Peter Gelling

Peter Gelling reports from Indonesia for GlobalPost. He examines the country’s difficult transition to democracy after 30 years of authoritarian rule, its emerging economy,...

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Peter Gelling's Notebook:

October 3, 2009 08:42 ET

Hopes of finding earthquake survivors fade

Hopes of finding survivors trapped beneath hundreds of collapsed buildings here began to fade Saturday, three days after a large earthquake struck the region.

“The possibility of finding life this long after an earthquake is very, very small,” said Rustam Pakaya. “We can only hope.”

Official government figures put the death toll from the 7.6-magnitude earthquake, which struck Wednesday evening, at about 500. Yusuf Kalla, the vice president, said at a press conference Saturday, however, that they were only counting confirmed deaths and that “thousands” more are still missing or trapped beneath buildings.

International aid organizations set up camp outside the governor of West Sumatra’s mansion, where the United Nations has established its base of operations.

The frenetic activity in and around the governor’s house stood in stark contrast to other areas of the city where residents expressed their frustration over the lack of any emergency response.

Exhausted survivors spent Saturday digging through rubble inside the city’s Chinese quarter, looking for bodies and personal possessions. Local churches and cultural centers had set up makeshift posts to distribute food and water they had pulled out of local stores.

Professional aid workers were nowhere to be seen.

“Not a single person from the government, military or international community has come to this neighborhood,” said Hongki, 57, a local community leader, adding that residents were in desperate need of water.

Neighborhoods like the Chinese quarter have so far been largely forsaken while teams of emergency personnel scour the wreckage of large commercial buildings, schools and hotels.

Signs of life briefly reinvigorated rescue workers late Friday night at the Hotel Ambacang, where scores of guests are thought to be trapped. An apparent survivor sent a text message to his family saying he and seven others were alive on the sixth floor of the hotel. Emergency crews scrambled to shut down their machinery, hushed the large crowd that had gathered, and listened quietly for sounds of life.

But none came.

“With every hour it gets less and less likely that we’ll find someone alive,” said Nino Rozano, a veteran Indonesian rescue worker. The wafting stench of decomposing bodies seemed to confirm his doubts.

Nino said the coordination of rescue crews during the first few days had been a disaster in itself. He said numerous teams – from Switzerland, Japan, Indonesia and the United States – were working at the site with no clear person or group in charge.

“There was absolutely no coordination,” he said. “It’s been a total mess.”

In the village of Pariaman, an hour north of Padang, the rescue effort appeared to be even more grim. A landslide buried three whole villages after the quake, yet the Indonesian military only arrived Saturday.

They brought with them two backhoes to help comb the fallen earth, but one of them broke down.

September 2, 2009 07:39 ET

Earthquake hits Indonesia

Indonesians fled Jakarta office towers, shopping centers and apartment buildings in a panic Wednesday afternoon after a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of West Java, killing at least 15 people, according to the country's disaster mitigation agency. Several aftershocks, including one measuring 5.4 magnitude, were felt hours later.

The quake, though underwater and more than 100 miles away from Jakarta, shook the entire city for almost a minute causing mass hysteria around the central business district. As office workers streamed out of buildings, traffic came to a standstill along the main Jakarta thoroughfare.

No major damage was reported in Jakarta though local media reported that hundreds of small houses collapsed in several rural areas south of the city. The casualties were reported mostly in Cianjur, Sukabumi and Tasikmalaya, all towns near Java’s south coast.

Jakarta is often rattled by the region’s hyperactive tectonic shifts, but Wednesday’s felt, for many, to be larger than normal. A tsunami warning was issued but lifted 15 minutes later.

Indonesia’s 17,000 islands, which straddle the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a region where three tectonic plates merge causing continuous seismic activity, is regularly struck by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves.

July 8, 2009 05:48 ET

Indonesia votes

Election day here is a holiday and as such the streets of Jakarta, normally chaotic, were shockingly quiet Wednesday as millions of Indonesians peacefully cast their votes across the country’s three time zones.

The polls opened as the sun came up. In one neighborhood in South Jakarta, residents poured out of back alleyways, leaving their urban village to vote at a makeshift polling station made of four bamboo posts and a tarp. A portable speaker system shouted directions during busy hours and blasted traditional pop music when lines thinned.

Polls closed at noon and within several hours a quick count gave incumbent president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono a whopping lead with about 60 percent of the vote, meaning no second round would be necessary. Official results won’t be available until July 27 but the quick counts have been remarkably accurate in the past.

His two challengers — Yusuf Kalla, his current vice president, and Megawati Sukarnoputri, a former president whom Yudhoyono defeated in 2004 during the country’s first-ever direct election — took about 13 and 27 percent of the vote respectively.

The quick count is in line with numerous surveys in the weeks leading up to the election, which — even those issued by Yudhoyono’s opponents — showed the president with a comfortable lead.

Yudhoyono, a liberal former general, appears to now have a mandate to continue, possibly more aggressively, the economic and bureaucratic reforms he began during his first term. Only 10 years ago Indonesia was embroiled in revolution and economic turmoil, but is now one of the most stable countries in the region.

June 16, 2009 09:23 ET | Updated: June 17, 2009 09:54 ET

Iran election: The view from Jakarta

There has been little reaction, official or otherwise, from Indonesia — the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country — to the election turmoil in Iran. On Sunday, after the Iranian election results had been announced, a spokesman from Indonesia’s foreign ministry offered a quick congratulations.

“We welcome the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and are ready to continue our cooperation with Iran,” Teuku Faizasyah, the foreign ministry spokesman, said Sunday. The spokesman went on to congratulate the people of Iran for the peaceful and smooth implementation of the presidential elections. “I congratulate the people of Iran for the successful implementation of the democratic elections, although there are some people who are not satisfied,” he told the state news agency.

It was not long after these comments that the riots broke. The Indonesian government has since kept quiet.

There were no reports of protests outside the Iranian embassy or anywhere else in capital city, Jakarta, though several Muslim intellectuals here voiced their disapproval of Ahmadinejad’s leadership in the Muslim world.

The two countries have increased bilateral ties in recent years, cooperating in economic, industrial and social sectors.

Indonesians, however, are predominantly Sunni, and although Muslim, share little of the Shiite Iranian leadership’s ideological zeal.

And, in fact, Indonesia has more closely aligned itself with American interests. Last week, the country said it would ratify a treaty banning nuclear tests if the United States does the same, giving a boost to Barack Obama’s vision of a nuclear-free world.

Indonesia is one of nine countries including the United States that need to ratify the treaty, which would ban all nuclear explosions everywhere for any purpose, according to Reuters.

“We share his vision of a world in which nuclear weapons have been eradicated,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said on a visit to Washington last week.

Wirajuda also said Indonesia, which has friendly relations with both Iran and North Korea, is willing to help the United States negotiate with the two countries.

See here for an overview of local reaction around the world.

June 4, 2009 07:34 ET | Updated: June 4, 2009 14:35 ET

Obama's speech: The view from Jakarta

Obama’s speech was highly anticipated here, his former home, but to everyone’s surprise it was not a game-changer.

Obama lived here with his mother and step-father, attending a local elementary school from ages 6 to 10. During that time, he encountered Islamic culture on a personal level, at times praying alongside Muslims in the mosque. It is for this reason that Indonesians feel Obama has a unique knowledge and understanding of Islam not found in former American presidents.

And it is for that reason they had high expectations for his speech in Cairo.

“If you don’t know each other, then you can’t love each other,” said Humaidi Sarjono, 32, a student of Islamic philosophy and mysticism in Jakarta. “Obama’s speech is proof that the idea of a clash of civilizations is not true. Obama is creating a dialogue. A clash only exists when there is a lack of dialogue. Until now, there have been very few attempts between the West and Muslims to understand each other.”

At a cafe around the corner from his Islamic university in South Jakarta, Sarjono and several of his friends watched Obama’s speech, quietly nodding throughout.

Though they acknowledged the speech was a good first step, they were far from floored.

“To me, it was a lot of words and no action,” said Dian Teja, 25. “If Obama really wants to make change, he needs to change American policy.”

Most importantly, he said, American needed to change its policy toward Israel and Palestine.

“If America continues to blindly support Israel, Muslims will be angry everywhere,” said Teja. “Obama has the intention to build goodwill with Muslims worldwide. But so far he is just an actor. This is just a spectacle. The dialogue is good. But if the policy doesn’t change, nothing will change.”

The students also bristled at Obama’s comments about nuclear weapons.

“It’s not fair. Why are Muslim countries prohibited from developing nuclear weapons, while America and Israel have so many?” asked Reno Ramutu, 26. “Israel has nuclear weapons, so why can’t Iran? It is very biased. I mean, it is simple logic that if one country has certain weapons, others will want them as well.”

In Javanese culture it is believed that people with big ears like to listen. And so the students here expect that Obama, who they said has “really big” ears, after an hour of talking, will now start listening.

“We are not just fighting a physical war, but also a war of ideas. He is saying all this in a very diplomatic way and I think people who understand history will appreciate his speech. It is very brave for him being a leader of the West, which has a stereotype of being so bad, to make this speech,” said Retno Pratiwi, 24.

“It takes all of us, together, to stick to the ideals of humanity in order to create a new world for the future, where we don’t just look at the past but learn from the past. Like Obama said, it is easier to blame each other than to look into ourselves. It is true, Obama must listen but everyone must listen. If you believe in peace, if you believe in a better society, then you must listen.”