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work in progress of Djokopekik - dogs ready to attack a patriotic boy
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In Indonesia, both presidential candidates have declared victory, just a few days after the elections that were held on 17th April, 2019. Both of them are pro-business, both Muslim, and both insist that the Communist Party should continue to be banned. Neither of them is even thinking about stopping their country from committing one of the bloodiest genocides on earth, that in West Papua; or ending the unbridled plunder and environmental disaster on the third largest island in the world, Borneo (in Indonesia known as Kalimantan).
Country is tense. The final results will be announced on May the 22nd, but anything could happen before that, including violence and clashes between the two camps.
If both candidates are pro-business and anti-Communist, then what is the fuss about, really? What makes these elections so different from the previous ones, and what makes the situation so volatile?
The explanation is simple: while the current president 'Jokowi' (his real name is Joko Widodo) is a former furniture-maker from a city in Central Java Solo (also known as Surakarta) who first became the relatively successful mayor of his city and then governor of the capital Jakarta, before being elected as Indonesian president in 2014, his rival Prabowo Subianto is the Indonesian answer to Bolsonaro: a man who was trained in the United States at Fort Benning, and who was deployed in East Timor in the early 90's, becoming the commander of Kopassus special forces, committing mass murder there, and using the notorious hooded "ninja" gangs, during the so-called operation "Eradicate". His murderous career did not end there: In 1996 he embarked on terrorizing villages in the occupied and plundered West Papua.Two years later, in 1998 his troops kidnapped and tortured at least nine anti-Suharto activists.
His military career ended there, after he publicly took responsibility for the kidnappings.
But in Indonesia, brutal deeds are hardly ever condemned or punished. The killers who participated in the 1965/66 US-backed coup and consequent mass murder of between 1 and 3 million leftists and intellectuals, are still proudly appearing on Indonesian television shows, bragging about committing monstrous assassinations, raping women and children, and about 'saving the country from the Communist menace'. They usually receive standing ovations, as documented in Oppenheimer's film the "Art of Killing".
Most likely, Jokowi won by approximately a 10% margin, but against him, there is an entire force of increasingly influential right-wing Islamist groups and movements. They want extreme capitalism, they want strong conservative rule, they want a physical crackdown against the leftists (particularly 'hidden Communists'), some want Sharia Law and a Caliphate; in brief, they want Prabowo.
The election campaigns were dirty and low. Prabowo's people tried to accuse President Jokowi of being a closet Communist (and a secret sympathizer of the once powerful political party PKI, that was crushed in 1965 and banned until now), and of being a 'non-Muslim'.
In Indonesia, these are extremely dangerous accusations. People blamed of siding with the 'Communists' or even leftists, are often confronted by physical violence and could face prosecution in the courts, and then lengthy prison terms. Without exception, they are banned from participating in political life. Being 'non-Muslim' or even worse, being branded as 'anti-Islamic', means that a person has all doors slammed in his or her face. To illustrate the point: the extremely successful governor of Jakarta, 'Ahok', was both Chinese by blood, and progressive by political belief. As a result of his socialist reforms, he was thrown into jail after being accused of 'insulting Islam', a ridiculous and never proven charge.
The fact that Jokowi is interested in participating in China's BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), has gained him an avalanche of accusations from Prabowo's camp, that he is 'pro-China', and therefore a Communist.
In extremely racist Indonesia, which perpetrated three genocides and countless pogroms against its minorities in little more than half a century, being 'Chinese' is another 'crime'. Between the 1965 coup and the reign of President Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) who lifted the ban, everything Chinese was forbidden: from spoken and written language, to films, names, traditional lamps and dragons, to cakes.
The West, of course, has been admiring and supporting all this, from 1965 until now. It cherishes fascist, anti-Chinese, extremely capitalist Indonesia, ruled by brutal military and increasingly radical (pro-Western) Wahhabi Islamists; a country that allows, even encourages the unrestrained plunder of its own natural resources; enriching North American, European and Australian companies,while impoverishing its own indoctrinated, uninformed religious and obedient population.
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