Word: jakarta
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...Yogyakarta, Richard Lloyd Parry decided to leave Indonesia. He would return to London, where there was a woman he loved waiting for him, "a face and the smell of clean skin"; he would put on hold his life as a reporter covering Asia for the Independent. But in Jakarta, where he waited for his plane to Europe, Lloyd Parry stalled. Maybe it was just cold feet; maybe it was a foreign correspondent's instinct for impending mayhem. He canceled his flight and headed into the city, just in time to catch a student protest that would turn violent and help...
...Before the troubles had run their course, Lloyd Parry would see men eating human flesh in Borneo, bodies burning in the streets of Jakarta, and a seemingly unassailable government collapse. In the Time of Madness is a deeply felt account of his time covering Indonesia's implosion; what it lacks in depth or context, it makes up for in sensitivity and humility. This is a book less about Indonesia than about Lloyd Parry himself, how the carnage he witnesses burrows into his soul, leaving him sickeningly vulnerable when the time of madness reaches its horrifying climax in East Timor. There...
...greatest horror comes later, in the twinned crises of Suharto's fall and East Timor. In May 1998, Lloyd Parry reports from a burning Jakarta, "a capital city looted by its own people," as a mix of demonstrators and marauders run wild in the streets. The structure of Lloyd Parry's book, which seems to lack much new research, leans too heavily on a chronological, riot-by-riot retelling of his experience. But his elegant, understated prose preserves a bubble of sanity amid the madness; he's particularly adept at capturing the moments when history is about to be made...
...That borrowed courage can vanish when one changes from witness to participant, as Lloyd Parry learns during his reckoning in East Timor, the book's most gripping section. After the embattled province votes for its independence from Jakarta in 1999, Lloyd Parry watches as anti-independence militias, seemingly with the tacit approval of the Indonesian army, wreak havoc. But this time he's more than a spectator?the militias violently turn on journalists, forcing them to hole up in the United Nations' overcrowded compound. Inside, terrified, he listens to machine guns firing, grenades exploding and refugees wailing. He imagines rockets...
...restrictions entirely; there are clearly some regions of the world where Harvard can reasonably conclude that student safety is an overriding concern. But country-based blanket restrictions are simultaneously heavy-handed and insufficient. Students wishing to study at the American University of Beirut or intern with a nonprofit in Jakarta are out of luck—both Lebanon and Indonesia are off limits despite the fact both are locales where a responsible traveler can expect no more danger than would be found in many U.S. cities. At the same time, the Indian side of Kashmir is an acceptable travel destination?...