Word: indonesianness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...total exports. But the same grinding geologic processes that make this wealth possible also bedevil Indonesia with disasters like the 2004 earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 160,000 people in Sumatra. Lusi is unlike any previous disaster, however. Unfolding in implacable slow motion, it has confounded Indonesian engineers and mystics alike. The mostly poor villagers who have lost homes and livelihoods to the mud complain that the response to the unfolding disaster has been equally sluggardly - a symptom, perhaps, of the fault lines in Indonesian society's own unsettled foundations...
...Locals call it Lusi - a portmanteau of the Indonesian word for mud, lumpur, and the name of the nearest city, Sidoarjo. Lusi is a mud volcano, though that appellation is somewhat misleading. The mud is actually more like brackish water. And, unlike the igneous volcanoes that dot Indonesia's countryside, the underground plumbing fueling Lusi is largely mysterious. Twenty-two months after it first erupted, Lusi remains the world's most bewildering environmental disaster. "I've never seen anything like it," says Richard Davies, a geologist at Britain's Durham University and one of only a handful of experts...
...That's because mud isn't the only thing boiling over in Porong. Villagers displaced by the eruption blame the disaster on PT Lapindo Brantas, an Indonesian mining company drilling for natural gas in the area. Lapindo is partly controlled by the family of Aburizal Bakrie, Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare, one of Indonesia's wealthiest men and an ally of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Victims of the disaster say that a murky web of political influence and corporate fecklessness has blunted the official response to the mud eruption. "Everyone is suspicious," says Mas Achmad Santosa...
...litany of complaints, from the quality of the rations to the health effects of the mud (though the government team says the gas coming from Lusi has no ill effect, locals complain of difficulty breathing and strange rashes). Mostly, though, they complain about money. On the orders of the Indonesian government, Lapindo has agreed to compensate the villagers with a total of $412 million - the company is offering 20% of the money up front, with the balance paid within two years. "It will not be enough," says Riati, a 45-year-old woman sitting outside the 16-ft.-wide...
...Fueling the refugees' anger is the fear that Lapindo will walk away from its promises. Last September, PT Energi Mega Persada, a company controlling 50% of the Lapindo drilling project and connected to Bakrie, the Indonesian Cabinet minister, attempted to unload Lapindo for $2 to a company based on the island of Jersey but owned by Bakrie's family conglomerate. When Indonesian financial regulators blocked that sale, Energi Mega tried to sell half the beleaguered Lapindo to the Freehold Group, registered in the British Virgin Islands. That deal also collapsed amid controversy. The attempted corporate reshuffling raised fears among many...