Australian won’t bow to Papua pressure, FM says

Foreign Minister Bob Carr says Australia has been “explicit” in its support for Indonesia’s sovereignty over Papua.

Australian Foreign Minister, Bob Carr

Senator Carr told Newsline the provinces have been recognised “by all the nations in the earth” as Indonesian territory.
(See the video)

“There are Australians, a very small number I think…who take an interest in the notion for more autonomy for Papua but I remind them that you’d be doing a disservice to the Indonesian population of those two provinces if you held out any hope that Australia could influence the cause of events,” he said.

The Foreign Minister has dismissed suggestions public pressure would cause Australia to change its policy on Papua’s autonomy.

“I just ask those idealistic Australians who might entertain some other arrangement, that what would be the cost in terms of our friendship with Indonesia and in terms of our budget of a different arrangement.

“It’s inconceivable, utterly inconceivable.”

‘Australians seen as Asians’

The Foreign Minister says Australia’s relationship with Indonesia involves a “habit of consultation” – a relationship it enjoys with a number of its Asian neighbours including Japan, South Korea and Singapore.

“We had the Singaporeans through in recent weeks and again we have common approaches to issues like the South China Sea, he said.

“A comfortable alignment of our foreign policy positions.”

He also countered criticisms Australia’s perceptions of Asia are superficial and too “Eurocentric” in response to the recently-released Asian Century policy paper.

“The foreign minister of Myanmar was through here last week and he said..’We see Australia as Asians’,” he said.

“Why wouldn’t he? We were there in Myanmar lifting, not just suspending our sanctions.”

Senator Carr says the fact Australia won a seat on the United Nations Security Council is also testament of its strong relationship with its neighbours.

“I was struck by this when I stood there in the UN and I was being congratulated by nations from every region in the world and it dawned on me that they’re comfortable with Australia and that reflects our diplomacy,” he said.

Source: Australia Network News

The US plans $1.4-billion arms package for Indonesia

The Obama administration is proposing a potential $1.4-billion arms package for Indonesia, including eight Boeing Co Apache AH-64D attack helicopters, in a fresh tightening of security ties in a region rattled by China’s growing territorial assertiveness.

The deal would include fire control radars, common missile warning systems, radar signal detecting sets and 140 state-of-the-art Lockheed Martin Corp Hellfire II AGM-114R precision-strike missiles, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a notice to the U.S. Congress published Friday.

Indonesia is Southeast Asia’s most populous country and the world’s most populous Muslim-majority state. Plans for several U.S. arms transfers to it have been announced since late last year that would make Jakarta a more militarily capable regional partner.

Indonesia would use the twin-engine Apache helicopters to defend its borders, conduct counter-terrorism and counter-piracy operations, “and control the free flow of shipping through the Strait of Malacca,” the security agency said in its memo.

The proposed sale would provide Indonesia assets vital to deterring external and other potential threats, the Pentagon agency said.

The narrow and congested waterway is a potential choke point linking the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea and Pacific Ocean. The shortest sea route between the Middle East and growing Asian markets, it washes the shores of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, and carries about 40 percent of the world’s trade.

Piracy, including attempted theft and hijackings, is a constant threat to tankers, though the number of attacks has dropped following stepped-up patrols by the littoral states.

REGIONAL SECURITY

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who announced the planned Apache sale on Thursday without providing details on the rest of the arms package, said it would boost a comprehensive partnership with Indonesia and enhance security across the region.

She spoke in Washington during a meeting with visiting Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa.

Indonesia represents just part of an increasing U.S. emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region for national security planning as China presses its claims on disputed territory, notably in the South China Sea.

The United States is also building Guam as a strategic hub, deploying up to four shore-hugging littoral combat ships on a rotational basis to Singapore and preparing a 2,500-strong Marine Corps task force rotation as part of a growing military partnership with Australia.

The arms and services called for under the $1.4 billion Indonesia package will provide key elements required for “interoperability” with U.S. forces, the security agency’s notice said.

Also included are “Identification Friend or Foe transponders,” 30mm guns and ammunition, communication equipment, tools and test equipment, simulators, generators, personnel training and logistics support services, the agency said.

The Hellfire II, included in the package, is the primary air-to-ground precision missile of its size for U.S. armed forces as well as the Central Intelligence Agency’s paramilitary capabilities and many U.S. allies.

The notice of such a sale is required by law. It does not mean that a deal has been concluded.

President Barack Obama announced in November plans to give Indonesia 24 decommisioned Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets, with Jakarta paying up $750 million to upgrade them and overhaul their engines, which are made by United Technologies Corp’s Pratt & Whitney unit.

The Pentagon moved in August to supply Raytheon Co AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground guided missiles and related gear valued at $25 million for Indonesia’s growing F-16 fleet.

Source: Reuters

Indonesia’s Papuan Hip-Hop Choreography to Play at the Singapore’s dance Festival

“Hip-hop was born in Papua in 1934,” says Indonesian choreographer Jecko Siompo. “You may not believe me, but my great-grandmother told me.”

We Came From The East, choreographed by Jecko Siompo.

This cheeky re-writing of dance history is done with a straight face in the introductory video to his upcoming production, We Came From The East.

The dance performance, which plays at the Esplanade’s da:ns festival next week, is playful and humorous – characteristic of his previous works.

Over the telephone from Jakarta, Jecko, 36, says the ambitious piece deals with “the evolution of dance”.

Offering his own brand of anthropology, he says: “Indonesia is a very ancient country with a very ancient culture. The embryo of dance was born in Indonesia.”

We Came From The East is a tongue- in-cheek way of sharing his worldview. Describing his dance, he says: “First you see people in ancient times in a natural environment with many animals. It’s the beginning of the world.

“Then they grow up and start building a small city, which eventually grows into a big one like New York or Paris.”

The bachelor has made a name for himself blending Papuan animalistic dance and hip-hop moves in his pieces, creating a unique, old-new, east-west style he calls “animal pop”.

Spending his childhood in a village in Papua, an Indonesian province on the island of New Guinea, he was lured by the bright lights of the capital city and enrolled in the Jakarta Institute for the Arts in 1994.

He went on to learn hip-hop in the United States and spent some time at the famous German dance company Folkwang Tanzstudio.

His pieces, which are energetic mash-ups of aboriginal dance as well as hip-hop, have been well-received.

In Front Of Papua, based on his return to his birthplace, was staged in 2007 at the National Museum of Singapore.

He was also included in the 2009 Singapore Arts Festival for Terima Kost (rented room in Indonesian) where the movements shifted between imitating animals in the jungle and urban routines.

In We Came From The East, he hopes to tease out the similarities between Indonesian aboriginal dance and hip- hop, which may seem worlds apart to many people.

Hip-hop is a street dance developed in the 1970s by African-Americans and it embraces a variety of styles, but some of its popular moves bear a resemblance to traditional dance, asserts Jecko.

In hip-hop, there is roboting, which imitates a dancing robot or mannequin. That is similar to a ‘statue’ dance in Papuan dance, where the dancers try to be as stiff as possible.

Jecko adds: “There’s the chicken dance in hip-hop and there’s a chicken dance in traditional Papuan dance, where we imitate a chicken.”

He may be making waves in the dance world for his bold synthesis of forms but back home in Papua, he needed to work hard to convince his parents that he had a legitimate career.

“Dancing was part of daily life’ in Papua but his parents, who were ‘office workers’, wanted him to get a government job. His two brothers and sisters are also ‘normal people who work in offices”.

His childhood was spent in the jungle, where he fished, swum in rivers and hunted for food. ‘I saw kangaroos and reptiles all the time,’ he says.

He was passionate about dance and wanted to do it for a living. He slipped away one day in 1994 and with some money stolen from his mother, he travelled by boat for a week to Jakarta.

That was where he first encountered hip-hop and enrolled at the Jakarta Institute for the Arts to learn a variety of Indonesian dance forms. It was only a year later that he went back home to Papua to see his parents.

“Nobody believed that I was studying. I had to show them my papers,” he says.

He even demonstrated his dance moves to them. “I danced on the table and on the chair, very slowly. I also did a slow-motion walk. They said: ‘That’s just movement, that’s not dance.'”

It took them five years to take him seriously, he says. It helped that they saw him perform on television.

Now that he is traveling for his work – We Came From The East is going to Melbourne after the Esplanade show and he is invited to give ‘animal pop’ workshops in Osaka – he says it is like a “dream come true.”

His connection to his birthplace will be a recurring theme in his work. “When I sleep, my body goes back to the jungle in Papua. When I wake up, I’m back in Jakarta again.”

Source: the Jakarta Globe