Category Archives: Southeast Asia

by | 11 October 2004 · 6:11 pm

Macam-Macam on the Bali Bombing

Macam-Macam reflects on the 2nd anniversary of the Bali bombing, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, “the largest peace-time loss of civilian life in the country’s history.”

Politically, the Bali bombings have been raised as refutation of the view held by many that it was our involvement in the Iraq war which has made us a terrorist target. Arguments can be had about whether Jemaah Islamiyah targeted Australians specifically in Bali, or simply Westerners in general, but they do not really matter. The fact is, Australia was a terrorist target well before April 2003 (the Iraq invasion) and indeed October 2002. In February 2002, the Singapore Government thwarted a JI plot to bomb the Australian High Commission, amongst other places.

The truth of the matter probably lies in Australia’s leadership of INTERFET, the multinational military force that oversaw East Timor’s transition from Indonesian province to full-fledged sovereign nation from 1999 to 2002.

If the undisputed view amongst Australians is that it was just and right to assist the East Timorese people shake off 25 years of Indonesian occupation, this leads to the inescapable conclusion that Australia was attacked for doing the right thing.

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by | 9 October 2004 · 10:22 am

The Saga of Asian Language Study in Australia

Macam-Macam has posted a lengthy update on the demise of Asian language study in Australia.

When the Howard Government scrapped the highly-regarded National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools Strategy initiative (NALSAS) in mid-2002, the news received international attention. The CNN:

The Australian government has scrapped a $130 million (Aust. $240 million) 10-year funding program for teaching Asian languages in schools, four years before it was originally intended to end.

The program, introduced to Australian schools in 1996, was designed to promote the teaching of four key Asian languages: Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Bahasa Indonesia/Bahasa Malaysia and Korean.

How bloody short-sighted. Five months later, the Bali bombings happened and South East Asia suddenly moved front-and-centre in the Australian political psyche.

The decision was especially mystifying as it came from the self-professed masters of Australian economic management – could there be anything more valuable in clinching deals and strengthening ties than the ability to speak to East Asians in their own languages?

“How bloody short-sighted” indeed! Fortunately, the program seems to have become an election issue.

Both the Federal Government and the Opposition have promised money specifically to encourage the study of foreign languages at school. The Government has budgeted $110 million for all foreign languages, while the ALP has slated $64 million for Asian language studies.

Macam-macam concludes:

The Howard Government may have done much to tackle terrorism in South East Asia since the Bali bombings of October 2002, but nevertheless I can’t stop feeling that a grave mistake in the war on terror was made 5 months earlier when funding for NALSAS was terminated. The full repercussions of that decision may not be felt for some years yet.

Let’s hope the newly returned Howard Government wastes no time before reversing this grave mistake.

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by | 4 October 2004 · 10:54 pm

Good Soldier Outlier: Dregs in the Military

I entered the Army during the era of Project 100,000 (1966-1971), an attempt to enlist the military as a tool of President Johnson’s War on Poverty–and vice versa. I would call it Project Cannonfodder, but the number 1 Google hit for that term bears the discouraging subtitle, Preparing Teachers for Public Schools. (Does that mean that our nation’s public school systems now offer less opportunity for personal growth and career advancement than our nation’s military? I can believe it.)

Under Project 100,000, entrance standards were lowered in order to enable more people to qualify for the military. As Secretary of Defense McNamara declared in a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August 1966:

The poor of America have not had the opportunity to earn their fair share of this Nation’s abundance, but they can be given an opportunity to serve in their Country’s defense, and they can be given an opportunity to return to civilian life with skills and aptitudes which for them and their families will reverse the downward spiral of human decay.

As a result,

By [1971], 354,000 L/A [“Low Aptitude”] men had entered the Services under the program. Of these, 54% were volunteers and 46% were draftees. The men who entered under P/100000 were on average 20 years of age, about half came from the South, and a substantial proportion (about 41%) were minorities. The average reading ability of these men was at the 6th grade level with 13% reading below the 4th grade level.

In my Basic Training squad in 1969, there was a trucker from Richmond named Bragg who was blind in one eye and deaf in one ear, but nevertheless a good, responsible soldier. Another soldier whose name I’ve forgotten was so exceedingly dimwitted that he had to be reminded to shower and change his clothes.

In the 95th Civil Affairs Group at Ft. Gordon, GA, two New Yorkers back from Vietnam had been juvenile delinquents. At age 17, they were each given the choice between the Army or Riker’s Island. They chose the Army, and they both ended up in Vietnam, where they discovered the dope to be far superior to what they could get in the States. O’Neill, from Queen’s, hoped to join New York’s finest, but Carter chose to go back to Vietnam’s finer grade of heroin.

A follow-up program, Project Transition, was founded in late 1967 in order to help the survivors of Project 100,000 make a transition back into the civilian workforce. I signed up for Cement Masonry under Project Transition when I was getting close to the end of my term of service (ETS date) toward the end of 1971. I picked Cement Masonry because it lasted the longest, 6 weeks (if I remember correctly). One of my fellow cement masonry classmates was a Nicaraguan journalist who spent his time in the U.S. Army as a cook because his English was so limited. Unfortunately, neither of us stood much chance of qualifying for membership in any construction union.

By that time, my Civil Affairs unit had moved to Ft. Bragg, and I was transferred to Ft. Gordon’s Personnel Control Facility (PCF), where I met a different class of Project 100,000 alumni. My job was to escort soldiers in penal custody to the mess hall, to the clinic, or to military courts. Most had just come back from being AWOL, and some had been turned in by their local sheriffs, who were said to collect a bounty from the military. If you went AWOL 3 times for a period of at least 30 days each, you could qualify for a dishonorable discharge for desertion–a surprisingly popular goal. It might take longer than getting three purple hearts to get out of a combat zone, but it was a safer alternative.

I was generally the last of those on duty to volunteer to escort prisoners because I was usually engrossed in a book. My comrades were bored and eager to take a walk. But I remember once accompanying a prisoner to face an officer who tried to convince him that, no matter how much he hated the Army, he would do better to finish his term of service than to keep going AWOL. To make his point, the officer turned to me and asked, “Outlier, do you like the Army?” I replied, “Not at all, sir!” Whereupon he turned to my prisoner, “See? Outlier hates the Army as much as you do, but he’s done his duty and will get out sooner than you will.” Somehow, I doubt my example impressed him all that much.

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by | 3 October 2004 · 1:28 pm

Mission to Siam: Animal Tricks

On thing I love to watch in Lampang is the elephants of the teak firms working the huge teak logs that are floated down the river. At times the logs get into a jam and only the elephants are able to break up these jams. They seem to know which is the key log holding the jam in place. They work around the pile and concentrate on this one log, protesting loudly all the time. When they get to the log, they put their tusks under it and their trunks over it until it is shoved loose. Then the mahouts, or riders, bring in one or two more elephants, and the log is pulled and pushed until it is free and floated down the river. The rest of the pile is easy for these wonderful animals to handle. They work hard, and at the end of the job the skin on their foreheads is almost raw.

Charlie Munro, one of our British friends, told us about an elephant belonging to the herd he has for his work. This elephant was a female, old and clever, and was used for carrying the cook’s outfit–pots, pans, pails, et cetera. She had no rider; she was a trained animal and would follow the others. One day she apparently tired of her clattering cargo, for she arrived at the camp without a single pot or pan and with a most indifferent look. Another elephant and rider were sent back to see what had happened. All along the trail, at intervals, the man found pots and pails and baskets of provisions. She had taken these off with her trunk and deposited them on the ground. Nothing was destroyed, just junked. I think Mr. Munro said they used this elephant for other duty after that.

Another interesting thing to watch, though not as nice as the elephants, is the buzzards. In this country, buzzards are our health department. They take care of all carrion and things that, if left, would make life unbearable. They are as hideous as their jobs, but to kill them is strictly forbidden.

We also have crows, and they love to annoy the buzzards. When the buzzards have picked some piece of carrion clean and are sitting along a sandbar resting and digesting, with their wings spread out, the crows come in flocks and fly just low enough so that their feet, like landing gear, are dropped down and dragged over the heads of the buzzards. Back and forth they go, making the big garbage disposals hop out of the way. Finally the buzzards are forced to fly away. The crows then gather in a circle, with much cawing and fluttering about. They seem to congratulate each other on the routing of their enemies.

We have a pet gibbon that was given to us by some native friends. Gibbons are very near to being human, and this one, even as a baby, looked so much like a wise old lady that we named her Mae Tao, or Grandmother. I had a little house built for her on top of four ten-foot posts. To keep her close to home, we outfitted her with a harness attached to a chain about fifty feet long. This was enough to stretch to the top of the tallest tree around her house, and the chain links were small enough that they wouldn’t catch in the branches. When we installed her in her house, she stayed there for a number of days, pulling on the chain and getting her bearings, as it seemed. Then one day she went out hand over hand, exploring. From then on, there has been no end to her antics. She loves to tease one of the coolies, Ai Noi, a stolid, quiet man who puts up with a great deal from her. She also likes to harass the dog, Sen. He has learned never to come too close, or she will be on his back in a second, holding onto his long hair, and only Ai Noi can rescue him. She loves bananas, which she peels daintily and stuffs into her mouth, storing the fruit in the pouches on the sides of her jaws for future eating. She drinks water by dipping her paw–or her hand, I should rather call it–into the water and then sucking the wet paw.

Our other pets include two parrots, one small one, with a pink breast, and the other a larger bird with green and yellow feathers. Both talk well, in Lao, of course. I have never seen the big one at rest. Either he is trying to reach the small one’s roost, or he is climbing around on his own roost, talking, swinging upside down, or imitating some noise he has heard. He gives such a realistic imitation of a dog fight that one day I called to the coolie to drive away the dogs. These birds rule the back porch leading to the kitchen, and they delight in yelling the cook’s name in a fairly good imitation of my voice. One day, Lott took both birds down and let them walk around on the floor. The big one immediately went after the small one, saying, “Please just let me touch you” in a wheedling voice. But the other bird had no confidence in him and scurried across the floor to me. He climbed up into my lap and then up to my shoulder, saying all the time, “I’ll die, I’ll die.” But when he peeked safely out from under my chin, he yelled, “Nok kao, nuu ka bo’ dai,” or “you can’t catch me, old bird.”

SOURCE: Mission to Siam: The Memoirs of Jessie MacKinnon Hartzell [1884-1968], edited with a biographical essay by Joan Acocella (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2001), pp. 56-58

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by | 2 October 2004 · 1:14 pm

Mission to Siam: The Ants Come Marching …

The rains have begun. We watched the thunder storms in the valley this afternoon. It is so strange to see isolated storms dotting the country, with bright sunshine in between. Tonight, after the first rains, we saw a spectacular sight. We were watching the moonlight over the ranges when we noticed dots of light, like fireflies, here and there all over the valley. Eventually the whole valley was filled with moving points of light. We called our servants, and to them this was no mystery. After the first rains, the frogs come out by the millions, and the natives turn out by the hundreds to catch them. They use a spear made of bamboo, sharpened to a needle point, and to guide their way in the dark, they carry lanterns–the lights we saw. Frogs are a great delicacy to these people. They probably ate frog legs before the French even thought of it.

We came down from the heights this morning. Toward the end, we had to hurry, as a thunderstorm was building. We just made it to the house as the first raindrops fell. That wonderful smell of the first rains, of dust being dampened, of dry leaves plumping up with moisture–everything combined makes a wonderful odor in the air. Even the ponies rejoice. They want to run.

But the rainy season is also the season of ants, ants of every size and description. Some bite, some only crawl, but all make for the food storage closet–all except the “army ants.” The army ants are a real army, with officers and also a huge “elephant ant,” who acts as an ambulance for those with sore feet or exhaustion. These pile aboard him, sometimes three or four at a time, and off he goes, alongside the regular line. This army on the march is about six inches across the column and several yards long. It goes through the house as if the house did not exist. The ants seem oblivious to obstacles and never go around anything. Over or under is the order. If the obstacle happens to be a desk, over they go, leaving a black smudge behind them almost as if their feet were covered with tar, and this mark is as difficult to remove as if it were tar. After suffering with the army ants several times, I found that a kettle of hot water can cause them to change their route. The officer ants are amusing to watch. They tear up and down the column, shoving any stragglers back into line and probably reprimanding them too, if one could understand their language. It is a great waste of my time to have these ants march through my house, but they fascinate me.

Then there are the small biting ants that crawl into our beds in the quiet night. It takes time and a lot of activity to get them out. Another kind of ant one could almost class with scorpions. This is the mot daeng, or red ant, named after its fiery color. The natives put it in their curry; they like its sour taste. When it bites, it stands on its head, to make a greater impression, I guess. It is the most belligerent of all ants except the mot tin, or tongue ant, which is about an inch long and shaped like a tongue. The people tell me six of them can kill a man.

These visitors teach us new habits. We have learned to keep our clothes not in drawers but in closets with open shelves. That way, if a snake or scorpion or centipede has decided to make a home in your clothing, you are likely to see him before he gets to you. Also, we always shake out our clothes before we put them on. In walking around the compound, we have learned to watch our step. The other morning we heard the servants talking excitedly, and we went out to see what was going on. Two snakes were trying to swallow each other, tail first, and had formed a complete circle. The coolie solved their problem. He killed them both.

SOURCE: Mission to Siam: The Memoirs of Jessie MacKinnon Hartzell [1884-1968], edited with a biographical essay by Joan Acocella (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2001), pp. 43-45

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by | 30 September 2004 · 10:06 pm

Good Soldier Outlier: Civil Affairs

My first thought when I got my orders to report to HQ Co., 95th Civil Affairs Group at Ft. Gordon, GA, after I finished language school in 1970 was, “Wow. I wonder if I’ll be working with civilians and can wear civilian clothes.” Little did I know that Civil Affairs was just a euphemism for what used to be called Military Government, and that my unit’s insignia showed a traditional Korean city gate on it from its first and last major deployment–during the Korean War. (Its only other component, the 42nd Civil Affairs Co., was briefly deployed to the Dominican Republic in 1965.)

The 95th CA Grp. was an officer-heavy skeletal battalion (only HQ Co. and 42nd Co.) with no critical mission, so it functioned as a holding unit for people either awaiting levy to Vietnam or just back from Nam. As a Romanian translator-interpreter, I was initially assigned to the amiable 2Lt Gorniak, who had mastered German, Dutch, Danish, and Afrikaans while in college ROTC. But, like most officers, he was assigned to one of the combat branches–Infantry, Artillery, and Armored Cavalry–and soon came down on levy to Vietnam. (His name was among the handful I looked for a couple decades later when I dragged my daughter over to the Vietnam Memorial on a visit to DC. I was relieved not to find the names, but found the experience too emotional to explain to my daughter at the time.)

Among those just back from Nam were Sp4 McLaughlin, a crazy fearless helicopter door gunner who never hesitated to step between belligerent drunken soldiers; Sp4 Blaisdell, a radio DJ with a mellifluous voice who spent most of his tour in PsyOps, eating dog and other delicacies with Vietnamese villagers; and three former juvenile delinquent New Yorkers, Pfcs Carter, O’Neill, and Melendez (black, white, and Hispanic, respectively), about which more in later posts.

We did only one field exercise: Driving south on bivouac to Florida, where we pitched tents in a wooded military reservation overrun with armadillos (called ‘turtle-rabbits’ in Nahuatl), many of which had themselves been overrun on the road. The excess of officers over enlisted in our unit meant that each of us peons had to do twice the amount of set-up and clean-up that we would otherwise have done. I remember spending one long evening in our tent listening to Sgt Kerwin tell stories and recite Robert W. Service poems. When I asked him why a person with his wide interests stayed in the Army, he said he and his family very much needed the medical benefits.

By that time, I had become company clerk, and rode in the company First Sergeant’s jeep. Just before departure, 1Sg Davis had gone off to take a shit in the woods. Unfortunately for him, he was very short and hadn’t noticed that he had squatted over the back of his own trousers. Unfortunately for me, I had to ride behind him all the way back to Ft. Gordon. (Fortunately, it was an open jeep.) From then on, his epithet was Sgt Shitty Britches.

The only official public service we performed was guarding railroad crossings while a trainload of nerve gas was shipped to Savannah for eventual destruction (perhaps on Johnston Island). We were all issued gas masks and atropine, but were not allowed to keep them on our persons so as not to alarm the populace. So we kept them in the back of our truck, knowing there would be no possible way for us to get to them and put them to use within the 7-10 seconds that nerve gas would take to kill us.

Civil Affairs was relocated to Ft Bragg in September 1971. As a short-timer, with barely 6 months left to serve, I was transferred to Ft. Gordon’s PCF–Personnel Control Facility (the brig), not Patrol Craft, Fast (Swiftboats). In December 1974, the 95th CA Grp was deactivated, and nowadays most Civil Affairs units are found in the National Guard, which I’m sure performs far more capably than the mixed bag of transients in the 95th CA Grp would have.

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by | 28 September 2004 · 7:41 pm

Laos: Minorities

Laos is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in mainland Southeast Asia…. Laos lies between the major states of the region: China on its northern border, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the far south, Thailand to the south and west, and Burma in the northwest. Populations from all of these neighbours overlap into Laos. Unlike these other countries, the lowland, ethnic Lao after whom the country is named, do not constitute an overwhelming majority of the population. The 1995 census shows the Lao making up around 2.4 million of a total population of just over 4.5 million, that is, just over half the population. If, however, an ethnolinguistic classification is used–lumping together all speakers of Tai dialects, of which Lao is one–then the Tai-Lao group rises to just over 3 million, or just over two-thirds of the population. By contrast, in all the neighbouring countries the dominant ethnic group–Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, Cambodian, Burmese–make up 80 per cent of the population or more. The balance between the different ethnic groups in Laos is therefore unusual, with political attractions to particular ways of drawing the ethnic map….

For centuries the region was dominated by Theravada Buddhist kingdoms that waxed and waned until the idea of national states took hold in the nineteenth century, largely in response to pressures from European colonial powers.

Culturally the minorities in Laos apparently fall outside the framework of these Theravada Buddhist kingdoms. However, some of them, such as those around Luang Prabang or in Champassak, played a central role in various state rituals presided over by a Theravada Buddhist king or prince. Besides the minorities directly caught up in traditional Lao state ritual there may also be important symbolic congruities between Buddhist polities and some of the upland societies. The overthrow of the monarchy in Laos in 1975, however, gutted the traditional symbolic forms of integration, with only less encompassing symbols of Lao nationalism substituted.

French colonialism (1893-1953) brought with it the trappings of the modern state, which demands much greater control over its citizenry than any premodern state. This often upset traditional arrangements, sometimes causing revolts. These revolts, however, were not ‘anti-colonial’ in any simple sense. For example, a 1914 revolt by Haw Chinese traders against the French occurred because the latter were trying to enforce their monopoly on the opium trade.

The Hmong were relative newcomers to Laos, their migrations beginning in the early nineteenth century, and therefore their growing presence finally demanded a redistribution of power in the highlands, which the French facilitated. They were also important economically because they grew opium. The centre of Hmong population was Xieng Khoang Province, and a dispute among clans there would ultimately lead one side into the arms of the Lao communists and the others to support the Royal Lao Government (RLG).

As the new Lao state took shape, the administrative integration of this important highland population gathered pace. In 1946 Touby Lyfoung became the assistant governor of the province, while in 1947 his brother Toulia became one of the province’s representatives in the new National Assembly. Touby regarded the granting of citizenship to the Hmong in the 1947 Constitution as truly momentous. In 1965 he even became a member of King Sisavang Vatthana’s Council. He encouraged Hmong participation in Lao national and annual festivals, and in particular the learning of Lao language and education. While social and cultural change among the Hmong accelerated in the 1950s, including the influence of Christian missionaries, it was not traumatic.

The war that swept through the highlands of Laos in the 1960s, and Xieng Khoang in particular, not only severely upset the highland habitat, but also led to high casualties among the minorities. One Hmong soldier, Vang Pao, rose to the rank of general and he and his multi-ethnic troops, many of them irregulars, spearheaded fighting against the Lao communists, and in particular North Vietnamese regulars sent against them. The military defeat of the RLG by the communists caused hundreds of thousands of minorities to flee as refugees after 1975.

SOURCE: “Laos: Minorities,” by Grant Evans, in Ethnicity in Asia, ed. by Colin Mackerras (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), pp. 210-212

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by | 26 September 2004 · 1:53 pm

Ethnicity in Cambodia

Cambodia is the country in Southeast Asia with the smallest ethnic minority population, both relatively and in absolute numbers. Among about 10 million inhabitants almost 90 per cent are ethnic Khmer. Khmer dominance is ancient: for the Khmer, the kingdom of Angkor (ninth to fifteenth centuries) still remains very much the exemplary origin both of Khmer civilization and the Cambodian nation.

The ways in which governments, officials and elites in post-colonial Cambodia have perceived and treated the country’s non-Khmer ethnic groups reflect an attitude of Khmer supremacy. This attitude is not so much directed against other ethnic groups (except for the Vietnamese), as manifesting a profound ethnocentrism, a conviction that Khmer culture is superior to others. This ethnocentrism puts the Khmer in line with the constructivist view, as opposed to the essentialist …. Already at independence (1953) it was officially recognized that one could ‘become Khmer’ (coul kmae) by adopting the Khmer language and customs.

The Khmer see themselves as fundamentally agrarian, their primary crop, paddy rice, being not only the mainstay for all but an important symbol of the human condition in general. Consequently, the ideal society is one of rice-farming peasants. It was the Khmer Rouge that most explicitly pursued this ideal, but cities generally do not figure positively in the Khmer imagination. There is an implicit association between urban life and foreign, non-Khmer customs. From a Khmer perspective, the capital Phnom Penh is a place in some sense outside Khmer cultural space and inhabited mainly by ‘foreigners’. The traditional ‘foreigners’ in Cambodia are the Chinese and the Vietnamese, and these have always to a large extent been urban populations. The rural-urban dichotomy is thus a significant dimension of ethnic relations.

Historically Cambodia has felt politically and territorially pressed between its two more powerful neighbours, Siam (Thailand) and Annam (Vietnam). Siamese armies contributed to the fall of Angkor in the late fifteenth century, and Cambodia was effectively under Siamese suzerainty for much of the period after this until becoming a French protectorate in 1863. Thailand temporarily annexed the northwestern provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap (where Angkor is located) during the Second World War; the name Siem Reap means ‘Siam conquered’, perhaps implying conquered both by and from Siam.

Nevertheless, since independence, the Cambodian governments and the Khmer educated elite have always regarded Vietnam and the Vietnamese as the big threat to Cambodian political, economic and territorial sovereignty, not Thailand and the Thais. Thus, the Khmer consider the Mekong Delta as kampuchea krom, a Cambodian territory unlawfully annexed by Vietnam. The Cambodian border provinces of Prey Veng and Svay Rieng have a significant Vietnamese rice-farming population who have settled (‘encroached’) in search of land. Vietnamese expansionism is a recurrent theme in Khmer propaganda.

The main cultural divide running through Indochina is that which divides mainland Southeast Asia between the ‘Indianized’ states of Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia and the ‘Sinicized’ Vietnam. This cultural divide may explain why the attitude of the Khmer towards the Vietnamese is significandy different from that towards the Thai. So, also culturally speaking, both Vietnamese and Chinese are perceived as foreign. But in contrast to the Chinese, the Vietnamese in Cambodia are regarded by the majority of the Khmer as intruders, whose presence in the country many perceive as a threat to the Khmer-ness of the nation. Although the Vietnamese do not form one coherent ethnic community, the Khmer nationalist elite, who have pursued anti-Vietnamese propaganda since independence, have tended to ignore this fact, and little allowance has been made for the diversity of Vietnamese communities within the ethnic category ‘Vietnamese’. Consequently, all members of this category have been victims of violent persecutions in recent Cambodian history.

SOURCE: “Cambodia,” by Jan Ovesen and Ing-Britt Trankell, in Ethnicity in Asia, ed. by Colin Mackerras (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), pp. 194-195

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by | 26 September 2004 · 1:44 pm

Cambodia’s Cham Minorities

The name Cham indicates a purported origin in the ‘Hinduized’ kingdom of Champa that occupied the coast of present-day Vietnam until the Vietnamese destroyed its capital in 1471, reducing it to its southernmost principalities. At this time the Cham underwent a gradual and partial conversion to Islam through the influence of the coastal trade of Arab, Persian and Indian merchants.

The ethnic label Cham in Cambodia covers virtually all the country’s Muslims. They number about 230,000, many of them traders. The Khmer view the Cham with apprehension because of a reputation for possessing strong magic. At the same time, both Khmer and Cham believe the latter belong firmly in Cambodian society, and as a well established Cambodian minority they are ‘good to think with’, as their land was once conquered by the Vietnamese and they thus exemplify a fate that many Khmer fear may one day become Cambodia’s.

Three separate groups may be distinguished within the Cham ethnic category. The Cham proper trace their ancestry to the Champa kingdom, but emphasize their religion (Islam) rather than their historical origins as their main defining feature. Most still speak the Cham language, which belongs to the Austronesian family [and appears most closely related the language of Aceh, Indonesia], but all are bilingual in Khmer. They are found mainly in Kampong Cham, Kampot and north of Phnom Penh.

A second group is referred to as ‘Chvea’, which is the Khmer word for ‘Java’, suggesting a penultimate origin in the Malay-Indonesian area. Today they speak Khmer. They prefer to call themselves not ‘Chvea’ but ‘Khmer Islam’ – stressing both their linguistic and national belonging and their separate religion, rather than their ‘foreign’ origin.

Both these groups are recipients of various forms of Islamic aid from the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates) as well as from Malaysia. The aid consists of schoolbooks and religious literature in Arabic, and contributions to building schools, mosques and wells. It also involves annual travel funds for some prominent members of local communities to go on the pilgrimage to Mecca. The Cham and Chvea welcome this attention from the world Islamic community, feeling it gives international recognition to their importance as Cambodian Muslims.

The third group of Cham are the Jahed. Although Muslims, they identify themselves primarily in terms of their historical origins in the Champa kingdom. Their ancestors formed part of an exodus from a Champa principality after its ruler’s defeat by the Vietnamese in 1692. Today they number about 23,000 people, all speaking Cham, but most being bilingual in Khmer. In terms of religion, the Jahed belong to a minority within the Muslim population. Their somewhat unorthodox version of Islam (superimposed on a basically Hindu type of cosmology and influenced by Sufi traditions) sets them apart from the other Muslims groups in Cambodia, the Chvea and the Cham. Their possession cult featuring the spirits of their royal ancestors in Champa still flourishes, another sign of their unorthodox approach to Islam.

The Jahed are adamant in following the Muslim customs they have preserved from Champa. Central among these are the weekly prayer meetings at the mosque (instead of the five daily prayers of orthodox Muslims), the use of the Cham language (rather than Arabic) for prayers, and the preservation of their religious literature in the Cham script. In the long run it is doubtful that these traditions will survive, as orthodox Islamic missionaries exert pressure through promises of financial support for mosque-building and distribution of cheaply printed prayer books in Arabic.

SOURCE: “Cambodia,” by Jan Ovesen and Ing-Britt Trankell, in Ethnicity in Asia, ed. by Colin Mackerras (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), pp. 204-206

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by | 21 September 2004 · 5:35 pm

Indonesian Presidential Election Run-off

The Swanker at Macam-Macam is back from hiatus with a post on the Indonesian presidential elections.

You can add the name Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to the pantheon of misfits, megalomaniacs and kleptocrats that have taken residence in Merdeka [‘Freedom’] Palace as President of the Unitary Republic of Indonesia, following:

– Megawati Sukarnoputri,

– Abdurrahman Wahid,

– BJ Habibie,

– Suharto,

– Sukarno.

The Christian Science Monitor strikes a more positive note.

With 155 million eligible voters, Indonesia directly chose its president for the first time on Monday, as well as electing local, regional, and national legislators. The voting was largely peaceful and, despite many complexities, conducted on one day (although official results are two weeks away).

Civic activism has taken root in Indonesia since the ouster of former dictator Suharto in 1998, despite attempts by Islamic political parties to gain power. Voters feel so independent in fact that it’s likely the current president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, may have been defeated in this election, according to early estimates. The candidate expected to win, former Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is popular for his secular leadership and record on fighting terrorism.

But even more positive coverage is at Agam’s Gecko, which I can’t resist quoting at length.

It was a fabulous day yesterday for Indonesians, and for their growing and strengthening democracy. The entire procedure — one of the largest scale exercises in democracy in the world — came off very smoothly. So much so, that it seemed to excite many of the mid-day commentators as the results came in. The fact that they could, in an election taking place across tens of thousands of islands spanning three time zones, be in a position to confidently declare the next president only hours after the polls closed in the western time zone, was taken as a point of pride in the efficiency and use of modern election techniques which have been implimented. It seems like they’ve had quite a lot of practice this year — parliamentary elections in March, first round presidential election in July, and yesterday’s presidential run-off between Megawati Sukarnoputri and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono….

Megawati just seems tired, I think she’s known for a while now that her term would be ending here. People are grateful for the measure of stability that she was able to maintain, and for moving some of the reforms along (such as these first direct presidential elections), but they are looking for a more energetic leader.

Best of all, this is a very fine answer to all those in other parts of the world who nervously wonder whether Islam is compatible with democracy. Indeed, if all those pundits and opinion-shapers of the mainstream media world would take time out from listening to their own voices, they might have noticed that a very important example was taking shape right under their noses. It still amazes me how little attention this country gets these days, considering that it is the most populous Muslim country in the world. And we can have any number of Agams of Tapaktuan telling anyone who would listen, that Indonesian Muslims are practically the most generous, tolerant and good natured people one is likely to find on this earth — it will never have the impact of just having our information gate-keepers giving it the attention it warrants.

In fact, and you won’t find this in any of the MSM [the universally reviled MainStream Media] coverage, there were some positively inspiring demonstrations of how to work the democratic process into the local cultural milieu. In many polling places, some in Bali and East Java that I saw on tv, every voter came dressed in the traditional clothing of the area — and in several examples that were covered by local media, the polling station officials and workers went all out to make it a special day, with ballot checkers and counters done up as traditional characters from mythological stories. One polling station in Yogyakarta was absolutely fantastic, with everyone in full costume from the wayang stories. When Arjuna hands you your ballot paper, and Gatokaca offers the ink pot to dip your pinky in while the gamelan chimes gently in the background, that’s pretty damn cool in my book. These were excellent examples of the Indonesian people saying, “This is democracy, this is what we struggled for, this is what reformasi was all about, and we want it. This is democracy, and this is our way of doing it.”

And they make it look like so much darn fun. All this in the wake of the horrendous terrorist attack in the heart of the capital less than two weeks ago. I think part of the giddiness that I noticed toward the end of the day, was sheer relief that none of the terrible possibilities that one could not help worrying about, actually took place. There had apparently been bomb warnings and phoned threats, those had been happening ever since the embassy blast on the 9th. There were definite worries on most minds, yet they turned out (early, most of them) to vote for their head of state, for the first time ever. They did it joyfully, and they made it their own. Yes, democracy is definitely compatible with Islam, no question about it….

AFTERTHOUGHT: So like, the next thing is trying to get our journalistic profession to actually learn how to say the name of the next president of the biggest Muslim nation. Would that be too much to ask? I mean, watching CNN the past few days, in addition to the BBC’s Rachel Harvey and her stupid persistent use of “Bang-Bang”, I’ve heard everything from “Yuhodio” to “Yuhohohodo”. It’s ridiculous! OK newsreaders, so it looks a bit intimidating with that one seemingly superfluous h. Don’t let it get to you, and just take five seconds to look at it. Take it slow: YUDHOYONO. You. Dough. Yo. No. Is that so hard? Or if you want to be a perfectionist: Yude. Hoe. Yo. No. Say it fast. Faster. Just like it’s spelled. You got it.

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