This article deserves to be read by every politician, businessman, community worker and, indeed, every citizen of Indonesian who has a voice and a vote.
Nature Not Solely to Blame for Disasters in Indonesia
By Andre Vltchek
Another day, another unnecessary loss of lives: 24 people killed and 10 still missing in floods and landslides on the small island of Tahuna off Indonesia’s Sulawesi. The date is January 12, 2007.
At an alarming rate, Indonesia is replacing Bangladesh and India as the most disaster-prone nation on earth. Whenever the word Indonesia appears on the list of headlines on Yahoo News, chances are that another enormous – and often unnecessary – tragedy has occurred on one of the islands of this sprawling archipelago.
Airplanes are disappearing or sliding off the runways, ferries are sinking or simply decomposing on the high seas, trains crash or get derailed on the average of one per week Illegal garbage dumps bury desperate communities of scavengers under their stinking contents. Landslides are taking carton-like houses into ravines; earthquakes and tidal waves are swallowing up coastal cities and villages. Forest fires from Sumatra are choking huge areas of Southeast Asia.
The scope of disasters is on a scale so vast that they cannot be discounted simply as the nation’s bad luck or as the wrath of gods or nature. Corruption, incompetence and gross indifference on the part of ruling elites and government officials are to blame. Poverty, in combination with a dearth of sound public projects as well as kleptomania, is taking the lives of hundreds of thousands of desperate Indonesian men, women and children.
Since the 1965 U.S.-sponsored military coup that deposed Sukarno and installed the military regime of staunchly anti-communist and corrupt pro-market dictator Suharto, Indonesia has escaped serious scrutiny by the international media and governments. After Suharto was forced to step down in 1998, Indonesia has been hailed by the international media as an emerging and increasingly tolerant democracy: yet the only political parties allowed to compete in elections are those that are staunchly pro-business.
All continue to cover up the facts of Indonesia’s recent history, notably the 1965 massacre and the nation’s recent social collapse and the slide toward Muslim domination of Indonesian politics and society. In the wake of major earthquakes, tsunamis and landslides, citizens are encouraged to pray, instead of analyzing facts, particularly the facts of government failure and corruption.
Some of the disasters that have struck Indonesia are man-made; many are preventable; in all cases the possibility exists of reducing the human toll. On close scrutiny it becomes obvious that people die due to almost non-existent efforts to prevent the loss of life and the lack of basic education. Perhaps it is above all the product of a savage unrestricted market economic system, which allows enrichment of the very few at the expense of the majority who live on less than 2 dollars a day in this resource rich country.
Indonesia is profit-driven to the extreme. When combined with extreme corruption, the result is a formula for disaster. Particularly when there appears to be little profit to be made from implementing preventive measures. Dams and anti-tsunami walls are almost everywhere considered public works and it is precisely this word – public – that has almost disappeared from the lexicon of Indonesia’s decision makers. Short-term profits for special interests receive much higher priority than long-term gains for the entire nation. Moral collapse of the nation is reflected in these values, which slight the interests of the working poor.
Ferries are sinking not “because of high winds and waves”; they are sinking because they are overcrowded and badly maintained, or more precisely because they are allowed to be overcrowded and badly maintained. Everything is for sale, even the safety of passengers. Companies care only about their profits, while government inspectors are mainly interested in bribes.
In the recent well-publicized sinking of the Senopati Nusantara ferry on December 30, 2006 as many as four to five hundred are feared drowned. But this was just one of hundreds of maritime disasters that occur in Indonesia each year. While there are no comprehensive statistics available (the Indonesian government publishes none), some maritime routes lose three or more vessels a year.
The Indonesian airline industry has one of the worst safety records in the world. Since 1997, at least 666 people have died in eight major airplane crashes in Indonesia. Some of the pilots are so badly trained that planes regularly skip off runways, miss runways altogether or land in the middle of them. Maintenance is another issue: flaps often don’t function properly, wheels cannot be taken in after take-off, seldom changed tires frequently blow up on touch down. It is a mystery how some airplanes – particularly the old Boeings 737s flown by almost all Indonesian airlines – make it through inspections.
Local civil aviation officials told the author that the navigation systems at several major Indonesian airports are in a disastrous state, particularly those at Makassar in Sulawesi and Medan in Sumatra.
Adam Air which recently lost a plane off Sulawesi with 102 people on board during a short inter-island hop – without a mayday and with the flight recorder still unrecovered – is presently locked in a lawsuit with two former pilots who claim that the airline was violating every imaginable international regulation in order to maximize profits and cut costs. The two are among 20 pilots who have resigned, refusing to fly badly maintained aircraft, fearing for their lives and the lives of their passengers.
“The industry growth is so fast and it’s not matched by the growth of human resources,” said Dudi Sudibyo, an aviation expert called on to advise President Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono about Adam Air Flight KI-574. “There are not enough regulators, flight inspectors or planes,” he told the Associated Press. The fact that no Indonesia airline has ever been held legally responsible for a major accident is indicative of unbridled corruption in the Indonesian government, legal system and regulatory bodies.
On average, a deadly train accident occurs every six days in Indonesia, many caused by the lack of gates at its 8,000 level crossings. In comparison Malaysia had no fatal accident for 13 years up to 2005 (the last year for which statistics are available).
Despite the fact that Indonesia has relatively few cars per capita, its roads are the “most used” of any network in the world (second only to Hong Kong): 5.7 million vehicle-km per year of road network (2003 data, The Economist World in Figures, 2007 Edition). Despite epic congestion resulting in the generally slow pace of traffic, more than 80 people die per day on Indonesian roads, mostly due to the terrible state of the infrastructure and poor law-enforcement, according to The Financial Times.
Earthquakes alone do not kill people. Poor construction of houses and buildings are the culprits, together with the lack of preventive measures and preventive education. It is a well known fact that Indonesia, located on the so called ring of fire, is prone to natural disasters. But the poor can count on no large-scale public housing projects (like those in neighboring Malaysia), which could withstand earthquakes. Almost every family must build its own dwelling. Major earthquakes kill hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.
At least 5,800 people died and 36,000 were injured on May 27, 2006 during the earthquake that struck central Java near the historic city of Yogyakarta, recording 6.3 on the Richter scale. Primitive infrastructure, inadequate medical facilities and corruption in the distribution of aid are responsible for the unacceptably large number of casualties after each major tremor.
Illegal logging and deforestation are the main reasons for numerous landslides, frequently the result of deforestation. There are numerous solutions to this problem, including law enforcement, inspections and attempts to provide alternative means of livelihood for those communities that are so desperate that they are literally forced to dig their own graves by destroying the environment, which in turn annihilates entire communities. But almost nothing is done, as illegal logging is a huge and lucrative business that greases hundreds of willing palms.
In December, 2006, dozens of people were killed in landslides and flash floods in northern Sumatra Island, forcing 400,000 people to flee their homes. In June 2006, floods and landslides triggered by heavy rains killed more than 200 people in south Sulawesi province.
Tidal waves, known as tsunamis, killed more than 126,000 people in Aceh province in December 2004. Not only was the response of the Indonesian government and military inexcusably slow and inadequate, but a large part of the massive foreign aid disappeared in corruption. Instead of helping victims, many members of the Indonesian military extorted bribes from relief agencies and destroyed precious supplies including drinking water and food when bribes were not paid.
Many victims were prevented from returning to their own land while children were forcefully separated from their parents (who lost birth certificates during the tragedy) and “adopted” by religious organizations; some became victims to human trafficking. More than two years after this devastating tragedy worsened by a scandalous land grab, hundreds of thousands are living in temporary housing.
Many victims of another tsunami, which struck the coast of southern Java on July 17, 2006, are still waiting for any substantial help. At official count, 600 people died, but the real number was almost certainly much higher. Indonesian officials received early warning from Japan but refused to act, later claiming that there was not much they could do, as the area was not equipped with sirens or loudspeakers.
Indonesia often suffers from man-made disasters that strain comprehension. Mud volcano – a torrent of hot mud from deep beneath the surface – began surging from a natural gas exploration site after a drilling accident. The mud inundated entire villages right outside the second largest city – Surabaya. This was the result of flawed safety procedures by a gas exploration company. The principal well owner is PT Lapindo Brantas, which is linked to the wealthy family of Indonesia’s Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie.
This “accident” displaced more than 10,000 people, covering more than 1,000 acres of land with hot mud, and destroying Surabaya’s only motorway as well as the major railway line. Garbage buried entire communities of poor scavengers at an illegal dumping site outside Bandung. There are many more cases similar in nature, but a complete list would require an entire book to begin to do justice to the subject.
The question is when will Indonesian people say that enough is enough and when will they demand accountability and justice, exact statistics and a concrete blueprint for solutions? In almost any other country, two recent disasters – the sinking of the Senopati Nusantara ferry and the “disappearance” of Adam Air’s Boeing 737 with 102 people on board – would be more than enough to force cabinet ministers to resign. In Indonesia, these tragedies are seen (or presented) as yet another misfortune with no one accepting responsibility and no one held accountable.
Indonesia’s press and mass media report every disaster in excruciating detail. But they fail to provide analysis to show that what is happening is extraordinary and intolerable, that probably no other major country is experiencing such devastating loss of human lives due to disasters that are either man-made, easily preventable, or subject to government action to minimize casualties. To link the enormous number of lost human lives in countless disasters with corruption and the system’s socio-economic priorities is unthinkable for the major media. The Jakarta Post, Indonesia’s leading daily newspaper, recently declined to publish this commentary.
Since December 2004, Indonesia has lost some 200,000 people in various disasters, excluding automobile accidents and military conflicts. That is more than Iraq lost in the same period of time in the course of a deadly war, and more than Sri Lanka or Peru lost during their long civil wars. Indeed, many Indonesians are experiencing lives as danger ous and hazardous as those in war-torn parts of the world. In the absence of comprehensive statistics and comparative analysis, however, few realize it.
Indonesia is poor, but it certainly has the capacity to protect some of its most vulnerable citizens. The main problem is a lack of political will and a
system whose priorities lie elsewhere. There is plenty of concrete and bricks to build dams and walls against tsunamis, to reinforce the hills around those towns, which are in danger of being buried by the landslides. One has simply to look around Jakarta where dozens of new shopping malls are springing up and at the palaces being built for corrupt officials.
Failure to deal with the problems of natural and man-made disaster is rooted in the combination of the dominance of the calculus of profit and the system’s corruption. Local companies and officials have developed an uncanny ability to profit from everything, even from disasters and the suffering of fellow citizens. When the toll has to be calculated in hundreds of thousands of lost human lives, corruption becomes mass murder.
Andre Vltchek – novelist, journalist and filmmaker – is a co-founder of Mainstay Press and senior Fellow at the Oakland Institute. Producer and director of “Terlena – Breaking of a Nation“, a feature documentary film about the impact of Suharto’s dictatorship on present-day Indonesia.
Andre Vltchek presently resides and works in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific and can be emailed here. He wrote this report for Japan Focus. This article is reprinted with (his) permission.
