Apr 08
08
Commander
After a meeting with Ministry of Communication and Informatics yesterday night, I am still amazed about how linear, short-sighted, narrow minded and low self-esteem my government is. From the discussion, all of those attributes were coming out one by one and it scared me. A lot.
Self-Esteem
If I burn the barn just because I can not catch one rat, I believe people will call me stupid, absurd or even idiot. But that was what happened with YouTube case. I don’t know who was behind the idea of blocking YouTube, the Minister said it was coming from the President, just because one crappy movie. Yes, the movie insulted the religion of the majority of Indonesian, no doubt about it, but the way Indonesian government reacted was totally over reacting.
Let me turn my flashback engine. Indonesian government told YouTube to takedown a movie, I don’t have to tell you what movie it is - if you don’t know what movie I am talking about, just help yourself with Google. YouTube didn’t respond because well, it’s YouTube, all of the content were user generated content. But instead of following the spirit of the web by flagging the movie as negative or offensive, the government grumpily chosed to block the entire YouTube. Yeah, I said grumpily because the government thought that YouTube didn’t respect Indonesian government request. So low self-esteem. So low that the government didn’t have guts to create a creative way to counter the movie on the content level. So low that instead of encouraging its own people to create a counter movie, the government chosed to close down the infrastructure. It’s pathetic, really.
That action was also very New Orderly. In the New Order era, if the government did not like one article then the government would ban the newspaper that have the article. The history repeated itself. Welcome to the New Order 2.0.
Narrow Minded
It’s clear that the intention of the Ministry to invite the community was to ask how to block a certain movie discussed above. Nothing else. So no matter how the community screamed out their heart out and even offered brilliant alternative solution other than blocking, the Ministry simply shrugged those off. The Ministry only want to hear the solution for their solution which was the blocking, imagine how strange it was.
Who put us into this mess first time? Who brilliant enough to come out with the idea of blocking the whole website, without even knowing the essence of user generated content, just because of one content? Then when they realized it was not so easy, they were asking help for their problem and closed their eyes and mind for any other better and yet smart alternatives. They can not even solved their own solution. Nice work.
Xenophobic
One of the department staff continuously talking about xenophobic and racism toward us in the international world. As if Indonesian were not xenophobic and racist toward others? I always said this and people kept getting angry with my statement: “Indonesian are one of the most xenophobic and racist people in the world”. Do you think it’s not true?
Even worse, Indonesian are just not racist, Indonesian are tribalist. How many times we hear: “Javanesse vs. Sundanesse”, “Sumatra people are better than Java people”, “Where are you come from? Java? Solo? Jogja?”, “You don’t look like Batak”, “Are you Chinese? So you must be very rich”, “Indonesian girls who are dating foreigners are only looking for money” and other racist/tribalist comments? Don’t say you never heard it or even don’t say you never said it, because that will be a lie.
Putting the blame to the international world for being xenophobic and racist against us was like a childish act. We are racist, we are xenophobic, we are tribalist - even I sometime fallen into that trap, not just toward the international world but toward our own community, our own country.
Commander
I saw yesterday meeting as a step forward for the government to listen the voice of its people directly. I appreciated the effort, really I did. It’s just a shame that the government was only looking for one track solution. There were other inspirations, other ideas and other things that could become a better solution without losing our dignity as a nation.
International world treated us with xenophobic and racism. Fine, that’s already happened. Are we stand still? Of course not. But not in the level of forbidding access, not in the level of an undemocratic country (yeah, some of you probably laugh about this), not in the level of a security personal. We showed them that we are great. We are creative. We are proud of our identity. We are able to compete on the same level with them. That will be a very smart and dignified solution.
Somehow the word ‘Government’ made me wonder. It means ‘someone to govern’. While it translated into Indonesian as “Pemerintah” which actually means “someone who command”. Commanding vs. Governing. Is that what the Indonesian government all about? I command thee to block YouTube - no other option! I didn’t want to believe that it was true but it seems like the truth.
Epilogue
It was clear that the commander er… government only could think of one solution. Blocking (or in the milder term: filtering). That’s all. They want to control the information again. I was joking around and said that the Ministry of Communication and Informatics (Depkominfo in Indonesian abbreviation) should probably changed its name into ‘Departemen Kompilasi Informasi’ (Department of Information Compilation) - it still retain the name ‘Depkominfo’ but with a different meaning because that’s what they did right now. They decided and compiled which were the best content for their people - for some it was an insult for an intelligence, of course, but those ‘some’ are not majority, so don’t worry.
There you have it.
Additional Note (April 9, 2008 - 0:23):
I just watched this movie. This is an example of a smart way to deal with the issue. This is what I was trying to tell the Ministry - which of course, like shouting against the wind. This is the mature solution. This is what I called “playing on the same level”. This is a high self-esteem. This is a broad-minded view. This is what our government lack of…
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57 Comments
Repeat after me: We are racist xenophobic people. No matter how insulting it might heard, I do think it is true. Sad isn’t it?
i second your post. I think we can decide ourself which content we have to consider and which not. i never blame the author of the movie. He has his liberty to speak anything or in any way he wants. In my honest opinion, It’s just how community should react to the content that matters. When we are being provoked.. should we declare war? of course not (unless you are non-educated, narrow-minded and maniac person)
Seriously, sometimes, i really think that i can do better than those Ministers. ( <—- this is an insult , yes :) )
Somehow this action will provoke more counter-acts against government or persons behind it. I won’t be surprised to see more negatives blog posts or even hacked pages.
I feel so disturbed.
Here here! Bloody good post!
Bloody hell, vi! Nice job with the post! Ini gue link ya?
And since elementary school, I have been brainwashed and told that Indonesia is the most democratic nation in the world.
… Yea rite.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” - Voltaire
If a people don’t have any clue to govern the country and they only should know one way to govern the country, which is the military way … and the “Blocking” word is the one of military way. The simple and effective way to stop what they don’t want to see. Welcome guys, we are back to 10 years before
arifin: as i wrote above, the minister did that because it was the instruction from our president. So yeah, I’ll let you make your own conclusion.
ak: Sad and pathetic…
smc: I think that was the thing the government scared of. The ability of their people to decide on their own. Sounds familiar?
pico: Disturbed indeed and the scariest part is then the government could act more hostile. Imagine that.
Brett: Thank you. Ironic, isn’t it? A good post about bad news.
Bellamy: Go ahead, spread the words.
Nindya: We are the most democratic nation in the world. According to the government. So that’s why they are not allowed us to decide is it true or not…
Roy: Even worse. 10 years ago, the Internet was not blocked. The Internet was the weapon of freedom and played a great role in toppling down the New Order. Hmm, is that what the government afraid of? Considering the upcoming election. You decide.
Pemerintah = commander, nice. :)
Yes, very nice piece of writing. Thanks for saying all those things you said.
Whenever I tried to bring up the issue “how foreigners see Indonesians,” then some people started pointing at my ethnicity, which is Chinese-Indonesian. I was not somebody who should bring up the issue of “self-criticism” because I’m not an “insider” of Indonesia.
My point was exactly like yours. To be taken seriously, we should play at other countries’ level. Professionally and gracefully.
That hurts but then I realize how true it was. I’m Indonesian, Chinese, and American. And something greater. :)
I took it with a grain of salt. Thanks for listening.
PS. People like Roy Suryo have been receiving accolades, huh? Funny.
nice post Boy….. you described it clearly :D
An excellent post, Avi for which many thanks.
Maybe there is a need for some guerrilla warfare.
I don’t actually want to see the film, but now so much fuss has been generated by a bigot and ignorant know-it-all, can we publish a wiki-page about Roy Suryo detailing all the bad things we can find out about him? He’s obviously a pal of SBY whispering his own private agenda. Note that he was paid $10,000 (!?!) to set up the Presidential website, which is much too much of a mish-mash.
As it is, and as pointed out here, in over-reacting to one man’s bigotry, Indonesia is becoming even more of a laughing stock internationally.
Sad really.
I just heard about the blocking of some major websites happening in Indo and it was a sad moment really. I started telling all my friends about this matter and of course, negative comments were all I got. There should be a better way to “fix” the problem rather than to block the entire website because it’s stupid.
I know that Indonesia has many great individual that could team up and try to come up with a solution, as you mentioned above, but guess the minister took the highway to just block the sites (and I heard from some random source that it cost A LOT to just create this regulation. Can’t you use it for something better like poverty?).
Anyway, who am I to talk about this? Just a student outside the country that everyday hoping that Indonesia could get better to become a place to live but guess that won’t be happening. It’s just becoming dumber and dumber (at least the government side).
Appreciate your effort for meeting with the minister and try to save the community! And it’s a great blog you posted here.
Hope things will go well and looking forward to see where this situation would lead us.
But something need to be done from us as citizen.
Yes, we know that a bunch of old people in the government will keep a narrow minded mind? But what can we as a broader minded, non xenophobic citizen could do?
As far as i’m concern, we didn’t do anything except rants, because it’s still not BIG enough. If blogger.com or wordpress.com is banned that’s a whole new level.
My friend said, “My internet life isn’t really affected by this whole banned thing, because i didn’t see youtube (slow bandwidth), or join myspace.”
Is it a start of something BIG? or it’s just because SBY is angry someone is sleeping during his talk?
First of all, thank you for all the comments, all of you are smart and broad-minded. I don’t even have to filter your comments =P sarcasm detected
Jen: About Roy Suryo. That’s the reality of the game. Brain and attitude weren’t matter, sensational was the juice for media. About the “self-criticism” issue, it’s just a proven fact about Indonesian racism/tribalism. Sad, isn’t it?
feha: Clear enough for all of you smart people but not clear enough for the government ;).
Jakartass: Thank you too. Guerilla warfare will happened sooner or later if this matter keep on going like this. About Roy Suryo, there was a website and wiki about his action a couple of years ago - but then the author decided it was not worth of the author’s time to continue monitoring a person who absolutely have no clue about what he was talking about. Not to mention the abuse of the wiki system by a certain someone who keep deleting all of the wiki post. Laughing stock indeed but yet the government was angry being a laughing stock and reacted by creating more jokes. Not just sad, it’s pathetic.
ben: Of course we all hope this will not get any worse. But considering next year election and the ability of the Internet to build opinion and action - I am afraid that we will see more of this fiasco. As I mentioned above, the government are looking for a way to control what kind of information should be delivered to the people. The government think they should decide which information is the best for the people according to their agenda. Compiling or even compressing the information. Scared yet? I know I did.
Koko: We did do something. We met with the Minister, weren’t we? We said our concern. We said our opinion. But of course that’s all we could do as a citizen. What else? Started a revolution? If this thing going on then maybe it will happened anyway. Your friend should be glad this fiasco didn’t affect him, but there were others whose affected so much by this fiasco, have you consider that? Indonesian are not just you and your friends, right? Is it something big? I don’t know but I am afraid that this will be a rolling snowball.
good one boy, i don’t need to write about it anymore, yours is great post.
Like i said in other blog,.. its just not about the way how to control the Movie. But its seem like how the gov try to control the freedom of speech, or the freedom opinion.
i could not imagine, if gov success to start from this case (Fitna),.. and later maybe, all content that they think could disturb the plitic power.
Mas boy, I’ve just realized that they block MP also today. God, I really want to support my own country, but I don’t know how I could do it if they keep doing stupid things like this.
I agree, they are narrow minded, so narrow they can’t even protect their peoples’ rights, so shallow that they don’t have the brains to counter a certain movie with another movie.
I’m out of words, I spend half of the morning ranting and raving with my friends, and spilled my guts in my blog. Still not satisfied though, want to knock something on some certain people’s head, or operate their brain….. AGGGGHHHHHHH….Bethe!!!!
Marvelous entry. And in my opinion an utterly effective one too. Effective too anyone in his right mind, I mean. Especially because the wit and irony you use are superior weapons. It’s brave also, because you can not trust a government that treats citizens as under aged children.
Well, the Indonesian government may indeed have a low self esteem, fortunately quite a number of Indonesian nationals are sharp, cool, witty and self confident. Congratulations on that state of mind.
(PS: The movie you refer too, to me seems to be more of a slide show.)
A very fine writing. Congrats.
This is a backward public policy (related to mass media) ever made after Harmoko’s era.
I guess this policy is related to the next election. Hidden campaign. Make sure that we will not choose the same government.
Great writings!! Stupid folks, aren’t they? =p I also address this issue in my blog, but you happen to include xenophobia and tribalism as well, which is very interesting! Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Fantastic post, thank you for writing that :-D I hope the “Chief Compiler” and “Commander in Chief” read your blog, definitely my read of the year :-D How much low can they go in terms of idea. It’s like they are too desperate to act something, probably those guys in FPI are scaring them shitless.
Rani: Thanks but I think you should write about it too. You’ll be back here soon, right? I want to know how you’ll deal with this.
Ieksa: That’s what scared me the most and since most Indonesian are amnesiac, this thing could happened again and again.
Ciels: Well, it is sad. Of course we all want to support our country but with this event, most of us are not so sure anymore.
colson: Thank you for the encouraging comment and I hope the government had the same level of state of mind as the rest of brilliant commenters here. PS: I read the countered movie is also looks like a slide show but I never watched it, it didn’t hit my curiosity nerve.
Pena Budaya: Thank you. We are sharing the same suspicion. Let’s hope it’s not true because if it’s true then we are in the deep trouble.
Anna: Thank you for reading my writing. The xenophobia and tribalism are my favorite subject to brought up since those are the facts but most people denied it.
Endy: Thanks for the compliment. Let’s hope they will not go any lower. More people will suffer if they do that.
Mac: Thank you for the link but that solution will only solve the problem partially. The problem is on the government’s head and if they are not realizing that even those proxy links or server will get banned eventually.
This is why UU ITE thinks (in one way or another) that blogging is dangerous, cause we speaks our mind!
I think it’s clear now where we’ll be heading toward. Let’s strike back! Elegantly of course!
VOTE BOY FOR THE NEXT MINISTRY OF DEPKOMINFO!!!
—abis baca komennya Trinie di atas—
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHH!!
SETUJUUUU!! VOTE FOR BOY AVIANTO AS NEXT MINISTER OF DEPKOMINFOOO!!!! XD XD
Menterinya jadi funky entar :D
a very nice post indeed. i guess what our government wants to do is to play safe. remember, 2009 is the time for general election (ehm, more like a conspiracy theory).
kangbayu: Let us hope we will move toward a better future because unfortunately the situation right now is not so conducive for us to express our own opinion.
Trinie & Nindya: Hahaha, thanks for the support but I think we have much greater people than me right now to hold such a powerful responsibility.
MarkO: Remind me of an era where safety and stability were the reason for oppressing people. Are we going to that direction again? Hope not.
@Trinie: Vote. Yeah, I think Avi will be a better Menkominfo than our present one.
Boy,
Dari sudut antropolog, soal “xenophobuia , tribalism” itu sudah ada sejak jaman dahulu. Cuman memang ada bedanya antara pulau.
Sumber asalnya adalah “our Feudal Heritage”.
Ada di buku2 sejarah Indonesia yang ditulis Bung Hatta dan Sjahrir.
Jadi tulisan elu itu betul, kita ini hasil thesis,antithesis dan sinkretis pemikiran lama saja…
Kamsia,
Karloz
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arifin @ April 8, 2008 3:18 PM
I could not agree more with you, very nice post!
This stupid minister is helping the author of that movie to get more exposure … How’s that sound?
I cannot believe he has done this, but the author of that movie must laugh his ass off, thinking that his true agenda has been reached!
All that because of this stupid minister.
No, it is not too late to remedy the situation, just unblock the sites and move on.