

But in the wake of recent moves by Congress to block the sale of nine F-16 fighter jets to Indonesia and to freeze the training of Indonesian military officers in America -- because of Indonesia's occupation of East Timor -- Indonesians are beginning to fear that something new is going on: that America is going from criticising them for certain abuses to turning Indonesia into a pariah state -- another Burma, China, Iraq or Iran.

Angered by congressional criticism of its human rights record, Indonesia pulled out of the military aid programme and the F-16 deal last month.

Indonesia is too complex to be a pariah.

It has probably the best macroeconomic management of any developing nation, along with mind-boggling corruption; it has political repression along with a tolerance for hundreds of independent non-governmental human rights groups and a press that is unafraid to write about abuses; it has occasional church burnings, but the most popular Muslim leader in the country sent his daughter to study in Israel.

As a banned newspaper editor here told me: "The Indonesian government is a police state about six hours a day.

"The other 18 hours you can negotiate with it, bribe it, ignore it or go around it."

And strategically, Indonesia is the keystone of Asean, the main counterweight to China and Japan in this region.

Turning Indonesia into a pariah will produce a nationalist backlash here among the good guys, let alone the bad.

Listen to Foreign Minister Ali Alatas.

"What we had hoped," he told me, "was that public opinion would not forget Indonesia's constructive role in world affairs. We are not a pariah country that is looking inwards or that deserves to be hit on one issue only.

"Yes, we have an issue, we have East Timor, but that's a complex issue with a long history that we are trying to resolve. We are a huge society in continual growth. It is not an easy country to govern and we have come very far."

He added: "We are not causing the world problems because we have dreams of becoming a nuclear power. We don't believe in that.

"Economically, we have been at the forefront of the North-South dialogue, but with a very rational voice. We are the biggest Islamic population, but we are not an Islamic state.

"Take all of these factors and I think, humbly, we don't deserve to be put into a corner and to be told, 'You are a pariah nation and we must clobber you all the time because of East Timor'."

"You can criticise us about human rights; no country is beyond criticism on human rights," he continued. "We would prefer that you don't criticise us by shouting from the roofs, but that you sit down and, as a friend, say: 'Look, we don't like the way you do things. You better change because you're getting in trouble.' But why link it to such things as Imet?"

Imet -- International Military Educational Training -- is a programme under which the Pentagon trains foreign military officers in military matters and human rights.

After the 1991 Dili massacre, Imet for Indonesian officers was suspended; the ban was lifted in 1996.

"Indonesia is a friend of the US, not an enemy," Mr Alatas said.

"It is important not to make it an opponent. Because an Indonesia that is feeling unjustifiably pushed around, an Indonesia that feels that Indonesia-bashing is going on, reaches a point where it says: 'Well, okay, we've done what we can. If that is not understood, then we'll just shrug our shoulders and continue on'."