Bad mintin'

The Indonesian badminton team retained the coveted Thomas Cup in Kuala Lumpur. But celebrations were cut short when the team manager, retired colonel Soemarjono, received a phone call to be told he would be charged over the discovery of Rp 4.7 billion (AU$ 1 million) in counterfeit money. He was arrested upon his return to Indonesia. Hendrawan, two-time hero for Indonesia's Thomas Cup team in 1998 and 2000, was stunned when he saw several officers approaching Soemarjono to arrest him. 'Too bad, it happened just after we won the Thomas Cup. Our victory is meaningless.' Soemarjono was the commander of the Army Strategic Reserves Command (Kostrad) internal affairs division from 1996 to 1998. The scandal was later traced to top levels in the armed forces, who printed the money to finance the East Timor operation last year.

Jakarta Post 25 May 2000

Strings attached

The US Agency for International Development (AID) is cutting funding for Indonesian environmental groups because of their criticism of US mining corporations, according to environmentalists in Washington and Indonesia. After the Indonesian environmental NGO Jatam held a workshop in November 1999 condemning US mining company Newmont's actions, member Muhammed says he received a call from the US Embassy enquiring whether the funds used were derived from US AID. According to Muhammed, the Embassy said they received a complaint from Newmont protesting the use of US taxpayers' money to fund a campaign against a US company. Kim Walz, a spokeswoman for US AID, confirmed that Jatam's funding was not renewed. 'Doubts were raised about Jatam's ability to give impartial assistance to communities and we determined that this was harmful to US goals,' she told IPS.

IPS 15 May 2000

Bad vibes

Critics attacked the Howard government after it agreed to lease a government-owned radio transmitter to a Christian fundamentalist group to broadcast propaganda programs to Asia. The powerful Radio Australia short-wave transmitter in the northern Australian city of Darwin will be leased for 10 years to the British-based Christian Vision for an undisclosed sum. The Christian fundamentalist group is headed by Bob Edmiston, Britain's 85th richest man. 'Broadcasting evangelical Christian messages into countries such as Indonesia will do little to ease tension between Christian and Islamic communities,' says opposition Democrats foreign affairs spokeswoman Vicki Bourne. 'For many years Radio Australia was the voice of a nation,' observes Robert Macklin of the Canberra Times. 'Its replacement by a "repent or be damned" Christian broadcaster is an act of spiritual aggression to the millions of Muslims in Indonesia, Malaysia, Mindanao (in the Philippines) and elsewhere.'

IPS 23 June 2000

Risky buzz

Roll-your-own cigarettes wrapped in nipah leaves used to be a cheap alternative favoured by Aceh's older generation. But when a batch of tobacco and nipah leaves became contaminated with herbicide, far from abandoning the product, this type of cigarette became an instant hit with the youth. They believed it would give them a high. Cigarette vendor Bukhari explained that the price of the tobacco and nipah leaf had doubled. Before the contamination he was only selling

Rp 200,000 worth of cigarettes per day, but now he sold up to Rp 500,000. 'I am a merchant. I just sell what people want to buy,' he added, while he rolled himself a nipah leaf cigarette. So far 54 people have been admitted to hospital with poisoning, and one has died.

Detikworld 28 July 2000