Building Bridges not Bunkers
Aug 10th, 2009, in News, by Patung
Different approaches to Abu Bakar Bashir from the police and military in Central Java.
As part of a ‘building bridges’ attempt the police chief of Central Java, Alex Bambang Riatmodjo, on 6th August donated five computers, one printer, and a memento type gift to the Pondok Pesantren Al Mukmin in Ngruki, Sukoharjo, led by Abu Bakar Baasyir.
Police General Riatmodjo had intended to hand over the gifts in person to Abu Bakar Bashir at the Al Mukmin school but was taken sick suddenly, while a senior official of the Sukoharjo police force stepped in to take his place.
Al Mukmin Islamic boarding school has produced graduates such as Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra, executed on 9th November 2008 for their roles in the Bali bombings, and after the recent suicide bombings in Jakarta suspicion immediately fell on the school again.
Alex Bambang Riatmodjo
Alex Bambang Riatmodjo later said that his intended visit was to ensure that the police and the Islamic community had a similar vision and to prevent any misunderstandings between them.
On the visit of Riatmodjo Bashir said the police initiated the attempt to improve relations, and: kompas
As far as I know the police chief wanted to find out what our school is actually like. There is the issue of some people believing that there is a secret bunker under the school, but if he visits he’ll see there’s nothing like that.
In recent days military officers had searched the school complex looking for an underground facility.
They searched everywhere, even in the toilets and in my house.
Pangdam IV Diponegoro Major General Haryadi Sutanto had ordered the search of Ngruki, having some suspicions that Noordin M Top may be being hidden at the school, and saying of Bashir: okezone
Every time there is a terrorist act in Indonesia Baasyir always says it is a form of jihad to defend Islam. It is the wrong way of thinking about it and it is a justification of terrorism. In my view there are three causes of terrorism. Wrong ideology, poor education, and poverty.
35 Comments on “Building Bridges not Bunkers”
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Odinius says:
Well, the racialism in Malaysia is actually inherited from the colonial regime, as Charles Hirschmann’s research shows. It continued and expanded after independence, unfortunately, but the cleavages were inherited. It only became infused with state Islamism in the 1980s, though. But somewhat ironically, the real Islamists (PAS) are now in coalition with the liberals and ethnic minority parties! The racialist faux-Islamists in UMNO are finally in a bit of hot water…
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Ross says:
True, we imported so many Chinese that the Malays got ‘frit’ and thus Singapore became detached. Mea culpa, and I did feel bad when the Malay monarchy of Singapore was deprived of its palace a few years ago.
I spoke to the staff at Kampung Glam and they surmised that the family had given up and dispersed to Malaya. we should have tried to guarantee their little heritage.
But then we did try a bit in India, to no ultimate avail, for the Indian Government reneged on the princely privileges in the post-independence years.Shifting folks around for economic reasons often results in grief, viz. the Tamils – was it not us who encouraged them to Ceylon?
But though I say ‘mea culpa,’ I don’t really mean it. We weren’t born when Tamils were propelled to Ceylon, nor when most Chinese went to Singapore. We are not to blame, any more than today’s Germans should be blamed for Hitler, or youing Russians for the evil of communism.
it’s the same with the ludicrous demands for ‘reparations’ emitted by certain American minorities… or indeed affirmative action programmes in a country which now has a partially black president. -
Don’t think the problem was importing labor or civil servants, it was instituting racially-defined corporate systems (i.e. the malays will do this, but not that; the chinese will do that, but not this).
The 19th Century was one where, in the colonies, European racist ideologies generally won out over European liberal ideologies. Wasn’t just the British. Dutch did the same thing in Indonesia, Belgians in the Congo, etc.
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Yes, but the reason the Chinese and maybe the Tamils were imported was that the Malays and Sinhalese were deemed inappropriate, for whatever reason, unwillingness, temperament, etc., for certain chores. Or am I being tautological?
Comment on “Building Bridges not Bunkers”.
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Yes, Odinius, Malaysia’s becoming a bit of a mess, but it’s a long time since we left,and whilst every epoch leaves its traces on a county’s history, the current situation has developed in parallel with increasing Islamist triumphalism everywhere.
I think until the Fifties, the general idea in Britain was to take about a hundred years to bring Africa to independence.
As to my specific example, Rhodesia, Thatcher’s commission agreed that the elections which preceded the Lancaster House debacle were ‘free and fair,’ but then we had the extra condition to deal with, that the ‘final solution’ – an evocative concept – had to be internationally acceptable.
That meant basically that the UN had a veto, so as with Papua, forget free and fair as useful adjectives in the discussion.