Word: jakarta
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...likely to weed out crooked officers. An estimated 75% of the military's cash comes from "nonbudgetary sources," as local economists euphemistically call it, which include logging in Indonesia's vanishing rain forests, extortion and prostitution. Jakarta's red-light district was shut down in the spring of 2000, not out of religious zeal but because the army and police quarreled over the profits. Wahid tried to pension off the worst offenders and replace them with more idealistic middle-ranking officers. Such attempts at reform may stop...
Meanwhile, in the far-flung islands of the archipelago, Indonesians are starting to thumb their noses at Jakarta. Squatters invade mines and plantations, nobody pays taxes, smuggling is rampant, and murders go unpunished. Since February, some Dayak tribesmen in central Kalimantan have kept the heads they cut off Madurese migrants as trophies of magic power. Indonesia has more than 1.2 million refugees from ethnic violence. Says sociologist Paulus Wirutomo: "There's a hate being kept alive in our culture. We have to get rid of this." Wahid tried but failed. And Megawati...
...deal with President Suharto to operate the province's lucrative gas fields over 30 years ago. The decades-old rebellion has been fueled largely by popular resentment over the American company's relative wealth and that 80% of the government revenues its gas fields generate are diverted back to Jakarta. When Abdurrahman Wahid became President in 1998, he vowed to correct the imbalance and even talked about allowing Aceh to hold a referendum on independence, but those promises fell victim to government paralysis and a strong military lobby that didn't want to let Aceh...
...Whether or not ExxonMobil has approached the government, it does have leverage. Facing revenue losses of around $100 million a month after the company recently suspended operations, the Indonesian government promised to restore order swiftly. The troops at A-13 were put on high alert and in May, Jakarta dispatched 2,000 more soldiers to ExxonMobil's gas sites. Among them were the feared Kopassus, or Special Forces, responsible for much of the mayhem in East Timor before it gained independence in 1999. According to Lieut. Colonel Sadharun Nandio, spokesman for the Aceh Security Restoration Operation: "The decision...
...Under Suharto there were no rules, nothing. You could be thrown into prison without first going to court. If you were found with anything to read, even a piece of torn newspaper, you could be killed. If you were a prisoner in Jakarta you could receive visitors?but for that...