Why should our government grovel to the Indonesians?

Having covered Indonesia since the 1950s, and seen its transition from Sukarno, to Suharto, to the short-lived Habibie, then Gus Dur (Abdurrahman Wahid), and now President Megawati Sukarnoputri, I was particularly irked by a report yesterday that President Macapagal-Arroyo had sent Mr. Norberto Gonzales "to thresh out" and clarify with the Indonesian government the arrest and detention of two Indonesians who were collared at our airport last March 13 on suspected ties with a terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda.

Gonzales, who currently bears the title of Presidential Adviser on Special Concerns, has been dabbling in matters concerning Mindanao for decades now, dating back to the Cory Administration. Having followed the "appeasement" line towards Moro rebels and other Islamic separatists for many years, Gonzales is the perfect choice if the GMA government intends to grovel, and brown-nose the "indignant" Indonesians.

But why should we be in such a rush to abjectly apologize to the Indonesians, in the same way that we handed those two suspects back to Jakarta with a great deal of humiliated bowing and scraping?

Are we scared of the announced plan of the ex-detainees to sue the Philippine government for "wrongful arrest" and the alleged planting of evidence against them?

It has to be said that our lawmen and authorities do arrest the wrong people on some occasions, particularly when victimizing Filipinos targeted for blackmail and extortion, and our cops do "plant" evidence, but — by the same token — it would have taken a lot of gall for our immigration and intelligence officers to have detained the two suspected "terrorists" for more than a month if convincing evidence did not exist. When I say convincing, this may or may not be proof that would, in the end, actually stand up in court.

Let’s face it. The two Indonesians were released and speeded home to Jakarta thanks to intense pressure exerted by the Indonesian government, since both are very well connected with those in power.

As acting Press Secretary Silvestre Afable let slip in his statement from the Palace, Abdul Jamil Balfas and Tamsid Limrung were freed in response to official requests made to President GMA by the "highest officials in both executive and legislative branches" of the Indonesian government.

Limrung, for instance, belongs to the National Mandate Party of Amien Rais, the Speaker of the upper house and the People’s Consultative Assembly (parliament). In case Amien Rais’ name doesn’t ring a bell here, he is chairman of the 30 million-strong Islamic Muhammadiyah — a radical Muslim organization whose title means "Followers of Muhammad". Rois’ movement is only slightly smaller than the 35-million strong, but less activist and "threatening" Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) of the former President Abdurrahman Wahid, who was deposed by Megawati only last year.

So what if there are more than 200 million Indonesians, 87 percent of them Muslims? Did we expect them to come boiling across the narrow sea which separates our two archipelagos in "revenge" for our nabbing of a few sundry Indonesian terrorist suspects? I suspect most of them can’t swim anyway. (If any do come over, given the current ethnic and religious clashes there, they’ll probably have immigration or refuge, rather than invasion, in mind. In fact, the "invasion" is on, which is probably why we see so many Moros here in Luzon – they were displaced by the "war" in Mindanao and probably the influx of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians from next-door Sulawesi, and refugees from Malaka and Sumatra. Or just plain infiltration by troublemakers.)

Maybe it is Indonesia which should apologize to us.

* * *

The awful truth is that there has been close interaction and cooperation between terrorist cells in Indonesia and their counterparts here, including the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The Megawati government, for example, has done nothing to curb, or even question the activities of their two homegrown fundamentalist radicals, leader of the Jemaah Islamiah (to which Indonesian bomber Fathur al-Ghozi, who was just convicted in General Santos City, belongs – hence, possibly, last week’s bomb attacks there). These men are al-Ghozi’s mentor and idol, the preacher Uztadz Abubakar Ba’asyir, who advocates an "Islamic super-state", and the even more dangerous Riduan Isamuddin, more notorious as "Hambali", a 36-year-old Muslim cleric described by Time Magazine last April 1 as "Asia’s Own Osama" and said to have his fingerprints on terror attacks in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and even Indonesia over the past eight years.

Hambali comes from Sukamanah, in West Java (Indonesia) and his family lives there, but he was last seen based in the village of Sungei Manggis, northeast of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Perhaps Hambali might already be in Mindanao, who knows?

How can the Indonesians then blame us for being suspicious of anybody who comes from their "happy" isles, so apparently veering towards Islamic fundamentalism, as the frequent riots and the bombings of Christian churches (and pubs) in the Indonesian capital and elsewhere in that country clearly indicate.

My Indonesian friends used to boast that if 200 million Indonesians were to pee into the ocean at the same time, "Singapore would drown." (They politely did not infer that the Philippines would drown, too, although the same thought indubitably crossed their mind.) All I can say, in the same friendly fashion, is that 80 million Filipinos could piss back with some effectiveness. This is, however, a piss-poor way to fight.

So what if there are 478,000 men in the Indonesian armed forces (formerly the ABRI) and 400,000 men in their reserves. At the risk of sounding like the neighborhood braggart, we could take on any assault by the Indonesians. The only ones we can’t seem to be able to handle are the Abu Sayyaf.

* * *

The Germans are still dazed and puzzled by the most horrible murder spree in their country’s postwar history – the slaughter of 17 (teachers, school personnel, one policeman, and two young female students) by a 19-year old expelled high school student named Robert Steinhaeuser. Last Friday, as everybody knows by now, this deranged teenager went through the Johann Gutenberg Gymnasium (i.e., high school) in the small town of Erfurt, Thuringen, shooting away with a pump-action shotgun and handgun, leaving victims in his wake.

The shockwaves of that bizarre event may even threaten to capsize the fortunes of the ruling Socialist Party (SPD) of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in the coming elections. (The SPD has already lost the state of Sachsen-Anhalt to the Christian Democrats, CDU, in the recent Land by-election.)

The question, I’m sure, in every German mind is: How could this happen in disciplined and well-ordered Germany? Such awful things happen, in their estimate, only in the United States, or in wild Scotland.

The Germans might find the answer to their puzzlement in our gun-happy country. It’s simple. It’s the idea of "Have gun, will use it." The report is that this guy Steinhaeuser owned those lethal weapons "legitimately," under proper licenses, and practiced regularly in the local gun club in a target range which used to be maintained by the East German police before the "reunification" of West with East Germany. When police raided the killer’s home, they found a cache of 500 bullets. When somebody accumulates 500 bullets, there’s either something wrong with his noggin or he plans to engage in something more ambitious than target practice.

It is a tragedy and, indeed, cause for mourning. I guess it’s time the entire world, ourselves especially, embraced the idea of a "Gunless Society".

That doesn’t seem remotely possible though, not just in Mindanao but in Metro Manila. Look at the two cops the other day, who got sore at each other during the "security" drill at the Quirino grandstand in the Luneta, and almost staged a shoot-out? Welcome, regretfully, to the club, Germany!