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Smoking in Indonesia Where there's smoke There’s no fiery religious passion
LIFE is hard for Indonesia’s anti-tobacco lobby. More and more teenagers are smoking; tobacco is still advertised on television and at concerts and sporting events; and the police fail to enforce even the most basic smoking bans. Some 70% of Indonesian men older than 20 smoke, and 400,000 Indonesians die each year from smoking-related illnesses, according to the World Health Organisation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, anti-smoking groups have turned to religion.
They have teamed up with Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second-largest Islamic organisation, with some 30m members. It has issued a fatwa declaring smoking haram, or forbidden under Islam. There is, however, a snag. The ruling is useless. Indonesia has more than 190m Muslims, and the government is occasionally guilty of pandering to the religious right. In April the Constitutional Court refused to repeal a 1965 blasphemy law, which has strict provisions that are widely abused by Islamist groups. On the other hand, Indonesia’s constitution and government are secular. Fatwas have no legal force and are widely flouted.
This did not stop religious groups and the anti-smoking lobby from mobilising to try to stop a planned concert in Jakarta by Kelly Clarkson, an American singer. It was to be sponsored by Djarum, one of the country’s main tobacco companies, and its L.A. Lights cigarette brand. Muhammadiyah—though not other religious groups—declared the concert also haram.
It didn’t matter. The uproar only served to boost ticket sales, and the concert was due to go ahead on April 29th, after Ms Clarkson issued a statement saying she was unaware of the sponsorship arrangement and was personally opposed to smoking. L.A. Lights withdrew as the show’s main sponsor.
The brand, however, may well have emerged the winner from the controversy. Not only did it receive far more publicity than its sponsorship money would have bought. It also earned a bad-boy image that has done it no harm with teenage smokers.
Meanwhile, the religious right and anti-smoking lobby dented their own credibility. Busy vituperating against Ms Clarkson’s concert—after foreign activists spotted the smoking link—they kept hypocritically mum about the L.A. Lights Open, a volleyball tournament held at the same time on the island of Batam.
There might be better targets for the anti-smoking lobbies, such as the failure to enforce a four-year old ban on smoking in Jakarta’s buildings. That would at least spare Indonesians the embarrassment of watching their elected representatives on live television, puffing away in the chambers of parliament. (The Economist)
Ahmadinejad will be invited to New York
Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has applied to go to the US for a United Nations nuclear meeting.
The US State Department has revealed that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has applied to be part of an Iranian delegation to an upcoming nuclear conference at the UN headquarters in New York.
The State Department has said the United States has a responsibility to accept the Iranian president’s visa request, which means he will attend the month long conference that begins on Monday.
The conference will review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Iran is a signatory.
The United States does not have diplomatic relations with Iran and has accused Mr Ahmadinejad of being involved in secret weapons building in his country.
The US government is currently leading a diplomatic effort to place additional UN sanctions on Iran over its refusal to stop nuclear enriching activities. ( Indonesia News.Net )
Now, Musharraf accused of selling properties 'gifted' by Indonesian Prez for 'peanuts'
A report prepared by the Pakistan Foreign Affairs Ministry has charged former President General Pervez Musharraf and his cronies of selling government owned non-movable properties in Jakarta at the rate of peanuts.
The report said the government-owned Chancery building and the ambassador’s residence in Jakarta, which were gifted to Musharraf by former Indonesian President Soeakarno, were sold in 2002 by passing all rules and regulations.
The report indicts former Pakistani ambassador to Indonesia Major General (retired) Mustafa Anwar Hussain for the irregular sale of the ‘gifted’ properties, saying he forced the authorities to sideline normal procedures in order to avoid heavy penalties.
The report noted that the ambassador’s huge residence was sold for a mere f 2.28 million dollars.
The foreign ministry had even told Hussain that he cannot proceed with the deal without the approval of the inter-ministerial committee, and asked him to refrain from finalising the agreement.
However, he went ahead with the sale, claiming he had acted in line with “a directive by the chief executive on the sale of both properties,” The Daily Times reports.
Quoting the then defence attachi Colonel. Khalid Mehmood, the report says that Hussain and one of his close friends had extracted massive kickbacks in the sale of the properties in Jakarta. Â (Indonesia News.Net)
Bali cracks down on suspected gigolos
Civilian security guards on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali have rounded up 28 suspected male prostitutes after the trailer of a documentary, made by an Indian-origin filmmaker, depicting the lives of local ‘gigolos’ sparked controversy, an official said Tuesday.
‘We found 28 people whose identity was unclear but none of them has confessed to being a gigolo,’ said Gusti Ketut Sudira, the informal village chief of Kuta, Bali’s most popular tourist strip. The move came after the preview of a documentary focusing on the lifestyles of gigolos operating in Bali beaches, titled ‘Cowboys in Paradise’, was posted on the popular internet video sharing site YouTube. Sudira said the film’s depiction of local boys as gigolos had tainted the image of Bali’s tourism and caused ‘a little unease’. He argued that men who sold sex to females in Bali beaches were mostly outsiders.
‘The gigolo phenomenon has existed since perhaps 20 years ago,’ he said. ‘We will intensify monitoring at the beach and those who are neither tourists or merchandise vendors will be questioned.’ Bali police spokesman Gede Sugianyar Dwi Putra said he had not received any reports of suspected gigolos being rounded up. Security agencies ‘may have programmes to tackle the matter, but any action should be conducted legally,’ he said. The director of the documentary, Singapore-based writer Amit Virmani, told the Jakarta Globe newspaper in an interview that he had begun to receive hate mail and death threats. ‘It’s unfortunate that people are making this out to be an anti-Indonesian film by an Indian filmmaker,’ Virmani told the Globe. ‘Hatred is not what the film is about. And it’s not what Bali is about.
‘ Virmani said one person called him an ‘irresponsible idiot’ and ‘the biggest enemy in Bali’ in an email he had received. Bali Governor I Made Mangku Pastika said he was concerned about the film but warned civilian security forces against the use of violence. ‘We are grateful to members of the public who have kept an eye on those suspected gigolos,’ he said. ‘But please don’t use violence.’ (indonesianews.net)
New Monitor Lizard Discovered in Indonesia
A newly discovered species of monitor lizard, a close relative of the Komodo dragon, was reported in the journal Zootaxa by a professor at UC Santa Barbara and a researcher from Finland.
Sam Sweet, a professor in the department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at UCSB, and Valter Weijola, a graduate student at Abo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, are the first to describe the distinctive lizard, which lives in the Moluccan islands of east Indonesia. Sweet is an authority on monitor lizard biology.
The scientific name of this lizard is Varanus obor; its popular names are Torch monitor and Sago monitor. It’s called Torch monitor because of its bright orange head with a glossy black body. Obor means torch in Indonesian. It is a close relative of the fruit-eating monitor lizard recently reported from the Philippines. The Torch monitor can grow to nearly four feet in length, and thrives on a diet of small animals and carrion.
The Torch monitor exists only on the small island of Sanana in the western Moluccan islands. A unique aspect of this geographical region is the lack of mammalian predators, which may have given reptiles the space to evolve as the top terrestrial predators and scavengers. Several million years ago, this island was situated near New Guinea, and it is possible that the lizard lives on as a relic from that period. It is the only black monitor in its lineage, and the only monitor species anywhere that has evolved red pigmentation.
Sweet describes an important biological context: “East of Wallace’s Line — the boundary between Asian and Australian domains — there are no native carnivorous mammals, and monitor lizards fill that role. There are more species there, doing more different things ecologically than in Africa or South and Southeast Asia, where competition and predation by mammals tend to keep monitor lizards down. East of Wallace’s Line in Indonesia, New Guinea, and Australia, monitor lizards are on the top of the heap. It emphasizes again how little we know about some tropical regions, to find an animal so strikingly colored and so large only last year.”
Weijola discovered the lizard last spring, and returned with Sweet in late 2009 for five weeks to do studies and take photographs of the animal. The Torch monitor is most common in the coastal sago palm swamps and belongs to the mangrove monitor, V. indicus group. (science daily)
DBS bets on Indonesia
DBS Group sees Indonesia as having the greatest investment potential and Thailand as risky due to the political mess.
DBS Group including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and China recently introduced blue-chip companies to fund managers during a roadshow in Hong Kong.
The roadshow was designed to draw more investment to the stock exchange in each country.
Pattera Dilokrungthi-rapop, CEO of DBS Vickers Securities (Thailand), said last week that fund managers in Hong Kong are highly interested in Indonesia with its political stability and continued economic growth. Malaysia ranked second in investment potential.
The company introduced three Thai listed companies – Charoen Pokphand Foods, Minor Corp and Thai Airways International.
“Those fund managers have expressed concern that the political mess in Bangkok would create higher investment risk, which caused those three companies to lose business opportunities,” he said.
The political turmoil also causes the company to take a more conservative approach to providing credit for stock trading.
“We have to be more careful in considering margin loans for customers due to the fluctuating trading environment,” he said. ( THE NATION )
Indonesia wants to tap volcano power
KAMOJANG: Indonesia has launched an ambitious plan to tap the vast power of its volcanoes and become a world leader in geothermal energy, while trimming greenhouse gas emissions.
The sprawling archipelago of 17,000 islands stretching from the Indian to the Pacific Oceans contains hundreds of volcanoes, estimated to hold around 40 per cent of the world’s geothermal energy potential.
But so far only a tiny fraction of that potential has been unlocked, so the government is seeking help from private investors, the World Bank and partners like Japan and the United States to exploit the power hidden deep underground.
“The government’s aim to add 4,000 megawatts of geothermal capacity from the existing 1,189 megawatts by 2014 is truly challenging,” Indonesian Geothermal Association chief Surya Darma said.
One of the biggest obstacles is the cost. Indonesia currently relies on dirty coal-fired power plants using locally produced coal. A geothermal plant costs about twice as much, and can take many more years in research and development to get online.
But once established, geothermal plants like the one built in Kamojang, Java, in 1982 can convert the endless free supplies of volcanic heat into electricity with much lower overheads — and less pollution — than coal.
This is the pay-off the government is hoping to sell at the fourth World Geothermal Congress opening Sunday on the Indonesian resort island of Bali. The six-day event will attract some 2,000 people from more than 80 countries.
“An investment of 12 billion dollars is needed to add 4,000 MW capacity,” energy analyst Herman Darnel Ibrahim said, putting into context the recent announcement of 400 million dollars in financing from lenders including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
“Field exploration can take from three to five years, suitability studies for funding takes a year, while building the plant itself takes three years,” he added.
If there is any country in the world where geothermal makes sense it is Indonesia. Yet despite its natural advantages, it lags behind the United States and the Philippines in geothermal energy production.
Southeast Asia’s largest economy and the world’s third biggest greenhouse gas emitter exploits only seven geothermal fields out of more than 250 it could be developing.
The case for geothermal has become stronger with the rapid growth of Indonesia’s economy and the corresponding strain on its creaking power infrastructure.
The archipelago of 234 million people is one of the fastest growing economies in the Group of 20 but currently only 65 percent of Indonesians have access to electricity.
The goal is to reach 90 percent of the population by the end of the decade, through a two-stage plan to “fast-track” the provision of an extra 10,000 MW by 2012, mostly through coal, and another 10,000 MW from clean sources like volcanoes by 2014.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s pledge to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 26 per cent against 2005 levels by 2020 has also spurred the push to geothermal.
Many of the best geothermal sources lie in protected forests, so the government aims to allow the drilling of wells inside conservation areas while insisting that the power plants themselves be outside.
Geothermal fans welcomed the recent completion of negotiations between a consortium of US, Japanese and Indonesian companies and the state electricity company, Perusahaan Listrik Negara, over a 340 MW project on Sumatra island.
The Sarulla project will be Indonesia’s second biggest geothermal plant, after the Wayang Windu facility in West Java.
“The Sarulla project is a perfect example of how Indonesia can realise its clean energy and energy security goals by partnering with international firms,” US Ambassador Cameron Hume wrote in a local newspaper.
Several firms such as Tata and Chevron have submitted bids to build another geothermal plant in North Sumatra, with potential for 200 MW. – AFP
Clarkson cuts ties to tobacco in Indonesia
The promoter of Kelly Clarkson’s Jakarta concert said it has cancelled its sponsorship contract with a cigarette company because of fan protests.
Adrie Subono said his company would remove signs in Indonesia’s capital showing Clarkson’s image and advertising cigarette brand L.A. Lights.
Fans and anti-tobacco groups had protested and Clarkson’s Facebook page has been flooded with messages urging her to cancel the concert or reject the sponsorship.
The American Idol winner, now a major pop star, has never smoked and says she does not want to advocate smoking. But in a posting on her blog she said the April 29 show would go on because “I refuse to cancel on my fans.”
Initially, Clarkson said she did not know of the sponsorship arrangement.
“I think the hardest part of situations like this is getting personally attacked for something I was completely unaware of and being used as some kind of political pawn,” she wrote in her blog.
Subono said the contract has now been cancelled, but it would take a couple of days to take down all the signs.
Indonesia puts no restrictions on tobacco advertising or sales, making it a hot market for companies. Of Indonesia’s 235 million people, one-third smoke, including 63 per cent of all adult men. (CBC News)
Indian workers attacked in Indonesia
BATAM (Indonesia): Angry at being dubbed as “stupid” by their Indian supervisor, some 10,000 local workers at a dry dock in Indonesia on Thursday went on a rampage attacking their Indian colleagues injuring four of them and torching vehicles. A total of 41 Indians employed at the PT Drydock World Graha docks on Batam, an island just south of Singapore, were evacuated by a boat in a special seaport following the attack.
The four injured were among those evacuated under tight police protection, Antara news agency reported, adding no fatality was reported during the incident. Around 400 police officers were deployed to stop the attack, adjunct senior commissioner Eko Yudha, deputy head of the Barelang police, said. Police sealed the factory following the attack by the company’s workers who also burnt some 20 vehicles. The violence occurred after an Indian supervisor cursed at Indonesian workers, the report said. (The Times of India)
Thai fishermen enter RI aboard Indonesian boats
Surabaya (ANTARA News) – Fifty-three fishermen from Thailand have entered Indonesian waters illegally boarding Indonesian-flagged fishing boats. “We are now holding them at the IX Main Naval Base in Ambon,” Indonesian Eastern Fleet Command spokesman Lt Col Toni Syaiful said here on Wednesday.
Some of the Thai fishermen were caught when navy ship Multatuli-561, led by Lt Col Sufenri, was conducting sea security patrol in the waters near Ambon. The navy ship when inspecting fishing boat KM Samudra Jaya during the patrol discovered 27 of 31 crew on it were Thai.
At the time the boat weighing 497 gross tons were carrying 21,000 bales of fish of various species. The navy ship meanwhile caught 26 other Thai fishermen aboard KM Maribu-8 carrying 70 tons of fish of various species. “The two fishing boats were seized while passing from the fishing ground to Ambon,” he said.
He said the fishing boats violated the rules on foreign employment and for having incomplete documents. Meanwhile another navy ship KRI Wiratno-879 led by Major Bambang Darmawan had also seized fishing boat KM Sanjaya-61 in Sawu island waters for carrying no fishing license and proper documents. The Indonesian-flagged ship with 12 crew on board and Kung Toni as its skipper carried one ton of fish of various kinds. (*)
